The Life and Passion of William of Norwich

Download or read book The Life and Passion of William of Norwich written by Thomas of Monmouth and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating surviving chronicle from 12th-century England which holds a unique and terrible place in the history of anti-Semitism The Life and Passion of William of Norwich gives a remarkable insight into life in a medieval cathedral city, brilliantly capturing the everyday concerns of ordinary people and focussing on the miraculous cures carried out at a shrine. But this was no ordinary shrine; fervent worshippers gathered around the burial-place where they believed that a boy was buried, a boy murdered by the Jews of Norwich. A chilling, highly significant document, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich is, as far as we know, the earliest version of what was to become the 'blood libel' which has haunted Europe ever since. Miri Rubin both superbly translates the book and in her introduction interprets the sequence of events that led to the monk Thomas of Monmouth's appalling narrative. The consequences of his fantasies have been incalculable.