Persecution of Jews at the time of the First Crusade

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During the Peasants' Crusade, which took place in the run-up to the First Crusade of the Knights , the Jews living in the Rhineland were attacked by crusaders in the spring of 1096 . This led to the first organized pogroms against the Jews in the West . In Judaism the event is thought of as Gezerot Tatnu .

background

As early as 1066, the so-called massacre of Granada took place as the first pogrom on European soil . Under the rule of the Muslim Zirids of Granada , more than 1,500 Jewish families, around 4,000 people, were murdered. After the Jewish community of Granada recovered in the years that followed, it was attacked and wiped out again in 1090 under the Almoravids , the end of the golden age of Judaism in Spain .

In parts of the Holy Roman Empire and France , Jews and Muslims were also seen as enemies of Christianity . After the Synod of Clermont , Pope Urban II held synods in Tours and Rouen to disseminate the appeal. The Church's itinerant preachers sent across the country did the rest, ensuring that many simple people, adventurers, criminals, but also peasants went to war. The most famous among them was the penitential preacher Peter the Hermit . Pope Urban II's appeal was addressed to Christians to embark on the crusade to Jerusalem in order to expel the “enemies of Christianity” from the Holy Land and to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher of Christ . Before that, however, the crusaders wanted to drive the Jews out of their own territories.

In addition to religious causes, the financial needs of the participants in the farmers' crusade was another cause of the pogroms against the Jews in the Rhineland . The Jewish communities in the Rhineland were very wealthy because the Jews, unlike the Christians, were allowed by the Catholic Church to lend money against interest . See also: Interest prohibition

Rumors of the first outbreak of violence against Jews from Rouen reported that Jews had been massacred there. In December 1095, the northern French Jewish communities wrote a letter to the Rhenish Jews warning them of the arrival of the Crusaders. The Rhinelander answered that they had no fear, but gave Peter the Hermit in his People's Crusade a letter in which they asked their European co-religionists to support him and his followers and alimony .

Volkmar and Gottschalk

In the spring of 1096 a multitude of small groups of knights and peasants, inspired by the sermons of Peter the Hermit , set off from different parts of the Holy Roman Empire and France . The procession of the priest Volkmar had started in the Rhineland at the end of April 1096 with the aim of joining Peter the Hermit in the east. This resulted in the persecution of Jews in Magdeburg and later in Prague (June 30, 1096). The Hungarians disbanded the train by force when they realized that they were rioters.

Another priest named Gottschalk, whom Peter the Hermit had also left behind when he set out on April 20, led crusaders from the Rhineland and Lorraine up the Rhine. When the crusaders passed Bavaria on their way to Hungary, z. B. Regensburg to attacks directed against Jews. Gottschalk's procession was wiped out by the Hungarians after its drunken participants looted Hungarian territory.

Count Emicho

The largest of these crusades, most closely involved in the attacks on Jews, was led by Count Emicho . An army of around 10,000 men, women and children from the Rhineland , Eastern France, Lorraine , Flanders and even England , which started in the early summer of 1096, rolled along the Rhine Valley , up the Main to the Danube . Emicho was accompanied by Vice Count Wilhelm von Melun , called the carpenter , and Drogo von Nesle from France, Hartmann von Dillingen and Herr von Salm from his Rhenish neighborhood.

Emperor Heinrich IV. , Who was in northern Italy , ordered the protection of the Jews when he learned of the impending riots. Bishop Johann I. von Speyer gave protection to the Jewish inhabitants of the city when they were attacked by Emicho on May 3rd, but 12 people were killed. Emicho appeared in Worms on May 18th. The crusaders murdered all Jews who had not already fled in their homes if they did not get baptized. On May 25, a mob and the crusaders stormed the bishop's court , where many Jews had fled to their patronage. The bishop was not present, however. The mob continued to kill there, some Jews killed their children and committed suicide. There are said to have been about 800 deaths. There are at least three contemporary reports on the pogrom, the report of Solomon bar Simeon , the report of Eliezer bar Nathan and a third report by an anonymous , narrative far more embellished, in some facts, especially dates, differing in some facts and due to substantive clues in the present one Version probably written down in the second half of the 14th century at the earliest.

News of Emicho's crusade spread quickly. Archbishop Ruthard prevented him from entering Mainz on May 25 , but the next day the gates were opened to them by like-minded people. The Archbishop tried to protect the Jews by hiding them in his lightly fortified palace, but Emicho and his people broke into the palace on May 27th, Ruthard fled the city, the Crusaders caused a bloodbath. Mainz was probably the site of Emicho's greatest acts of violence. Around 700 Jews were killed here.

Regarding the acts of violence in the ShUM cities , the contemporary lament of the calonymos ben Jehuda has been handed down, who belongs to the large family of the calonymids , but cannot be clearly identified beyond that.

From Mainz, Emicho turned north, where riots had already broken out in Cologne in April. The Jews had left the city and hid in the area. The influence of Cologne Archbishop Hermann III. von Hochstaden prevented a larger number of victims here. Emicho came to the conclusion that he had done his job in the Rhineland and continued his crusade up the Main and down the Danube towards Hungary.

In Mainz a group had left his heap, pulled up the Moselle and attacked the Jewish community of Trier . Here it was thanks to the intervention of Archbishop Egilbert that only a few Jews fell victim to the Crusaders. Eventually this group of crusaders made it to Metz , where they killed 22 Jews. The crusaders then moved on to Cologne, where they found that Emicho had already left. Here on the Lower Rhine , too, there were riots against the Jews living in Neuss , Wevelinghoven , Eller and Xanten from June 24th to June 27th , before this group of crusaders finally dispersed.

The chronicler Ekkehard von Aura reports that Emicho's heap, which also included women, allowed themselves to be attacked by the "spirit of fornication " in trust in the indulgence granted to all crusade participants . This and the experiences the Hungarians had with Volkmar and Gottschalk caused King Koloman to refuse Emicho's crusaders to travel through his country. In the battles that followed, they were almost completely wiped out near the border river Leitha . Emicho returned home, Wilhelm the carpenter and others eventually joined Hugo von Vermandois and the main crusader platoon in Italy .

Walter have nothing

The Jewish community in Trier was spared a pogrom by paying money and handing over groceries to Walter Sans-Avoir ( Walter habenicht ).

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the Muslim Al-Andalus the pogrom of Granada had already occurred in 1066 (Darío Fernández-Morera: The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise (PDF; 193 kB), in: The Intercollegiate Review , 2006, pp. 23–31 (25) ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Bruno Gloger: Crusades to the Orient. Kinderbuchverlag Berlin, 1985, p. 19 ff.
  3. ↑ Leo Trepp : The Jews. People, history, religion. Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3499606186 , p. 66.
  4. ^ Report of Eliezer bar Nathan . In: Neubauer and Stern, pp. 37f, 156.
  5. ^ In: Neubauer and Stern, pp. 2, 84f.
  6. ^ In: Neubauer and Stern, pp. 37f, 155.
  7. ↑ Neubauer and Stern, pp. 49–51, 172–176.
  8. ↑ Printed in: Fritz Reuter and Ulrike Schäfer: Wundergeschichten aus Warmaisa. Juspa Schammes, his Ma'asseh nissim and the Jewish Worms in the 17th century . Warmaisa, Worms 2007. ISBN 3-00-017077-4 , pp. 60-63.

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literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Robert Chazan : European Jewry and the First Crusade . University of California Press, 1987.
  • Robert Chazan: In the Year 1096. The First Crusade and the Jews. Jewish Publication Society, 1996 (also contains extracts from the Hebrew Chronicles).
  • Jeremy Cohen: Sanctifying The Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade . University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
  • Alfred Haverkamp: Jews and Christians at the time of the crusades (= Constance working group for medieval history. Lectures and research. Volume 47). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1999, ISBN 3-7995-6647-3
  • Eva Haverkamp (ed.): Hebrew reports on the persecution of the Jews during the First Crusade. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hanover 2005.
  • A [dolf] Neubauer and M [oritz] Stern: Hebrew reports on the persecution of the Jews during the Crusades = sources on the history of the Jews in Germany 2. Berlin 1892.
  • Steven Runciman : History of the Crusades. Book 3, Chapter 2. * Kenneth Setton (Ed.): A History of the Crusades. Madison, 1969-1989 ( accessible online ).

Web links