“If it had not been for your fine apothecary, my daughter would have died.” Malka smiled at Sister Anne. “Instead she lives, and I have a grandson.”
“And I, too, would be returning to Norwich, blinded by tears, had we not met Sister Anne here,” Jacob added, then spoke again of his gratitude for the protection given his family, the kindness of the innkeeper and even his temporary jailer, as well as the diligence of Crowner Ralf in seeking justice.
Thus you teach us all the true meaning of forgiveness, the prioress said to herself, but she kept her thoughts private as they grew more uneasy. The violence against this family continued to anger her, but she had more cause to be troubled after Oseberne’s death.
Although the murderer was dead, his body had been buried in sanctified ground. He had died untried for his crimes and never pronounced guilty of murder. As she well knew, some claimed that Oseberne had confessed any transgressions in the hearing of a priest and died a good Christian, forgiven all sins. A few others even whispered that what he had done had been no wickedness at all.
Eleanor shut her eyes to hide her musings. What she could not disguise was the flushing of outrage that painted her cheeks.
To her mind, the man had only bragged about the murders and thefts and never showed remorse. This was not her concept of a true confession, and she also suffered dissatisfaction with the lack of both trial and hanging. Opening her eyes and looking upward, she forced herself to remember that God must still judge the man’s soul and would not be lax in due punishment where no repentance was felt. This time it was harder for her to feel comforted by this, but she was determined to be so.
Yet there had been a form of justice in the manner of his death. The bees, who had enjoyed the gentle care of Brother Gwydo, had wielded their special weapons against the man who had murdered their caretaker. In that, she found an odd contentment. Scripture did teach that vengeance must always belong to God, perhaps because mortals were too imperfect to judge without selfish motive. The bees had acted well on behalf of their Creator. She caught herself smiling.
But the moment of peace was brief. She suddenly felt lightheaded standing in the hot summer air. Might she be sickening? Her head ached as if someone was pushing a hot metal rod into her temple. Eleanor took a deep breath. Most likely her courses were due, a condition that always make her uncomfortable in the heat.
She looked up at the sky. The sun was expanding with painful brightness, and the intensity of its power sucked strength from her. Her eyes began to hurt as well as her head. She longed to escape to the quiet of her cool and shaded chambers.
Determined not to let herself fall victim to self-indulgent weakness, Eleanor turned her attention again to the family of Jacob ben Asser. How relieved they must feel that they had only a few hours left of their journey back to the comfort of kindred and friends in Norwich.
Although their faith was not hers, they were of kind heart and gentle manner. If Jacob ben Asser and his family had been Christians, she would praise them for holding to their beliefs despite threatened slaughter. Indeed, most would condemn them for this obstinacy, but she confessed to God that she admired them anyway. In truth, it was a pity that they had not converted, but surely they would never forget Tyndal Priory. Perhaps one day…
With no warning, dizziness struck her hard. She staggered.
Sister Anne grasped her elbow, steadied her, and then asked with concern if all was well.
Forcing a bright smile, Eleanor denied illness, but her arm began to tingle as if needles were pricking it. A horse whinnied and she started. The sound hurt her head. Again, she stiffened her back, patted her friend’s hand, and turned to matters other than this inconvenient frailty.
“Did not Mistress Malka promise to send you a precious manuscript on breathing difficulties for your collection,” she murmured to the sub-infirmarian, “one written by a Jewish physician named Moshe ben Maimon?”
“This gift is in gratitude for saving her daughter and grandson. I told her that we had no need of thanks,” Sister Anne replied, “but she insisted, saying that the work was a translation that my father, Benedict of Norwich, would have cherished.”
Eleanor nodded. “Then we shall accept the offering with gratitude,” she said, but the sound of her own voice was painfully loud and she fell silent.
Turning to look behind her, the prioress noticed that only Tostig and Signy, with her foster son by her side, had come from the village to see this family off. Gytha was tending the wounded Ralf, but they had sent their prayers for a safe journey. Was it shame that kept others away because they had unjustly accused Jacob ben Asser of murdering Kenelm? Or was it due to hatred for the family that still festered in their hearts?
The reaction of the villagers to Oseberne’s crimes of theft unsettled her. Because the victims had been Jewish, few cared that the baker robbed these innocent travelers to enrich himself. As for Kenelm, no one had liked the man. Some still regretted that a villager had been guilty, but no one grieved over the guard’s murder. The only crime the village lamented was the murder of Brother Gwydo. Yet Gytha told her that some men believed he had betrayed his faith by slipping out of the priory to ask pardon of a Jew, and thus God had punished him.
She took a deep breath to calm herself, but the air seared her lungs like molten lead and the faint smell of her own sweat made her nauseous. Feeling lightheaded again, she shook her head, hoping to chase the dizziness away, and shut her eyes against the intense sunlight. When she opened them, she saw that the armed guard had surrounded the family, and the party was about to depart. As the prioress looked into the distance, the road to Norwich shimmered. Even the stones and trees glowed as if the sun had set them afire.
Just in time, Eleanor stopped herself from giving Jacob ben Asser and his family a blessing and instead wished them a safe journey, as did Prior Andrew and Brother Thomas. Sister Anne opened her arms and stepped forward to hug Mistress Malka, then kissed a finger and placed it against the cheek of the babe she had brought into the world. When the nun walked back to her side, Eleanor saw tears in her eyes and then noticed that the cheeks of Mistress Malka also glistened.
As the family slowly rode off, the mother and her babe on the donkey with the young father walking beside them, Eleanor saw extraordinary, shimmering circles of light begin to flow around each of their heads. The lights were unbearably bright, and her eyes watered with the pain. But she could not bear to look away and stared without blinking as if compelled by a force far greater than her own will.
With no warning, the prioress fell to her knees and pressed her hand against her heart.
Sister Anne knelt by her friend’s side. “You are ill!” she whispered, frightened by the prioress’ staring eyes and sudden pallor.
Eleanor grasped her friend’s shoulder and pointed down the road. Her hand trembled. “The Holy Family,” she murmured. “Do they not look like the Holy Family?”
***
Years hence, the tale was told that the village of Tyndal had been honored to receive a visit from Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary. There, in a stable, the wonder of the Bethlehem story had been recreated, an event intended to bring solace and reverent awe to the hearts of all who witnessed it.
But instead of humble joy, the villagers greeted the family with hate and violence, as the inhabitants of Sodom did God’s angels. As a consequence, no one was allowed the privilege of seeing the miracle. Only the Prioress of Tyndal was found virtuous enough to receive the blessing of the vision, the story went, and so her reputation continued to grow as one especially favored by God.
Author’s Notes
In England, Jewish immigration began with a warm invitation from William the Conqueror to the Jewish merchants of Rouen. His purpose was pragmatic. Skilled and well-connected businessmen were certainly good for an economy suffering the aftereffects of war. Christians were also barred from mon
ey-lending, although the need to borrow remained an economic necessity, and usury became the occupation quickly assigned to the Jewish community. The king then put these families under his protection and authority, thus allowing him to also profit handsomely from the relationship while protecting his “investments.”
By the time of Edward I, however, English Jewry had been bled dry by exorbitant fees, taxes and other methods of paying for monarchial costs. (Despite Belia’s observation about Henry III supporting Jewish plaintiffs in court against Christians, this king’s record was very mixed.) But Edward had a new source to pay his debts, costs for building castles in Wales, and get money for those wars against the Scots. It was called the Italian financier.
Since the Jewish community no longer served his financial requirements, he may have concluded he could best use them for political gain by bowing to the barons’ wish not to pay back loans they had previously begged. (Some of these had been needed by former de Montfort supporters to buy back the land taken from them by the king.) In any case, Edward launched a series of anti-Semitic proclamations that eventually led to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. He was neither the first nor the last ruler to take this road, but it is a troubling asterisk next to the name of one so often praised as “the lawyer king.”
The Statute of Jewry (Statutum de Judeismo) was signed by Edward I in late 1275. Although the need for borrowing continued and interest rates would always exist in some form, he concluded that usury by the Jewish community in particular had caused “divers evils and the disinheriting of good men.” As of October 1275, no interest on old loans could accumulate, Edward would not lend his support to any repayment, and Jews were almost instantly prohibited from moneylending. In addition, large yellow badges became obligatory for all over the age of seven, a demand often imposed in the past but little enforced, and both men and women over the age of twelve were assessed yet another fine. Jews and Christians were also not allowed to live together (suggesting that they had been intermingling), and the Jewish communities were only allowed to reside in cities (archa towns) where the records of usurious debts had been kept.
To make up for this rather abrupt elimination of a major and obligatory profession, the statute encouraged the Jewish community to become merchants or even farmers, an odd suggestion for a group who had little opportunity in England to learn how to till the land. The permission to do business with Christian merchants and to “live by lawful trade and by their labour” sounds innocent enough until one discovers that movement, property transfers, and debt negotiations between merchants were severely restricted for the Jewish businessmen. The rules hardly made competition fair or equal, and just how does one run a farm without being able to stay around long enough to make sure the stewardship is honest?
For those interested in the provisions of the statute, a copy in readable English is easily obtained on the Internet. This is a far more complex subject than I can do justice to here, and the books by Richard Huscroft, Robin Mundill, and Cecil Roth, listed in my bibliography, are good places to start for those interested in a thorough discussion of Edward’s rationale as well as the changing environment for the Jewish community.
It should be noted, however, that thirteenth-century England was not alone in this anti-Semitic trend. When I tried to decide where Jacob and his family might go, I found few places in Europe where massacres had not recently occurred or banishments were not forthcoming.
Anti-Semitism was widespread and often virulent in the medieval era, but the conclusion that all medieval Christians hated or shunned all Jews is not an accurate assumption. There have always been some who do not join the mobs. Those Germans who saved Jewish friends and even strangers during the Holocaust are an example. More frequently, many cast aside common prejudice when it was practical or lucrative to do so.
Jewish doctors treated Christian patients. The reverse was also true. Contrary to some secular laws and much Church opposition, Christians worked as servants for Jewish families. Merchants, no matter what their religion, cooperated when it was mutually beneficial. Children of both faiths often played together, a fact that makes the bizarre stories concocted about the deaths of boys like William of Norwich all the more tragic.
Despite the prohibitions against Jewish merchants belonging to guilds, Benedict fil Abraham was welcomed into one in 1268 by Simon le Draper, Mayor of Winchester. This may have been encouraged by King Henry III, who had a financial interest, and was certainly contentious and a unique situation. However, Robert Burton’s statement in his 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy remains true: “No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.”
No matter what the era, people rationalize their actions, noble or ignoble, with reference to faith or other ethical codes. (In the United States, we both defended and excoriated slavery with biblical quotes.) To say that Christians in the medieval period never did the same is to disregard an ancient human custom. So Oseberne justifies his hatred of Jacob ben Asser by quoting the teaching of a priest, while Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas opt for compassion in a similar fashion. We may find their language, imagery, and reasoning tortuous or alien, but, were their discussions put into modern dialogue, we would find much the same points of view reported in the morning news.
The story told by Brother Thomas about Bernard of Clairvaux is based on the abbot’s letter in 1146, promoting the second crusade, in which he also denounced violence against the Jewish communities and warned against following extremists like Peter the Hermit, a man who led many innocents to their deaths while carefully saving his own life. Pope Gregory X, who reigned from 1271 to 1276, did write a letter in 1272 condemning forced baptisms, aggression against the Jews, and the fabrications of blood libel, although he himself had been on crusade with Edward I and was hardly the medieval version of the latte liberal.
Neither of these men extended his remarks to include compassion toward Muslims, that being an era of war between the two faiths, but many ordinary crusaders did remain in the land where they had gone to fight those deemed infidels, married local women, and occasionally converted to Islam.
Like Prioress Eleanor, most medieval Christians hoped for conversions, an attitude common to any proselytizing creed, but it would have taken a fossilized heart not to react in horror at violence perpetrated on peaceful men and mothers with their babes in arms.
Jewish divorce in the Middle Ages was somewhat easier than Christian marriage dissolution, but it was still rare and looked upon with extreme disfavor within the community. One of the reasons for divorce was a childless marriage after ten years, but, if the wife refused consent, honored rabbinical opinion said that the dissolution should be prohibited. It wasn’t always, but familial rather than political concern was the ruling factor.
A short note for those who might not have recognized the name: Moshe ben Maimon is possibly better known as Moses Maimonides. Sister Anne would have treasured any of his medical works.
***
Lay brothers in a religious house were men who had taken the vows of the order but were not ordained and were primarily employed in manual labor. (Lay sisters performed a similar function.) They usually had little education and were of a lower social class. In many cases, their dress was slightly different to distinguish them from the choir monks. Choir monks were supposed to spend most of their time in study, prayer, and singing the office. Their education was expected to include knowledge of Latin. And so Adelard might well be miffed when told he could only enter Tyndal Priory as a lay brother, since he had expected to become a higher ranked choir monk. If his vocation were more his father’s wish than his own, he may soon decide that running a profitable business was a more congenial choice.
Bees are striking in appearance and have long fascinated me. At age four, I was stung trying to pet one. Many decades later, I keep a more respectful distance, but I still love to watch a great bumble rolling in a native poppy and am amazed at
the organization of honeybees, a society that includes guards and undertakers as well as workers and leaders.
In the Middle Ages, bees were not accurately “sexed.” That was not done until centuries later. In 1609, Charles Butler wrote The Feminine Monarchie in which he established that queens ruled the hive, not kings. From at least the time of the Greeks through the sixteenth century, it was assumed that the queen was a king and the mating ritual a battle, after which the bee troops settled down to making honey for human consumption and the best wax for our candles. The troops mentioned by Brother Gwydo are male drones, eager to mate with the queen who flies through the swarm. Sadly, the drones die after mating. The “tooting” mentioned by Brother Gwydo is actually a sound emitted by queens which can be heard several yards away.
Today, bees continue to suffer from diseases and seasonal death, but our methods of collecting honey no longer require killing off the weaker hives with sulphur fumes. Nontoxic smoke is still used to calm them during honey harvesting, but modern beekeepers are interested in preserving as many bee lives as possible.
The average honeybee is not normally aggressive, but the hives that Oseberne knocked over had been harassed before. These bees had learned to attack when someone rushed at them and committed violence against their home, as some boys in this story had done previously. In Oseberne’s case, he was fatally allergic to the sting, and there was no remedy to save his life in the thirteenth century. Others might have suffered much pain, but the stinging would not have killed them. Each honeybee, however, dies after stinging once.
As a final note, there was good news recently from England. The native black honeybee of Brother Gwydo’s time, almost destroyed by a virus 100 years ago, is coming back. Unlike the yellow-striped variety, familiar to many of us, the black honeybee is darker, bigger, and protected by thicker, longer hair, which makes it a hardier species in the northern climates.
The Sanctity of Hate Page 21
