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Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln

Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 27 August 1255) was an English boy whose death in Lincoln was falsely attributed to Jews. He is sometimes known as Little Saint Hugh or Little Sir Hugh to distinguish him from the adult saint, Hugh of Lincoln (died 1200). The boy Hugh was not formally canonised, so "Little Saint Hugh" is a misnomer.

Little Saint

Hugh of Lincoln
The body of Hugh in its coffin, drawn by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1791)
Little Sir Hugh
Born1246
DiedBefore 27 August 1255 (aged 8–9)
Venerated inFolk Catholicism
Major shrineLincoln Cathedral
Feast27 July[1]

Hugh became one of the best known of the blood libel "saints": generally Christian children whose deaths were interpreted as Jewish human sacrifices. It is believed by some historians that the church authorities of Lincoln steered events in order to establish a profitable flow of pilgrims to the shrine of a martyr and saint.[2] Hugh's death is significant because it was the first time that the Crown gave credence to ritual child murder allegations, through the direct intervention of King Henry III.[3] As a result, in contrast to other English blood libels, the story entered the historical record, medieval literature and in ballads that circulated until the twentieth century.

Background

Allegations of ritual child murder had become increasingly common following the circulation of The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth, the hagiography of William of Norwich, a child-saint said to have been crucified by Jews in 1144. Other accusations followed, such as that of Harold of Gloucester (1168) and Robert of Bury (1181). The story of William and similar rumours influenced the myth that developed around Hugh. The accusations may have been promoted by church officials hoping to establish local cults to attract pilgrims and donations.

During the years running up to the accusation, King Henry III taxed English Jews heavily. This in turn forced Jewish moneylenders to ensure their debts were paid, with no flexibility, or to sell their debt bonds to Christians. The King's relatives and courtiers in particular would buy debt bonds, with the intention to seize the debtors' property as collateral. These policies of King Henry would later provoke the Second Barons' War.

Church restrictions against Jews also built up in the period. Pronouncements were made by the Vatican ordering that Jews live separate from Christians, that Christians were not to work for Jews, especially in their homes, and that Jews were to wear yellow badges to identify themselves. Church pronouncements in particular led to a number of English towns expelling their Jewish communities. Henry III codified most of the Church's demands and put them into enforceable law in his 1253 Statute of Jewry.[a]

At the time of the Hugh of Lincoln murder accusations, Henry III had sold his rights to tax English Jews to his brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall. The King decreed that if any Jew were convicted of a crime, his money and property would then be forfeit to the Crown.

A number of Jews from across England had gathered in Lincoln to attend a wedding at the time of the child's death.[3]

The accusation and myth

 
Drawing of a 13th-century statue of St Hugh at Lincoln Cathedral, by 18th-century antiquary Smart Lethieullier. This statue was posed at the head of the shrine of Little St Hugh.[4]

The nine-year-old Hugh disappeared on 31 July, and his body was discovered in a well on 29 August. It was claimed that Jews had imprisoned Hugh, during which time they tortured and eventually crucified him. It was said that the body had been thrown into the well after attempts to bury it failed, when the earth had expelled it.[5]

The chronicler Matthew Paris described the supposed murder, implicating all the Jews in England:

This year [1255] about the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul [27 July], the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old. After shutting him up in a secret chamber, where they fed him on milk and other childish food, they sent to almost all the cities of England in which there were Jews, and summoned some of their sect from each city to be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, in contumely and insult of Jesus Christ. For, as they said, they had a boy concealed for the purpose of being crucified; so a great number of them assembled at Lincoln, and then they appointed a Jew of Lincoln judge, to take the place of Pilate, by whose sentence, and with the concurrence of all, the boy was subjected to various tortures. They scourged him till the blood flowed, they crowned him with thorns, mocked him, and spat upon him; each of them also pierced him with a knife, and they made him drink gall, and scoffed at him with blasphemous insults, and kept gnashing their teeth and calling him Jesus, the false prophet. And after tormenting him in diverse ways they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a spear. When the boy was dead, they took the body down from the cross, and for some reason disembowelled it; it is said for the purpose of their magic arts.[6][b]

While the Paris account is significant as the most famous and influential version of the myth, due to his own popularity as a chronicler and talent as storyteller, it is also thought to be the least reliable, and most fabricated, of the contemporary accounts of what had supposedly taken place.[7] Other contemporary accounts include the Annals of Waverley and of Burton Abbey.[8]

Role of the Bishop

A Jew, Copin, reportedly confessed to the murder. He was also offered immunity from sentencing in return for his confession according to contemporary accounts.[9] Copin appears to have been interrogated under torture by John of Lexington, brother of Henry, the new Bishop of Lincoln, and servant of the King.[10] This leads to the conclusion by modern historians that there was likely clerical collusion to give credence to the accusation, with the aim of profiting from a new cult with pilgrims and their gifts.[11]

Royal intervention

A number of events exacerbated the impact of this event.[6] Henry III arrived in Lincoln around a month after the initial arrest and confession. He ordered Copin to be executed, and for ninety Jews to be arrested at random in connection with Hugh's disappearance and death and held in the Tower of London. They were charged with ritual murder. Eighteen of the Jews were hanged for refusing to participate in the proceedings, claiming this was a show trial and refusing to throw themselves on the mercy of a Christian jury.[7] Gavin I. Langmuir says:

What distinguished the Lincoln affair from other accusations of ritual murder was that the king took personal cognizance and had one Jew executed immediately and eighteen others spectacularly executed later. That royal substantiation of the truth of the charge was probably decisive for Hugh's fame, which far outshadowed that of William of Norwich, Harold of Gloucester, Robert of Bury St. Edmunds, and the poor anonymous infant of St. Paul's.[12]

Garcias Martini, knight of Toledo, interceded for the release of Benedict son of Moses of London, probably the father of Belaset, whose wedding had been taking place. In January a further pardon was extended to a Christian Jew, John after the intervention of a Dominican friar.[13] A trial took place on 3 February at Westminster for the remaining 71 prisoners. They were condemned to death by a jury of 48. After this point either the Dominicans or Franciscans interceded, together with Richard of Cornwall. By May, the prisoners were released. It may be that doubt as to their guilt had set in, as it is unlikely that the monks or Richard would have interceded without thinking the charge was false, given the severity of the charge.[14]

The difficulty remains as to why King Henry and his servant John of Lexington would have believed the accusations in the first place. For Lexington, his motivations may be his personal connections to the clerics of Lincoln, including his brother the Bishop, who stood to benefit from the veneration of the 'martyr' Hugh. He may have believed, or wished to believe, what he heard. While the decision to act belonged to the King, Langmuir believes that he was weak and easily manipulated by Lexington. Langmuir says Henry III has been described as; "a suspicious person who flung charges of treason recklessly, [who] was credulous and poor in judgment, and often appeared like a petulant child. When to these qualities we add his addiction to touring the shrines of England, it becomes easier to understand why he acted as he did, both when he heard Copin's confession and when the friars and cooler heads intervened later."[15] Langmuir therefore concludes that Lexington "incited the weakly credulous Henry III to give the ritual murder fantasy the blessing of royal authority".[16] Jacobs on the other hand sees the financial benefits that Henry received as a major factor, conscious or unconscious, in his decision to arrest en masse and execute Jews. As noted above, he had mortgaged his income from the Jews to Richard of Cornwall, but was still entitled to the property of any Jew executed, adding that Henry, "like most weak princes, was cruel to the Jews".[17]

Veneration

The shrine of Little St Hugh, at the south choir aisle of Lincoln Cathedral.
 
Drawing of the shrine by William Dugdale (1641)[18]
 
Remains of the shrine in 2006

After news spread of his death, miracles were attributed to Hugh; and he became one of the youngest individual candidates for sainthood, with 27 July unofficially made his feast day. Many local 'saints' of the medieval period were not canonised but were locally dubbed saints and venerated. 'Little Saint Hugh' was for a while acclaimed as a saint by local people but never officially recognised as one.[19] Over time, the issue of the rush to sainthood was raised, and Hugh was never canonised[20] and was never a part of the official Catholic calendar of saints. The Vatican never included the child Hugh in Catholic martyrology and his traditional English feast day is not celebrated.[21]

Lincoln Cathedral benefited from the episode; Hugh was regarded as a Christian martyr, and sites associated with his life became objects of pilgrimage.[5]

The shrine dated to the period immediately after the expulsion of the Jews, and included decoration commemorating Edward I's wife Eleanor of Castile, who had been widely disliked for large-scale buying and selling of Jewish bonds, with the aim of requisitioning the lands and properties of those indebted.[22] While popular into the 1360s, the cult seems to have declined in next half century, as it was raising just 10½d. in 1420–21.[23] The shrine was largely destroyed after the English Reformation. During the Cathedral restoration of 1790 a stone coffin, 3 feet 3 inches (1 metre) long, was found containing the skeleton of a boy, which was drawn by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm.

Legacy and significance

The myth of ritual child murder was a continuing theme in anti-semitism and long-standing in English culture.[24] The Hugh story is referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in The Prioress's Tale. Christopher Marlowe also apparently refers to the story in The Jew of Malta, where Friar Jacomo at the end of Act Three asks of a Jew, "What, has he crucified a child?"[25] Again, Marlowe may have known the story through Paris's account. The story is retold as fact in Thomas Fuller's 1662 Worthies of England.[26][c]

Ballads referring to the incident circulated in England, Scotland and France.[27] The earliest English and French versions appear to have been composed near the time.[28] The "Sir Hugh" ballad went through many variations, and was still well known into the nineteenth and twentieth century, when versions could be found in the United States.

Langmuir describes the fantasy concocted by Lexington as contributing to some of the darkest strands of anti-Jewish prejudice. Lexington:

inspired Matthew Paris to write a vivid garbled yarn that would ring in men's minds for centuries and blind modern historians. A century and a half later, Geoffrey Chaucer, after letting the legend of the singing boy slip from the prioress's lips, would inevitably be reminded of England's most famous proof of Jewish evil and conclude with an invocation to young Hugh – whose alleged fate neither he nor his audience were likely to question. John de Lexinton died in January, 1257, and his elegant learning will not be described in any history of mediaeval thought, yet his tale of young Hugh of Lincoln became a strand in English literature and a support for irrational beliefs about Jews from 1255 to Auschwitz. It is time he received his due 'credit' for such wickedness.[29]

The Hugh myth continued to resonate into the nineteenth century, when European antisemitic polemicists attempted to 'prove' the veracity of the story.[30] In the twentieth century, a well in the former Jewish neighbourhood of Jews' Court, Lincoln was advertised as 'the well in which Hugh's body was found', however this was found to have been constructed some time prior to 1928 to increase the tourist attraction of the property.[31] A Lincolnshire preparatory school, St Hugh's School, Woodhall Spa, was named after Little St Hugh in 1925; its school badge featured a ball travelling over a wall.[32]

In 1955, the Church of England placed a plaque at the site of Little Hugh's former shrine in Lincoln Cathedral, bearing these words:

By the remains of the shrine of "Little St Hugh".

Trumped up stories of "ritual murders" of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255.

Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray:

Lord, forgive what we have been,
amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be.[33]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Wearing of a badge had been law for some time, but had been used as a means to gain revenue in 'fines' for non-compliance
  2. ^ See Paris 1852, p. 138 (links to online version)
  3. ^ Fuller says of Hugh: [he was] "a child, born and living in Lincoln, who by the impious Jews was stolen from his parents, and in derision of Christ and Christianity, to keep their cruel hands in use, by them crucified, being about nine years old. Thus he lost his life, but got a saintship thereby; and some afterwards persuaded themselves that they got their cures at his shrine in Lincoln.
    "However, this made up the measure of the sins of the Jews in England, for which not long after they were ejected the land, or, which is the truer, unwillingly they departed themselves. And whilst they retain their old manners, may they never return, especially in this giddy and unsettled age, for fear more Christians fall sick of Judaism, than Jews recover in Christianity."[26]

References

  1. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 459
  2. ^ Hillaby & Hillaby 2013, pp. 657–58
  3. ^ a b Huscroft 2006, p. 102
  4. ^ Hillaby 1994, p. 96–98.
  5. ^ a b Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006
  6. ^ a b Bennett 2005
  7. ^ a b Langmuir 1972, pp. 459–482
  8. ^ Jacobs 1893, p. 96
  9. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 478
  10. ^ Huscroft 2006, p. 102, Hillaby & Hillaby 2013, p. 658 and Langmuir 1972, pp. 477–478
  11. ^ Huscroft 2006, p. 102; Hillaby & Hillaby 2013, p. 658; Langmuir 1972, p. 478
  12. ^ Langmuir 1972, pp. 477–478
  13. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 479
  14. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 479; see also Hillaby & Hillaby 2013, p. 658
  15. ^ Langmuir 1972, pp. 480–81
  16. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 481
  17. ^ Jacobs 1893, p. 100
  18. ^ Hillaby 1994, p. 96.
  19. ^ Sagovsky, Nicholas. "What makes a saint? A Lincoln case study in the communion of the local and the universal Church", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Volume 17, 2017 - Issue 3
  20. ^ "Hugh of Lincoln", The British Museum
  21. ^ Editors, Catholic Saints 2013, Butler 1910
  22. ^ Hillaby & Hillaby 2013, p. 658
  23. ^ Hill 1948, pp. 228–29
  24. ^ Simon Sharma 'The Story of the Jews Finding the Words (London: Random House 2013) p. 307-310
  25. ^ The Jew of Malta, Act Three, Scene Six, Line 49.
  26. ^ a b Fuller 1662; Lincolnshire, HUGH [SAINT HUGH OF LINCOLN, b. 1246?]
  27. ^ Jacobs 1904, pp. 487–488
  28. ^ McCabe 1980, p. 282
  29. ^ Langmuir 1972, pp. 481–482
  30. ^ Langmuir 1972, pp. 459–60
  31. ^ Langmuir 1972, p. 461
  32. ^ Martineau, Hugh (1975). Half a Century of St Hugh's School, Woodhall Spa. Horncastle: Cupit and Hindley. p. 2.
  33. ^ Coakley & Pailin 1993

Sources

Primary sources

  • Chaucer, Geoffrey (2007). Skeat, Walter William (ed.). Chaucer's Works, Volume 4: The Canterbury Tales (ebook) (in Middle English). Project Gutenberg.
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey (2000). Purves, David Laing (ed.). The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems (ebook). Project Gutenberg.
  • Fuller, Thomas (1662), The Worthies of England Vol III, London
  • Paris, Matthew (1852). Giles, John Allen (ed.). Matthew Paris's English history : from the year 1235 to 1273 Vol III. London: HG Bohn.; especially Of the cruel treatment of the Jews for having crucified a boy, (page 138); How eighteen Jews were dragged to the gallows and hung, page 141; and Of the release of the Jewish prisoners, page 160
  • Dugdale, William (1846). Monasticon Anglicanum Volume III.; includes Annals of Burton in Latin

Secondary sources

  • Hill, Francis (1948), Medieval Lincoln., Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, LCCN 49001943, OCLC 1563484, OL 6044601M
  • Hillaby, Joe (1994). "The ritual-child-murder accusation: its dissemination and Harold of Gloucester". Jewish Historical Studies. 34: 69–109. JSTOR 29779954.
  • Hillaby, Joe; Hillaby, Caroline (2013). The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 468. ISBN 978-0230278165.
  • Huscroft, Richard (2006). Expulsion: England's Jewish solution. Stroud, UK: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-752-43729-3.
  • Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (2006). "Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln – English martyr". Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  •   Jacobs, Joseph (1904). "Hugh of Lincoln". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 487.
  • Jacobs, Joseph (1893). "Little St. Hugh of Lincoln. Researches in history, archæology, and legend". Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England). 1: 89–135. JSTOR 29777550.
  • Langmuir, Gavin I (July 1972). "The Knight's Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln". Speculum. 47 (3): 459–482. doi:10.2307/2856155. JSTOR 2856155. S2CID 162262613.
  • Utz, Richard (2005). "Remembering Ritual Murder: The Anti-Semitic Blood Accusation Narrative in Medieval and Contemporary Cultural Memory". In Østrem, Eyolf (ed.). Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals. Copenhagen: Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press/University of Copenhagen. pp. 145–162. ISBN 9788763502412.
  • Utz, Richard (1999). "The Medieval Myth of Jewish Ritual Murder. Toward a History of Literary Reception" (PDF). The Year's Work in Medievalism. 14: 22–42.
  • Bennett, Gillian (2005). Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, and Death in Contemporary Legend. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. pp. 263–264.
  • Editors, Catholic Saints (31 July 2013). "Hugh the Little". CatholicSaints.Info. {{cite web}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  • Butler, Richard Urban (1910). "St. Hugh". Catholic Encyclopedia.
  • Coakley, Sarah; Pailin, David Arthur (1993). The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles. Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198267393.

History of the ballad

  • Göller, Karl Heinz (1987). "Sir Hugh of Lincoln. From History to Nursery Rhyme". In Engler, Bernd; Müller, Kurt (eds.). Jewish Life and Jewish Suffering as Mirrored in English and American Literature (PDF). Schöningh: Paderborn. pp. 17–31.
  • James Woodall, "'Sir Hugh': A Study in Balladry", Southern Folklore Quarterly, 19 (1955), 77— 84. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015038728997
  • Stamper, Frances C., and Wm. Hugh Jansen. ""Water Birch": An American Variant of "Hugh of Lincoln"." The Journal of American Folklore 71, no. 279 (1958): 16–22. doi:10.2307/537953.
  • McCabe, Mary Diane (1980). A critical study of some traditional religious ballads. Durham University: Durham theses. pp. 277–292. See Chapter 11, The Survival of a Saint's Legend: Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter (Child 155)

External links

  • 2001 review of Ritual In Blood: a play by Steven Berkoff
  • Jewish Encyclopedia: Hugh of Lincoln
  • "Jewish Communities in Eastern England"
  • "A Jewish delegation remembers 'Little Hugh'"
  • "British Mayor Slaps at Myth of ‘little Hugh’", Jewish Telegraphic Agency 12 July 1934]

little, saint, hugh, lincoln, this, article, about, subject, mediaeval, blood, libel, adult, saint, hugh, lincoln, hugh, lincoln, 1246, august, 1255, english, whose, death, lincoln, falsely, attributed, jews, sometimes, known, little, saint, hugh, little, hugh. This article is about the boy who was the subject of a mediaeval blood libel For the adult saint see Hugh of Lincoln Hugh of Lincoln 1246 27 August 1255 was an English boy whose death in Lincoln was falsely attributed to Jews He is sometimes known as Little Saint Hugh or Little Sir Hugh to distinguish him from the adult saint Hugh of Lincoln died 1200 The boy Hugh was not formally canonised so Little Saint Hugh is a misnomer Little SaintHugh of LincolnThe body of Hugh in its coffin drawn by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm 1791 Little Sir HughBorn1246DiedBefore 27 August 1255 aged 8 9 Venerated inFolk CatholicismMajor shrineLincoln CathedralFeast27 July 1 Hugh became one of the best known of the blood libel saints generally Christian children whose deaths were interpreted as Jewish human sacrifices It is believed by some historians that the church authorities of Lincoln steered events in order to establish a profitable flow of pilgrims to the shrine of a martyr and saint 2 Hugh s death is significant because it was the first time that the Crown gave credence to ritual child murder allegations through the direct intervention of King Henry III 3 As a result in contrast to other English blood libels the story entered the historical record medieval literature and in ballads that circulated until the twentieth century Contents 1 Background 2 The accusation and myth 2 1 Role of the Bishop 2 2 Royal intervention 2 3 Veneration 3 Legacy and significance 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 6 1 Sources 6 1 1 Primary sources 6 1 2 Secondary sources 6 1 3 History of the ballad 7 External linksBackground EditFurther information History of the Jews in England 1066 1290 Allegations of ritual child murder had become increasingly common following the circulation of The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth the hagiography of William of Norwich a child saint said to have been crucified by Jews in 1144 Other accusations followed such as that of Harold of Gloucester 1168 and Robert of Bury 1181 The story of William and similar rumours influenced the myth that developed around Hugh The accusations may have been promoted by church officials hoping to establish local cults to attract pilgrims and donations During the years running up to the accusation King Henry III taxed English Jews heavily This in turn forced Jewish moneylenders to ensure their debts were paid with no flexibility or to sell their debt bonds to Christians The King s relatives and courtiers in particular would buy debt bonds with the intention to seize the debtors property as collateral These policies of King Henry would later provoke the Second Barons War Church restrictions against Jews also built up in the period Pronouncements were made by the Vatican ordering that Jews live separate from Christians that Christians were not to work for Jews especially in their homes and that Jews were to wear yellow badges to identify themselves Church pronouncements in particular led to a number of English towns expelling their Jewish communities Henry III codified most of the Church s demands and put them into enforceable law in his 1253 Statute of Jewry a At the time of the Hugh of Lincoln murder accusations Henry III had sold his rights to tax English Jews to his brother Richard Earl of Cornwall The King decreed that if any Jew were convicted of a crime his money and property would then be forfeit to the Crown A number of Jews from across England had gathered in Lincoln to attend a wedding at the time of the child s death 3 The accusation and myth Edit Drawing of a 13th century statue of St Hugh at Lincoln Cathedral by 18th century antiquary Smart Lethieullier This statue was posed at the head of the shrine of Little St Hugh 4 The nine year old Hugh disappeared on 31 July and his body was discovered in a well on 29 August It was claimed that Jews had imprisoned Hugh during which time they tortured and eventually crucified him It was said that the body had been thrown into the well after attempts to bury it failed when the earth had expelled it 5 The chronicler Matthew Paris described the supposed murder implicating all the Jews in England This year 1255 about the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul 27 July the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh who was about eight years old After shutting him up in a secret chamber where they fed him on milk and other childish food they sent to almost all the cities of England in which there were Jews and summoned some of their sect from each city to be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln in contumely and insult of Jesus Christ For as they said they had a boy concealed for the purpose of being crucified so a great number of them assembled at Lincoln and then they appointed a Jew of Lincoln judge to take the place of Pilate by whose sentence and with the concurrence of all the boy was subjected to various tortures They scourged him till the blood flowed they crowned him with thorns mocked him and spat upon him each of them also pierced him with a knife and they made him drink gall and scoffed at him with blasphemous insults and kept gnashing their teeth and calling him Jesus the false prophet And after tormenting him in diverse ways they crucified him and pierced him to the heart with a spear When the boy was dead they took the body down from the cross and for some reason disembowelled it it is said for the purpose of their magic arts 6 b While the Paris account is significant as the most famous and influential version of the myth due to his own popularity as a chronicler and talent as storyteller it is also thought to be the least reliable and most fabricated of the contemporary accounts of what had supposedly taken place 7 Other contemporary accounts include the Annals of Waverley and of Burton Abbey 8 Role of the Bishop Edit A Jew Copin reportedly confessed to the murder He was also offered immunity from sentencing in return for his confession according to contemporary accounts 9 Copin appears to have been interrogated under torture by John of Lexington brother of Henry the new Bishop of Lincoln and servant of the King 10 This leads to the conclusion by modern historians that there was likely clerical collusion to give credence to the accusation with the aim of profiting from a new cult with pilgrims and their gifts 11 Royal intervention Edit A number of events exacerbated the impact of this event 6 Henry III arrived in Lincoln around a month after the initial arrest and confession He ordered Copin to be executed and for ninety Jews to be arrested at random in connection with Hugh s disappearance and death and held in the Tower of London They were charged with ritual murder Eighteen of the Jews were hanged for refusing to participate in the proceedings claiming this was a show trial and refusing to throw themselves on the mercy of a Christian jury 7 Gavin I Langmuir says What distinguished the Lincoln affair from other accusations of ritual murder was that the king took personal cognizance and had one Jew executed immediately and eighteen others spectacularly executed later That royal substantiation of the truth of the charge was probably decisive for Hugh s fame which far outshadowed that of William of Norwich Harold of Gloucester Robert of Bury St Edmunds and the poor anonymous infant of St Paul s 12 Garcias Martini knight of Toledo interceded for the release of Benedict son of Moses of London probably the father of Belaset whose wedding had been taking place In January a further pardon was extended to a Christian Jew John after the intervention of a Dominican friar 13 A trial took place on 3 February at Westminster for the remaining 71 prisoners They were condemned to death by a jury of 48 After this point either the Dominicans or Franciscans interceded together with Richard of Cornwall By May the prisoners were released It may be that doubt as to their guilt had set in as it is unlikely that the monks or Richard would have interceded without thinking the charge was false given the severity of the charge 14 The difficulty remains as to why King Henry and his servant John of Lexington would have believed the accusations in the first place For Lexington his motivations may be his personal connections to the clerics of Lincoln including his brother the Bishop who stood to benefit from the veneration of the martyr Hugh He may have believed or wished to believe what he heard While the decision to act belonged to the King Langmuir believes that he was weak and easily manipulated by Lexington Langmuir says Henry III has been described as a suspicious person who flung charges of treason recklessly who was credulous and poor in judgment and often appeared like a petulant child When to these qualities we add his addiction to touring the shrines of England it becomes easier to understand why he acted as he did both when he heard Copin s confession and when the friars and cooler heads intervened later 15 Langmuir therefore concludes that Lexington incited the weakly credulous Henry III to give the ritual murder fantasy the blessing of royal authority 16 Jacobs on the other hand sees the financial benefits that Henry received as a major factor conscious or unconscious in his decision to arrest en masse and execute Jews As noted above he had mortgaged his income from the Jews to Richard of Cornwall but was still entitled to the property of any Jew executed adding that Henry like most weak princes was cruel to the Jews 17 Veneration Edit The shrine of Little St Hugh at the south choir aisle of Lincoln Cathedral Drawing of the shrine by William Dugdale 1641 18 Remains of the shrine in 2006 After news spread of his death miracles were attributed to Hugh and he became one of the youngest individual candidates for sainthood with 27 July unofficially made his feast day Many local saints of the medieval period were not canonised but were locally dubbed saints and venerated Little Saint Hugh was for a while acclaimed as a saint by local people but never officially recognised as one 19 Over time the issue of the rush to sainthood was raised and Hugh was never canonised 20 and was never a part of the official Catholic calendar of saints The Vatican never included the child Hugh in Catholic martyrology and his traditional English feast day is not celebrated 21 Lincoln Cathedral benefited from the episode Hugh was regarded as a Christian martyr and sites associated with his life became objects of pilgrimage 5 The shrine dated to the period immediately after the expulsion of the Jews and included decoration commemorating Edward I s wife Eleanor of Castile who had been widely disliked for large scale buying and selling of Jewish bonds with the aim of requisitioning the lands and properties of those indebted 22 While popular into the 1360s the cult seems to have declined in next half century as it was raising just 10 d in 1420 21 23 The shrine was largely destroyed after the English Reformation During the Cathedral restoration of 1790 a stone coffin 3 feet 3 inches 1 metre long was found containing the skeleton of a boy which was drawn by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm Legacy and significance EditFurther information Blood libel and Sir Hugh The myth of ritual child murder was a continuing theme in anti semitism and long standing in English culture 24 The Hugh story is referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer s Canterbury Tales in The Prioress s Tale Christopher Marlowe also apparently refers to the story in The Jew of Malta where Friar Jacomo at the end of Act Three asks of a Jew What has he crucified a child 25 Again Marlowe may have known the story through Paris s account The story is retold as fact in Thomas Fuller s 1662 Worthies of England 26 c Ballads referring to the incident circulated in England Scotland and France 27 The earliest English and French versions appear to have been composed near the time 28 The Sir Hugh ballad went through many variations and was still well known into the nineteenth and twentieth century when versions could be found in the United States Langmuir describes the fantasy concocted by Lexington as contributing to some of the darkest strands of anti Jewish prejudice Lexington inspired Matthew Paris to write a vivid garbled yarn that would ring in men s minds for centuries and blind modern historians A century and a half later Geoffrey Chaucer after letting the legend of the singing boy slip from the prioress s lips would inevitably be reminded of England s most famous proof of Jewish evil and conclude with an invocation to young Hugh whose alleged fate neither he nor his audience were likely to question John de Lexinton died in January 1257 and his elegant learning will not be described in any history of mediaeval thought yet his tale of young Hugh of Lincoln became a strand in English literature and a support for irrational beliefs about Jews from 1255 to Auschwitz It is time he received his due credit for such wickedness 29 The Hugh myth continued to resonate into the nineteenth century when European antisemitic polemicists attempted to prove the veracity of the story 30 In the twentieth century a well in the former Jewish neighbourhood of Jews Court Lincoln was advertised as the well in which Hugh s body was found however this was found to have been constructed some time prior to 1928 to increase the tourist attraction of the property 31 A Lincolnshire preparatory school St Hugh s School Woodhall Spa was named after Little St Hugh in 1925 its school badge featured a ball travelling over a wall 32 In 1955 the Church of England placed a plaque at the site of Little Hugh s former shrine in Lincoln Cathedral bearing these words By the remains of the shrine of Little St Hugh Trumped up stories of ritual murders of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives Lincoln had its own legend and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255 Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom and so we pray Lord forgive what we have been amend what we are and direct what we shall be 33 See also Edit Biography portalAntisemitism in the United Kingdom Berechiah de Nicole Sir Hugh St Hugh s School Woodhall Spa Andreas Oxner Robert of Bury Simon of Trent Werner of OberweselNotes Edit Wearing of a badge had been law for some time but had been used as a means to gain revenue in fines for non compliance See Paris 1852 p 138 links to online version Fuller says of Hugh he was a child born and living in Lincoln who by the impious Jews was stolen from his parents and in derision of Christ and Christianity to keep their cruel hands in use by them crucified being about nine years old Thus he lost his life but got a saintship thereby and some afterwards persuaded themselves that they got their cures at his shrine in Lincoln However this made up the measure of the sins of the Jews in England for which not long after they were ejected the land or which is the truer unwillingly they departed themselves And whilst they retain their old manners may they never return especially in this giddy and unsettled age for fear more Christians fall sick of Judaism than Jews recover in Christianity 26 References Edit Langmuir 1972 p 459 Hillaby amp Hillaby 2013 pp 657 58 a b Huscroft 2006 p 102 Hillaby 1994 p 96 98 a b Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 a b Bennett 2005 a b Langmuir 1972 pp 459 482 Jacobs 1893 p 96 Langmuir 1972 p 478 Huscroft 2006 p 102 Hillaby amp Hillaby 2013 p 658 and Langmuir 1972 pp 477 478 Huscroft 2006 p 102 Hillaby amp Hillaby 2013 p 658 Langmuir 1972 p 478 Langmuir 1972 pp 477 478 Langmuir 1972 p 479 Langmuir 1972 p 479 see also Hillaby amp Hillaby 2013 p 658 Langmuir 1972 pp 480 81 Langmuir 1972 p 481 Jacobs 1893 p 100 Hillaby 1994 p 96 Sagovsky Nicholas What makes a saint A Lincoln case study in the communion of the local and the universal Church International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church Volume 17 2017 Issue 3 Hugh of Lincoln The British Museum Editors Catholic Saints 2013 Butler 1910 Hillaby amp Hillaby 2013 p 658 Hill 1948 pp 228 29 Simon Sharma The Story of the Jews Finding the Words London Random House 2013 p 307 310 The Jew of Malta Act Three Scene Six Line 49 a b Fuller 1662 Lincolnshire HUGH SAINT HUGH OF LINCOLN b 1246 Jacobs 1904 pp 487 488 McCabe 1980 p 282 Langmuir 1972 pp 481 482 Langmuir 1972 pp 459 60 Langmuir 1972 p 461 Martineau Hugh 1975 Half a Century of St Hugh s School Woodhall Spa Horncastle Cupit and Hindley p 2 Coakley amp Pailin 1993 Sources Edit Primary sources Edit Chaucer Geoffrey 2007 Skeat Walter William ed Chaucer s Works Volume 4 The Canterbury Tales ebook in Middle English Project Gutenberg Chaucer Geoffrey 2000 Purves David Laing ed The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems ebook Project Gutenberg Fuller Thomas 1662 The Worthies of England Vol III London Paris Matthew 1852 Giles John Allen ed Matthew Paris s English history from the year 1235 to 1273 Vol III London HG Bohn especially Of the cruel treatment of the Jews for having crucified a boy page 138 How eighteen Jews were dragged to the gallows and hung page 141 and Of the release of the Jewish prisoners page 160 Dugdale William 1846 Monasticon Anglicanum Volume III includes Annals of Burton in LatinSecondary sources Edit Hill Francis 1948 Medieval Lincoln Cambridge Eng University Press LCCN 49001943 OCLC 1563484 OL 6044601M Hillaby Joe 1994 The ritual child murder accusation its dissemination and Harold of Gloucester Jewish Historical Studies 34 69 109 JSTOR 29779954 Hillaby Joe Hillaby Caroline 2013 The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo Jewish History Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan p 468 ISBN 978 0230278165 Huscroft Richard 2006 Expulsion England s Jewish solution Stroud UK Tempus ISBN 978 0 752 43729 3 Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln English martyr Encyclopaedia Britannica inc Retrieved 4 November 2016 Jacobs Joseph 1904 Hugh of Lincoln In Singer Isidore et al eds The Jewish Encyclopedia Vol 6 New York Funk amp Wagnalls p 487 Jacobs Joseph 1893 Little St Hugh of Lincoln Researches in history archaeology and legend Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England 1 89 135 JSTOR 29777550 Langmuir Gavin I July 1972 The Knight s Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln Speculum 47 3 459 482 doi 10 2307 2856155 JSTOR 2856155 S2CID 162262613 Utz Richard 2005 Remembering Ritual Murder The Anti Semitic Blood Accusation Narrative in Medieval and Contemporary Cultural Memory In Ostrem Eyolf ed Genre and Ritual The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals Copenhagen Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen pp 145 162 ISBN 9788763502412 Utz Richard 1999 The Medieval Myth of Jewish Ritual Murder Toward a History of Literary Reception PDF The Year s Work in Medievalism 14 22 42 Bennett Gillian 2005 Bodies Sex Violence Disease and Death in Contemporary Legend Jackson University of Mississippi Press pp 263 264 Editors Catholic Saints 31 July 2013 Hugh the Little CatholicSaints Info a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a last1 has generic name help Butler Richard Urban 1910 St Hugh Catholic Encyclopedia Coakley Sarah Pailin David Arthur 1993 The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles Clarendon Press ISBN 9780198267393 History of the ballad Edit Goller Karl Heinz 1987 Sir Hugh of Lincoln From History to Nursery Rhyme In Engler Bernd Muller Kurt eds Jewish Life and Jewish Suffering as Mirrored in English and American Literature PDF Schoningh Paderborn pp 17 31 James Woodall Sir Hugh A Study in Balladry Southern Folklore Quarterly 19 1955 77 84 https hdl handle net 2027 mdp 39015038728997 Stamper Frances C and Wm Hugh Jansen Water Birch An American Variant of Hugh of Lincoln The Journal of American Folklore 71 no 279 1958 16 22 doi 10 2307 537953 McCabe Mary Diane 1980 A critical study of some traditional religious ballads Durham University Durham theses pp 277 292 See Chapter 11 The Survival of a Saint s Legend Sir Hugh or The Jew s Daughter Child 155 External links Edit2001 review of Ritual In Blood a play by Steven Berkoff Jewish Encyclopedia Hugh of Lincoln Jewish Communities in Eastern England A Jewish delegation remembers Little Hugh British Mayor Slaps at Myth of little Hugh Jewish Telegraphic Agency 12 July 1934 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln amp oldid 1141278762, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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