The Norwich ‘Jewish’ Skeletons in the Well: The Historical Context

Back in 2004 seventeen skeletons were discovered down a medieval well in the English city of Norwich and were positively identified to be those of jews and moreover they include was then reasonably presumed to be whole families. (1)

Naturally everyone's ears pricked up when the time period was pinpointed to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries in Norwich: this is because this would date the bodies to around the time of the ritual murder of William of Norwich, which is the first ritual murder case that we have detailed information about.

That said the BBC's declaration that the 'most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide' is rather perfunctory given that what hadn't then been established was if all the bodies were pushed down the well at the same time (although that has subsequently been the general interpretation as all the individuals were related). We need to bear in mind here that the medieval world was a very violent place and murders were not uncommon and throwing your victim down a well to get rid of the evidence was a fairly common practice at the time.

What the BBC are doing is drawing a link between the time that the jews lived, that we know the jews were being attacked at this time by locals (although this - in spite of the BBC's insinuation - was nothing particularly unusual) and the famous William of Norwich ritual murder case. This is unfounded very simply, because it has not been properly demonstrated (merely presumed [which is understandable but not satisfactory]) that the bodies are those of jews and that these deaths are in any way linked to the anti-jewish feeling in Norwich at the time.

Sue Black goes a long way out of acceptable academic standards when she compared this discovery with ethnic cleansing as she claims happened to the jews in the well. She draws comparisons to all the old horror stories: 'bayoneting babies', 'mass executions' etc. Black should know better than to do that as she is prejudicing the discussion by using emotive language from the modern era to describe an event or series of events based on little to no actual evidence.

Indeed, this is rather nicely demonstrated by a more detailed article about how this premise of the bodies being part of an anti-jewish massacre came about in so far as we are told that:

'In addition, Jewish historian, Professor Miri Rubin confirmed to Dr Xanthe that the 13th Century was a time of religious persecution for the Jewish community: “In the late 12th and 13th Century as Europe becomes more Christian there was a real deepening of this sense of Jewish evil, so it is a picture of worsening and ultimately the age of expulsions.”

These historical facts together with: natural death ruled out; the confirmation that the bodies being most likely of a Jewish family; the fact that neither Jewish or Christian communities would have treated members of their communities in such a disrespectful way at burial, leads Professor Sue Black to reach the conclusion that foul play of some kind was involved – either a mass murder or self-inflicted death is likely.' (2)

Let’s think about this for a moment: the basis of the claim that this is the result of a wholesale anti-jewish massacre has been established based on Rubin's testimony - I won't call it evidence - that the time was one of 'persecution' for jews because Christians were becoming more Christian. This is - like Black - simply prejudicing the discussion by applying wide generalities to a very specific situation: now just because we find some bodies in a well who may or may not have been jewish and who may or may not have been murdered (suicide has never been ruled out) ‘because they were jews’ (which hasn't been proven either merely presumed on the belief they are jews) it does not therefore mean that they died as part of an anti-jewish massacre as Black et al seem desperate to assume.

The central piece of evidence for assuming such a massacre seems to be the location of the well as it was a 'few hundred yards' from a 'thriving jewish community'.

This sounds absolutely compelling, doesn't it?

Think again: medieval Norwich was a fairly small place and a 'few hundred yards' is actually quite a substantial difference in the terms of the settlement itself as one can easily ascertain by consulting Lipmann's 'The Jews of Norwich'. (3) In essence what Black et al are probably doing here is presenting an a priori conclusion - based purely on the belief that the bodies were those of jews - as if it was a logical series of deductions from the evidence.

We can show this by the fact that Black et al have immediately abandoned their own stated possibility of a suicide or another rationale for the deaths - without evidence for doing so - and gone straight to the most extreme conclusion of the bodies being a bit of medieval ethnic cleansing of the self-chosen.

As it turns out this early trumpeting of a jewish identification by Black and Ian Barnes – which has been echoed by more recent 2022 claims that they are ‘Ashkenazim’… before Ashkenazim are believed to have existed – (4) as well as the concomitant media hype over the 'massacred jews' was quite unjustified as scholars have echoed my own initial scepticism of the identification of these human remains as being those of jews. (5)

Indeed, what it is interesting is that further genetic testing has yielded inconclusive results about the 'jewishness' of these skeletons, but this scepticism from the academic community has unsurprisingly not stopped the jews effectively claiming special knowledge that these individuals were jewish.

Barnes has tried to defend his identification of the skeletons as jewish on the grounds that the geographical mapping of the origins of the genetic material gives us a location of South-East Europe to Central Asia. He claims that this has to be plausibly explained and that he has not yet been given a reasonable answer.

Answering that little titbit is fairly easy given that Barnes is forgetting that a Franco-Norse dynasty (the Normans) conquered England in 1066 and included many members who were militarily active in south-eastern Europe and whose ancestors had - to an extent - intermarried with families from that region as well as probably had numerous children out of wedlock with local women. Further Barnes is also forgetting that many of the ancestors of the Normans would have served in the Varangian guard of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople and could have easily produced sons and daughters of more varied origins than would have been immediately apparent. (6)

Incidentally we also know of major violent events in Norwich in the late 11th century (which it could easily given the 12th century genetic locational cusp reading) in which Normans of this type were killed! (7)

Barnes really hasn't thought through his defensive claims of jewishness now, has he?

This means that the likelihood is that these bodies were of Christians as West asserts. (8) What has also been completely ignored by those arguing - like Barnes - that these bodies are those of jews and that their deaths were likely the result of Christian persecution. Is that if they are indeed of jewish origin: then why couldn't they be say a family of jewish converts to Christianity and killed for a reason unrelated to this ancestry? We know of plenty of such individuals in Europe at the time: so why should we automatically being of jewish origin as meaning that the individual concerned believes in Judaism?

I mean who cares about the context when a good story about so-called ‘anti-Semitic pogroms’ can be claimed?

The jews believe it to be true so according to them it must be so.

References

(1) http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-13855238

(2) http://www.medievalists.net/2011/06/23/bodies-of-17-jews-from-medieval-norwich-may-have-been-mass-murder-victims-scholars-believe/

(3) V. D. Lipmann, 1967, 'The Jews of Norwich', 1st Edition, The Jewish Historical Society of England: London, pp. 11-48

(4) https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/august/ancient-dna-medieval-norwich-skeletons-shed-light-jewish-history.html; see Michael Toch’s comments about the similar origins of the Ashkenazim in Michael Toch, 1995, ‘Jewish Migrations to, within and from Medieval Germany’, pp. 640-641 in Michael Toch, 1995, ’Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History’, 1st Edition, Ashgate: Burlington

(5) http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/103175/norwich-bury-bones-%E2%80%94-jewish-or-not

(6) On this see Brian Crouch, 2002, 'The Normans: The History of a Dynasty', 1st Edition, Continuum: New York

(7) David Bates, 2001, 'William the Conqueror', 2nd Edition, Tempus: Stroud, pp. 181-186

(8) http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/103175/norwich-bury-bones-%E2%80%94-jewish-or-not