Tag Archives: Ritual Murder

On the Expulsion of Jews from Western Catholic Monarchies: Part III

Undoing Historical Revisionism

Expulsions of European Jewry, 1290-1492

by Austin Walsh

Part III: In Spain Terror, Larceny and State Sanctioned Murder

After the Moors invaded Visigoth Spain in 711, the facts were plain and well-known that the Saracens would not have attempted the invasion were it not for the treason by way of intelligence furnished by local Jews who, as it were, held open the Gates of Toledo for the enemy. However, Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin were to plant the foundations of a glorious future only eleven years later, and fittingly, originating from a cave beyond which Saracen advances on Visigoth territory never did advance.

Our Lady of Covadonga and her son Don Pelayo loom large in a chapter of Catholic history that, while separate from this article, prove well worthy of any Catholic reader hungering for restoration. Visigoths surely taught the sons of their sons to be ever mindful of the death of their nation at the hands of treacherous Jews. The Councils of Toledo (400-681) had wisely decreed that Jews incorrigibly subverted the well-being of the state and should be barred in perpetuity from holding government office. However, after eight hundred years of preoccupation with recapturing their ancestral home from the Musselmen, this lesson was to be learned again the hard way.  Maurice Pinay, the singular pseudonym for the several authors of the absolutely essential-to-read The Plot Against the Church, recount for us the terror endured by the Spanish in the late Fourteenth Century under Monarch Peter the Cruel.  (A full and free PDF download of the English translation of The Plot Against the Church is available via Cognitive Gateway.)

Then the Christian kingdom of Iberia (Spain)… promoted the Jews to government members and even to ministers or royal state treasurers. As a result they violated the decisions of the Holy Church Councils, which excluded the Jews from government offices.

The Jews turned back once again to their traditional tactics, to gain their enemies through seeming good conduct and effective services, thus obtaining valuable offices which made it possible to them to later conquer the states which had offered them protection. They therefore left no opportunity unused in order to get into their hands control over this Christian kingdom, which had already become a second Palestine to them, into which they streamed ready and willing. The Jews came to Castile at a time when they had reached the high point of their power. (20)

Still an adolescent upon ascending the throne in 1350, Peter the Cruel took as his advisor Jewish leader Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia, whose influence over the King increased, giving him power like no other before him. (21) This influence proved disastrous for Peter’s subjects, who were subject to a reign of terror and murder like no other during that period of history. Interestingly, regarding Peter the Cruel’s appetite for the killing of layman and clergy alike, Pinay traces a direct parallel to the murderous Jewish Bolshevik’s of Soviet Russia. No one in Castile felt safe. Pinay continues,

Unfortunately, however, history proves to us that every time the Jews in a Christian or pagan state attain “the highpoint of their power”, a terrible wave of murders and terror is unleashed, and Christian or pagan blood flows in streams. Thus it also occurred under Peter from the moment when the Jews obtained decisive influence upon education and government…The Jews attained high regard and the synagogues prospered, while the Churches decayed and the clergy and the Christians were disgracefully persecuted. (22)

Here another pattern can be seen in the larger context when considering aforementioned events in England and France: the more power Jews obtain, the greater the abuse and persecution to be suffered by the kingdom’s subjects. The bloodshed arising from such abuse is documented not only in the form of occult ritual killing seen in England and France, but in open murder of subjects by the monarchy so influenced, as noted here about Castile. Fittingly, this pattern also applies to royal treasuries. Whereas in England and France, the lending of money to the crown proved highly pernicious, under Peter the Cruel, who was a veritable thrall of his own Jewish advisors, usury devolved into crass and enormous theft. Such was the case when Peter’s advisor Samuel was betrayed by envious fellow Jews, accused of stealing gold and silver for himself, and forfeited his life. Pinay retells the discovery recorded by a chronicler of the period,

“And it (his death) caused the King much sorrow, when he learned of it, and upon the advice of these Jews he commanded to bring him all his possessions. The houses of Samuel were searched, and they found a subterranean chamber with three mountains of gold and silver coins, bars and pieces. Each individual one was so high that a man could hide behind it. And King Peter inspected them and said: “If Samuel had only given me the third part of the smallest of these heaps, then I would not have had him tortured. But he preferred to die, without telling me.” The fact that Jewish treasurers or finance ministers stole was not new. Many had been deposed for this reason. (23)

Tyrannized by Jew-controlled Peter the Cruel, the subjects of Castile languished until the Pope excommunicated Peter and declared his subjects free of any obligation to submit to Peter’s authority. At the same time, the Pope declared Henry – Peter’s half brother-  the lawful King of Castile. With the Pope’s blessing, Henry made war against Peter. In 1369, after a battle driving Peter, that tool of Spanish Jewry, into a castle near Toledo, a meeting was arranged via a certain double-agent envoy, at which Henry slew Peter, thus ending the terror.

Abravanel, the Monarchs and the Final Decree

The next and final chapter of Jew-orchestrated chaos in Spain began in 1483 with the arrival from Portugal of treason-suspect and refugee, the Jew Isaac Abravanel. As per typical historical pattern, Abravanel opened a bank, obtained an invitation to the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Monarchy. Returning to Ryssen

Ferdinand and Isabella then entrusted him with the Spanish finances, despite the prohibition, frequently renewed by the Cortes, against entrusting any employment whatever to a Jew. “He himself’, writes Graetz, “recalls that his services brought him riches and honours, that he was highly esteemed at court, and before the high nobility of Castile”. As at Lisbon, he caused his fellow Jews to profit from his elevated position. It was certainly Abravanel who protected the Jews of Castile from the punishments which the inquisitors would have inflicted upon them for supporting the marranos. (24)

Nine years after Abravanel’s arrival in Spain, the southern region of Granada, final holdout for Islamic Spain, fell into Christian hands on January 2nd, 1492. After eight centuries, Visigoth Toledo was avenged, and this time unlike during the previous century, the Monarchs had seemingly crystal clear recollection of Jews’ role in the downfall of 711. Ryssen again,

On 31 March 1492, by an edict dated from the palace of the Alhambra, the Catholic Kings ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. They were ordered, on pain of death, to leave the territories of Castile, Aragon, Sicily and Sardinia within four months. (25)

Now what have our Talmudic friends at the Jewish Virtual Library to say about this expulsion? It seems as if both the JVL and Ryssen use nineteenth century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz as their source, as both accounts are in agreement. First the Jewish Virtual Library (source),

Tens of thousands of refugees died while trying to reach safety. In some instances, Spanish ship captains charged Jewish passengers exorbitant sums, then dumped them overboard in the middle of the ocean. In the last days before the expulsion, rumors spread throughout Spain that the fleeing refugees had swallowed gold and diamonds, and many Jews were knifed to death by brigands hoping to find treasures in their stomachs.

Now Ryssen,

The rumour of this practice became current, and certain Spaniards did not hesitate to disembowel them in order to search for treasure in their entrails. The captains of Genoese ships treated them with “ferocious savagery”. “Out of greed of simple caprice, to revel in the sufferings and desperate cries of the Jews, they threw large numbers of them overboard”. It was clear that the Spanish had nourished notions of vengeance against the Jews for many years, and were not about to waste their opportunity. (26)

How unfortunate indeed for these murdered Jews, who themselves as individuals were forced to suffer greatly in excess of any anti-Catholic antagonism in which they might have participated.

This is the difficult lesson faced by this subversive sect who, century after century, in Kingdom after Kingdom, so mistreat and abuse their host country that their presence becomes intolerable. In Visigoth Spain their treason was so malevolent, destructive and continuous through history, even as Spain emerged and attempted to unite itself in the fifteenth century, that those enacting the expulsion found themselves avenging the slaughter, enslavement and humiliation of their own ancestors, unrequited for eight hundred years.

While affirming on the one hand, Church teaching that no one has a right to harm the Jew; on the other, the Jew has no right to subvert, slander, swindle or slaughter any Catholic Kingdom or its subjects. This sort of lawlessness is precisely what England, France and Spain’s Jews put into practice.

All murder is regrettable, whether the victim be Christian or Jew. Thus this writer posits without contesting the Jewish Virtual Library’s prerogative to decry the harm done to Jews during their expulsion from Spain. However, the same also asserts the Catholic’s right and duty to mourn and remember all the Catholics murdered by perfidious, Christ-hating Jews, throughout the Church’s history. William of Norwich was a saintly boy who offered harm to no one, but was abducted, tortured, drained of his blood, murdered and discarded as if he were one hundred pounds of rubbish. This writer reserves mourning for the Church Militant, who while gaining a Saint, has endured a deep injustice. Just as no one has the right to harm the Jew, no Jew has the right to cram a phony historiography down the throat of any Catholic.

Weaponized Jewish Historiography vs. Authentic Catholic Counter-Narrative 

This inquiry into expulsions from Jews from kingdoms of Christendom leads to surprising discoveries regarding Jewish behavior, which in its malevolence invariably exceeds all rational limits and proportions, to the point where destruction falls upon Jews themselves by way of expulsion.

These excesses continue to this day and are observable in Jewish historiography which denies by way of omission their own culpability in the disasters which befell them. Not one word of acknowledgement is written that would admit even a small portion of responsibility resting with history’s Jews. Neither is one syllable of consideration given to the point of view of history’s Catholic protagonists.

Regarding historiography and education, if the reader take even a cursory look round, he’ll see that history texts are permeated by Jewish publishers, editors, and of course, that comic-book style historiography and the Christ-hating, anti-Catholic bigotry which that historiography attempts to conceal.  It behooves today’s Catholics therefore, to speak plainly with one another about this concealed Christ-hatred to be found just beneath the surface of this Judaized historiography.

Once our Catholic voice and vocabulary on this topic is regained, we can again begin asserting our historical counter-narrative among both Catholic and non-Catholic listeners and readers. Prior, however, to both the reasserting and the speaking plainly, is the knowing the truth for oneself. Completing this priority step involves criticizing, questioning and deprogramming from the relentlessly pushed varieties of Jewish comic book history that constantly crop up in media/alt-media/social media, and even Catholic media. Authors like Pinay, Ryssen, and E. Michael Jones can be a great start. It is time that Catholic minds were liberated.

Finally, a word on the intention behind the phony histories promoted by the likes of the Jewish Virtual Library, not only a contempt for the very concept of objective truth, but also a component of a larger and more pernicious long-term agenda. A quote follows, from a Jewish document dating back to 1489, attributed to the Great Sanhedrin, a hidden group alleged to this day to guide the work of world Jewry, and in the following letter encouraging other Jews suffering a setback at the hands of the French. The letter both disturbs and reveals much about the Jewish vision for Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

Dear beloved brethren in Moses, we have received your letter in which you tell us of the anxieties and misfortunes which you are enduring. We are pierced by as great pain to hear it as yourselves. The advice of the Grand Satraps and Rabbis is the following:

As for what you say that the King of France obliges you to become Christians: do it, since you cannot do otherwise, but let the law of Moses be kept in your hearts.

1) As for what you say about the command to despoil you of your goods: make your sons merchants, that little by little they may despoil the Christians of theirs.

2) As for what you say about their making attempts on your lives: make your sons doctors and apothecaries, that they may take away Christians’ lives.

3) As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues: make your sons cannons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches.

4) As for the many other vexations you complain of: arrange that your sons become advocates and lawyers, and see that they always mix themselves up with the affairs of State, in order that by putting Christians under your yoke you may dominate the world and be avenged on them.

This concludes the Series.

_________________

FOOTNOTES:

20  Pinay, Maurice; The Plot Against the Church; 1962; Online English Edition, (T. P. Johnson, Trans.), pp. 357-58.

21  Ibid..

22  Ibid., p. 359.

23  Ibid., p. 363.

24  Ryssen, op. cit., p. 254.

25  Ibid., p. 255.

26  Ibid. p. 256.

CREDITS: For the Featured Image, see credits to Part I.

FromRome.Info wishes to thank Mr. Walsh for his research and contribution of this series.

 

 

On the Expulsion of Jews from Western Catholic Monarchies: Part II

Undoing Historical Revisionism

Expulsions of European Jewry, 1290-1492

by Austin Walsh

Part II:  France: Holy Mother’s Eldest Daughter

What have the voices of Jewry to say about their ancestors’ expulsion (one of several) from France in 1394? The Jewish Virtual Library is peculiarly reticent:

Between 1338-1347, 25 Jewish communities in Alsace were victims of terror. Massacres in response to the Black Plague (1348-49) struck Jewish communities throughout the east and southeast. The Jews of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin were spared similar fates because of intervention from the pope. Further bloodshed spread to Paris and Nantes in 1380. The culmination of all the persecution and bloodshed was the definitive expulsion of Jews from France in 1394.

This is odd: a single sentence alone describes the entire event, appended like an afterthought to a lengthy list of grievances. What gives? Where is litany of suffering, or accusations of Catholic Frenchmen inflicting undue cruelty for no reason whatsoever? Perhaps that censorious journal of philo-semitism known as Wikipedia will disclose more, in the article on the History of Jews in France, in the section on the Expulsion of 1394:

On 17 September 1394, Charles VI suddenly published an ordinance in which he declared, in substance, that for a long time he had been taking note of the many complaints provoked by the excesses and misdemeanors which the Jews committed against Christians; and that the prosecutors, having made several investigations, had discovered many violations by the Jews of the agreement they had made with him. Therefore, he decreed as an irrevocable law and statute that thenceforth no Jew should dwell in his domains (“Ordonnances”, vii. 675). According to the Religieux de St. Denis, the king signed this decree at the insistence of the queen (“Chron. de Charles VI.” ii. 119). The decree was not immediately enforced, a respite being granted to the Jews in order that they might sell their property and pay their debts. Those indebted to them were enjoined to redeem their obligations within a set time; otherwise their pledges held in pawn were to be sold by the Jews. The provost was to escort the Jews to the frontier of the kingdom. Subsequently, the king released the Christians from their debts. 

This is more of what is to be expected: the sudden ordinance of King Charles VI arising, as it were, out of the blue.  Note well that here in France, as with England in 1290, a grace period was granted for Jews in France to get their affairs in order. This is contrary to what contemporary Catholics are conditioned to believe about their ancestors, being programmed by Jewish historiography and Jewish media. Where are the accounts of squadrons of gendarmes chasing every last (harmless and innocent) Jew to every corner of the kingdom in a surprise massacre? Even more noteworthy is that French Catholics in debt to the Jews were commanded, under a deadline, to repay their Jewish usurers, lest the collateral be sold by said Jews. Even a Jew-friendly source like Wikipedia, with paid editors working from Tel Aviv, contradicts what may justly be termed the Comic Book Historical Narrative, by citing all the measures taken to mitigate discomfort of Jews on the verge of expulsion.

Charging Interest on Interest While Debauching Coin of the Realm

What account is given by Hervé Ryssen in History of Antisemitism? Usury, pushed beyond all reason and sense of proportion, sets the stage in 1380, when riots broke out in Paris:

The common people, enraged by the usury of the Jews, practised with impunity, pillaged Jewish property and wounded or killed several inhabitants; but the Jewish community always managed to arrange compensation. For example, they argued that precious objects left with them as collateral – gold, silver, precious stones, jewelry, etc. – had been stolen in the riots, and that as a result they could no longer return these objects to their owners. They were thus dispensed from returning them without even having to compel the government to reimburse them.

Would that Catholics today understand their financial enslavement and their own progeny’s peril as did the fourteenth century French! Interesting is that which can be inferred of the above passage indicating that in the aftermath of pogroms, the Jews in France seemed to have recourse to the King for the redress of grievances by way of compensation and reimbursement. Not only ought such a fact disabuse Catholics of their philo-semitic programming in comic book historiography, but also inquire as to cause. From whence would such Jewish privilege have arisen? Ryssen supplies a clue:

We see, through the public documents of the time, that they never ceased supplying the King with bribe money, for wars and other expenses. In 1388, they extorted the right to demand four pennies per livre in interest, an exorbitant rate. But the kings always prohibited the cumulation of rents with capital, and charging interest on interest, which was called, in the language of the time, faire des montes montes [making mountains of mountains]. The Jews had never before been allowed to push usury to this point.

Here is what E. Michael Jones, quoting the lawyer, St. John of Capistrano, refers to as Jewish privilege. France’s Jews, both relentless and rapacious, used the lucre stolen in the unnatural act of breeding money by lending at compound interest, to bribe the King. French patriots alert to the problem, brought legal charges against the Jews and thus sought to end the chaos:

The king’s prosecutors and other judicial officers then filed charges against the guilty usurers. In fear that the authorities might discover transactions capable of bringing down a new tempest upon their heads, the Jews hastened to advance the king a large sum of money. They then complained that the officers of the law were molesting them, and begged the King to protect them from these “persecutions”. The monarch in this case was weak enough to impose perpetual silence upon his own prosecutor, and to protect the Jews from any prosecution for 10 years. The unfortunate borrowers, for their part, probably paid 10 times what it cost the Jews to obtain this concession. The King was weak enough to prohibit his own prosecutor from accusing them of any abuses whatever. He was also ordered to avoid disturbing them in any way and to allow them to enjoy their privileges to the fullest, so that the fortunes of private persons were placed at the discretion of the usurers for 10 years. Never since the reign of Louis the Pious had the Jews obtained so much power.

Now the historical picture takes on a much clearer perspective: the absurd presupposition of the Jewish Virtual Library that innocent Jews were banished from their homes with neither warning nor cause- can be discarded. As outrageous as may be the events detailed above, for the beleaguered French at the close of the fourteenth century, the Jews kept right on pushing. The forthright Ryssen continues:

With an insane king and a government undermined by factions, the Jews speculated in public misery, enriching themselves rapidly, and, as usual, pushing their audacity to ever greater extremes. In this case, they asked the king to stop issuing creditors with the letters of respite which were obtained to prevent prosecution by the creditors of anyone who enjoyed credit at the royal court. It cost them 10,000 francs.

Would that monetary gangster tactics were the only misery inflicted on the French of the fourteenth century.

Ritual Child Murder in France

The scene repeated itself over and over throughout Christendom, time after time. Unsuspecting inhabitants of an ordinary town or village were confronted with a grisly discovery: the body of the child of one of their neighbors. Adding to the pain and horror were wounds and mutilations suggestive not only of murder, but blood-curdling occurrences surrounding the death of an innocent. Often such discoveries occurred -as in the cases of Sts. William, Hugh and Simon around Holy Week. Once eyewitness accounts and other evidence led public suspicion to fall upon area Jews, arrest and prosecution led to detailed confessions fitting the gruesome facts torn into the body of a Christian child. Toaff provides detail of these legal facts contained in the historical record

The most famous, and most frequently studied, ritual homicide of which Jews in French territory were accused during this period is certainly that reported in 1171 in Blois, a central location on the main route from Tours to Orleans, on the banks of the Loire. Here, the Jews of that community, suspected of killing a Christian child and then dumping the body in the waters of the Loire, were condemned to death, and thirty-two of them met death at the stake after a summary trial.

The Expulsion of the Jews from France in 1394

The Royal Monarch had been bought. Interest upon interest and outrage upon outrage: Jews at court removed from debtors the legal protection from prosecution by lenders. Thus the power of the lender was joined to the power of the state to extract interest and, when the borrower failed to repay, to incarcerate. In France, as in England, Jewish privilege was quite real and very menacing to Catholics. Sporadic outbreaks in both city and countryside found murdered and dismembered Catholic children, often drained of their blood before dying. In sharper relief can be seen how Jewish behavior corroded the very foundations of the societies in which Jews resided. Ryssen quotes prominent Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz:

“The Jews collected great sums in interest and had their borrowers imprisoned when they didn’t wish to pay”, thus arousing popular enmity. “The people hated the Jews”, writes Graetz. Their incessant raillery against the Catholic religion, the receiving of stolen goods, their usury, pederasty, pimping, ritual murders, racketeering and swindling of all kinds, had aroused the disgust and hatred of the Christians against the members of this sect. On 17 September 1394, the day of the Great Pardon, the King finally took the decision to expel the Jews from the kingdom.

This concludes Part II of the Series.

_________________

FOOTNOTES:

12 Ryssen, op. cit., p. 60.

13  Regarding Wikipedia, there is an Israeli term known as Hasbara, or propaganda. Israel recruits volunteers to edit Wikipedia to alter its content in favor of Jewish historiography.  Their influence is huge, due to the number of young readers who rely on Wikipedia as a source. It is explained in a two-minute video.

14 Ibid., p. 212.

15 Ibid..

16 Ibid., p. 213.

17 Ibid..

18 Toaff, op. cit., 172.

19 Ryssen, op. cit., 214.

CREDITS: For the Featured Image, see credits to Part I.

FromRome.Info wishes to thank Mr. Walsh for his research and contribution of this series.

 

 

On the Expulsion of Jews from Western European Catholic Monarchies

Undoing Historical Revisionism

Expulsions of European Jewry, 1290-1492

by Austin Walsh

Part I: Seditious Sojourners in the Kingdom of England

If the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) is to be believed, it seems as if one day, the Catholic Monarchs of England, France and Spain, during respective centuries, decreed spontaneously that Jews were no longer welcome in the Kingdom, necessitating imprisonment, asset stripping and deportation. In reality, such a decree is a very complicated legal and logistical step which no head of state would take lightly: how are debts to be settled? Where and when are the Jews to go, and how? What is to be done with abandoned property? Not even a mentally impaired monarch would undertake such a step without both grave underlying causes, and serious consideration. However, the only cause cited by the JVL is anti-semitism. Peculiarly, no Jewish behaviors are ever mentioned. Thus goes Jewish historiography on expulsions from Catholic Kingdoms, with the unjustifiable a priori presumption that only irrational Jew-hate explains the cause, like some pandemic virus coursing through the air from one Christian to the next, targeting and persecuting innocent and unsuspecting denizens of the synagogue. Such cartoonish and false history is fodder for simpletons, or those who read only comic books; but such is what most Catholics today believe about their own ancestors, and sadly also about themselves.

Historical lessons are often reducible to the same principles which govern interpersonal relations; that is, at times the events of centuries past are more easily understood by drawing analogies with the manners in which people do (or do not) get along. Let us consider first such an analogy. A man is sacked by his employer and then complains to his friends, “they didn’t appreciate me,” he groans. “All the credit that I deserved always went to others,” is followed by the inevitable “there’s something wrong with that place.” All of which seems reasonable except to the friends of the man in question, who are subject to the man’s repetitious complaints far too often, because in reality he loses every job he takes within a short period of time. Sooner or later, a true friend will challenge the man by telling him that when one has been fired from one hundred jobs, maybe the problem lies not with one’s employers, but with the person getting fired all the time.

To history now can be linked this lesson in which reality itself seems to beggar life’s participants to stop simply blaming everyone else and examine oneself.  Question: Is there any people on earth who have known banishment or expulsion in excess of one hundred times? Answer: the Jews have known expulsion in excess of one hundred instances.  Why were Jews banished so many times? To ask this question is to enter the minefield of historiography, but let’s begin with a sample of what the JVL says:

  1. On July 18, 1290, shortly after money lending was made heretical and illegal in England, Edward I expelled the Jews from England, making England the first European country to do so.
  2. {France} Phillip IV the Fair ascended to power in 1285. In 1305, he imprisoned all the Jews and seized everything they owned except the clothing on their backs. He expelled 100,000 Jews from France and allowed them to travel with only one day’s provisions
  3. …the date 1492 has been almost as important in Jewish history as in American history. On July 30 of that year, the entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain.

Bribery, Fraud & Usury

The first stop of Catholic history’s counter-narrative is England of the late thirteenth century, ruled by the House of Plantagenet, and is related to us by French author Hervé Ryssen via his concisely written History of Antisemitism (see PDF at Cognitive Gateway’s Gateway Reader Page.)

Plantagenet King Henry III (1227-1272) showed great kindness to Jews. Of Henry, Ryssen writes:

Henry, the son of King John and Isabelle of Angouleme, favoured the immigration of Jews and protected them against the common people. (21)

In fact, so favorable was King Henry’s treatment of England’s Jews that late in his reign (1263-64) a revolt of the Barons took place:

The Jews were accused of serving as the tools of royal oppression, and the communities of London, Cambridge, Canterbury and Lincoln were convulsed by riots. At Worcester, Simon de Montfort expelled all the Jews from their lands after declaring all outstanding debts to them null and void. At London, in 1264, more than 500 Jews were massacred; their houses pillaged and their synagogues destroyed. (2)

courtNow if Henry were an oppressive monarch, and the Jews his tools, then his death ought to have ended the problem. Edward succeeded him, and in 1275 issued The Statutum de judaismo, which included prohibitions against usury. (3) Now the Jews were wont to lend money to landed nobility at low interest rates of five percent or less, in exchange for the nobles’ pledge of physical protection. Once obtained, Jews would then lend to peasants at a compound interest rate of up to forty percent. Unsophisticated peasantry often found themselves ruined by such financial predation, but the Jews having the barons’ guardianship, would persist in their usurious practices until the peasants were forced to take matters into their own hands. Hence the wise prohibitions in Edward’s statute were intended to keep matters from spiraling out of control, and thus afforded a reasonable protection for both Jew and gentile.  But England’s Jews kept pushing the envelope in a manner devoid of any sense of proportion or reason. Ryssen relates:

but some Jews attempted to evade its prohibitions. Better luck next time: 293 of them were hanged at London for violating the royal interdict. It was soon discovered that counterfeit money was circulating in England and that the country’s silver pennies were often clipped. (4)

Coin clipping in this case involved shaving, then collecting silver from the circumference of the penny, and repeating ad infinitum. In so doing Jews literally robbed the kingdom of the purchasing power of its money.

St William of Norwich

Ritual Murder “In contempt of the passion of our Lord”

With documented activity in Europe since at least 600 A.D., human trafficking has been a Jewish operation targeting primarily Christians. The events of Holy Week’s Spy Wednesday (22 March) of 1144 in England’s Norwich, would cause the mother of a boy named William to discover this fact the hard way.  Earlier that week William’s mother Elvira was offered a large sum of money to release her son into the custody of a man claiming to be the cook for the local archdeacon, so as to make William his apprentice. In actuality a Jew of Norwich by the name Eleazar, the man brought William to his home. An eyewitness recounts

This was Eleazar’s Christian servant, who, the following morning, had by chance, witnessed, with horror – through the crack of a door left inadvertently open – the cruel ceremony of the child’s crucifixion and atrocious martyrdom, with the participation, carried out with religious zeal, of local Jews, “in contempt of the passion of our Lord”. Thomas kept the date of the crucial event clearly in mind. It was the Wednesday following Palm Sunday, 22 March of the year 1144.

To throw off suspicion, the Jews decided to transport the body from the opposite side of the city to Thorpe’s Wood, which extended to within a short distance from the last house. During the trip on horseback with the cumbersome sack, however, despite their efforts at caution, they crossed the path of a respected and wealthy merchant of the locality on his way to church, accompanied by a servant; the merchant had no difficulty realizing the significance of what was taking place before his eyes…Young William’s body was finally hidden by the Jews among the bushes of Thorpe. (5)

Taken from the book Blood Passover, the Jews of Europe and Ritual Murder, this history was written by Ariel Toaff, son of Rome’s Chief Rabbi, and history professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University (not a likely suspect for antisemitism). Subject to a firestorm by American Jewry’s ADL for translating the original Hebrew into English, Toaff abandoned the copyright in 2014. (A full and free PDF download of the English translation of this book is available via the following link to Cognitive Gateway’s Gateway Reader Page.)

As grisly as are the facts of this case, Our Adorable Savior does not permit young William’s story to end here, but ordained that he become the venerable martyr and Saint William of Norwich

The scene now became the inevitable scene of miraculous happenings. Beams of celestial light illuminated the boy’s resting place late at night, causing townspeople to discover the body, which was then buried where it was found. A few days afterwards, the cleric, Godwin Sturt, who, informed of the murder, requested, and was granted, permission to have the body exhumed. He then recognized his nephew William as the tragic victim. A short time afterwards, during a diocesan synod, Godwin got up to accuse the Jews of the crime. Thomas of Monmouth agreed with him and accused them of the horrible ritual of crucifixion of a Christian boy as the principal event of a Passover ceremony intended to mock the passion of Jesus Christ, a sort of crude and bloody Passover counter-ritual. (6)

Authentic converts from Judaism prove themselves praiseworthy sons of Holy Mother Church. History gives us Nicholas Donin and Johannes Pfefferkorn as examples of exemplary converts who helped alert the Church to the threat posed to it by the synagogue. Add to these witnesses the name Theobald of Cambridge, an authentic convert who became a monk, and gave testimony in William’s case.

The convert revealed that the Jews believed that, to bring redemption closer, and with it, their return to the Promised Land, they sacrificed a Christian child every year “in contempt of Christ”. To carry out this providential plan, the representatives of the Jewish communities, headed by their local rabbis, were said to meet every year in council in Narbonne, in the south of France, to draw lots as to the name of the locality where the ritual crucifixion was to occur from time to time. In 1144, the choice fell by lot to the city of Norwich, and the entire Jewish community was said to have adhered to that choice. (7)

The phrase to bring redemption closer warrants additional explanation. According to the Babylonian Talmud, redemption for the Jews means the arrival of Moshiach, or Jews’ version of messiah. The Talmudic messiah is an earthly ruler who will undertake the universal conquest and slaughter of the vast majority of gentiles, sparing only a fractional remainder for enslavement.  Redemption for Jews has nearly the opposite meaning of that for Catholics, whose understanding of the Redemption is rooted in the salvific act by Our Lord on Calvary. To Jews, the total destruction of all Christian society will bring about the arrival of Moshiach. To Catholics, this Moshiach is anti-Christ. Thus, the motive behind these heinous, outrageous and totally unprovoked murders was to bring the so-called messiah, or anti-Christ into the world. Unfortunately, additional ritual murder cases fit the same evidence pattern and motive as those above:

the accusation of ritual murder or the crucifixion of Christian boys spread from Norwich throughout England: from Gloucester in 1169, to Bury St. Edmunds in 1183, to Winchester in 1192, from Norwich – again – in 1235, to London in 1244, and, finally, to Lincoln in 1255, where the martyr was sainted.As we shall see, there are reports of an anomalous case of plural ritual murder again at Bristol at the end of the 13th century. (8)

In 1255 another notorious case erupted:

The body of an eight-year old child, Hugh, in the bottom of a well owned by Copino, a local Jew, at Lincoln in the summer of 1255. …The victim had been abducted by Jews, tortured and crucified, exactly as in little William’s case. (9)

And by the close of the thirteenth century, a serial case emerged, indicating a situation gone completely out of control.

The case of Adam, considered the victim of a ritual homicide occurring at Bristol at the end of the 13th century, provides us with a true and proper serial killer, the Jew Samuel, who, “in the days of King Henry, father of the other King Henry”, is said to have killed three Christian children in one year. Thereafter, with the collaboration of his wife and son, he is said to have gone on to kidnap another child, named Adam, who, tortured, mutilated (perhaps subjected to circumcision) and crucified, is said finally to have been skewered on a spit like a lamb and roasted over a flame. Samuel’s wife and son are said to have repented, expressing the intention to bathe in the baptismal waters, but at this point the perfidious and criminal Jew is said to have killed them both as well. (10)

The most important evidentiary item in a murder case is the body of the victim. Each of the well-documented cases above was made manifest by the discovery of a previously abducted, murdered and mutilated child. In many cases the wounds inflicted were puncture marks at physiological locations likely to bleed profusely. In many cases the body was pale, indicating heavy blood-letting before death. Many bore marks of crucifixion, and slashed throats were not unheard of. In the cases of Saints William and Hugh, the miracles documented owing to these Saints’ intercession provide us with the certainty of ratification by the Holy Ghost: ritual murder of Christian children by Jews is a historical fact.

The Expulsion of the Jews from England

Thus with usury, counterfeiting and coin-clipping already rampant, and instances of ritual murder also on the rise, King Edward I of England expelled Jews from his kingdom on July 18, in the year of Our Lord 1290. Ryssen relates the events:

They were granted the right to convert their property into liquid cash by the month of November; after this time, those found on the territory would be hanged. But first, they were to return to their owners all pledges and collateral in hock to them from Christians. King Edward nevertheless prohibited his officers from mistreating them upon their departure and from extorting money from them in the ports of embarkation. Finally, on 9 October; 16,511 Jews left England. Any goods which they had been unable to sell were confiscated by the King. (11)

From the welcoming stance of Henry III, to the protective prohibitions taken by Edward I, the historical record reveals monarchs taking great pains to obey the Church’s teaching that no one in the kingdom possesses the right to harm the Jew. By contrast, decades of Jewish behavior proved both disruptive, subversive, and a growing threat to the Kingdom itself. Worth noting are the explicit orders of the King who did the banishing: the expelled Jews were to suffer no harm to their persons or their property. If antisemitism were the motive all along, why would such royal policies have been decreed? Edward’s expulsion of Jews in 1290 was not only measured and reasonable, but an act of defense of the realm.

This concludes Part I of the Series.

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FOOTNOTES:

1 Ryssen, Hervé. History of Antisemitism (C. W. Port, Trans.). (Washington, DC: The Barnes Review, 2016), p. 157.

2 Loc. cit.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Toaff, Ariel. Blood Passover, The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murder (G. M. Lucchese & P. Gianetti, Trans.). (Italy: Gian Marco Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti, 2016), p. 167.

6 Op. cit., p. 168.

7 Ibid.

8 Toaff., op. cit., p. 170.

9 Op. cit., p. 171.

10 Op. cit. p. 171-172.

11 Ryssen, op. cit. p. 160.

CREDITS: The Featured Image is Valentin de Boulogne’s, Our Lord driving the Jewish Money Changers out of the Temple, which is in the public domain. — The first image in the text, is from the Codex Maneses, c. 800 A.D., and depicts a Jewish moneylender at the court of a Catholic prince. It is in the public domain. — The second image is of an engraving c. 1478, showing the Martyrdom of St. William of Norwich.

FromRome.Info wishes to thank Mr. Walsh for his research and contribution of this series.