Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

It was a time when the Eastern and Western halves of mankind agreed in regarding the conversion, or, at least, the extermination of each other as their divinely appointed task. If the followers of Mohammed considered it an article of faith that the propagation of Islam at all costs was the supreme duty of every true believer, the propagation of the belief in the divinity of Christ, or the annihilation of those who denied it, was not less firmly held by all good Christians as a sacred obligation. A collision between the rival creeds was inevitable. All that was wanting was union on the part of the Christians equal to that which characterised the Mohammedans. This consummation was prepared by Peter the Hermit and was brought about by the exertions of the Pope.

♦1095♦

At the great Council of Clermont Urban II. described to the noble crowd of prelates and barons, assembled from all parts of Western Christendom, the sufferings of the Eastern Christians at the hands of the Saracens. With burning eloquence, and, no doubt, considerable exaggeration, he depicted the dark deeds of “the enemies of God”: their destruction and desecration of Christian churches; their slaughter, torture, and forcible conversion of Christian men, and their violation of Christian women; and he ended with a passionate appeal to all present to hasten to the assistance of the Holy Land, “enslaved by the godless and calling aloud to be delivered”; promising, at the same time, a plenary indulgence and general remission of sins to all who should enlist under the banner of the Cross. The effect of the Pontiff’s harangue on his chivalrous, sinful, and bigoted hearers was stupendous. It was the first official instigation to that hatred of the non-European and non-Christian which, however loth we may be to acknowledge the fact, in a less furious form, still survives amongst us. Many obeyed the summons with fervour born of pure piety; many more saw in the enterprise a comparatively cheap means of obtaining pardon for all their crimes, past and to come; while others welcomed an opportunity for satisfying their adventurous dispositions, for gaining wealth and renown, or for quenching in the blood of foreigners that fanatical zeal which could not find its full gratification in the butchery of fellow-countrymen.

Among such foreigners—Asiatic at once and infidel—the nearest were the Jews. Cruelty, like its opposite, begins at home. It was natural that the champions of the Cross should begin the vindication of their sacred emblem by the extermination of the race which had made so criminal a use of it. The shadow of the Old Crime once more fell upon the hapless people, and darkened their lives. Religious frenzy kindled the ancient feud, and greed fanned it. The vast and motley rabble of savage peasants who, under the command of a monk and the guidance of a goat, followed in the wake of the knightly army, incited by the lower clergy, fell upon the Jewish colonies which lay along their route through Central Europe—at Rouen, on the Moselle and the Rhine, at Verdun, Trèves, Speyer, Metz, Cologne, Mayence, Worms, Strasburg—massacring, pillaging, raping, and baptizing, without remorse or restraint.

But the Jews, as on so many occasions before and since, so now proved in a practical and ghastly manner that they dreaded death less than apostasy. Many of them met bigotry with bigotry, and cheated their assailants of both glory and gain by committing their property, their families and themselves to destruction. Martyrdom is a pathetic yet forcible reply to oppression. At Trèves the Jews, on hearing that the holy army was drawing near, were so terrified that some of them killed their own children; matrons and maidens drowned themselves in the Moselle in order to escape baptism or disgrace; and the rest of the community vainly implored the hard-hearted Bishop for protection. His answer was that nothing could save them but conversion. Thereupon the wretches hastened to be converted. The scene must have been a perfect study in the grimly ludicrous. The enemy was outside ready to pounce upon his prey. The latter said to the Bishop: “Tell us quickly what to believe.” The Bishop recited the creed, and the converts repeated it after him with all the fervour and fluency which the fear of death can only inspire.

At Speyer the Jews stoutly refused to be baptized, and many were, therefore, massacred. Those who succeeded in escaping sought shelter in the palace of the Bishop, who not only protected them, but incurred the censures of his contemporaries by ordering the execution of some of the holy murderers. A similar tragedy was acted at Worms, where some of the victims were temporarily saved by the Bishop, while a few were baptized, and the rest, men and women, committed suicide. At Mayence, they were slaughtered in the Archbishop’s palace, where they had taken refuge, and many murdered each other rather than betray their faith. At Cologne the majority of the community were rescued by the good burghers and their humane Bishop Hermann III. The Emperor Henry IV, also, on his return from his third Italian campaign, publicly denounced the crimes of the Crusaders, instituted proceedings against the Archbishop of Mayence, who had shared the spoils of the Jews, and permitted the surviving converts to return to Judaism; ♦1097♦ thereby drawing down upon himself an indignant reproof from his own antipope, Clement III., on whose behalf he had undertaken that expedition to Italy. For, however grateful Clement might be to Henry, he could not conscientiously connive at his impious interference with the designs of Providence.

♦1146♦

Similar scenes were repeated at the Second Crusade. Pope Eugenius III. issued a Bull, announcing that all who joined in the Holy War would be released from the interest which they owed to the Jewish money-lenders. St. Bernard seconded the Pope’s recruiting efforts. Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, exerted himself by might and main to inflame King Louis VII. of France and other noble Crusaders against the Jews: “Of what use is it,” wrote he to the king, “to go forth to seek the enemies of Christendom in distant lands, if the blasphemous Jews, who are much worse than the Saracens, are permitted in our very midst to scoff with impunity at Christ and the Sacrament?... Yet, I do not require you to put to death these accursed beings, because it is written ‘Do not slay them.’ God does not wish to annihilate them, but like Cain, the Fratricide, they must be made to suffer fearful torments, and continue reserved for greater ignominy, and to an existence more bitter than death.” In conformity with this charitable doctrine, the Jews of France were forced to yield their ill-gotten gains for the service of the cause of God.

Far worse was their fate in Germany. Even the partial protection which the citizens of the Rhineland had afforded the persecuted people in the First Crusade was now withdrawn, and the undisciplined mob gave the reins to the gratification of its religious zeal and of its lust. St. Bernard endeavoured to curb the demon of fanaticism, which his own eloquence had raised, by admonishing the enthusiasts, with more earnestness than consistency, that “the Jews are not to be persecuted, not to be butchered.” But his well-meant efforts produced no other effect than to turn the fury of the mob against himself; for a rival monk, Rudolf, had been going up and down the Rhineland, everywhere preaching, with tears in his eyes, that all Jews who were found by the Crusaders should be slain as “murderers of our dear Lord”—an appeal far more acceptable to the brutal herd of besotted hinds to whom it was addressed. The persecution commenced at Trèves, in August, 1146, where a Jew was seized by the Crusaders, and, on refusing to be saved by baptism, was murdered and mutilated. Soon afterwards a Jewess at Speyer was tortured on the rack. Many others were waylaid and made to suffer for their constancy at Würsburg and elsewhere. From Germany the frenzy passed into France. At Carenton, Rameru, and Sully the Jews were hunted and massacred.

For one who, in the face of such deeds, strives to preserve his faith in human nature, it is reassuring to note that the German bishops exerted themselves on behalf of the miserable victims, and, by accepting a simulated and temporary conversion, rescued many from martyrdom. The Emperor also extended to them his protection. But this favour was to cost the recipients dearly. Henceforth the German Jews were regarded as the Emperor’s protégés, which gradually came to mean the Emperor’s serfs. All they possessed, including their families and their own persons, were the Emperor’s chattels to be bought, sold, or pledged by him at pleasure. They were designated “Chamber-servants” (Servi Camerae or Kammerknechte); a servitude, however, that had the advantage of making it the Emperor’s interest to safeguard them against oppression, and to suffer no one to fleece them but himself.