How to Make a City: The Jews, the Minster and the Guildhall in Thirteenth-Century York

Three major events in York dating to the period around September 1231 show the close co-operation of the city’s Christian and Jewish residents at the time, and point to the recognition of a tripartite social contract. Prominent members of the city council, the Minster chapter, and the Jewish community were involved in the city’s acquisition of the civic hall known as the Guildhall, the grant of an extension to the city’s Jewish burial ground, and the construction of the great ‘Jewish Window’ in the north transept of York Minster. Rather than see Jews as simply a persecuted minority in medieval England, this article argues that the Jews of York were central to the creation of civic institutions in the thirteenth century. This article is part of a Special Issue on Marginality and the Medieval Church that examines how categories of marginalisation were constructed, negotiated, and resisted within the medieval church.