William of Norwich
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Scholars usually see the case of William of Norwich as the event that led to the establishment in Europe of the legend of the Jewish 'blood libel' against Christians.
The murder in the woods
In 1144, England was "a dangerous country in troubled times". Less than a century before, the Norman Conquest had occurred, and during the 1140s, civil war was ravaging the country. Over Easter of that year, the mutilated body of a 12-year-old apprentice leather-worker named William was found in suspicious circumstances on Mousehold Heath (in those days called Thorpe Wood). The manner of the boy's death was a mystery to most people, but a priest (who was William's uncle) formally accused the city's Jews of murdering his nephew. The Jews were supported by the Sheriff of Norfolk, John de Chesney, so that no charges were brought against them.
Perhaps a month later, William's body was allowed to be buried in the monks' cemetery at Norwich Cathedral Priory. The body was later moved to the interior of the cathedral. The clergy there were keen to establish a martyr's cult at Norwich, and when stories of miracles began to appear, William began to be regarded as a martyr saint. He was never formally canonised.
In about 1150 the Priory asked one of their monks, a man called Thomas of Monmouth, to re-investigate the crime. Thomas interviewed a number of witnesses, including members of William's family. Thomas used their ridiculous stories of torture and ritual murder to justify accusations against the Jewish community. The first volume of his seven-volume work The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich was written in 1149. Riddled with hearsay and unsubstantiated rumours, it nevertheless was probably the origin of the story brought down to us about William. What does 'ring true' in Thomas's narrative is the nature of the panic that seized the citizens of Norwich after the news of the murder reached the city:
... the rumour got spread in all directions, and when it reached the city it struck the heart of all who heard it with exceeding horror. The city was stirred with a strange excitement, the streets were crowded with people making disturbance: and already it was asserted by the greater part of them that it could only have been the Jews who would have wrought such a deed, especially at such a time. And so some were standing about as if amazed by the new and extraordinary affair ; many were running hither and thither, but especially the boys and the young men ; and, a divine impulse drawing them on, they rushed in crowds to the wood to see the sight. What they sought they found ; and, on detecting the marks of the torture in the body, and carefully looking into the method of the act, some suspected that the Jews were not guiltless of the deed; but some, led on by what was really a divine discernment, protested that it was so.
When these returned, they who had stayed at home got together in groups, and when they heard how the case stood, they too hurried to the sight, and on their return they bore their testimony to the same effect.
The 'witnesses' to the crime
The account built up by Thomas about William's last days and what happened after he was killed were obtained from a number of different 'witnesses' who told him about a sacrifice, a strange from of crucifixion, a dream prophesying the boy's death, and men skulking about with a body in Thorpe Wood:
A servant told Thomas of Monmouth how she was sent for boiling water in a house, and saw a boy tied to a post. She was able to show Thomas suspicious marks on timbers in the house.
William's aunt claimed to have last seen him entering "the Jew's house".
Thomas believed Theobald of Cambridge, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who stated that Jews were obliged to shed human blood in order to be able one day to return to their fatherland.
Thomas was told by priests that a man named Aelward Ded whom they had attended on his deathbed confessed that when walking through Thorpe Wood on Good Friday, he had met a group of Jews carrying a body in a sack. He had been bribed by the authorities not to speak of this.
A legend established
By 1155, it was firmly believed that William's murder had been a ritual crucifixion, as reported by that year's annal of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle :
In his reign (i.e. Henry II’s) the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter, and tortured him after the same manner as our Lord was tortured; and on Long-Friday hanged him on a rood, in mockery of our Lord, and afterwards buried him. They supposed that it would be concealed, but our Lord showed that he was a holy martyr. And the monks took him, and buried him with high honour in the minster. And through our Lord he worketh wonderful and manifold miracles, and is called St. William.
It is known that the second volume of Thomas of Monmouth's hagiography was written after 1154, as it refers to the death of King Stephen that year Thomas compressed the timescale of the events in this second volume so as to improve the story, and produced an account of the murder and its aftermath that bears little relation of the legend that eventually emerged. The Jews are not mentioned by Thomas as being attacked in Norwich, William's murder is not described by him in terms of being a crucifixion or a ritual blood-collecting sacrifice, and the city's sheriff is described by Thomas as doing nothing more than he was expected to do (rather that acting as a hero in protecting the Jews).
Thomas admits that people at the time were:
indeed certain of his death, but [...] entirely uncertain and doubtful by whom and why and how he was killed.
Norwich Cathedral became a pilgrimage centre, never an important one, although William's cult was temporarily revived in the 1370s and 1380s following his adoption by a Norwich guild.
Historians have attempted to used Thomas of Monmouth's Life to construct a non-legendary version of events. They have variously depicted William's death as an accident, a genuine ritual sacrifice by the Jews, a killing by a Christian who then blamed the Jews, or nothing more than an unsolved crime (perpetrated by Christians or Jews). One theory proposed in 1897 suggested that the young boy was crucified by his own family in an attempt to bring them blessings by causing his sanctification.
St William's Chapel on Mousehold Heath
A chapel was dedicated to William in 1168. At the time it was believed the chapel was located at the site on Mousehold Heath where William's body had been found. All that now remains is a large earthwork, covered by overgrowth.
Click here for further information on St William's Chapel.
Sources
https://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF406-Remains-of-St-William-in-the-Wood%27s-chapel-Mousehold-Heath Norfolk Heritage Explorer: Remains of St William in the Wood's chapel, Mousehold Heath
Shinners, John (1988). https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3237360 The Veneration of Saints at Norwich Cathedral in the Fourteenth Century
Bennett, Gillian (2005). "Towards a revaluation of the legend of "Saint" William of Norwich and its place in the blood libel legend". Folklore. 116 (2). Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.: 119–139. JSTOR 30035273.
Further information
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichmarymagdalen/norwichmarymagdalen.htm The images on this page include that of the panel of William in the church. A high resolution version of the image can be can be opened in Flickr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Norwich A lot has been written about William of Norwich. This Wikipedia article includes a list of books about both him and English medieval antisemitism.
https://archive.org/details/lifemiraclesofst00thomuoft/page/n11/mode/2up The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth
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