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European Jewry and the First Crusade

University of California Press

The First Crusade was an intense and explosive outburst of religious exhilaration that culminated in a remarkable military achievement. Pope Urban II, in his call to the crusade at Clermont in late 1095, touched a nerve in western Christendom, unleashing forces that far exceeded his anticipations and proved impossible to control. Motivations both noble and base impelled armies of crusaders to journey to the East. Despite formidable obstacles, many of these military forces succeeded in reaching the Holy Land; in mid-1099 they breached the walls of Jerusalem and in a paroxysm of frenzy conquered the Holy City.

This extraordinary religious and military venture has long fascinated historians. To the Christian chroniclers of the late eleventh and early twelfth century, it represented the saga of religious dedication and zeal rewarded by God's miraculous interventions on behalf of his loyal servants. The remarkable success of this audacious effort, capped by the conquest of Jerusalem during the summer months of 1099, reinforced this religious and romantic view of the great military campaign as a divinely supported undertaking on the part of an army of devoted Christian warriors. To be sure, the Christian foothold established in the Near East crumbled quickly, and subsequent crusading efforts never duplicated the brilliant achievements of the 1090s. As setbacks mounted, the historical sources began to reflect doubt and disillusionment where there had been simple admiration on the part of the earlier crusade historians. Modern skepticism has taken the revisionism fur-

ther. The result is a set of crusade accounts that present an increasingly unsavory picture of the enterprise, emphasizing the cupidity that sent many crusaders into the Levant in quest of temporal gains and pointing to the fanatic cruelties that sprang from the initial religious exhilaration. Another line of investigation has focused on the attempts of the papacy to regain control of the movement it had launched, to define the movement more clearly, and to administer it more effectively. In the twentieth century, historians have sought to understand the wellsprings of this dynamic movement. Deeply aware of the innovative aspects of crusading behavior and ideology, these contemporary historians have sought to identify key elements in crusading theory and practice, to discover their origins in eleventh-century European life, and to discern their impact upon the rapidly developing civilization of twelfth-century western Christendom. The result of all this is a mosaic of diverse views of the First Crusade; there have been pious, perjorative, institutional, social, and spiritual perspectives and explanations.

A dramatic by-product of the religious fervor associated with the First Crusade was a series of devastating attacks on Jewish communities in northern Europe. Certain crusading bands interpreted the papal initiative as a call to overcome all infidelity and chose to begin their mission with an assault on the infidels immediately at hand, the Jews. These attacks were both cruel and thorough, resulting in the total destruction of a number of important Jewish settlements. The response of the besieged Jews reflects a level of religious fervor as intense as that of the attacking crusaders. In a variety of ways these Jews remained firm in their faith and militantly fought off the challenge of Christianity, in most instances at the cost of their lives. Crusader persecution of the Jews and consequent Jewish martyrdom have long been known to historians of the crusades and to historians of the Jews alike. The Christian chroniclers of the late eleventh and early twelfth century showed little interest in the anti-Jewish violence of 1096; their modern counterparts have dealt

with it more extensively, generally using these assaults to highlight some of the negative aspects of the crusading venture.1 To Jewish historians the events of 1096 have held far greater meaning. Following the catastrophe, observers preserved recollections of these incidents. These recollections were eventually fused into two unusual and innovative Hebrew chronicles, both devoted to celebrating the martyrdom of the Jews under assault. The pious attitudes of the twelfth-century Jewish chroniclers have by and large been adopted by their nineteenth- and twentieth-century successors, although modern Jewish experience has led to some critical perspectives on medieval Jewish martyrdom. Jewish sources and commentators through the years have generally concurred in interpreting the events of 1096 as an instance of remarkable Jewish heroism and as a disastrous turning point in the course of medieval Jewish history.2

This study began with my conviction that the anti-Jewish violence associated with the First Crusade deserves and requires full analysis. No one has isolated the phenomenon and made it the focus of detailed scrutiny before now. The first step in such an analysis would be a careful examination of the available sources, followed by an evaluation of their reliability. It quickly becomes apparent that the key to a study of Jewish fate in 1096 lay in the two original Hebrew chronicles. Extended examination of these unusual and innovative sources indicates that they are in fact relatively reliable. They were composed fairly close in time to the events depicted, are based on first-hand testimony, are committed to a portrayal of a variety of patterns of Christian and Jewish behavior, and are written in a plain and unadorned style. On examination, these unusual Hebrew chronicles reveal, besides their reliability, a striking stylistic parallel with the corresponding Christian accounts of the First Crusade. This concurrence shows that northern European Jews at these early stages formed a community that shared the spiritual environment of the Christian world in which it was embedded.

What are my findings from the careful study of these valuable records? For the anthropologically oriented, the events of 1096 would seem intrinsically interesting as instances of unusual group behaviorb both the radical violence of the Christians and the equally radical martyrdom chosen in response by the Jews. In depicting these fascinating behaviors, I have often quoted the language of the sources because I felt that paraphrasing would diminish the powerful impact of the medieval portrayal. While attempting to convey some of the intrinsic power of the medieval accounts, I have also tried to remain aloof of their seductive appeal. These sourcesb especially the extensive Jewish recordsb seek to leave an impression of overall Christian bestiality and Jewish heroism. In fact, however, they provide sufficient detail to indicate that the reality was more complex and nuanced. For one thing, not all Christians were united in hostility to the Jews; even the Christian burghers of the Rhineland cities, usually excoriated by the Jewish chroniclers as aligned monolithically with the popular crusading bands, are nonetheless depicted as displaying a wide variety of behaviors, ranging from full collaboration with the attacking crusaders to vigorous efforts to protect their Jewish neighbors. Nor should the Jews who were affected by the events of 1096 be depicted simplistically as having responded uniformly to adversity. They reacted to their persecution in a number of ways. Even...