Patrick Comerford
The dean and chapter of Norwich Cathedral have decided to remove information leaflets dated from the 1990s on the murder of William of Norwich in 1144. The leaflets have been removed from the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in Norwich Cathedral following a new documentary film that explores the history of the Jewish blood libel in mediaeval Norwich.
The murder of 12-year-old William of Norwich in 1144 was blamed on the Jewish community. The myth gained ground when a Benedictine monk, Thomas of Monmouth, accused the Jewish people of murdering Christian boys so that they could use their blood in ritual ceremonies. The libel spread to Europe, leading to the persecution and massacre of the Jewish people.
Norwich Cathedral had a shrine to William, whose body was said to have been buried beneath the altar. It was destroyed at the Reformation and the Chapel of the Innocents was rededicated in the 1990s to victims of abuse, persecution, and intolerance. The leaflets linked William’s murder with the story of slaughter of the innocents in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.
The documentary The Innocents – funded by the Jewish Small Communities Network (JSCN) – is about two small English cities in the shadow of the blood libel and is to be screened in Norwich next Thursday (4 December 2025) as part of the British Jewish Life on Film event. A coda has been added to include a section on the start of the conversation with the cathedral.
The Dean of Norwich, the Very Revd Dr Andrew Braddock, said last week that the documentary film had brought long-held concerns to the surface. He said that putting the story of William into the context of a chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents was really troubling and created ‘a parallel between William as an innocent boy who was killed allegedly by the Jews, with the story of the boys under two years old in Bethlehem being killed by a Jewish king, Herod.’
The events in Norwich in 1144 mark the beginning of the mediaeval ‘blood libel’, and, according to a report in the Church Times last week, Dean Braddock concedes: ‘We just need to own it as part of our history – but in a way which makes it clear that today we work together as synagogue and cathedral, both committed to taking a shared stand against antisemitism in our own time.’
The cult of William of Norwich developed into a particularly virulent strain of antisemitism, and the story of the tragic death of a boy was exploited to incite antisemitic persecution.
By the mid-12th century, there were nine Jewish communities across England, including 200 Jews living in Norwich. In the days before Easter 1144, a 12-year-old boy named William, a tanner’s apprentice, disappeared. When his body was discovered under suspicious circumstances in woods outside Norwich, it was clear he had suffered a violent death. His mother and uncle alleged local Jews were responsible were responsible for his death, and local gossip spoke of anti-Christian Jewish conspiracies.
One story claimed the Jews had crucified William. However, the local sheriff could find no evidence for any of this, and further investigations did not shed any further light on the events. Despite the rumours of Jewish involvement, no arrests were ever made, the Jews of Norwich were provided with shelter in Norwich Castle, and William’s death remained unsolved.
Several years later, when a monk named Thomas de Monmouth arrived in Norwich he noticed that Norwich Cathedral was dedicated to the Holy Trinity but not to any named saint. Thomas of Monmouth said the lack of a local saint’s cult was a glaring omission, and missed out on the opportunity to increase revenue from visiting pilgrims. In 1150, he published The Life and Passions of Saint William, the Martyr of Norwich.
Thomas claimed his detailed research had uncovered the lurid details of in the murder and martyrdom of 12-year-old William. He claimed William had been abducted, subjected to ritual torture and crucified before his body was dumped in the woods.
Bishop William de Turbeville and several monks in Norwich were eager to support William’s saintly candidacy, although the new cult was not without its detractors. The local sheriff, John de Chesney, refused to support the cult, pointing out that neither Thomas nor the local Bishop had the authority to declare people saints.
When the body of the newly-proclaimed Saint William was moved to a place near the Priory’s high altar, tales of miracles spread quickly. By 1154 William’s body was moved to the chapel of martyrs in Norwich Cathedral.
The story of William of Norwich set a precedent. It was the first known time a Jewish community had been accused of ritual child murder in England. Similar accusations of child murder by Jews followed: Gloucester (1168), Bury Saint Edmunds (1181), Winchester (1192), Norwich again (1235) and Lincoln (1255).
The accusations in Lincoln in 1255 led to the hanging of 19 Jews and, were it not for the intervention of the king’s brother, 90 more would have followed them. Similar accusations appeared in continental Europe from the mid-12th century on, and accusations of Jewish child murder featured in around 150 different trials in the 12th and 13th centuries.
What began as a local antisemitic rumour evolved into a conspiracy theory that became known as ‘Blood Libel’. Within a century it was being claimed that Jews harvested a child’s blood and distributed it to other Jewish communities. These ideas spread across Europe, and the ‘Blood Libel’ became firmly established in western European.
When the bodies of five dead boys were discovered in Fulda in Germany in 1225, local Jews were accused of murdering them in Blood Libel rituals; 34 Jews were rounded up and burnt at the stake, despite the lack of any solid evidence.
Although William of Norwich was venerated locally throughout the Middle Ages, he was never officially recognised as a saint. His cult finally disappeared during the Reformations in the 16th century. The ritual nature of William’s death became part of the narrative long after the event. Other possibilities include an accidental death or killing, or the killer transferring the blame to local Jews in Norwich.
One of the earliest references to The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth is from John Bale (1495-1563), Bishop of Ossory, who went to school in Norwich.
The stories became the pretext for a lie that travelled across Europe, was evoked by the Nazis and endures today. The legacy of the ‘Blood Libel’ stories that spread from Norwich continues in antisemitic language and claims across Europe.
In the film, the Masorti rabbi in Norwich, Rabbi Roderick Young, says he wants to focus on the thriving Jewish history of the city. ‘Let’s not concentrate so much on William of Norwich, let’s concentrate on what was great about the time that Jews were living in Norwich.’
Two years ago, the Mayor of Norwich apologised for the city’s part in the spread of blood libel. Now Norwich Cathedral is taking a step in the right direction.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
For the history of the Jewish community in Norwich, visit HERE
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