Who Murdered Licoricia of Winchester?

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Statue of Licoricia of Winchester in Winchester, England, via Wikimedia Commons (Lategatsby23, CC BY-SA 4.0)

It’s an unsolved mystery: Licoricia of Winchester, once the wealthiest woman in England, was found stabbed to death, with her maid, in 1277. Licoricia was a businessperson, whose clients included the king of England. She was a wife and a mother. She was also Jewish. The life, times, and circumstances of this extraordinary woman reveal a lot about the history of women and Jews in medieval England, and her death remains a puzzle to historians. 

Host: Kristin

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Further Reading

Suzanne Bartlet, "Three Jewish businesswomen in thirteenth-century Winchester," Jewish Culture and History 3, no. 2 (2000): 31-54.

----, Licoricia of Winchester: Marriage, Motherhood, and Murder in the Medieval Anglo-Jewish Community, edited by Patricia Skinner (2009).

Reva Berman Brown and Sean McCartney. "David of Oxford and Licoricia of Winchester: glimpses into a Jewish family in thirteenth-century England," Jewish Historical Studies 39 (2004): 1-34.

Sarah Ifft Decker, Jewish Women in the Medieval World, 500-1500 CE (2022).

Historic Royal Palaces, The Jewish History of the Medieval Tower of London.

Thomas Monmouth, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, edited and translated by Miri Rubin (2014).

R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250, second edition (2007).

 Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (2004).

Cheryl Tallan and Suzanne Bartlett, “Licoricia of Winchester,” The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (19 December 1999).

Images

Statue of Licoricia of Winchester in Winchester, England, via Wikimedia Commons (Lategatsby23, CC BY-SA 4.0).

​Medieval Walls of Winchester, via Wikimedia Commons (Espresso Addict, CC BY-SA 4.0​).

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)

Medieval Walls of Winchester, via Wikimedia Commons (Espresso Addict, CC BY-SA 4.0​).