Religion: The Legend of Little Hugh

0 yonge Hugh of Lincoln, slayn also With cursed Jewes, as it is notable For it nis but a lit el whyle ago.

So in his Prioresse’s Tale Geoffrey Chaucer ended his version of one of the best-known stories of the Middle Ages. “In 1255,” according to contemporary Chronicler Matthew Paris, “the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old.” After fattening him up, they were said to have staged a mock re-enactment of the Crucifixion, killing little Hugh to the accompaniment of fiendish tortures. “When the boy was dead,” Paris concludes, “they took the body down from the cross, and for some reason disemboweled it; it is said for the purpose of their magic arts.” Other versions had Hugh enticed into a castle by “the Jew’s daughter,” who “laid him on a dressing board/ And sticked him like a swine.”

Partially as a result of the story, things went hard for the Jews of England. Nearly 1,000 were jailed that year in London alone, Jewish property was confiscated, and many of them were executed. Little St. Hugh, as he was soon called,*received a pillared shrine in Lincoln Cathedral. In 1791 the tomb was opened by the president of the Royal Society. Inside was “the complete skeleton of a boy, three feet, three inches long.” For years, on a plaque above the tomb, visitors to Lincoln Cathedral could read a full account of the story, softened only by a small postscript casting doubt on its authenticity. Last week the plaque disappeared. To replace it, a new version was being lettered: “Trumped up stories of ‘ritual murders’ of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. [They] do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and we pray, ‘Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers.’ “

*-Little “St.” Hugh never made the official Catholic calendar of saints, is not to be confused with St. Hugh of Lincoln (1140-1200), who founded the first Carthusian Charterhouse in England, became bishop of Lincoln, and built the present cathedral. At his death he was deeply mourned by the Jews, whom he had defended and befriended.