In 1098, Jerusalem, after many a repulse, was safe in the crusaders’ hands, and the conquerors celebrated their success by so complete a massacre of the Jews then living in Jerusalem and its suburbs, that when the city was again retaken by the Mahomedans, hardly a Jew was left to exult at the reversal of Christian arms. For fifty years Jerusalem remained a Mahomedan conquest. At the end of that time (1147) a second crusade was organised to retake it. All who joined this expedition were solemnly released by Pope Eugenius III. from all obligations to pay any debts which they might owe to the Jews. And in this second crusade, as in the first, a broad red track of Jewish blood marked the way whichthe crusaders took to the East, and the flames from burning Jewries were beacon-lights on their path.
2. Glimpses of Better Things.—There were occasional incidents which show like light in the darkness of that cruel age. The Spanish Jews, whose misfortunes were of later date, did not neglect their unhappy co-religionists. More than once we find the still prosperous Jews of Spain sending sympathetic messages and substantial supplies to the persecuted Jews of France and Germany. And amongst Christians there was many a brave, good man who had the courage to be humane, and to stand out as an exception to the general line of conduct which was pursued towards the Jews. The Bishop of Spires and the Bishop of Cologne both did their very best to protect the Jews in the terrible scenes that preceded the first crusade (1096). And in the second crusade (1147) the famous monk, St. Bernard of France, distinguished himself in the same way. He did all he could, by voice and hand and pen, to check the prevailing fashion of cruelty. Pope Alexander III. was another advocate of fair treatment for the Jews, and Pope Innocent IV. actually issued a bull laughing to scorn the accusations brought against them of killing children for the flavouring of passover cakes, and denouncing as ‘crimes’ the cruelties which were practised by Christians upon Jews. But how sadly exceptional such instances were may be judged from the fact that Church historians try to explain away the humanity of that good Bishop of Cologne in 1096 by saying that he was bribed by the Jews, and that his kindness to them was bought withtheir own money. ‘Save me from my friends,’ that poor bishop might well exclaim. It was defending his orthodoxy at the expense of his honesty with a vengeance.
3. Life in France till the Expulsion thence.—From the date of Charles the Bald’s death (877), and the accusation of poison brought against his Jewish doctor Zedekiah, the position of the Jews in France grew slowly and gradually, but quite steadily, worse, till injustice reached its climax in an edict of expulsion (1394). From the ninth to the twelfth century Jewish schools and synagogues continued to exist, and the people were tolerably protected from violence. So late as 1165, when a famous Jewish Spanish traveller named Benjamin of Tudela was visiting France, he found such institutions flourishing in most of the towns which he included in his travels, and he seems to have made a very comprehensive tour both north and south. In Narbonne the traveller speaks of great tracts of land being cultivated by Jews and being held by them, under what we should call a leasehold tenure, from the lords of the soil. Paris seems to have been a favourite city with the race even at that time, and Christian writers confirm Benjamin of Tudela’s account of the prosperous and respected condition of the Jews who were dwelling there. The crusades, and the need of money for conducting them, were the chief causes for the persecutions which were so soon to follow. The sufferings of the Jews in France were, as a rule, due less to bigotry and religious hatred on the part of the priests and the populace, than to the avarice of thekings. In Spain, Jews were hunted out of the country as heretics. In France they were treated more as sponges, first squeezed, and then tossed away. Towards the end of the twelfth century King Philip Augustus ordered them, in a body, out of his dominions (1180), and the purchase-money that the Jews gave for the right to return brought them a short interval of ‘protection.’ Expelling the Jews, and selling permission to them to come back, was found an excellent means of raising a large sum of money, and the process was repeated in 1306, when Philip IV., one of the most cruel sovereigns who ever sat on any throne, was King of France. Before they were expelled, in 1306, their goods were pillaged and confiscated to a great extent, and it must have been difficult for the poor exiles to raise the enormous sum which was demanded, a few years later, for the right to return. Like Noah’s dove, which in the whole wide world found no resting-place for the sole of her tiny foot, the Jews, at this date, had small choice or chance of safe asylum in any country, or we might wonder at their paying for permission to go back to such inhospitable shores. Under ‘Saint’ Louis (Louis IX., 1226–1270) a new form of persecution was hit upon. Killing Jews and plundering their property was commonplace; it was decided to destroy their literature. So a raid was made on Jewish libraries, and, as a beginning, twenty-four cart-loads full of Talmudical books were burnt in Paris. It was under this king, too, that the Jews were prohibited from practising as physicians, and that they were all compelled to wear a conspicuous garment. It was called the rouelle, and its distinctivenessconsisted in a bit of blue cloth being sewn in front of, and behind, the outer dress of both men and women. Louis the Saint must have the virtue of originality added to his other claims for saintship.
In 1320 there was another crusade, another accusation against the Jews, and another large sum of Jewish money paid into the royal treasury. These three contemporaneous occurrences, examined closely, seem to have a somewhat suspicious connection with one another. The crusade of 1320, which was called the rising of the shepherds, was set on foot by peasants, who were presumably too poor to pay its expenses, and a preliminary crusade against the Jews was a very convenient way of raising the necessary money for the holy expedition. So a cry was raised against them of poisoning the wells. Any charge against Jews was sure to result in plunder, or in a bribe big enough to make plunder unnecessary. In 1348–1349 the Black Pestilence was raging in Europe. This frightful epidemic was said to spare the Jews. So far as it did spare them, their cleanlier lives and their more temperate habits would be quite sufficient explanation for all reasonable people of the somewhat doubtful fact. But the reasonable people would seem to have been few in those days, and the fanatics many. The Jews were accused, both of causing the pestilence and of not suffering from it, and again that ridiculous charge of poisoning the wells was brought against them. It must have been taken for granted that Jews lived without drinking! The accusation, however, was good enough for its purpose. The Jews died by the sword if not by the plague; they werenot permitted the choice granted to David their king, who elected to be punished by the pestilence rather than by the sword, to fall by the ‘hand of God rather than by the hand of man.’
4. Expelled from France.—On September 17, 1394, on [a]יוֹם כִּפּוּר], when Charles VI. was king, with a six weeks’ notice, the Jews were commanded to leave France altogether, and this third expulsion was decided and general, and included all the Jews in all parts of the country.
5. Treatment of Jews in the German States.—In the ninth and tenth centuries many French Jews had crossed the Rhine, and, emigrating into Germany, had established colonies there, which the crusaders, some two centuries later, on their way to the Holy Land, found conveniently handy to pillage. From Germany the Jews were never expelled in a body as they were from France and Spain, and, as we shall presently see, from England, but there were many local and partial expulsions; and German Jews, from the ninth till nearly the nineteenth century, lived, as it were, in the midst of alarms, and led, for the most part, a miserable existence. Throughout the Middle Ages, their legal position in these dominions was that of serfs of the Emperor, and they paid a certain tax for somewhat uncertain ‘protection.’ The Emperors themselves were often kindly inclined towards the Jews, and Frederick Barbarossa, who ruled in the twelfth century, was particularly humane. A greedy fanatic once entered this Emperor’s presence with the news that three Christian children had been found dead in a Jew’s house on the eve of the Passover; and ‘what was to be done?’ the man excitedlyasked. ‘Three children dead!’ said the Emperor calmly; ‘why, let them be buried, of course.’ But all the Emperors of Germany were not like Frederick Barbarossa, and very few of the princes. The Jews were shunned and oppressed in the German states, even when and where they were not openly and violently outraged. They walked among men with Cain’s mark set upon them without Cain’s sin. Each city, each street, each house nearly in the German dominions could ‘tell sorrowful stories.’ And because finis was never written on the page of Jewish history in Germany as it was for a while in Spain, and France, and England, the sad tale in this part of the world comes to no abrupt and dramatic conclusion, and breaks off with no certain and settled date.
CHAPTER XXIV.
JEWS IN ENGLAND.
(1066–1210.)
1. The First Seventy Years.—Beyond a rare mention in the Saxon Chronicles, there are no records concerning English Jews till after the Conquest (1066), when Jews from France and Germany, seeking happier homes, may have crossed the Channel in the train of William the Norman, on the chance of finding such. They were probably accepted by William’s new subjects as one of the many consequences of the invasion, and Jews gradually gained a tolerably comfortable and secure position in the towns in which they settled. London and Oxford became head-quarters.The selection of London, the capital, is sufficiently explained. The attraction of Oxford was, in all likelihood, its scholarly reputation. King Alfred’s idea of making Oxford a seat of learning was already being realised in the eleventh century, and although none of the colleges bear much earlier date than that of the thirteenth, yet the names of some of these—Moses-Hall and Jacob-Hall, for instance—give silent evidence of the presence of Jews and of the growth of Jewish teaching, and, it may be, of Jewish trading influences in Oxford. Little colonies of Jews established themselves also in York, and in Lincoln, and in Norwich, and in various other towns, and set up small businesses, and always managed, however poor they might be at first, to find some small room which would serve as a meeting-place for prayer and for school work. In London they were soon numerous enough and prosperous enough to gain the great privilege of being allotted a ‘burying place for their dead.’ This first [a]בֵּית חַיִּים] of the Jews in England was situated in St. Giles, Cripplegate. Thus things went well for a time. William I. was a conqueror, but not an oppressor; William Rufus, though dissolute and dishonest, was yet a mediæval sort of gentleman, who, having once promised protection, kept his word, and Henry I. was a scholar, and had some sympathy with the historic race who were so bravely and patiently accommodating themselves to altered circumstances. It was in the reign of Stephen (1135–1154) that the troubles of the Jews in England began.
2. ‘Saints’ and Supplies.—The civil wars, consequent on the disputed succession after Henry’s death,had drained the country of money. The wealth of the Jewish traders was in close and awkward contrast with the poverty of the Christian knights. An evil eye was cast on these riches, and as the conscience of the country was scarcely yet hardened to the open and unprovoked plunder of Jews, men cast about them for a plausible excuse for robbing them. Nothing more original was found, nor was perhaps necessary, than the one which had so often served on the Continent—the accusation of child-killing for Passover purposes. One day, in the town of Norwich, a certain small boy, named William, was missing, and straightway he was declared to have been murdered, and the Jews were accused of having murdered him. It is not even certain that the body of the little lost boy was ever found. William of Norwich, however, was made into a saint, and added to the muster-roll of miracle-working martyrs, whilst the supposed perpetrators of a never committed crime were hanged, and the English Jews generally were taxed to the estimated, and somewhat fancy, value of the sainted child. The real martyrs in the affair were certainly the Jews, and the real miracle was the easy raising of vast sums of money through such manifestly ridiculous charges. The Jews had to submit to be plundered, and it was better for them, perhaps, that their goods should be ‘confiscated’ at the order of the king, than at the mercy of the populace. The fashion that Stephen set was found to be a convenient and ready mode of raising supplies. St. William of Norwich was the first saint that the Jews in England contributed to the calendar, buthe was, during the Middle Ages, the type of a class of what might be called the patron saints of impecunious kings, and lazy priests, and ‘chivalrous’ nobles. These so-called saints always managed to fill the empty coffers of their devotees, and to that extent miraculous powers may certainly be conceded to them. The most celebrated of them all is a certain Hugh of Lincoln, who is said to have lived and died in the reign of Henry III. The local celebrity of this small saint was secured by the hanging of twenty Jews of that town, the imprisonment of more than a hundred, and a general confiscation of Jewish property in Lincoln.The literary interest attaching to the little Hugh, which has outlasted the religious, was ensured by Chaucer selecting him for the hero of one of his famous Canterbury Tales.[25]