But all those troubles, trying as they must have proved to the unfortunate Jews, were as nothing when compared with the terrible afflictions which that people were called upon to endure, in consequence of the outbreak of the fearful pestilence known in history by the name of the ‘Black Death.’ This appeared in Germany 1348, and was so fatal that the country was almost depopulated by it. It was sudden and rapid in its effects. Tumours, mostly of a black colour, made their appearance in the groin and axilla, accompanied by spitting of blood. In three days, at longest, the crisis was reached, and few survived it. The science of the day could not explain its origin, any more than it could cure, or even palliate, its virulence. In the absence of any reasonable explanation of the causes of the outbreak, the terrified multitude caught at whatever was suggested to them. It was first attributed to the indignation of Heaven at the outrageous wickedness of the age; and large bodies of men banded themselves together to make atonement for this by fasting and penitential discipline. They formed into companies, men and women, of all ranks and ages, naked to the waist, and marked with a red cross; and in this state marched in procession through the chief cities, scourging themselves as they went, and calling on all to follow them.
But a new and much more welcome theory was presently started—that the pestilence which was slaying its thousands and tens of thousands was due to the Jews. It is said that the Flagellants first suggested this; but there is little reason for supposing so. The first idea in the minds of uneducated men, when attacked by some malady of which they have had no previous experience, is that they have been poisoned or bewitched; the next, to fasten upon the person by whom the drug has been administered or the spell wrought. Now, it was argued, if this wickedness had been devised by any one, it must have been by some inveterate enemy of Christian men; and who were such inveterate enemies of Christian men as the Jews? They, in truth, and they only, were capable of malice so subtle and deadly! Again, it was clear that these operations had been carried on in some wholesale manner. The criminals must have infected the air or poisoned the water. The idea, once conceived, spread like wild fire. No inquiry was made; no proofs were called for. What need of them? It was clear as the day that the Jews had poisoned the wells and fountains! The supposed murderers were everywhere pursued with the most merciless barbarity. Some were dragged before the tribunals, where a form of trial was gone through. Some were slaughtered by the mob without any investigation at all. It mattered little which course was pursued. The result was invariably the same.
The persecution seems to have commenced in the autumn of 1348, at Chillon, in Geneva, where criminal proceedings were taken against them, on the specific charge of having poisoned the wells. The same inquiries took place in other towns, as Berne and Freiburg. Some poison had been found in a well at Zoffingen—though by whom put in there was no evidence to determine. But the usual mode of eliciting evidence in those ages was resorted to, and with the customary result. Balavignus, a Jewish physician resident at Thonon, having been put on the rack, confessed that Rabbi Jacob, of Toledo, had sent him, by a Jewish boy, some poison in the mummy of an egg. The poison consisted of a powder, sewn up in a thin leathern pouch, and it was accompanied by a letter commanding him, on penalty of excommunication, to throw the powder into the principal wells of Thonon, in order to destroy the people who lived there. In obedience to this injunction he had distributed the poison in various places, and more particularly had thrown it into a spring on the shore near Thonon. He swore by the Law and the five Books of Moses that this confession was true, and also implicated several other Jews as accomplices. Another Jew, of Neustadt, named Banditono, was similarly put to the torture, and confessed to having thrown a packet of poison, given him by one of his brethren, into a well at Carulet, and denounced other Jews, whom he named, as having done the same. Eight others underwent the same treatment, and made confessions, all nearly resembling the two above quoted, with the difference that some admitted that the whole Jewish people, except those under seven years of age, were privy to and participators in the plot. It is wonderful that they did not implicate the infants in arms!
The persecution soon spread to neighbouring lands. At Basle the populace obliged their magistrates to take an oath that they would burn all the Jews in the town, and forbid any of their countrymen to settle in their country for two hundred years to come. In compliance with the order, all the Jews in the place were shut up in a wooden building and burnt alive. At Bennefeld, in Alsace, a diet was held, at which a similar decree was made. At Spires the Jews, driven to despair, shut themselves up, together with their wives and children, in their houses, which they then set on fire, and all perished in the flames. In Mentz and Eslingen similar tragedies were enacted. In the first-named city, when the Flagellants made their entrance, the Jews began by repelling the violence offered them; but, perceiving the impossibility of making any effectual resistance, they too fired their dwellings and destroyed themselves and all belonging to them. In Eslingen it was the synagogue, with the entire Hebrew population of the place, that was consumed; and it is related that mothers were seen to fling their children into the burning pile, to prevent their undergoing compulsory baptism. At Strasburg two thousand Jews were burned on a scaffold erected in their own burial-ground. For months the same cruelties were perpetrated along the Rhine and the contiguous cities. The history of these times is one unvaried repetition of horrors, which it wearies the pen to describe and sickens the heart to peruse. Everywhere there are the same groundless and monstrous charges, the same blind and fanatic fury, the same merciless and exterminating hate. And, worst of all, these atrocities are committed in the name of Christ and His Gospel! If we could conceive that the gates of hell had been broken open, and its inmates had overrun the earth, the deeds we might have expected of them were just what the rabble of these German cities actually performed. They did not, however, wholly escape the consequences of their own lawless cruelty. In many places the Jews, before inflicting death upon themselves, turned their swords against their persecutors, and inflicted severe retribution on them; while in Frankfort their despairing rage caused the destruction of the town-hall and cathedral and a large portion of the city.
It would not be just to omit the fact that several among the European sovereigns condemned these proceedings, and did their best to check them. Clement VI., a self-indulgent and easy-tempered man, whose reign was a continued scene of slack and voluptuous living, was nevertheless roused by the enormities of the wrongs which he saw perpetrated on the helpless Jews, to exert himself to the best of his power in arresting the popular frenzy and punishing the offenders. Charles of Moravia, also, Duke Albert of Austria, and others, would fain have saved them if they could. But the fury of the people would not be restrained, and Albert was obliged to condemn five hundred of them to the flames. In Lithuania alone were they permitted any respite. Here they were protected by Casimir III., King of Poland, known in history as the Great. He confirmed the privileges granted them by his predecessor Boleslaus, and bestowed additional favours on them. It is popularly believed that he was induced to show them this consideration by his attachment to a beautiful Jewess named Estherka.[140] It is at least certain that throughout his reign the Jews in Poland escaped persecution, and large numbers of Jews migrated to that country.
The history of the Jews in the Netherlands during the fourteenth century very nearly resembles that of their German brethren. They had settled long before in the Low Countries, where the trade had fallen almost entirely into their hands. Their numbers were swelled by fugitives from England and France, from which countries, as we have seen, they had been forcibly expelled. They were treated sometimes kindly, sometimes harshly, according to the caprice of the rulers and the people. They were expelled from the duchy of Brabant in 1370, on account of a charge of sacrilege, which was very frequently made in mediæval times. It was said that they had stolen and then stabbed the holy wafer at Brussels, which bled profusely. A banker of Enghien, named Jonathan, was charged as the chief offender, on the evidence of a woman, who confessed to having been an accomplice. All the Jews suspected were put to torture, and afterwards torn with red-hot pincers, and then burned.[141]
Such Jews as had taken refuge in Bohemia do not appear to have fared much better than their brethren in other European countries. The Emperor Wenceslaus, son of Charles IV., a lavish and dissipated sovereign, anxious to recover the goodwill of his subjects, whom he had alienated by his excesses, issued a decree discharging all his nobles from any liabilities they might have incurred to the Jews. The people thereupon, who had been afraid to meddle with them, because they regarded them as living under royal protection, considering that they had now lost the emperor’s favour, broke out into a riot at Gotha, where they massacred large numbers of them. They were presently joined by the peasants, and the outbreak extended to other cities. At Spires the whole of the Jewish residents, with the exception of some few small children, who were reserved for the font, were put to the sword.
Soon afterwards the cry was raised again that the springs and rivers had been poisoned; and the Jews were subjected to a second persecution all over Germany, and in parts of Italy and France. We are informed that the emperor was fully convinced of the falsehood of the accusation—which, indeed, it is difficult to believe that any person of sense and education could ever have credited. But it was in vain to attempt to reason with the multitude; and, despairing of obtaining peace or quiet in his kingdom so long as the Jews were allowed to reside in it, he issued an order requiring them either to accept Christianity or depart from the empire. The observation, already made in the instance of other lands, naturally recurs to us when we read his sentence. What punishment could it be to them to leave a country where they had been so persistently and so remorselessly wronged? Nevertheless, it is evident that it was a punishment, and a severe one to them. It is to their honour that few of them accepted the alternative offered them, but went forth into exile, with all its sorrows and privations, rather than forsake their ancient faith.
The reader will not wonder that in an age of such unexampled misery, few German Jews were distinguished for their literary success. Isaac of Düren, Alexander Cohen of Cologne, Halevi of Mentz, Isserlein of Marburg, and Lipman of Mulhouse, were among the most celebrated writers of these unhappy times.