(Everybody needs good) Neighbours: Jews and Christians living together in medieval Kent
Saturday 27 April 2024 | 10:00-11:00 | Augustine House | AHg.27
SOCIAL HISTORY
Dr Dean Irwin
Dean Irwin completed his PhD at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he worked on the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities between 1194 and 1276. He now researches medieval Anglo-Jewish history (broadly defined) as an Independent Scholar. He is a member of the advisory board of the Jewish Historical Society of England and a board member of the MedievalJewishStudiesNow! blog.
About the event
There as a Jewish presence in medieval Kent from at least the 1170s until the general expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. For much of that period, Jews and Christians seem to have had positive relations in the local context (even if matters were more complex at other levels). This paper will explore how Jews and Christians lived, and worked, together in medieval Canterbury, and Kent, in order to facilitate urban communal life.
This is a detailed study of Jewish settlement and of seven different Jewish communities in England between 1262 and 1290, offering in addition a new consideration of the prelude to Edward I's expulsion of the Jews in 1290.
Considers the Jews of medieval England as victims of violence (notably the massacre of Shabbat haGadol when York's Jewish community perished at Clifford's Tower) and as a people apart, isolated amidst a hostile environment. This title presents a picture of a lost society which had much to contribute and yet was turned away in 1290.