(A.D. 1144.)
[Anglican Martyrologies. But the day of his invention, April 15th, was
observed as his festival at Norwich. Authority:--An account of his
martyrdom in Capgrave.]
According to the legend related by Capgrave, there lived in Norwich
in the 12th century a couple named Wenstan and Elwina, of the peasant
class, who became parents of a boy, named William. One day Wenstan went
to a feast and took his little son with him. During the meal a beggar
came in with irons on his hands, worn as an act of penance; the child
put out his hands to touch the chains and manacles, and instantly they
broke and fell at the feet of the mendicant. At the age of seven the
boy was so filled with the ardour of self-mortification, that he fasted
three days in the week, and was constantly in the church singing psalms
and reciting prayers.
On the Passover in 1144, some Jews of Norwich took the child, and
having strangled him, crucified him, and then took the body in a sack
out of the town, to bury it in a wood. But a certain Aelward saw them
entering the wood, and followed them. Then, in alarm, the Jews ran
away, and considering that their only chance of safety lay in bribing
the viscount, who was chief magistrate of the town, they offered him a
hundred marks of silver if he would hush the matter up. The viscount
took the money, sent for Aelward, and threatened and persuaded him
to hold his tongue about what he had seen. Aelward kept the secret
for five years, till he was on the point of death, when the martyred
boy appeared to him, and bade him disclose what he had witnessed.
Now at the same time, early in the morning, a nun was walking in the
wood, when she came suddenly on a child's body lying at the foot of
an oak tree, with two ravens fluttering over it, and the woman was so
frightened that she ran into Norwich and told what she had seen. Then
a crowd of people went forth and took up the body, which though it had
lain five years unburied in the wood, was incorrupt, and brought it
into Norwich; at the same time Aelward made his confession, and thus
the whole of the circumstances were made clear; the people readily
concluding that this newly found body was the same that had been left
by the Jews, according to Aelward's account, unburied in the wood, five
years before. The body was buried, and a rose bush was planted at the
head, about the festival of S. Michael, (Sept. 29th), and it at once
put forth fresh leaves and flowers, and bloomed till the feast of S.
Edmund, (Nov. 20th). Many miracles were performed at the grave. It does
not appear that this discovery was followed by a massacre of the Jews.
Throughout the Middle Ages three accusations were constantly brought
against the Jews by the populace; all three were denounced by the
authorities of the time as imaginary. They were accused of killing
children. A law of the duke of Poland, in 1264, renewed in 1343,
rebuked those who made this charge, and required that it should be
substantiated by the testimony of three Jews. They were accused of
poisoning the wells. Pope Innocent IV. in a bull denounced this charge,
and in 1349, the king of the Romans ordered that the Jews in Luxemburg
should be protected against the insolence of the people, because,
said he, the pope and he regarded them as innocent of the many crimes
attributed to them. Lastly, they were accused of sacrilege. The Abbé
Fleury, in his Ecclesiastical History gives one instance of the manner
in which this charge was made, "In a little town called Pulca, in the
diocese of Passau, a layman found a bloody Host before the house of a
Jew, lying in the street upon some straw. The people thought that this
Host was consecrated, and washed it and took it to the priest, that it
might be taken to the church, where a crowd full of devotion assembled,
supposing that the blood had flowed miraculously from wounds dealt it
by the Jews. On this suspicion, and without any other examination, or
any other judicial procedure, the Christians fell on the Jews, and
killed several of them; but wiser heads judged that this was rather
for the sake of pillaging their goods than avenging the pretended
sacrilege. This conjecture was fortified by a similar accident which
took place a little while before at Neuburg, in the same diocese of
Passau, where a certain clerk placed an unconsecrated Host steeped
in blood in the church, but confessed afterwards in the presence of
the bishop Bernhard and other persons deserving of credit, that he
had dipped these Hosts in blood for the purpose of rousing hostility
against the Jews."[89]
[89] Hist. Eccles. vi. p. 110.
If, however, we consider the intolerable treatment of the Jews
throughout the Middle Ages, it makes it by no means improbable that
their pent-up wrongs should have exasperated them into committing
acts of vengeance, when they had the opportunity. Through centuries
they were ground under an intolerable yoke. They could call nothing
really their own, not even their persons. They were obliged to wear a
distinctive mark, like outlaws and harlots; if they emigrated, their
feudal lords were under mutual agreement to seize them in foreign
lands; their children were stolen from them to be baptized; if their
wives wished to abjure, they were divorced; they were taxed on going
in and coming out of and sojourning in any city; on the smallest
pretext, their debtors refused to pay their debts. At Toulouse on every
Good Friday a Jew was brought upon the cathedral stairs to have his
ears publicly boxed; their lives were at the mercy of every one. The
magistrates burnt them, the people massacred them, the kings hunted
them down to despoil them of all, when their exchequer was low. All
these insults, outrages and injustices must have created an intense
hatred of Christianity, and every thing and person that was Christian,
and may well have found vent occasionally in some savage murder in
parody of the Crucifixion, or sacrilegious outrage on the Blessed
Sacrament, which the Jews knew full well was the great object of
Christian love and devotion. They would not have been human had it not
been so, and though many of the stories of murders and sacrileges told
against them were undoubtedly false, yet some may have been true. But
at the same time it is impossible to doubt that most of these charges
brought against them were invented by their enemies for the purpose of
plundering them; and that others had their origin in the imagination of
the people, ready to believe anything against those whose strong-boxes
they lusted to break open.
The first mention of the crucifixion of a boy by the Jews is in
Socrates, (Hist. Eccl. lib. vii. c. 16.) He says that about A.D. 414,
at a place called Immestar, between Antioch in Syria and Chalcis, "the
Jews, while amusing themselves in their usual way with a variety of
sports, impelled by drunkenness, were guilty of many absurdities. At
last they began to scoff at Christians, and even at Christ himself;
and in derision of the cross and those who put their trust in the
Crucified, they seized a Christian boy, and having bound him to a
cross, began to laugh and sneer at him. But in a little while they
became so transported with fury that they scourged the child until he
died under their hands." The emperors being informed of this ordered
the delinquents to be punished with the utmost severity.
The Jews in England were accused of having crucified a child in 1160, a
boy, Robert, at Bury S. Edmunds, in 1181, at whose tomb miracles were
also wrought. Another boy, Hugh, is said to have met with the same fate
at Lincoln, in 1255, the place of whose image and shrine is still shown
in the cathedral of that city. Matthew Paris, in his English history,
under the date 1239, says, "In this year, on the feast of S. Alban,
and on the following day, a great massacre and destruction of the Jews
took place by order of Geoffry the Templar, a particular councillor of
the king, who oppressed, imprisoned, and extorted money from them. At
length, after great suffering, these wretched Jews, in order to enjoy
life and tranquillity, paid the king a third part of all their money
debts, as well as chattels. The original cause of this calamity was the
perpetration of a clandestine murder committed by the Jews in the city;
and not long after this, owing to a boy having been circumcised by the
Jews at Norwich, four of the richest of that community, having been
clearly convicted of that offence, were hung."
And again, under 1240, "About this time the Jews circumcised a
Christian boy at Norwich; they then kept him to crucify him. The
father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a
diligent search, at length discovered him, and with a loud cry pointed
out his son, shut up in a room in one of the Jew's houses. When this
came to the knowledge of William de Rele, the bishop, a wise and
circumspect prelate (!) and of some other nobles,--that such an insult
to Christ might not be passed over unpunished, all the Jews in the city
were made prisoners, and when they wished to place themselves under
the royal protection, the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the
Church, they are not to be decided by the king's court.' Four of the
Jews, having been found guilty, were dragged at the tails of horses,
and afterwards hung on a gibbet."
Six boys are reported to have been martyred by the Jews at Ratisbon,
in 1586; another, named Johannet, at Siegesburg, another at Bacharach,
another, S. Richard, at Paris, in 1182, Simon of Trent has already been
spoken of (March 24th), and Raderus in his Bavaria Sancta mentions
another, George, at Sappendalf, in 1540. There was another S. Richard,
child-martyr at Pontoise; and the last we hear of was in 1650, in
Bohemia.[90]
[90] See for fuller particulars, and more instances, the Lives of S.
Werner, April 19th, S. Albert, April 20th, and S. Ludwig, April 30th.
[Illustration: Decorative motif]
March 26.
S. CASTULUS, _M. at Rome, circ._ A.D. 286.
SS. MONTANUS AND MAXIMA, _MM. at Sirmium_.
SS. BATHUS, _P.M._, VERCA AND CHILDREN, _MM. among the Goths,
circ._ A.D. 370.
S. EUTYCHIUS, _Subd. M. at Alexandria_, A.D. 356.
S. FELIX, _B. of Treves, circ._ A.D. 426.
S. BRAULIO, _B. of Saragossa_, A.D. 646.
S. MOCHELLOC, _Ab., in Ireland, between_ A.D. 639-656.
S. LUDGER, _B. of Munster, Ap. of Westphalia_, A.D. 809.
S. BASIL THE LESS, _H. at Constantinople, circ._ A.D. 952.