Modern historians have still not uttered the final word, as they attempt to define the importance of the persecutions in the history of Jewish-Christian relations. Typically compelled by their attackers to choose between conversion to Christianity and death, the Ashkenazic Jews of northern Germany broke with historical precedent in no less striking a fashion.
To be sure, some of them attempted to bribe the crusaders, to seek refuge with the local authorities, to flee altogether, and even to take up arms; but it appears that one of two outcomes awaited most of those Jews attacked. First, many opted for baptism, although Jewish and Christian sources testify that they generally did so under duress, "more for fear of death than for love of Christian doctrine. Still, one should not underestimate the extent or the significance of the conversions.
Large numbers in some Jewish communities—Trier, Metz, and Regensburg, for example—evidently were baptized, as were smaller but sizeable numbers of the Jews of Mainz and elsewhere, and the shock of these conversions haunted the self-consciousness of Ashkenazic Jewry throughout the decades that followed. For their part, most of the crusaders and local townspeople who attacked the Jews apparently deemed their baptism an acceptable, if not a preferable, alternative to their death.
As one Hebrew source recounts, in rationalizing their attacks on the Jews the crusaders resolved, "Let us first take revenge on them and wipe them out as a nation, and Israel's name will be mentioned no more, or let them become like us and confess their faith in the 'offspring of whoredom'"—a hostile Jewish caricature of Jesus.
Significantly, no evidence suggests that Jews who accepted baptism suffered any physical harm. On the contrary, some accounts portray Christians preventing Jews from harming themselves so as to baptize them in good health, while others relate that Christians used torture to induce Jews to convert. We read, for example, of a Jew of Cologne named Isaac the Levite whom the Christian mob apprehended in the nearby town of Neuss.
They inflicted heavy tortures upon him. And when they beheld his suffering, they defiled [baptized] him against his will, since the blows with which they had beaten him left him unconscious.
Having regained consciousness, he returned three days later to Cologne. He entered his house and, after waiting but an hour, went to the Rhine and drowned himself in the river. About him and others like him Scripture states Psalm , "I will bring back from the depths of the sea. Here, too, Latin and Hebrew sources agree. Many of those attacked elected to die a martyr's death; and of these, very many took their own lives and those of their loved ones in order to avoid capture, torture, forced conversion, and death at the hands of the enemy.
Christian writers recoiled at accounts of such behavior, as did the Latin chronicler Albert of Aachen when relating Count Emicho's attack on the Jews of Mainz: The Jews, seeing that their Christian enemies were attacking them and their children, and that they were sparing no age, likewise fell upon one another, brother, children, wives, and sisters, and thus they perished at each other's hands.
Horrible to say, mothers cut the throats of nursing children with knives and stabbed others, preferring them to perish thus by their own hands rather than to be killed by the weapons of the uncircumcised. In such sacrifice of life 'al kiddush ha-Shem in sanctification of God's name, as medieval Jews put it and, perhaps, in violation of rabbinic rules against suicide, many students of Jewish history have beheld one of the distinctive hallmarks of Ashkenazic Jewish culture.
Some have contrasted it sharply with the frequent preference of medieval Sefardic or Spanish Jewry for conversion to Christianity or Islam in the face of religious persecution. Alongside the anti-Jewish violence and the readiness of many Jews to kill themselves as martyrs, yet a third dimension of the persecutions of compounds the novelty of this critical experience in Jewish history.
For centuries the ancestors of these Ashkenazic Jews had recalled moments of national tragedy in liturgical poetry piyyut , and an impressive number of piyyutim bemoan the suffering and casualties of Beside poetic laments of this sort, however, stand three Hebrew chronicles of the crusade, among the first works of local Jewish historical writing in medieval Europe.
The chronicles include a relatively long text attributed to one Solomon bar Samson of Mainz, a somewhat briefer and entirely anonymous "Account of the Persecutions of Old" often dubbed the "Mainz Anonymous" , and a more abbreviated report by Eliezer bar Nathan, a well-known Ashkenazic rabbi of the twelfth century. These Hebrew crusade chronicles have fascinated historians over the past century and more, and among the numerous published studies of these texts one can isolate several major avenues of inquiry.
First, some investigators have used the chronicles as windows to the actual events of Mined for information in this way, the Hebrew narratives have revealed the causes of the pogroms, the motivations and behavior of the Christian attackers, and the reactions of the afflicted Jews. The worth of these studies depends directly on the chronicles' factual accuracy, what some have called their "facticity"-a term I find grating and try to avoid. Such use of the chronicles to establish exactly what transpired during the crusade rests on several basic assumptions concerning the close relationship between historical events and the historical texts reporting them.
Historians of all fields have hotly debated these assumptions in recent decades, and, while prominent scholars continue to write the narrative history that the Hebrew crusade chronicles appear to document, more and more skeptical voices have joined the conversation in recent years. Second, other scholars have moved from the history of the events of to a history of the three chronicles themselves: their authors; the date, nature, and whereabouts of their composition; the relationship between them; and their varying degrees of reliability.
Most readers have considered the two longer and more detailed of the three chronicles-the narrative attributed to Solomon bar Samson and the "Mainz Anonymous"—more valuable; yet investigators have still not reached a consensus concerning their chronological order and accuracy.
For years some may have "favored" the longer Solomon bar Samson text as the oldest and best record of the violence and martyrdom; but votes had always been cast for the Mainz Anonymous, which now appears to have overtaken its rival. Here one must also consider the specific relationship between these chronicles and other Jewish and Christian texts of the period, both prose and poetry, just as one must identify criteria for determining which source should take precedence.
Finally, still other investigators have evaluated the importance of the Hebrew crusade chronicles in the development of Jewish historical writing. Since the publication of the long-forgotten Solomon bar Samson text and the Mainz Anonymous alongside the better-known chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan at the end of the nineteenth century, these texts have ranked among the first and the most important genuinely historical works produced by medieval Jews. Yet our own generation has called this view into question, too.
Leclercq Rome, , vol. John H. Its members instinctively seek an immediate and violent cure for the onslaught of unbearable violence. Other consulted works are: John Dollard, Neal E.
Miller et al. Current research on Antisemitism, ed. Erlbaum Associates, , and chapter 6. Langmuir briefly mentioned displacement in his general discussion, but did not apply it to the events of Toward a Definition of Antisemitism , , Arnold H. The phrase appears also in his poems, Habermann, Sefer Gezerot , 83; 84, for example. Translation in John F. Benton , Self and Society , As noted, the Latin accounts tend to refer to the Muslim enemy in the plural, and the Jews in the singular.
The Anonymous does not mention the vengeance motif here. Habermann , Sefer Gezerot , Reference Works. Primary source collections. Open Access Content. Contact us. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Login to my Brill account Create Brill Account. Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.
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Export References. Guibert of Nogent , Dei gesta, Fulcher of Chartres, in Hagenmeyer , Fulcheri Carnotensis, Guibert of Nogent , Dei gesta, ; Peters, Albert of Aachen , Historia Ierosolimitana, 1 : Habermann , Sefer Gezerot, 63 ; Annales S.
Benton , Self and Society, Habermann , Sefer Gezerot, Abstract Metadata. Several Rhineland Jewish communities were destroyed, but they rapidly rebuilt in the early 12th century. Jewish economic activity flourished; moneylending in particular, increased as subsequent crusading ventures needed cash. There was certainly no decline in intellectual creativity among Ashkenazi Jews; the study of law continued, although the focus shifted from Germany to northern France.
Although Crusades continued over the next years, subsequent crusades did not affect the Jews in the same way. After the events in the Rhineland in , the Church realized the importance of reining in the popular armies and protecting the Jews. During the Second Crusade, the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux, the moving spirit behind the Crusade, condemned anti-Jewish preaching and actions. Their dispersion throughout the world served as proof of their guilt and of Christian redemption.
Interestingly, the Jews of Europe were motivated by the journeys of Christians to the Holy Land, and aided by the increased maritime transportation between Palestine and Europe, to make a greater number of pilgrimages themselves.
This emigration of several hundred rabbis from Western Europe mostly France and England marks the beginning of an active period of aliyah immigration to the Land of Israel that continued through the 13th century. From the Muslim-Arab conquests of the 7th century to the appearance of modern ideas in the 1, years later. New, more fanatical Muslim rulers caused the quality of Jewish life in North Africa and Egypt to deteriorate during the 12th and 13th centuries.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site and bring you ads that might interest you. Devastation of the Jewish Rhineland The events of temporarily stopped the intellectual and social activity of Ashkenazic Jewry.
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