Bank of Venice

In 1168, Alfonso II of Aragon, stepfather of Roger-Raymond Trencavel, known to Grail lore as Percival, reached an agreement, the Treaty of Sangüesa, with Sancho VI of Navarre (1132 – 1194), whose daughter, Blanche of Navarre, married Theobald III of Champagne, the son of Henry I of Champagne and Marie of France, thus uniting two important dynastic branches: the Plantagenets involved in the creation of the Grail legends, and the Iberian families involved in the Reconquista and the defense of the Cathars. Blanche of Navarre, who had good relations with Cluny and the Cistercians, would also play a leading role in the Champagne Fairs, in a region closely associated with the Templars. Henry I of Champagne’s uncle was Henry of Blois, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey and Bishop of Winchester, who was closely associated with the development the legends of the Holy Grail. Henry of Blois was the son of a leader of the Princes’ Crusade, Stephen of Blois, and William the Conqueror’s daughter Adela, and a step-brother of Templar founder, Hugh of Champagne.

Genealogy of Blanche of Champagne

• Geoffrey II, Count of Perche (d. 1100)

  • Rotrou III, Count of Perche (bef. 1080 – 1144) + Matilda FitzRoy, Countess of Perche (an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England)

    • Philippa, married Elias II, Count of Maine (brother of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou)

  • Rotrou III + Hawise, daughter of Walter of Salisbury

    • Stephen du Perche (1137/8 – 1169), Archbishop of Palermo (hired Joachim of Fiore)

  • Margaret + Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick

    • Rotrou (archbishop of Rouen)

  • Juliana du Perche + Gilbert, Lord of d’Aigle

    • Marguerite de l’Aigle + García Ramírez, King of Navarre (son of Ramiro Sánchez and Cristina, d. of El Cid)

      • Sancho VI of Navarre + Sancha of Castile (d. of Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile)

        • Sancho VII + Constance of Toulouse (d. of Raymond VI of Toulouse + Beatrice of Béziers, aunt of Roger-Raymond Trencavel, called “Perceval” by Wolfram von Eschenbach)

        • Berengaria Sánchez + Richard the Lionheart

        • BLANCHE OF CHAMPAGNE + Theobald III, Count of Champagne (son of Henry I of Champagne + Marie of France, sister of Richard the Lionheart, who hosted Walter Map, author of the Skull of Sidon legeng, and sponsored Grail author Chretien de Troyes)

      • Blanche + Sancho III of Castile (s. of Alfonso VII of León and Castile + Berengaria of Barcelona)

        • Alfonso VIII of Castile + Eleanor of England (sister of Richard the Lionheart)

      • Margaret of Navarre + William I of Sicily (s. of Roger II of Sicily + Elvira of Castile, d. of Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile + Zaida, Muslim princess. Brother of Constance, Queen of Sicily, mother of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor)

        • William II of Sicily + Joan Plantagenet (s. of Richard Lionheart, later married Raymond VI of Toulouse)

  • Mathilde + Raymond of Turenne, who was a fellow Crusader in the following of Raymond IV of Toulouse

According to Janet Abu-Lughod, in Before European Hegemony, the period between 1250 and 1350 AD, following the Crusades, represented a critical “turning-point” in world history, through the proliferation of an international trade economy that developed through the Champagne fairs, that stretched all the way from northwestern Europe to China.[1] Their confrontations in the East brought to Western Europe a great deal of skill and learning. The famous medieval Champagne fairs at Troyes began as a result of the increased trade traffic between Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. “Thus,” explains Abu-Lughod, “although the Crusades eventually failed, they had a significant consequence. They were the mechanism that reintegrated northwestern Europe into a world system from which she had become detached after the ‘fall of Rome.’”[2]

The King of France granted the privileges of the Champagne fairs to the Templars.[3] Historians acknowledged that Templar influence was a key factor behind these popular fairs, as they were the wealthiest organization in Western Europe at the time.[4] The Templars’ house in Provins, in Champagne, was one of the most important preceptors in Northern France. The Templars gained a great deal from the fairs, either by acting through agents, as suppliers of merchandise, or as shippers and transporters of the various goods on offer. Along with the king, the Counts of Champagne had also given the Templars the right to levy tolls on produce entering the fairs. Needing more for the Crusades, the Templars steady increased their share of the taxation levied on sales at the fairs.[5] Through the influence of the Templars, the fairs showed the first appearance in Europe of the use of “credit transactions,” with letters that promised full payment of a particular debt at the next fair.

Between the beginning of the twelfth century and the end of the thirteenth, signaled by the fall of Acre in 1291, a competitive alliance connected northern Europe, through the Italian intermediaries in Venice and Genoa, to the preexisting circuits of commerce that joined the Middle East with India and China.[6] Having begun as an autonomous outpost of the Byzantine Empire, Venice developed into a city state between the ninth to the twelfth century. The city became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade, which had veered off course and culminated in capturing and sacking Constantinople in 1204, and establishing the short-lived Latin Empire. Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice had long traded with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world, leading it to become the most prosperous city in all of Europe by the late thirteenth century.

The fairs became meeting places and centers for commercial traders from Italy and Flanders as well as northern and southern France and Germany. Spices, silk, brocades, damascene blades, porcelain, and a variety of luxury goods previously unknown to the West became highly prized. The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at Provins. Furs and skins traveled in both directions, from Spain, Sicily, and North Africa in the south via Marseilles.[7] Goods converged from Spain, travelling along the well-established pilgrim route from Santiago de Compostela and from Germany.[8] To cross the Alps, the caravans of pack mules made their way over the Mont Cenis Pass, a journey that took more than a month from Genoa to the fair cities, along one of the varied options of the Via Francigena.[9]

During the so-called Dark Ages, the Italian ports never lost their continuity nor their connection with the East. The Italians were indispensable to the fairs for their supply of goods imported from the Orient, either directly from North Africa and the Middle East, or through Muslim intermediaries, from the Far East.[10] Fernand Braudel claims that the true originality of the Champagne fairs was in “the money market and the precocious workings of credit on display there,” which were primarily in the hands of the Italians.[11] Their equipment included a banco, Italian for “bench,” the origin of our modern word for banking. When the crusades were launched at the close of the eleventh century, the general commercial abilities of the Venetians secured to them the chief agency of the crusaders; and the profits of this business were so great as to lead to the establishment of the Bank of Venice in 1157, under the guarantee of the state.[12] “[A]ll the international and above all most of the modern aspects of the Champagne fairs were controlled, on the spot or at a distance, by Italian merchants whose firms were often huge concerns”[13]

This was a time of further urbanization in Flanders and France, which had access to the western Mediterranean through Marseille, Aigues-Morte, Montpellier and particularly the central seaport of Genoa, and the Rhine which provided a connection to the North Sea from Venice.[14] At first the Europeans had little to offer in exchange, except for slaves, precious metals, wood and furs, but demand in the Middle East stimulated production, particularly the fine wooden cloth. This stimulus resulted in the renaissance in agriculture, mining and finally manufacturing in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth century. Europe joined the long-distance trade system that extended through the Mediterranean into the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and into the Indian Ocean and through the Strait of Malacca to teach China.

Blanche of Champagne

Sometime after 1130, but before his succession, García Ramírez of Navarre married Margaret of L’Aigle. She was to bear him a son and successor, Sancho VI of Navarre, as well as two daughters, who each married kings. The elder, Blanche, born after 1133, was originally to marry Raymond Berengar IV, the son of the Templar, Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, as confirmed by a peace treaty in 1149, in spite of the count’s existing betrothal to Petronilla of Aragon, the daughter of Ramiro II of Aragon and Agnes of Aquitaine. However, García died before the marriage could happen. Instead, Blanche married Sancho III of Castile, the son of Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile and his wife Berengaria of Barcelona. Blanche’s sister, Margaret, married William I of Sicily, the son of Roger II of Sicily and Elvira of Castile.

In 1153, Sancho VI married Sancha of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII, King of León and Castile and his wife Berengaria of Barcelona, the sister of Raymond Berengar IV. Sancho VI and Sancha’s son, Sancho VII, who succeeded his father and ruled as King of Navarre from 1194 to 1234, married first to Constance of Toulouse, the daughter of Raymond VI of Toulouse. Constance’s mother was Beatrice of Béziers, sister of Roger-Raymond’s father, Roger II Trencavel. Sancho VII’s sister, Berengaria Sánchez, became Queen consort of England after her marriage in 1191 to Richard the Lionheart, son of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Sancho VII’s other sister, Blanche of Navarre, became Countess of Champagne. An alliance with Navarre, through the marriage of Blanche of Navarre’s sister, Berengaria of Navarre, as Queen of England as the wife of Richard the Lionheart, meant protection for the southern borders of Richard’s mother Eleanor’s Duchy of Aquitaine, and helped create better relations with neighboring Castile whose queen was Richard and Joan’s sister Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII of Castile (1155 – 1214), the son of Sancho III, and a close ally of Alfonso II of Aragon.

Genealogy of Counts of Champagne

• Theobald III, Count of Blois + Alix de Crepy (Adela) or Adele of Valois

  • Hugh of Champagne (founder of the Templars, met with Rashi)

• Theobald III, Count of Blois + Gersent of Le Mans

  • Stephen II of Blois + Adela of Normandy (d. of William the Conqueror)

    • Stephen, King of England (suppressed blood libel case of William of Norwich)

    • Henry of Blois (Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey and Bishop of Winchester, author of Perlesvaus)

    • Theobald II, Count of Champagne + Matilda of Carinthia

      • Henry I of Champagne + Marie of France (d. of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sponsored Grail author Chretien de Troyes)

        • Henry II (1166–1197) + Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem (g-d of Baldwin II and Morphia of Armenia of Walter Map’s “Skull of Sidon” legend)

        • Marie of Champagne + Baldwin I

        • Theobald III of Champagne + Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne

          • Theobald IV of Champagne + Margaret of Bourbon (acted as regent with James I of Aragon, son of Cathar defender Peter II of Aragon)

            • Henry III of Champagne + Blanche of Artois

              • Joan I of Navarre + Philip IV “le Bel” of France (ordered arrest of Templars)

              • Theobald of Navarre + Violant (d. of Alfonso X of Castile)

            • Theobald V, Count of Champagne + Isabella (d. of Louis IX of France + Margaret of Provences

      • Theobald V of Blois (involved in blood libel through affair with Pulcelina of Blois) + Alix of France (d. of Louis VII + Eleanor of Aquitaine)

        • Louis I, Count of Blois

          • Theobald VI, Count of Blois

      • Adela + Louis VII of France Philip II of France

        • Philip II of France + Isabelle of Hainaut

          • Louis VIII + Blanche of Castile (d. of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England)

Blanche’s father-in-law, Henry I of Champagne, established orderly rule over the county of Champagne, thus ensuring the economic success of the Champagne Fairs, which became a central part of long-distance trade and finance in medieval Europe. Henry I was part of the network, along with his uncle Henry of Blois and Henry II King of England, who were at the center of the authorship of the various early legends of the Holy Grail, and who had taken part in the Second Crusade led by Louis VII of France. Henry’s uncle, Henry of Blois, was the son of Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, who married Stephen II, Count of Blois, a leader of the First Crusade. Adela, who would become a nun at Cluny, pledged the young Henry to the Church at Cluny Abbey, as an oblate child, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Peter the Venerable. His uncle, Henry I King of England invited him to England as Abbot of Glastonbury in 1126 and appointed him Bishop of Winchester in 1129. The first blood libel case of the Jewish ritual murder of William of Norwich was suppressed, according to Thomas Monmouth, by Henry of Blois’ brother, Stephen I of England. Stephen’s reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III and Margaret of Wessex. Henry II, the son of Henry I and Matilda, Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England.

Also involved in a blood libel case was Henry I’s brother Theobald V of Blois (1130 – 1191), through his affair with the Jewess, Pulcelina.[15] Although he was the second son, Theobald V inherited Blois, while Henry I inherited the more important county of Champagne. Henry’s court in Troyes became a renowned literary center, which included Walter Map, source of the Melusina and Skull of Sidon legends.[16] In 1164, Henry married Marie of France, the daughter of daughter of King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, a decisive influence on the culture of Courtly Love and a patroness of Grail author Chrétien de Troyes. Marie’s birth was hailed as a “miracle” by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, patron of the Templars, an answer to his prayer to bless the marriage between Eleanor and Louis VII.[17] When she was just two years old, Marie’s parents led the Second Crusade. Soon after their return in 1152, her parents’ marriage was annulled. As they were at that time the only heirs to the French throne, custody of Marie and her younger sister Alix was awarded to Louis VII. Both Louis and Eleanor remarried. Eleanor married Henry II and became Queen of England. Louis remarried first Constance of Castile, a daughter of Alfonso VII of León and Berengaria of Barcelona, and then Adele of Champagne.

Henry and Marie’s daughter, Marie of Champagne (c. 1174 – 1204), was the first Latin Empress of Constantinople by marriage to Emperor Baldwin I, one of the most prominent leaders of the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the conquest of large parts of the Byzantine Empire, and the foundation of the Latin Empire. Marie’s brother Henry II of Champagne had been King of Jerusalem in the 1190s, by virtue of his marriage to Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem, the daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem, the second son of Melisende and Fulk of Jerusalem, the eldest daughter of Baldwin II and Morphia. Amalric was the father of three future rulers of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, and Isabella I, and Sibylla, who married Guy of Lusignan. In 1190 with his two uncles Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart. There is a legend that Henry II, during his reign in Outrmer, sought an alliance with the Assassins.[18]

Because Henry II and Isabella had three daughters and no surviving sons, when Henry II died in 1197, his brother inherited the county as Theobald III, Count of Champagne (1179 – 1201), Blanche of Navarre, who had good relations with Cluny and the Cistercians, and thus became Countess of Champagne. In 1215, Henry II’s third daughter, Philippa of Champagne, married Erard of Brienne-Ramerupt (c. 1170 – 1246), a nobleman from Champagne living in the Holy Land, who was a cousin of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and gave Philippa the idea of claiming the county of Champagne. By 1216, despite the fact that Erard rallied most of the local barons of Champagne against Blanche, she had built up such strong alliances with both King Philip II as well as Pope Innocent III that Erard never gained any official legal support for his claims. During the early part of the conflict, Erard and his rebel barons attacked merchant caravans traveling to the Champagne fairs at Troyes and Bar-sur-Aube. However, each side soon recognized the vital source of monetary income that the fairs provided. During the later years of the war, therefore, Erard agreed to truces with Blanche, in order for the trade fairs to occur undisturbed. In return, Blanche paid off Erard with a large share of the revenues from the comital taxes collected from the trade fairs.

Barons’ Crusade

When Theobald III died of a sudden illness four years later in 1201, while preparing to lead the Fourth Crusade, he left his widow Blanche of Navarre nine months pregnant with their son Theobald IV (1201 – 1253), born after his father’s death. Blanche ruled Champagne as regent until Theobald IV turned 21 in 1222. With her regency completed, Blanche withdrew to the Cistercian convent of Argensolles, whose foundation she had funded herself, for her retirement. Blanche’s brother Sancho VII, who would join in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, died in 1234. Their elder sister Berengaria, Queen of England, had died childless some years earlier. Thus the Kingdom of Navarre, though the crown was still claimed by the kings of Aragon, passed by marriage to the House of Champagne, firstly to the heirs of Blanche, who were simultaneously counts of Champagne and Brie. Theobald IV, was also called the Troubadour, and many of his songs have survived, including some with music. He was Count of Champagne from birth and King of Navarre from 1234.

The Jews, who played an important commercial role in the fairs, benefitted most from the support of Blanche of Navarre, who had ruled Champagne as regent for Theobald IV from 1201 to 1222. Blanche was deeply in debt and therefore in need of the financial support of Jewish money-lenders. She sided with the Jews against the Church, insisting on their right to lend money. Although the Jewish badge was never enforced in Champagne, as it was elsewhere in France.[19] Theobald IV came into conflict with Louis VIII of France (1223 – 1226) over the restrictive policies the new king tried to enforce on Jews in France. In his Etablissement sur les Juifs of 1223, Louis VIII declared that interest on debts owed to Jews should no longer hold good, and should be inscribed and placed under the control of their lords, who would then collect the debts. Twenty-six barons accepted Louis VIII's new measures, except Theobald IV, since he had an agreement with the Jews that guaranteed their safety in return for extra income through taxation.[20]

Due to his disagreements with Louis VIII, during the siege of Avignon in 1226, as part of the Albigensian Crusade, Theobald IV put up a minimum show of support. The goal of the campaign had been the submission of Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, whose sister Constance was married to Sancho VII. The Chronicle of Tours blamed the failure of the assault on the treachery of Theobald IV of Champagne and Duke Peter I of Brittany(c. 1187 – 1250).[21] Strong rumors began to spread that Theobald IV was having an affair with Louis VIII's widow, the regent Blanche of Castile, for whom he composed a poetic homage. Blanche was the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile, the cousin of Blanche of Navarre. Roger of Wendover (d. 1236)), the first chronicler to report the rumors about a love, claimed that Theobald IV, “tormented by passion” for the queen, tried to poison Louis VIII at the siege of Avignon. At the beginning of the regency of Louis VIII’s widow, Blanche of Castile, Theobald abandoned a conspiracy against the king, which also included Peter I of Brittany and Hugh X of Lusignan (c. 1183 – 1249).[22] Hugh X’s daughter Margaret de Lusignan married Raymond VII of Toulouse.

Theobald IV initiated the Barons’ Crusade of 1239, with Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy, Peter I of Brittany, Amaury de Montfort and many other prominent nobles. Hugh IV married twice, first to Yolande de Dreux and then to Beatrice of Navarre, the daughter of Theobald IV and Margaret of Bourbon. Beatrice’s siblings included Theobald II of Navarre and Henry I of Navarre. She is also known as Beatrix of Champagne. Theobald negotiated with the Ayyubids of Damascus and Egypt, who were at enemies of each other at the time, finalizing a treaty between them, whereby the Kingdom of Jerusalem regained Jerusalem itself, in addition to Bethlehem, Nazareth, and most of the region of Galilee with many Templar castles.[23]

Although Theobald IV resisted the king’s decree limiting Jewish lending, the prosperity enjoyed by the Jews of Champagne was challenged by the Church, the king and the local population. Finally, in 1268, Theobald’s son and successor, Theobald V (1239 – 1270) of Champagne, in conjunction with King Louis IX, confiscated all Jewish goods and Jewish loans in order to finance the new Crusade.[24] In 1284, Champagne’s only remaining heir, Countess Joan of Navarre, the great-granddaughter of Blanche of Navarre, married the future King Philip IV le Bel, and Champagne was annexed to royal France. The massacre of 1288 in Troyes, as a result of a blood libel accusation against Isaac Chatelaine, ended in the burning of thirteen Jews and the confiscation of their property. Finally, in 1306, nearly twenty thousand Jews were expelled from Champagne, together with all the Jews of France by Philip IV, who a year later would also arrest the Templars.[25]

Philip IV’s father was Louis IX, brother of Charles of Anjou. His mother was Isabella, sister of Alfonso X of Castile’s wife Violant. Philip IV’s wife was Joan I of Navarre. Joan’s father a Henry III of Champagne (c. 1244 – 1274), the son of Theobald IV of Champagne, and her mother was Blanche of Artois, daughter of the then-reigning King Louis IX of France’s brother Count Robert I of Artois. Joan’s brother, Theobald of Navarre, married Violant, the daughter of Alfonso X.[26] Violant’s sister Beatrice was the mother of Denis I of Portugal, founder of the Order of Christ. Violant’s brother was Sancho IV of Castile, whose daughter Isabella married James II of Aragon, founder of the Order of Montesa.

Blood Libel

Isabella of France, the youngest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Philip IV le Bel married Edward II of England (1284 – 1327), the son of Edward I of England (1239 – 1307). Edward’s father Henry III of England (1207 – 1272) was the son of the King John of England (1166 – 1216), the son of the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England. Edward’s mother was Eleanor of Provence, the second daughter of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence (1198 – 1245), who was raised by the Templars with his cousin James I of Aragon. Ramon’s father was Alfonso II, Count of Provence (1180 – 1209), the second son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile, the only surviving child of Alfonso VII of Castile by his second wife, Richeza of Poland. Alfonso II’s sister Constance was married to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Alfonso II’s other sister Eleanor married the Cathar supporter Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, after he had been married to Joan Plantagenet, the sister of Richard Lionheart, had first been married to William II of Sicily.

Henry III of England would become involved in the next famous blood libel case, that of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 1255). In frequent cases of blood libel, Jews were said to hunt for children to murder before Passover so they could use their blood to make matzo.[27] Thomas of Monmouth’s account of the accusation against Jews of the ritual murder of William of Norwich helped inflame antisemitic sentiment in England, resulting in the eventual expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. Recalling the prophecy reported to Thomas of Monmouth by a converted Jew, the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré recorded in his Bonum universale de apibus (“On Bees”), a work he began in the 1250s and expanded until 1263:

Moreover, I have heard that a very learned Jew who converted to the faith in our days said that there was a certain one, like a prophet of theirs, who prophesied at the end of his life to the Jews, saying: “Most assuredly” he said, “know you that you cannot be healed in any way from that shameful torment with which you are punished, except by Christian blood alone.”[28]

Similar accusations were occurring in France and Germany. The Chronicle of Rigord (d. 1207 – 1209?), the biographer of Philip Augustus, claims that Richard of Pontoise (c. 1179 – 1181) was killed by Parisian Jews in an annual ritual that took place during Holy Week to show contempt for the Christian religion. Richard of Pontoise was supposed to have been crucified by Jews on Good Friday in 1163, which coincided with the second day of Passover. William the Breton expanded Rigord’s narrative to indicate not merely that Jews had killed Richard of Pontoise “as if for a sacrifice,” but indeed that as a youth King Philip II had heard from his contemporaries and playmates that “every year Jews sacrificed a Christian [child] and shared [or “took communion with”] its heart.”[29] In a letter from perhaps before 1263, Jacob ben Elie asserts that a Jewish convert named Nicholas Donin, the source of the thirty-five articles against the Talmud presented to Pope Gregory IX around 1238–1239, attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the king—perhaps Emperor Frederick II—that on Passover Jews “slaughter young boys… cook the children… and eat their flesh and drink their blood.”[30] In the 1190s, Peter of Blois remarked that Jews abduct Christian children and crucify them in secret places.[31]

The two-year-old Meilla in Valreás was ritually murdered in 1247, in southeastern France. Three Jews, named Bendig, Burcellas, and Durand, were arrested for her murder, for having gathered her blood in a glass vessel, and for intending to crucify her on Good Friday as an insult to Jesus. They confessed to have believed to have had to crucify her on account of the “prophet” called Jesus, on whose account the Jews are in captivity. Bendig admitted, “that it is a custom among Jews, and especially wherever there is a large population of Jews, to perform this deed annually, especially in the regions of Spain, because there is a very large population of Jews there, and when they cannot obtain a Christian [victim], they purchase a Saracen instead.”[32]

In 1187, the Jews of Mainz in Germany were made to swear to the Bishop of Mainz that they did not kill Christians at Easter.[33] In 1235, after the dead bodies of five boys were found on Christmas in Fulda, the inhabitants of the town accused the Jews of having killed them to consume their blood, and burned 34 of them to death with the help of Crusaders who were assembled there. However, the Marbach Chronicle reports that in response to this accusation, Emperor Frederick II convened a council of scholars, which finally concluded that, in light of the prohibition against such acts in the Bible and the Talmud: By this sentence of the princes, we pronounce the Jews of the aforesaid place and the rest of the Jews of Germany completely absolved of this imputed crime.”[34]

In England, Harold of Gloucester was said to have been abducted and then murdered by Jews in 1168, about 10 days before Passover, while Robert of Bury is said to have been murdered by Jews on Good Friday 1181. Richard of Devizes, a monk at St. Swithun’s in Winchester, alleges that the Jews of Winchester ritually crucified and ate a Christian boy in 1192 about the time of the Passover. Roger of Wendover alleges similarly that seven Jews in Norwich abducted and circumcised a Christian boy in 1235, “intending to crucify him at Easter.”[35] The Lincoln case, which become well-known, is mentioned by Chaucer and English Benedictine monk and chronicler Matthew Paris (c. 1200 – 1259). Paris described the murder, implicating all the Jews in England:

This year [1255] about the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul [27 July], the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old. After shutting him up in a secret chamber, where they fed him on milk and other childish food, they sent to almost all the cities of England in which there were Jews, and summoned some of their sect from each city to be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, in contumely and insult of Jesus Christ… They scourged him till the blood flowed, they crowned him with thorns, mocked him, and spat upon him; each of them also pierced him with a knife, and they made him drink gall, and scoffed at him with blasphemous insults, and kept gnashing their teeth and calling him Jesus, the false prophet. And after tormenting him in diverse ways they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a spear. When the boy was dead, they took the body down from the cross, and for some reason disemboweled it; it is said for the purpose of their magic arts.[36]

The death of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln is significant because it was the first time that the Crown gave credence to ritual child murder allegations, through the direct intervention of Henry III.[37] Henry commanded a royal investigation. A Jew named Copin confessed to the murder, in return for a promise of immunity from sentencing.[38] Henry III ordered Copin to be executed, and for ninety Jews to be arrested in connection with the boy’s death and held in the Tower of London, where 18 of them were executed. The rest were pardoned at the intercession of the Franciscans or Dominicans.[39] After news spread of his death, miracles were attributed to Hugh, and ballads referring to the incident circulated in England, Scotland and France.[40]

Second Barons’ War

Henry III’s policies towards the Jews would later help provoke the Second Barons’ War (1264–1267), a civil war in England between the barons—led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester (c. 1205 – 1265)—and the royalist forces of Henry III, led initially by the king himself and later by his son, the future King Edward I. Simon de Montfort was the son of Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, who took part in the Fourth Crusade and was one of the prominent figures of the Albigensian Crusade, notably for his triumph at the Battle of Muret. As a boy, Montfort accompanied his parents during his father’s campaigns against the Cathars. Simon’s father was also a supporter of the Notre-Dame-de-dProuille Monastery, the “cradle of the Dominicans,” associated with the St. Dominic’s reception of the rosary from a vision of the Virgin Mary. Simon was with his mother at the Siege of Toulouse in 1218, where his father died. His father, who had acquired vast domains during the Albigensian Crusade, also inherited a claim to the Earldom of Leicester through his mother. His French estates passed to Simon’s elder brother, Amaury, while Simon eventually gained possession of the earldom of Leicester and played a major role in the reign of Edmund’s father Henry III of England. In January 1238, Montfort married Henry III’s sister Eleanor.

Simon de Montfort is remembered for his opposition to the rule of Henry III, culminating in the Second Barons’ War which was tied to the rising anti-Semitism in the country linked to several blood libel cases. The first Jewish communities of significant size came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066.[41] Economically, Jews came to play an important role in the country, because the church strictly forbade the lending of money for profit, while Judaism permits loans with interest between Jews and non-Jews. As a consequence, some Jews became very wealthy and acquired a reputation as extortionate moneylenders, which made them extremely unpopular with both the church and the general public. An image of the Jew as an enemy of Christ started to become widespread and anti-Semitic myths such as the Wandering Jew and ritual murder of Christians originated and spread throughout England, as well as Scotland and Wales.

The years running up to the Lincoln murder were particularly hard on the English Jewish community. Henry III had taxed Jews harshly. Church teachings against Jews also built up in the period. Pronouncements were made by the Vatican demanding that Jews were kept separate from Christians, that Christians not work for Jews, especially in their homes, and that Jews wear badges to identify themselves. Church pronouncements in particular led to a number of English towns expelling their local Jewry. Henry III codified most of the Church’s demands and put them into enforceable law in his 1253 Statute of Jewry. Articles included that provided that any Jew could only remain in England only if he or she would “serve Us in some way,” that Synagogues could not be constructed, that Jews lower their voices in Synagogues, so that Christians could not hear them, and that “every Jew wear his badge conspicuously on his breast.”

Before marrying King John, Henry III’s mother, the then twelve-year-old Isabella, Countess of Angoulême, was betrothed to Hugh IX de Lusignan in 1200, when John took her for his Queen, an action which resulted in the entire de Lusignan family rebelling against him. Following John’s death in 1220, Queen Isabella returned to her native France, where she married Hugh IX’s son, Hugh X de Lusignan, an ally of Theobald IV of Champagne. Their daughter Margaret de Lusignan married the Cathar supporter Raymond VII of Toulouse. Her brother Hugh XI was betrothed in 1224 to Joan of Toulouse, the daughter and heiress of Raymond VII and his wife Sancha de Aragon. In 1239, Simon and Amaury both took part in the Barons’ Crusade, led by Theobald IV of Champagne.

Henry III wanted to use his court to unite his English and continental subjects, which included his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort, in addition to the later influxes of Henry’s Savoyard and Lusignan relatives. In 1247, Henry encouraged his relatives to emigrate to England, where they were awarded large estates, mostly at the expense of the English barons.[42] Henry’s court followed European styles and traditions, and was heavily influenced by Henry's family traditions from Anjou. French was the spoken language, and it had close ties to the royal courts of France, Castile, the Holy Roman Empire and Sicily, and Henry sponsored the same writers as the other European rulers.[43] Henry supported his brother Richard of Cornwall in his bid to become King of the Romans in 1256, but was unable to place his own son Edmund Crouchback on the throne of Sicily, despite investing large amounts of money. Henry planned to go on crusade to the Levant, but was prevented from doing so by rebellions in Gascony.

By 1258, Henry III’s rule was increasingly unpopular, the result of the failure of his expensive foreign policies and the notoriety of his Poitevin half-brothers, the Lusignans, as well as the role of his local officials in collecting taxes and debts.[44] The discontent finally erupted, when coalition of his barons, which included Simon de Montfort, who seized power in a coup d’état, expelled the Lusignans from England, and reformed the royal government through a process called the Provisions of Oxford. The baronial regime collapsed but Henry III was unable to reform a stable government and instability across England continued.

In 1263, Simon de Montfort, seized power, resulting in the Second Barons’ War. Cancellation of debts owed to Jews was part of Simon’s call to arms. As Earl of Leicester, Montfort expelled the small Jewish community from the city in 1231, banishing them “in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world.” The Second Barons’ War also featured a series of massacres of Jews by de Montfort's supporters including his sons Henry and Simon, in attacks aimed at seizing and destroying evidence of baronial debts. Rising anti-Jewish sentiments resulting in part from murder of Hugh of Lincoln combined with resentment about debts among the barons gave an opportunity for Montfort to incite rebellion by calling for the cancellation of Jewish debts.[45]

Edict of Expulsion 

Henry III’s son Edward I was involved from an early age in the political intrigues of his father’s reign, which included the rebellion of the English barons. In 1259, Edward briefly sided with the baronial reform movement, supporting the Provisions of Oxford. After reconciling with his father, however, Edward remained loyal throughout the subsequent Second Barons’ War. After the Battle of Lewes, Edward was taken hostage, but escaped after a few months and defeated Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Within two years, the rebellion was defeated. With England pacified, Edward joined the Ninth Crusade to the Holy Land.

In 1254, Alfonso X of Castile had signed a treaty of alliance with Edward’s father supporting him in the war against King Louis IX of France, and in the same year Alfonso’s half-sister, Eleanor, married Edward. Unlike her half-brother’s philosemitism however, Eleanor was said to have perpetrated acts of anti-Semitism and the seizure of Jewish property, and is considered to have influenced Edward’s policies towards the Jews.[46]

Edward and Eleanor’s marriage was known to be especially close, and they travelled extensively together. In 1270, Edward and Eleanor left to join his uncle Louis IX of France on the Eighth Crusade. In order to fund his crusading venture, Parliament granted a tax of a twentieth, in exchange for which the Edward I agreed to reconfirm Magna Carta, and to impose restrictions on Jewish money lending.[47] Eleanor was with him on the Ninth Crusade, when he was wounded at Acre, where legend reports that she saved his life by sucking out the poison. When she died, at Harby near Lincoln, Edward ordered a stone cross to be erected at each stopping-place on the journey to London, ending at Charing Cross. In his letter to the abbot of Cluny in France, seeking prayers for the soul of the wife, Edward wrote “whom living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love.”

Making a slow return home in 1272, Edward was informed that his father had died, and was crowned king at Westminster Abbey when he reached England in 1274. This reinforced his own reservations concerning usury, Edward issued his own Statute of the Jewry in 1275. The statute acknowledged that the kings of England had profited from Jewish usury at the expense of their Christian subjects, and attempted to rectify some of these abuses.[48] Finally, in 1290, Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, by which the Jews were expelled from England, a ban which remained in place until it was overturned more than 350 years later by Oliver Cromwell in 1657. Shortly after he expelled the Jews from England in 1290, Edward I added royal approval to the cult of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln by building him a shrine.[49]

A year before the Templars were arrested, in 1307 AD, France also expelled its Jewish population. All the crowned heads of Europe then followed his example. In 1348 Saxony followed suit. In 1360 Hungary, in 1370 Belgium, in 1380 Slovakia, in 1420 Austria, and in 1444 the Netherlands.

[1] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 12.

[2] Ibid., p. 47.

[3] Ralls. Knights Templar Encyclopedia, p. 65.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Karen Ralls. The Templars and the Grail, p. 21-21.

[6] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 46.

[7] Elspeth M. Veale. The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd Edition, (London Folio Society 2005), pp. 65–66.

[8] Paul R. Milgrom, Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, “The role of institutions in the revival of trade: the law merchant, private judges and the Champagne fairs,” in Kaushik Basu, ed. Readings in Political Economy, (2003), p. 68ff.

[9] Fernand Braudel. “The Perspective of the World,” in Civilization & Capitalism, 15–18th Centuries, Vol 3: (William Collins & Sons, London 1984), p. 111.

[10] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 68.

[11] Braudel. “The Perspective of the World,” p. 112

[12] J Macardy. Outlines of banks, banking, and currency. (Macardy and Son, 1840), p. 33.

[13] Fernand Braudel, “The Perspective of the World,” in Civilization & Capitalism, 15–18th Centuries, Vol 3: (William Collins & Sons, London 1984), p. 112

[14] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 47.

[15] Nissan Mindel. “The Martyrs of Blois - (circa 1171) - Jewish History.” Kehot Publication Society (June 16, 2006).

[16] Joshua Byron Smith. Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), p. 218 n. 8.

[17] Jeffrey Anderson. Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500: Lords of the Greater Part of the World (Robert Hale Non-Fiction, 2019).

[18] Napier. A to Z of the Knights Templar.

[19] Norman Roth. “Champagne.” Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia (Taylor & Francis, 2003).

[20] Anna Sapir Abulafia. Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300: Jews in the service of medieval Christendom (Taylor & Francis, 2011), p. 73.

[21] Sidney Painter (1937). The Scourge of the Clergy: Peter of Dreux, Duke of Brittany (Johns Hopkins University Press, (2019), pp. 40–41.

[22] William of Puylaurens. The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens: The Albigensian Crusade and its Aftermath. Translated by Sibly, W.A. (Sibly, M.D. Boydell Press, 2003), p. 81.

[23] Christopher Tyerman. God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 767.

[24] Emily Taitz. “Champagne.” Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 147.

[25] Emily Taitz. “Champagne.” Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 147.

[26] Richard P. Kinkade. “Alfonso X, Cantiga 235, and the Events of 1269-1278.” Speculum. Vol. 67 (1992), p. 294.

[27] W.D. Rubinstein. A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World (Great Britain, Macmillan Press, 1996), p. 39.

[28] Thomas of Cantimpré. Bonum univerale de apibus 2, cap. 29, 23, pp. 304–306; cited in Resnick, p. 104.

[29] Guillelmus Armoricus. “Gesta Philippi Augusti, Francorum Regis… ab anno 1179 usque ad annum 1223,” in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Michel-Jean Joseph Brial (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1878; reprint Gregg International Publishers Limited, 1968), 17: 66.

[30] Cited in Irven M. Resnick. “Cruentation, Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemic, and Ritual Murder.” Antisemitism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2019), p. 105.

[31] “Christianorum parvulos abducunt et in abditis crucifigunt.” Contra Perfidiam Judaeorum 28 (PL 207: 861C).

[32] Irven M. Resnick. “Cruentation, Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemic, and Ritual Murder.” Antisemitism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2019), p. 112.

[33] Anna Sapir Abulafia. Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300: Jews in the service of medieval Christendom (Taylor & Francis, 2011), p. 184.

[34] Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum, doc. 204, ed. Ludwig Weiland, MGH, LL, sectio 4, vol. 2 (Hannover, 1896), 274–276; 276.

[35] Irven M. Resnick. “Cruentation, Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemic, and Ritual Murder.” Antisemitism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2019), p. 109; cited in Resnick, p. 110.

[36] Matthew Paris. John Allen Giles (ed.). Matthew Paris’s English history: from the year 1235 to 1273, Vol III. (London: HG Bohn, 1852).

[37] Richard Huscroft. Expulsion: England’s Jewish solution (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2006), p. 102

[38] Gavin I Langmuir. “The Knight’s Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln.” Speculum, 47, 3 (July 1972), p. 478.

[39] Ibid., p. 479.

[40] Joseph Jacobs. “Hugh of Lincoln.” In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. 6 (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1904), pp. 487–488.

[41] Paul Johnson. A History of the Jews, p. 208

[42] Adrian Jobson. The First English Revolution: Simon de Montfort, Henry III and the Barons' War (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 9.

[43] Nicholas Vincent. “Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel.” In Church, Stephen D. (ed.). King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 150–151.

[44] Huw Ridgeway. “King Henry III and the ‘Aliens,’ 1236–1272.” In Peter R.Coss & Simon D. Lloyd, (eds.). Thirteenth Century England: Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference, 1987. 2. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 173–188.

[45] Robin R. Mundill. England’s Jewish Solution (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 254

[46] Cecil Roth. The Jews of Medieval Oxford (Clarendon Press, 1951).

[47] John Maddicott. “The Crusade Taxation of 1268–70 and the Development of Parliament.” In P. R. Coss; S. D. Lloyd (eds.). Thirteenth Century England. 2 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1989). pp. 107–110.

[48] Abulafia. Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300, p. 101.

[49] Ibid., p. 187.

Volume One

Introduction

1. Babylon

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic Age

4. The Book of Revelation

5. Gog and Magog

6. Eastern Mystics

7. Septimania

8. Princes' Crusade

9. The Reconquista

10. Ashkenazi Hasidim

11. The Holy Grail

12. Camelot

13. Perceval

14. The Champagne Fairs

15. Baphomet

16. The Order of Santiago

17. War of the Roses

18. The Age of Discovery

19. Renaissance & Reformation

20. Kings of Jerusalem

21. The Mason Word

22. The Order of the Dragon