The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 (Hebrew: גזרות תתנ״ו, romanized: Gezērot-Tatnu, lit. 'Edicts of 4856'), were a series of mass murders of Jews in the Rhineland (part of the Holy Roman Empire) which took place in 1096, which is the year 4856 in the Hebrew calendar, which is abbreviated in Hebrew as Hebrew: גזרות תתנ״ו, romanized: taṯnu They were perpetrated by mobs of Catholic Christian French and German peasants during the People's Crusade.
Prominent leaders of crusaders involved in the massacres included Peter the Hermit and, especially, Count Emicho. Part of this murderous violence, namely the destruction of Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms and Mainz, was recorded as the Destruction of the SHUM (Hebrew: חורבן שו״ם, romanized: Ḥurban Shum), Shum being the abbreviation of the names of these three cities in Old French. Many historians have referred to the violence as pogroms.
Background
While none of the Crusades explicitly targeted Jews, the fervor for religious war sometimes turned into outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in Europe, even though both ecclesiastical and secular authorities condemned it. The focus on the Crucifixion of Jesus and the call for violence against enemies of the Christian faith during the Crusades, as exemplified by the preaching of Pope Urban II in 1095–1096 and Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146–1147, was additionally translated into animosity towards Jews. In French and German regions, Jews were perceived as just as much an enemy as Muslims were: they were held responsible for the Crucifixion, and they were more immediately visible than the distant Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel great distances to fight "non-believers" when there were already "non-believers" closer to home.
It is also likely that the Crusaders were motivated by their need for money. Jewish Rhineland communities were relatively wealthy, both because they were isolated and because the Jews were not restricted as Catholics were against moneylending. Many crusaders had to go into debt in order to purchase weaponry and equipment for the expedition; as the Catholic Church strictly forbade usury, many crusaders inevitably found themselves indebted to Jewish moneylenders. Having armed themselves by assuming the debt, the crusaders rationalized the killing of Jews as an extension of their Catholic mission.
There had not been so broad a movement against Jews by Catholics since the 7th century's mass expulsions and forced conversions. While there had been regional persecutions of Jews by Catholics—such as in Metz in 888, a plot against Jews in Limoges in 992, a wave of anti-Jewish persecution by Christian millenarian movements, which believed that Jesus was immediately going to descend from Heaven in the year 1000, and the threat of expulsion from Trier in 1066. These are all viewed "in the traditional terms of governmental outlawry rather than unbridled popular attacks." Also, many movements against Jews (such as forced conversions by King Robert the Pious of France, Richard II of Normandy, and Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor around 1007–1012) were suppressed by various popes and bishops. The passions that were aroused within the Catholic community by Pope Urban II's call for the First Crusade had moved the persecution of Jews into a new chapter in history where previous constraints no longer held.
A relevant perspective on the extent of the era's antisemitism was recorded 40 years afterward by Jewish historian Solomon bar Simson. He states that Godfrey of Bouillon swore:
to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name 'Jew', thus assuaging his own burning wrath.
Emperor Henry IV, after being notified of the pledge by Kalonymus ben Meshullam, the Jewish leader in Mainz, issued an order prohibiting such an action. Godfrey claimed that he never really intended to kill Jews, but the communities in Mainz and Cologne sent him a collected bribe of 500 silver marks.
Sigebert of Gembloux writes that before "a war in behalf of the Lord" could be fought, it was essential that the Jews convert; those who resisted were "deprived of their goods, massacred, and expelled from the cities."
The first outbreaks of violence occurred in France. According to a contemporary chronicle of events written by an anonymous author in Mainz: "There first arose the officers, nobles, and common people who were in the land of France [Sarefat] who took counsel together and plotted...to make clear the way to go toward Jerusalem."
Richard of Poitiers writes that Jewish persecution was widespread in France at the beginning of the expeditions to the east. The anonymous chronicler of Mainz admired the Jews:
At the time, the [Jewish] communities in France heard [about these things], trembling...seized them. They wrote letters and sent messengers to all the communities around about the River Rhine, [to the effect] that they should fast...and seek mercy from Him who dwells on high, that He might save them from their hands. When the letter reached the holy ones in the land [of the Rhine], namely the men of renown ... in Mainz, they responded [to their brethren in] France as follows: 'The communities have decreed a fast. We have done that which was ours [to do]. May the Lord save us and may He save you from all sorrow and oppression [which might come] upon you. We are in great fear.'
In June and July 1095, Jewish communities in the Rhineland (north of the main departure areas at Neuss, Grevenbroich, Altenahr, Xanten and Moers) were attacked, but the leadership and membership of these Crusader groups were not chronicled. Some Jews dispersed eastward to escape the persecution. On top of the general Catholic suspicion of Jews at the time, when the thousands of French members of the People's Crusade arrived at the Rhine, they had run out of provisions. To restock their supplies, they began to plunder Jewish food and property while attempting to force them to convert to Catholicism.
Not all crusaders who had run out of supplies resorted to murder; some, like Peter the Hermit, used extortion instead. While no sources claim he preached against the Jews, he carried a letter with him from the Jews of France to the community at Trier. The letter urged them to provision Peter and his men. The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle records that they were so terrified by Peter's appearance at the gates that they readily agreed to supply his needs. Whatever Peter's own position on the Jews was, men claiming to follow after him felt free to massacre Jews on their own initiative, to pillage their possessions. Sometimes Jews survived by being subjected to involuntary baptism, such as in Regensburg, where a crusading mob rounded up the Jewish community, forced them into the Danube, and performed a mass baptism. After the crusaders had left the region, these Jews returned to practicing Judaism.
According to David Nirenberg, the events of 1096 in the Rhineland "occupy a significant place in modern Jewish historiography and are often presented as the first instance of an antisemitism that would henceforth never be forgotten and whose climax was the Holocaust."
Volkmar and Gottschalk
In the spring of 1096, small bands of knights and peasants, inspired by the preaching of the Crusade, set off from various parts of France and Germany (Worms and Cologne). The crusade of the preacher Volkmar, beginning in Saxony, persecuted Jews in Magdeburg and later, on May 30, 1096, in Prague in the Duchy of Bohemia. Cosmas, Bishop of Prague, attempted to prevent forced conversions, and the Catholic hierarchy in Bohemia preached against such acts. Duke Bretislav II was out of the country, and the Catholic Church officials' protests were unable to stop the mob of crusaders.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a whole condemned the persecution of the Jews in the regions affected (though their protests had little effect). Especially vocal were the parish priests (one monk, named Gottschalk, is recorded as joining and encouraging the mob). Chronicler Hugo of Flavigny recorded how these religious appeals were ignored, writing:
It certainly seems amazing that on a single day in many different places, moved in unison by a violent inspiration, such massacres should have taken place, despite their widespread disapproval and their condemnation as contrary to religion. But we know that they could not have been avoided since they occurred in the face of excommunication imposed by numerous clergymen, and of the threat of punishment on the part of many princes.
In general, the Crusader mobs did not fear any retribution, because the local courts did not have the jurisdiction to pursue them past their locality, nor did they have the ability to identify and prosecute individuals out of the mob. The pleas of the clergy were ignored on similar grounds (no cases against individuals were brought forward for excommunication), and the mob believed that anyone preaching mercy to the Jews was doing so only because they had succumbed to Jewish bribery.
The monk Gottschalk went on to lead a crusade from the Rhineland and Lorraine into the Kingdom of Hungary, occasionally attacking Jewish communities along the way. In late June 1096, the crusader mob of Gottschalk was welcomed by King Coloman of Hungary, but they soon began plundering the countryside and causing drunken disorder. Coloman then demanded they disarm. Once their weapons had been secured, the enraged Hungarians fell upon them, and "the whole plain was covered with corpses and blood."
The priest Volkmar and his Saxons also met a similar fate from the Hungarians when they began pillaging villages there because "sedition was incited".
Emicho
The largest of these crusades, and the most involved in attacking Jews, was that led by Count Emicho. Setting off in the early summer of 1096, an army of around 10,000 men, women and children proceeded through the Rhine valley, towards the Main River and then to the Danube. Emicho was joined by William the Carpenter and Drogo of Nesle, among others from the Rhineland, eastern France, Lorraine, Flanders and even England.
Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, absent in southern Italy, ordered the Jews to be protected when he learned of Emicho's intent. After some Jews were killed at Metz in May, John, Bishop of Speyer gave shelter to the Jewish inhabitants. Still, 12 Jews of Speyer were slain by crusaders on May 3. The bishop of Worms also attempted to shelter Jews, but the crusaders broke into his episcopal palace and killed the Jews inside on May 18. At least 800 Jews were massacred in Worms when they refused Catholic baptism.
News of Emicho's crusade spread quickly, and he was prevented from entering Mainz on May 25 by Bishop Ruthard of Mainz. Emicho took an offering of gold raised by the Jews of Mainz in hope to gain his favor and their safety. Ruthard tried to protect the Jews by hiding them in his lightly fortified palace. Nevertheless, Emicho did not prevent his followers from entering the city on May 27, and a massacre followed. Many among the Christian business class (the burghers) in Mainz had working ties with Jews and gave them shelter from the mobs (as the burghers in Prague had done). The Mainz burghers joined with the militia of the bishop and the burgrave (the town's military governor) in fighting off the first waves of crusaders. This stand had to be abandoned when crusaders continued to arrive in ever greater numbers, and Ruthard and his militia fled and left the Jews to be slaughtered by the crusaders. Despite the example of the burghers, many ordinary citizens in Mainz and other towns were caught up in the frenzy and joined in the persecution and pillaging.
Mainz was the site of the greatest violence, with at least 1,100 Jews being killed by troops under Clarambaud and Thomas. Given the choice between flight, death, and conversion, some Jews opted for a desperate fourth alternative: active martyrdom, that is, killing their family and themselves. One man named Isaac was forcefully converted, but, wracked with guilt, he later killed his family and burned himself alive in his house. A woman Rachel murdered her four children so that they would not be kidnapped and "raised in the way of error" as Christians. Chronicler Solomon bar Simpson compares Rachel to the martyrdom of the woman and her seven sons in an attempt to make sense of her desperate act.
Jewish chronicler Eliezer ben Nathan paraphrased Habakkuk 1:6, writing "cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans...[who] put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth."