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Crusades
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Image: Pope Urban II calls
for the First Crusade at Clermont Cathedral, Bibloteque National
du Paris. |
For centuries Jews had
been a vulnerable minority in Europe. Their vulnerability became particularly
evident in the eleventh century when Pope Urban II called for a crusade
to liberate Jerusalem from the control of Islam. The crusade got underway
in the summer of 1096, but before the crusaders left for the Holy Land,
they set out to remove enemies from their homeland.
As the historian
John Weiss explains in Ideology of Death:
Map: Jewish communities and population at the start
of the Crusades.
Image: Execution of Jews during the Crusades.
Map: The
Crusades. |
The accumulated
hatreds and fears resulting from charges of deicide and usury
exploded
in the Crusades. In the eleventh century, Christian pilgrims
to Jerusalem were persecuted by the ruling Muslims, who also
defiled
the most sacred of Christian churches, then Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, site of the Resurrection and tomb of Jesus. Spurred
by the preaching of Pope Urban II and scores of Christian clergy,
in 1095 crusading nobles set out under the sign of the cross
to free the Holy Land from the infidel. Crop failure, famine,
and
plague created a surge of religious passion; in a prescientific
age natural disasters were seen as the wrath of the Lord. To
appease God, the holy places must be redeemed. The pope promised
salvation
to those who would slay the offending Muslims. Local priests
reminded the faithful that the most terrible enemies of
Christ were
permitted to live and prosper in the very midst of Christian
civiliztion. “First
avenge the crucified,” a monk wrote, “then go off
to fight the Turks.” As a contemporary noted, the Crusaders “exterminated
by many massacres the Jews of almost all Gaul, with the exception
of those who accepted conversion,” deeming it “unjust
to permit the enemies of Christ to remain alive in their own
country, when they had taken up arms to drive out the infidels
abroad.” The
abbot of Cluny asked why Christians should travel to "the ends
of the world to fight the Sarcens, when we permit among us other
infidels a thousand times more guilty
toward
Christ
than
the
Mohammedans?” Religious
passion, greed, and the vulnerability of Jews led to the rise
of violent mobs who murdered thousands to the cry of conversion
or
death. It seemed just that the wealth of blasphemers should fall
to those who did the work of the Lord.
John Weiss, Ideology of
Death, p. 15. |
See also Pope
Urban II's call for the First Crusade.
See also the eyewitness account of Soloman
bar Samson: The Crusaders in Mainz, May 27, 1096.
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Anti-Jewish Myths Evolve in the Middle
Ages
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Image:Antisemitic pamphlet
with illustration of ritual murder of a Christian boy by a Jew.
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During the centuries of the Crusades, myths about Jews circulated,
helping to heighten popular hatred and fear of Jews. It became commonplace
among Christian groups to think of Jews as agents of Satan. Images
of the satanic Jew adorned cathedral courtyards and town squares of Europe
where “miracle” plays presented the life, death and Resurrection
of Christ. Take, for example, the dramas
of Oberammergau (also known as the Oberammergau Passion Play):
Jews were depicted as demons who knew full well that Christ was the
son of
God.
While Christ
carries the cross, he is tortured by bloodthirsty, cursing devils with
hooked noses, horns and tails. The Jews were made to seem as evil as
Christ was divine.
The Myth of the Blood Libel
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Image:A depiction of the alleged
murder of Simon of Trent by Jews. From a facsimile of Hartmann
Schedel's Nuremburg Chronicle or Buch der Chroniken,
printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. Both the Buch der Chroniken and
the facsimile are located at Kenyon College.
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A
popular anti-Jewish myth that gained widespread acceptance was the
notion that Jewsmurdered Christians because they need blood to perform
satanic rites—the charge of ritual murder or blood
libel. It was
believed that Jews, usually led by rabbis, kidnapped Christian children
on Jewish holidays in order to bleed them to death for occult rituals.
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Image: Blood libel.
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According
to medieval myth, Jews thought the Christian blood could purge the
diseases caused by their own corrupt blood, or cure the wounds
caused by circumcision. Christians believed that Jews mixed the blood
in their
ritual foods at Passover in order to sanctify them. Some thought
that the captive Christians were crucified in order to reenact Christ’s
murder. If a Christian child was murdered near Easter or Passover,
there was a good chance that local Jews would be massacred. Into the
late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, at least two dozen ritual murder
trials took place in Central and Eastern Europe.
Video |
 |
You will need Windows Media Player to view this video. |
 Image: Blood libel. |
Dr.
Michael
Berenbaum, Professor of Theology at the University of Judaism
in Los Angeles, CA, discusses the Blood Libel myth during
a tour at the Florida Holocaust
Museum.
Cable/DSL |
The Myth that Jews Desecrated the Host |
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Miracle of the Desecrated
Host (Scenes 1-6)
1465-69, each panel is 43 x 58 cm, Galleria Nazionale delle
Marche, Urbino. The Miracle of the Desecrated Host was
painted by Uccello in
Urbino between 1465 and 1469 as the predella for the altarpiece
showing the Communion
of the Apostles that Justus
of Ghent (Joos van Wassenhove) painted in 1472
for the church of Corpus Domini in Urbino. The predella tells
the antisemitic legend that Jews desecrated the Host through
six episodes. The six scenes are not unanimously attributed
to
Paolo Uccello. Source: Web
Gallery of Art
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By the end of
the fourteenth century, Jews were seen to embody evil. There
were no longer tales of Jews converting. Rather, it was believed
that Jews stabbed the Host—literally stabbed Christ.
Images of Jews as scorpions and pigs adorned Cathedral walls.
The proliferation of anti-Jewish images in the Middle Ages
presaged the Nazi propaganda that depicted Jews as satanic
figures.
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 Image: Jews
mocking the Host at Pressburg, (Bratislava) in 1591, contemporary
woodcut from the Kupferstichkabinet, Berlin.
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 Image: Late
fifteenth century antisemitic painting from Frankfurt-Main
depicting Jews engaged in ritual murder and bestiality and
associating with the Devil.
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 Image: This
stone relief concerns the so-called "Judensau".
This derogatory portrayal of the Jews in intimate contact
with the "unpure" swine was common in the Middle
Ages.
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 Stained
Glass Windows: Church
and Synagogue (Ecclesia and Synagoga) stained glass windows
in the Elisabeth Church in Marburg, Germany. Depicts the
Church as triumphant, the Synagogue as blind and fallen.
Form more information, see commentary.
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The Myth of Jews Poisoning Wells
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Image: Illustration of a
Jew poisoning the Christian water supply by dropping some potion
into the well.
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The Black Plague in the middle of the fourteenth century killed approximately
one-third of the population of Europe. At the time, it was not known
how the illness spread, but stories and rumors circulated that Jews
had poisoned the wells. The accusation was totally unfounded. Nonetheless,
many Christians believed the myth.
This accusation led to severe consequences for Jews. More than sixty
Jewish communities were burned to the ground with all their occupants
killed. In cities
in Switzerland and Germany—Basel, Cologne, Strasbourg, and Mainz—Jews
were tortured and, in some cases, burned to death in bonfires. Christian
writers rationalized the attacks on Jews, claiming that Jews deserved death
for killing
Jesus and for taking unfair economic advantage of Christians.
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Economic Factors Contributing to Hatred of Jews
in the Middle Ages |
In the late Middle Ages, many of the
guilds which regulated trades and crafts excluded Jews. One of
the few professions open to Jews was lending money for interest,
a practice considered a sin for Christians. Jews also served as
middle men for landowners, collecting taxes from their serfs and
carrying out administrative tasks. The association of Jews with
these activities increased Christian antipathy for, and suspicion
of, Jews. These negative notions about Jews have persisted to the
present even though Christians now engage in these activities,
and Jews have gained access to many trades formerly restricted
to the Jewish community. |
| |
 Image: The
first victims of the religious intolerance of the king were the
Jews who were
often the bankers of the kingdom. Since it was, in theory, prohibited
to the Christians, the Church condemned any financial transaction
comprising the payment of interest. The miniature shows a Jewish
money lender who wears a yellow witch's hat. He counts
gold coins and gives them in a bag to a Christian. The closed door,
on the left, symbolizes the clandestinity of the act. From http://philae.sas.upenn.edu/French/caroly3.html
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 Medieval
iconography is filled with images of Jews engaged in financial
activities and often implies that Jews are draining resources from
the Christian community.
Image: Medieval Jewish merchants. |
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 Image: A
Biblical scene in a German church: Judas is counting money—his
reward for betraying Jesus. He is portrayed as a medieval
Jew wearing the obligatory pointed hat. Church of Naumburg, Germany,
Thirteenth
Century. Courtesy of Beyond
the Pale.
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The Fourth Lateran Council
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Image: Pope Innocent III.
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Pope
Innocent III convened the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Council
set forth a number of regulations that would make Jews identifiable
in Christian society.
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Image: Jewish woman with
yellow badge.
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In
France, Jews were to wear yellow badges, often round in shape. In Germany,
Jews were required to wear pointed hats.
In addition, Jews were banned from holding public office and were forbidden
to appear in public during Holy Week. Jews were also required to pay
a tax to their local Christian clergy. As
James Carroll explains in Constantine’s Sword, “the
Fourth Lateran Council fundamentally changed the situation of Jews
both legally and theologically.” (p. 282).
See also Lateran
Councils.
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Image: Twelfth Century dress
of a commoner (left), a Jew (middle), and a knight (right). Note
the obligatory pointed hat that is part of the Jew's attire. From
The History of Costume, By Braun & Schneider - c.1861-1880,
Plate #15d - Twelfth Century.
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See also a fictional written account of living
in Toledo, Spain in the 1230's in the Jewish quarter by Chaiya,
a fictional Jewish lady. (Note: This Web site is centered around the
Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) fictional persona of Chaiya
bat Avraham Toledano, created by Stacy Braslau-Schneck.)
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The Black Plague and the Flagellants
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The Black Plague of the
mid-fourteenth century resulted in the deaths of a third of the
European population. The people were obsessed with the notion of
death and the coming of the Last
Days (also known as Judicium Universale, Last Judgment).
For many, it was believed that it was essential that Jews convert
if Christians were to be saved. As the historian, Norman Cohn,
describes, large groups of flagellants preached
the coming of the Last Days and traveled from village to village,
scourging themselves with whips. These groups insisted that Jews
must finally accept Jesus, or die. It was widely believed
among Christians that Jews were poisoning the wells, allowing the
disease to spread. Jewish communities were destroyed in these years,
and Jews were exiled from France and England.
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Painting: The
Black Plague 1349. |
Image: Plague
Epidemic 1349 / Formation of the Flagellants. The Flagellants of
Doornik (Netherlands), 1349. Colored book miniature from the Chronicle
of Aegidius Li Muisis. Brussels, Library. Brussels, Bibliothèque
Royale. |
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