Pope Celestine I

The earliest mention of the man who became Pope Celestine I was a reference to "Celestine the Deacon" in a 416 document by Pope Innocent I. We don't really know anything else factually except that he became the Bishop of Rome in 422, either on 10 September or 3 November. (Currently the Vatican dates the start of his pontificate as 10 September. The Liber Pontificalis ("Book of Pontiffs"), started in the early Middle Ages and occasionally updated, starts him on 3 November of 422.)

His election involved an "antipope situation." An archdeacon named Eulalius was recognized as pope by the emperor prior to Celestine's election, but once the proper election took place, no arguments ensued. 

In the decade while he sat the Throne of Peter, he had to deal with various questions of proper doctrine and fighting heresy. Fighting Pelagianism was an ongoing concern. He sent Palladius to the Scots of Ireland to deal with heresy, according to Prosper of Aquitaine. He may also have been the reason for St. Patrick's mission. Four letters from Celestine, all dated 15 March 431, went to African bishops urging them to fight against Nestorianism. Closer to home, the Roman Novatians denied the opportunity for any lapsed Christians to be re-welcomed into the faith. Celestine confiscated Novatian churches, arguing that reconciliation should never be refused to one who truly wants it.

The Gallic monk St. Vincent of Lerins in 434 explained Celestine's policy as a strict adherence to the tradition of his predecessors:

Holy Pope Celestine also expresses himself in like manner and to the same effect. For in the Epistle which he wrote to the priests of Gaul, charging them with connivance with error, in that by their silence they failed in their duty to the ancient faith, and allowed profane novelties to spring up, he says: "We are deservedly to blame if we encourage error by silence. Therefore rebuke these people. Restrain their liberty of preaching."

He had a long-distance relationship with Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Augustine was aware of him prior to his election, calling him "My Venerable Lord and Highly Esteemed and Holy Brother" in a letter of 418. Augustine wrote to him again shortly after he became pope with an unusual problem: his own mistake:

I am so racked with anxiety and grief that I think of retiring from the responsibilities of the episcopal office, and abandoning myself to demonstrations of sorrow corresponding to the greatness of my error.

What was the error? Augustine had recommended Antony of Fessula to become the bishop of that town, and now recognized that Antony was corrupt. Augustine wanted the new pope to help him deal with the problem.

Augustine's was one of the strongest voices against Pelagianism, and sent Prosper of Aquitaine (one of his most fervent disciples) to Rome to deliver his arguments to Celestine in a way that they could not easily be done by letters. This changed Prosper's career, since he stayed in Rome working for the papacy as Augustine's "man on the inside" to make sure the anti-Pelagian stance stayed foremost in papal policy. When Augustine died during the Siege of Hippo Regius by the Vandals, Celestine forbade attacks on Augustine's memory that were being made by the Semipelagians, who stated that humans could reach salvation through the choice of Free Will, as opposed to Augustine's teaching that God's Grace was necessary and predestination meant the conclusion was foregone. Semipelagianism was on the rise due to the works of John Cassian.

The early Church generated a lot of different ideas about how salvation was to be achieved and how the relationship between Good and Evil worked. For future reference, let's take a look at the major "heresies" (quotation marks because they simply failed to become official doctrine, but who knows what might have happened?) next time, and we'll talk about Vincent of Lerins who did his best to distinguish between Catholic doctrine and heresy.

Prosper of Aquitaine

Much of the history of the second half of the 5th century is known to us because of a disciple of Augustine of Hippo named Prosper. Born about 390 CE in the Roman province of Aquitaine, the Gothic invasions of Gaul drove him to Marseilles in 417. By 429 he was corresponding with Augustine, and in 431 went to Rome to speak to Pope Celestine I on behalf of Augustine.

From that point Prosper appears in no records until 440, when he is a secretary in the papacy of Leo I. He never took orders, but he was thoroughly involved in religious institutions.  He wrote De vocatione omnium gentium ("The Call of all Nations"), in which he urges all Gentiles to embrace Augustine's idea of God's Grace. He wrote a 1000-line poem in which he attacked Pelagianism.

Prosper left us the Epitoma Chronicon ("Ultimate History"), a continuation of a history by St. Jerome, in which he covers the Belgian controversy and world history. He first composed it in 443, but released several subsequent editions with updates. The final edition was in 455 and covers the death of Valentinian III, which is traditionally given as the year of Prosper's death. (The historian Marcellinus Comes mentions Prosper in the year 463, but Marcellinus was in Constantinople and was not an eyewitness to events in the Western Empire.)

It is Prosper who tells us that, when the Vandals approached Rome to sack it in 455, Pope Leo the Great met with their leader, Genseric, to request that he refrain from burning and killing, but content himself with pillaging.

Prosper's other focus, besides Pelagianism, was the shameful behavior of certain Roman generals, such as Magnus Maximus:

Maximus was made emperor in Britain in an uprising of the soldiery. He soon crossed to Gaul. Gratian was defeated at Paris owing to the treason of Merobaudes the magister militium, and was captured in flight at Lyon and killed. Maximus made his son Victor his colleague in power.

The tyrant Maximus, despoiled of his royal garments by the emperors Valentinian and Theodosius at the third milestone from Aquileia, was called forth to judgement and condemned to death. In the same year his son Victor was killed by Comes Arbogast in Gaul.

Prosper is also our chief source for the details of the Vandal invasion in Europe and North Africa. He blames the general Castinus for losing against the Vandals in Spain, allowing them to conquer the province of North Africa and leading to the death of St. Augustine. (Of course, Augustine was 75 at the time of his death, so it is not quite fair to blame the Vandals.)

Among other writings of his were the Sententia ("Sentences"), 392 maxims supporting the writings of Augustine, and Epigrammata ("Epigrams"), 106 short verses drawn from other sources. The Epigrammata exist in 180 manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

But why did Prosper have to go to Rome to speak to the pope about Augustine? Wasn't Augustine one of the respected fathers of the Church? Let's look at Celestine tomorrow and see why that might have been.

The End of the Vandals

The Roman Empire ultimately decided that fighting the Vandals was not in their best interests, and made peace treaties, hoping the Vandals would keep to their current boundaries. Those involved in the treaty need to act in support of one another, however. When King Hilderic was overthrown by his cousin Gelimer—partially because Hilderic was too tolerant of Catholics (Nicene Christians) for the taste of the Arian Vandals, partially because his approach to military endeavors led to a defeat by the Moors—the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I chose to come to his aid.

With the intention to restore Hilderic to the throne, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I sent  an army to North Africa. This was the start of the 533-34 Vandalic War, Justinian's attempt at reconquest of the Western Roman Empire. The Byzantines had a stroke of luck: the Vandal army wasn't home.

The Vandal army was on its way to Sardinia to deal with a rebellion there, led by Gelimer's brother. Seeing the Byzantine army approaching, Gelimer tried to gather what remaining forces he had, but they were insufficient to stop the Byzantines, led by Belisarius, from conquering the vandal capital of Carthage. 

On 15 December 533, the two armies met again 20 miles from Carthage. When the Vandal leader Tzar (Gelimer's brother) fell, the army scattered. Belisarius advanced to the Vandal second capital of Hippo Regius, occupying it with little resistance. Gelimer surrendered in 534, and the Kingdom of the Vandals was  no more. North Africa was once more a Roman province.

So what happened then? Gelimer was offered estates in Galatia (Hilderic had been killed in prison). He was offered the rank of patrician, but he would have had to convert to Catholicism, and so refused. The Vandal soldiers were shipped to Constantinople to become a unit in the Byzantine army. The best warriors became a cavalry regiment called the Justinian Vandals, or Vandali Iustiniani, and were sent to the Persian frontier. With Byzantine soldiers staying in North Africa to maintain the imperial presence, many married Vandal women.

Some Vandals migrated back to the Iberian Peninsula. One of them, Guntarith, came back in 546 with Moorish support and killed the proconsul of the African province in Carthage. His takeover of Carthage did not last long: he was assassinated by resident Byzantines and his Moorish counterpart, Stotzas the Younger, was taken to Constantinople and executed. That was the last gasp of the Vandal Kingdom that harried Europe and Rome.

One of the only contemporary accounts of the Vandal interaction with the Roman Empire is by Prosper of Aquitaine, who is relied on for the late 4th to mid-5th century. I'll tell you more about him next time.

Fighting the Vandals, Part 3

The sacking of Rome by the Vandals motivated the Roman Empire to prepare to deal with them like never before. It certainly made the Vandals themselves feel invincible. Their king, Genseric, sent a fleet of 60 ships to attack Gaul and Italy in 456. They landed on the southern coast of Sicily at Agrigentum, where they met Ricimer.

Ricimer was a Roman general, but like many Romans, he was not Latin, but German. He is usually described as a Goth by his contemporaries, but sometimes as the product of a Suevic father and a Visigothic mother. Some surmise that he was the son of a marriage alliance between the two Germanic tribes. His sister married a Burgundian king, Gondioc, giving Ricimer additional powerful ties. The chaos that followed the sacking of Rome allowed Ricimer to consolidate military hold over much of the Western Empire.

The Battle of Agrigentum was a success for Ricimer: the Vandals retreated to their ships to escape, but Ricimer followed and defeated them in a naval battle off the coast of Corsica. A year later, a Vandal army after looting Campania (the "shin" of Italy) was ambushed and defeated by forces of the Western Emperor Majorian. Majorian was a full-blooded Roman who had been a general and achieved the throne with the support of Ricimer and another general.

Majorian made it a primary goal to defeat the Vandals decisively. His first attempt, an attack on Cartagena in 460, failed. An alliance between the Western and Eastern Empires in 468 sent (supposedly) over 1000 ships and over 50,000 soldiers. The Vandals used fireships—ships filled with combustibles, set on fire, and sent into the opposing flat to do damage and cause chaos—to disrupt the Roman navy. Over 100 ships and over 10,000 Romans died. Rome's chances of achieving any kind of domination over the Vandals faded after that.

In the 470s, Ricimer negotiated a treaty with the Vandals. Genseric ruled the Western Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Tripoli.  The Vandals started minting their own coinage, although it was only low-denomination bronze and silver coins. They adopted Roman coinage when higher value was needed. When Genseric did in 477, his son Huneric took over.

Huneric was married to Eodocia, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Valentinian III. A fervent Arian, he nonetheless allowed some tolerance to other groups, allowing the Catholics to elect a bishop (a position that had not been filled in 24 years). He did persecute Manichaeans, however, and later in life returned to harassing Catholics, exiling their bishops and trying to force conversions to Arianism.

Under Huneric and his successors, the Vandals lost much of the territory that had been conquered under Genseric. The Ostrogoths took most of Sicily. The rising presence of Moors in the Iberian Peninsula chipped away at Vandal control of the Western Mediterranean. The Vandal King Hilderic (523 - 530) was too tolerant to Catholics, creating a civil war when a strong Arian faction overthrew him, making Hilderic's cousin Gelimer king and throwing Hilderic into prison.

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian then stepped in on Hilderic's behalf. Tomorrow we'll see the result, and the dissolution of the Vandal Kingdom.

Fighting the Vandals, Part 2

After Genseric of the Vandals took over Carthage and made it the Vandal capital, they started looting up and down the Mediterranean. Their domination of the sea was so thorough that an Old English name for it was Wendelsæ ("Sea of the Vandals").

This was obviously a challenge to Rome's power, but Rome was busy on another front: Attila the Hun and his brother Blaeda had been a problem for years. Worse, a request from Emperor Valentinian III's sister to Attila for help complicated matters: Attila thought Honoria was offering herself in marriage, and Attila wanted half the Roman Empire as dowry. Being informed by Valentinian that he had clearly misunderstood the situation, Attila attacked Gaul in 453. This was drawing Rome's military forces substantially inland and away from the Mediterranean coasts.

Rome had a stroke of luck in that Attila died not long after the invasion of Gaul. His three sons' eagerness each to rule a part of the Hun empire helped reduce its effectiveness. Rome could now turn its attention to Genseric and the Vandals—for all the good that did.

Valentinian decided on a diplomatic route, offering his daughter in marriage to Genseric's son. This might have satisfied both sides, but for something neither side saw coming: Valentinian was murdered on 16 March 455 by the senator Petronius Maximus. Maximus bribed the Senate to support him; he married Valentinian's widow, married Valentinian's daughter to Maximus' own son.

Maximus got to be emperor for two and a half months. Genseric, understandably enraged at this betrayal, headed to Rome. Valentinian's widow supposedly sent a message to Genseric or his son requesting saving from Maximus. Maximus requested help from the Visigoths, but it was not forthcoming. He fled Rome as the Vandals arrived, became separated from his retinue in the chaos of escaping, and was killed. The Vandals went on to sack Rome (illustrated above in a 19th-century painting).

The only contemporary account of the sacking of Rome comes from Prosper of Aquitaine (also one of the rare early sources of info on St. Patrick). Prosper says that Pope Leo I ("the Great") asked Genseric to satisfy himself with pillaging, but refrain from murder and destruction. The Vandals not only left Rome with many treasures, but also with Valentinian's widow and daughter.

It would seem that nothing prevented the Vandals from ruling that part of the world indefinitely. Their fortunes were about to turn, however, and we'll see how that happened next time.

Fighting the Vandals, Part 1

The Germanic tribe the Vandals made their way across Europe, into the Iberian Peninsula, and then to North Africa. There they clashed with a Roman general, Bonifacius, who after a defeat on the Numidian border barricaded himself in the city of Hippo Regius. The Vandals, led by Genseric, laid siege to Hippo Regius. This was in May of 430CE.

Hippo Regius (on the coast of what is now Algeria) had a Christian bishopric, established about 250. It was significant enough that North African church councils and synods were held there. At the time of the siege, its most famous bishop and resident was Augustine. He would have been deeply dismayed at the approach of the Vandals, who were followers of Arianism. He and the residents feared death or forced conversion if the Vandals captured the city. He was 75 years old when the siege began, so it is not surprising that he died during it, on 28 August 430.

His age and poor health were no doubt exacerbated by the lack of food. Since the siege started in May, the fields around the city were untended and supplies of grain dwindled. News of Augustine's death drew the attention of Galla Placidia, regent of the Western Roman Empire. Galla Placidia was the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I, who died in 395. Next in line was her son, Valentinian III, who was only 11 in 430, making her regent during his minority.

The North African province was an important source of grain for the empire, and Galla realized something had to be done. Her nephew, Theodosius II, was ruler of the Eastern Empire in Constantinople. She asked him to send an army to join her Italian forces to deal with the Vandals. It was led by General Aspar.

The lack of food not only weakened the city, it was also affecting Genseric's army: in summer of 431 he left Hippo. This gave General Bonifacius the chance to leave Hippo for Carthage and join Aspar. In the summer of 432, Genseric's army met the joint force of Bonifacius and Aspar and, history repeating, defeated them. Aspar eventually negotiated a treaty with Genseric, whereby the Vandals would keep Mauretania and the western part of Numidia. Genseric made Hippo his capital.

On 19 )October 439, while the citizens of Carthage were all at the hippodrome for a racing event, Genseric entered the city without opposition and took control. Carthage became his new capital, and he started calling himself King of the Vandals and Alans (an Iranian nomadic people who had been with the Vandals in their migration across Europe and Africa).

Valentinian III was now emperor in his own right, and the Vandals were his problem, especially when Genseric started looting up and down the Mediterranean. We shall look at attempts to counter the Vandals tomorrow. And what about Attila the Hun?

Who Were The Vandals?

Isidore of Seville (c.560 - 636) wrote Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum ("History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi"). From him we learn about some of the Germanic peoples that existed in the 7th century. They were noted earlier by Pliny the Elder, who used the term Vandilii generically for a lot of the Germanic tribes, as did Tacitus.

The Vandals appear on the "world stage" in 405CE when, moving long the Danube, they are stopped in their westward expansion by the early Franks. Gregory of Tours, with typical (we assume) medieval historian literary license, tells us that the ensuing Vandal-Frankish War resulted in the death of 20,000 Vandals, including their current king Godigisel. Godigisel's eldest son, Gunderic, then led the Vandals over the next few years into Gaul and thence to Iberia. In fact, some theorize that the term Al-Andalus used by the Umayyad rulers of Iberia from c.715 on may be an Arabism based on the word "Vandal."

Their swift advance through established kingdoms turned their name synonymous with ruthless destruction of anything good and beautiful.

They went into North Africa in 429, then led by Gunderic's half-brother Genseric, when the Visigoths entered the Iberian Peninsula. Genseric ruled the Vandals until 477, during which time he controlled the Roman province in Africa, as well as Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, and the Balearic Islands Mallorca, Ibiza, etc.). Procopius, whose accuracy of reporting gave the West the secret of silk, wrote that the Vandals were actually invited to North Africa by the Roman general Bonifacius—unlikely, since he had previously fought them and was defeated by them again and again in the years to follow.

At one of these conflicts, a defeated Bonifacius barricaded himself and army inside Hippo Regius ("Royal Hippo" was so-called because it was one of the residences of Numidian kings). One of its most famous citizens, named for the place, was living there at the time; then he died, and the death of St. Augustine of Hippo was a turning point for the Western Roman Empire. Something had to be done about the Vandals in North Africa. I'll tell you what they did tomorrow.

Maghreb Jews

When Jews were expelled from England (1290) and Sephardic Jews from Spain (1492) and other locations in Europe, many of them wound up in North Africa, where there were already communities of Maghrebi Jews.  Maghrebi Jews are those who migrated to North African areas that are now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. "Maghrebi" or "Maghreb" means "western" and refers to the western Arabic world. Sometimes Egyptian Jews are included, but there were distinct cultural differences between those in Egypt and the Maghrebi to the west.

The illustration is a synagogue off the coast of Tunisia, on an island called Djerba. It was partially built with stones that were brought from Jerusalem, and is still visited by North African Jews.

There were likely Maghrebi Jews living in ancient Carthage (the Carthaginians were also a Semitic people). Simon of Cyrene, mentioned in three of the Gospels as a man chosen to help carry the Cross on the way to the Crucifixion, was Maghrebi: Cyrenaica was a Greek colony in eastern Libya. The Roman general Titus deported Jews to Mauretania (Northern Africa) after the Jewish-Roman War of 70CE, adding to the Jewish population.

The Vandals established kingdoms in Northern Africa early in the 5th century. They were tolerant of the different peoples in their territories. This allowed the Jewish population to grow and thrive, so much so that the Christian churches decided to curtail their influence with restrictive laws. Moreover, when Justinian I's armies overthrew the Vandals, he issued an edict that lumps Jews with Arians and heathens.

Muslim rulers tolerated Jews, but when the Visigothic king Sisebut invaded the Iberian Peninsula and persecuted those he found there, many Iberian Jews fled to Northern Africa. The influx of Sephardic Jews eventually changed the local customs of the Maghrebi Jews to a more Sephardic manner. Fez in Morocco and Tunis in Tunisia became important Sephardic rabbinical centers right up until the 20th century, when many Jews emigrated to Israel, France, and Canada.

Once again I have found that I have referred to Vandals a handful of times without ever explaining who they really were. Let's fill in that gap tomorrow.

The Illustrated Receipt

In the earliest days of this blog, there were no illustrations. I eventually decided there were some posts that would be enhanced by an appropriate image. In some cases, however, there was no image available specific to the subject of the post; for instance, there are some individuals about whom I've written that were no important enough to have an image created in their lifetime that has survived, if it existed at all. In those cases I would find something—a picture of a manuscript, a woodcut of folk doing some related work—that links however tangentially to the subject.

In today's case, however, the illustration is the subject. I have enlarged it at the risk if throwing off the formatting of the web page to let you see it more clearly.

This is a unique document: it is a sketch that was made at the top of a 1233 receipt from the Exchequer, listing tax payments from the Jews of Norwich. Illustrating an Exchequer receipt was unnecessary, but the unknown scribe/accountant was making a point, a point that provides us with the earliest visual caricature of Jews in a negative light.

The top center shows a three-faced figure labeled "Isaac fil jurnet." This is Isaac of Norwich, probably the richest moneylender in Norwich. We know he was owed a lot of money by the abbot and monks of Westminster, taking them to court to force repayment. This was decades after Richard I established the Exchequer of the Jews and the Ordinance of Jewry that should have made his lawsuit easier, but King Henry III was not Richard and did not so carefully protect the Jews in his realm from anti-semitism.

Isaac is shown with a forked beard, a sign of the devil. There are two other Jews represented, one just below Isaac and one to the left. Both have long, hooked noses, and a demon between them is pointing a clawed finger at each of their noses, indicating that they have noses like the demon's. The Jew to the left is labeled Mosse Mokke, who was a collector of debts for Isaac. The one below Isaac is labeled Abigail, who some believe was married to Mosse Mokke and also worked for Isaac.

To the far left is a monk with scales full of coins, representing the money owed by Westminster. A demon behind him has an arrow coming from his mouth to the back of the monk.

To the right of Isaac is a demon in a tower labeled "Dagon," the pagan god of the Philistines from the Old Testament. He is accompanied by a demon with a horn who is summoning several other demons to come to Isaac's aid. All the demons have horns and hooks noses and claws.

Considering that a scribe took the time to indulge in the unusual step of creating such a detailed negative portrayal of Jews in an official document of the Exchequer, the likelihood for anti-semitism "on the street" must have been enormous.

Was it the same everywhere? Jews had scattered all over Europe and on all parts of the Mediterranean Coast. What was going on with other Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the Maghreb Jews.

Exchequer of the Jews

In 1194, Richard I of England created a system by which all financial transactions by Jews would be documented by the Crown. This system created an office that was subordinate to the Royal Exchequer, and became known as the Exchequer of the Jews.

His motivation was the Massacre at York, as well as the anti-semitic riots that took place at his own coronation.

I think it would be interesting to see part of the actual (translated) decree (ellipses and italics are mine):

All the debts, pledges, mortgages, lands, houses, rents, and possessions of the Jews shall be registered. The Jew who shall conceal any of these shall forfeit to the King his body and the thing concealed, and likewise all his possessions and chattels, ..., and there shall be appointed two lawyers that are Christians and two lawyers that are Jews, and two legal registrars, and before them and the clerks of William of the Church of St. Mary's and William of Chimilli, shall their contracts be made.

And charters shall be made of their contracts by way of indenture. And one part of the indenture shall remain with the Jew, sealed with the seal of him, to whom the money is lent, and the other part shall remain in the common chest: wherein there shall be three locks and keys, whereof the two Christians shall keep one key, and the two Jews another, and the clerks of William of the Church of St. Mary and of William of Chimilli shall keep the third. And moreover, there shall be three seals to it, and those who keep the seals shall put the seals thereto. 

... For every charter there shall be three pence paid, one moiety thereof by the Jews and the other moiety by him to whom the money is lent; whereof the two writers shall have two pence and the keeper of the roll the third. 

And from henceforth no contract shall be made with, nor payment, made to, the Jews, nor any alteration made in the charters, except before the said persons or the greater part of them, if all of them cannot be present. And the aforesaid two Christians shall have one roll of the debts or receipts of the payments which from henceforth are to be made to the Jews, and the two Jews one and the keeper of the roll one.

Moreover every Jew shall swear on his Roll, that all his debts and pledges and rents, and all his goods and his possessions, he shall cause to be enrolled, and that he shall conceal nothing as is aforesaid. And if he shall know that anyone shall conceal anything he shall secretly reveal it to the justices sent to them, and that they shall detect, and shew unto them all falsifiers or forgers of the charters and clippers of money, where or when they shall know them, and likewise all false charters.

The three sets of locks and keys eliminated the chance of tampering, since the chest holding the official documents could only be opened if all three possessors of the keys were present.

There were two major benefits to this decree: one to the Crown, and one to the Jewish population. The Crown would have records of every transaction and could use them to tax the Jews involved. The Jewish moneylenders also benefitted, because any debtor wishing to accuse the moneylender of unfairness, or who tried to get out of repayment, now had to deal with a moneylender with the full weight of the Royal Exchequer behind him.

An additional benefit to the Crown was that the death of a moneylender without heirs meant a faithful accounting of all the moneylender was owed was known and therefore could be collected ... by the Crown, of course.

Documents from this office are extant for 1219-20, 1244, 1253, and 1266-87. (In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England by Edward I, or made to convert.)

One of these documents, in 1233, has an unusual feature: it is illustrated. The illustration above is part of it. The whole drawing is interesting as one of the earliest examples of Jews shown in a negative depiction. We're going to look at it very carefully next time.

Ordinance of the Jewry

When Richard I of England was kidnapped coming back from the Third Crusade, the ransom was going to be enormous: 100,000 pounds of silver. This was 2-3 times the annual income to the English crown from taxation. Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, worked hard to raise the money. Churches were taxed for one-quarter of the value of their property. William Longchamp, Richard's chancellor, raised 5000 marks from the Jewish community of England alone, which was more than three times what the City of London was required to offer.

When Richard got back to England, he looked at an anti-semitic massacre that happened in York, and decided to do something about it. That situation seemed to have been started deliberately by Christians who owed money to Jews and chose to start a pogrom to avoid having to settle their debts properly.

To be fair, Richard saw such situations as financial losses for himself. Lost revenue of a citizen meant being able to tax that citizen less. Richard decided that all transactions with Jews needed to be recorded by the Exchequer. His Ordinance of the Jewry in 1194 led to a new division of the Royal Exchequer called the Exchequer of the Jews.

This Exchequer required each transaction to be documented with a chirograph (literally "hand-written"). One part would be kept by the creditor, one part would be kept at the Exchequer. The benefit to the Jewish creditor was that a record of the debt was stored in a safe place and the person to whom the money was leant could not get out of repayment. There was a benefit for the Crown, as well. All transactions were liable to taxation. Moreover, Richard mandated to receive 10% of all debts collected with the aid of his courts. Curiously, with the king acting as "silent partner" to Jewish moneylenders, they had an advantage over Christian moneylenders whose accounts were not protected by the Exchequer. 

The Exchequer expanded beyond just debts, which we can look at tomorrow.

William Longchamp

William Longchamp (or "de Longchamp") achieved success the old-fashioned way: he paid lots of money for it. That's not fair; best to start at the beginning.

Little is known of his background, except that his family came from Longchamp in Normandy. A rival of his, Hugh Nonant, Bishop of Coventry, claimed William's grandfather was a peasant. This seems unlikely, since William's father Hugh held a knight's tenancy in Normandy, also land in England. (Nonant was Longchamp's opposite on many issues, such as the Becket affair and loyalty to Henry II's children.)

Near the end of Henry II's reign, Longchamp entered royal service for Henry's son Geoffrey (not Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Brittany, who would join the rebellion against their father; the illegitimate one, who became Archbishop of York under Richard). That did not last long. Soon he was working in Henry's chancery, writing up documents, and later was working for Richard I, who made Longchamp Chancellor of Aquitaine, of which Richard was then the Duke. During a dispute between Richard and Henry's envoy, William Marshall, Longchamp was sent to Paris to represent Richard at the court of King Philip II.

When Richard became king, it might have seemed inevitable that he made the trusted and competent Longchamp Chancellor for England—once Longchamp paid £3000 for the privilege, that is. Longchamp would manage England's business while Richard ruled. One of those bits of business was the use of the Great Seal to authenticate documents, whose control and use was now in Longchamp's hands. Stamping a chancery document with the Great Seal incurred a fee, paid to the keeper of the Seal. The price of the Seal's use was raised at this time, perhaps to help Longchamp recoup the £3000 pounds.

Longchamp was also made Bishop of Ely, as well as Justiciar, able to act in the king's name in certain matters. He clashed with a co-justiciar, Hugh de Puiset, Bishop of Durham (who paid £1000 for that office), and so Richard split the country, giving Hugh authority over everything north of the Humber. (Hugh was a bit of a problem, exercising too much authority because the position of Archbishop of York had not been filed for awhile; once Richard placed his brother there, Hugh had a higher authority to whom he was forced to submit.)

One of Longchamp's first challenges after Richard left England was the Massacre at York, when about 150 Jews died after seeking refuge in Clifford's Tower. Richard had made it clear after the anti-semitic riot at his coronation that Jews were to be left in peace. Angry at the insult to the king's command, Longchamp marched to York and imposed heavy fine on 52 of its citizens. He banished Richard de Malbis and members of other families who had been leaders of the riot and massacre. Evidence showed that these individuals owed debts to the Jews, giving them motivation for their crimes.

There are some who blame Longchamp for harassment of the Jews, and yes, there was financial inequity because of Richard's kidnapping, but ultimately that led to Richard creating a system that he intended would stop the attempt to eliminate debt by eliminating the Jew to whom one owed the debt. In fact, Richard's plan gave Jewish moneylenders a slight advantage over Christian moneylenders. We'll go into all this next time.

When the King's Away

Anti-semitic riots at the coronation of Richard I cannot really be seen as an anomalous event: anti-semitism—even when not overtly practiced as a matter of policy—was always lying just under the surface, waiting to erupt at a moment's notice.

So even though Richard might have preferred that Jews be left alone, and made a formal statement of this, he was not always present in England to make sure his word was adhered to. It wasn't long after his coronation (3 September 1189) that he left England: not only was his heart never in England, having been raised largely in France, but also he had "taken up the Cross," and the Third Crusade was calling. (For Richard, England was mostly a place he could tax to support his military plans.)

Several incidents took place. At Bury St. Edmunds, 57 Jews were killed on 18 March 1190. There were attacks on Jews at Lincoln, Colchester, Thetford, and Ospringe.

A major incident took place in York on the 16th-17th of March, on the Shabbat before Passover. A contingent from York was preparing to join the Crusade, and with Crusading fever so high, sentiment against non-Christians rose to match it. Richard de Malbis owed a large sum of money to the Jew Aaron of Lincoln; he was slow in paying. He used an accidental house fire as an excuse to incite a crowd to attack the home of the recently deceased Benedict of York, an agent of Aaron of Lincoln. This prompted the leader of York's Jews, Josce of York, to ask the keeper of York Castle to provide safety.

Jewish families were allowed refuge in Clifford's Tower, but a mob surrounded it. The constable went out to speak to the mob, but the Jews inside feared to open the doors again and would not let him back in. The constable called for help from the sheriff, who brought his forces to the castle keep.

Rabbi Yom Tov Joigny, a French-born liturgical poet, advised the Jews inside with him to commit suicide rather than be forced to convert to Christianity. The fathers of the families would (and did) kill their wives and children, before handing the knife to Yom Tov, who stabbed them before killing himself. They also set the wooden keep on fire so their bodies could not be desecrated by the mob.

A handful of Jews who did not kill themselves surrendered at dawn the next day, on the promise that they would be unharmed. When they came out, however, they were killed. In all, about 150 died in the Clifford's Tower incident.

With Richard gone, the Chancellor of England, left to maintain order, had to deal with the aftermath. What was that like? Next we will meet William Longchamp.

Riot at the Coronation

During the coronation of Richard I, many citizens wanted to show their loyalty to the new king (and perhaps gain future favor) by giving him gifts. Not all citizens were welcome, however. Tradition meant not everyone was allowed to be part of or even witness the ceremony; for instance, women and non-Christians.

According to the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, Ralph of Diceto (c.1120 - c.1202), when some Jews arrived with gifts, they were stripped, flogged, and thrown from the building. To the people outside Westminster Abbey, the rumor spread that the new king disapproved of Jews and wanted them killed.

Riots began immediately. The Jewish population of London was attacked. Many of the homes in the area called Old Jewry were made of stone, and could withstand attacks by ordinary citizens, but the solution was to set them on fire, killing those within. (Some non-Jewish homes were destroyed by fire as well.) Some Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. Among those killed was Jacob of Orléans, a tosafist or author of commentaries on the Talmud, who had left France to teach in England. Some Jews escaped London, while some fled to the Tower of London to request sanctuary. Some were sheltered by Christian friends.

Richard was furious: no one wants the start of their reign to be marked by a massacre. His desire to punish the perpetrators was curtailed by the fact that there were so many and that some were prominent citizens. He chose to punish specifically the destruction of certain property. Roger of Hoveden describes it thusly:

On the day after the coronation, the king sent his servants, and caused those offenders to be arrested who had set fire to the city; not for the sake of the Jews, but on account of the houses and property of the Christians which they had burnt and plundered, and he ordered some of them to be hanged.

Although Richard seemed not to care about the destroyed Jewish homes, he did allow forcibly converted Jews to return to their chosen faith. He made a royal writ saying Jews should be left alone—he was concerned about what would happen when he left the country, since he had already pledged to go on Crusade.

When he went on Crusade shortly after, however, there were more examples of anti-semitism, which I will share tomorrow.

The Coronation of Richard I

Richard I of England was not his father. Not only did he rebel against his father and reject support of his father's favorites, but he was far more known for his love of pageantry than Henry II. His coronation on 3 September 1189—incidentally the first coronation of an English king for which we have a detailed account—was considered lavish. We have an eyewitness to this event: Roger of Hoveden, who worked for Henry II and stayed with Richard, including going on the 3rd Crusade.

One of Richard's first moves upon becoming king was to release his mother from house arrest. Since the revolt of Henry's sons in 1173-74, Eleanor of Aquitaine had been kept imprisoned (though in style) for 15 years. Eleanor's hand was likely in the coronation agenda: Richard was her favorite of their sons, and she had waited for this day for three decades.

It started with a long procession through London, ending in Westminster Abbey, where all the great barons and lords of England gathered to see their new king. Nobles in the procession carried items made of gold: swords, cups, spurs, a royal scepter. Once in the Abbey, Richard knelt before the altar and the assembled bishops and abbots of England. A Bible and saints' relics were placed before him. Then, according to Roger of Hoveden:

…. [Richard] swore that he would all the days of his life observe peace, honor, and reverence towards God, the Holy Church, and its ordinances.  He also swore that he would exercise true justice and equity towards the people committed to his charge.  He also swore that he would abrogate bad laws and unjust customs, if any such had been introduced into his kingdom, and would enact good laws, and observe the same without fraud or evil intent.

Then came the true moment when he would become king: the anointing. Attendants came forward to removed his clothing except for undergarments, and giving him sandals embroidered with gold to wear. He was wearing a special shirt designed to keep his right shoulder and his chest bare. Baldwin of Forde, the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom Richard had ordered months earlier to stop his radical re-organizing of their chapter house), anointed his head, chest, and arm.

Richard then donned consecrated linen and royal robes, spurs and a sword. The crown was sitting on the altar. Richard took it, handed it to Baldwin, and was formally crowned. (In fact, two earls held it above his head because of its weight.) Richard then sat himself on the throne, and a Mass of celebration was begun.

Roger of Hoveden continues:

The mass having been concluded, and all things solemnly performed, the two bishops before-named, one on the right hand the other on the left, led him back from the church to his chamber, crowned, and carrying a sceptre in his right hand and the rod of royalty in his left, the procession going in the same order as before. Then the procession returned to the choir, and our lord the king put off his royal crown and robes of royalty, and put on a crown and robes that were lighter; and, thus crowned, went to dine; on which the archbishops and bishops took their seats with him at the table, each according to his rank and dignity. The earls and barons also served in the king’s palace, according to their several dignities; while the citizens of London served in the cellars, and the citizens of Winchester in the kitchen.

It must have been a sight that no one present would forget. Unfortunately, nor would they be likely to forget the mayhem that followed when some "uninvited guests" came to pay their respects and offer gifts to the king. Riot and murder followed, but that is a story for next time.