An engraving (18th century) of the mass suicide of the Jews of Worms in 1096, when they were overwhelmed by Crusaders (with shields). (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
In the winter of 1095-1096 news of Pope Urban II’s call for a crusade spread. In the spring of 1096 the Jews of northern France, fearing that a crusade would arouse anti-Semitic hostility, sent a circular letter to the Rhineland’s Jewish community seeking its prayers. Jewish leaders in Mainz responded, “All the (Jewish) communities have decreed a fast. . . . May God save us and save you from all distress and hardship. We are deeply fearful for you. We, however, have less reason to fear (for ourselves), for we have heard not even a rumor of the crusade.”2 Ironically, French Jewry survived almost unscathed, while the Rhenish Jewry suffered frightfully.
Beginning in the late tenth century Jews trickled into Speyer (SHPAHY-uhr) — partly through Jewish perception of opportunity and partly because of the direct invitation of the bishop of Speyer. The bishop’s charter meant that Jews could openly practice their religion, could not be assaulted, and could buy and sell goods. But they could not proselytize their faith, as Christians could. Jews also extended credit on a small scale and, in an expanding economy with many coins circulating, determined the relative value of currencies. Unlike their Christian counterparts, many Jewish women were literate and acted as moneylenders. Jews also worked as skilled masons, carpenters, and jewelers. As the bishop had promised, the Jews of Speyer lived apart from Christians in a walled enclave where they exercised autonomy: they maintained law and order, raised taxes, and provided religious, social, and educational services for their community. (This organization lasted in Germany until the nineteenth century.) Jewish immigration to Speyer accelerated; everyday relations between Jews and Christians were peaceful.
But Christians resented Jews as newcomers, outsiders, and aliens; for enjoying the special protection of the bishop; and for providing economic competition. AntiSemitic ideology had received enormous impetus from the virulent anti-Semitic writings of Christian apologists in the first six centuries C. E. Jews, they argued, were dei-cides (DAY-ah-sides) (Christ killers); worse, Jews could understand the truth of Christianity but deliberately rejected it; thus they were inhuman. By the late eleventh century anti-Semitism was an old and deeply rooted element in Western society.
Late in April 1096 Emich of Leisingen, a petty lord from the Rhineland who had the reputation of being a lawless thug, approached Speyer with a large band of Crusaders. Joined by a mob of burghers, they planned to surprise the Jews in their synagogue on Saturday morning, May 3, but the Jews prayed early and left before the attackers arrived. Furious, the mob randomly murdered eleven Jews. The bishop took the entire Jewish community into his castle, arrested some of the burghers, and cut off their hands. News of these events raced up the Rhine to Worms, creating confusion in the Jewish community. Some took refuge with Christian friends; others sought the bishop’s protection.
A combination of Crusaders and burghers killed a large number of Jews, looted and burned synagogues, and desecrated the Torah and other books. Proceeding on to the old and prosperous city of Mainz, Crusaders continued attacking Jews. Facing overwhelming odds, eleven hundred Jews killed their families and themselves. Crusaders and burghers vented their hatred by inflicting barbaric tortures on the wounded and dying. The Jews were never passive; everywhere they resisted. If the Crusades had begun as opposition to Islam, after 1096 that hostility extended to all those who Christians saw as enemies of society, including heretics, Jews, and lepers. But Jews continued to move to the Rhineland and to make important economic and intellectual contributions. Crusader-burgher attacks served as harbingers of events to come in the later Middle Ages and well into modern times.
Questions for Analysis
1. How do you explain Christian attacks on the Jews of Speyer? Were they defenses of faith?
2. How did Christian views of the Jews as outsiders contribute to these events? Can you think of more recent examples of similar developments?
How did medieval rulers create larger and more stable territories? (page 194)
The end of the great invasions signaled the beginning of profound changes in European society. As domestic disorder slowly subsided, feudal rulers began to develop new institutions of government that enabled them to assert their power over lesser lords and the general population. Centralized states slowly crystallized, first in England and France, where rulers such as William the Conqueror and Philip Augustus manipulated feudal institutions to build up their power. In central Europe the German king Otto had himself declared emperor and tried to follow a similar path, but unified nationstates did not develop until the nineteenth century. Emperors instead shared power with princes, dukes, archbishops, counts, bishops, abbots, and cities. In the Iberian peninsula Christian rulers of small states slowly expanded their territories, taking over land from Muslim rulers in the reconquista.
How did the administration of law contribute to the development of national states? (page 202)
As medieval rulers expanded territories and extended authority, they required more officials, larger armies, and more money with which to pay for them. They developed different sorts of financial institutions to provide taxes and other income. The most effective financial bureaucracies were those developed in England, including a bureau of finance called the Exchequer, and in Sicily, where Norman rulers retained the main financial agency that had been created by their Muslim predecessors. By contrast, the rulers of France and other continental states continued to rely primarily on the income from their own property to support their military endeavors, so their financial institutions were less sophisticated.
How did the papacy attempt to reform the church, and what was the response
From other powerful rulers? (page 205)
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rulers in Europe sought to transform a hodgepodge of oral and written customs and rules into a uniform system of laws acceptable and applicable to all their peoples. In England such changes caused conflict with church officials, personified in the dispute between King Henry II and Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. Fiscal and legal measures by Henry’s son John led to opposition from the high nobles of England, who forced him to sign Magna Carta, agreeing to promise to observe the law. Magna Carta had little immediate impact, but it came to signify the principle that everyone, including the king and the government, must obey the law. At the same time that kings were creating more centralized realms, energetic popes built up their power within the Western Christian church and asserted their superiority over kings and emperors. The Gregorian reform movement led to a grave conflict with kings over lay investiture. The papacy achieved a technical success on the religious issue, but in Germany the greatly increased power of the nobility, at the expense of the emperor, represents the significant social consequence. Having put its own house in order, the Roman papacy built the first strong government bureaucracy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the High Middle Ages, the church exercised general leadership of European society.
Domesday Book (p. 196) Exchequer (p. 196)
Holy Roman Empire (p. 199) diwan (p. 200) reconquista (p. 201) common law (p. 203) circuit judges (p. 203) jury (p. 203)
Magna Carta (p. 205) simony (p. 205) college of cardinals (p. 206) lay investiture (p. 206) excommunication (p. 207) cloistered (p. 207) Christendom (p. 208) Crusades (p. 209) indulgence (p. 210) Albigensians (p. 212) Inquisition (p. 212)
How did the motives, course, and consequences of the Crusades reflect and shape developments in Europe? (page 209)
A papal call to retake the holy city of Jerusalem led to the Crusades, nearly two centuries of warfare between Christians and Muslims. The enormous popular response to papal calls for crusading reveals the influence of the reformed papacy and a new sense that war against the church’s enemies was a duty of nobles. The Crusades were initially successful, and small Christian states were established in the Middle East. These did not last very long, however, and other effects of the Crusades were disastrous. Jewish communities in Europe were regularly attacked; relations between the Western and Eastern Christian churches were poisoned by the Crusaders’ attack on Constantinople; and Christian-Muslim relations became more uniformly hostile than they had been earlier.
1. J. Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwdn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 293.
2. I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 403.
3. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 24.
4. Ibid., pp. 250-255.
World History
