77 Chapter 4: The First Massacres

Today’s episode includes a content warning for descriptions of graphic violence which some listeners may find disturbing.

It was in the 1028th year since the destruction of the Temple that this evil occurred among the Jews, that noblemen, officials, and peasants of France first rose, took counsel, and plotted to ascend, to soar like an eagle, to fight, clearing a way to go to Jerusalem, the holy city, and to arrive at the grave of the crucified, the trodden corpse who can neither affect nor save, for he is naught. Each said to his fellow, "Lo, we are going to a distant land to fight its kings. We are endangering ourselves to kill and subdue all the kingdoms that don't believe in the hung one. But it was the Jews who killed and hung him!" They were demeaning us from every side, from every corner; they took one another's counsel and decided to [cause us to] return to their disgusting law, or to destroy us, from the young even to the sucklings. They put a symbol of evil, a cross, on their clothes — noblemen and peasants alike — and hats upon their heads”...And when the Crusaders started arriving in this land, they would ask for money with which to buy bread; we gave them, explaining "Serve the king of Bavel and live" as referring to ourselves. But all this did not help us: our sins caused that whatever city the Crusaders came to, its burghers heckled us, for they, too, helped the Crusaders destroy both vine and root all the way to Jerusalem.

-The Mainz Anonymous

Why did the heavens not grow dark and the stars not withdraw their brightness? Why did not the moon and the sun grow dark in their heavens when on one day, on the third of Siwan, on a Tuesday eleven hundred souls were killed and slaughtered, among them many infants and sucklings who had not transgressed nor sinned, many poor, innocent souls?

-The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle

Pope Urban II’s call to crusade was as much an attempt to unify Christendom as it was to challenge Islam. By 1095 the Catholic Christian-controlled lands were remarkably uniform in religious allegiance. This was because Christians from their inception had a remarkably antagonistic relationship with the polytheists of the Roman Empire. The ‘pagans,’ frequently massacred those who refused to worship the traditional Greco-Roman gods. Even after the Western Roman Empire fell, Christians were not-infrequently slaughtered by polytheists, this time by raiders from Scandinavia. Most famously, in 845 Ragnar sailed up the Seine, captured 111 Franks and sacrificed them to Odin before sacking Paris. Christians responded to these attacks with enthusiastic proselytization, often violent in nature. Forces representing the cross ultimately succeeded. By the 11th century traditional polytheism was heading towards extinction across the Continent.

Europeans not only exterminated polytheism, they also fought against other monotheistic faiths. Outside of Norman Sicily and recently-conquered territories in northern Spain, few Muslims lived in Christian-controlled parts of Europe. The dar-al-Islam was wealthier than Christendom, giving little incentive for Muslims to travel to Christian-held territory. Due to regular warfare between Christians and Muslims, the former treated the latter with suspicion, if not outright hostility in the lands they controlled. For all these reasons there were hardly any Muslims in Christian countries.

This left only one religious minority of any significance in Christendom: Jews. For millennia Jews lived in the Eastern Mediterranean around the territory that had once been the Kingdom of Israel, but which had since been conquered by competing empires. When the Romans violently incorporated the land into the province of Judaea, this opened up new economic opportunities to Jews. Jews travelled across the Roman Empire, established themselves in major cities and used their linkages to Western Asia to become traders and merchants. From the fourth to the seventh centuries Jewish communities developed as far north as Paris. Charlemagne’s conquests allowed Jews to emigrate to German territories. Following Charlemagne’s death the Frankish Empire began to collapse under the dual strains of civil war and Viking raids. Violence and economic decline led many Jews along continental Europe’s northern frontiers to abandon Christendom for the dar-al-Islam, which was relatively safer, more prosperous, and whose people were more tolerant of Jews.

In the late 10th century Europe’s fortunes reversed. The Viking Age was drawing to a close, while the Holy Roman Empire, France and England began to stabilize. Economic revival meant more opportunities. The lords of cities and towns invited Jews to settle in their domains to spur economic growth. However, not all welcomed the Jews with open arms. Wealthy urbanites, who we now call ‘bourgeoisie’ in French or ‘burghers’ in German, resented Jews as competitors. Aside from economic competition, Jews represented legal and political adversaries to prominent city-dwellers: cities which housed Jews generally had three separate courts: the lord’s court (which was the highest authority), the bourgeoisie court and a special Jewish court to deal with inter-Jewish affairs. When a case arose between Jews and non-Jews the issue went to the lord’s court. Because of this, the bourgeoisie believed Jews limited their power while extending that of the lord’s. Meanwhile many commoners were suspicious of the newcomers due to their different religious beliefs. Yet, these Jews enjoyed the protection of whoever the local lord was and of the Catholic Church, which meant open violence against them was irregular.

Thus, Jews occupied a unique position in Europe. They were the only tolerated religious minority within Christendom, which was at times awkward given that their religious tenets were in direct opposition to Christianity, as Christianity’s were to theirs. Jews believed that they were chosen by God for a special blessing and destiny. In contrast, Christians believed that the Jews had forfeited their covenant with God when they killed his Son, Jesus Christ. Many Christians held the Jewish people as a whole responsible for the crime of deicide. It’s not an easy thing to be neighbors with someone who killed your God. However, many Christians viewed individual crimes and collective crimes as separate issues, allowing Christians to tolerate Jews individually while simultaneously believing that their people were cursed.

Jews became well-integrated into the societies of northern France and the Rhineland and adopted the local languages rapidly. Their community leaders became local notables, with some even developing personal connections with kings and emperors. Furthermore, Jews and their Christian neighbors developed friendships and business relations. The vast majority of Christians welcomed or at least tolerated the Jews who lived among them. Yet, the Catholic Church instituted a canon of religious and social norms that intrinsically divided Jews from Christians. The church forbid violence against Jews based on their Jewishness, including forced conversion. Jews were allowed to practice their religion openly and completely. However, Jews were forbidden from proselytizing to Christians. They were also prohibited from disputing or mocking Christianity, which constituted blasphemy. In stark contrast, Christians could proselytize to Jews, contest and even denigrate Judaism. In essence, European Jews were tolerated and protected in Christian society so long as they kept their Jewishness to themselves and accepted a lower position relative to Christians. Such strictures meant that Jews were ghettoized, figuratively and sometimes literally. Jews often chose to live amongst themselves for community and protection. Sometimes these ghettos included their own protective walls proffered by the local lord, as was the case in the city of Speyer. However, Jewish populations in cities were so small that they were not wholly self-contained, meaning that Jews and Christians worked for and with each other on a daily basis.

Despite all these societal regulations, Jews were still victims of violence by Christians. Anti-Judaism was widespread among Christians, and sudden bouts of religious fervor were always dangerous for Jews. In 1009 the fundamentalist Fatimid Caliph al-Halum ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. When news arrived in France, Christians, caught up in a millenarian panic, accused Jews of orchestrating the desecration of Christianity’s holiest site. These accusations led to widespread persecution in France, which spilled over into the Rhineland. Lords and clergy largely acted to restrain Christian violence against Jews, though on occasion some notables would join in the pogroms, either because they were anti-Judaic themselves, feared opposing the mobs, or wanted to plunder Jewish wealth.

While Christians were prohibited from attacking Jews based on their Jewishness, they could do so for other reasons. When a case came to court the adjudicating Christians naturally favored their own. Moreover, Christians could play on anti-Jewish sentiment. In one case in the town of Le Mans, an ex-Jew named Sehok ben Esther hired armed men to assassinate a Jewish business rival before turning against the entire Jewish community. Historian Robert Chazan recounts that,

[Sehok] hired a craftsman to fashion a waxen image of the count of Maine and then hid this image in the ark of the synagogue of Le Mans. He then went to the count of Maine and made the following allegation:

Do you know what this people has done? They have taken a waxen image made like you and pierce it three times a year to destroy you. Indeed, this is what their ancestors did to your deity. Now if you agree, let the matter be investigated. If it be found true, then order that they be destroyed. Their silver and gold will come to your treasury; the spoils will be divided among your servants and the populace. What you have done will be heard by all. and they will follow suit.”

Sehok believed he could get the lord and the Christian community of Le Mans to eradicate the entire Jewish community that lived there, showing that anti-Judaism was widespread among Christians. Even if his conspiracy failed, infrequent massacres occurred. In the 1060s or 1070s a Messianic movement led the Christians of Lyons to engage in a widespread slaughter of their Jewish neighbors.

Urban II likely did not plan any anti-Jewish violence. However, his calls to war against the heretical enemies of Christ, who held blasphemous beliefs and rejected the Gospel, inevitably stirred up deep-seated anti-Judaic sentiment. A number of accounts record Crusaders following this exact logic, stating, “Even as we set out on a long journey, to seek the shrine of the idolatrous deity and to exact revenge from the Muslims, behold, the Jews, whose ancestors gratuitously killed and crucified him, live among us; let us first take our revenge upon them.” Another remarked, “(After traversing great distances) we desire to attack the enemies of God in the East) although the Jews (of all races the worst foes of God) are before our eyes. That's doing our work backward.” Yet another said, “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.” According to one account, no less a man than Godefroy de Bouillon, one of the seven leaders of the holy war, declared his desire to exterminate the Jews. Godefroy went so far as to take an oath not to travel east until he had avenged the death of Christ through the slaughter of Jews, “so that there might not remain alive a remnant among them.”

Violent rhetoric led to violent actions. While few sources survive, it is clear that in 1096 a number of pogroms took place across France. One such massacre occurred in the sizeable town of Monieux, northeast of Avignon. Historian Norman Golb writes, “Likely what occurred is that outsiders came to the town attacking Jews, at which point the townsfolk joined them.” Exactly how the locals of Monieux joined the pogrom is complex. Some must have taken up arms against their Jewish neighbors because they viewed them as deicides, because of personal enmity or out of a desire to share in the plunder. Others may have participated in the ransacking of Jewish homes without resorting to violence. Still others seized Jews and tried to convert them; perhaps out of genuine concern for their neighbors who would otherwise face death.

We know from one preserved letter that the Christians at Monieux invaded the synagogue where they killed a man named David. They then seized his two children, Jacob and Justa, who they sent away to a Christian family to be raised as Christians. Then they took everything of value from David’s house, leaving his wife and infant son naked and utterly destitute. When the armed pilgrims left the slaughter ceased. Some Jews managed to survive, either because they had pretended to convert or because sympathetic Christians hid them. But the Jewish community was so decimated and impoverished that they could not care for the woman and her baby. Instead, a literate Jew wrote a letter recounting what had happened and asked fellow Jews to provide for the woman. Given that the letter was found in Fustat-Misr (now within the old city of Cairo, Egypt) it seems that the Jewess embarked on an incredible journey, taking shelter and nourishment from numerous Jewish communities until she arrived among her people in the Fatimid Caliphate, safe from Christian soldiers.

A much larger pogrom occurred that September in the city of Rouen. Given that the armed pilgrims had already left by that time it is possible that many Christians suffered a sense of being left out of the great events taking place. Unable to fight for the glory of God, the Christians of Rouen made their own holy war upon their Jewish neighbors. According to Abbot Guibert of Nogent, the Christians declared, “Here we desire to attack the enemies of the Lord after traveling eastward over great distances of land, while before our very eyes are the Jews, who of all peoples are the greatest enemies of the Lord: this is preposterous...and a (foolish) labor.” Afterwards they gathered their weapons and marched to the nearest synagogue whereupon they offered Jews the choice to convert or be killed. Those who refused to renounce their faith were slaughtered on the spot, elders, men, women and children, until their blood soaked the sacred hall. Those young children who were orphaned during the massacre were seized and given to Christian parents. After the violence subsided and the Jewish parents tried to reclaim their children they were often denied, as was the case with one boy who was sent to a monastery at Eli.

Almost no record remains of specific pogroms that took place in 1096 France, though it is likely that regular anti-Jewish attacks took place across the kingdom in response to Urban II’s preaching. Two 12th century records claim widespread violence against Jews took place at the First Crusade’s outset. It is unlikely that the extreme bloodshed at Monieux and Rouen were isolated events. Moreover, there were clear patterns in the pogroms that likely go beyond mere coincidence. In Monieux and Rouen, Christians first offered Jews the chance to convert before killing them. In both cities Christians seized Jewish children and sent them to like families where they would receive a proper Catholic upbringing. While mass anti-Jewish violence was rare before 1096 in Christian Europe it was common enough that some practices for pogroms developed and were known in the farthest south and utmost northern edges of France.

There is also the timing to consider. We cannot say for certain when the Monieux pogrom took place, though all evidence points to it being around the departure of the Crusaders. Exactly which group of crusaders we cannot be sure of as there were two major companies, which we will discuss in detail further on. The first major crusading force is known to history as the ‘People’s Crusade’ or the ‘Pauper’s Crusade.’ This was a mass migration of peasants and minor nobility caught up in religious fervor who decided to march eastward, despite Urban II’s prohibitions on laypeople from journeying east. This first group left France in April 1096. The ‘official’ crusade, known to historians as the ’Prince’s Crusade,’ comprised seven armies led by five great lords of France, Robert of Flanders and Bohemond. This force left on 15 August of the same year. If the pogrom in Monieux took place anywhere between the two dates that means that the Rouen pogrom occurred between 1 and 5 months later. It is unlikely that only two large-scale massacres of Jews took place over such a significant timescale. It is far more probable that French Christians killed Jews throughout the Spring and Summer as religious fervor reached its zenith.

There is one final piece of evidence for further French crusader pogroms and that is the French Jews’ warnings to their fellows in the Rhineland. The German manuscripts record, “When the Jewish communities in northern France heard [of the development of crusading ardor], they were seized by consternation, fear, and trembling, and they reacted in time-honored ways. They wrote letters and sent emissaries to all the Jewish communities along the Rhine River, [asking] that they fast and seek mercy for them from him who dwells on high, so that they [the Jews] might be saved from their [the crusaders’] hands.” Could French Jews have acted with such prescience in the absence of outright violence? Unlikely. Even as the majority of French Jews were safe and protected by the Catholic Church and secular lords, there must have been significant outbreaks of violence across the country. These pogroms frightened French Jews so much that they believed it was their moral duty to forewarn their brethren in the Rhineland about the armed Christian pilgrims heading their way.

While the great magnates and their professional armies still prepared, another host began the journey east, under the leadership of Pierre l’Ermite, in English: Peter the Hermit. We know very little about Pierre. He was probably born in Amiens and became a priest with a reputation for mysticism. He was also a remarkable and zealous orator who appealed to the masses of Christians who wished to join the First Crusade but had been forbidden from going due to being non-combatants. Poor men, women, elderly, children, the infirm, and clergy flocked to his call to join the great war in the east. Alongside the ‘rabble’ were a number of minor lords who likely joined Pierre’s massive host with the hope of commanding the force and using it to further their own wealth and power. After all, if Gautier Sans Avoir, that is Walter the Penniless, had joined the armies of the great lords he would have probably held the rank of a common soldier. Under Pierre he became a leader of thousands if not tens of thousands.

In defiance of Urban II’s orders, Pierre’s host marched from northern France and into Germany in early April 1096. The first major city that they approached was Trier. For the Jews who lived there, the sight of a massive host of poorly-organized Christians armed with whatever instruments they could find must have been terrifying. Moreover, Pierre preached death to God’s enemies wherever he went and salvation for all those who would join his righteous cause. Already, the Rhineland Jews had been fasting and praying upon the advice of their French compatriots, fearing violence. Yet, Pierre’s ire was solely directed against Muslims. When he arrived in Trier he approached the city’s Jewry and presented them with a letter by French Jews. The letter warned the Rhineland Jews about the Christians’ wrath and counseled the Jews to provision them with whatever they asked. The Jews of Trier complied and gave money freely to the gathered Christians. Pierre was good for his word; after seizing so much wealth at the point of a sword his rag-tag army moved eastward to the relief of the city’s Jews.

The People’s Crusade continued eastward, arriving at Cologne on Easter where Pierre again preached his message of righteous fury to the awed Germans. It was at Cologne that the Hermit’s host split apart. Gautier Sans Avoir was discontented with the slow pace, took what forces would follow him and set on ahead. Fearing further defections, Pierre led the main body across Germany to Hungary, from which they would pass into the Eastern Roman Empire.

The French rabble and those Germans who joined them quickly left the Holy Roman Empire. While Pierre disavowed violence against Jews he could not wholly control his host. When some French and German contingents arrived at Regensburg they ordered the local Jews to convert. Local Christians who were friends with the Jews led them to the Danube and baptized them as a means of saving their lives. Those Jews who refused Christ’s message were killed on the spot. Satisfied, the armed pilgrims left, after which those Jews who had sworn fealty to Christ returned to their old faith. As Pierre’s forces moved they enacted another pogrom in Prague on 30th May. Yet, resistance from local rulers, such as the King of Hungary, and the Hermit’s own opposition to anti-Jewish persecution, kept his people mostly in check.

If one danger has passed from Germany another had been created. Pierre had preached wherever he went that Christians should take up arms against the enemies of God, inspiring many Germans. However, his sudden haste meant that thousands of German Christians, who otherwise might have joined the movement, remained. It did not take long for those left behind to follow the same murderous logic that those in France had so recently used to instigate pogroms. According to one Jewish record known as the Mainz Anonymous,

“When the Crusaders came, troop after troop like the army of Sancherev, some of the noblemen of this land said, ‘Why should we sit thus? Let us, too, go with them, for whoever goes on this journey and clears a path to ascend to the impure grave of the crucified will be prepared and readied for the hellfires.’ So the Crusaders gathered. They came from each city until they were as numerous as the sands at the sea; with them were noblemen and peasants. They announced at large, ‘Whoever kills even one Jew shall have all his sins pardoned.’ And one pacha named Dietmer said that one may leave the country only after he had killed a Jew.”

The first bloodshed in the Rhineland that we know of occurred on 3 May in the town of Speyer, a day that was the Sabbath. Beforehand, the Jewish community had been warned of a plot by armed pilgrims and allied burghers to corner them while they were in temple. Knowing the danger, the Jews went early, prayed and left the synagogue. Their plan foiled, the fanatical Christian band confronted a group of Jews demanding they be baptized or killed. When the Jews refused the Christians slew 10, while an 11th victim, a Jewish woman, chose to take her own life rather than die by their hands. Word of the massacre spread quickly. Johannes I, who was both Bishop of Speyer and a count, summoned a small army and arrived at the city. Upon arrival he seized those who had participated in the massacre and had their hands cut off. Johannes I then sheltered the Jews in fortifications under his control until the major armed bands had left the Rhineland and the violence ended.

Speyer had gotten off relatively easy. The marauding bands and the anti-Judaic burghers who joined them were relatively small and poorly organized. The city’s bishop had a close relationship with one of the community’s leading rabbis, Moses ben Yekutiel, and personally oversaw the protection of Speyer’s Jewry.

Word of the massacre in Speyer quickly spread to one of the jewels of Ashkenazi Jewry: Worms. Worms had just under one thousand Jews and a thriving culture. The city was famous across Europe for its yeshiva, an academy. Most notably, in the late 1050s to early 1060s the Worms yeshiva hosted a French Jewish student, Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, who became a rabbi known to history as Rashi. By the time of the First Crusade Rashi had luckily moved back to his hometown. There he became the most influential Jewish theologian of the post-Biblical period.

When the Jewish community of Worms learned about the massacre at Speyer they were caught between anguish and uncertainty. Given the relatively limited violence, rapid response of the authorities and harsh punishment of the killers some Jews believed that they would be safe. Many gave money to burghers who promised to protect them, believing that they could trust their neighbors. Others feared that some of their fellow citizens would betray them and so they fled to the bishop’s castle within the city.

On 18 May a much larger and better-organized force than the one that attacked Speyer marched on the city. As they did a number of burghers joined them, including many who had previously promised to protect Jews. According to the Mainz Anonymous, the Christian bands dug up a corpse that, “had been buried thirty days previously, and carried it through the city, saying ‘See what the Jews did to our neighbor! They took a Gentile, boiled him in water, and poured the water in our wells, in order to kill us.’” The source continues,

“When the Crusaders and burghers heard this, they shouted; anyone capable of wearing and unsheathing a sword gathered — young and old — and said, ‘Lo, the time and season have now arrived to avenge the one nailed into wood, whom their ancestors killed. Now let not one of them escape as a refugee — even the young, the suckling in its crib!’ They came and smote those remaining in their homes — fine bachelors, fine and pleasant maidens, and the elderly, all stretched out their necks [to be slaughtered]; even freedmen and maids were killed among them… they were killed like oxen and were dragged through the streets and markets like sheep to the slaughter; they lay naked, for the Crusaders had stripped them.”

The Chronicles of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan compares the Crusaders’ bloodlust to animals, saying that,

“On the twenty-third day of Iyar the steppe-wolves attacked the community of Worms. Some of the community were at home, and some in the court of the local bishop. The enemies and oppressors set upon the Jews who were in their homes, pillaging, and murdering men, women, and children, young and old. They destroyed the houses and pulled down the stairways, looting and plundering; and they took the holy Torah, trampled it in the mud of the streets, and tore it and desecrated it amidst ridicule and laughter…

They left only a few alive and had their way with them, forcibly immersing them in their filthy waters [that is baptism and forced conversion]; and the later acts of those thus coerced are testimony to this beginning, for in the end they regarded the object of the enemy's veneration as no more than slime and dung. Those who were slain sanctified the Name for all the world to see, and exposed their throats for their heads to be severed for the glory of the Creator, also slaughtering one another-man, his friend, his kin, his wife, his children, even his sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; and compassionate women slaying their only children-all wholeheartedly accepting the judgment of Heaven upon themselves.”

When the Crusaders had killed or converted those they could capture in the city they decided to assault the bishop’s castle. So pronounced was their hatred of Christ’s enemies and their fervor to rid their country of a corrupting influence that they were willing to defy one of God’s chosen and kill the Christian defenders to reach the Jews sheltered within. The Christian soldiers and the Jews inside tried to resist but they were overwhelmed. When it became apparent that the fanatics could not be stopped the Jewish parents slaughtered their own children to prevent their torture and murder. Solomon bar Nathan writes, “They took their own lives; mothers were dashed to pieces with their children, fathers fell upon their sons and were slaughtered upon them.”

While quick suicide seemed the logical option to some, others could not bear the thought of ending their own children’s lives. In one instance recorded in the Mainz Anonymous,

“Rabbi M'shulam…called loudly to all assembled and to his beloved, Mrs. Tzipora, saying, "Hear me, young and old! God has given me this son; my wife Tzipora gave birth to him after she was already old. His name is Isaac; now I shall offer him up [as a sacrifice] as Abraham did to his son Isaac. Tzipora answered him, "Sir, sir, wait a bit. Do not yet send your hand against the boy whom I raised, whom I reared, whom I gave birth to when I was already old. Slaughter me first, that I do not see the child's death" But he answered, saying, "I will not delay even a moment; He who gave him to us will take him to his portion and seat him in the lap of Abraham." He bound his son Isaac, picked up the knife to slaughter his son, and recited the benediction over slaughtering; the boy said "Amen"; and he slaughtered the boy. He took his screaming wife, and the two of them left the room together; the Crusaders killed them.”

M’shulam was one of three rabbis we know of that were executed that day. Rabbi Isaac refused to denounce his faith and accept Christ. As punishment for his defiance the fanatics tied a rope around his neck and dragged him through the city. Horrendously beaten, clothes and skin torn to shred by stones, his tormentors offered him respite if he would convert. With what little strength he had, he motioned for them to cut off his head, which they did.

The armed men then seized Rabbi Simcha, son of Rabbi Isaac. They asked Simcha if he would accept baptism. As they did they pointed to the many corpses of Jews around him; the only alternative they would offer. Simcha agreed to convert but asked that the bishop oversee his conversion. The armed pilgrims and allied burghers led him to the bishop’s courtyard. Then some of the men left to scour the rest of the castle for Jews, or possibly plunder. As they did, Simcha took out a hidden knife. He struck one of the officers in the stomach then quickly killed two more men before his knife broke and he was brought down.

Simcha seemed convinced that the bishop of Worms had betrayed the Jews, that or he simply wanted to enact vengeance on every Christian that he could. A tragedy upon tragedy, given that the bishop of Worms sincerely did want to protect the city’s Jews. However, unlike the Bishop of Speyer, the Bishop of Worms did not have the manpower needed to hold back the crusaders. Instead, he could only mourn the heretical violence and the death of the officer who was his nephew.

While most of the crusaders killed with abandon, there was at least one person that gave them pause. A woman known only as Mrs. Mina was well-known and respected even by the Christian burghers, seemingly due to her connections to many powerful nobles. When the burghers found her hiding outside the city they begged her to convert. Yet, no amount of pleading could convince her and they slew her as well.

Eight hundred Jews were killed in the pogrom at Worms. In mere days the crusaders had wiped out one of the greatest bastions of Ashkenazi Jewry. The accounts of the mass murder and desecration of the Worms Jewry are harrowing. Yet, the worst was yet to come.

Those armed bands of would-be crusaders which had devastated Worms marched north along the Rhine towards Mainz, which then boasted the largest Jewish population in the Rhineland. As their numbers swelled a local count named Emicho joined them with his vassal knights. Emicho quickly became one of the primary leaders of the armed fanatics. Perhaps Emicho was merely an opportunist who saw an opportunity to seize control of an army. Maybe he truly did want to exterminate all Jews in Germany. It is possible that both were true. Whether he hated the Jews or not, Count Emicho’s sadism has since been etched into the pages of history.

After the massacres at Speyer and Worms the Jewish community of Mainz knew that there would be bloodshed. They prayed and fasted, hoping for deliverance from the worst of it. The community leaders approached Ruthard, the city’s archbishop and ruler, begging for safety. Ruthard told the Jews to bring as many of their valuables as they could and stay in his castle until the danger had passed. The city’s Jewry holed up behind the stone walls, though a number of rabbis ventured out at night to visit the synagogue. When they returned they told their fellow Jews that they had heard weeping from inside the building only to find it empty; as dark an omen as could be.

The Jews were not the only ones who witnessed miracles in the lead-up to the conflict. A German woman who had joined the armed pilgrims noticed that a goose was following her, causing her to remark, “See, the goose understands what I tell it: I'm going Crusading and (it) wants to come with me.” This sign of divine approval, communicated through the actions of a fowl assured locals that the cause was just and they joined the march. Yet, the bands were unruly and given to pillaging. At one point a group of crusaders fought amongst each other, resulting in one person’s death. When word spread that one of their number had been killed some of them declared, “This is all the Jews' doing!” With renewed fervor they set upon the road.

On 25 May the armed pilgrims arrived at the city gates. What had been a small mob at Speyer and cohorts at Worms became an army at Mainz. After two days the Crusaders still had not left. The city’s defenders recognized that this was not a violent migration but a siege. When the Jews realized that the walls might not hold they decided to treat the Germans as they had the French: they gave them their money with the hopes that they would use the wealth to pay for food and shelter on the way to the East. Emicho gladly took their money but remained at the gates.

The crusader army arrived during a particularly holy period for Jews. Historian Robert Chazan notes that,

“The time of Count Emicho's encampment was special for the Jews of Mainz, as it was for Jews the world over. On the first days of Sivan, Jews began preparing for the festival of Shavuot on the sixth of the month, the festival that celebrates Israel's receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai. To the Jews of Mainz and elsewhere, God's revelation on Sinai represented the high point in human history and the apogee of the Jewish experience. For these medieval Jews, God's direct appearance to the entire people of Israel distinguished them from all other nations and faiths and constituted the most telling argument for the veracity of Jewish religious tradition. Yet now they were imperiled by the adherents of Judaism's daughter religion, the crusaders, who were setting out in the name of Christian truth to vanquish the adherents of Judaism's other daughter religion, [Islam, whose adherents the Christians called] the "infidels.””

On the 27 May the burghers of the city opened the gates to the crusaders. Whether this was to save themselves by directing the crusaders’ wrath against the Jews or their desire to join in the killing we can only guess. The armed pilgrims sped towards the archbishop’s castle. Led by Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam, the city’s Jews had armed themselves and fought against the oncoming tide, but they faced overwhelming numbers. Moreover, the Jews were not trained in combat and they were fatigued from constant fasting and praying. The heroic defense was a one-sided rout. When the castle’s few-remaining Christian defenders saw that the battle was hopeless they abandoned their posts. In barely any time at all the castle had fallen. Some Jewish women saw the Crusaders entering and threw coins out the windows, hoping it would delay their killers long enough for them to execute their own children as painlessly as possible.

12th century rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan wrote that when the crusaders entered,

“The enemy arose against them, killing little children and women, youth and old men, viciously-all on one day-a nation of fierce countenance that does not respect the old nor show favor to the young. The enemy showed no mercy for babes and sucklings, no pity for women about to give birth. They left no survivor or remnant but a dried date, and two or three pits, for all of them had been eager to sanctify the Name of Heaven. And when the enemy was upon them, they all cried out in a great voice, with one heart and one tongue: "Hear, O Israel,"…

Some of the pious old men wrapped themselves in their fringed prayer shawls and sat in the bishop's courtyard. They hastened to fulfill the will of their Creator, not wishing to flee just to be saved for temporal life, for lovingly they accepted Heaven's judgment. The foe hurled stones and arrows at them, but they did not scurry to flee. Women, too, girded their loins with strength and slew their own sons and daughters, and then themselves. Tenderhearted men also mustered their strength and slaughtered their wives, sons, daughters, and infants. The most gentle and tender of women slaughtered the child of her delight.”

The Jews knew that they were doomed. Furthermore, they reasoned that strangling or slitting the throats of their children was better than torture or forced conversion. Even if the Jewish parents believed this many still struggled to do the deed, especially when their children begged them for mercy. The Mainz Anonymous recounts

“An important woman, Mrs. Rachel, a choice woman (daughter of Rabbi Isaac, the son of Rabbi Asher), was there, and she told her friends, ‘I have four children. Do not have pity on them, lest these uncircumcised come and grab them alive so that the children live with the enemies' heresy; rather, honor the holy name even with [killing] them.’ So one of her friends went and took a knife. When Rachel saw the knife, she cried a long, bitter shout, hit her face, and said, "Where is Your kindness, God?" She took Rachel's youngest son, Isaac, a very pleasant boy, and slaughtered him. Rachel had spread out her sleeves between the two brothers, saying to her friend, "By your life, do not slaughter Isaac in Aaron's sight." But Aaron [nonetheless] saw that his brother had been slaughtered, and cried, "Mother, Mother, don't slaughter me." He went and hid under a box. She took her two daughters, Bela and Madrona, and slaughtered them to God who had commanded us not to exchange His pure awe, and to be steadfastly with him. When the holy one finished slaughtering the three of her children before our Creator, she raised her voice, calling her son, Aaron: "Aaron, where are you? Nor will I have pity or mercy on you." She dragged him by his foot from under the box where he had been hiding and slaughtered him before the exalted God on high. She put them in her two sleeves, two on each side, near her belly, and they were twitching next to her, until the Crusaders captured the room, finding her sitting and elegizing over them. The Crusaders told her, "Show us the money you have in your sleeves." When they saw the slaughtered children, they smote her, killing her on top of them.”

In truly tragic irony, the crusaders witnessed Jewish parents killing their children and took this as a sign of Jewish cruelty, malevolence and proof that they deserved death; this despite the fact that the Jews were only executing their children to prevent more painful death by the crusaders.

The Mainz Anonymous continues,

“The Crusaders killed everyone in that room and stripped them naked; the corpses were still twitching and becoming stained in their own blood as they were stripping them…[The crusaders] then tossed [the Jews], naked, from the room through the windows; [the corpses piled up,] hills upon hills, mounds upon mounds, until they became like a tall mountain. Many members of the holy covenant, when they were being tossed, still had a bit of life left in them, and gestured with their fingers [as if to say], "Give us water, that we may drink." When the Crusaders saw this, they asked them, "[Will you accept baptism]?" But they shook their heads and looked to their Father in heaven, [as if] to say, No, and they pointed [as if] to God; the Crusaders killed them.”

Though many of the Jews had abandoned hope, some still managed to achieve a small measure of vengeance. When one overeager crusader sped ahead of his comrades and entered a room filled with Jews they stoned him to death. Yet, not long after, a band of armed pilgrims broke open the roof above them and shot the Jews with arrows and spears. These and many more horrors they committed, a fraction of which are recorded in the Jewish chronicles.

The Christians within the castle recognized that they had no hope of defeating the army before them. The archbishop only had 300 soldiers; certainly no match for the 12,000 under Count Emicho, even if most of them were men untrained in war, women, children, elderly and feeble. Realizing the hopelessness of the situation Archbishop Ruthard had led his followers to the nearby village of Rudesheim, across the Rhine River. Yet, the archbishop was not entirely shirking his duty. There remained a small number of Jews still holding out within the castle that he hoped to save. At night Ruthard sent a messenger to their leader, Rabbi Kalonymous, telling him to take as many Jews as he could and abandon the castle. After the messenger swore an oath, the rabbi followed him and took a boat across the river to meet the archbishop.

When Archbishop Ruthard saw Rabbi Kalonymous step onto the eastern bank he rejoiced. Ruthard then related his plan. He told Kalonymous that he did not have the arms necessary to save the remaining Jews of Mainz, but if they came over the bank, renounced their faith and became Christians they might still be saved from extermination. The Rabbi grieved, knowing those were his only options. He, a rabbi, could lead his fellows to betray the very framework of their existence and being, or embrace a horrendous death. Caught between these two impossible choices, the rabbi said that he needed time to consider. The rabbi returned to what few of his people were left and solemnly relayed the archbishop’s message. The Jews prayed and decided that they would sooner die than abandon their faith. Kalonymous then kissed his son Joseph and killed him.

When Archbishop Ruthard learned of all this he denounced the Jews for rejecting his offer, clinging to what he viewed as a false faith, and the beloved rabbi’s murder of his own child which the archbishop viewed as a monstrous act. The archbishop’s condemnation of the Jews inspired the villagers of Rudesheim to join the crusaders besieging Castle Mainz. When the crusaders had finished killing the Jews in the archbishop’s castle they returned to the city to mop up any they had missed. In a day, the largest community of Jews in the Rhineland was exterminated, roughly one thousand souls.

A small number of Jews survived, though only by feigning conversion. Among the few survivors was a man named Isaac. Later Isaac became overwhelmed by grief and survivor’s guilt. He killed his two daughters and walked to the empty synagogue where he and another man lit the temple on fire, accepting death by immolation.

On 29 May Emicho’s impromptu army arrived at Cologne where similar massacres occurred. Many of Cologne’s Jews had heard of the coming crusaders and evacuated to nearby villages, but even this did not save them. Breakaway cohorts from the crusader army pursued the refugees and enacted pogroms throughout the northern Rhineland. Even as these armed bands ravaged northwestern Germany, Emicho turned eastward. Finally, after purging his lands of Jews did he commit to the pope’s original call: to march upon Jerusalem.

Yet, Emicho and his fanatical army never made it to the Holy Land; they did not even step foot in the Byzantine Empire. By the time the Germans crossed over into Hungary, its ruler, King Coloman was ready to meet them. In the months before Emicho’s host arrived, the largely French migration under Pierre l’Ermite had passed through his realm. Pierre exercised a level of control over his vast gathering, though some cohorts broke away and sacked villages for food and other supplies. The scholar-king of Hungary engaged what small bands he could, slaughtering the untrained men and women who rampaged throughout his kingdom, until the bulk of Pierre’s forces crossed over into the Eastern Roman Empire.

If the Hungarian knights were initially caught off-guard by ‘the People’s Crusade’ they were fully prepared to meet the much smaller army of zealots under Count Emicho. According to one source, the German force arrived at the border where they encountered King Coloman himself at the head of an army. Emicho sent emissaries to his majesty, asking for safe passage. In response, Coloman demanded that the emissaries send him Emicho’s head. Emicho was tipped off to the plot and fled. This left the untrained, migrating zealots with no leader and their organization immediately fell apart, at which point the Hungarian knights charged them. The German peasants were no match for trained soldiers, and were easily dispatched. Many fled the violence only to drown in the surrounding bogs. Others fled to the Danube River where they hoped to cross the makeshift bridges which the French armed pilgrims had erected just months prior. But these had not been made to last and they collapsed under the weight of the stampeding Germans. Thus, the zealots who had slaughtered so many Jews in the Rhineland faced their own gruesome deaths at the hands of the Hungarians, the Danube River and shoddy French engineering. Their ignominious leader Count Emicho survived the slaughter and went home to Germany. For the rest of his life he lived in shame, though not primarily for slaughtering Jews but for betraying his oath to war for Jerusalem.

Soon order was restored across Western Europe. In late May the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich IV finalized an agreement with the Duke of Bavaria which allowed him to use the mountain passes and return to Germany after a long stay in northern Italy. Heinrich IV’s vassals paid homage and the Emperor ensured an end to the bloodshed. He expressed compassion towards the Jews, waiving the punishments for apostasy and heresy for those who wished to return to Judaism. Then Heinrich IV declared he would not allow such madness to occur again in his kingdom. Before his martyrdom, Rabbi Kalonymous of Mainz had sent a letter to the Emperor, expressing his fears, and specifically mentioned Godefroy de Bouillon’s vow to exterminate the Jews. When Godefroy led his armies through Germany towards the East Heinrich IV personally threatened him, at which point the Frenchman denied ever threatening Jews.

The Catholic Church condemned the massacres. These attacks violated church prohibitions on violence and specific protections for Jewish minorities. 24 years afterwards, Pope Callixtus II passed papal bulls collectively known as Sicut Judaeis. These ordinances forbid on pain of excommunication the forced conversion of Jews, interruption of religious observance or violence against themselves and their property.

Finally, many, if not most Christians disapproved of the violence, which was perpetrated by a radical minority of fanatics looking for religious absolution and the burghers who joined them for political and economic reasons.

The 1096 massacres of Jews are known as the Gezerot Tatnu. These events occupy a unique, and complex episode in Jewish history. The dramatic stories preserved in the contemporary documents and chronicles written shortly thereafter are tragic, awful and depressing. Over three thousand Jews were murdered, the vast majority in the three cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz. Yet, the total violence that European Jews faced was minimal compared to previous and later events, and the Jewish communities revived and grew, even in the three aforementioned cities. During the Great Jewish Revolt between 66-73 CE the Romans killed hundreds of thousands, if not over a million Jews. Series of pogroms in the later medieval and early modern period killed tens of thousands. Then the Holocaust resulted in the deaths of roughly 6 million European Jews.

Given all this violence, the Gezerot Tatnu seems insignificant in the long history of the Jewish people. Yet, there are scholars who contest that this was a major catalyst for anti-Jewish oppression. There are even historians who trace a direct line from the anti-Jewish massacres of 1096 through to the Holocaust. While the Catholic Church may have prohibited harming Jews, the First Crusade spread the idea that killing false believers pleased God. Pope Urban II’s logic that Muslims had rejected Christ’s message and that Christians could slay them without concern for their immortal souls was easily transposed onto Jews, despite Catholic ordinances against anti-Jewish persecution. If anything, many Christians argued that they had more reasons to oppose Jews than Muslims. Jews did not just reject Christ’s message, but Christ himself. Many Catholics held Jews responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion, something which the Catholic Church only explicitly denied in the 1960s at the Second Vatican Council. It is no wonder that when the Second Crusade was called, Jews prepared for a new wave of pogroms.

In hindsight, the 1096 pogroms provide a fascinating spiritual dilemma for the First Crusade, one which contemporary Christians would dismiss. Christianity was uniquely a middle religion. It was the successor to Judaism, yet it denied ‘The Last Revelation’ of the Prophet Muhammad that is the basis for Islam. Christians claimed that they were the Chosen People on the basis that when the Jews rejected Jesus, God’s covenant passed to them. Yet, as the children of Isaac, the Jews believed that God maintained his covenant with them, even as Muslims believed that they had a special divine mission. Thus the Crusaders marched to conquer Israel even as Jews claimed that they were the true children of Israel.

Who was to blame for the 1096 massacres? Traditionally the blame has fallen on the Germans, which is understandable. Most of the surviving sources are in German. The majority of the violence that we know of took place in Germany. The fanatics and their leader Count Emicho were German. Additionally, while historians aspire to neutrality we never quite achieve it, and often read history backwards. Many scholars trying to explain how the Holocaust happened look towards earlier events as the progenitor of modern-day horrors. For roughly forty years after World War 2 many people, historians included, accepted the assumption that German culture was uniquely anti-Semitic.

Was this the case? Oh, I’m not going to go through the whole history of Germany; but in this one particular incident it appears that the French are just as culpable as the Germans. It was a French pope who declared the holy war. It was also the French who enacted the first pogroms of 1096. While less-studied than the German pogroms, what sources we have imply that there were violent anti-Jewish demonstrations across France that year. The preaching of Pierre l’Ermite roused the Germans to frenzy, and his hasty, uncoordinated march left them with no clear leader or organization. Furthermore, the French armed pilgrims themselves participated in pogroms in Regensburg and Prague. Even if most of the Rhineland massacres were committed by Germans, there were French figures among them. Emicho’s subcommanders included Dreux de Nesle, Guillaume viscount of Melun, Clarambaud de Vendeuil, and Thomas de la Fere. When Godefroy de Bouillon passed through Germany he accepted soldiers who had been involved in the pogroms into his entourage. For this reason, the author of the Mainz Anonymous blames the French for the persecutions.

The persecutions of 1096 have long-been depicted as a uniquely German event. Yet, they are just as much a part of French history. Their impact has further been enshrined by the work of the French Jew Rashi. As a former student in Worms, Rashi was deeply impacted by the violence and frequently referenced it in his commentaries. Given that his commentary has been included with every printing of the Talmud for five hundred years this event, and its interpretation by a French Jew, remains a part of world Jewish culture.

These events were a clear and foreboding sign for the holy war. If he did not know it yet, Pope Urban II would soon realize that he had created something which he could not control. For the rest of their journey the armed pilgrims were torn between what they believed was their righteous cause and the more sadistic impulses contained in every man’s heart, impulses which could amplify a thousand times over when shared by a multitude and charged by war.

Timeline:

Speyer (3 May) -> Worms (18 May) -> Mainz (25 May arrived), Cologne (29 May) [Emicho leaves for the Danube for Hungary] -> Neuss (24 June) -> Xanten (27 June) -> Wevelinghofen (28 June) [other smaller villages attacked at different dates]

Sources:

Robert Chazan, God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives,2000.

Robert Chazan, In the Year 1066: The First Crusade & the Jews, 1996.

Robert Chazan, “’Let Not a Remnant or a Residue Escape’: Millenarian Enthusiasm in the First Crusade,” Speculum, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 2009), pp. 289-313.

The Chronicles of Rabbi Eliezer Bar Nathan, “The Massacres of Jews by the First Crusaders” (1096) [Excerpted from Shlomo Eidelberg, trans. and ed., The Jews and the Crusaders (KTAV, 1996), pp. 79-93.] https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/bar-nathan

Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade, 2006.

Norman Golb, “New Light on the Persecution of French Jews at the Time of the First Crusade,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 1966, Vol. 34 1-63.

The Mainz Anonymous, 1100. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Mainz_Anonymous

The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, 1096 https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1096jews-mainz.asp