ABSTRACT
“The blood of Jews was poured out like [that of] cattle”: So reads the Chronicle of Melrose in a reference to the outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in York on March 16, 1190. 1 It was the endgame of months of rioting, sparked initially by attacks against the London Jews at the coronation of Richard I of England (1189–1199) on September 3, 1189. What followed was widespread anti-Jewish fervor, and by March 1190 attacks on Jews had occurred in Norwich, Stamford, Bury-St. Edmunds, Colchester, Thetford, Osplinge, and Lincoln, culminating most famously at York with the mass suicide of the Jews within Clifford Castle. 2 Although anti-Jewish violence was not uncommon on the continent, the calamitous fury leveled against the Jews in England 3 was somewhat unprecedented in the twelfth century. Its development owed much to the crusading fervor in the period between the Second and Third Crusades, as crucesignati and their relations found commonalities between the struggle for the Holy Land and their own locales. 4 Jews, like Muslims, were perceived as a viable threat to the church, but because they lived within English borders Jews were easier targets for abuse. Besides the crusading mentality, other elements were instrumental, as Robert Stacey neatly summarizes: “Behind the massacres of 1189–90 in England there thus lay a complicated mixture of anti-Jewish prejudice and hostility: of sadism, greed, carnival and riot; of economic resentment and regional hostility; of political rivalry; and of protest against the crown’s relationship to Jews and Jewish moneylending.” 5
