Adolescence and Sanctity:The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich

One of the few extant documents providing evidence of Jewish life in the Norman settlements after the conquest, Thomas of Monmouth's Vita et passio Sancti Willemi martyris Norwicensis is a literary prototype for the narrative of Jewish ritual murder that burgeoned in late twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Thomas's authorial woes, although typical of hagiographers whose saintly subjects are deemed problematic in some fashion, have in the past been interpreted as primarily resultant of his failure to persuade others that the Jews were responsible for the ritual murder of the twelve-year-old boy. Here, Despres revisits this issue in the broader religious context of cultural shifts that were occurring coexistent to this first recorded charge against the Jews, suggesting causal connections among new models of sanctity and thus fully realized Christian "identity" in the wake of Gregorian reforms, the changing role of boy oblates within the monastery, and the problem of intentionality that plagues Thomas's defense of his William.