Jewish Ritual Murder: The Winchester Case (1232 A.D.)

Continuing on with discussing the various individual case of jewish ritual murder (aka the so-called ‘Blood Libel’) we have the second case in the former Anglo-Saxon capital of England and then major city of Winchester in 1232 A.D. during the reign of Henry III of England.

Now traditionally this case and others like it are simply hand-waived away by authors such as Darren O’Brien simply assuming without any actual reason that they are simply false stories created ex nihilo by bigoted and/or threatened local Christians with which to smear jews (1) or were repeated as nonsense claims/‘parodies of anti-jewish bigotry’ by medieval chroniclers. (2)

Something that is barely acknowledged by such scholars is this a priori assumption of ipso facto jewish innocence is completely nonsensical given that the historical context suggests that jews were often engaged in violent and/or viciously sacrilegious acts with – in the context of England in the thirteenth century – examples being the case of a jew urinating on a cross in 1222 as reported by Matthew Paris (3) and the attack on a crucifix during a Christian religious procession in Oxford in 1268 which triggered anti-jewish violence in the city. (4) While in 1285 a mixed group of Christians and jews broke into a church in the city of Norwich, stole valuable items and actively desecrated the Host resulting in further anti-jewish feeling and violence. (5)

The reason for this is because it throws the accusations of jewish ritual murder into sharp relief in the context not of ‘Christian bigotry’, but rather of a ‘Christian anti-Semitism’ that was being driven by provocative and often violent anti-Christian/anti-gentile behaviour on the part of the jews.

Instead we are treated to – in essence – the highly selective narrative of much later jewish historians like Cecil Roth who deliberately and systematically whitewashed their people’s conduct and made medieval Christians/non-jews out to be irrational and bigoted foes of all things jewish, while the jews were portrayed – and still are almost always portrayed – as universal helpless victims who didn’t put a foot wrong let alone do anything to trigger such Christian anti-jewish violence and/or rhetoric. (6)

This alternative world of violent anti-Christian/anti-gentile jewish fanaticism is instead the true backdrop to the charges of jewish ritual murder; which in truth never really stopped occurring between the first known account of jewish ritual murder recorded in Jerusalem in the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167-168 B.C. (7) and the ‘first medieval account’ in 1144 in the city of Norwich. (8)

The reason a break is traditionally ascribed is because of the different character of the ritual murders which only really begin to morph into the perceived ‘drinking/eating Christian/gentile blood’ narrative in the 1250s to 1300s rather than the far more common attacks on Christian children as ‘representations of Haman’ – such as at Imnestar in 415/416 – (9) all the way through to jews mocking/attacking a crucifix in Rome sometime between 1012 and 1024 (10) as well as the and even then we need to take each case on its merit not just dismiss them out of hand because ‘they are preposterous’ or other such nonsense.

Indeed, the problem with ‘the allegations are preposterous’ crowd is that we aren’t just reliant on chroniclers, but we actually have the legal summaries of the trials such as at Winchester in 1232.

This is as follows:

‘A one-year-old boy was discovered dead and strangled in the church yard of St Swithun’s with his hands and feet having been chopped off, his private parts castrated, and his eyes and heart removed.

They [the jury] say that the nurse of the boy sold him to a Jew, Abraham, who killed him, and the nurse fled. And Emma, the mother of the boy, was captured on suspicion of his death and imprisoned in the city jail but then she escaped.

[The jury] also say that at Abraham Pinche killed the boy at his house along with other Jews whose names they did not know. They say the mother of the boy was ill at that time and did not know what had happened when she escaped.

[The jury] also say that when this deed was done Henry of Bath (the sheriff) captured all the Jews of Winchester for this deed and afterwards he released them from 20 marks which he had taken from them.’ (11)

Now as we can see this is a summary of the findings of the jury trial at Winchester where a one-year-old boy had been found heavily mutilated – possibly post-mortem – in a church yard after he had been strangled to death which broadly aligns with the jewish behaviour reported by Socrates Scholasticus concerning the Imnestar case of 415/416. (12)

This ritual murder occurred in the house of a local jew named Abraham Pinche who – again in strong similarity to the Imnestar case – had gathered with other jews to abuse the child who had been sold to Abraham by the child’s nurse, while the child’s mother Emma was ill and presumably bed-ridden.

Now the sceptic might argue that the child’s mother Emma’s successful escape attempt from prison militates against this narrative and suggests it is a made up cover story emanating from the mother to hide her guilt, but in truth the fact that the local sheriff Henry of Bath apprehended the mother after her child’s body was discovered on suspicion of her being involved in his death but yet he - and the jury - found her innocent despite her escape from prison.

All this goes to suggest that the court had in fact done their due diligence and they weren’t particularly prejudiced against – or trying to blame – the jews at all, because the first person they suspected wasn’t the jews at all, but rather the mother of the child. Yet the focus on the investigation shifted to the jews on the evidence of the child’s nursemaid who confessed she had sold him to Abraham.

We are also told quite specifically that the child’s mother ‘did not know what had happened when she escaped’ from prison meaning that the boy’s mother must have been taken prisoner while she was still sick and thus her escape attempt was more the attempt of a desperate mother to see her child – who she doesn’t seem to have known was already dead – and cannot be held to be evidence of her guilt.

Therefore we have no actual reason to disbelieve the court of the time which clearly had reasons and evidence to convict Abraham Pinche of committing the ritual murder of this one-year-old boy – again the strong similarities with the Imnestar case of 415/416 must be restated – that we don’t truly know, but we may reasonably trust the verdict of the time given the fact that suspicion first alighted upon the mother and that she was subsequently acquitted rules the mother out as the murderer. While the nursemaid openly confessed to having sold the child to Abraham - we have no reason to disbelieve her - and presumably was also punished for her part in the death of the boy.

Indeed the fact that Henry of Bath merely fined the rest of the jews – albeit the then hefty sum of 20 marks (roughly £10,000 today) – is actually good evidence that the trial was an honest one. Since Henry of Bath didn’t go after all the jews of Winchester and contented himself with the principal criminal who he could prove with evidence carried out the ritual murder (Abraham Pinche) and then simply fined the rest of their jews for their general part in (and presumably covering up of) Pinche’s crime since he couldn’t prove anything specific against them individually.

Thus, we can see that in fact the charge of jewish ritual murder made against the jews in the city of Winchester in 1232 is actually likely both true and valid based upon the evidence we have placed into the proper historical context.

References

(1) https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/jews-in-england-1216-72/ also see Colin Holmes, 1981, ‘The Ritual Murder Accusation in Britain’, p. 110 in Alan Dundes (Ed.), 1991, ‘The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore’, 1st Edition, University of Wisconsin Press: Madison

(2) Darren O’Brien, 2011, ‘The Pinnacle of Hatred: The Blood Libel and the Jews’, 1st Edition, The Hebrew University Magnes Press: Jerusalem, p. 135

(3) Elliot Horowitz, 2006, ‘Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 167-169; for other cases see Ibid., pp. 163-166

(4) Ibid., pp. 169-170

(5) Ibid., p. 173; additional context and incidents are recounted by Robert Chazan, 2006, ‘The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000-1500’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 162-165

(6) For example: Horowitz, Op. Cit., pp. 170-171

(7) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/reconstructing-the-first-jewish-ritual

(8) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/brother-theobalds-testimony-on-jewish

(9) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-ritual-murder-the-imnestar

(10) Horowitz, Op. Cit., pp. 160-61

(11) JUST 1/775, m. 20 (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/jews-in-england-1216-72/source-four-accusation-of-murder/)

(12) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-ritual-murder-the-imnestar