*A new DNA analysis suggests the 17 individuals were Ashkenazi Jews
murdered in Norwich, England, in 1190*
In 1190 C.E., Christian soldiers making their way to Jerusalem to fight
in the Third Crusade stopped in eastern England to “rise against the
Jews before they invaded the Saracens,” or Muslims. According to
medieval chronicler Ralph de Diceto, on February 6, “all the Jews who
were found in their own houses at Norwich were butchered; some had
taken refuge in the castle.”
The Norwich massacre was part of a broader wave of violence against
England’s Jews, who faced mounting anti-Semitism in the late 12th
century due to the “religious fervor of the Crusades,” per Historic U.K.’s Seth Eislund, and baseless accusations of blood libel. (The
blood libel myth—the false notion that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes—actually originated in Norwich, where a
boy named William died in 1144; his family accused local Jews of
murdering him.)
Scholars are unsure of how many lives the 1190 pogrom claimed, but a
new genetic analysis published in the journal Current Biology suggests
that 17 skeletons found in a well in Norwich in 2004 belong to victims
of the attack. DNA extracted from six of the deceased contains close
links to modern-day Ashkenazi Jewish populations, including markers for
genetic disorders common in the community. Using radiocarbon dating,
the researchers estimated that the 17 people died between 1161 and
1216. These discoveries, combined with the unusual circumstances of the
burial, support the idea that the individuals were murdered during the
1190 massacre.
“Ralph de Diceto’s account … is evocative, but a deep well containing
the bodies of Jewish men, women and especially children forces us to
confront the real horror of what happened,” says study co-author Tom
Booth, a bioarchaeologist at the Francis Crick Institute in England, in
a statement.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bones-found-in-medieval-well-likely-belong-to-victims-of-anti-semitic-massacre-180980692/
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