England's Jews

Reviews / Votes

"Pairing detailed archival evidence with a wide-ranging view of Anglo-Jewish history and scholarship, John Tolan's England's Jews is a fascinating and significant contribution to medieval studies. Tolan charts the late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century history of medieval Jewish life in England, and the developing oppressions of monarchical and ecclesiastical involvement, through the lives of influential individuals key to this history...This perceptive and meticulous monograph constitutes a significant advancement in studies of thirteenth-century England." (Journal of Modern Jewish Studies) "Noting that for centuries Jews had been caricatured in English literature, even as they were largely written out of English history, Tolan situates England's Jews as a project of recuperation...[A]n engaging and informative study. It has much to tell nonexperts and specialists alike about what certain, prominent-enough-to-be-recorded Jews did, and still more about what was done to them." (Speculum) "[This] book tells a gripping and accessible story of thirteenth-century policy makers and communities in conflict, while also occasionally pausing to assess the hearts and minds of those involved in the events that led to the Expulsion of Jews from England in 1290. Moving us from England to France to Rome to the Holy Land and back again, Tolan takes his readers through the international political machinations of church and state that preceded 1290. Along the way, he succeeds in demonstrating how enmeshed English Jews were not only in the economy of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England but also in early notions of Englishness." (Medieval Encounters) "This splendid book offers an engrossing and profoundly learned account of the place of Jews in English society. Its cogent and subtle exploration of the interplay between creative social dynamics and the destructiveness of predatory government have relevance far beyond its thirteenth-century setting." (R. I. Moore, author of The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250) "There is no comparable book to this one. England's Jews is a compelling and impressive account of Jews' changing relationship to the Crown in thirteenth-century England, and John Tolan is a well-respected historian and an excellent storyteller." (Robert Stacey, University of Washington) "England's Jews is a welcome contribution to the study of the history of England's Jews. By examining documentation generated by church and crown, John Tolan shows how a small group of subjects occupied the bureaucratic efforts and the religious imagination of the country's leaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." (Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London) "John Tolan, in an account as scholarly as it is accessible, casts entirely new light on the predicament of England's Jews in the century before their expulsion in 1290. His book is essential reading for all those interested in the history of medieval Jewry." (David Carpenter, King's College London)