Early Middle Ages and Crusades
First European ritual murder accusation (William of Norwich)
1144·Norwich
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the motif subsequently spreads throughout Christendom
The discovery of the body of an adolescent, Guillaume, in a wood near Norwich gave rise to an accusation destined for a sinister legacy: the Jews of the city had allegedly killed the child in mockery of the Passion. No prosecution succeeded at the time; it was the monk Thomas de Monmouth who, a decade later, constructed the narrative and made the victim a local martyr.
The motif of ritual murder then spread throughout Christendom — Gloucester, Blois, Lincoln, Trente — and would serve as a pretext for trials and massacres well into the modern era. *La Vie et les miracles de saint Guillaume de Norwich* is the first text to give it its form.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Trials and executions
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Royaume-Uni
Thomas de Monmouth, *The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich* ; Gavin Langmuir, *Toward a Definition of Antisemitism*.