A Hebrew Elegy on the York Martyrs of 1190

It is generally known that the Hebrew sources for the history of the Jews in medieval England are extremely sparse. The chronicler Ephraim of Bonn gives a poignant, but not in every respect accurate, account of the massacres of 1189-90 1 : and historians of a later generation reproduce a legendary story of the Expulsion of the Jews by Edward I, partly deriving as it seems from a lost work of the polemist and grammarian Profiat Duran and partly from the Fortalitium Fidei of the Franciscan Alfonso de Espana.2 Except for one or two oblique allusions, this is almost all. Any new material that comes to light is therefore all the more valuable.

century ago, Zunz called attention to two Hebrew elegies on the English massacres at the beginning of the reign of Richard I. One of them, by R. Menachem ben Jacob, was presented (as far as the portion

Written by

Cecil Roth

Published in

Volume 16

1945

Other articles within the volume

• William Wollaston (1659-1724): English Deist and Rabbinic Scholar
• A Hebrew Elegy on the York Martyrs of 1190
• The Case of Dr. Lopez
• The Case of Dr. Lopez
• More Anglo-Jewish Leading Cases
• Grace Aguilar : A Centenary Tribute
• Jewish Residents in Eighteenth-century Twickenham
• Sir Edward Brampton: AN ANGLO-JEWISH ADVENTURER DURING THE WARS OF THE ROSES
• Sir Henry Finch (1558-1625) and the first english advocates of the restoration of the jews to palestine
• Maimonides and England
• Jewish Finance in Thirteenth-century England
• The Strayings of Paul Isaiah in England, 1651-1656
• The Non-Christian Oath in English Law
• The Damascus Affair-1840
• Solomon ben Joseph Buzaglo
• Church and Synagogue in the Middle Ages
• Levi Barent Cohen and some of his descendants
• War and Jewish History
• Preface