The Jews and the Archives of Angevin England: Reflections on Medieval Anti-Semitism

Abstract

When should an historian analyze the assumptions which underlie his work, and when, if ever, is it incumbent on him to include in his work a discussion of the beliefs and procedures which have influenced his treatment of a subject? Recently historians, and in particular English medievalists, have been criticized for their anarchic empiricism; yet willingness to utilize any approach which promises concrete results, regardless of an integrated theoretical justification, is an attitude by no means limited to history but characteristic of many fields of detailed investigation in the natural and social sciences. By their fruits, as appraised by experts in the same field, shall their works be judged. There are times, however, when a broad historical subject is so narrowly treated that the result is tantamount to a philosophical statement, a statement, however implicit, that there is but one way of gaining valid knowledge of of men's past actions. We may then feel that the historian ought to have justified his procedure more explicitly, and we may be provoked to analyze and criticize the work, not for what has been said in it, but for what has not. This is especially true when the contrast between the dimensions of the subject and the limitations of a particular historian's vision throw his approach into high relief and incite the reader to examine the historian's conception of history. The English Jewry under Angevin Kings by H. G. Richardson is such a book because of its tone of certainty as to the proper path of history and because its subject cannot be domesticated to the calm conventions of professional habit.

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