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In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in medieval English society. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts showed that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even had romantic relationships with Christians.
However, Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumors circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England. John Tolan’s book England’s Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history and shows that thirteenth-century England was both the theater of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.
John Tolan is a historian interested in the entangled lives of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages and beyond. He has taught in universities in North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East; he is currently emeritus professor of History at the University of Nantes (France) and member of the Academia Europæa. He has received numerous prizes and distinctions, including two major grants from the European Research Council and a prize from the Académie Française. He writes in English, French and Spanish; his work has been translated into Italian, Turkish, Polish, Russian, Bosnian, Arabic and Korean. He is author of numerous articles and books, including Saracens (2002), Francis and the Sultan (2009), Faces of Muhammad (2019), Nouvelle histoire de l’islam, VIIe-XXIe siècles (2022), and England’s Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century (2023). He is one of the four coordinators of the European Research Council program “The European Qur’an” (2019-2025; euqu.eu).