Gone Medieval - The Jews of Norwich

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

The chilling discovery of a medieval well in Norwich, filled with the remains of 17 Jewish adults and children, opened a window into the lived reality of historical antisemitism. What do these findings tell us about the forces that shaped Jewish life and loss in medieval England?Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis continue their exploration of Norwich, uncovering the rich, and often heartbreaking, story of the city’s once-thriving Jewish community. Dr. Oren Margolis joins Eleanor to trace the journey from the arrival of Jews after the Norman Conquest through centuries of resilience, discrimination, and ultimately expulsion in 1290.More:Antisemitism in Medieval EuropeListen on AppleListen on SpotifyJulian of NorwichListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. Since our last episode when Matt and I visited Norwich Castle, we've stayed in Norwich to uncover more of its extraordinary medieval history. We're standing next to an avenue of old trees. Here the air is really still, almost reverent. Around us there's lots of gorgeous old headstones, some of them kind of getting swallowed into the shrubbery behind them. At the very far end of the cemetery

past the older Victorian monuments and the quiet ranks of war graves, there's a simple memorial. It's modest, but powerful. And it marks the resting place of the remains of 17 Jewish men, women, and children. whose remains were found discarded in a medieval well here in Norwich. It's set at the end of the ranks of other memorials, and just behind it there's a tangle of ivy, holly, and bay trees. It's dotted with small pebbles.

Tokens of remembrance left by visitors who know the story. There's a really palpable weight here. It's not a fear. It's more like solemn recognition. Recognition of the shadows of religious purists. persecution at last honored. It was only in 2013 that these 17 souls were finally laid to rest. More than eight centuries after the massacre that destroyed them,

their bones were given the dignity of a burial that had been denied them in death, by violence, and in death again by erasure. They had lain forgotten at the bottom of a well, just unceremoniously stacked like discarded refuse in an unmarked question. grave, 61 meters beneath the ground, in a pitch-black tomb that they did not choose. So, Matt, what do we know about this massacre and how did it come about? Well, we know that this all really begins in February of 1190 when Christian crusaders are about to head off to Jerusalem for the Third Crusade, but they decided that before they went

to fight the Saracens, they could identify an enemy closer to home to deal with first. On the 6th of February, they came here to Norwich. The medieval chronicler Ralph de Dicetto wrote these words with a kind of chilling brevity. He wrote, all the Jews who were found in their own houses at Norwich were butchered. Butchered like animals. A family or families destroyed in an instant of religious fanaticism, so absolute that their demise was never even dignified with the courtesy of a proper grave. For more than 800 years, those 17 men, women and children remained in darkness.

But in 2004, when construction workers started excavation in the centre of Norwich to build a shopping centre, a human skull tumbled into their equipment. And suddenly the well that had swallowed these people whole gave up its dark secret. DNA analysis revealed three of them as sisters. Another was a toddler with red hair alongside their mother and father. The most advanced forensic science was able to connect these medieval dead to modern Ashkenazi Jewish populations. So today on Gaum medieval, we're telling the story of medieval Norwich's once thriving Jewish community.

Of how religious conspiracy theories, the blood livals, a specifically medieval lie, could turn a prosperous minority into hunted prey. Of a reconciliation that took over 800 years to attempt, but which finally honored both the murdered and those who survived. So let's just take a moment to lay a pebble on the memorial. Now, to find out more about the pogrom that saw an end to Norwich's thriving Jewish community, I'm going up to the campus of the University of East Anglia and its Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts to meet Dr. Orin Margulis,

Associate Professor of Renaissance Studies. He's been leading a campaign to create a Center for Jewish History and Heritage at UEA and is a trustee of Jernet's House, which, in partnership with the city, aims to preserve and restore the oldest extant identified Jewish residents in England and promote Jewish cultural heritage in Norwich. So, Matt, I'll catch up with you later. To the Sainsbury Center here at you. Out there he's Orin. Hi. Hi. Hello.

Good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you so much for me. me. Well, thank you for coming. Welcome to UA. Welcome to Saints Bese. It's exciting. Okay, let's go ahead. All right, we're an very basic one to start us out. Best possible way to discuss the

Jewish community in Norch from the beginning. How did this particular community come to be here? Where did they originate from? Well, that's a very interesting question. Because, of course, where Jews originate from, if we're going back in our previous thousand years,

of course, Jews originate in Judea, originate in Jerusalem, from the people that were there in the time of the temple, and afterwards, when the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed, Jews remain in the region and so on. It becomes increasingly difficult for Jewish communities to live there through the early Middle Ages, and communities are moving through the Mediterranean world, through the developing Islamic world, and so on. Also, then, by around the year 1,000, we see Jews coming up from Italy into central and then northern and western Europe. Most immediately, the Jews of Norwich are coming from Normandy. And that's very, and that's notable, because the Jewish population

of medieval England comes after the Norman conquest and is on the, and comes on the invitation of William the Conqueror. So why does William the Conqueror have such an interest in bringing the Jewish community over here? Is it just like more Normans is better? Or is it specifically we want Jewish Norvans? Well, I mean, I mean, to the extent that they're Normans, because the Jewish community in Normandy, of which there's been some really excellent scholarship that's been done, really interesting, with centers like Ruon, that were really important centers. But it's part of this northern French Jewish community, which produces some of the leading Jewish scholars and commentators of the medieval period. This is the world of Rashi, the great biblical commentator.

And Normandy is part of that culture world. The Jews that come, are, for the most part, they're invited as they come as merchants and as financiers. That's the purpose for inviting them. But, of course, communities don't live on commerce and finance alone. When Jewish communities come, they come also with the people that will provide for Jewish life in England, in places like Norwich, in places like London, in Winchester, and other English cities. This involves the butchers and the, that's an important one in a Jewish life. Jewish community. Of course, yeah. That's a special task. They come with all the stuff that you need for life, and we have records of the Jewish community of medieval Norwich that show the diversity of occupations that people had.

So this is something that I find really interesting, because what is really fun about these urban Jewish communities in England is we do have really great records for that, right? Because they are so particularly tied up with royal favor that it lets us kind of drill down. a little bit more and find out way more about them than we know about, you know, I guess, generalized rural communities elsewhere. Yeah, and that's really interesting. And Eleanor, you've said that they have royal favor. That's in a context, however, where there's a lot of things Jews can't do. So Norwich is a city that it is settled in the Saxon period, but the building of Norwich Castle and the development of effectively a new town around the marketplace that I think

you're going to be going to, is crucial too. And because that whole world, that civic world of guilds and the developing world of civic government that we associate with so much of the Middle Ages is a world that is, however, closed to Jews. Jews are not members of guilds. Jews aren't part of those city corporations. So what they do have is a relationship directly to the crown. But it's not so removed because the heart of the Jewish community of Norwich was right beside the marketplace, off the street now called Haymarket. So it was right at the heart of town, even if they could not take part in those civic institutions. So this is really interesting because we have this whole big community that comes over like other big communities of people

from Normandy. Why are they settling in Norwich? What is it about Norwich that you can have a huge community of people come over like this? Yeah. Well, let's, I mean, we should just be careful when we're talking about numbers. We're talking about numbers that are in the hundreds that settle in Norwich. But that is sizable. I mean, when one thinks of the population, again, historical demographics are challenging, but it is a sizable percentage of the population. It has a number of things going for it that are attractive to it. First of all, it's effectively a new town. It's effectively a development town around the marketplace in the castle. In that sense, it's also a royal town in that sense. And it's also a town that has just become the Episcopal Sea. And for the eastern part of the country,

the diocese moves to Norwich in the later 11th century, and Jews are involved in the financing of works on the cathedral. It's also, geographically, it's at a point of close and easy access to some of the continental centers. Most of the medieval English-Jewish-Jewish communities of significance are at places with C. access to the continent. Those remain really important links. The Jewish community in medieval England is never really an isolated community. It is always relatively small, but in close relationship with those centers in Normandy and in northern France, and also with Spain, too. The great scholar Ibn Ezra famously comes to London as well, too, in the 12th century. So it's a community that

for which it's always important to think about those links. There's a reason the Jews of medieval Norwich from what we can tell speak French as their vernacular language. Well, there's a lot of that about, though. Yeah, yeah. That's true. But there's a reason that they do because their lives are not removed from that world. So what's life like in the Jewish community here in Norwich? You're set up right by this very bustling market square. You're in a very up-and-coming city.

But what does it sort of feel like to be one of the, Jewish people in this town. What are kind of facilities are they constructing? What are they using, I guess is my question? Well, this is a great question because our knowledge of the medieval Jewish community has changed. The physical space of the medieval Jewish community has changed significantly. Now, from these records that we've been talking about, it's been possible to understand a bit about who lived in which houses. I've talked about a Jewish community and a concentration in this area near the market. It's not a ghetto. Jews are not required to live there. That's not something that we see characteristically of the Middle Ages, but it is a density of the population because

of those community institutions that we're talking about. Things like the ritual slaughterer, the ritual bath, which is very important. The ritual immersion is extremely important for women, especially. So things that will make the community concentrate, as well as protection. But what's become interesting to, I mean, further, is, so of course there was also a synagogue that was there in this site. And that was a stone building, not that common here. Stone buildings mean that you had to import your building materials. So there was a synagogue. But it appears, and this has been one of these great kind of detective work cases, and it's slightly complicated, but based on finds in Ruon and reading sources in light of what those finds suggest to us. So rereading sources

in light of what we can now know, gives us an idea of what these sources actually mean. It appears that there wasn't just a synagogue in Norwich, but there was also a yeshiva in Norwich. Now a Shiva, yes, exactly. A yeshiva is an academy of scholars, of Jewish scholars studying Talmud, studying the oral law. That actually changes our perspective of this place because you can't have a yeshiva. A synagogue you can have is run by a community, is run by a kihila. It's not like today where you hire a rabbi. The synagogue is run by a kehila. You have, but to have a yeshiva, you need a concentration of scholars. So that's one other piece to the story. We have a concentration of scholars that's here.

And it's quite likely that one of the bodies of commentary on the Talmud from the Middle Ages, this group of texts called the Tosophod, was penned in Norwich, a place that the text referred to with a kind of inversion as by the name Gornish. So that's, you know, if we're thinking of what people are doing, that's also something that's going on here. Torah scholarship. Isaac Jernet and his father, Jernet of Norwich, also called Elieab, are identified in Hebrew sources with the name as well, Nadiv, which means benefactor. So these are people, wealthy people in the community that we do know we're also financiers. But benefactor, refers to their role as benefactors of scholarship in the community.

Well, I mean, this says a lot, right? Because by the time you have a whole yeshiva and you are, you've got the resources and a large enough community both to be holding classes and bring people in that really tells us that this is a really thriving group. I guess I have a question just going back a little bit. You mentioned a few times now that there are some members of the community that are financiers.

What is it that this particular group is offering in terms of services to the rest of the population in Norwich? In Norwich, insofar as we have records of this, we're talking about one of the most significant financiers in medieval England in the form of Isaac Jernet and his son, Isaac Jernet. They do have holdings not only here, but also in Kings Lynn and other places. We're talking about financing. We're talking about, in this case, financing the construction of the cathedral. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Serious money. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So, and this is, this is one of these things where in terms of financing, I think that people don't really understand the difficulties that medieval Christians have created for themselves in terms of financing in the medieval world, right? Because there are particular rules within Christianity about money lending. and the concept of what Christians call us usury, right? Can you tell us a little bit about what that means

and how it is that Jewish people are able to get Christians out of this mess they've created? Well, in some ways, the answer is less dramatic than the whole story around it. This whole myth of the Jewish money lender as some kind of figure so often of anti-Semitic discourse later on is exactly, as you say, it's something that we would consider entirely normal. which is means of providing credit for larger projects, and so you don't have to just spend what you can raise in that particular moment. That's entirely normal. Jewish law provides for loans, especially beyond the Jewish community in this. This is one of the reasons, this is one of, as it were, one of the services that Jewish communities are called on to provide. It's also one of,

It's one of the reasons that it seems that for the most part Jews lived, broadly speaking, quite decent lives when they were going about and living their lives. It's also one of the circumstances that made Jewish life always contingent and always at risk. Yeah, could we talk about that a little bit? You know, I think it's so difficult because I'd never want to make it seem when I'm talking about Jewish medieval life as though the only thing about them. Oh, the only thing about Jewish people is that they're facing, you know, violence and oppression because there's so many interesting things they're doing as well. But, I mean, let's be real, there is still this kind of ongoing, I guess you can

kind of characterize it almost as resentment sometimes that some Christians have towards Jewish communities. Well, I mean, there's no way around it. I mean, I think it's so important that we understand Jewish history as not just a series of sufferings, the old sufferings and scholars history, it's important that we don't just do that and that we give in history a space for Jewish agency. At the same time, it's important never to forget that Jews are a subordinate and subjugated population. That throughout our period, throughout the world in this period, and we can keep both those things in mind. You've mentioned Christian resentment. There is no doubt that resentment does play a role

and resentment of others and fear of the other and so on. But there are also things particular to Christianity and indeed to Islam as well too that means that Judaism represents a problem. And so there's also a basis in an anti-Judaism as well too

that will characterize. So when we, all of those things are true, resentment, fear of others, these financial issues, that we've been talking about. All those things are true. But there's a good seedbed to draw upon, which is theological. Yeah, and I suppose that this is one of those things that we do see across the period. You know, you've mentioned we've got so big, well, household names if you're a medieval historian, I guess.

Like, you know, we have like real Jewish thinkers and scholars. And, you know, you see, particularly at a very high level of theologians, like a lot of very fruitful scholarship going back and forth. You know, not, I think that people tend to talk about Iberia and the Jewish population is there, and quite rightly too, but certainly here as well. You know, this is a sort of hotbed of scholasticism here in England, and we got big names coming and going back and forth. And I guess here in Norwich, we've got big names like Jernet, who are making these things possible, right? And so it's interesting because you have a collection of people who, yeah, they do become wealthy, but they're providing a service that people want, you know,

people want a cathedral here in Norwich, yeah, and one of my favorite cathedrals in England, too, love Norwich Cathedral. And, you know, who's going to pay for it? That's the question. Who's going to finance it? Yeah. Let's put it that way, too, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. When we're talking about a cathedral, as you well know, is a project that is always ongoing. So the beginnings of Norwich Cathedral are before the time of the Jernets. The Jernet is a, the Jernet, father and son are either side of 1,200. So let's think this is building cathedral never ends. Oh, yeah.

It's still being built right now, but you've got the jurors. And by the time they are, they are kind of in the swing of things, this is a really influential family. So, you know, it's been, you know, 100 some years since Jewish people have showed up. This is like embedded. This is bedrock into the community of Norwich writ large. You know, like this group of people that you can kind of rely on for financial services. Do you think that that would be a fair thing to say? Well, the time that, what's interesting is that by the time we're talking about the Jernets,

the community has also suffered a lot of severe blows. So in some ways, if we want to think of this, you know, this is already, in some ways, the period of the decline of medieval Jewish Norwich in terms of its population, because there is the blood libel of 1144, and also it seems that there may have been a massacre in 1190 as well. And this is really interesting, right, because when you have, you have this kind of underlying, anti-Semitism and, you know, ongoing accusations of blood liable. And then here you have people like the journalists who are, they can kind of be, I don't know, a magnet in certain ways for resentment, because if you have like very prominent or very wealthy families in these areas, that can cause

problems. How do we see them depicted? We know that they are incredibly important to the Jewish community, what about four Christians outside of that? Well, they clearly are depicting them, are trying to present themselves to represent themselves not just to the Jewish community because their substantial townhouse is not in that area I was describing earlier. It's not in the heart of the Jewish community. It is on King Street. It's part of, not part of the new expansion of the city.

It's the area down towards the river. It is a street that has a number of patrician. residences at that point, and it has river access. So it is a grand house that has another audience in mind too. But this is, in some ways, one of those eternal themes. They're representing themselves to a non-Jewish audience as well. But we also see how a non-Jewish audience depicts and sees them, because we do have the record of a, on a famous tax record in the National Archives in London, probably what I'd call one of the first recognizing. anti-Semitic caricatures, depicting at the top of a record that's involving the Jernets and their

agents, an image of Isaac Jernet, a three-headed fork-beard Isaac Jernet, with his assistants, a man and a woman with hooked noses and grotesque features in league with demons. And this is, we all know this imagery. As you know, Eleanor, this is not an entirely widespread medieval imagery. No. We know where it goes. but this is one of our earliest pieces of evidence of the development of the symmetry. Oh, I hate that.

It's going to be bad vibes from here on out, isn't it? I guess, unfortunately, I'm going to take us into the bad vibes portion of this, because I think it is important. You know, we can acknowledge that there is this really important thriving community, but, you know, you've already alluded to it. You know, in 1144, there is an... incident that particularly inflames hatred against the Jewish population here in Norwich. And there is the death of a 12-year-old boy. This is William the Skinner. Can you tell us a little

bit about that? Many of your listeners will have heard of the phrase the blood libel. And the blood libel is the false, malicious accusation of ritual murder of Christian children. The accusation against Jews. And the first blood libel in recorded history is William of Norwich. The fact is, is that, you know, this is something that when we're thinking about how we deal with Norwich Jewish history and heritage, and even how we think about life as a Jewish community here in Norwich today, is something that always comes out. Everyone knows in the Jewish world, everyone knows of Norwich because of William of Norwich, because of the blood libel. I mean, I suppose it's a little bit frustrating when one is a medieval historian because we like to be so exacting in the way that we

relate to history is that, you know, what we want to do is see how communities respond, how people reflect on things. I think that when you kind of talk about William of Norwich showing up dead, there is this instant reaction where people say, oh, what really happened to him? I don't think anyone really believes Jewish people were out to kill a Christian child. But one way or another, William ends up dead. And people will always say, oh, well, what really happened to him? Yeah. As a historian, I really find that question to be one of the least importance. I'm not a solver of cold cases. I am interested in historical problems. And the thing is, and the fact is the fact of the blood libel.

The blood, this accusation, is produced in the 1140s, associated with a death that purportedly happened in 1144. There is a life of William of Norwich written by Thomas of Monmouth associated with Norwich Cathedral in 1150. That is our first recorded blood libel, but it's clear he's drawing it from other, material from other sources. It's clear there was a quite interested campaign within Norwich, for that to develop a local saint, and those who are promoting William Sanctity, the cathedral, then with Thomas and Monmouth gets on board, but there's probably other antecedents too.

It's important to call this the first recorded blood libel. But that's where we can start to do our historical analysis of the development of the rhetoric of blood libel. It's significant that all of the features that are present in the William blood libel recur in all subsequent blood libels, in Blois, in L'A, in Ler, in Lerner, in Lincoln, in Trento famously, in Bialystok, in Kishnev, in so on, in Damascus, and so on and so forth

that involve an innocent child, ritually murdered, and so on. Are they all taking it from William of Norwich, from the life written by Thomas and Monmouth? Of course not. This text doesn't circulate widely. And the cult of William doesn't circulate widely, but it's drawing

clearly on probably some common stock, probably some common ideas, and probably on what some people want to hear. So certainly I think that we can say that there is this legend that is born out of result of it. In terms of the Jewish people who live here in Norwich, what are the consequences of William's murder for them? Well, the contemporary sources show the Jewish community being sheltered in the castle when there is a riot provoked by this. That's what the contemporary sources show.

But the contemporary sources give a bit of a different picture of what happens a few decades later. Even though the Jews appear to be sheltered in the castle then, this is an outpouring of violence. And it's not the last outpouring of violence that English Jews face. In the same year as the notorious York massacre, 1190, that massacre which kills amongst others, the great Rabbi Yomtov of Juani, Yomtob of York, probably the greatest liturgical poet in medieval England, there's also some contemporary sources record a massacre in Norwich. A massacre that has been given some added credence by the discovery of 17 bodies in a well that was discovered about 20 years ago.

Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I think this is an incredibly important point. When you have these flash points of violence or these new ideas that come into being, Yes, so in 1144, there's one specific outpouring of violence that the Jewish community manages to more or less avoid by being sheltered in the castle. Great. But then you have subsequent ideas about what it is Jewish people are like as a result of this that are fed and fed through these particular rhetorical exchanges. You know, and obviously there is, as you say, there is kind of something in it for the cathedral, for example, like Thomas of Monmouth. he's writing about this. You know, they want a local saint. It's a new city. You can have a new saint like this. And there isn't a local martyr here. And so, and now you've got one, right?

And so it's not just like surviving that one day. It's like, what does this narrative do when it gets out into the world? It grows and it grows and it grows. And eventually, we do see that things begin to happen. It's not just 1144. It's the things afterwards. And we do have this discovery of the well? I'd like to phrase my words very carefully about this because DNA-based history presents some problems around

precise dating, and this question about whether there was a massacre in Norwich is contested among some historians as well too. But again, the particularities I think we can zoom out a little bit of it. Because

what the, well, precise dating is very hard to do. These 17 bodies that were found in the well, including women and children, some that are put in headfirst. So it appears to be execution-style killing. What the DNA evidence did find was some matches with things that we, genetic matches, what we tend to find in contemporary Ashkenazic Jewish populations. Now, that's not to say that the, as was reported in the media at the time, It's not to say necessarily that the Jews of medieval Norwich were Ashkenazic.

That, as a meaningful term for dividing the Jewish world, that's a bit of a more recent development. But what it does show, whenever the bodies precisely ended up there, whenever there was this execution of a number of Jews that took place here, that does show something quite critical if we're looking forward, because it suggests to us that the Jews of medieval England, when they were expelled and they were expelled, 1290. They didn't just all go and jump into the sea, of course. They went into continental Europe again, and they mixed with the populations of Jews in France, and when they were expelled of those of the Rhineland, and subsequently into Poland, Lithuania, and so on. That is to say that the story of medieval English Jewry is not this kind of peripheral story just equal to its weight in numbers at the time, but it's actually a point of departure. One of the points

departure for a big chapter of world Jewish history. So what we have here, what we have here in the form of Jernet's house, the oldest identifiable place of Jewish residents in England, is a touchstone to something of world historical importance. There's no earlier survival from that. And this isn't just a little peripheral story. It's something that's part of the mainstream. And I think that is such an interesting point because I do think that there is a tendency on everyone's parts to kind of think of everywhere in Europe is cut off from one place or another as every single community is particularly distinct. And of course there are, you know, nuances to how different groups of people live. But also, you know, especially place like Norwich, you know,

it's like if you get expelled from the country, pretty easy to get on a boat and ends up somewhere else, I guess, you know. But I think that this is such an interesting case because it does show us how, I suppose, the temperature of anti-Semitism is being turned up over the period. You know, you go from a kind of relatively like, oh, yeah, well, here's a new group of Norman's, you know, not necessarily like any other, but, you know, this is an expression of normanness. It becomes an expression of Englishness. And then suddenly you have this campaign to say, oh, this is actually an other in our midst. And that has real world consequences for people who are killed, you know, and these bodies we found in the well,

you know, you say some of them are head down. Does that mean that they are killed by being thrown into the well, or are they killed and then thrown into the well? Do we know? Does it matter? They are probably killed the thrown into the well, but quite quickly. There are a lot of controversies, historical controversies, questions still around the issue of the bodies in the well. When they were exhumed first when they were discovered while building the shopping center. They were eventually exhumed and given a proper Jewish burial. But there are questions around the bodies in the well. I prefer to think about that. It separated from the issue of the proper treatment of the bodies, can that evidence that we found, that DNA evidence, rather than trying to figure out who the Jews of

Norwich were, rather to use that to think differently about the role of English Jewry in the making of world Jewish history. What we have here, as awful as it is, what we have here is actually evidence of the persistence of medieval English jury. This I like, because it is definitely, we, I know that the dating is very difficult with this, but it's probably, it's after, you know, everything goes down with William of Norris. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, they're able to persist, they're able to still be kind of clinging on. But, but Eleanor, I mean also that they persist to this day, because those genetic matches are to contemporary populations. So this is, what we have here is evidence of the survival of the Jews of medieval England.

Are they the Jews of England today? The story of Anglo-Jewry is one of the Jews that come to this country after Oliver Cromwell re-permits Jews to settle here again. This is not the story of Anglo-Jury. This is the story of world jury. I think we've been beating around the bush a little bit, And we've mentioned it a few times, but eventually we do get to this point in time when the Jews are expelled from England. And this is, you know, one of Edward the first really bad projects. He's got a few.

Can we talk a little bit about what happens with that and why we get to this point? The 13th century is an increasingly dark time for medieval English Jewry. It must be said. There's another notorious blood libel, one that gets royal endorsement this time, the blood libel of the 1250s of Little Hugh of Lincoln, which is endorsed by Henry III. So things are darkening. The population of Jews in medieval England, certainly in medieval Norwich, is declining through that period.

So by the time we're getting into the 1270s and 80s, as there's increasing anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish preaching also in the context of the mendicant orders, and which is endorsed by the monarch and the queen, as well, too, things are darkening. In 1286, that stone building that I've talked about, the synagogue of medieval Norwich, is burnt. There is a layer, it's now under the site of a pub and a primark. Until we get to the earlier medieval layer, there's a burn layer as well, too. So that communal center is destroyed in 1286. It's only four years later that the Jews are expelled.

But we also have, and this is again an interest, something that brings us back to Norwich, our most eloquent voice of all of medieval English Jewry, in fact, comes from that period and comes from Norwich, a poet who identifies himself in an acrostic as Na'ir Ben Eliahu of Norwich. And he's writing in that period. Maybe writing in exile, too, based on some, hints that we get in his works, to largely liturgical poems, also one called, one in which he calls for a curse on his enemies. So it's a dark time. But we can see in that too, we have a contemporary

Jewish voice, but in that too, we get a sign of the continued vitality through all of that of Jewish life in Norwich that was able to produce a poet of this rank. So you've mentioned here, like the preaching of the mendicits as being in involved in this in terms of just kind of turning up the temperature on anti-Semitism here in England. Do you think this is a continent-wide phenomenon, or is that something that is an English specialty? No, this is a European phenomenon. It's not particular to England alone. We do see it elsewhere as well.

I suppose what is particular to England, though, is if you're going to be a monarch who decides to get really anti-Semitic with it, you can kind of expel people from here, right? Because it's an island. It's possible to identify groups and say, okay, you're going to need to leave because there's more of a border. Well, this was the first country to ever do it. And what it showed was that it could be done because France isn't an island and it followed suit pretty quickly. That's a good point. See, you know, like the normanness of England's showing through again. Okay, so in terms of, you know, the persecution gets worse. We're starting to see more pogroms. We're starting to see more. just outright anti-Semitic rhetoric. But eventually this is stuff that is kind of coming from the

crown as well. And I think that this is an important point because when Edward I first decides, okay, well, that's it. We're getting rid of Jewish people. Listen, it's not just, oh, I'm doing like a big religious thing, right? Like, this is a man who is in Hawk. This man owes a lot of money to this group of people. So it's actually really convenient, isn't it? Because it's not just, oh yeah, I have these deep-seated religious opinions. It's also like, oh, yeah, and now I don't owe you money anymore. And I think that's an important point because there's this material thing. Like, there's always this kind of, I don't know, hypocrisy behind it.

So it's like, yeah, and you get something that you want, which is that you don't have to pay your bills, right? It's the whole thing together. The Jewish community then is also smaller and not as wealthy, also by that period. The medieval economy is changing, too. You know, Jews are also less necessary for some of those. purposes that we had earlier. So it's a number of forces coming to, coming to bear. And, you know, it's not just in England, too. There's this, also the time of crusade fervor. Edward I was the first

is a committed crusader. It was the first crusade that expelled the Jewish population in Jerusalem as well, too, or was very harsh on the Jews that were living there. It's in the 13th century, 12th and then, well, then into the 13th century, we do see Jewish people from Western Europe, from Spain, but also from England and France, going to the land of Israel and setting up academies and wanting to be buried there, coming back to Jerusalem as well too. But, you know, these are all things that are happening on a pan-European level. The English kings are not just operating in this island. They're operating on different stages. And Crusade Fervor is part of this too. What do you think it is about England, though, that they were kind of the first to kick it off? Is there a reason why England are the first to do it? Or is it just a fluke? I don't know if I'd call it a fluke, nor would I put too much weight on it. Frankly, England shows it can be done and other countries follow suit. It's true that not all countries, of course, but as I said, France, famously Spain, of course, in 1492.

There's other places that become centers of Jewish life afterwards. What England doesn't have, for example, because of this, is a whole wave of anti-Jewish violence occasioned by the Black death. But that doesn't stop England after the Black Death from continuing to repeat these stories that it was the first recorded sight of. For example, the story of the blood libel told in the Pryor's tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. So even the expulsion of the Jew does not expel the idea of the Jew, that is present throughout European society, but that England also, it must be said, did a lot to shape. So I guess, you know, we've already talked a little bit about this.

We see from the DNA evidence of the bodies that we find in the well that these are people who share genetic markers with Jewish people now. So where do the Jews of Norwich go when they're expelled? Do we know exactly, I mean, do they go back to, you know, France in the first instance? Are they... The Jewish community of Central Europe, this is, it's around this time that those start to grow, actually. For example, it's in the, for example, in the 50th century that we start to see significant Jewish populations starting to develop in Poland. Obviously, the famous old new synagogue of Prague is a late 14th century building.

But that move of Jewish populations from Western Europe, northern France, the Rhineland into Central Europe, is a product of these expulsions. So we can never just have nice things, can we? And there's always got to be some terror behind. But actually, one thing I often like to think about is, I mean, that's periodizations are very interesting. This is a medieval podcast. Yeah. But if you're thinking about Jewish history never, you know, these periods aren't in. invented for Jewish history. So what are ways of thinking about Jewish history? And one thing I like

to think about is the notion of a double diaspora, which would really characterize my Jewish early modernity, really, which is once these populations are moving into their next homes, as it were, Ashkenazic Jewry into central, you know, where the main centers are central and central eastern in Europe, Sephardic Jewish populations, the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, into places like the Levant, some joining the Italian populations in Italy, North Africa, of course, the Netherlands. I guess, so what happens you've mentioned already that the synagogue gets burnt as a part of this process? What happens to the other properties in Norwich during this period? You know, once the Jewish people are expelled, what happens to their very nice houses? Well, I mean, the population by this

time is much shrunken. Jews are required to give up their possessions that they have here. The Jernets had already sold that substantial house. We have the records of the purchase and we have the records of the sale, both in King Street. They'd already sold that house. The history of the house is actually quite interesting, too, because that house subsequently is in the hands of the Paston family, subsequently of Edward Cook, the Chief Justice. And so it's a house with history. And these are these histories that can get effaced. So eventually Jewish people return to England very famously because Oliver Cromwell makes a concerted effort to have them come along. But is there a particular reason why people decide that Jewish people should be readmitted to

England? Well, that's a contested question today. What are the reasons? Is it Cromwell's apocalyptic beliefs? Is it out of some kind of religious motivation? Is it because of the lobbying of the Amsterdam Jewish community, Manasabin Israel, and his campaigns? Is it actually the circumstance that there's actually already a number of Maranoes, a lot of, a number of crypto Jews in London at that time? In fact, in one famous case, someone who is about to have his ship expropriated for being a Spaniard declares, actually, I'm Jewish. And really, that is, that is the de facto legalization. of the Jewish presence in England before there's any legislation for this.

Oh, I absolutely love that. So what do we do? But this is the thing is that eventually we do have Jewish people come back to England. Well, what's it like when Jewish people get back to Norwich? What does their life look like then? Well, the Jewish population of Norwich, we start to see a community in the 70,

probably around the 1750s. It's really quite interesting the development of it really in the 19th century. Just across from the cathedral is where they're, first permanent synagogue space was. There's some notable people in the community at that time, not least the scholar Simon Caro, who's an ancestor of the artist, Anthony Carroll,

whose works you can see just outside here at the Sainsbury Center. And the Norwich community builds a synagogue in 1848, large Victorian synagogue in what's the only synagogue street in all of England. Yeah. That's so cool. It no longer has that name. The building was destroyed in 1942, by enemy bombing. There is a synagogue today, not on the same site, but that first site,

Synagogue Street, is right around the corner from Jernet's House. I absolutely love that. I think that it's such an exciting project to try to reestablish our memory of Jernet's House and the Jewish community here, because it's such an important part of English history. This is something I so often try to get across, because the Jews of medieval England come to this country in the same way that the Normans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Celts came here. That is a very important. is they came here from somewhere else. But the Jews are the only one of those populations to be expelled. This is the beginning of England as an intolerant country. And that's a history that has a lot of road to run. We think of what happens in the Reformation. And the fact, this is a country with an

established religion. So I like to also think about what we have here at Jernet's House as a touchstone to history, a touchstone to the history of medieval English Jewry, but also as a, as a touched on to a different way of thinking about the history of this country. What if we were to think of England as a place where diversity was the natural state that only lost that through intolerance, the decision to become an intolerant country? That's one of the messages that we want to come out of Jernet's house. I'm quite clear that we're telling a Jewish story, but that Jewish story by focusing on its particular aspects actually has something that is universal.

Oren, it has been an absolute delight talking to you. Thank you so much for making time for me. And, yeah, I'm going to head back to the city center to find Matt, probably by way of these sculptures outside the Stainsbury Center. Very good. Thanks for coming. Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you. Hey, Matt.

Hello. What have you been up to? Hanging out in Norwich. I mean, is there any cool a place to hang out? Very cute. And I thought we could end our visit to Norwich here. We're at the junction of White Lion Street and Haynes. market right in the heart of the city. And we're standing in the very centre of what was once

one of medieval England's most prosperous Jewish quarters. In the 11th and the 12th centuries, this area would have been thrumming with life of a different kind. The streets would have echoed with Hebrew prayers drifting from the synagogue that stood roughly where Primark is. With the clatter, though, you can imagine, can't you? The clatter of coins being counted in the counting houses, the arguments of merchants haggling over grain and cloth in nearby markets. And this location was chosen deliberately. It's close enough to the castle to provide the community with some royal protection, but it's also near enough to the city's bustling fish markets, corn markets and parchment shops

to conduct the business that needed doing. Journey to Norwich's magnificent three-story stone house with its vaulted undercroft still stands on King Street today, the oldest surviving Jewish residents in England. And it's a testament to the wealth and the permanence that this community believed that they'd earned. You know, one of the things I love about Norwich is you can really imagine the medieval street as it once was. Because, you know, you've got a community living under constant tension. You've got them resented by Christian neighbors for their favored status under the King's Protection. They're blamed for the debts that the English nobles owed them.

They're subjected to the very first ever blood liable. recorded in 1144. And, you know, the same streets where Jewish children played and studied the Torah, where families celebrated Shabbat and Passover, those would have been come killing grounds on that February day in 1190 when Crusaders decide it's time to rise against the Jews before marching to Jerusalem. I mean, what about that well? Which became the unmarked grave for those 17 victims. You know, men, women, three sisters. the red-headed toddler really gets to me. You know, all members have probably one extended Ashkenazi family.

And it becomes kind of heartbreaking when it becomes so personal, doesn't it? You can imagine those people. And that's all now being covered up by a shopping centre where people browse for bargains. It's quite a haunting reminder, I guess, that the bustling consumer landscape of modern Norwich that we're enjoying today was built quite literally on the bones. of those destroyed by a medieval hatred? It's a sobering thought. Well, thanks, Matt. Joyful.

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