|
A UK government
educational website once had a webpage called "A Medieval Mystery."1
At the top of the page was this:
|
A
medieval cartoon
This cartoon is from 1233. It is a detailed cartoon and it is a real
mystery. It was found on an Exchequer Roll. A roll is not a sandwich
but a government document recording various payments. This roll listed
tax payments made by Jewish people. They were called rolls because that
is how they were stored - rolled up.
|
There followed a
series of questions (e.g., "What do you think these characters are
supposed to be?"; "What do you think their role is within the
cartoon?"), and then this "Background Information":
Background Information
Unravel the
Medieval Cartoon Mystery
Persecution of
the Jews
The persecution (being picked on) of the Jews that the world witnessed
during the Second World War (6 million were murdered) was not a new
event. Although nothing had been seen on this scale before, the Jews
have been persecuted throughout history - ever since Roman times. Their
religion and their success in business has attracted hatred and
jealousy at different times. Laws were sometimes passed against them,
such as the 1215 ruling by the Catholic Church that Jewish men had to
wear spiked hats to identify them. At other times they have been made
to wear stars on their clothing and change their names. Britain in its
past victimised the Jews to the point of expelling them from the
country in 1290 and not letting them back in until 1655.
The cartoon is an example of the feelings some people had towards the
Jews in the Middle Ages. The cartoon is about real people and their
situation within medieval society. This is their story:
Isaac fil
Jurnet
Isaac fil Jurnet was one of the richest Jews in England and certainly
the richest Jew in Norwich where he lived. Isaac was much richer than
many Christians living at the same time. Like many Jews, Isaac was a
money-lender. By law Jews were allowed to charge a fee for borrowing
money on loans whereas Christians were not.
Isaac was the chief money-lender to the Abbot and monks of Westminster.
He took them to court to get interest on the money they had borrowed.
As a result of this he became the target of opposition from Pandulf,
the Bishop of Norwich, who wanted to see all Jews thrown out of the
country to ‘beyond the seas’. Isaac was also a merchant and owned a
dock in Norwich. The Abbot and monks were not the only ones in debt -
whole districts of the city owed him money.
Mosse Mokke
Mosse Mokke worked for Isaac, collecting the money owed to him. Money
in medieval England was made from precious metals, and was worth as
much as it weighed. This caused problems because people would ‘clip’
pieces off the edge of coins and use these pieces to make another coin.
The coins that had been clipped were hard to detect and were used to
pay for goods despite being worth less than they appeared. Many people
were tempted to clip coins but it was a crime - punishable by death.
However, Mosse Mokke was a rather shady character. He had been charged
for beating someone up in 1230 and in 1242 he was caught clipping coins
and was executed.
Abigail
Another character in medieval Norwich was Abigail, or Avegay, who some
said was the wife of Mosse Mokke. She was known for usury - the
collecting of very high interest on a loan. Unlike Christian women,
Jewish women were much more frequently successful in business and could
become quite rich.
The Jews in England were to suffer increasingly as the 13th Century
continued. They were subjected to heavy taxes, had property
confiscated, were attacked and finally were expelled in 1290. This
anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) behaviour was mostly the result of jealousy
of Jewish wealth and a misunderstanding of their religious practices.
|
The point of showing the cartoon is, of course, to ensure that kids are
sensitized to what the UK government considers to be antisemitism. And
that's likely the "lesson" most people will take away when reading the
above: "Poor Jews! Always persecuted!" They'll focus on the Bishop
wanting to throw the Jews out, the ideas that Christians were too
stupid to understand the Jewish religion, and that Christians were
jealous because they weren't as "successful" as Jews.
But read it again: It says over and over that the Jews were rich, and
that they got their wealth through usury, which is a sin, which is
ruinously destructive, which the Torah forbids, and which the Talmud
forbids against other Jews. It says that the Jewish characters
portrayed in the cartoon clipped money; beat people up; had entire
districts of the city indebted to them; weren't simply richer than
Christians, but were rich at the
expense of Christians, etc. But then they go on about how
persecuted the Jews were.
Sounds to me as if it were the Christians
who had it bad.
Then, after all that, the problem all those Christians had wasn't that
they were being financially destroyed, ripped off, beaten, etc. (and
the webpage says not a thing about Jewish treatment of and
"misunderstandings" about the Christian religion); no, their problem
was this: Christians were just stupid and jealous.
It really is incredible how people can't see what is right in front of
their own eyes.
And as an aside, Jews were being thrown out of countries far earlier
than "Roman times," and Christian women could and absolutely did
successfully run
businesses in the medieval era; they just couldn't get filthy-stinking
rich by exploiting others through usury.
Footnotes:
1 URL of original article:
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot12/snapshot12.htm
Article at Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050105050722/http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot12/snapshot12.htm
|
|
