Statues are such strange things. Solid and impermeable in their stone or bronze silence, yet fluid with the possibility of political interpretation.
Eight hundred years ago a Jewish woman from Winchester bankrolled a Plantagenet king. Last week, were it not for Covid, a new statue to her was due to be honoured by a British monarch-in-waiting, Prince Charles. The story of Licoricia has all the ingredients of a historical saga. A statue to a medieval Jewish businesswoman. A royal client. A murder mystery.
Licoricia lived in 13th century Winchester, the former English capital, just 13 years before the expulsion of the Jews from England. The cultured mother of five was a moneylender who numbered King Henry III and Queen Eleanor among her clients.
It all ended in tragedy. Licoricia was found murdered alongside her maid in 1277 in the Oxford home she had shared with her late husband, David of Oxford, one of the richest Jews in England. Who killed her and why we shall never know. Was jealousy and antisemitism the motive, rife at the time?
Henry was the first English monarch to tax his subjects regularly once the crown lands could no longer meet his military costs. The windfall tax Licoricia paid on her husband’s death helped finance the building of Westminster Abbey.
The timing of the unveiling of her statue with her son Asher by the sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley is interesting, coming in the wake of the ongoing controversy over monuments and what they represent. Last year, the statue of the slave trader Richard Colston in Bristol was dragged off its plinth, daubed with red paint and flung into Bristol Harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters. The four activists involved were cleared of criminal damage.
All over the world controversy rages over statues memorialising people now fallen out of favour. Most famous before Colston was the destruction of the statue of Saddam Hussein during the Iraq war. Many more have been defaced or destroyed. Anti-slavery is a common reason. So we have Nelson’s column, Captain James Cook, Christopher Columbus and Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University. Monuments to those who fought with the Confederate army in America have been attacked; the 9-11 Memorial in Washington was defaced by unknown protesters and in some places memorials to Jesus Christ and Mary, and even one of the Ten Commandments, have been attacked.
The government says that statues of controversial historical figures should be "retained and explained" instead of being taken down.
But statues in themselves are dangerous things, always liable to become hostages to fortune. The reverence of one generation becomes the dishonour of the next. It has happened throughout history, particularly in the aftermath of war. There is nothing particularly new about this, only that with time and education we tend to challenge our heroes, not for the good for which they are remembered but the very opposite.
As for Licoricia’s death, there is an argument that it could indeed have been antisemitism, whose roots date back to the mediaeval England in which she lived, when Jews, forbidden to enter the professions, were the moneylenders - the bankers of their day. (Although some claim that most Jews were not moneylenders and most moneylenders weren’t Jews.)
Has anything really changed? In the same week we learned about Licoricia we also heard that antisemitic incidents hit a new high in 2021. The CST recorded 2,225 incidents including 173 violent assaults, representing a 34 per cent increase over the previous year, the highest annual figure ever recorded.
Statues rarely have the last word, however, although it sometimes happens in a parallel universe. Don Giovanni got his come-uppance in Mozart’s opera when he invited the statue of the murdered Commendatore to supper and ended up being dragged down to hell. Let’s hope that Licoricia in her bronze immortality will survive and continue to be honoured as she deserves by the good people of Winchester.
