12-13세기 영국의 유대인들

Abstract

The Jews were typical of oppressed minorities throughout the whole Western European history. The persecutions they suffered were especially severe in the Middle Ages, in which Christianity played a leading role in society. There are no other periods in western history when the Jews were oppressed and tormented so severely as in the Middle Ages, and England of the 12th and 13th centuries was no exception. It was in the middle of the eleventh century, the period of the Norman Conquest, that the Jews entered England for the first time. They settled and prospered thereafter under the rules of the Norman and Plantagenet kings, and in 1290 after two centuries of their stay in England, they were expelled from the country collectively. During these periods the Jews in England were not so numerous as those in other countries, but the persecutions they suffered were no less severe, or rather more extreme than those suffered by them in other countries. For example, it was in England that the first recorded instance in the medieval world of the infamous Ritual Murder accusation took place, and the first collective expulsion of the Jews also took place in England. These incidents subsequently brought about untold miseries to the Jews throughout Europe. Viewed in this light the experiences of the English Jewry in these periods deserve our notice as the most typical case of the sufferings of the minorities in history. In this paper, I have tried to reexamine the following issues. Firstly, how did the Jewry settle and prosper in England in the Middle Ages? Secondly, what persecutions did they suffer and how severe were the oppressions? Thirdly, what was the most important cause of the persecutions? Through these reviews it was found that the English Jewry of the 12th and 13th centuries were oppressed more for social and economic reasons than for religious and political ones.