Chaucer on jewish ritual murder: "The Prioress's Tale"

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Jim Pennington

Chaucer on jewish ritual murder: "The Prioress's Tale"

Post by Jim Pennington » Fri Jun 05, 2015 12:29 am

The Prioress's Tale



A great city of Asia once contained,
Amid the Christians in majority,
A Jewry that a local lord maintained
For venal lucre, foulest usury,
Hateful to Christ and to his company;
And through its street all men might ride or wend,
For open was this Jewry's either end.

A little Christian school stood by this place
Down at the farther end, to which would go
Many a child of Christian blood and grace.
There they would learn, as yearly they would grow,
Such things as in that land were good to know--
That is, they learnt to sing and read, as all
Such children learn to do when they are small.

Among these children was a widow's son,
A little scholar seven years of age,
Whose daily wont was to this school to run;
And if he chanced to see at any stage
An image of Christ's mother, he'd engage
In that which he was taught: he'd kneel and say
His Ave Maria ere he went his way.

Thus was the youngster by this widow taught
Our dear and blissful Lady to revere; 510
And so he kept her near to him in thought--
A guiltless child learns quickly, seeing clear.
(Always when I recall this matter, dear
Saint Nicholas stands ever in my presence,
So young he was to do Christ reverence.)

And while his book this child was studying
As he sat with his primer in the hall,
Alma redemptoris he heard them sing,
As children learn from the antiphonal;
Nearer and nearer he would draw, that all
The words he might then hear, and every note,
Until the first verse he had learnt by rote.

He didn't know what all this Latin meant,
For in his tender years he was too young;
One day he begged a friend there to consent
To tell to him this song in his own tongue,
Or tell him why this song so much was sung;
That he might so instruct him was his plea
Many a time on bare and bended knee.

His friend (older than he) said to him thus:
"This song was written, so I've heard them say,
For our dear Lady, blissful, generous,
To praise her, and that she be (as we pray)
Our help and succor when we pass away.
I can no more expound, I'd only stammer;
I've learnt the song but still know little grammar."

"Then is this song composed in reverence
For our Lord's mother?" asked this innocent.
"Now certainly I'll learn with diligence
The entirety ere Christmastide is spent.
Though from my primer I shall thus relent
And get three beatings in one hour, I
Shall learn it all, to honor her on high!"

His friend taught him in secret after school
From day to day till he knew it by rote;
He boldly sang, and well by any rule,
He knew it word for word and note for note;
And twice a day it wafted from his throat
When off to school and homeward he would start.
On Christ's dear mother he had set his heart.

This little child, as you have heard me say,
As through the Jewry he went to and fro,
Would merrily be singing every day
O Alma redemptoris as he'd go,
The sweetness of Christ's mother piercing so
His heart that, praying to her his intent,
He couldn't keep from singing as he went.

That serpent known as Satan, our first foe,
Who has his wasp's nest in the Jewish heart,
Swelled up and said, "O Hebrew people! Woe!
Is this a thing of honor for your part,
That such a boy should walk at will, and start
To sing out as he's walking such offense
To spite you, for your laws no reverence?"

Thenceforth the Jews proceeded to conspire,
Out of this world this innocent to chase;
They found themselves a murderer for hire,
Who in an alley took his hidden place;
And as the child passed at his daily pace,
This curséd Jew grabbed hold of him and slit
His throat, and cast him down into a pit.

Into a privy place, I say, they threw
Him, where these Jews would purge their bowels. Wail,
O curséd Herod's followers anew!
Your ill intent shall be of what avail?
Murder will out, for sure, it will not fail;
That God's honor increase, and men may heed,
The blood cries out upon your curséd deed.

"O martyr, ever in virginity,
Now may you sing and follow ever on
The Lamb white and celestial," said she,
"Of whom the great evangelist Saint John
In Patmos wrote. He said that those who've gone
Before this Lamb and sing a song that's new
Are those who never carnally women knew."

This poor widow awaited all that night
Her little child, but waited all for naught;
When morning came, as soon as it was light,
Her face grown pale with dread and worried thought,
At school and elsewhere then her child she sought;
She'd finally learn, when she'd gone far and wide,
That in the Jewry he'd last been espied.

With mother's pity in her breast enclosed,
She went as if halfway out of her mind
To every single place where she supposed
It likely that her child there she might find;
And ever to Christ's mother meek and kind
She cried. At last, completely overwrought,
Among the curséd Jews her child she sought.

She piteously inquired, she prayerfully
Asked every Jew who dwelt within the place
To tell her if her child they'd chanced to see.
They answered, "Nay." But Jesus by his grace
Put in her mind, after a little space,
To cry out for her son, and where she cried
The pit wherein he lay was near beside.

O God so great, so praised in many a hymn
By mouths of innocents, behold thy might!
This emerald, of chastity the gem,
Of martyrdom as well the ruby bright,
With throat cut, facing up toward the light,
The Alma redemptoris began to sing
So loudly that the place began to ring.

The Christian folk who through that Jewry went
Came by and stopped to wonder at this thing,
And for the provost hastily they sent.
He came without the slightest tarrying,
With praise for Christ who is of heaven King,
And for his mother, honor of mankind;
And after that the Jews he had them bind.

This little child with piteous lamentation
Was taken up while still he sang. They had
A great procession then, its destination
The nearest abbey. By his bier his sad
And swooning mother lay to mourn the lad,
And scarcely when they had to interfere
Could they move this new Rachel from his bier.

To pain and shameful death this provost sent
Each of the Jews known to participate
In knowledge of the crime. They early went,
For no such cursedness he'd tolerate;
What evil shall deserve is evil's fate.
He had them drawn by horses, then he saw
That they be hanged according to the law.

Upon his bier still lay this innocent
Before the altar while the mass progressed.
After that, the abbot with his convent
Made haste that they might lay the child to rest;
With holy water by them he was blest--
Yet spoke the child, when sprayed with holy water,
And sang O Alma redemptoris mater.

This abbot, who was such a holy man
As all monks are (or so they ought to be),
To conjure this young innocent began:
"Dear child, I'm now entreating you," said he,
"By power of the holy Trinity,
To tell me by what cause you sing, for it
Would surely seem to me your throat is slit."

"My throat's cut to my neckbone," then replied
The child, "a wound that is of such a kind
That long ago indeed I should have died.
But Jesus Christ, as in books you will find,
Wills that his glory last and be in mind;
And for the worship of his mother dear,
Yet may I sing O Alma loud and clear.

"This well of mercy, Christ's sweet mother, I
Have always loved as best as I know how;
And when I was to forfeit life and die,
She came to me and bade me give a vow
To sing this anthem when I die (as now
You have already heard). When I had sung,
I thought she laid a grain upon my tongue.

"Wherefore I sing, and sing I shall again,
In honor of that blissful maiden free,
Till from my tongue they take away the grain.
For afterwards here's what she said to me:
'My little child, I'll fetch you, as you'll see,
When that same grain has from your tongue been taken.
Be not afraid, you will not be forsaken.'"

This holy monk (the abbot's whom I mean)
Pulled out the tongue and took away the grain:
The child gave up the ghost, soft and serene.
And when he saw this wonder so obtain,
With salty tears that trickled down like rain
He, groveling, fell flat upon the ground
And stilly lay there, as if he were bound.

Upon the pavement, too, the whole convent
Lay weeping, and they praised Christ's mother dear;
And afterwards they rose and forth they went
And took away this martyr from his bier;
Inside a tomb of stone, of marble clear,
They put away his body small and sweet.
There he remains. God grant we all shall meet!

O youthful Hugh of Lincoln, slain also
By curséd Jews, as is so widely known
(As it was but a little while ago),
Pray for us too (in sin we've wayward grown),
That gracious God, in mercy from his throne,
Increase his grace upon us as we tarry,
For reverence of his sweet mother Mary. Amen.


Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 27 August 1255) was an English boy who is said to have been crucified in a ritual murder by the Jews of Lincoln. Hugh is known as Little Saint Hugh to distinguish him from Saint Hugh, otherwise Hugh of Lincoln. The style is often corrupted to Little Sir Hugh. The boy disappeared on 31 July, and his body was discovered in a well on 29 August. His feast day is held on 27 July.

While out playing with his friends, Hugh went missing. His friends told his mother that they had last seen him go into the house of a Jew named Copin, who had lured him in. Hugh's mother Beatrice went to Copin's house and later discovered the body of her murdered son in Copin's well. Accused of the murder by the courts, Copin confessed to the crime and stated that it was the custom of the Jews to crucify a Christian child every year. Copin and eighteen other Jews were put to death for the murder as a consequence.

It is said that a number of Jews had gathered at Copin's house and tortured the child, scourged and crowned him with thorns and crucified him in mock of death of Jesus Christ. At the tomb of Hugh, many miracles are said to have been wrought and so the canons of Lincoln transfered the body from the local parish church and buried it in great state at Lincoln Cathedral. During the Middle Ages, the martyrdom of St Hugh became a popular subject in ballad poetry, for instance it is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prioresses Tale".

Cultural influence

Meanwhile, the Cathedral in Lincoln was beginning to benefit from the episode, since Hugh was seen as a Christian martyr, and sites associated with his life became objects of pilgrimage. The legend surrounding Hugh that emerged became part of popular culture, and his story became the subject of poetry and folksongs. Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales makes reference to Hugh of Lincoln in "The Prioress's Tale". Pilgrims devoted to Hugh of Lincoln flocked to the city as late as the early 20th century, when a well was constructed in the former Jewish neighborhood of Jews' Court and advertised as the well in which Hugh's body was found. At St Hugh's College, Oxford, there is a plaster relief of Little St Hugh's icon - a pelican and a well - although the college is actually dedicated to the other Hugh of Lincoln.

In 1975 the English folk-rock group Steeleye Span recorded a politically correct version of "Little Sir Hugh" on their album Commoner's Crown. In the song, the murderer is fair witch "dressed in green". [1]

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Little_Sai ... of_Lincoln

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