Aaron of York
1185 CE–1253 CE · Rishonim · York
Aaron of York (born before 1190 – died after 1253) was the wealthiest English Jew of his day and the Presbyter Judaeorum — the official head of the Jews of England — from 1237. Probably the son of Josce of York, he amassed an enormous fortune as a financier to the Crown, only to be ruined by the relentless tallages of King Henry III, who extracted from him, by one account, some 30,000 marks of silver and 200 of gold. His fall mirrored the deepening royal exploitation that would culminate in the expulsion of England's Jews in 1290.
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YorkיורקYorkshire, England — medieval Jewish center
What they did here
Born in York into a leading family — probably the son of Josce of York — he became the realm's foremost Jewish financier and, in 1237, Presbyter Judaeorum, the senior representative of English Jewry. Repeated royal tallages and confiscations stripped away his vast fortune before his death.
About York
York is a city in northern England at the meeting of the rivers Ouse and Foss. The Romans founded it as Eboracum in 71 CE. Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor there in 306, and a bishop from York attended the Council of Arles in 314. It later became the seat of a Northumbrian archbishopric and cathedral school, where the scholar Alcuin trained before joining Charlemagne's court, and then the Viking town of Jorvik. York had a Jewish community in the twelfth century that met a tragic end in March 1190: besieged by a mob in the royal castle keep, now Clifford's Tower, many chose to die rather than be killed or forcibly baptized.
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