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William Prynne and the Myth of Jewish Usury: Reworking Medieval Anglo-Jewish History

Tue, December 18, 10:15 to 11:45am, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Federal 1 Complex

Abstract

A prolific puritan oppositional writer, William Prynne (1600-1669) was a marked figure in seventeenth-century English public sphere. Among the numerous controversies he was involved in, he is well remembered for his vehement engagement in the public polemic over Jewish readmission into England in 1655-1656. Prynne was the most vociferous opponent to the scheme, and published and circulated an effective historical-legal treatise in the midst of the discussions. In it, he drew on every historical piece he could find for proving the inherent enmity between the Jews and the English nation and constitution. Naturally, much of the treatise focused on the 1290 expulsion and its historical background. Yet surprisingly, a central explanation for the expulsion – the charge of Jewish usury – which was exploited by the majority of medieval chronicles and later historical accounts, was minimized in his description. This paper presents this abnormality and seeks to explain what drove Prynne to this position. I argue that Prynne was compelled to revise the account of medieval Anglo-Jewish usury due to two sets of causes: first, the growing commercialization of English society in this period, which took form in changing social conduct, social ideology, and jurisprudence; and second, the new polemical context of the 1650’s, in which his predecessors’ emphasis on Jewish usury came to work against itself. Inadvertently, I suggest, the most ardent opponent to Jewish settlement in England initiated a revision of the medieval myth of Jewish usury. Consequently, the medieval myth of Jewish usury and the historical narrative of the expulsion, came to play a nuanced and multifaceted role in the English discourse on the Jews during the following decades.

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