Talk:The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich

Edit removing section

These paragraphs were deleted by Fkendrick:

William was a 12-year old "boy of unusual innocence." Initially, William had many Jewish friends and was very well-liked, but he was abducted by other Jews. He was quickly bound and gagged by an object called a teasel. William was then shaven and forced to wear a crown of thorns. Afterwards, William was "fixed to a cross in mockery of the Lord's Passion" and crucified. Like many other martyrologists and hagiographers of the Medieval era, Thomas of Monmouth deliberately constructed William's murder to mimic the death of Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, comparing William to "an innocent lamb" in order to show his murderers as being motivated, in odium fidei ("out of hatred of the faith").

The credibility of Thomas of Monmouth's account hinges solely upon the testimony of a monk and former Jew named Theobald of Cambridge. Brother Theobald alleged that the murder was a human sacrifice and that the "ancient writings of his fathers" required the murder of a Christian yearly. This was allegedly for two reasons: to one day return to the Holy Land and to punish Jesus Christ for the persecution that the Jewish people continued to experience at the hands of his followers. While there is no such commandment for human sacrifice anywhere in Jewish theology or religious literature, Brother Theobald also alleged, however, that the murderers were not practitioners of Orthodox Judaism. The murder was instead ordered at Narbonne, by a cult leader who had declared himself to be the Jewish Messiah and who had cast lots to select where in Europe his followers were to commit the murder.

While these paragraphs need to make it clear that they are relaying the content of the hagiography, roughly the same account of the document is relayed for instance on the William of Norwich or in Hillaby, Joe; Hillaby, Caroline (2013). The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 324–5. ISBN 978-0230278165. for instance. Was this a mistake? Jim Killock (talk) 20:56, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I reverted, edited and added a reference. Hope that is OK. Jim Killock (talk) 21:05, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. There are several problems with this summary of The Life and Miracles of William of Norwich. For starters, the summary does not actually summarize the text, but only small portions of books 1 and 2 completely out of context.

These sentences: "William was a 12-year old "boy of unusual innocence." Initially, William had many Jewish friends and was very well-liked, but he was abducted by other Jews. He was quickly bound and gagged by an object called a teasel. William was then shaven and forced to wear a crown of thorns. Afterwards, William was "fixed to a cross in mockery of the Lord's Passion" and crucified," while they may seem to be a (selective and poorly written) summary of the text, are not accurate because they suggest that the events Thomas describes actually took place - that William was an innocent child, that he was abducted by Jews, that he was murdered by Jews - whereas ALL scholars, including the Hillabys, understand this to be a fiction. If you wish to keep this description, you should re-write it so that it accurately reflects Thomas of Monmouth's narrative, while making it clear that this is a fictional narrative.

The remainder of this paragraph is somewhat better, in that it is slightly more clear that Thomas's narrative is rhetorically constructed, although again it suggests that William was indeed murdered by Jews who were "motivated by hatred of the faith", which statement could be taken as anti-semitic.

The discussion of "Theobald of Cambridge" in the second paragraph is problematic for the same reasons - it implicitly suggests that Thomas had spoken to Theobald. E.M. Rose's 2015 book, The Murder of William of Norwich, however, has proven conclusively that there is no historical evidence for this figure, and that he is most likely a figure of Thomas of Monmouth's imagination.

I left the Jacob Marcus citations, but I do question the wisdom of citing a pre-Holocaust historian on the history of antisemitism when there has been so much scholarly work done on this topic in the interim.

Overall, I would trace the problems in this entry to its reliance on out-dated scholarship - there have been many important scholarly studies of the Life since 1938!! I tried to add many of them to the bibliography.

This entry as it stands risks reiterating the antisemitism of Thomas of Monmouth's text, rather than describing it accurately. In my revision, I tried to be as brief as possible, as accurate as possible, and to refer readers to recent scholarship. I'd really appreciate it if you would delete these offending paragraphs.

In the meanwhile, I didn't realize that there was a separate "William of Norwich" page. I will try to get to editing that tomorrow.

Thanks for your consideration. Fkendrick (talk) 21:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

First I should say I am no more responsible for this page than you, but rather we should both try to work from modern sources as you righly suggest; I have Hillaby and Hillaby's summary to hand. Feel free to edit and extend; but I would be careful not to remove information but rather update it and give better context if you are able. Some of what you say is fairly easy to copy edit and fix for istance. I've had a go at addressing a few of your points meantime. Jim Killock (talk) 22:34, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi - thanks for your reply! I'm sorry I didn't realize that you weren't responsible for the page, I thought that was why you were overseeing the edits to it.

This is my first time editing Wikipedia. I'm a professor and an expert on this topic, and several colleagues alerted me to the problems with this page and that on Thomas of Monmouth, so I tried to fix it. I take your point that Wikipedia is crowd-sourced and should be collaborative, but I don't see how I can fix this entry without deleting information that is misleading and, frankly, verging on hate speech? I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk - but I think this is a serious issue. Thanks for your time. Fkendrick (talk) 22:53, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

First off, it sounds like you are the expert, so you should really go ahead and edit. To be honest these pages could do with more people who are working in the fields concerned being involved.

My only point here is that the books say these anti-semitic things; it's of course not possible to wholly omit them if one is to make a an account of the book and its content; but rather better to make it clear what it did and why. As a stop gap I've made light edits to reinforce at all points that it is the book's account, to avoid the worst of the possible misreadings.

Or to put it another way: What misleading information do you think is there that needs to be omitted? And is it misleading information in the book; or misleading information about the book?

For instance you mention that it has been conclusively proved that Thomas didn't speak to Theobald; that's a really important point to add, I would suggest, rather than to remove the account as such.

In other words, I'm wholly in agreement with your desire to get this right but struggling somewhat to understand how to amend what is there without losing some or informative description of its contents.

All that said, perhaps you should just edit and I can come back with queries after? If you are able to keep in something of a description of what it contains and alleges that's probably enough to satisfy a general reader, and prevent future editors from being tempted to add further details back in. Jim Killock (talk) 23:06, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Another approach might be to merge this page and the William of Norwich page. Does this document need its own article? Is it possible to make a serious discussion of it without explaining the same background? Even doing some basic edits, it feels very duplicative. Jim Killock (talk) 08:46, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I've just had a chance to read through the "William of Norwich" entry - it looks as if it has been recently edited, and in my opinion it does a good job of offering context. It also offers a much longer and representative description of the text.

I think that overall, with my last edit to the Life and Miracles of William of Norwich page, we can be happy that the situation is aptly described without being too misleading.

Thanks again for your help Fkendrick (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Dear Jim,

Thanks for your reply - I really appreciate the work you've done on this entry, it makes the fictional nature of the text much clearer. While I understand your point about the necessity of trying to summarize the text, I still hesitate over the emphasis on Theobald.

So, for example, the Theobald story is not a particularly important part of the life. Theobald's "testimony" takes up about a page in the Penguin translation. By way of contrast, the testimony of a Virgin from Dulwich who was saved from a demon incubus who wanted to have sex with her by William takes up 4 pages in the Penguin translation. It seems to me most likely that the reason the Hillabys have emphasized Theobald rather than the Virgin of Dulwich is because it is perhaps one origin of the still problematic antisemitic slur that Jews are somehow pulling the strings of a global conspiracy? However, they don't say that, leaving the inference that this story is, in fact, a major part of the story.

So I think I we could just delete the Theobald paragraph, with your edits we'll have a stronger and much more responsible entry on the Life?

I apologize for all this detail - I suspect you didn't intend to get so deeply drawn into a conversation about 12th century literature!

Thanks again 184.189.228.204 (talk) 21:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

No problem at all :) I'm not wholly sure about omitting this entirely but agree there does need to be some balance and explanation. On the question of editing these pages, I did quite a lot of work on Simon de Montfort, and a little on Henry III of England re Jewish policies, as a result of reading around medieval history of Worcester. So I share your concerns about these pages, and did quite a bit on some of the other related topics a few years ago. It's not so often I get drawn into a discussion tho! usually it's just helping some other editors keep the pages free of blatantly anti-semitic re-slanting by bad faith random editors. Jim Killock (talk) 01:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

References