
A Jewish Woman’s Appeal of Murder in Thirteenth-Century England - diodorus
https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-womans-appeal-of-murder-in-thirteenth-century-england/
======
olivermarks
'The day of the murder, Josce breakfasted (gentaculavit) at Olympias’s home.
The jurors skirted around the issue of why Josce was present in Olympias’s
domicile at such an early hour. One cannot help but speculate whether the
“abominable mixing” which seems to have kept Pope Innocent III up at night
dreaming of ways to prevent inter-religious coitus, may have been to
blame.[11] Apparently, discord broke out between Josce and Olympias before
they had even finished their breakfast. Josce then withdrew, and was
immediately killed, although the record does not disclose the identities of
the perpetrators'.

The murder appears to have been a crime of passion, not uncommon in that era?

~~~
genieyclo
What is the Latin root of this word "gentaculavit"?

~~~
stevula
The form _gentaculavit_ implies it’s a 3rd person singular perfect indicative
of a regular 1st conjugation Late Latin verb _gentaculare_ “to eat breakfast”.
Knowing that, it’s clearly derived from this Late Latin noun:

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/jentaculum#Latin](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/jentaculum#Latin)

From Wiktionary:

 _gentaculum_ “breakfast” (alternate spelling of _ientaculum /jentaculum_).
That form ultimately comes from the adjective _ieiunus_ (alternate spelling
_jejunus_ ) “fasting”.

The adjective is a standard word in Classical Latin, but the noun and verb
above are not. They are probably later developments or Vulgar Latin (spoken by
the common people) that was not preserved in Classical texts. The standard
word for breakfast in Classical Latin would be _prandium_.

------
vinceguidry
Does anyone have any idea what "secretam familiaritatem" meant from a legal
and social perspective? Google didn't yield anything.

~~~
goodcanadian
I'm pretty sure that means sex.

------
jedberg
There’s a reason that the premise of every one of our Jewish holidays is,
“they tried to kill us, we lived, let’s eat!”

~~~
js2
Passover, Purim, and Hanukkah are not every Jewish holiday.

Shabbat, the High Holidays, Sukkot, etc.

~~~
xwowsersx
You're right that it's not every holiday, but just to be accurate Shabbat is
not, strictly legally speaking, a holiday. It is "fixed" from creation, not
dependent on the declaration of the new moon and not categorized as a Yom Tov
at all (though it does share laws in common, on the surface, with Holidays).

~~~
js2
Thanks for the clarification, but I was interpreting it colloquially. Also,
while it may not strictly be a holiday, it is a holy day. :-)

~~~
xwowsersx
Also, a counterpoint: Shabbat is referred to in the text of Kiddush as a
"remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt". There are various approaches to
explain why this is (it's more obvious for the other holidays mentioned, but
less so for Shabbat), but Maimonides' approach is:

"This difference can easily be explained. In the former, the cause of the
honor and distinction of the day is given: "Therefore the Lord blessed the day
of the Sabbath and sanctified it", and the cause for this is, "For in six
days," etc. But the fact that G-d has given us the law of the Sabbath and
commanded us to keep it, as the consequence of our having been slaves; for
then our work did not depend on our will, nor could we choose the time for it;
and we could not rest. Thus God commanded us to abstain from work on the
Sabbath, and to rest, for two purposes; namely, (1) That we might confirm the
true theory, that of the Creation, which at once and clearly leads to the
theory of the existence of God. (2) That we might remember how kind God has
been in freeing us from the burden of the Egyptians."

------
eccbits
Puts the UK Labor Party today into perspective - England’s attitude towards
the Jews didn’t start as “anti-Zionism”.

~~~
DSingularity
How did you reach that conclusion? This was about racism in the thirteenth
century. I would love to read more about these links.

What is your purpose into bringing the Labour party into this discussion?
Seems like you are trying to paint the Labour party as anti-semitic. Is it
because of foreign-policy positions with respect to Israel?

~~~
isostatic
Probably because some Labour MPs have left due to antisemetism, and many high-
profile members are on the receiving end.

Antisemetism is a popular view in the west, and globally.

------
webwielder2
Racism is one of the most profoundly transformational forces in human history,
and yet it is entirely contrived, arbitrary, and voluntary.

~~~
daenz
It's a Prisoner's Dilemma[0] situation. Even if one arbitrary group is
inclined to behave in a unbiased way, they know that they stand a lot to lose
if the other groups take advantage of the situation. The other groups knows
this as well. It takes a lot of trust on all sides for the "prisoners" to
cooperate and be better off for it. The group with the weakest cohesion loses,
unless they all weaken at the same time. And too many interests benefit from
keeping everyone tribal and mistrusting.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

~~~
maxerickson
Your explanation begs the question. Racism is at its core, based in the idea
that superficial characteristics somehow convey deeper information. Your
explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics
correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.

~~~
golergka
> Your explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics
> correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.

It is, because in a society that has racism as status quo, you can be sure
that these superficial characteristics are shared between you and your
immediate, as well as extended family - people who you can rely to be in your
group.

~~~
maxerickson
What? Extended family is a tighter group than any group based on physical
resemblance.

My argument isn't much changed if you recast it as the generalization from
family to "race" being incorrect, because races aren't actually coherent
groups in the same way that many (extended) families are.

~~~
golergka
> Extended family is a tighter group than any group based on physical
> resemblance.

Exactly. And in a traditional society, you can be pretty much sure that your
extended family is of your race.

~~~
maxerickson
My point is that the generalization from a real in group of people that look
like you (extended family) to the group of people that look like you, is not
really a useful thing to do, it mistakes the superficial information (similar
appearance) for useful information.

------
aphextim
I could have swore I saw this story float around a few days ago. I searched to
see if it was in fact a re-post.

I did a search of the url
[https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-
woman...](https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-womans-
appeal-of-murder-in-thirteenth-century-england/) into the hackers news search
and got this:

[https://i.imgur.com/XyoqA83.png](https://i.imgur.com/XyoqA83.png)

I clicked on the 1 comment on the article from two days ago and it now says it
was posted 2 hours ago and shows the comment from a few minutes ago.

[https://i.imgur.com/Knfp1be.png](https://i.imgur.com/Knfp1be.png)

Is this normal for re-posts on HN? First time I've seen the date something was
posted change upon clicking the comments, however I'm pretty new to this space
so it may be a glitch in the matrix that is known.

~~~
maxerickson
The mods reset the timer on stories they like to give them another chance at
wider attention/discussion.

~~~
homonculus1
The quiet malleability of data on this site is disturbing. Titles, article
links, and timestamps are all changed without notice on a regular basis. Older
discussions become disorienting as their subjects are silently memory-holed
and replaced. Users are shadowbanned and throttled for undesirable ideas.
There is no written policy for any of this and you feel like you're crazy
until you hear rumors from someone who talked to someone who emailed the
internet hall monitors.

~~~
dang
That seems a little overwrought. None of this is secret and we answer
questions about it all the time, every day.

~~~
homonculus1
What is the full list of moderator actions that promote, remove, or change
content on Hacker News which are not listed in the FAQ? Why are these actions
not listed? Why is there no indicator when an instance of one of these actions
has occurred?

~~~
dang
We don't maintain an encyclopedia of HN moderation for a bunch of reasons. One
is that such a compendium would only be of interest to a small subset of
users, and they are just the kind who would never be satisfied by it. There's
a certain sort of moderation discussion in which, no matter how patiently you
answer objections, your answers are never accepted and only spawn new
objections. To engage is to participate in a denial-of-service on yourself,
dancing ever faster to a piper who will never stop. It doesn't take long to
learn what a mistake that is. It sucks energy, razes morale, and never works.

The vast majority of HN users aren't like that. They find the site
interesting, are grateful that we maintain it, and respond with happiness when
we answer their questions. That's the population we're excited to serve.

So our approach is to operate by the principles outlined in the site
guidelines, spend most of our resources trying to make HN more interesting (or
at least stave off its decline), and answer specific questions when they come
up. Not because of sinister secrets, just because of basic resource
management: it's the best use of our limited resources and the best way to
manage the effects on ourselves so we don't burn out quite so quickly.

It's fairly clear that the community is happy with this approach, because if
it weren't, we'd be hearing about nothing else. Then there's the grousing sort
of commenter who makes dark insinuations about moderator manipulation. There
are actually fewer of those than it seems, because they tend to cycle through
various accounts over the years. I think they have a role to play, too, and am
happy to engage up to a point—but only as long as it feels like the discussion
is useful for the general audience too.

