452 THE MIDDLP: AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
interesting, but it was not till four centuries had elapsed, that another historian, Thomas Fuller, commenting upon this piece of mediaeval dentistry, had the hardihood to say, this Jew " yielding sooner, had saved his teeth, or, stubborn longer, had spared his money; now having both his purse and his jaw empty by the bargain. Condemn we here man's cruelty, and admire Heaven's justice; for all these sums extorted from the Jews by temporal kings are but paying their arrearages to God for a debt they can never satisfy; namely, the crucifying of Christ." Old prejudices die hard.
Henry III.'s exactions became so intolerable that in 1255 the Jews begged to be allowed to leave the realm. This request, to rely again upon Matthew Paris, the king re fused, and then, like " another Titus or Vespasian," farmed them out to his rich brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, that, " as he himself had excoriated them, so Richard might eviscerate them." *
The English Crusaders, starting on the Third Crusade, freely pillaged the Jews, indignant, as the chroniclers re late, that they should have abundance and to spare while they, who were hurrying on the long journey to Jerusalem, had not enough for their barest wants.2 It was at this time, on the evening of the coronation of Richard I., that the horrible massacre occurred in which neither sex nor age was spared. At York, five hundred were shut up in the castle, and the men, in despair, after putting to death their own wives arid daughters, were many of them burned to death.3
English communities were roused to a lamentable pitch of excitement by the alleged crucifixion of Christian boys. Among the more notorious cases were William of
1 Ut quos excoriaverat, comes eviscerat. Luard's ed., V. 487 sq.
2 M. Paris, II. 358 sq.
3 See M. Paris and especially William of Newburgh, Hamilton's ed., II. 24- 28, and de Hoveden. Matthew and de Hoveden are careful to say that the mortgage papers the Jews held were burnt with them. See Graetz's de scription, VI. 219 sqq.
§ 77. THE JEWS. 458
Norwich 1144, Harold of Gloucester 1168, Robert of Edmonsbury 1181, and Hugh of Lincoln 1255. Although these children were popularly known as saints, none of them have been canonized by the Church. The alleged enormities perpetrated upon Hugh of Lincoln, as given by Matthew Paris, are too shocking to be enumerated at length. The same chronicler interjects the statement that the deed was " said often to have occurred." In the excitement over little Hugh, eighteen Jews were gibbeted.1 The marvel is that the atrocious charge was believed, and that no protest against the belief has come down to us from those days.
Some English Jews, under pressure of fear, submitted to baptism, and some also of their free will. The first case of the latter kind, so far as I know, is given by Anselm.2 The convert became a monk. An isolated case occurred here and there of a Christian turning Jew. A deacon was hanged for this offence.3
The last act in the history of the Jews in mediaeval Eng land was their banishment by Edward I. in 1290. From that time until the Caroline age, England was free from Jewish inhabitants. Cromwell added to his fame by giv ing them protection in London.
The treatment the Jews received in Spain is justly re garded as the most merciless the race received in the Middle Ages. Edward I. protected against plunder the sixteen thousand Jews whom he banished from England. But Ferdinand of Spain, when he issued the fell decree for his Jewish subjects to leave Spain, apparently looked on without a sign of pity. Spain, through its Church
1 M. Paris, Luard's ed., III. 543, IV. 30, 377, V. 516. As usual, the guilty parties were the richest Jews in the place. The chroniclers are not agreed in regard to the exact motives actuating the Jews in these murders.
2 Jacobs, p. 8. Hermann, a monk of Cologne, gives an account of his con version from Judaism, Migne, 170, 806 sqq. A most singular attempt by the devil to blot out the baptism of a German Jewish girl is given by Csesar of Heisterbach, Dial, , II. 26. She was to be drawn three times through the hole in the outhouse, the effects of baptism being left behind.
8M. Paris, III. 71.