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- [00:00]
Claire Aubin
A list of sensitive themes and topics covered in this episode can be found in the episode description. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host, Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, as we all know, certified hater. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week, as you all know, to tell us why. With me today is Elise Wong, who is a professor of Medieval literature at CSU Fullerton and a current. I have a question. Because in the US we say Carnegie. Yes, but having lived in Scotland, they say Carnegie.
- [01:04]
Elise Wong
Carnegie. But this is the. These are the American Carnegie's. You know, Andrew Carnegie.
- [01:10]
Claire Aubin
I'm always curious because there they will also say Andrew Carnegie. So I think this is an interesting thing and they're talking about the same guy, but they just pronounce it differently. And I never know. Whatever.
- [01:20]
Elise Wong
Yeah, I'm sure Carnegie is actually the way that you pronounce it. Everybody here says it. Carnegie.
- [01:25]
Claire Aubin
Carnegie. Well, she's a current Carnegie fellow. She works on the medieval origins of modern concepts. So her first book was on the conception of modern felony in Arthurian literature. And her current very exciting project, which is germane to the topic of conversation today, is on the origins of the conspiracy theory genre. So welcome to the show and thank you for coming on.
- [01:47]
Elise Wong
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:49]
Claire Aubin
So we always start with a little question. So here's a new one for the listeners. The show is about awful people, but sometimes I like to bring a little bit of levity in. Who, from your research, do you think you would most enjoy getting a drink or sharing dinner with.
- [02:04]
Elise Wong
Oh, that's a really good question.
- [02:06]
Claire Aubin
And it could be any of your research. Doesn't have to be the conspiracy theory.
- [02:10]
Elise Wong
Yeah, well, the first person who comes to mind just because I like. We know so little about him. And this will kind of be a theme for this episode I work on people we actually know very little about. William Langland. Okay. Who wrote A Dream Vision. That's a loose term. He wrote this 7,000 line poem in the period that I study in the 14th century. And it's just nuts. Like it begins with a dreamer. He falls into this dream and then he starts having these allegorical dreams about structures of government. And it's insane. And there are people in my field who are Leylandians. Like, they study Pierre's plowman for a living. And they spend their whole lives interpreting these various. Because he has so many little Easter eggs and, like, references. And they spend their whole lives studying this poem. And I would really just. Like, he seems nuts, and I would like to get very drunk with him.
- [03:10]
Claire Aubin
Well, yeah, Anybody who can write 7,000 lines of a poem is, I think, someone we're talking to.
- [03:18]
Elise Wong
Unlike, you know, this. His, like, his character goes and has these, like, conversations with his own imagination and with, like, his conscience. And it's just this really trippy. Like, he had to have been on drugs.
- [03:32]
Claire Aubin
When is he writing this?
- [03:33]
Elise Wong
So he's writing this after the plague in the 14th century.
- [03:37]
Claire Aubin
I'm gonna. I know. You know, sometimes people say things on the show that in my head, I know I'm gonna spend a long time Googling after we get off this.
- [03:46]
Elise Wong
There is. This is a rabbit hole you can go down. Also wrote it, like, three times. Like, this is the only thing he ever wrote as far as we know. And he wrote it, like, three times. And we know nothing about him. We don't even know that his name was William Langland. But whoever. Whoever wrote this thing. I would like to have a drink with him. Whoa.
- [04:05]
Claire Aubin
Me too. Invite me. What we need to do is have approximately a 7,000 line long dream vision in which we go, we meet him.
- [04:14]
Elise Wong
Yes, yes.
- [04:15]
Claire Aubin
Trick with playing it. Okay.
- [04:18]
Elise Wong
So it's also what convinced me to be a medievalist. So I feel like this is very indicative of what I like this crazy shit.
- [04:27]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's, like, something that really unites medievalists across the board is everyone I know who's a medievalist is like, okay, so there's this crazy thing. I was reading once, and then all of a sudden, I'm envisioning myself in a scriptorium. I'm looking at marginalia. My life has changed immensely.
- [04:47]
Elise Wong
Or such fudgeing nerds. It's just like. It just comes out of you.
- [04:52]
Claire Aubin
And I get it. I so get it. Because, like, those of us who are, like, 20th century people are not like that. Like, for us, it's like, yes, I was in an archive and I read the most horrifying thing you've ever heard of in your entire life, and then suddenly it's 10 years later, and that's what I do for a living. Like, it's. It's not like. And there was this trippy, like, spooky esoteric, arcane thing I was in. You know, for us, it's like, I read something depressing.
- [05:19]
Elise Wong
Yeah, well, your stuff always connects to the present. Right? Like, there's always immediately. Even if it's early 20th century, there's some sort of immediate connection to your regular life. And I think that's another thing that draws medievalists to our period, is that you can often forget about regular life. And I've chosen to make lots of connections to the present. But you don't have to. Many people don't. Sure.
- [05:42]
Claire Aubin
I've said this before on the show, but I did my master's and my PhD at Edinburgh, which has, like, a big medievalist contingent.
- [05:48]
Elise Wong
Oh, yeah. Because.
- [05:49]
Claire Aubin
Well, firstly, it's Edinburgh. So, like, obviously, just location wise, but also there's the. The environment of Edinburgh is like this, like, dungeony, dark, wet experience. Like, wherever you are, you basically are, like, recreating the scriptorium experience. So I think there's something that medievalists are like, oh, what I can do, because I'm not researching the present, is just surround myself in the atmosphere.
- [06:13]
Elise Wong
Yeah, there's definitely, like, an element of escapism to being a medievalist.
- [06:20]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, I could see that. And I think every medievalist I know has said essentially the same thing to me. And I kind of. I envy that a little bit, because unfortunately for me, like, there's no. I'm just in it. Like, there's no escape from this.
- [06:34]
Elise Wong
Honestly, I feel like this is a problem for me with this new book because I'm writing about something that is relevant right now, and I'm old also reading about it on the news. Like, conspiracy theories are everywhere and you can't avoid them. And it means. It feels like I can't avoid my work.
- [06:49]
Claire Aubin
Well, sure.
- [06:50]
Elise Wong
And I really feel for 20th century people because you can never avoid your work. It's always coming at you all the time. And we're like, this is exhausting. How do you do this?
- [06:59]
Claire Aubin
I always joke that Nazi or something having to do with the word Nazi or the Holocaust trends on Twitter every single day. And I'm not really on Twitter that much anymore. But, like, it used to be a thing where I was like, I can't even go anywhere without this appeal appearing in front of me.
- [07:15]
Elise Wong
Yeah, I hate it. It's terrible.
- [07:17]
Claire Aubin
It's awful. We're not even talking about what we're supposed to be talking about yet. But one of the things that I think is really funny and maybe you'll think this is funny. My friend's dating app her way of, like, sussing people out on dating apps, which I now think is, like, genius, is I think on dating apps now you can put, like, ask a question and have someone answer it. And her question is, this will make sense, I promise. Her question is, what conspiracy theory can you be convinced to believe? Because she was like, this lets you know how wacko someone is and how scary they are right off the bat. Because, like, someone who's like, moon landing, you're like, okay, kind of harmless. Like, there are obviously lots of bad things there, but, like, you know, this person is just, like, a little kooky versus, like, adrenochrome, you know, Like.
- [08:11]
Elise Wong
Like, it tells you a lot. It's also, like, a good invitation. Like, if you just put it out there, Like, I am interested in what conspiracy theories you might believe. Most people, even conspiracy theorists, have the, like, social wherewithal to withhold it if you don't ask. If you do ask, then they'll just let loose. So that. That is a very. That's. That's a really good question.
- [08:33]
Claire Aubin
And the wackier it is, the more they're like, oh, I found one of us. Whereas she's being like, great. So this person is immediately a no for me, which I just think that's, like, a genius way of dealing with this out.
- [08:46]
Elise Wong
No.
- [08:47]
Claire Aubin
Yeah. So, yeah, feel free. Anyone listening to this, feel free to use that and steal it and make that a thing that you do.
- [08:53]
Elise Wong
It's a good one.
- [08:54]
Claire Aubin
I think. It's really good.
- [08:56]
Elise Wong
It is really good.
- [08:57]
Claire Aubin
Okay. Speaking of conspiracy theories, we have found ourselves our way back to the point of the show. We are talking about the first pair of people on the show today. So who are we talking about?
- [09:08]
Elise Wong
So we're talking about two people who lived in the 12th century in England. The first one is a man named Godwin Sturt, and he is a parish priest in Norwich, which is a city that is to the, like, northeast of London. So he's. He's like, you know, parish priest means you have a lot of local power. He doesn't have anything really beyond that. He's not an archdeacon. He's not canon. He's not part of the church structure. He's just like, you know, a locally respected man. And the other person that we're talking about, and he's English. And so this is very important. I'll talk about this a little bit later, but at the time, this is just after the Norman conquest of England. So the Normans have come, and William the Conqueror comes and conquers England. And so you've got these two populations now, the ruling Normans and the English who were already there. Godwin Sturt is English, as you can probably tell from his name. And then we're also talking about Thomas of Monmouth, who is Norman and he is a monk, and he's a Benedictine monk in the monastery in Norwich.
- [10:22]
Claire Aubin
And that's pretty much.
- [10:24]
Elise Wong
That's pretty much it. Like, I. I wasn't kidding when I say I study people who we don't know very, very much about. I even usually study less consequential people. Like, I study people who. Where you have one record, like one death roll or something like that. In this case, that's pretty much all we know about these people. I know a little bit about Godwin's family. I know nothing about Thomas's family, and that's about it.
- [10:48]
Claire Aubin
And that's not because, like, just because you don't know this, but that's because that they.
- [10:52]
Elise Wong
Oh, yeah, no, we don't know.
- [10:54]
Claire Aubin
These things are not of great consequence. These people end up being of great consequence. But the. Everything around them before and even kind of after this moment that we're going to talk about is not of enormous consequence. But I also think it's funny. This is another one of these guys. The further back we go, the more frequently we have people on the show or we talk about people on the show that are like, we know they were active at this moment in time. We don't really know when they were born or when they died. So this is a case of that.
- [11:24]
Elise Wong
Yes. We don't know birth, death dates for either of them. No, we know that they were alive somewhere between like 11:30 and 11:70.
- [11:34]
Claire Aubin
They were definitely alive and grown up and active in the mid 12th century, certainly by the year 1144 BCE, which will become consequential in just a minute. We also know that Godwin is the uncle by marriage to a boy named William, who will also become very important. And for people who are listening to this, who know anything about medieval history, this might be starting to some bells. We know. This is something that I found out from my brief research. We know that Thomas of Monmouth, he's a Benedictine monk at Norwich Cathedral Priory, which he joined at some point before 1150, but most likely not before 1144.
- [12:15]
Elise Wong
Yes, that is important.
- [12:17]
Claire Aubin
So we think he joined after this important year, 1144.
- [12:21]
Elise Wong
Yes.
- [12:22]
Claire Aubin
And he's a writer, and that's what I have.
- [12:25]
Elise Wong
Well, he fancies himself a writer.
- [12:28]
Claire Aubin
That's also important here.
- [12:31]
Elise Wong
It is also important. I mean, Thomas clearly, just to give a little bit of sense of who these men are. Godwin is your standard issue English priest at this time. He probably knows enough Latin to get by in his job, because at this point, the liturgy is all in Latin. That does not mean he actually speaks and writes in it. He's probably like functionally literate, but it's very unlikely that he wrote anything of consequence. So he's kind of at that rung. And then Thomas is actually very well educated. And this leads me, and I think most people to think he probably had some sort of noble background. So he's probably like the second son or third son of a lord who ended up in a monastery. So he got a very, very she education for the time. He's completely fluent in English, French and Latin. He knows a lot of the classics. So he's. He's very well educated. He fancies himself a writer. That kind of gives you a sense of their class, I think.
- [13:35]
Claire Aubin
And I think what's also interesting, and this will become very apparent very shortly, but is that they both, in order to become consequential, they both rely on each other. Like they are not individually consequential, but together they create this thing. And again, it's also not even together like in cahoots with one another, but in conjunction with one another. They. They cause this thing to happen. There's a third person of import here, not a person who sucks, but who matters very greatly or ends up mattering very greatly to the sucking of others. And it's the person named William of Norwich, who I mentioned earlier as the. The nephew by marriage of Godwinster. Can you tell me who William of Norwich is?
- [14:22]
Elise Wong
Yeah. So he's of Norwich because we now call him that because he was born in Norwich, but William in 1144. So he's. We do know his birth date. He was born in 1132 and he died in 1144. So he's found. He's found when he is 12 years old, dead in a forest outside of Norwich, so outside the walls by a forester. And he's found the day before Easter. So he's found Saturday, March 24, in 1144. And he's got injuries to his arms, legs and face. And he has a teasel stuck in his mouth, which is a. It's like a thistle. And they used to use it to raise the nap on woolen garments. And this will be important in a moment. So the. The body's identified and it turns out that he is the nephew of Godwyn Sturch And William's father has already passed away, Winston. And so Godwin is the person to come to collect the body. He begins a rumor or a accusation that Jews killed his nephew. And he gets up at the next synod, which is, like, the local governing body of the church. And, you know, they usually talk about property matters and stuff, but he gets up, and he accuses the Jews of Norwich of having murdered his nephew and calls for vengeance. He seems to have kind of been politely ignored. They move William's body to the churchyard. They're like, okay, we'll move him to the monastery. But, like, hopefully that's the end of it. And he kind of does a little more maneuvering. I can talk about later, but he pretty much has to give up because the Bishop of Norwich is like, no, I don't. I don't think so. The bishop even summons some of the leadership of the Jews of Norwich to the castle to talk to them. Nothing comes of it. He's not convinced. And so Godwin kind of has to drop it at an official level. But he starts this, like, seedy little relic business on the side, which is. In Catholicism, relics are the body parts or effects of saints. And especially during the medieval period, these were sort of ways that you could. If you were. Especially if you were desperate for some sort of cure for an ailment, you would go to touch a relic or to get the water that a relic has been dipped in. And so Godwin is trying to kind of like, canonize his nephew as a martyr through his relic business. And so he has. The only thing he takes from William's body when he goes to see the boy is the teasel. And he brings that back, and he starts his little relic business. There are saints at this time for whom relics are, like. They're a really big, thriving business. There's, like, Thomas Becket. People come from the continent to come make pilgrimages to. To his shrine. This is more like the dollar store knockoff version of that. He's like. He's kind of known on the streets. Like, he's probably known in his little parish for doing this, but he makes, like, a tidy little living off of it. Yeah, he gets people to give him their livestock in exchange for these little cures and for telling the story of William. And that kind of seems to be the end of it for a while.
- [17:51]
Claire Aubin
Hi, it's Claire. Thank you for listening to the show. You're currently hearing the free version of this guy sucked. So I'm here to tell you about our Patreon in Order to make the show sustainably and independently. Episodes switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of good, accurate public history made by actual experts, consider supporting us and joining our honorary haters club. It's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board. For the price of a pastry at your local hip coffee shop, you'll get to listen to a new episode every week instead of just the bi weekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives. To sweeten the deal, just head over to patreon.com this guy sucked. Or follow the link in the episode description to sign up. It's interesting how many people have been on this show or again, people I've talked about on the show. Not the people on the show who are talking to me, but the people we've talked about on the show, who we are. Like, okay, so part of the issue with this person is that they're very straightforwardly a grifter. Like, part of the problem is that they start a grift and then this grift has this enormous ripple effect, this huge domino effect that causes all this stuff. But it often, very often starts off as this like, well, I guess my 12 year old nephew has died.
- [19:12]
Elise Wong
How can I make a dollar on this?
- [19:13]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, how do I make a buck off of this tragedy?
- [19:17]
Elise Wong
He's so hateable.
- [19:18]
Claire Aubin
He's just like, well, yeah, that it starts up like there are many things. You're like, well, that alone is enough to sort of disqualify, qualify this person as a good person.
- [19:28]
Elise Wong
But this is like a small time grift, right? Like, that's part of actually what makes it kind of despicable is like he's destabilizing the trust in his community so that he can get like this poor woman's last chicken. Yeah. For a little bit of the water that he's dipped the Teasel in. Like, really, dude, that's the level that we're going for. So, yeah, he's got this like this seedy little business that's going on for a while. You know, everybody in Norwich knows about it, but nobody is, nobody's particularly bothered. And he even like, he tries to rile up anti Semitic sentiment and people are like, I don't know, like, doesn't seem true.
- [20:05]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, seems unlikely.
- [20:06]
Elise Wong
Seems unlikely. Yeah, there Are there are things about William that made it seem kind of unlikely. So just to sort of get to the end of this story, he's just got this kind of story about like, vaguely the Jews murdered William. That's his story is like they murdered him because they're evil. It doesn't really get much more complicated than that. And then the turning point is there's this big trial. King Stephen comes to town specifically to hear this trial. And so Eliezer, a Jewish money lender, has been found dead, actually in the same woods where William was found. And this is in 1149. So five years after William's dead, and there's like this huge trial in the castle. Like whole town shows up. This whole thing, everybody already knows what happened. So Simon de Novors was a crusader knight and he had borrowed a great deal of money from Eliezer to go on the Second Crusade, because the First Crusade kind of, kind of worked out. And so people borrowed really extravagantly for the Second Crusade. Second Crusade was a disaster. I'm not a Crusade historian, but I think Crusade historians would agree that the Second Crusade was just an unmitigated crusade disaster. Yeah. So Simon, like most who came back, can't pay his debt. And so his men, either out of loyalty to him or under orders, lure Eliezer to the woods and murder him rather than repaying the debt. And so everybody, everybody knows this is what's happened. It's not a secret. The question isn't what happened, it's if this Christian Norman king is going to punish a Christian Norman knight for the death of a Jewish. And it actually seems like he might have. But at that moment, the bishop, the same one who ignored Godwin when he first got up at the synod and made his big accusation and everything, the same bishop who was just like, calm down. Gets up to speak. And by the way, Simon is his vassal. Simon is his vassal knight, the bishop's vassal knight.
- [22:06]
Claire Aubin
So he has some vested interest here.
- [22:08]
Elise Wong
Yeah. You know, out of pure love of justice and no ulterior motives to speak. And the bishop says, sure, you know, murder should be punished, blah, blah, blah, no matter who the victim is, but not until the Jews are punished for a murder of their own. So he tells the king in front of Everybody, you know, five years ago, a 12 year old boy was found dead in the woods and the Jews are suspected to have done it. And there's a huge uproar in the courtyard. And the king, he's been having these succession wars and things like that. He can tell a riot when it's coming. And so he immediately ends it. He's just like, I'll hear this later. We'll hear this trial later. Let's. I'm out of here. And so he hightails it back to London and, like, that's kind of the end of it. He just absents himself from the process. This is the first sort of actual threat to the Jews of Norwich. They end up spending the night inside the castle, protected by the Sheriff of Norwich to protect them from the anger of the. The crowd. And just at this sort of moment when that's what everybody is talking about, Thomas Monmouth arrives in town and he hears about Godwin's story, and he hears about this. And Thomas, you know, he's raised in the monastery. He knows what a saint looks like when he sees one, and he knows an opportunity when he sees it. Yeah. And so he's ready to pick up the. This story. And there's no sort of evidence that they, you know, hung out together. But I. I think Thomas and Godwin would have kind of gotten along. Like, they were kind of similar characters. And Thomas begins to write this story, the life and passion of William of Norwich, in order to make him a real saint. And Thomas actually knows how to do this, unlike Godwin. Like, he knows all the notes you should hit. You know, he takes advantage of the timing around Easter and, like, the, you know, compares it to the crucifixion. So he's got this whole story. And then we get the story that, like. Because that's also the same time as Passover, that the Jews must have crucified William and used his blood in their Passover rituals. And this is the story that becomes blood libel. Yeah, this is why they suck is this is the beginning of blood libel. And it's not that there weren't accusations of murder against Jews, but before this, but this, like, fully formed story that Jews kidnap and crucify Christian children and use their blood for Passover rituals began here with Thomas and Godwin. And then pretty much every decade since then to the present, we have had an accusation of blood libel. It continues throughout the medieval period. There are hundreds of pogroms across Europe based on accusations of blood libel of this particular act. And then, you know, it continues into the 19th century, the 20th century. It's a big hobby horse of the Nazis. There's a whole, like, disturmer issue on blood libel. It's got, like, picture of William, and this continues to the present. You might recognize it from Qanon.
- [25:24]
Claire Aubin
Yeah. And it's interesting Also because it shows up in ways, it starts to morph also. So one of the things that I wrote down here, and we'll talk about all of these things in a lot more depth, but one of the things that I wrote down here is that although sort of anti Semitic in origin, these blood libel accusations do begin to pop up in other contexts, usually as accusations against a sort of barbarized minority. So they'll show up in places like South Asia and the Middle east in the 20th and 21st century. Like a good example of this being used or this trope being used in a way that remains sort of anti Semitic at its origin but is weaponized against other groups. We'll see things like Hindu nationalist groups using a similar, more adapted trope against Muslims, particularly Pakistani Muslims. In the late 20th and 21st century. We've seen a lot of conspiratorial tropes used against a lot of minoritized groups.
- [26:18]
Elise Wong
Well, J.D. vance's Haitians Eating pets is like, it's straight out of the. That. Yeah.
- [26:23]
Claire Aubin
Lots of people will online will joke about Trump saying things like, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. But that's being said to demonize Haitian migrants in the US and to me, that's a very subtle, not actually subtle invocation of blood libel, given the sort of familial parental relationships that modern Americans have with their pets. Now that, that to me is a very like, obvious thing that's happening here.
- [26:46]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And it draws on that like, disgust. Right. There's the essential disgust of like ingesting human blood or like ingesting something that you're not supposed to ingest. Yeah.
- [26:57]
Claire Aubin
And it all begins with this really hyper specific accusation, which, as I said, like, we're going to talk even more in depth about this accusation, but it's good to sort of give people some of the broader context in the way that they might have like encountered this previously without realizing that they were encountering it. Ivan Marcus, who's also at Yale, has a really great book out that came out last year called how the West Became Anti Semitic. And he talks about the circumstances that allow this to grow in the 12th century. He talks about like previous to that as well. But he talks about Christians and Jews competing with one another for identity, competing with one another for attention and power. And so when we talk about Godwin and Thomas and the 12th century, a lot of what we see as very obvious modern anti Semitism, like 21st century anti Semitism and 20th century anti Semitism is really being Shored up at the point in time that Godwin and Thomas are alive. And it becomes a way to distinguish acceptable, at that time, modern, enlightened Christian practice from unacceptable, barbarous Judaism. So it's not just about, like, hating Jews. It's about establishing Christian identity as this, like, correct set of behaviors. So it's important that people understand that. It's like, there's a lot of layers to this.
- [28:11]
Elise Wong
Well, I, I always teach this in my, in my classes because I teach Chaucer and I teach his prioress tale, which isn't. Which is blood libel. It is a story of a little boy who is murdered by the Jews. But Chaucer is writing, In 1385, 1390, the Jews were expelled. 100 years before that, there are no Jews in England. So why is he telling this tale? And something that we talk about is that it's because Christian English identity is dependent on having expelled the Jews. Yeah, right. Like, that is part of what makes you an English Christian is that you have expelled the Jews. And so you need to kind of keep on shoring up that part of the identity. And, and when I talk about it in classes, we talk about, like, the sort of guilt and trauma of having done that. Right? The. The guilt and trauma of a genocide and having to continually reinforce it and be like, yes, we did the right thing. Yes, we did. Like, this is. This is like, obviously the right thing to have done, otherwise you're in trouble.
- [29:21]
Claire Aubin
And it still persists in the modern UK in a way that's very weird, where you'll see, like, philo Semitism in response to this, where there's an obsession with Jews and Judaism, but also there still are. Outside of specific, like, enclaves, there are still not large proportions of Jews. Like, technically, my PhD was in religious studies because I had to be with the Jewish studies professor. And Edinburgh had one Jewish studies professor for this huge university. Because there's. There, it's. It's a very. The way that Britain and the uk, their relationship with Jews, very strange. And I think it just comes out of this long term, like, bizarre. I mean, I don't know. That was my reading of it.
- [30:06]
Elise Wong
I mean, I think it's only in the last 20 years that England has started going back to these shrines. Like Hugh of Lincoln, who sort of follows William and adding plaques that are like, so this isn't true, by the way. Like, we still have a shrine to this person. But by the way, this is kind of bad that they did this. Like, they're just getting around to this now, and there's nothing about William of Norwich, like, in Norwich.
- [30:33]
Claire Aubin
There's nothing they'll say, like, this person is a saint. This person was martyred. We're not sure how or by whom.
- [30:42]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [30:42]
Claire Aubin
But we still want this person to be a saint. So we're. That is. We're leaving that.
- [30:48]
Elise Wong
We're just sort of leaving that. Yeah. And if you don't know, then you wouldn't. You wouldn't sort of know this. This background. Like, there are plenty of people from Norwich who I've spoken to who have never heard this story.
- [30:59]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, totally.
- [31:00]
Elise Wong
And this is like. This is the beginning of blood libel. This is the first one that we.
- [31:03]
Claire Aubin
Know of, and it inspires a bajillion more to pop up. So it's not even just like pogroms, but the exact story shows up over and over and over again.
- [31:12]
Elise Wong
And you can trace it going across England. Like, it goes from there to Bury, which is right nearby, to Lincoln. Like, you can draw a line to trace where it travels. Yeah.
- [31:21]
Claire Aubin
And then you can see it going across the continent as well. One of the most famous instances of blood libel that people may or may not have heard of is in 1426. For some point in the 1400s, there's Simon of Trent, and that becomes very, very famous. And it follows basically the same story.
- [31:38]
Elise Wong
Exactly the same story.
- [31:39]
Claire Aubin
And so it's.
- [31:40]
Elise Wong
It's a.
- [31:42]
Claire Aubin
One of the things when I teach classes to students, so, like, when I teach a Holocaust history class, I always start off with, like, a primer on European anti Semitism before the Holocaust, so people will, like, understand what it looks like. And usually when we get to the blood label part and I show the enormous number of, like, etchings and paintings and, like, visual representations of this and how they'll be in all different places, supposedly depicting all different children and different people. But they're all exactly the same.
- [32:13]
Elise Wong
Yeah, they were all in exactly the same position with the child in the middle. Yeah, It's. It's all on a template. Yeah.
- [32:19]
Claire Aubin
And the students are, like, shocked by this. And I have to say, like, this is. These guys are. This. Are what makes this happen.
- [32:28]
Elise Wong
And, you know, it gets leveraged to buy the right and by the. By the people who believe in Qanon and this. Like this in blood libel, because Qanon is essentially. Blood libel is the theory that Democrats are sacrificing children. They use the antiquity of these images to prove their point. Right. These go around as means to prove that, like, this has always been going on. And I think But I think the really interesting thing about this, this moment in the 12th century is we're actually not there yet. The. A lot of the tropes about the evil Jew with the hooked nose, especially the physical attributes and the tail, things like that, the horns, that's actually not in wide circulation yet. And in Norwich. Norwich is a really interesting place at this moment because. So this is post conquest. Conquest is in 1066, William comes over. William the Conqueror comes over and he brings his men with him. And the way this works on a kind of, you know, administrative level is he installs his Norman men across the country. And there are some places where there's a lot of pushback to this. And in Norwich there's some, but not as much as in other places. Norwich stays pretty stable. It's also like a really attractive place for the Normans to settle because it's not a port city, but it is. It leads directly to a port. So the. The river that goes through it leads directly to the River Yare that comes out at Yarmouth. Like, it's really easy to get to. It's a really good place for trade. It has enormous reserves of peat, so it makes a lot of money by actually exporting peat. So it runs on Pete, but it also exports it and it's physically very defensible. It's in the middle of all these peat bogs. So nobody is sneaking up on anybody in Norwich. Like, it's flat as a pancake, it's hard to navigate. You're not going to be marching troops over it. So in a lot of ways, it's really attractive to the Normans and they move in and pretty soon Norwich becomes the second largest city in England due to the Norman Conquest. And so it's actually a pretty Norman friendly city, as these things go. But it also, you know, it completely remakes the city. The way that they do it is, you know, they demolish 98 English houses to make the Norman quarter and build the Norman capsule. And it's a huge production. They. There's no hill in all of Norfolk, so they build a hill and then they build the castle on top of it. And it becomes the center of this new city. And they bring with them the Jews who came just after the Conqueror. So the Conqueror invites Jews to come settle from Normandy in England. And there's a small community that comes to Norwich, partly because it is so Norman heavy. Like, it's. So it's relatively safe. It's this really interesting moment of it's a town that has been properly colonized it really has been taken over. And from Godwin's perspective, you know, he's lost all of his status. So another kind of like interesting detail you can tell me when I'm just rambling off.
- [35:49]
Claire Aubin
No, this is great.
- [35:50]
Elise Wong
I'm but like thralled. Godwin is a fascinating. Like, I feel like I, I love thinking about him because you know this person in your life, like he's a parish priest. His father was a parish priest. His father's father was a parish priest. His mother, his like wife's father was a parish priest. So it's priests all the way back. And you might notice from that that these priests had children. And this is a standard thing in the English priesthood that you marry and you pass your position down to your children. And like that is what English priesthood is. It's an inherited position. Like it's not nobility, he's not a noble, but it's kind of as close as you get while still being kind of on the peasant end of things. You are handing down your status and your position to your sons. And his father in law, Woolard, we actually know his name, was probably kind of the last generation where that was the standard. And Godwin ends up being kind of a man out of time. Because the Normans are serious about the celibacy thing. Yeah. And if you're not celibate, you can't hold positions of power and you can't be an archdeacon, you can't be a canon, you can't have sort of like decision making power within the church. If you are not celibate or at least nominally celibate, you can't be married, you can't be a married priest. And Godwin is. And so, you know, he grew up kind of expecting a life like his father and his father in law, this like sinecure, like he, he expected to have the life that they had. This, this life of consequence. You live off of the tithes from your parishioners. You don't have to do any labor. He lives in a nice house in town. He expected to have consequence in his life. And that was taken away by the conquest in this new structure in which, you know, it's not only that he can't hold positions of power, but he doesn't even speak the language of the people in power. Now it's all French and like, I assume he knew enough French to get by, but that is not his native town.
- [38:00]
Claire Aubin
So this conquest happens in 1066, but it affects him in 1130 ish too.
- [38:08]
Elise Wong
Norwich was really transformed kind of the end of the 11th century. And that's when all of these changes come into effect. And, you know, they build the monastery and they build the cathedral, and they sort of. They build the church in Norwich. And it is a church that does not involve Godwin's church. It is a church that excludes him. Yeah.
- [38:29]
Claire Aubin
And Norwich is, like I said, Thomas is a monk at Norwich Cathedral Priory for people who haven't lived in Europe or haven't spent as much time around it, like a cathedral city. To live in a cathedral city, which is just any city with a cathedral or like a head of a d. Where.
- [38:47]
Elise Wong
Where you have a bishop.
- [38:48]
Claire Aubin
Where you have a bishop. Your whole city, especially prior to now, is organized around this cathedral. Like, it's organized around Christianity Cathedral. The clergy members have enormous power in your city. Like, so to go from being in a family where they have power by having any relationship to the church to then losing that power because a cathedral is built and it. That is the real power now. Like, that is the real Christian power there. It does give you a clear picture of this kind of guy, if that makes sense.
- [39:25]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And I think the really important thing is, like, he doesn't actually lose any money or power within his, like, little parish. They still listen to him on Sunday. Well, you know, maybe, but they still go to his sermons on Sunday. Right. He's still the guy. He doesn't lose his position. Like, the. The bishop who comes in, Bishop Herbert de La Zinga, is. He's very practical. He's like, I'm not going to take this away from you. We're just going to build a structure on top of you. And so it's not even that he loses anything. He just. Now, in the hierarchy, there are rungs above him, and he is aware of this. Like, Right. He's not on top of. He was on top, and now he's no longer on top. Even though he technically has, like, about the same income, he's probably actually doing better because the population is growing. Like, things are not bad for Godwin Stern. Like, let's make that clear. I think we. When we talk about conspiracy theories, we often try to, like, give people the benefit of the doubt. And we're like, you know, there must be something that they're really suffering from that they're trying to, like, work out through this. Godwin's not suffering.
- [40:33]
Claire Aubin
Or, like, they turn to this out of desperation to explain exactly.
- [40:37]
Elise Wong
Godwin is not suffering. I don't. I don't buy it.
- [40:41]
Claire Aubin
I think also, and I think this ties Together, what you're saying, it seems to me very obvious that him blaming the Jews for the death of his nephew and also his lack of station, our acts or loss of station are very closely tied to one another. Because if the Normans come in, they build this cathedral, they add people on top of you. And one of the most notable things that they do is bring Jews with them, essentially. You're not like, bring that with them, but, like, make Jews able to live in this area. Because Jews start showing up in Norwich more in higher numbers at this exact same time. And then they become money lenders and outsiders and very easy scapegoats at the same time. He can say, well, here's this bad thing that happened to me. Here are these people that accompany this bad thing. Here's this other bad thing that happened to me.
- [41:34]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [41:35]
Claire Aubin
How can I tie these to one another?
- [41:37]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And I think it makes a lot of sense that, you know, a man like that, he's a man who. Who values power. Right. Clearly, this. This matters to him. He doesn't go against the people who actually have power. Yeah. He goes against the. The sort of symbol and people who he can punch down to. Yeah. Because he doesn't criticize the bishop. There are places in England where there's a lot more resistance to Norman rule. This is not the case in Norwich. And he's not. Godwin is not part of that. He doesn't resist these changes above him. Yeah. He aims below him. Yeah. And the thing with the Jews and Norwich is, like, this is actually kind of as good as it gets for Jews in England. In Norwich, like, they have a pretty large population. By the 13th century, it's estimated they were something like 7% of the population of Norwich. They live in a sort of area near the market, but there's no kind of ghetto or area that. That is closed off. They're pretty. Actually relatively integrated. And, like, one of the interesting things about William is he was a tanner's apprentice. He seems to have been like a sweet kid. He seems to have been really sociable. He just kind of had the run of the town. Godwin very sternly warned him not to make friends with the Jews. And William, being a teenager, was like, so, well, that's what I'm gonna do. Well, sure. And he, you know, he seems to have made friends with boys his age. He went over to their houses for meals. Like, he seems to have actually been quite good friends with the Jewish community. And they. He was there, like, go to Tanner. And so he had this established relationship which means that when Godwin brings out these accusations, people are a little bit like, I don't know about that.
- [43:22]
Claire Aubin
Like, they liked him.
- [43:23]
Elise Wong
They liked him. What? Why? Yeah, like there's actually a lot of pushback to Godwin, who, you know, is not as sophisticated as Thomas. So he's got this kind of like crude story and people are like, I don't know, we haven't had any problems with these people. Like, and William was friends with them in Norwich. They actually have a variety of roles. They're known for their goldsmithing. And you know, a lot of their loans are very low level loans, like, you know, to a small holder to buy a new plow kind of thing that you repay at the end of the harvest. These are not big sums of money like Eliezer. Like Eliezer is a big money lender. But there are many sort of smaller time ones and people interact with them all the time. Time, sure. And so if you're Godwin's neighbors and you're kind of being like, well, does this seem like a likely story? You might decide? No. And that does seem to be what they decided they were like. I don't, I don't think so.
- [44:16]
Claire Aubin
I think also one of the things that I was really fascinated by is the way that Thomas. So when Thomas writes about this and publicizes this story that he writes, yeah. He uses William's kindness or his openness or his friendliness to portray him as uniquely vulnerable to Jews. And also, and this fits with their like, weird interaction with one another in terms of Godwin and Thomas and the creation of this blood libel myth is he says that William is friendly and this causes Jews to pay attention to him. But he also says that Godwin warned him against it and so that there was always. There was already suspicion about the Jews to begin with. Like he writes, I love to include some primary source quotes.
- [45:09]
Elise Wong
Yeah, please.
- [45:10]
Claire Aubin
This is a translated version. But he writes, there was in Norwich a certain priest, Godwin by name, who had for his wife the sister of the boy's mother. The boy being William. He strongly rebuked the boy for his frequent visits to the Jews houses, suspecting evil of them. Which to me seems like some retconning here in terms of him being like, well, he always had known that they were evil and positions Godwin as this really foreboding figure who already was aware of the underlying tensions between Christians and Jews shortly before William's murder. And then basically says like, and then the Holy week happens, which is the seven days before Easter. And that presents them with this, you know, perfect opportunity to do evil against this child. And it is interesting that everyone's not like, well, why don't we find the guy who actually did this? And instead are like, well, well.
- [46:02]
Elise Wong
And that's, like, a fascinating thing. And I feel like one of the most damning things about godwyn Is that he does not ask for an inquest. Yeah. So in order to get a death inquest, you, have to request it. Child death is very common, unfortunately, during this period. But many. I would say, most children do get inquests because parents want some sort of closure. Want some sort of. And they also want a record of their child in the city records. And godwin does not ask for this. In fact, when he comes to collect the body, the only thing he brings back. He doesn't even bring. The other thing he should have done was bring William's body back to be buried in, you know, his cemetery. He's a parish priest. He has a cemetery. He could just bury him. No, he buries him there under the tree in the forest. The only thing he brings back to the town Is the teasel.
- [46:53]
Claire Aubin
You know, I was thinking that when you said that for all the relic options he has. Because, again, we're talking about a child here. But, like, with all of the. The relic options before this, People are taking fingernail clippings, Their bones.
- [47:07]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [47:07]
Claire Aubin
Hair. Like, all kinds of stuff. And he instead chooses the one thing that is not the body.
- [47:15]
Elise Wong
Yeah. It's weird.
- [47:17]
Claire Aubin
Which is weird.
- [47:18]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [47:19]
Claire Aubin
Like, looking at that as a historian, that's a strange thing to have chosen to do.
- [47:24]
Elise Wong
It's very weird. And also, like, as a historian, you look at the lack of a death inquest, and you're like. Because at this point, a death inquest Is basically the procedures. You go ask the neighbors what happened. Yeah. That's what you do, you see. Summon a jury of, like, local neighbors who then, like, get through the gossip mill and figure out what happened, and they sort of present the most likely scenario that the gossip mill seems not to have been on Godwin's side. Yeah. And he seems to have known this from the very first time he goes to collect the body. Like, there's something fishy about that, too, that he already knows not to bring the body back to the town. Like, I don't.
- [48:07]
Claire Aubin
We don't know. And I don't want to say that godwin has anything to do with it, but also, it does seem like the behavior of someone who had something to do with it a little bit. I don't know.
- [48:15]
Elise Wong
It doesn't. I don't either. Yeah. Or who, like, immediately saw the benefit in this, was like, yes, that may be more fair here.
- [48:23]
Claire Aubin
Well, he immediately capitalizes off of this. And that, to me, is a strange thing to do when your nephew has.
- [48:30]
Elise Wong
Just died, presumably grieving. One would think.
- [48:33]
Claire Aubin
One would think. We also didn't mention another part of the grift thing here, which is that Thomas also makes a fuckload of money off of this, off of this story that he writes.
- [48:45]
Elise Wong
Yeah. We haven't talked about Thomas, and Thomas is just as much of a shit as Godwin.
- [48:50]
Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [48:50]
Elise Wong
So Thomas, like, you know, I said his education indicates some sort of like, noble birthday. That's pro. I think that's probably true. You know, primogeniture, the fact that the eldest son gets it all meant that there are a lot of second sons, a lot of men who grew up with status and grew up around someone who is going to be basically the most powerful. Like being the first son of a feudal lord is kind of the most powerful position, one of the most powerful positions in history world. Like, you have this kind of like godlike power over the people around you. You don't have to do anything and you have an easy life for the rest of your life. There's just this sort of like, enormous gift that you grow up knowing that you have. And for the second son, it's like, well, I either have to wait for him to die or I have to find something else to do. And many of them go into monasteries and it's not all out of an abundance of. Of piety. You know, monasteries are a way that you can kind of be ambitious and advance even if you're not a lord. And so that's my guess about Thomas, again. We don't know. He at least got an extremely expensive education and then entered the monastery. And he seems to have been just like the most unlikable shit who has ever lived. Like, even he admits that his brothers hated him.
- [50:18]
Claire Aubin
Damn.
- [50:19]
Elise Wong
I mean, his, like the life and passion of William of Norwich is half about William, but it's like also half about Thomas's brothers who are always scheming against him and who were jealous of people who were successful. Like, it's his little burn book for all of the people who wronged him in his life. He's so petty.
- [50:40]
Claire Aubin
Well, it's like he has a conspiracy theorist mind. Right. Like he has.
- [50:43]
Elise Wong
Yes.
- [50:45]
Claire Aubin
Personality of a conspiracy theorist where he's like, well, the issue here, one, the Jews killed this child and perhaps they will be Killing more, which is what happens allegedly. And then he's also like, but also since birth, everyone has been against me.
- [51:00]
Elise Wong
Yes, exactly.
- [51:01]
Claire Aubin
Like, I don't know why believe the second half of the story if that's the first half of the story.
- [51:07]
Elise Wong
And the fascinating thing is, like, if you read. And I don't really recommend it, but if you read the Life and Passion of William of Norwich, the entire first part, like the prologue, and then, like, there's book one, which is about William's actual death. And then books two through seven are basically all about the evil people who do not believe Thomas. And, like, you know, the perfidious serpents who want to undermine the truth. And, like, the people who won't even believe things when they're in front of their eyes. Like, it's all about the evilness of people who doubt Thomas's story. And that does seem to have been the case. Like, he, you know, gets from Godwin this great story, and he can see, like, he can. He gets dollar signs in his eyes. He's like, okay, I could be the sacrist of this saint, which means, like, I could be the guy who holds the shrine and gets all of the donations that come in for this. And, like, if you couldn't advance in the monastery, this was. This was another way you could go. And, like, sidebar. This is how we know that everyone hated him. It's like, he was in this monastery for 40 years and he never advanced a single rung in the leadership. Like, people hated him.
- [52:27]
Claire Aubin
Goes up for 10 year yearly and is just.
- [52:30]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And people are just like, no, absolutely not. No, not him. Not him. And so, like, he. He sees this as like, okay, this is going to be my. This is going to be my back door. I'm going to get in this way. And he writes this book, and he writes the. Like, people think that basically what he did is he wrote the first book, which is really a straight up, like, you know, this is the blood libel. This is what happened to William. The Jews crucified him. Here are all the details. It's kind of straightforward. It's not very flowery. He thinks that, like, he's got it, and he takes it to his prior, Prior Elias. But unlike Thomas Elias, he's kind of like part of the conservative old guard of the Benedictines. He doesn't like all of these newfangled saints. He's very suspicious of these, like, local saints. And he, you know, knew about William, heard about Godwin's little relic business. He's. He was in Norwich Before. Before. He seems to have grown up in Norwich, unlike Thomas. And so he's seen this whole, like, distasteful relic business thing go by. And so when Thomas brings this book to Aurelius, he's like, absolutely not. No, we're not doing that. And that seems to be the turning point where Thomas is like, all right, well, everybody is just against me. And he. He says, like, the people who are driven by, quote, the very spirit of the perversity, and they refuse to believe those things that are written and even reject those things which have been testified by many. And so then Thomas regroups and he's like, okay, this is what we're going to do. And he decides to have visions of his own. I say decides, okay, maybe. Maybe he has.
- [54:11]
Claire Aubin
Maybe he has visions.
- [54:13]
Elise Wong
Maybe he has visions. He has three visions of William coming to him to, like, argue for his sanctification. And so Thomas returns to his book and he adds these visions. He also adds these, like, inside sources. He talks about Theobald, who he claims is a convert he met in Cambridgeshire.
- [54:36]
Claire Aubin
Yeah, I was gonna ask, do you think Theobald is real or not? Because this is also a source of controversy.
- [54:42]
Elise Wong
I mean, I would say no. I would say there might have been someone like that. I think that if I had to put my money on it, I would say that Theobald didn't actually exist. He's this convert, apparently, from Judaism to Christianity, who we never hear about anywhere else from anyone else. This is the only source. He's also not in Norwich. I think this is important. He's in Cambridge, so he's like. He's not close to the people who might know. So Prior Ellius isn't going to know Theobald. Right. Whereas you might know a convert in Norway.
- [55:16]
Claire Aubin
Well, sure, because there's a whole process they would have gone for.
- [55:19]
Elise Wong
This is like, you know, my girlfriend in Canada, you know her, like, this kind. It. It smacks of that. We don't. We don't know. So Theobald apparently is a convert. And he says every year Jews from across the world gather in Nurbonne and they choose a location amongst their settlements across the world in which to sacrifice Christian child. And that year they'd fall into Norwich. And so that's how it happened. And so this is sort of expanding the theory of blood libel. Right? It's building out the world of blood libel.
- [55:54]
Claire Aubin
Say, expanding the anti Semitism universe is what's.
- [55:57]
Elise Wong
Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's building out the lore of the antisemitism universe. I Think it's extremely convenient. Like, I know all of the scholarship that's talked about. You know, there is a gathering of Jews near there in France. Like, there is some sort of historical connection that could have been made. It just seems really super convenient.
- [56:20]
Claire Aubin
Well, sure.
- [56:21]
Elise Wong
And also that it's not mentioned the first time he writes the story. Yeah.
- [56:25]
Claire Aubin
And I would just like to add that, like, religions and religious groups meet up all the time, and part of the agenda is not normally, where's the sacrifice for the year gonna happen? I think that's one we are a little suspicious with. Cause even if that were true, Right. That this meetup happens, that doesn't mean that what this alleged convert of his imaginary friend Theobald thinks. I don't know. I understand the. I think the skepticism is warranted on this one.
- [56:54]
Elise Wong
Yeah. It's not unusual for a person to have only one record from this time. Like, the fact that there is no other evidence of Theobald is not. That's not unusual. It's just, like, really convenient that he has this guy. And there is another person. He cites a Jew in Norwich who he doesn't give the name of, but a Jew in Norwich who he cites. And this one I actually believe, mostly because I think Thomas didn't get the joke. He says that the Jews in Norwich have become fond of saying, quote, you should pay us. Great, thanks. Because we have made a saint and martyr for you. We have done something that you could not do for yourselves. He. Which is funny. That's funny. It's objectively funny. Like, it's. It's a joke. It's attempting to, like, obviously, you know, if Thomas had had any sense of humor whatsoever, sure, he might have gotten the joke.
- [57:49]
Claire Aubin
And also, if you had done the murdering, you probably wouldn't make this joke. So you'd be like, well, lucky you. You know, we did this thing. Like.
- [57:59]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And it's. It's like the perfect kind of dark humor. Like, it's. It's also kind of like poking fun at their own vulnerability. Right. It's like. It's a great piece of humor. Because the best kind of humor is a little bit dangerous. You only play with your own safety rather than punching down. Yeah.
- [58:16]
Claire Aubin
And Thomas does not get it.
- [58:19]
Elise Wong
And Thomas just straight over it says.
- [58:21]
Claire Aubin
Aha, I have evidence.
- [58:23]
Elise Wong
Exactly. So that one I believe, because he's so dumb. Like, he's just dumb. He missed it, I believe.
- [58:31]
Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [58:31]
Elise Wong
So that one seems maybe likely. So, I don't know. I'll leave Theobolt, like, up in the air. That's possible.
- [58:43]
Claire Aubin
Hello everybody. I am here to tell you that the Multi Crew drive is back. You might be like, hey Claire, what's the Multi Crew drive? And that would be a very reasonable question because this show did not yet exist during the last one. If you're not familiar, TGS is a part of Multitude, which is a really cool podcast collective. The Multi Crew drive is our way of saying thank you to those of you who have supported Multitude through its special membership program which is separate from the TGS subscription, also known as the Multi Crew. So from now until September 26th, multitude is saying thank you to our Multi Crew members and our community at large. We'll be hosting Community events on Twitch, giving away fun prizes. Members of the Multi Crew crew will also get six brand new exclusive bonus podcast episodes if you want to hear, for example Moya, who was on our Ptolemy episode and has a show called Pale Blue Pod, and Misha from another Multitude show called simple and Clean, discussing the world building of the movie Sinners. Or maybe you're more into the return of a fan favorite called Beginners Potluck, which is a cooking advice show. You can join the Multi Crew today and listen to that. I am contributing a truly unhinged bonus episode that is better left undescribed so that you can kind of go into it open minded. But just know that it involves me using the words squelch, gambeson and yoga all in totally contextually relevant ways and you basically get to listen to me being uncomfortable for 30 minutes straight. Follow the Collective on social media at multitudeshows to hear all about the events and giveaways and episodes at the end, etc and then head over to multitudeshows.com to sign up and get those new exclusive podcast episodes today. You also get two free bonus months if you join up right now. So hey, if that sounds like something you'd be into, I highly recommend going and checking it out. Hi, I've been having this problem lately. I get one bajillion scam texts and phone calls and it is driving me legitimately insane. I was trying to figure out what was going on and the answer was very clear. A bunch of online data brokers had collected my information and sold it to scammers. These data brokers collect all kinds of stuff like names, addresses, Social Security numbers, court records, Internet browsing information, financial data. Very scary. And I'm pretty hip to stuff like this, so I haven't ever been successfully scammed. However, these brokers aren't just trying to go after smart cool, well adjusted 31 year olds. They're also going after my grandparents and now my grandpa has to basically ask all his grandkids a security question when we try to call him because this stuff freaks me out a lot. I am partnering with a service called Incogni who remove personal data from these online brokers. To make this even freakier, I just went and looked back at how many data removal requests Incogni had sent on my behalf and the answer was 1037. My personal information was in some form on over 1000 data broker sites and shout out to Incogni. Now it is not. Incogni removes data from hundreds of data brokers, or in my case thousand, continuously monitoring them. To take your data off and keep it off, you can submit up to three phone numbers, emails and addresses per person for removal searches and get monthly updates. Let me try that last bit again. You can submit up to three phone numbers, emails and addresses per person for removal searches and get monthly updates on removal Progress. To get 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to incogni.com TGS and use code TGS. You can also find a link in our episode description Incogni has a 30 day money back guarantee, so it's worth giving it a try and seeing how much of your data is terrifyingly available out in the world. Hi, this is a special announcement. Insert sirens here. We, meaning me and some other people, are doing our first ever live show, what the F. On October 9th in New York City at Caveat at 7pm It's a special format that we're calling the Worst Wing, with two incredible guests pitting their least favorite presidents against each other. And speaking of those guests, I am super stoked about them. I'm going to be joined by Nicole Hemmer and Kevin Schultz, who you might remember from our Spiro Agnew episode, and it's going to be an absolute hoot. A complete riot, some might say. We're going to play some games, we're going to do a little audience participation and all kinds of fun secret stuff is planned. So head over to thisguysucked.com and click on the live show link at the top of the page to snag tickets. While we've still got a handful available. Subscribers to the show get a special discount code too, which is pretty sweet. In order to access that, just go to our Patreon page. So count this right now as me personally inviting you to come and listen to me yap some more. Okay, bye. Enjoy the rest of the episode.
- [63:47]
Elise Wong
But so he then goes over Elias's head to the bishop. And the bishop has told this story, if you remember, at Simon the Nova's trial. And so he can't very well be like, no, there's nothing to this. And so he agrees on kind of a compromise again, over Elias's head. He's like, okay, we'll move him to the monastery. Like, we'll allow him to be buried, like, where the monks are buried, which is a great honor. It's not sanctification, but, like, sure, we can do this. So at this point, William has been reburied, like, three times. So he's reburied again. And so, you know, Thomas is all triumphant, but he almost ruins it for himself. Like, he gets just his enthusiasm almost ruins it for him. He's very happy about this. And he and some of his brothers go to, like, move the body. And while his brothers were looking the other way, he, like, lunges for it and steals a few teeth from William's body. And he calls it a pious theft. I mean, Godwin would have recognized the move. Well, sure. And so he does this and then they, like. He then goes to the cathedral and, like, takes a rug and a candle from another tomb. And these things are expensive things, like a large candle, large, expensive candle from another tomb and puts them on Williams.
- [65:17]
Claire Aubin
Oh, my God.
- [65:18]
Elise Wong
To, like, invite worship. Yeah, I know. And at this point, like, Prior Elius has had enough of this fucker. He's just like, absolutely not. We are done with this. Like, I had to defer to the bishop about the burial, but he. And the quotation he felt had been managed with presumptuous boldness. And he goes to the chapter house and he takes the rug and the candle and he says that it should be removed and never put there again. It's like, this did not make him a saint. You can't. Can't do this.
- [65:48]
Claire Aubin
You can't go stealing bouquets off someone else's grave.
- [65:54]
Elise Wong
What is wrong with you? And then Elias dies. And, like, I think this is a big part of how this story takes off as Elias dies.
- [66:06]
Claire Aubin
And there's no impediment now to any of this now.
- [66:10]
Elise Wong
There's no impediment. And so that's when it kind of takes off, is when Elias dies. Thomas, of course, has to sneak in, like, a shitty little comment about this in his book. He, like, goes back to his book and he's. He's gonna write down all of these. And he says, like, you know, he didn't want to speak Ill of his own prior. No, like that. But he did feel compelled by his conscience to note, quote, we can no longer pass over in silence that he was warned very often by many visions of others to return that rug and it did not soften his hardness of heart. And you know, of course, Thomas wouldn't go so far himself, but he mused, quote, I would not be surprised if some entertain the opinion and say in their hearts that the martyr William quite rightly punished with the vengeance of his anger the injury done to him by the hard hearted prior. Right.
- [66:59]
Claire Aubin
Because he said, put that rug back where you got it, you free.
- [67:02]
Elise Wong
Yeah, yeah. And like, why are, why are you stealing teeth?
- [67:09]
Claire Aubin
Like, this is ikea.
- [67:10]
Elise Wong
Stop being a weirdo.
- [67:13]
Claire Aubin
Oh my God. Well, yeah, I mean, there's. I came into this episode being like, we don't know that much about these guys, but actually quite a lot of them as individuals can be revealed by these things. And then this episode, this enormous impact they have on the world after.
- [67:31]
Elise Wong
Yes.
- [67:32]
Claire Aubin
One of the things that I, I wrote an article on that is to be published because I need to edit it, but I'm giving a talk on later this year is on Holocaust metaphor in right wing social activism and political activism. And it's been really interesting how often the American right in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s will talk about things like abortion and they will simultaneously be like, talking about the Holocaust and also being wildly anti Semitic and talking about blood libel at the exact same time as they're doing this. And that's how pervasive it is in culture now, where people will engage in it without even knowing that that's what they're doing. And not even realizing that this style of thinking, like there have been moments before this happening where stuff has shown up in smaller or different ways, but this fully fledged, like, fully formed narrative.
- [68:28]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [68:28]
Claire Aubin
Is a creation at this one moment in time and gets crystallized in this one moment in time. And people still invoke it without even knowing that this is like a purposeful creation that happens.
- [68:42]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [68:43]
Claire Aubin
And Thomas makes a ton of money off this, like I said. So they both make money off of this?
- [68:48]
Elise Wong
Yes. Yeah. They both live very well off of this. This makes them very comfortable for the rest of their lives.
- [68:54]
Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [68:54]
Elise Wong
And the thing about the impact of it is, and the intentional creation of it is, I think the, the sort of message I get out of this story is that conspiracy theories are not grassroots things. And they are often not even about the thing. I lie that Godwin was anti Semitic already and had an axed grind there. But by his canniness, at least as important as that was the grift.
- [69:24]
Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [69:25]
Elise Wong
And for Thomas, like, he's. He's this guy who's just not getting ahead. No matter how hard he tries in the monastery, he's just like, deeply unlikable. He's. He seems like a pompous asshole, so nobody likes him. And he has to find some other way of getting consequence, and this is how he chooses to do it. And honestly, in. If you read the Life and Passion of William of Norwich, it is not actually that much about the Jews.
- [69:53]
Claire Aubin
No.
- [69:54]
Elise Wong
It's all about the people who doubt Thomas. Yeah. And so he provides this, like, conspiratorial structure of, like, the secret that is being hidden from you by bad actors. And the people who doubt are just either like, gullible and misled or they're nefarious and they're keeping it from you. Like, he built the whole, like, epistemological structure of the conspiracy theory and Godwin gives you the anti Semitism and that's kind of what becomes the whole story. But they created this whole cloth. You know, this isn't like rumors are going around. In fact, everybody seems to be pushing back on it. Bishop is like, you're crazy. Prior Elias can't stand Thomas and is constantly trying to get him to stop. I can sort of, like, I feel very sympathetic. Elias. And you know, the neighbors also don't buy it. So it's not like this takes off like wildfire or something like that. They have to force this to work.
- [70:52]
Claire Aubin
Yeah. The conspiratorial structure is a vehicle for the grift.
- [70:57]
Elise Wong
Yes.
- [70:57]
Claire Aubin
And so they have to work quite hard at the hustle in order to make this work. And it just so happens that this other murder happens against Eleazar, who you're talking about. There's this other murder that happens at a convenient moment for the story and the grift to grow legs. And in a way that makes it convenient for that to happen. Yeah. And I think it's really important to point that out that this is a style of conspiratorial thinking and a way of conspiracy growing that is like. Yeah, it's not grassroots. It's not like someone is noticing something. And then everyone goes, hold on. Maybe there is. Maybe the Democrats are doing something weird in a pizza parlor. Like that's. Someone comes up with that, invents it, and then con, and then they have to convince everyone else.
- [71:47]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And when I talk about conspiracy theories with people, their. Their questions are mostly what about the conspiracies that are true. Yes, there are conspiracies in the world. And then their second question is always like, well, isn't this just a way to silence, like, dissenting voices or people who look at things differently? I, like Godwin and Thomas, I think, are kind of the. They're perfect examples of the type of person who clings to a conspiracy theory because they are not downtrodden. They are not outcasts. They are not, you know, oppressed in any way. They are powerful men who thought they deserved more than they got in life. That is who they are. They're not weak. They're not suffering. They're men who are resentful because they thought they deserved more than they got. And they use the conspiracy theory as a lever to get themselves this kind of significance they think they're owed. This kind of, like, resentment, I think, is really. That's the conspiracy theory purveyor. This kind of, like, resentful acquisitiveness and grifting. That's who makes up the conspiracy theories and pedals them and pushes them. Not people who are looking to make sense of the world.
- [73:04]
Claire Aubin
Yeah. And I think being able to say, like, when someone says, well, what about people who just look at things differently than you? Okay. But there is objective truth in somewhere here. Like, you can say, yeah, a person killed William.
- [73:18]
Elise Wong
Yes. Yeah.
- [73:19]
Claire Aubin
That's not a difference of opinion when we say who it was, because there is an answer to the person who did it. A specific person or group of people or whatever specifically did it.
- [73:28]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [73:29]
Claire Aubin
It doesn't actually matter whether you view it differently or not, because a person did.
- [73:36]
Elise Wong
That makes sense.
- [73:37]
Claire Aubin
Like, there is an answer to this. We don't know what the answer is. And inventing new answers or clinging to one is actually not you finding the real truth of it, because there is actually a truth. The issue is that we don't know what the truth is. Someone who believes this hasn't accessed some secret, hidden knowledge by believing it, because there is actually an answer. We just don't know what the answer was.
- [74:03]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And this is like, the problem with being a medievalist and trying to communicate how we do historical work, because for a lot of these things, like with, you know, contemporary historians or historians of the 20th century, a lot of these things are knowable. Yeah. In this case, it's not knowable. We don't know what happened to William. And I. I get a little frustrated with the articles that are written about, like, well, what actually happened to William. We don't Know there's no way.
- [74:30]
Claire Aubin
And no amount of guessing is not. Is going to be the answer.
- [74:34]
Elise Wong
It really is not. Like, there is no way of knowing. Like, you can talk about statistical likelihoods, what children of this age usually died of, but there is no way of knowing what actually happened. But that does not mean that there isn't an answer. Yeah, we just don't have access to it. And so that's the instability that you have to get used to in this period with so few records. But I think that it's very difficult to communicate that in a way that sort of translates when you're talking to other people, even to other historians, because you want to communicate that there is some sort of answer. And we can kind of guess at the likelihoods. But that doesn't mean that there isn't an answer. It doesn't mean that you can just make up whatever you want. It doesn't mean that guesses help get us there. You know, like, it's a part of the studying this period that's a little bit difficult to communicate.
- [75:24]
Claire Aubin
And it also doesn't mean that whatever likelihoods you find are more correct or like, it doesn't mean that you have found an answer when you feel like you have found something that could, if we could time travel, have led us to an answer. Like, that doesn't mean you've actually found the answer now. And it's just there are some things we simply cannot find know. Like I not to sort of end on a note that has to do with my research, but I research, like I've said, Nazis who live in the US And a lot of times I have to sort of do some guesswork about what they're thinking. Right. Like, I'll say this is their behavior. They for the most part are dead and also for the most part have a vested interest, the ones that are alive now and the ones that are dead in not ever telling people they're thinking. Like, there's a reason that they're living in the US and not telling people. People what they're thinking. I have to spend a lot of time being like, this is my best guess of what they might have been thinking based on their behavior. But, like, that is not a knowable thing. I always have to say this is what this might suggest, but we're not sure.
- [76:26]
Elise Wong
Yeah.
- [76:26]
Claire Aubin
And people really do not like that unstable answer. Like they want a stable answer from history. And we have to say, just because an answer exists does not mean we have access to it. And no amount of wishful thinking and Guesswork is going to give you that answer no matter how strongly you feel, how strong your conviction that you have figured it out.
- [76:48]
Elise Wong
Yeah. And obviously a lot of this episode has been me kind of like guessing at the motivations of Godwin and Thomas. And I might be wrong about this. Godwin never wrote anything that we have access to. So everything about him is lost. And I can make guesses from the type of person, like his position in Norwich, what I know is going on in Norwich, his behavior. His behavior. I can make some sort of educated guesses about what probably was going on, but it's all a guess. And same to a large extent with Thomas. We know a little bit more because he wrote this whole thing and you can hear his tone and you know what an unlikable person he was. Like seriously, he such a dick. But a lot of what I'm sort of putting forward as his motivations, it's a guess. But I think grifting is usually a pretty good guess.
- [77:39]
Claire Aubin
Grifting is a good. That's also a good merch idea. We do have to end somewhere and I think it's good that we have made it clear to people that although the medieval period didn't have comment sections, it did have monasteries where you could produce viral like anti Semitic rage bait. Really incredibly easy, easily actually. And it would. It was easier because people couldn't really.
- [77:59]
Elise Wong
Fact check you and just to shed on the Benedictines. They were the worst for this. Yeah, the Benedictines were the worst for this. They were extremely well connected. They were the wealthiest. And that's where Bloodlight will travel is through the Benedictines.
- [78:14]
Claire Aubin
Well that's actually good to know. I didn't know that. And they corner the market on this a little bit both financially and in terms of the information market.
- [78:21]
Elise Wong
Yes, they do.
- [78:22]
Claire Aubin
We do have to end like I said. Thank you so very much for coming on. Elise Swan can be found on Blue sky at Elise Wong. Her website is elise d.wong.com. you can get yourself a copy of her first book, the Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature at the link in our episode description. Is there anything else you want me to add? We'll put everything in our description.
- [78:41]
Elise Wong
That's it. Yeah.
- [78:42]
Claire Aubin
Thank you so much for talking to me about this. This is a.
- [78:45]
Elise Wong
Thank you. This was really fun despite.
- [78:49]
Claire Aubin
I mean it's depressing. So whenever I say this is great, I hope people at home are listening and knowing that I'm. I don't mean like, like it's good, I mean like I learned something. We all learned something in this, and it hopefully wasn't too horribly painful to to learn it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude Podcast Collective, this episode was Hosted by me, Dr. Claire Aubin, featuring special guest Professor Elise Wong, and edited by Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by Nathan's world famous hot dog eating champion. Or at least he wishes he was Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month, and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our patreon@patreon.com thisguysucked See you next week. Sam.