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miracles.
A few years later, between 1150 and 1155, Thomas of Monmouth, prior of the cathedral of Norwich, reconstituted, with plentiful details and
testimonies, the various phases of the crime, [allegedly] perpetrated by local Jews, and prepared a detailed and broad hagiographic report of
the event (1). These were the origins of what is considered by many to have been first documented case of ritual murder in the Middle Ages,
while, for others, it is the source of the myth of the blood libel accusation. The latter consider Thomas to have been the inventor and
propagator of the stereotype of ritual crucifixion, soon to be rapidly disseminated, not only in England, but in France and the German
territories as well, fed by in the information relating to the now famous tale of the martyrdom of William of Norwich by the Jews in the days
of Passover (2).
William was an apprentice tanner in Norwich and came from an adjacent village. Among the shop's clients were a few local Jews, who are
thought to have chosen him as the victim of a ritual sacrifice to be performed during the days of the Christian Easter. On the Monday
following Palm Sunday, 1144, during the reign of King Stephen, a man claiming to be the cook for the arch deacon of Norwich presented
himself in the village of
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William, asking his mother Elviva for permission to take William with him to work as an apprentice. The woman s suspicions and hesitation
were soon won over thanks to a considerable sum of money. The following day, little William was already traveling the streets of Norwich in
the company of the self-proclaimed cook, directly to the dwelling of his aunt Leviva, Godwin Sturt s wife, who became informed of the
apprenticeship undertaken by the child and his new patron. But the latter individual awakened numerous suspicions in the aunt, Leviva, who
asked a young girl to follow them and determine their destination. The shadowing, as discreet as it was effective, took the child to the
threshold of the dwelling of Eleazar, one of the heads of the community of Norwich, where the cook had little William enter the house with
the necessary prudence and circumspection.
At this point, Thomas of Monmouth allowed another key witness to speak, one who had been strategically placed inside the Jew's house.
This was Eleazar's Christian servant, who, the following morning, had by chance, witnessed, with horror -- through the crack of a door left
inadvertently open -- the cruel ceremony of the child s crucifixion and atrocious martyrdom, with the participation, carried out with religious
zeal, of local Jews, "in contempt of the passion of our Lord . Thomas kept the date of the crucial event clearly in mind. It was Palm Sunday,
Wednesday 22 March of the year 1144.
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To throw off suspicion, the Jews decided to transport the body from the opposite side of the city to Thorpe's Wood, which extended to within
a short distance from the last house. During the trip on horseback with the cumbersome sack, however, despite their efforts at caution, they
crossed the path of a respected and wealthy merchant of the locality on his way to church, accompanied by a servant; the merchant had no
difficulty realizing the significance of what was taking place before his eyes. He is said to have remembered, years later, on his death bed,
and to have confessed to a priest, who then became one of the diligent and indefatigable Thomas s valued sources of information. Young
William s body was finally hidden by the Jews among the bushes of Thorpe.
The scene now became the inevitable scene of miraculous happenings. Beams of celestial light illuminated the boys resting place late at
night, causing townspeople to discover the body, which was then buried where it was discovered. A few days afterwards, the cleric, Godwin
Sturt, who, informed of the murder, requested, and was granted, permission to have the body exhumed. He then recognized his nephew
William as the tragic victim. A short time afterwards, during
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a diocesan synod, Godwin got up to accuse the Jews of the crime. Thomas of Monmouth agreed with him and accused them of the horrible
ritual of crucifixion of a Christian boy as the principal event of a Passover ceremony intended to mock the passion of Jesus Christ, a sort of
crude and bloody Passover counter-ritual.
The conclusion of the matter turned out to be anything but a foregone conclusion, particularly in comparison with the numerous similar cases
occurring over the following years, in which the Jews, considered responsible for the horrible wickedness, met a cruel fate. In this case, the
Jews of Norwich, invited to present themselves before the archbishop to respond to the accusations, requested and obtained the protection of
the King and his agents. Protected by the walls of the sheriff's castle, in which they found refuge, they waited for the storm to pass, as in fact
it did. In the meantime, little William s body was taken from the ditch in Thorpe's Wood to a magnificent tomb usually reserved for monks,
in a sheltered spot behind the Cathedral, and began, as anticipated, to work miracles, as only a martyr worthy of being proclaimed a saint
possibly could (3).
The most disturbing of the testimonies gathered by Thomas of Monmouth for his file on the murder of little William was that of a converted
Jew, Theobald of Cambridge, who had become a monk hearing the story of the miracles reported at the tomb of the victim of Norwich. The
convert revealed that the Jews believed that, to bring redemption closer, and with it, their return to the Promised Land, they sacrificed a
Christian child every year "in contempt of Christ". To carry out this providential plan, the representatives of the Jewish communities, headed
by their local rabbis, were said to meet every year in council in Narbonne, in the south of France, to draw lots as to the name of locality
where the ritual crucifixion was to occur from time to time. In 1144, the choice fell by lot to the city of Norwich, and the entire Jewish
community was said to have adhered to that choice (4).
Theobald s confession has been considered by some to constitute the origin of the ritual murder accusation of Norwich, which was then
collated, accompanied by suitable documentation, by Thomas of Monmouth (5). The ex-Jewish monk was probably alluding to the carnival
of Purim, also known as the "carnival of the lots", which, in the Jewish calendar precedes Pesach, Passover, by one month, since the macabre
lottery was said to have taken place every year on Purim (6).
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The reason for drawing lots to select the Jewish community to be entrusted with the duty of carrying out the annual sacrifice of a Christian
child appeared later, in the confessions of the defendants of a ritual murder committed at Valréas in 1247, and, with reference to another case
at Pforzheim in Baden in 1261, gathered and disseminated by the friar Thomas of Cantimpré in his Bonum universale de apibus (Douay,
1627) (7). On that occasion, the Jews of the small village of the Vaucluse were accused of killing a two-year old girl, Meilla, "in a sort of
sacrifice" for the purpose of collecting her blood, and then dumping the body in a ditch (8). The testimonies, extorted by the inquisitors under
torture, were said to have shown that "it is a custom of the Jews, above all, wherever they live in large numbers, to carry out this practice
every year, particularly in the regions of Spain, because there are a lot of Jews in these places" (9). It should be noted that Narbonne,
mentioned by the converted Jew, Theobald of Cambridge, as the meeting place of the representatives of the Jewish communities for the
annual Passover lottery held to select the location of the next ritual homicide, was in France, but belonged to the Mark of Spain.
But was the case of William of Norwich truly the first ritual murder of a Christian reported during the Middle Ages? Was Thomas of
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