Early Middle Ages and Crusades
The Jews sheltering in Clifford Tower
16-17 mars 1190·York
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
mass suicide led by Yom Tov of Joigny, survivors massacred at the exit; debt registers burned in the cathedral
The Jews of York, attacked in the city, took refuge in the wooden tower of the royal castle — the one known today as Clifford's Tower. The constable allowed them in, then, having left, could not or would not let them back in himself: the garrison went over to the side of the besiegers.
The siege lasted several days. Yom Tov de Joigny, a master who had come from France, decided with the men of the community that they would die by their own hands rather than surrender. The fathers killed their families, the tower was set on fire. Those who emerged the following day asking for baptism were killed on the spot.
The ringleaders immediately made their way to the cathedral, where the community's debt registers were kept, and burned them. This is the only one of all the English massacres whose financial motive is so clearly established. The site bears a plaque today, and the community did not reconstitute itself for a long time.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Royaume-Uni
Guillaume de Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum ; Roger de Hoveden ; Ephraïm de Bonn.