Rhineland massacres
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó or Tatnu, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in 1096. These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
Prominent leaders of Crusaders involved in the massacres included Peter the Hermit and, especially, Count Emicho. As part of this persecution, the destruction of Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms and Mainz was noted as the Hurban Shum. These were new persecutions of the Jews in which peasant Crusaders from France and Germany attacked Jewish communities. Many historians have referred to the violence as pogroms.
Background
Though no Crusades explicitly targeted Jews, the fervor for holy war sometimes turned into an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Europe, even though both ecclesiastical and secular authorities condemned it. The focus on the crucifixion story and violence against enemies of the Christian faith during the Crusades, as exemplified by the preaching of Pope Urban II in 1095-96 and Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146-47, needed little misconceptions to be translated into animosity towards Jews. In parts of France and Germany, Jews were perceived just as much of an enemy as Muslims: they were held responsible for the crucifixion, and they were more immediately visible than the distant Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel great distances to fight "non-believers" when there were already "non-believers" closer to home.It is also likely that the Crusaders were motivated by their need for money. The Rhineland communities were relatively wealthy, both because they were isolated and because the Jews were not restricted as Catholics were against moneylending. Many Crusaders had to go into debt in order to purchase weaponry and equipment for the expedition; as the Catholic Church strictly forbade usury, many Crusaders inevitably found themselves indebted to Jewish moneylenders. Having armed themselves by assuming the debt, the Crusaders rationalized the killing of Jews as an extension of their Catholic mission.
There had not been so broad a movement against Jews by Catholics since the 7th century's mass expulsions and forced conversions. While there had been regional persecutions of Jews by Catholics—such as in Metz in 888, a plot against Jews in Limoges in 992, a wave of anti-Jewish persecution by Christian millenarian movements in 1000, and the threat of expulsion from Trier in 1066. These are all viewed "in the traditional terms of governmental outlawry rather than unbridled popular attacks." Also many movements against Jews had been suppressed by various popes and bishops. The passions that were aroused within the Catholic community by Pope Urban II's call for the First Crusade had moved the persecution of Jews into a new chapter in history where previous constraints no longer held.
File:Gottfried von Bouillon 2006 0931C.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Sixteenth-century bronze statue of Godfrey of Bouillon from the group of heroes surrounding the memorial to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in the Hofkirche, Innsbruck|alt=A statue of a knight with a long beard. He is wearing a crown of thorns and elaborate armour. He has a sword in his left hand, and a shield rests against his right leg.
A relevant perspective on the extent of the era's antisemitism was recorded 40 years afterward by Jewish historian Solomon bar Simson. He states that Godfrey of Bouillon swore:
Emperor Henry IV issued an order prohibiting such an action. Godfrey claimed that he never really intended to kill Jews, but the communities in Mainz and Cologne sent him a collected bribe of 500 silver marks.
Sigebert of Gembloux writes that before "a war in behalf of the Lord" could be fought, it was essential that the Jews convert; those who resisted were "deprived of their goods, massacred, and expelled from the cities."
The first outbreaks of violence occurred in France. According to a contemporary chronicle of events written by an anonymous author in Mainz:
Richard of Poitiers writes that Jewish persecution was widespread in France at the beginning of the expeditions to the east. The anonymous chronicler of Mainz admired the Jews:
In June and July 1095, Jewish communities in the Rhineland were attacked, but the leadership and membership of these Crusader groups were not chronicled. Some Jews dispersed eastward to escape the persecution. On top of the general Catholic suspicion of Jews at the time, when the thousands of French members of the People's Crusade arrived at the Rhine, they had run out of provisions. To restock their supplies, they began to plunder Jewish food and property while attempting to force them to convert to Catholicism.
Not all Crusaders who had run out of supplies resorted to murder; some, like Peter the Hermit, used extortion instead. While no sources claim he preached against the Jews, he carried a letter with him from the Jews of France to the community at Trier. The letter urged them to provision Peter and his men. The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle records that they were so terrified by Peter's appearance at the gates that they readily agreed to supply his needs. Whatever Peter's own position on the Jews was, men claiming to follow after him felt free to massacre Jews on their own initiative, to pillage their possessions. Sometimes Jews survived by being subjected to involuntary baptism, such as in Regensburg, where a crusading mob rounded up the Jewish community, forced them into the Danube, and performed a mass baptism. After the Crusaders had left the region, these Jews returned to practicing Judaism.
According to David Nirenberg, the events of 1096 in the Rhineland "occupy a significant place in modern Jewish historiography and are often presented as the first instance of an antisemitism that would henceforth never be forgotten and whose climax was the Holocaust."
Volkmar and Gottschalk
In the spring of 1096, small bands of knights and peasants, inspired by the preaching of the Crusade, set off from various parts of France and Germany. The crusade of the preacher Volkmar, beginning in Saxony, persecuted Jews in Magdeburg and later, on May 30, 1096, in Prague in Bohemia. The Catholic Bishop Cosmas attempted to prevent forced conversions, and the Catholic hierarchy in Bohemia preached against such acts. Duke Bretislaus II was out of the country, and the Catholic Church's officials' protests were unable to stop the mob of crusaders.The hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a whole condemned the persecution of the Jews in the regions affected. Especially vocal were the parish priests. Chronicler Hugo of Flavigny recorded how these religious appeals were ignored, writing:
In general, the Crusader mobs did not fear any retribution, because the local courts did not have the jurisdiction to pursue them past their locality nor did they have the ability to identify and prosecute individuals out of the mob. The pleas of the clergy were ignored on similar grounds, and the mob believed that anyone preaching mercy to the Jews was doing so only because they had succumbed to Jewish bribery.
Gottschalk the monk went on to lead a crusade from the Rhineland and Lorraine into Hungary, occasionally attacking Jewish communities along the way. In late June 1096, the crusader mob of Gottschalk was welcomed by King Coloman of Hungary, but they soon began plundering the countryside and causing drunken disorder. Coloman then demanded they disarm. Once their weapons had been secured, the enraged Hungarians fell upon them, and "the whole plain was covered with corpses and blood."
The priest Volkmar and his Saxons also met a similar fate from the Hungarians when they began pillaging villages there because "sedition was incited".
Emicho
The largest of these crusades, and the most involved in attacking Jews, was that led by Count Emicho. Setting off in the early summer of 1096, an army of around 10,000 men, women and children proceeded through the Rhine valley, towards the Main River and then to the Danube. Emicho was joined by William the Carpenter and Drogo of Nesle, among others from the Rhineland, eastern France, Lorraine, Flanders and even England.Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, absent in southern Italy, ordered the Jews to be protected when he learned of Emicho's intent. After some Jews were killed at Metz in May, John, Bishop of Speyer, gave shelter to the Jewish inhabitants. Still, 12 Jews of Speyer were slain by Crusaders on May 3. The Bishop of Worms also attempted to shelter Jews, but the Crusaders broke into his episcopal palace and killed the Jews inside on May 18. At least 800 Jews were massacred in Worms when they refused Catholic baptism.
News of Emicho's crusade spread quickly, and he was prevented from entering Mainz on May 25 by Bishop Ruthard of Mainz. Emicho took an offering of gold raised by the Jews of Mainz in hope to gain his favor and their safety. Ruthard tried to protect the Jews by hiding them in his lightly fortified palace. Nevertheless, Emicho did not prevent his followers from entering the city on May 27, and a massacre followed. Many among the Christian business class in Mainz had working ties with Jews and gave them shelter from the mobs. The Mainz burghers joined with the militia of the bishop and the burgrave in fighting off the first waves of Crusaders. This stand had to be abandoned when Crusaders continued to arrive in ever greater numbers, and Ruthard and his militia fled and left the Jews to be slaughtered by the Crusaders. Despite the example of the burghers, many ordinary citizens in Mainz and other the towns were caught up in the frenzy and joined in the persecution and pillaging.
Mainz was the site of the greatest violence, with at least 1,100 Jews being killed by troops under Clarambaud and Thomas. Given the choice between flight, death, and conversion, some Jews opted for a desperate fourth alternative: active martyrdom, that is, killing their family and themselves. One man named Isaac was forcefully converted, but wracked with guilt he later killed his family and burned himself alive in his house. A woman Rachel murdered her four children so that they would not be kidnapped and "raised in the way of error" as Christians. Chronicler Solomon bar Simpson compares Rachel to the martyrdom of the woman and her seven sons in an attempt to make sense of her desperate act.
Jewish chronicler Eliezer ben Nathan paraphrased Habakkuk 1:6, writing "cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans... put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth."
On May 29 Emicho arrived at Cologne, where most Jews had already left or were hiding in Christian houses. In Cologne, other smaller bands of crusaders met Emicho, and they left with quite a lot of money taken from the Jews there. Emicho continued towards Hungary, soon joined by some Swabians. Coloman refused to allow them through Hungary. Count Emicho and his warriors besieged Moson, on the Leitha. This led Coloman to prepare to flee into Russia, but the morale of the Crusader mob began to fail, which inspired the Hungarians, and most of the mob was slaughtered or drowned in the river. Count Emicho and a few of the leaders escaped into Italy or back to their own homes. William the Carpenter and other survivors eventually joined Hugh of Vermandois and the main body of Crusader knights. Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV overruled Church law and permitted forcibly converted Jews to return to Judaism.