England’s First Expulsion

The Crusade, Politics, and Power which drove England's removal of its Jews in 1290.

A precarious existence:

History often imagines medieval England as a world dictated by rigid social and religious boundaries: Christian and Jew, noble and serf, Church and outsider. But the reality of life for England’s Jews before the late thirteenth century was as entangled with English social and political life, as it was precarious. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, Jewish communities lived in London, Lincoln, York, Oxford, Norwich, and smaller towns across the kingdom. They lived mostly in peace among Christian neighbours. Jewish physicians treated Christian nobles; Jewish administrators worked in royal courts. The lines between communities were apparent, but daily life was characterised - for the most part - by routine coexistence.

This delicate balance rested on an idea articulated as early as the sixth century by Pope Gregory the Great. In a letter that would shape medieval Church policy for centuries, Gregory urged Christian rulers not to engage in wanton violence …