Touché!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Shifrin" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 February 2001 15:37
Subject: Re: Magna Carta
> Gerard McSweeney wrote:
>
> > I believe the answer is that, as Christians were not allowed to be
> > money-lenders, one could say that it referred to the Jews by implication
but
> > not as what we should term anti-Semitism, specifically.
> > G Mc Sweeney
>
> As well as 1215 being the year of Magna Carta, it was also across Europe
the
> year of the Fourth Lateran Council, four of whose decrees referred to
Jews. As
> a result, for the first time, Jews in all Christian countries had to wear
a
> distinctive badge to single them out: boys over the age of twelve had to
wear it
> in their hats; women in their bonnets. The great Jewish historian Heinrich
> Graetz (writing over sixty years before the Nazi cattle trucks rolled into
> Auschwitz) pointed to 30 November 1215 as the day the Jews in Europe were
forced
> to take the first step toward becoming things.
>
> The Magna Carta was sealed just twenty-five years after the events at
Clifford's
> Tower, York, when the many of the city's Jews committed suicide when they
saw
> there was no escape from the Christian mob that forced them to seek safety
> there; the remainder, including the women and children, were brutally
massacred.
>
> The Magna Carta was also sealed just forty years before the execution
without
> trial of 18 of the 92 Jews arrested for the so-called "ritual murder" of
Hugh
> of Lincoln whose body had been found in a well in the house of a Jew named
> Jopin.
>
> The Magna Carta was sealed, therefore, in the midst of a period when, all
over
> Europe, Jews were suffering at the hands of their Christian compatriots,
but
> whether any of this was "what we should term anti-Semitism, specifically"
is not
> for me to say.
>
> Malcolm Shifrin
> Leatherhead
>
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