It\u2019s a story that has been told and retold for centuries. This story has shaped our faith and the culture of Western Christendom. It directly influenced later, better-known works by Chaucer and Luther and, even today, we can see its influence in both works of popular entertainment and scholarly theology. Every generation has adopted and adapted this story, repackaging it and repurposing it for each succeeding day and age. In my own time and place, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to understand American Christianity or American politics in the 21st Century without understanding this story \u2014 the story invented and promoted by Thomas of Monmouth way back in the 12th Century.<\/p>\n
And the most important thing to understand about Thomas of Monmouth\u2019s massively, enduringly influential and culture-shaping story is this: It\u2019s a lie. It\u2019s a vicious, outrageous fabrication \u2014 the product of an evil, deceitful man with a twisted mind.<\/p>\n
To understand Thomas\u2019 story, you must first understand the story that preceded his arrival on the scene. That story, unlike the one later told by Thomas, is something that really happened.<\/p>\n
What happened was this: During Holy Week in 1144, a 12-year-old boy named William left home to take a job working in the kitchen of the Archdeacon of Norwich, England. His body was found a few days later in the woods outside the town. The boy had apparently been beaten to death.<\/p>\n
The local sheriff, a man named John de Chesney, was unable to identify William\u2019s killer. The only thing he was sure of was that no evidence suggested the local Jewish community had anything to do with the boy\u2019s death. So when the good Christian people of Norwich formed a lynch-mob to round up their Jewish neighbors, de Chesney sheltered them in Norwich Castle until the furor died down.<\/p>\n And that was that. Or it should have been. The sad end of a sad story from a time and place in which life was often nasty, brutish, and short.<\/p>\n But then several years later, in 1150, an ambitious monk named Thomas of Monmouth rolled into town.<\/p>\n Thomas had big plans to put his new home on the map. That was going to be a challenge, since Norwich didn\u2019t have the sort of lucrative holy shrines or holy relics Thomas needed for his scheme. What the town needed, he decided, was a local saint. And so Thomas set out to invent one: the martyred \u201cSaint\u201d William of Norwich.<\/p>\n Thomas began concocting fantastical tales of \u201cmiracles\u201d he attributed to the saintly intervention of the young boy, supported by \u201cevidence\u201d supplied to him in sacred visions he said he received from the now-long-dead original bishop of Norwich. Those stories helped him to sell his makeshift cult of \u201cSaint\u201d William, but the scheme didn\u2019t really take off until he let his lurid imagination run wild in the darkest fantasies he could spin.<\/p>\n Thomas cranked out a hagiography titled The Life and Miracles of Saint William of Norwich<\/em> \u2014 a book he would continually expand and embellish for the next several decades. Despite its title, Thomas\u2019 tale had relatively little to say about either William\u2019s life or the miracles posthumously attributed to him. It was mainly about William\u2019s death<\/em> \u2014 a death Thomas attributed to the secret ritual human sacrifice carried out by the nefarious Other he refers to throughout the book as \u201cour enemies\u201d: the Jews.<\/p>\n Thomas describes William\u2019s ritual murder in gleeful, gruesome detail, suggesting that the boy was actually crucified in an elaborate Satanic mockery of Jesus\u2019 crucifixion. He attributes all of this new detail \u2014 all of which contradicts every account from the time of William\u2019s death \u2014 to a variety of unidentifiable \u201cwitnesses\u201d and otherwise unattested \u201cdeathbed confessions.\u201d The real story had not been previously told, he suggested, because all of these supposed witnesses feared retribution from the global conspiracy of Satan-worshipping, child-killing Jews.<\/p>\n In short, Thomas of Monmouth invented the blood libel<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it was a runaway smash hit. Christians loved<\/em> this story and couldn\u2019t get enough of it, embellishing it with ever-more depraved detail as it spread throughout Europe. Other cities rushed to venerate their own local child-martyr \u201csaints\u201d supposedly slain in the Satanic rituals of the Jews.<\/p>\n Chaucer included a variation of Thomas\u2019 story in The Canterbury Tales.<\/em> More than 500 years later, in 1994, Dale W. Griffis told a variation of Thomas\u2019 story to an Arkansas jury, helping to wrongly convict the West Memphis Three. \u201cPizzagate\u201d and the \u201cQAnon\u201d conspiracy theory roaring through Tea Party Republicanism are nothing but modern remixes of the story told by Thomas of Monmouth.<\/p>\n And here is President Donald J. Trump, offering his own garbled rendition of Thomas\u2019 ancient tale just this weekend at a campaign rally in Wisconsin:<\/p>\n \"The baby is born, the mother meets w\/the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. Then the doctor and mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.\"<\/p>\n How is this man's mental state not a National Emergency right now? pic.twitter.com\/uq2yPoxH3o<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) April 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2019\/05\/NorwichCastle.jpg\")
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