Adrienne Williams Boyarin is Professor of English and Humanities Associate Dean Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of "The Christian Jew and the Unmarked Jewess: The Polemics of Sameness in Medieval English Anti-Judaism," (Penn, 2021) and "Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval England: Law and Jewishness in Marian Legends," (D.S. Brewer, 2010). Her current digital project is Medieval Anglo-Jewish Women, 1154¬–1307, an online resource that catalogues, networks, and publishes new biographies of Jewish women who lived and worked in medieval England.

Lecture summary:
In 1220, Comitissa Turbe, a Jewish woman, claimed that Christian men had murdered her husband Solomon by pushing him out of Gloucester Castle. A mixed jury of Christians and Jews ruled suicide: witnesses recounted that Solomon claimed he would be “saved” (salvus) like King Saul (who dies by his own sword in 1 Samuel 31:1–5). In 1905, J.M. Rigg, the first editor of the Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, added a perplexed footnote: “The meaning of this term [salvus] in the mouth of the Jew is not easy to conjecture.” Williams Boyarin argues, in response to Rigg’s still unanswered note, that record of Solomon’s death evokes biblical and literary tropes, embeds anti-Christian polemic, and alludes specifically to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezar, the popular medieval midrashic compilation. These arguments do not support Comitissa’s claim of murder, but they do reveal ideas about suicide and salvation—and about Jewish-Christian legal interactions in medieval England—that are only visible through Jewish texts and contexts traditionally excluded from Anglo-Jewish historical studies. Note: this lecture will also include contextualizing information about the medieval Anglo-Jewish community, the legal systems that constrained and protected it, and its expulsion from England in 1290 CE.

Sponsor: Jewish Studies Program

Co-sponsors: Department of History, Medieval Studies Program

Photo: Stokesay Castle (an example of a 13th century fortified manor house)  Tony Grist, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons