The Archae System Revisited: The Records of Indebtedness to Medieval Jews

Abstract

This article examines on document acknowledging debt to Maruna, a Jewish woman, to John of Kent that was deposited in a chest in Canterbury in 1264. Using this document, the article examines what can be learned about the archae system in thirteenth-century England from the perspective of the documents which were produced there. A series of chests (Lat. pl. archae) were established across England following the introduction of the Articles of the Jewry (1194), which regulated the production, use, and storage of the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities in medieval England. Additionally, the Articles of the Jewry required that more general business transactions, such as the sale and purchase of property, also be recorded at the archae. This paper considers not only the legal and administrative structures which governed the production of such records but also how these systems manifested themselves within the documents which produced at the archae. Finally, it will consider the role that ritual and gender had to play in such transactions and the documents which recorded them.