A Collected Translation into English
Translator’s Preface
The following passages are drawn from all seven volumes of Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora (composed at St Albans Abbey, c. 1240–1259). They are grouped under the rubric Adversus Judaeos — “Against the Jews” — not because Paris gathered them under a single heading, but because they form a coherent thread of hostile, conspiratorial, and theologically loaded material about Jewish people running through his entire chronicle. The passages range from canonical legislation and royal fiscal exploitation to allegations of ritual murder and desecration.
Each passage is introduced with the date, volume reference, and Paris’s own Latin heading (where one exists), followed by an English translation. Latin headings are transliterated from the OCR text; editorial marginalia supplied by Paris himself (visible in the manuscripts) are noted in square brackets. Editorial footnotes from the Rolls Series edition (ed. H. R. Luard, 1872–1884) are incorporated where they aid comprehension.
I. The Third Lateran Council and the Jews (1179)
Volume II — A.D. 1179 [Latin heading: De concilio Romæ habito præsidente Papa Alexandro]
Among the twenty-eight constitutions of the Third Lateran Council, held in Rome under Pope Alexander III, was the following:
That Jews and Saracens shall not be permitted to hold Christian slaves; but if they wish to convert to the faith of Christ, they shall by no means be excluded from their possessions.
II. The Crusaders Attack the Jews of England (1190)
Volume II — A.D. 1190 [Latin heading: De interitu Judæorum diversis in locis] [Marginal note: Attacks on the Jews at Norwich, Stamford, St. Edmundsbury, and elsewhere by the Crusaders]
In that same year, many men throughout England who were hastening toward Jerusalem first resolved to fall upon the Jews. Accordingly, however many Jews were found in their own homes at Norwich were slaughtered; some found refuge in the castle. Then, on the nones of March, many perished at Stamford during fair-time. Likewise, on the fifteenth day before the kalends of April, at Bury St Edmunds, fifty-seven are said to have had their throats cut. And so wherever Jews were found, they were struck down by the hands of those signed with the cross, except for those who were protected by the shelter of the town officers.
But one must not believe that so deadly a massacre of Jews was pleasing to men of prudence, since it is written: “Slay them not, lest my people forget” [Psalm 58:12].
III. The Dreadful Fate of the Jews at York (1190)
Volume II — A.D. 1190 [Latin heading: De Judæis apud Eboracum mirabiliter interfectis] [Marginal note: Dreadful fate of the Jews at York]
In that same year, during Lent — specifically on the seventeenth day before the kalends of April — the Jews of the city of York, numbering five hundred, not counting small children and women, fearing the assault of the Christians, shut themselves within the tower of the city with the consent of the sheriff and the keeper of the tower. When the keepers sought it back, the Jews refused to surrender it. As those outside attacked the tower day and night, the Jews within came to their senses and offered a large sum of money for their lives, but the people refused to accept it.
Then a certain learned man among them rose up and said: “Men of Israel, hear my counsel. It is better for us to die for our law than to fall into the hands of our enemies, as our law commands.” All assented to him; and each father of a family, taking a sharp razor, first cut the throats of his wife, his sons, and his daughters, and then of all his household; and they threw the dead, whom they had sacrificed to the demons, over the walls onto the Christians outside. The rest they locked inside the royal building, and setting fire to it, burned themselves together with the royal buildings. Whereupon the citizens and knights, having set fire to the Jews‘ houses along with their bonds of debt, kept their treasure for themselves.
IV. King John’s Extortion of the Jews (1210)
Volume II — A.D. 1210 [Latin heading: Quomodo Judæi ad redemptionem gravissimam compelluntur] [Marginal note: The Jews compelled to the most heavy ransom]
In the year of the Lord’s Nativity 1210, King John commanded that the Jews throughout all England of both sexes be seized and cast into prison, and afflicted with most grievous torments, so that they would do the king’s will with their money. Some of them, heavily tortured, gave all they had and promised more, so that they might escape so many kinds of torment. Among them, one man at Bristol, torn by various torments, refused to ransom himself or to make terms; so the king commanded his torturers to knock out one of his molar teeth each day until he had paid the king ten thousand marks of silver. When at length they had knocked out seven teeth with intolerable agony over seven days, and the torturers were beginning the same work on the eighth day, that Jew — slow to provide for his own welfare — paid the sum remembered, so that, with seven teeth already pulled, he might save himself the eighth.
V. The Fourth Lateran Council: Jews and Usury for Crusaders (1215)
Volume II — A.D. 1215 [Within the constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council]
Concerning Jews, we make this same statute: that they be compelled by secular power to remit the usuries owed to them by those who have taken the cross; and until they remit them, let all fellowship with them in trade and in all other things be denied, by sentence of excommunication, to all the faithful of Christ. To those who cannot now pay their debts to Jews, let secular princes provide a useful delay, so that after the journey is undertaken, until it is most certainly known whether they are dead or returned, they shall not incur the burden of usury; the Jews being compelled to reckon into the principal the revenues of pledges they shall have received in the meantime, after deducting necessary expenses — since such a benefit seems not greatly to damage them, as it postpones payment rather than cancelling the debt.
VI. Jews Circumcise a Christian Child at Norwich (1235)
Volume III — A.D. 1235 [Latin heading: De Judæis qui puerum Christianum circumciderunt] [Marginal note: Crime of the Jews — a boy circumcised]
In the year of the Lord 1235, King Henry III of England, in the nineteenth year of his reign, held his court at Christmas at Westminster, in the presence of many bishops and princes of the realm. At that time, seven Jews were brought before the king at Westminster, who at Norwich had circumcised a certain boy whom they had secretly stolen and had hidden from the sight of Christians for nearly a year, intending to crucify him at Eastertide. But they were convicted of this deed and confessed the truth of the matter in the king’s presence, and so remained in prison under custody, their lives and limbs at the king’s pleasure.
VII. Jews Circumcise a Christian Child at Norwich (1240) — Second Incident
Volume IV — A.D. 1240 [Latin heading: De quodam puero quem Judæi circumciderant apud Norwicum et reservabant ad crucifigendum] [Marginal note: The Jews circumcise a Christian boy]
Around that time, at Norwich, the Jews had circumcised a Christian boy and, once circumcised, had called him by the name “Jurmin.” They were keeping him to be crucified in contempt of the crucified Jesus Christ. The boy’s father, from whom the Jews had stolen his son by stealth, searched diligently for his child and at last found him shut up in the custody of the Jews. Raising an outcry, he declared that his son, whom he had believed lost, was wickedly imprisoned in the inner room of a certain Jew. When this great crime became known to Bishop William de Raleigh, a prudent and circumspect man, and to other magnates — lest so great an injury to Christ pass unavenged through the negligence of Christians — all the Jews of that city were seized. When they sought to shelter behind the royal authority, the bishop said: “This matter belongs to the Church, not to the royal court, since the question concerns circumcision and the violation of the faith.” And so four Jews, convicted of the said crime, were first dragged at the tails of horses and then hanged on the gallows, breathing out the last of their wretched lives.
VIII. The House for Converted Jews, London (1233)
Volume III — A.D. 1233 [Latin heading: De domo Conversorum Londoniis constructa] [Marginal note: Church for converted Jews built by the king]
About the same time, Henry, king of England, at his own expense built a suitable church with certain adjacent buildings sufficient for a conventual community, in the place where he had established the House of Converts for the redemption of his own soul and of King John his father and all his ancestors, in the seventeenth year of his reign — in London, not far from the Old Temple. To that house Jews who converted, having abandoned the blindness of Judaism, might have under a certain honourable rule of life a permanent dwelling for the whole of their lives, a safe refuge, and a sufficient means of sustenance, without servile labour or the emolument of usury. Hence it came to pass that within a short time a great number of converts was gathered there; and being baptized and instructed in the Christian law, they live in praiseworthy fashion, governed by a skilled rector specially appointed for the purpose.
IX. King Gregory IX Orders Restraint on Jewish Usury for Crusaders (1234)
Volume III — A.D. 1234 [Within a letter of Pope Gregory IX on the Crusade]
We command that the Jews be compelled by secular power to remit to the crusaders the usuries owed them. And until they remit them, by sentence of excommunication all fellowship with them in trade and in all other things shall be denied to all the faithful of Christ. Those who, being unable to pay their debts to the Jews at present, have crusaders’ debts postponed by the prince — when it is most certainly known whether they are dead or returned — shall not incur the burden of usury. The Jews shall be compelled to reckon into the principal the revenues of pledges they have received in the meantime, with necessary expenses deducted.
X. The Crown of Thorns and the Jews (1240)
Volume IV — A.D. 1240 [Latin heading: Corona Domini spinea a Constantinopoli in Franciam afportatur] [Marginal note: The Crown of Thorns offered by the Emperor to St. Louis, brought to Paris]
In that same year France rejoiced and exulted by a twofold benefit of our Lord Jesus Christ. For beyond the fact that she merited … to receive the confessor Edmund brought from England, she also rejoiced to possess the Lord’s Crown of Thorns, obtained at Constantinople. For when necessity pressed and, as is the custom of those waging war, the treasury of the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople was empty, he informed the king of France that if he were willing to help him effectively from his treasury, he would make over to the king — in the bond of their ancient friendship and kinship — the Crown of the Lord, which the Jews, pressing it down, had placed upon the Lord’s head when He was enduring the Passion of the cross for the redemption of the human race.
XI. The Extortion of Gold from the Jews (1243)
Volume IV — A.D. 1243 [Latin heading: Aurum extorquetur non modicum a Judæis] [Marginal note: Gold levied on the Jews. Pillage of the Jews by the king]
In those very same days the king exacted from the most wretched Jews a great redemption in gold and silver — so much so that, to say nothing of the others, from a single Jew, namely Aaron of York, he wrung four marks of gold and four thousand of silver. The gold, however, the king received with his own hand from each Jew, man or woman …; the silver was received by others on behalf of the king.
XII. A Jew Blasphemes the Virgin Mary (1250)
Volume V — A.D. 1250 [Latin heading: Inauditum nefas cujusdam Judæi] [Marginal note: Horrible crime of Abraham a Jew]
There was a certain Jew of moderate wealth, whose name — not without reason — was Abraham, who had frequent dealings and a dwelling at Berkhamsted and at Wallingford. He was, so it was said, familiar with Earl Richard for reasons other than were fitting. He had a comely and faithful wife named Flora. In order to heap greater dishonour upon Christ, this Jew had a carved and painted image of the Blessed Virgin purchased in the usual fashion, nursing her Son in her lap. This Jew placed the image in his latrine, and — what is deeply disgraceful and utterly shameful to relate — blasphemously used to commit against the image, as against the Blessed Virgin herself, the most vile and unspeakable acts by day and by night, and commanded his wife to do the same.
When his wife saw this after some days, she was moved with pity on account of her sex, and secretly wiped clean the face of the image, which had been horribly defiled. When the Jewish husband discovered this to be true, he impiously and secretly smothered his wife for that reason. When these crimes were discovered and he was publicly convicted and found guilty, though other capital charges were also present, he was thrust into the most loathsome prison in the Tower of London. But in order to be freed, he pledged most certainly that he would prove all the Jews of England to be the most wicked traitors.
When he was severely accused by nearly all the Jews of England, and they strove to have him put to death, Earl Richard spoke on his behalf. The Jews therefore accused him more heavily of clipping coins and other crimes, and offered the Earl a thousand marks that he might not protect him — which the Earl refused, since the Jew was said to be his. And so that Jew Abraham gave seven hundred marks to the king, in order that, with the Earl’s help, he might be freed from perpetual imprisonment to which he had been condemned.
XIII. Justiciars Sent to Investigate Jewish Wealth (1250)
Volume V — A.D. 1250 [Latin heading: Mittuntur justitiarii ad explorandum Judæorum pecuniam] [Marginal note: Justices sent through the country to assess the Jews]
At that same time the lord king sent justiciars of the Jews throughout all England to investigate all their wealth in debts and possessions, and with them a certain most wicked and merciless Jew, so that he might wickedly and even by going beyond the truth accuse all the others. This man rebuked those Christians who were moved with pity and wept over the affliction of the Jews, calling the king’s bailiffs tepid and effeminate; and gnashing his teeth at each individual Jew, with great oaths asserted they could give twice as much to the king as they had given — though he lied wickedly to their detriment.
This man, in order to harm the Jews the more effectively, revealed all their secrets to the royal exacters.
XIV. The Misery of the Jews — Elyas of London Speaks (c. 1251)
Volume V — A.D. 1251 [Latin heading: De miseria Judæorum] [Marginal note: Demands of the hard-hearted king. Speech of the Jewish high-priest Elyas]
In those same days, after Easter but before Rogationtide, the king — unwilling to rest — so harried the most wretched race of Jews that they longed to die. When they were summoned, Earl Richard, at the king’s command and on behalf of a king greatly in need, exacted from them no small sum of money, under pain of the most loathsome prison and a shameful death.
Elyas of London, the high-priest of the Jews, having taken counsel with his fellows, replied on behalf of all — he who had so often, willingly or unwillingly, paid the greatest sums of money:
“O lords and nobles, we see beyond doubt that the lord king proposes to annihilate us from beneath the heavens. Grant us, we beg for God’s sake, leave and safe-conduct to withdraw from his realm, so that elsewhere we may seek and find a dwelling under some prince who bears some bowels of mercy and some steadiness of truth and fidelity; and we will depart, never to return, leaving here our goods and our houses. How should he love us miserable Jews or spare us, who destroys his own natural-born English? He has the Pope’s merchants — or rather his own, whom I will not call usurers — who are heaping up infinite mountains of money from loans. Let the king lean on them and hunger for their profits. They have truly supplanted and impoverished us. The king pretends not to know this, demanding from us what we cannot provide — even if he put out our eyes or flayed us alive and cut our throats.”
And saying this, with sobs and tears choking his speech, he fell nearly silent, as one about to collapse in an ecstasy of dying.
When this came to the notice of the magistrates, they would not permit them to leave the realm, saying: “Where would you flee, you wretches? The king of France hates and persecutes you, and has condemned you to perpetual exile …”
XV. The King Sells the Jews to Earl Richard (c. 1255)
Volume V — A.D. 1255 [Latin heading: Judæi tondiuntur] [Marginal note: Demands of the king on the Jews. He sells the Jews to Earl Richard, who spares them]
When the season of Lent came, the king exacted from the Jews — though they had been impoverished many times over — with great insistence eight thousand marks, to be paid to him in good time under pain of hanging. They, seeing that nothing threatened them but utter destruction with disgrace, all replied in one voice:
“Lord king, we see that you spare neither Christians nor Jews, but study by all means to impoverish us all. No hope of breathing remains to us; the Pope’s usurers have supplanted us — permit us to leave your realm under safe-conduct, and we will seek out some dwelling for ourselves, however humble.”
When the king heard this, he cried out querulously, saying:
“It is no wonder that I crave money. It is dreadful to contemplate the debts by which I am bound. By God’s head, they mount to the sum of two hundred thousand marks, and if I said three, I should not transgress the limits of truth. I am deceived on all sides. I am a king mutilated and abbreviated — indeed already halved. For by a definite extent of reckoning, the sum of my son Edward’s annual revenues comes to more than fifteen thousand marks. I must therefore live off money from wherever, from whomever, obtained however.”
And so, becoming a second Titus or Vespasian, he sold the Jews for several years to his brother Earl Richard, so that those whom the king had flayed, the Earl might gut. Yet the Earl spared them, seeing that their power was diminished and their poverty shameful.
XVI. Hugh of Lincoln: Ritual Crucifixion (1255)
Volume V — A.D. 1255 [Latin heading: De ultione Dei in Judæos pro eo quod unum puerum crucifixerunt Lincolniæ] [Marginal note: A boy named Hugh crucified by the Jews at Lincoln]
The Abduction and Murder
Also in that same year, around the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the Jews of Lincoln stole away a boy named Hugh, about eight years of age. They nourished him in a certain most secret chamber with milk and other childlike foods; and they sent word to almost all the cities of England in which Jews dwelt, and summoned some Jews from each city, so that they might be present at their sacrifice at Lincoln in contempt and reproach of Jesus Christ. They had, as they said, a certain boy hidden away to be crucified.
Many assembled at Lincoln. Gathering together, they appointed one Jew of Lincoln as judge, in the manner of Pilate; by whose verdict and with the approval of all, the boy was subjected to various torments. He was beaten until he bled and was bruised, crowned with thorns, mocked with spitting and laughter, and moreover pricked with knives called anelacii by each one in turn; given gall to drink; derided with insults and blasphemies; and often addressed by those gnashing their teeth as “Jesus the false prophet.” And after they had mocked him in diverse ways, they crucified him and pierced him to the heart with a lance. When the boy had breathed his last, they took his body down from the cross; and it is not known why they disembowelled the little body — but it is said it was for the practice of magical arts.
The Discovery
The boy’s mother searched diligently for her absent son for some days. She was told by neighbours that the last they had seen the boy she was looking for was when he was playing with Jewish children of his own age and entering the house of a certain Jew. The woman immediately entered that house and saw the body of the boy thrown into a well. Carefully summoning the bailiffs of the city, the body was found and drawn out. And the sight was a marvellous spectacle to the people. The boy’s mother, loud in her lament and outcry, moved all the citizens — indeed all who gathered — to tears and sighs.
Present there was Sir John de Lexington, a circumspect and discreet man, and elegantly learned besides, who said: “We have sometimes heard that the Jews, in reproach of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, have not feared to attempt such things.”
The Confession of Copin
And seizing one Jew in whose house the boy had entered while playing — and who was therefore more suspect than the others — he said to him: “Wretch, do you not know that swift destruction awaits you? All the gold in England would not suffice to rescue or redeem you. Yet I will tell you, though you are unworthy, how you may preserve your life and limbs from mutilation. I will save you both if you do not fear to reveal to me, without any thread of falsehood, all that was done in this matter.”
That Jew, whose name was Copin, thus believing he had found a way of escape, answered: “Lord John, if you match words with deeds, I will reveal wonders to you.” And the industry of Lord John encouraged and stimulated him to this. And the Jew said:
“What the Christians say is true. The Jews crucify one boy almost every year in injury and contempt of Jesus. But it is not discovered every year, for they do it secretly, in hidden and most secret places. The boy whom they call Hugh, our Jews crucified without mercy; and when he had died and they wished to hide the corpse, it could not be buried in the ground or concealed. For the body of an innocent was considered of ill omen for that purpose; it was even disembowelled for this reason. And when in the morning it was thought to have been hidden, the earth cast it up and vomited it out, and the body appeared several times lying unburied on the ground — whereat the Jews were filled with horror. At last it was thrown into a well, and even then it could not be hidden; for the boy’s determined mother, searching everything, gave word of the found body to the bailiffs.”
The Execution
Sir John thereupon held the Jew in chains. When all this became known to the canons of the cathedral church of Lincoln, they begged that the little body be given to them. It was granted. And being viewed by countless people, the body was honourably buried in the church of Lincoln as the body of a precious martyr.
It must be noted that the Jews had kept the boy alive for ten days, so that being nourished on milk for so many days, he might endure in life the most varied torments.
When the king returned from the northern parts of England and was informed of the aforesaid, he upbraided Sir John for having promised life and limb to so great a scoundrel, which he had not been able to give. For that blasphemer and murderer was worthy of manifold death. And when irremediable judgment impended over the accused, he said: “My death is near, and Lord John cannot save me when I am about to perish. Now I tell you all the truth: to the death of this boy of whom the Jews are accused, almost all the Jews of England consented. And from almost every city of England in which Jews dwell, certain chosen ones were summoned to the slaughter of that boy, as if to a Paschal sacrifice.”
And having said this, together with other ravings, he was bound to a horse’s tail and dragged to the gallows, and was presented to the aerial demons in body and soul.
The other Jews who were partners in this crime — four score and eleven — were brought to London in wagons and committed to prison. If they were lamented by any Christians, they were mourned with dry tears by the Cahorsin money-lenders.
The Further Executions
Afterwards, by the inquest of the lord king’s justiciars, it was found and determined that the Jews of England had by common counsel slain an innocent boy who had been flogged for many days, crucified. But afterwards, for their iniquity — the mother of the said boy steadfastly pursuing her appeal against them before the king — the Lord God of vengeance rendered a worthy recompense. For on the day of St. Clement, eighteen of the richest and greatest of the city of Lincoln were dragged and presented to the new gallows specially prepared for the occasion. And in the Tower of London more than sixty others are kept in prison for a like judgment.
Editorial Notes
- Methodology. These passages have been translated from the Latin text as printed in the Rolls Series edition (Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 7 vols., London, 1872–84). The OCR source text presents occasional errors which have been silently corrected against context. Marginal annotations by Matthew Paris visible in the manuscripts are noted in brackets.
- Historical context. Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk of St Albans (c. 1200–1259) whose Chronica Majora is one of the most important narrative sources for thirteenth-century England. His treatment of Jews is consistently hostile: they appear as ritual murderers, blasphemers, torturers of Christian children, agents of usury, and objects of royal fiscal exploitation. At the same time, his chronicle preserves what is now precious evidence of medieval Jewish life and suffering, including the voices of Elyas of London and the events at York.
- The Hugh of Lincoln case (1255). The accusation of ritual crucifixion — the so-called “blood libel” — is found repeatedly in Paris. The 1255 case of “Little Saint Hugh” of Lincoln led to the judicial murder of eighteen Jews. The accusation is now understood by historians to be wholly false; there is no credible evidence of any such practice. Paris himself notes that the confession was obtained under duress and promise of pardon.
- Paris’s tone. While Paris records atrocities committed against Jews (York 1190, Bristol 1210) with evident awareness of their horror, he frames Jewish suffering almost always as divinely merited punishment, and frames Jewish survival as the theologically necessary witness of a condemned people. The Adversus Judaeos tradition in which he writes is patristic in origin (Tertullian, Augustine, Isidore of Seville) but in Paris acquires contemporary English specificity.
Source. Internet Archive – Translation by Claude.AI. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora. 1872.