Saturday, 3 September 2022

Evidence of the Jewish massacre in Norwich in 1190


Detailed analysis of the remains of seventeen skeletons found in a well in Norwich indicates that they were amongst the victims of the massacre of the Jewish community in Norwich in 1190. 


The massacre came about as participants in the Third Crusade prepared to set off for the Holy Land and was not unique - the one at the same time in York is better known today. As Norman Cohn pointed out in The Pursuit of the Millenium such attacks on Jewish communities on the eve of a Crusade appear to have occurred as expressions of popularist fervour and also resentment at Jewish moneylenders, and were usually deplored by the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies of the time.


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