Patrick Comerford
I was writing last night about my search last week for the ruins of Osney Abbey on the outskirts of Oxford, and how this had been the venue for the Synod of Oxford in 1222, when a number of tranches of antisemitic legislation were passed, leading eventually to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290.
A plaque is fixed to a decaying wall that is part of the ruins of Osney Abbey in the grounds of Osney Marina at the far end of Mill Street, Oxford. This plaque was one of a number of plaques erected by Oxford City Council in 1931 and reads: ‘Near this stone in Osney Abbey, Robert of Reading, otherwise Haggai of Oxford, suffered for his faith on Sunday 17 April 1222 AD, corresponding to 4 Iyyar 4982 AM.’
The plaque has remained in place for almost a century, despite the further decline and decay of the abbey ruins and the continuing development over the past nine decades or more of Osney Marina and of residential, commercial and office buildings on the site.
The plaque makes no reference either to the context of events in Oxford in the 13th century, nor does it reflect context of the time this plaque and two similar plaques were erected in Oxford.
The story of the plaque in Osney is further complicated by the facts: it seems that there was not one but two clerical Roberts in Oxford – a Robert of Oxford and a Robert of Reading – who both converted to Judaism in the 13th century, who both took the name Haggai, and who both married a young Jewish woman. To complicate things, it seems one was burned to death for his principles, while the other survived, although it is not clear whether he was imprisoned or was expelled from England.
The stories behind the plaque and the stories of these two Roberts are set in a time when anti-Jewish feeling was rampant throughout England. The Jewish community of York had been massacred in Clifford’s Tower in 1190. In one of the worst antisemitic massacres of the Middle Ages, the Jewish community of York were trapped by a violent mob and many Jews chose to die by suicide rather than be murdered. It was the bloodiest outbreak of antisemitism in 12th century England.
The first Robert of Oxford appears on the scene a generation later in 1220. He was a young Christian deacon who was studying Hebrew at Oxford University when he decided to become a Jew, had himself circumcised and married a young Jewish woman.
Following his conversion to Judaism and his circumcision, this Robert was brought before the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. At his trial, it was seen that Robert the deacon had been circumcised. Despite interrogation, no argument would change his mind, and a crucifix was brought before him.
Robert reportedly defiled the crucifix, saying, ‘I renounce the new-fangled law and the comments of Jesus the false prophet.’ It was said he reviled and slandered the Virgin Mary and made a charge against her ‘not to be repeated.’
Robert’s outspoken responses cost him his life. One account says he was burnt alive for heresy. Another says he was taken out and decapitated. Although his wife was spared the same fate, the executioner reportedly lamented, ‘I am sorry that this fellow goes to hell alone.’
The story of this first Robert is often confused with a second, similar figure, Robert of Reading, who also converted to Judaism in Oxford around 1275 and also took the name Haggai. However, historians do not agree about the details of his fate.
Robert of Reading was a Dominican friar from London who lived in the second half of the 13th century. An excellent preacher, he was given the task of seeking to convert Jews to Christianity, and was sent to Oxford to learn Hebrew. But as Robert mastered more Hebrew and more Jewish texts, the more he was drawn to Judaism, and his decision to convert to Judaism was stimulated by his study of the Bible.
When this Robert became a Jew in 1275, he too took the name Haggai, and he too subsequently married a Jewish woman. One source speaks of ‘a priest who … desired a very beautiful woman’ He ‘would talk to her every day [but] she told him that she would not marry an uncircumcised one. The priest, who desired her and loved her and listened to her and secretly converted and married her. When his [fellow priests] heard about this thing, it was a disgrace – adding to their hatred of the Jews – and they demanded to harm the Jews.’
When Edward I heard of this, Robert, or Haggai, was summoned before the king and argued boldly. The king then handed Robert over to the Archbishop of Canterbury to deal with. Robert ‘defended his new faith with great warmth,’ according to the historian Heinrich Graetz, who believed his conversion was genuine and not undertaken for other motives, such as the desire to marry a beautiful Jewish woman.
The fate of this Robert remains unknown. Graetz believed that both he and his wife escaped to safety; other scholars suggest he died in prison.
According to Graetz, the Dominicans were so embarrassed by Robert’s conversion and marriage that they quickly approached the ‘bigoted, avaricious queen mother, Eleanor, [who] … first expelled the Jews from the town of Cambridge which belonged to her, and personally fostered the hostile feeling against them throughout the whole country, especially among Christian merchants.’
In 1275, the same year that Robert converted, King Edward decreed a number of new antisemitic laws known as Statutum de Judaismo (Statute of the Jewry), which restricted the types of occupations permitted to Jews and the areas in which they were allowed to live.
The causal connection between Robert of Reading’s conversion and marriage and the expulsion of Jews from England seems tenuous at best. His conversion in 1275 was a full 15 years before Edward I’s edict. It seems unlikely too that one friar converting and marrying a Jewish woman was the determining factor in the expulsion of all Jews from England.
The Edict of Expulsion was proclaimed in 1290, and Jews were legally barred from England for almost four centuries. In those centuries that followed, these stories from Oxford caught the imagination of Jewish writers across Europe.
The story of this second Robert is retold in a popular early 16th century work, Shevet Yehuda, by Solomon ibn Virga, a Jewish chronicler who had been expelled from Spain. The historian Joseph Hacohen tells a similar tale in his Emek Habakha (‘Vale of Tears’), a chronicle of Jewish history traditionally read by some Italian Jews on Tisha B’Av. In that version, the priest even dresses up as a Jew in order to be able to speak with the woman of his desire.
A work attributed to a 16th century Italian Jewish scholar, Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph, may have mixed up the stories of the two Roberts, and taken additional poetic license. In that account, the king decreed that within three months Robert of Reading his wife should change their religion, that those who circumcised the priest were burned and that many Jews changed their religion.
The plaque to Robert of Reading at Osney Abbey is one of three plaques erected in 1931 commemorating the mediaeval Jewish history of Oxford. The plaques were the initiative of Dr Herbert Loewe (1882-1940), lecturer in Semitic languages at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1913 until 1931, when he moved to Cambridge as Curator of Oriental Literature and Reader in Rabbinics.
Before leaving Oxford in 1931, Loewe was responsible for erecting three plaques: the site of the mediaeval Jewish cemetery at the Botanic Gardens; the site of Great Jewry Street, currently St Aldate’s; and the ruins of Osney Abbey. When Loewe died in 1940, his library of 5,000 items was given to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Loewe’s plaques celebrated the centenary of the birth of Neubauer, a noted Jewish librarian in the Bodleian. When these plaques were erected, fascism was on the rise across Europe. Mussolini was in power in Italy, Hitler was about to take power in Germany, and Oswald Mosley was forming new far-right parties in Britain, with funding from the Oxford industrialist Lord Nuffield, who held strongly antisemitic views. Five years after the plaques were erected, these trends in Britain reached their climax with the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.
The plaque in Osney was erected beside the archway that is a surviving fragment of and the only remaining trace of Osney Abbey, founded in the 12th century, and the 15th century buildings of Osney Mill. The plaque is on the north-east outer wall of a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM), but – as I found last week – there is limited, restricted public access to the site and signs warnings that this is a private area.
Shabbat Shalom
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