The documents related to William of Norwich, a 12-year-old boy whose death in 1144 was blamed on the city's Jewish community in the world's first written allegation of the blood libel , a myth that still fuels antisemitism today.

Officials pulled the information leaflets after members of the city’s Jewish community raised concerns during the making of a new documentary film.

The Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Norwich Cathedral (Image: Dan Grimmer)

The film, The Innocents, was exploring the history of the blood libel and the cathedral's involvement in perpetuating it.

The cathedral seized on William's death and there were attempts to promote him as a saint - a potential money-spinner for those who ran the building - with a shrine to him set up in the building.

This was destroyed during the Reformation, but is thought to have near what is now the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, which is dedicated to prayer for victims of abuse, persecution and intolerance and was where the controversial information leaflets were displayed.

Members of Norwich’s Jewish community objected to the way the documents linked the original blood libel to the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, which has an account of the slaughter of boys by King Herod as he sought the infant Jesus.

A depiction of William of Norwich (Image: Wikipedia)

They said this linked the murder of one boy – blamed on the Jews – to the killing of children by another Jew.

The documents had been drawn up in the 1990s when the chapel was rededicated, apparently with input from the city's Jewish groups, as the cathedral tried to reframe the story of William's death, not as something Jews were responsible for but as the loss of an innocent child.

Dr Oren Margolis (Image: University of East Anglia)

But Oren Margolis, one of those involved in the film, said the resulting document remained "hugely problematic" to many Jews.........

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