The Crusades in Cross-Cultural Perspective

• What is it? What kind of source is it? Identify the genre. How would you classify it? And, is it an excerpt from a larger work? What is this larger work? Is it part of a chronicle? A philosophical treatise? A court record? A letter? A sermon? A law code? What is the usual purpose of this kind of source? To describe contemporary events? To govern behavior? To articulate abstract principles?

• Who wrote it? Who composed the work? What was his/her profession? Social standing?

• What language was it written in?

• When was it written?

3 page double spaced

THE FIRST CRUSADE AND THE PERSECUTION

OF THE JEWS

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

B
ETWEEN DECEMBER 1095 and July 1096 there took
place the first pogrom in western European History, a series
of events so distressing to the Jewish people that rumours of

them reached the Near East in advance of the First Crusade, inspiring
the communities there with messianic fervour, while dirges in
honour of the martyrs are recited in the synagogues to this day.’ The
first outbreaks seem to have occurred in France soon after the preach-
ing of the crusade and the first evidence of them is a letter written by
the French communities to their Rhineland counterparts, warning
them of the impending threat.2 It is possible that persecution was
widespread in France, even though the details of it are lost, apart
from a reference to an anti-Jewish riot which broke out among men
gathering to take the cross in Rouen.3 Much more evidence is avail-
able about events in the Rhineland. O n 3 May 1096 the storm broke
over the community at Speyer, where a crusading army of Rhine-
landers and Swabians under Count Emich of Leiningen had
gathered.4 Emich’s army marched north to Worms, where the

1 J. Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (London 1972) pp 234-5; S. D. Goitein,
‘Geniza Sources [for the Crusader Period: a Survey’, Outremer, edd B. Z. Kedar,
H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem 1982)] p. 308. The most detailed treat-
ments of the subject are still those in T. Wolff, Die Bauernkreuzziige desjahres 1096
(Tubingen 1891) and []. W.] Parkes, The Jew [in the Medieval Community (London
1938)] pp 58-89. For a recent attempt to date the Hebrew sources, see A. S.
Abulafia, ‘The interrelationship between the Hebrew chronicles on the first
crusade’, Journal of Semitic Studies 27 (1982) pp 221-39.

2 ‘Mainz Anonfymous’, trans S. Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders (Madison
1977)] pp 99-100. For the date of this letter, see[P.]Riant, ‘Inventaire critique [des
lettres historiques des croisades’, Archives de VOrient latin 1 (1881)] p i l l .

3 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua ed E.-R. Labande (Paris 1981) pp 246-8. See
Richard of Poitiers, [‘Chronicon’, Bouquet 12] pp 411-12; Geoffrey of Bruil,
[‘Chronica’, Bouquet 12] p 428.

4 [Solomon] BarSimson, [‘Chronicle’, trans Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders] p
22; [Eliezer] Bar Nathan, [‘Chronicle’ trans Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders]
pp 80, 91; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 100-1; Bernold of St Blasien, [‘Chronicon’, MGH
SS 5] p 465; [H.] Hagenmeyer, Chronologie [des la premiere croisade (Paris 1902)]
pp 19-20. For the dates of the massacres and the names of the dead, see also S.

Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 28 Dec 2021 at 22:52:39, subject to the

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

J O N A T H A N RILEY-SMITH

massacres began on the 18th,5 and then to Mainz, where it was prob-
ably joined by more Swabians under Count Hartmann of Dillingen-
Kybourg and by an army of French, English, Flemish and Lorrainer
crusaders. Between 25 and 29 May the Jewish community at Mainz
was annihilated.6 The movements of the crusaders, at no point very
clear, now become impossible to trace with certainty. Some
marched north to Cologne, where the Jews had already been dis-
persed into neighbouring settlements. Throughout June and into
early July they were hunted out and destroyed: at Wevelinghoven,
Ellen, Neuss, Dortmund, Mors, Geldern and Xanten; only at
Kerpen were the refugees saved.7 Another band of crusaders seems
to have marched south-west to Trier8 and then to Metz,9 where the
massacres continued. During May a separate crusading army, prob-
ably that of Peter the Hermit, forced almost the whole community at
Regensburg to undergo baptism.10 The communities at Wessili and
Prague also suffered, probably from the attentions of an army of
Saxons and Bohemians led by a priest called Folcmar.11 This terrible
sequence of massacres has attracted a good deal of attention from his-
torians, but it is my opinion that more could still be said on one fairly

Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nurnberger Memorbuches (Berlin 1898) pp 97-8,
101-19, 133-4, 137-41, 143, 151; A. Neubacher, Xe Memorbuch de Mayence’,
Revue des etudes juives 4 (1882) pp 10-11, 14.

5 Bar Simson pp 23-4; Bar Nathan pp 81-2, 91; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 101-2; Bernold of
St Blasien p 465; ‘Annalista Saxo’, [MGH SS 6] p 729; Hagenmeyer, Chronologic
p p 2 0 – l .

6 Albert of Aachen, [‘Historia Hierosolymitana’, RHC Occ 4] pp 291-3; William of
Tyre, [‘Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum’, RHC Occ 1] pp 66-7;
Bar Simson pp 23-4, 28-49; Bar Nathan pp 82-5, 91; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 99-100,
105-15; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron[icon\ MGH SS 6] p 209; ‘Annalista Saxo’ p
729; ‘Annales Brunwilarenses’, [MGH SS 1] p 100; ‘Annales Corbeienses’, MGH
SS 3 p 7; ‘Annales S Albani Moguntini (Wirziburgenses)’, [MGH SS 2] p 246;
‘Annales Hildesheimenses’, [MGH SS 3] p 106; Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 2 2 –
4.

7 Bar Simson pp 49-61; Bar Nathan pp 85-91; Albert of Aachen p 292; William of
Tyre p 66; ‘Annalista Saxo’ p 729; ‘Annales Brunwilarenses’ p 100; Hagenmeyer,
Chronologie pp 16-18, 19, 23-5, 26-30.

8 Bar Simson pp 62-7; Bar Nathan p 92; ‘Gesta Treverorum’, [MGH SS 8] pp 190-
1; Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 25—6.

9 Bar Simson pp 62, 67; Bar Nathan p 92; Hagenmeyer (Chronologie p 18) placed
this earlier.

10 Bar Simson pp 62, 67; Bar Nathan p 92; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p 208. The
events of Regensburg were dated by the Mainz Necrology to 23 May, which
seems to fit with the probable dates of Peter the Hermit’s passage through Bavaria.
See Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 21-2.

11 Bar Simson pp 62, 67-8; Bar Nathan p 92; Cosmas of Prague, [‘Chronica
Boemorum’, MGH SS 9] p 103; ‘Annales Pragenses’, [MGH SS 3] p 120;

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

narrow topic: the relationship between them and the crusade itself.12

That there is a close relationship is beyond doubt. Although the
Jews in the Rhineland had already been subjected to spasmodic ill-
treatment, they had not felt under threat before the crusade was
preached. They were protected to a certain extent and as tension in-
creased the head of the Mainz community, Rabbi Kalonymos, sent
urgently for help to the emperor Henry IV, who was then in Italy.
Henry’s prohibition against harming them came too late to save
them, but on his return to Germany he toured the affected areas and
tried to restore something of the status quo. In his General Peace of
1103 the Jews were singled out for protection.13 They seem to have
felt themselves to have been fairly well integrated into the towns in
which they lived. The great community at Mainz responded coolly
to the warning from France, replying that it felt no fear.14 Its in-
souciance seemed at first to have been justified by the fact that some
of the townspeople took its side; but after an armed engagement in
which a crusader was killed, both bodies of Christians turned on the
Jews, who were blamed for dividing them;15 in fact the physical des-
truction at Mainz seems to have been greater than elsewhere.16 When
the news of the pogrom reached Worms, the Jews entrusted their
valuables to their gentile neighbours;17 at the first signs of trouble at
Cologne they sought refuge with their gentile acquaintances.18 In
every town except Cologne and Trier the massacre began with the
arrival of the crusaders, although townspeople and villagers also
took part, and the hunting of Jews through the settlements around

Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 16-18. For an apparently slightly later outbreak, see
‘Annales Cameracenses’, MGH SS 16, p 510.

12 Compare H. Liebeschutz, ‘The Crusading Movement and its Bearing on the
Christian Attitude towards Jewry’, Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (1959) pp 97—111;
A. M. Shapiro, ‘Jews and Christians in the Period of the Crusades—A Commen-
tary on the First Holocaust’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 9 (1972) pp 725-49; A.
Waas, ‘Volk Gottes und Militia Christi—Juden und Kreuzfahrer’, Miscellanea
Mediaevalia 4Judentum im Mittelalter (Berlin 1966) pp 410-34.

13 Bar Simson p 25. See Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ pp 208-9; Parkes, The Jew pp 7 9 –
81, 105-6. In the 1060s Archbishop Everard of Trier tried to expel all Jews who
would not be baptized. His death was attributed to Jewish witchcraft. ‘Gesta
Treverorum’ p 182.

14 ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 99-100.
15 ‘Mainz Anon’ p 106; ‘Annalista Saxo’ p 729.
16 ‘Annales S Albani Moguntini (Wirziburgenses)’ p 246; ‘Annales Hildesheimenses’

p l 0 6 .
17 ‘Mainz Anon’ p 102.
18 Bar Simson p 49; Bar Nathan p 85.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

Cologne may have been largely the burghers’ work.1 9 A short time
before the outbreak at Trier Peter the Hermit had preached in the city
on his way to the East.20

Several armies, containing crusaders from all over Europe, took
part in the pogrom. It was crusaders, or those about to take the cross,
who persecuted the Jews in France.21 Emich of Leiningen’s
Rhinelanders and Swabians22 were, as we have seen, joined by
another band of Swabians under Count Hartmann of Dillingen-
Kybourg2 3 and by an army of French, English, Flemish and
Lorrainer crusaders.24 Peter the Hermit’s army consisted of French,
Swabians, Bavarians and Lorrainers25 and Folcmar’s probably of
Saxons and Bohemians.26 It should be stressed that, although these
early armies disintegrated in the Balkans or were defeated by the
Turks soon after crossing into Asia Minor, they were not contemp-
tible. There is a tendency to consider them to have been made up of
undisciplined hordes of peasants. It is true that contemporaries were
inclined to explain their excesses and lack of success in terms of the
large numbers of ordinary people, poor, women and children, in
their ranks.27 They may well have included more non-combatants
than the armies that departed later and there were certainly disrepu-
table elements in them,2 8 and the adherents of strange sects, like the
group following Emich which venerated a goose believed to be filled
with the Holy Spirit.29 But they were not nearly so unprofessional as
they are assumed to have been. We know very little, it is true, about
Folcmar’s army.3 0 Peter the Hermit’s strikes one as being an old-
fashioned armed pilgrimage, with a strong ecclesiastical contingent
19 See Bar Simsonpp 27-8, 30, 59; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 99,100,101-2,103,107,112-13;

Albert of Aachen, p 292.
20 Bar Simson p 62.
21 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua pp 246-8; Richard of Poitiers pp 411-12; Geoffrey

of Bruil p 428.
22 Bar Simson p 70; Albert of Aachen p 292; [H.] Hagenmeyer, ‘Etude [sur la

Chronique de Zimmern’, Archives de I’Orient latin 2 (1884)] pp 75-6.
“‘ William of Tyre p 66; ‘Chronique de Zimmern’, [ed H. Hagenmeyer, Archives de

I’Orient latin 2 (1884)] p 23; Hagenmeyer, ‘Etude’ pp 74-6. See Albert of Aachen
p 2 9 9 .

24 Albert of Aachen pp 291-2; William of Tyre p 66.
25 Albert of Aachen p 276.
26 Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’, [RHC Occ5] p 12.
27 See for instance Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta [Dei per Francos’, R H C Occ 4] pp 142-

3.
28 Albert of Aachen p 291; Bernold of St Blasien p 464; William of Tyre p 66.
2’J Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ p 251; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 19; Albert

of Aachen p 295; Bar Simson p 27.
M Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ pp 12, 20.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

in it. Peter had great difficulty in controlling his forces in the Balkans
and in Asia Minor,31 but his later career on the crusade was to show
that he was far from being simply an incompetent rabble-rouser.32

His captains, Godfrey Burel of Etampes,33 Raynald of Broyes,34

Walter fitzWaleran of Breteuil35 and Fulcher of Chartres,36 all seem
to have been experienced knights; Fulcher was to end his days as a
great lord in the County of Edessa.37 Attached to Peter’s army,
moreover, was a strong force of Swabian nobles under the Count
Palatine Hugh of Tubingen and Duke Walter of Tegk.3 8 Emich of
Leiningen’s forces were not negligible either. Emich was a major
south German noble. So was Count Hartmann of Dillingen-
Kybourg. They were probably accompanied by the Counts of
Rotteln, Zweibrucken, Salm and Viernenberg and the Lord of
Bollanden.39 The army of French, English, Flemish and Lorrainer
crusaders which met Emich at Mainz was, according to one report,
large and well-equipped.40 It was under the leadership of a remark-
able group of men, Clarembold of Vendeuil, Thomas of Marie Lord
of Coucy, William the Carpenter Viscount of Melun and Drogo of
Nesle.41 After the break-up of Emich’s forces these men joined
Hugh of Vermandois, the brother of the King of France, and con-
tinued their journey to the East. Clarembold of Vendeuil42 and
Thomas of Marie had distinguished crusades and Thomas had a

31 Albert of Aachen pp 272, 276-89 passim.
3 2 Gesta Francorum [et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed R. Hill (London 1962)] pp 33,

66-7, 94; Peter Tudebode, [Historia de Hierosolimitano itinere, edd J. H. and L. L.
Hill (Paris 1977) pp 68-9, 108-9, 144-5; Raymond of Aguilers, [Liber, edd J. H.
and L. L. Hill (Paris 1969)] pp 79, 111; Fulcher of Chartres, [Historia
Hierosolimitana, ed H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg 1913)] pp 247-8; Albert of Aachen
pp 314, 470, 491-2.

33 Albert of Aachen pp 277, 278, 281.
34 Ibid pp 277, 281.
3 5 Ibid pp 278, 281.
36 Ibid pp 281, 283.
3 7 [J. ] Riley-Smith, ‘The motives [of the earliest crusaders and the settlement of Latin

Palestine’, EHR 98 (1983)] pp 721-36.
3 8 ‘Chronique de Zimmern’ pp 22-9; Hagenmeyer, ‘Etude’ pp 69-72, 77-9.
3 9 Hagenmeyer, ‘Etude’ pp 74-7.
4 0 Albert of Aachen p 291. See also Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 20. The

combined armies under Emich’s leadership had a substantial body of knights.
Albert of Aachen p 294.

41 Ibid pp 293-5, 299; William of Tyre p 66.
42 Albert of Aachen pp 304-5, 398; Herimannus, ‘Liber de restauratione monasterii

S Martini Tornacensis’, MGH SS 14 p 283; William of Tyre pp 80, 218; Robert
of Rheims, [Historia Iherosolimitana’, RHC Occi] p 833; La Chanson d’Antioche,
[ed S. Duparc-Quioc 2 vols (Paris, 1977-8)] 1, pp 69, 440, 450, 451.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

colourful and violent career before he died in 1130 as Count of
Amiens.43 William the Carpenter, who had already fought in Spain,
was panicked into flight from Antioch but he eventually settled as a
fief-holder in the Principality of Antioch.44 Drogo of Nesle, of an
illustrious French family, joined Baldwin of Boulogne, following
him to Edessa and then to Jerusalem.45 These captains must all have
witnessed or taken part in the persecutions, as did William, a son of
the Count of Eu, who saved the life of a Jewish child during the riot
in Rouen.46

It is not possible, therefore, to adhere to the comforting view that
the massacres were perpetrated by gangs of peasants. Most were
carried out by armies containing crusaders from all parts of western
Europe, led by experienced captains. So what were the crusaders’
motives? There is evidence for the wish to get supplies by extortion
and looting, for attempts to convert the Jews by force and for a desire
for vengeance on them. I propose to deal with these in turn.

A near contemporary who, like most educated churchmen, found
the events abhorrent, was in no doubt that at their root was greed.
Writing of the disasters that beset so many of the early crusaders in
the Balkans, he commented

This is believed to be the hand of the Lord working against the
pilgrims, who sinned in his sight with their great impurity and
intercourse with prostitutes and slaughtered the wandering
Jews, who admittedly were contrary to Christ, more from
avarice for money than for the justice of God.47

In fact most of the examples of avarice described in the Hebrew
sources were attributed by the Jews not to crusaders but to bishops,
their officials and townspeople, who took bribes in return for
promises of protection, which they then failed to carry out.4 8 In
many cases the promises made were probably sincere and the break-

4 3 Albert of Aachen pp 315, 332, 422, 464, 468; William ofTyre pp 46, 134, 263, 352;
La Chanson d’Antioche 1 pp 69, 94, 155, 156, 160, 171, 307, 441, 451, 526; Robert of
Rheims p 833. See Dictionnaire de Biographie Francaise 9 cols 867-8.

4 4 Cesta Francorum pp 33-4; Peter Tudebode pp 68-9; J. Riley-Smith, ‘The motives’
p p 7 3 1 .
Duparc-Quioc, La Chanson d’Antioche 2 p 229; Riley-Smith, ‘The motives’ pp 736.

4<> Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua pp 248-50.
4 7 Albert of Aachen p 295. See also Bernold of St Blasien p-466. Albert’s account o b –

viously influenced H. E. Mayer (The Crusades (Oxford 1972) pp 43-4), but not N .
Cohn (The Pursuit of the Millenium, 2 ed (London 1962) pp 49-52) nor J. Prawer
(Histoire du royaume latin de Jerusalem 2 vols (Paris 1969-70) 1 pp 181-90).

4 8 Bar Simson pp 28, 44, 59, 62-4; Bar Nathan p 89; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 107. See also
Cosmas of Prague p 104. For a refusal to take a bribe, see ‘Mainz Anon’ p 101.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

ing of them reluctant, but there were examples of mixed motives. At
the first sign of trouble, for instance, the members of the Mainz com-
munity were encouraged to bring all their possessions into the court-
yard of the archbishop’s palace and to make over a sum of money to
Archbishop Ruthard himself. Ruthard fled before the mob broke in.
Although it is probable that he had originally wanted to protect the
Jews, his relatives were later accused of stealing from them and in
1098 he was forced out of the city by the emperor.49 It is certain,
however, that crusaders made financial demands of Jewish com-
munities in the cities on their line of march and it is apparent that
these were extortions backed by threats of force. When Peter the
Hermit reached Trier in early April 1096 he brought with him a letter
from the Jews of France asking their co-religionists everywhere to
give him provisions; in return, it said, Peter promised to speak
kindly of Israel. His arrival and preaching terrified the community at
Trier, which suggests that there was an anti-semitic tone to his ser-
mons.5 0 Godfrey of Bouillon apparently threatened to eradicate Jews
before accepting bribes in appeasement from what must have been
the remnants of the communities of Cologne and Mainz.51 The Jews
of Mainz had earlier hoped in vain to pacify Emich of Leiningen by
offering him money and letters, obviously like that carried by Peter
the Hermit, which he could have presented to the communities he
came across on his march.52 And perhaps in the erroneous belief that
canon law permitted the expropriation of the goods of infidels,53

crusaders joined the local inhabitants in looting Jewish property in
the towns where the massacres took place;54 at Mainz the Jews de-
layed their enemies for a while by throwing money out of the
windows to distract them.5 5

Grasping as the crusaders appear to have been, they acted in this
way not in response to theory but to necessity: the needs of their
armies—of any army—on the march. Extortion and looting were

4 9 Bar Simson pp 23-4, 28, 30; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 106, 107, 109; Albert of Aachen p
292; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p 209; ‘Annalista Saxo’ p 729.

50 Bar Simson p 62. For the date, see Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 18-19.
51 Bar Simson pp 24-5.
52 Bar Simson p 29; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 107. See also ‘Mainz Anon’ p 100.
53 See ‘NotitiaeduaeLemovicenses [depraedicationecrucisin Aquitania’, RHCOcc5]

p 351; Geoffrey of Bruil p 428; Sigebert of Gembloux, [‘Chronica’, MGH SS 6]
p 367; ‘Anon[ymi] Florinensis [brevis narratio belli sacri’, RHC Occ 5] p 371.

54 Bar Simson pp 35, 50; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 110, 112; Albert of Aachen pp 292-3;
‘Annales S Disibodi’, [MGH SS 17] pp 15-16.

55 Bar Simson pp 34-5; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 110.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

linked to crusading to the extent that crusade preaching was respon-
sible for the departure on a long march of large numbers of men and
women without proper logistical planning or any system for pro-
visioning and, in the case of the armies with which we are primarily
concerned, at a time of food shortage without even waiting for the
harvest which, when it came in 1096, was a good one.5 6 Provisions
and animals—horses and beasts of burden—came to be at the fore-
front of their minds from dawn to dusk. When in touch with Chris-
tian suppliers they had to pay often exorbitant prices. To meet these
costs they had to rely on alms from Christians57 and on subventions:
from Jews, as here, and later from Muslims.58 Often they had not
enough cash; they met with reluctant merchants and unsympathetic
officials;59 and for most of the time they were to be out of contact
with friendly suppliers. Plundering became a normal and necessary
occupation, which explains the quarrels over booty, the occasional
orders against turning aside for spoil in battle and the carnage and
sacking that accompanied the fall of Jerusalem. Historians who argue
that the crusaders had materialistic motives on the grounds that they
were so often concerned with loot should try to explain how other-
wise these armies would have been kept supplied.

Everywhere attempts were made to force Christianity on the
Jews, who had heard that the crusaders intended to offer them the
choice of conversion or death60 and that they desired to ‘cut them off
from being a nation’:61 a Christian writer confirmed that the aim of
the crusaders was ‘to wipe out or convert’.62 Synagogues, Torah
scrolls and cemeteries were desecrated.63 At times the Christians
employed terror-tactics: during the persecution at Mors they
covered their swords with the blood of animals to frighten the Jews
into thinking that killings had already taken place.64 In every settle-

56 Fulcher of Chartres p 154; Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ p 141.
57 Sec, for example, Albert of Aachen pp 278, 283. It is noteworthy that the early

armies entered the Balkans loaded with cash, pp 281, 289-90, 293.
58 See Gesta Francomm pp 83, 84, 86; Peter Tudebode 127, 128, 132; Raymond of

Aguilers pp 103, 107, 111, 112, 125.
59 For the early stages, see above all Albert of Aachen pp 274-312; Gesta Francorum pp

2-13; Peter Tudebode pp 32-48; Raymond of Aguilers pp 35-42; Fulcher of
Chartres pp 168-76.

60 Bar Simson p 22; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 99.
61 Bar Simson p 47; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 102; Bar Nathan p 80.
62 Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 20. See ‘Annales S Disibodi’ pp 15-16.
6 3 Bar Simson pp 37, 41, 50, 61, 62-3; Bar Nathan pp 81, 85; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 112-

13. For what was to be a typical charge against Jews, see ‘Mainz Anon’ p 102.
6 4 Bar Nathan p 89.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

ment subjected to the persecutions Jews were slaughtered when they
refused to convert and so desperate did they become that they died at
their own hands or at those of members of their communities to
avoid defilement.65 Those who submitted to baptism were spared:

Guibert of Nogent’s autobiography contains the story of a learned
monk, whose life began as a young Jewish boy in Rouen. He was
saved by a son of the Count of Eu, who took him to his mother,
Countess Helisende. She asked the child if he desired baptism and
when he was too frightened to demur had him immediately
christened. He was given the name of William and sent as an oblate
to the monastery of Fly to prevent him returning to his parents.

One factor in this campaign of forced conversions may have been
eschatological expectations. A passage on Emich of Leiningen in the
chronicle of Bar Simson has attracted a good deal of attention.

[Emich] concocted a tale that an apostle of the crucified one had
come to him and made a sign on his flesh to inform him that
when he arrived in Greek Italy [the crucified one] himself would
appear and place a kingly crown upon his head, and Emich
would vanquish his foes.

The French historian Alphandery suggested that this was a dis-
torted reference to the popular phophecy of the last Frankish or
German king in occupation of Jerusalem before the Last Days: it was
believed that in the reign of this last king the Jews would be con-
verted to Christianity.69 This legend had also been the basis of Benzo
of Alba’s advice of ri085 to Henry IV of Germany to proceed to
Jerusalem and rule there, and it is also to be found reflected in Guibert

65 Bar Simson pp 22-3, 35-44, 45-7, 50-8, 60, 65-7; Bar Nathan pp 80-1, 83-90;
‘Mainz Anon’ pp 102-5, 107, 109-14; Albert of Aachen pp 292-3; Ekkehard of
Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 20; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p 208; Bernold of St
Blasien p 465; ‘Notitiae duae Lemovicenses’ p 351; Geoffrey of Bruil p 428; ‘Anon.
Florinensis’ p 371; Cosmas of Prague p 103; ‘Gesta Treverorum’ p 190; ‘Annalista
Saxo’ p 729; ‘Annales Augustani’, MGH SS 3 p 139; Sigebert of Gembloux p 367;
‘Sigeberti Continuatio Auctarium Aquicinense’, [MGH SS 6] p 394, ‘Annales S
Disibodi’ pp 15-16.

66 Bar Simson pp 23, 39-41, 67, 68; Bar Nathan p 84; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p
208; ‘Notitiae duae Lemovicenses’ p 351; Geoffrey of Bruil p 428; ‘Anon. Florinen-
sis’ p 371; ‘Annalista Saxo’ p 729; ‘Annales S Albani Moguntini (Wirziburgenses)’
p 246; ‘Annales Hildesheimenses’ p 106; ‘Annales Pragenses’ p 120; Sigebert of
Gembloux p 367; Sigeberti Continuatio ‘Auctarium Aquicinense’ p 394; ‘Annales
S Disibodi’ pp 15-16; ‘Annales S Pauli Virdunensis’, MGH SS 16 p 501.

6 7 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua p 248-52.
6 8 Bar Simson p 28.
6 9 P. Alphandery and A. Dupront, La chretiente et I’idee de croisade, 2 vols (Paris 1954—

9)1 pp74-6.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

of Nogent’s version of Urban II’s proclamation of the crusade at
Clermont, in which the pope was made to argue that the occupation
of Jerusalem by Christians was a necessary precondition for the
appearance of Anti-Christ and therefore a step towards Dooms-
day.70 It has recently been pointed out that the evidence for wide-
spread eschatological fervour is not copious.71 There is enough,
however, to lead one to suppose that eschatological ideas had a cer-
tain currency and that they did find some echo in Bar Simson’s
account of Emich’s motivation, although all that we know of Emich
suggests that he had no intention of travelling to the East by way of
southern Italy.

Other elements in Bar Simson’s story, however, ring true. That
Emich had visions is confirmed in the account of the German abbot
Ekkehard of Aura. ‘Emich . . . like another Saul, called, so it is said,
by divine revelations to religious practice of this sort [the crusade]. ‘7 2

Visions and dreams were taken seriously at the time and such an in-
spiration to crusade does not appear to have been unusual. The
most famous vision associated with the early stages of the crusade
was said to have been experienced by Peter the Hermit, who claimed
to have seen Christ and to have been handed a celestial letter of com-
mission by the archangel Gabriel.74 Nor was it unusual for
visionaries to display brandings, usually of the cross, which they
claimed had appeared miraculously on their flesh. The most no-
torious was abbot Baldwin, Godfrey of Bouillon’s chaplain.
Baldwin financed his crusade out of oblations made by the faithful,
who were led to believe that he had been marked on the forehead by

7 0 Benzo of Alba, ‘Ad Heinricum IV . . . libri’, MGH SS 11 pp 605, 617; Guibert of
Nogent, ‘Gesta’ pp 138-9.

71 B. McGinn, ‘Iter Sancti Sepulchri: the Piety of the First Crusaders’, The Walter
Prescott Webb Lectures: Essays in Medieval Civilization, ed R. E. Sullivan et al.
(Austin 1978) pp 47-8, 66-7.

7 2 Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 20.
7 3 For visions during the preaching of the crusade, see Albert of Aachen pp 415-16,

486-8; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ pp 38-9; Caffaro di Caschifellone, ‘De
liberatione civitatum orientis’, ed L. T. Belgrano, Annali Genovesi 5 vols (Genoa
1890-1929) 1 pp 100-1, 106. For visions in the course of the crusade, see various
works by J. Riley-Smith: ‘An Approach to Crusading Ethics’ Reading Medieval
Studies 6 (1980) pp 1 2 – 1 3 ; ‘The First Crusade and St Peter’, Outremer edd B Z.
Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem 1982) pp 53-6; ‘Death on the
First Crusade’ [The end of strife ed D. M. Loades] forthcoming.

74 Albert of Aachen p 273; ‘Historia peregrinorum [euntium Jerusolymam’, RHC
Occ 3] p 169; William of Tyre p 35; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 40; La
Chanson d’Antioche 1 pp 21-2, 32-3, Riant, ‘Inventaire critique’ pp 96-9, 110-11,
714.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

an angel. In the course of the crusade he confessed and reformed and
he later became the first abbot of St Mary of the Valley ofjosaphat in
Jerusalem and the first Latin archbishop of Caesarea.75 In fact reac-
tions to the preaching of the cross seem often to have been hysterical.
At this distance Emich looks as though he was very unstable: this is
certainly suggested by Ekkehard’s comparison of him to Saul. To
the Jewish chroniclers he was merciless and wicked,76 and at least
one Christian contemporary seems to have thought the same: even
before the crusade he was ‘notorious for his tyrannical behaviour’;
and after his death in 1117 his ghost was believed to haunt the region
of Mainz imploring alms and prayers from the faithful so that he
might be released.77 One cannot state with certainty that he was
motivated by eschatological beliefs, but it seems likely that he shared
in the general hysteria and manifested it more strangely than most.

Eschatological myth may help to explain Emich’s attitude, but
there is little evidence that it convinced many. And anyway forcible
conversions were directly contrary to the clear injunctions of canon
law, obeyed on the crusade, incidentally, by Bohemond of Taranto
who, on 28 June 1098, promised the soldiers of the garrison of the
citadel of Antioch who did not wish to convert safe-conducts into
Muslim territory.78 For centuries it had been a repeatedly enunciated
principle that infidels, and particularly Jews, should never be forced
to the faith but could only be persuaded by reason. For instance, in
633, in a decree that passed into the collections of canon law, the
Council of Toledo had stated

The holy synod orders concerning the Jews that no one be
forced into belief. When God wants to show mercy he does, and when

75 Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ pp 182-3, 251; William of Tyre p 423. For other
examples, see Raymond of Aguilers p 102; Fulcher of Chartres pp 169—70; Baldric
of Bourgueil, ‘Historia Jerosolimitana’, RHC Occ 4 pi 7; Guibert of Nogent,
‘Gesta’ pp 250-1; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 19; Bernold of St Blasien p
464; ‘Historia de translatione sanctorum magni Nicolai . . . alterius Nicolai,
Theodorique’, RHC Occ 5 p 255; Orderic Vitalis, Historia aecclesiastka ed M.
Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford 1969-79)5 p 30.

76 Bar Simson p 28, 70; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 107.
77 Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’ p 20; Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p 261. For his

death, see ibid p 253; Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici [1. Imperatoris, ed G. Waitz
(Hanover 1912)] p 29.

7 8 Gesta Francorum p 71; Peter Tudebode pp 113-14; Robert of Rheims pp 835-6;
Baldric of Bourgueil p 79; Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ pp 207-8; ‘Historia pere-
grinorum’ p 206; Orderic Vitalis 5 pp 116-18. For a correct distinction between the
just war against pagans and the use of force against heretics, see a letter from the
leaders of the crusade. [H.] Hagenmeyer, [Die] Kreuzzugsbriefe [aus den Jahren
1088-1100 (Innsbruck 1901)] p 164.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

he wants to harden someone’s heart he does so (Romans 9:18). Such
men are not saved against their wills, but willingly, so that the
pattern of justice may be perfect.79

As statements in the Christian accounts of the pogrom
demonstrate, educated churchmen were in no doubt about this
matter. To Albert of Aachen,

God is a just judge and orders that no one be brought un-
willingly or by force under the yoke of the catholic faith.80

According to Cosmas of Prague,
[the bishop of Prague] seeing that [the forcible baptisms] were
against canon law and led by zeal for justice, tried vainly, be-
cause unaided, to forbid them lest the Jews be baptized against
their wills.81

In fact most of the bishops made some effort to protect the Jews,
although with varying degrees of success, taking them into their for-
tified palaces and, at Speyer, Mainz and Cologne, dispersing them in
their villages in the countryside.82 The bishop of Speyer was out-
standingly successful: he made no effort to interfere with the Jews’
religion and he took strong measures against his townspeople.83 The
bishop of Prague also took a strong line, but with less success.84 The
archbishop of Mainz began well, but he weakened in the face of the
mob, as we have seen.85 He then tried to exploit the Jews’ fears to
convert them,8 6 as did the archbishop of Trier, whose performance
also left something to be desired.87 Individual priests at Mainz and
Xanten also tried to take advantage of the situation to gain con-
verts,8 8 although that is obviously not the same thing as holding to
the idea of baptism by force.

The senior clergy, however powerless they proved to be in prac-
tice, knew their church law. It is unlikely, therefore, that any respon-

7 9 For a concise account of these prohibitions, see F. Lotter, Die Konzeption des Wen-
denkreuzzugs (Sigmaringen 1977) pp 34—8.

8 0 Albert of Aachen p 295.
81 Cosmas of Prague p 103.
82 Bar Simson pp 28-9, 44-5, 50; Bar Nathan pp 83-4, 86; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 101, 106.

For the protection of a local civil authority, see Bar Simson pp 67-8.
8 3 Bar Simson p 22; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 101.
84 Cosmas of Prague p 103.
8 5 Bar Simson pp 28-30; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 106, 107, 109.
86 Bar Simson p 45.
87 Bar Simson pp 63-5; ‘Gesta Treverorum’ pp 190-1. Compare the behaviour of an

earlier archbishop of Trier. ‘Gesta Treverorum’ p 182. For Worms, see Bar
Simson p 23; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 101-6.

8 8 ‘Mainz Anon’ p 114; Bar Simson p 57.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

sible crusade preacher ever suggested to the faithful that they were
embarking on a war of conversion, although it is possible that popu-
lar preachers were not so restrained: we have seen that Peter the
Hermit may well have been indulging in dangerous rhetoric. But
there was an idea around which was ambiguous enough to be inter-
preted by the ignorant or careless as supporting the concept of a mis-
sionary war. Odd asides in the histories of three educated and
theologically-minded French churchmen suggest that in the highest
circles the crusade was being protrayed as a war for the expansion of
Christianity. Robert of Rheims made Pope Urban II preach at the
Council of Clermont:

May the stories of your ancestors move you and excite your
souls to strength; the worth and greatness of King Charlemagne
and of Louis his son and of others of your kings, who destroyed
the kingdoms of the pagans and extended into them the boun-
daries of Holy Church.8 9

Baldric of Bourgueil referred to God in the context of the crusade
as the ‘propagator of Christian expansion’90 and Guibert of Nogent
called crusaders ‘the propagators of the faith’.91 It is not surprising
that when combined with contempt for the validity of pagan rule this
idea was reflected during the crusade in attitudes not far removed
from those in favour of forcible conversion, even if they could tech-
nically be distinguished from them. From Nicaea in the summer of
1097 the leaders sent envoys to the Fatimid caliph of Egypt offering
him Christianity or battle;92 and much the same choice seems to have
been put by Peter the Hermit in an embassy to the Muslim general
Karbuqa in the summer of 1098.93 Raymond of St Gilles refused to
make a treaty with the emir of Tripoli unless he was baptized.94 The
success of the crusade led to wild talk of a Christian conquest of
Asia.95 It may be that the persecutions in the Rhineland were partly
set off by careless references to the expansion of Christianity, es-
pecially since many crusaders found it difficult to make any distinc-

8 9 Robert of Rheims p 728.
90 Baldric of Bourgeuil p 9.
91 Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’, p 213; see also p 139.
92 ‘Historia peregrinorum’ p 181.
9 3 Gesta Francorum p 66; Peter Tudebode p 108.
94 Gesta Francorum p 83; Peter Tudebode p 128; Robert of Rheims p 853; Orderic

Vitalis 5 p 146. Corrupt version in ‘Historia peregrinorum’ p 210.
95 See Raymond of Aguilers pp 131, 136; La Chanson d’Antioche 1 p 215. See J.

Richard, The Latin Kingdom o/Jerusalem (Amsterdam 1979) pp 20-1.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

tion between Jews and Muslims as enemies of the faith. In France
crusaders were reported saying that

it was unjust for those who took up arms against rebels against
Christ to allow enemies of Christ to live in their own land.96

At Rouen men who had come to the city to take the cross began to
say

We wish to attack the enemies of God in the East, once we have
crossed great tracts of territory, when before our eyes are the
Jews, more hostile to God than any other race. The enterprise is
absurd.97

And the German Jews knew that such views were current in
France.98 Jews were held to be internal enemies of the Church99 and
it was this which presumably led a later writer to comment of the
south Italian Norman crusaders that they ‘held Jews, heretics and
Muslims, all of whom they called enemies of God, equally de-
testable’.100

N o w , the suggestion that the crusaders misconceived their role to
the extent that they thought they were fighting a war of conversion
in which they made no distinction between Muslim and Jew would
be convincing were it not for a remarkable fact. It is not generally
realized that this group of incidents is almost unique. Although they
suffered badly enough, Jewish communities in the Near East do not
seem to have been subjected to the treatment meted out to the
Rhinelanders. Professor Goitein has shown that the traditional pic-
ture of the persecution of the Jews in Palestine by the crusaders
should be modified. Caught up in the sack of the cities, the com-
munities suffered loss of life and in Jerusalem the synagogue and
Torah scrolls were destroyed and a Karaite library taken. Many Jews
were sold into slavery. But most seem to have been ransomed; and at
least part of the Karaite library was sold back. While on occasion
conversion to Christianity was offered, there is no evidence that re-
fusal meant death. Although the Jewish community in Jerusalem
was wiped out, Professor Goitein has recently commented that ‘the

9 6 Richard of Poitiers pp 411-12.
9 7 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua p 246-8.
9 8 Bar Simson p 22; ‘Mainz Anon’ p 99. At the time of the Second Crusade much the

same sentiments were expressed by Peter the Venerable, although he wanted to
tax the Jews, not kill them. Peter the Venerable, Letters, ed G. Constable 2 vols
(Cambridge Mass. 1967)1 pp 328-30.

9 9 Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Chron’ p 208.
100 Orderic Vitalis 5 p 44. See Raymond of Aguilers p 115.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

crusaders liquidated a Jewish community already in a state of liquida-
tion’.101 Indeed, if we leave aside a slightly different case of the in-
voluntary reception of the faith, the practice of Christian priests of
baptizing dying Turks as they lay on the battlefield,102 there are in
fact only two examples outside Europe of forcible mass conversion
in the sources for the First Crusade and one of them almost certainly
did not occur. The doubtful reference is to be found in Robert of
Rheims’s account of the taking of al-Barah in Syria by Count
Raymond of St Gilles in late September 1098. According to Robert

The count ordered that all should be enchained and that those
who would not believe in Christ as saviour should be beheaded
. . . N o one from such a great multitude was saved unless he wil-
lingly confessed Christ and was baptized. And so that city was
cleansed and recalled to the worship of our faith.1

That seems plain enough. But Robert of Rheims was not on the
crusade and his assertion is to be found nowhere else, although all
contemporary accounts agree that there was great slaughter, a dis-
play of deliberate ferocity in a region with an already strong indi-
genous Christian presence before the establishment of the first Latin
bishopric. Raymond of St Gilles’s chaplain Raymond of Aguilers,
who was present at al-Barah, reported that many of the inhabitants
were killed or sold into slavery in Antioch, but that those who sur-
rendered in the course of the fighting were set free. This looks like a
case in which resistance was punished by the razing of the town and
the destruction of the inhabitants. It is noteworthy that some manu-
scripts of Raymond’s Liber have the word ‘crediderant’, which does
not really make sense in the context, substituted for ‘reddiderant’,*04

and it may have been some such textual variant that persuaded
Robert of Rheims to write as he did. At any rate it is unlikely that
there was an attempt to convert by force at al-Barah.

The other case is, however, well documented. In the middle of
July 1098 a south French knight called Raymond Pilet, who seems to
101 S. D. Goitein, ‘Geniza Sources’ p 308; see pp 306-14; S. D. Goitein, ‘Contem-

porary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders’, Journal of Jewish
Studies 3 (1952) pp 162-7; S. D . Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3 vols (Berkeley
1967-78)3 p 356.

102 Fulcher of Chartres p 227. See also the story in Albert of Aachen (p 319) of a
Muslim scout, whose captors suspected that fear rather than conviction was
responsible for his conversion.

103 Robert of Rheims p 840.
104 Raymond of Aguilers pp 91-2. See also Gesta Francorum pp 74-5; Peter Tudebode

p 117; Baldric of Bourgueil pp 82-3; Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ p 210; ‘Historia
peregrinorum’ p 207; Orderic Vitalis 5 p 134.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

have acquired substantial loot, financed a large expedition which he
led into the countryside south of Antioch. O n 17 July he reached a
fortified place east of Ma’arrat-an-Nu’man called Tall Manas, which
was held by Syrian Christians, and on the 25th he took a nearby for-
tress which he had been informed was full of Muslims. All those in it
who refused to be baptized were killed. Two days later his force,
supplemented by local Christians, was bloodily repulsed from
Ma’arrat.105 Robert of Rheims, who, it will be remembered, was
never on the crusade, reported that Raymond Pilet had an especial
hatred of Turks, 1 0 6 but a reading of the sources suggests to me that
he had become involved in the complex inter-religious rivalries of
the region and that his alliance with a group of local Christians was
responsible for what happened.

The fact that there are so few cases of forcible mass conversion and
no parallels with what happened in Western Europe leads one to
wonder whether a commitment to missionary war was really preva-
lent in the crusading armies. At this stage it is worth considering a
third motive. There is strong evidence for a desire for revenge upon
the Jews for the crucifixion, which one contemporary understood to
be a purpose of the crusade, and this idea was referred to often
enough in both Jewish and Christian sources for one to be led to sup-
pose that it was fairly prevalent.107 It does not, therefore, come as a
surprise to learn that crusaders in the well-equipped army of French,
English, Flemings and Lorrainers, which met with Emich at Mainz,
claimed that the pogrom was the start of their service against the
enemies of the Christian faith108 or that German crusaders
announced their intention of clearing a path to Jerusalem which
began with the Rhineland Jews: a count called Dithmar was reported
as saying that he would not leave Germany until he had killed a Jew.
The Jews had heard that it was believed that killing them would gain
indulgences and that their co-religionists were slain in the name of
Christ.109 Residual feelings of vengeance may even have been mani-
festing themselves towards the end of the crusade, although, as we

105 Gesta Francorum pp 73-4; Peter Tudebode pp 115-16; Baldric of Bourgueil pp 8 1 –
2; Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ p 209; Robert of Rheims p 838; ‘Historia pere-
grinorum’ pp 206-7; Orderic Vitalis 5 pp 130, 132; Kamal ad-Din, ‘Chronique
d’Alep’, RHC Or 3 p 584. For date, see Hagenmeyer, Chronologie pp 179-82.

106 Robert of Rheims p 838.
107 Bar Simson pp 22, 25-6, 30; Bar Nathan p 80; ‘Mainz Anon’ pp 99, 102; ‘Annalista

Saxo’ p 729.
108 Albert of Aachen p 292. See ‘Annales Blandinienses’, MGH SS 5 p 27.
109 ‘Mainz Anon’ p 100; Bar Simson p 39.

66
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 28 Dec 2021 at 22:52:39, subject to the

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

have seen, the Jews in Palestine were not treated as badly as their con-
freres in Europe had been: they were no longer an alien minority and
feelings of animosity towards them must have been overshadowed
by fears of the Muslim powers. But it was reported that the South
Italian Norman leader Tancred chose to ransom them for 30 pieces of
silver each.110

It is clear that in respect of the desire for vengeance a significant
number of crusaders did not distinguish between Muslims and Jews
and could not understand why, if they were called upon to take up
arms against the former, they should not also persecute the latter. In
order to explain how they came to think this it is necessary to touch
briefly on the justifications of the crusade. Pope Urban called for a
war of liberation with two purposes. The first was the freeing of the
eastern churches in general and the church of Jerusalem in particular
from the oppression and ravages of the Muslims;111 the second was
the freeing of the city of Jerusalem from the servitude into which it
had fallen.112 So one aim was the liberation of people, the baptized
members of the Church; the other was the liberation of a place.
Urban put both goals within the context of Christian love. Love of
neighbour would find expression in the help given to one’s suffering
brothers, even at the risk of one’s own life; love of God would find
expression not only in such an act of charity to God’s own children,
but also in the liberation of God’s own city, the focus of divine inter-
ventions in the world, hallowed by the presence and blood of
Christ.113 It was the goal of Jerusalem that almost certainly led
Urban to introduce for crusaders the wearing of the cross, reflecting
contemporary preoccupations with the cross as a devotional symbol,

110 Baldric of Bourgueil p 103 note.
111 R. Somerville, ‘The Councils of Urban II: 1. Decreta Claromontensia’ Annuarium

Historiae Conciliorum, Suppl. 1 (1972) p 74; Conciliar decree in ‘Historia pere-
grinorum’ pp 169-70; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe p 136; [W.] Wiederhold,
‘Papsturkunden [in Florenz’, Nachrkhten von der Gesetlschaft der Wissenschaften zu
Gottingen, Phil.-hist. K l . (Gottingen 1901)] p 313; P. Kehr, Papsturkunden in
Spanien. I. Katalonien (Berlin 1926) p 287.

112 Hagenmayer, Kreuzzugsbriefe pp 136, 137; Wiederhold, ‘Papsturkunden’ p 313;
Urban II, ‘Epistolae et privilegia’, PL 151 col 478. The view put forward by C.
Erdmann (The Origin of the Idea of Crusade (Princeton 1977) pp 355-71) that help to
the eastern Christians was Urban’s priority and that to him the goal ofjerusalem
was secondary is untenable. See especially H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Urban II’s
Preaching of the First Crusade’ History 55 (1970) pp 177-88.

113 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe p 137; Clermont decree in ‘Historia peregrinorum’
p 169. See also Kehr, Papsturkunden p 287; Baldric of Bourgueil p 15; J. Riley-
Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, [History 65 (1980)] pp 177-8.

67
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 28 Dec 2021 at 22:52:39, subject to the

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

with the crucifixion and with the duty of men to follow the way of
the cross.J14 Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moreover, were, in an in-
terpretation of Psalm 79, Christ’s personal possession—’God, the
pagans have invaded your heritage’—and their occupation by the
Muslims was an injury to Christ himself. I have pointed out
elsewhere that in an age of vendettas appeals to west European
knights to go to the aid of their Christian brothers and their spiritual
father, who had lost his patrimony, would remind them of their ob-
ligation to avenge injury to their kin or feudal lords.115 There can be
little doubt that the crusade was on one level a war of vengeance. The
leaders, writing to the pope in September 1098, informed him that

The Turks, who inflicted much dishonour on Our Lord Jesus
Christ, have been taken and killed and we Jerusalemites have
avenged the injury to the supreme God Jesus Christ.116

Baldric of Bourgueil gave in his Historia a version of a sermon
preached beneath the walls of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099. Of
course the words are those of the learned French bishop himself,
writing seven or eight years later, but the sentiments might well have
been those of less distinguished crusade preachers.

Rouse yourselves, members of Christ’s household! Rouse your-
selves, knights and footsoldiers and seize firmly that city, our
commonwealth! Give heed to Christ, who today is banished
from that city and is crucified; and with Joseph of Arimathea
take him down from the cross; and lay up in the sepulchre of
your hearts an incomparable treasure, that desirable treasure;
and forcefully take Christ away from these impious crucifiers.
For every time those bad judges, confederates of Herod and
Pilate, make sport of and enslave your brothers they crucify
Christ. Every time they torment them and kill them they lance
Christ’s side with Longinus. Indeed they do all these things and,
what is worse, they deride and cast reproaches on Christ and our
law and they provoke us with rash speech. What are you doing
about these things? Is it right for you to listen to these things, to
see these things done and not to lament them? I address fathers
and sons and brothers and nephews. If an outsider were to strike
any of you down would you not avenge your blood-relative?
How much more ought you to avenge your God, your father,

1 , 4 See Clermont decree in ‘Historia peregrinorum’ p 170; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugs-
briefe p 164. Riley-Smith, ‘Death on the First Crusade’ forthcoming.

115 Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’ pp 190-2.
1 , 6 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe p 161.

68
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 28 Dec 2021 at 22:52:39, subject to the

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

your brother, whom you see reproached, banished from his es-
tates, crucified; whom you hear calling, desolate and begging
for aid.117

The response of so many crusaders now becomes explicable. If they
were being called upon to make good and avenge injuries to Christ
which included the occupation of his land four and a half centuries be-
fore, why should they not also avenge the crucifixion, an injury to
Christ’s person? Thejews reported that French crusaders argued that

We are going to a distant country to make war against mighty
kings and are endangering our lives to conquer the kingdoms
which do not believe in the crucified one, when it is actually the
Jews who murdered and crucified him.1 1 8

In the minds of the crusaders the crucifixion and the Muslim occupa-
tion of Palestine could become confused. In an extraordinary scene in
the Chanson d’Antioche, the greatest of the vernacular epics of the
First Crusade, Christ was pictured hanging on the cross between the
two thieves. The good thief commented

‘It would be most just, moreover, if you should be avenged
On these treacherous Jews by whom you are so tormented’.
When Our Lord heard him he turned towards him:
‘Friend’, said he, ‘the people are not yet born
Who will come to avenge me with their steel lances.
So they will come to kill the faithless pagans
Who have always refused my commandments.
Holy Christianity will be honoured by them
And my land conquered and my country freed.
A thousand years from today they will be baptized and raised
And will cause the Holy Sepulchre to be regained and adored.

know certainly
That from over the seas will come a new race
Which will take revenge on the death of its father’.

117 Baldric of Bourgueilp 101. Other references to vengeance. Vengeance on behalf of
God: Raymond of Aguilers p 134; Orderic Vitalis 5 p 4; William of Malmesbury,
Gesta regum Anglorum, ed W. Stubbs 2 vols (London 1889) 2 p 429; La Chanson
d’Antioche 1 pp 20, 22, 23, 30, 34, 36, 53, 56, 148, 473, 513, 517; and see the refer-
ences in note 119 below. Vengeance on behalf of eastern Christians and pilgrims:
Robert of Rheims pp 728, 805; Baldric of Borgueil p 28; Orderic Vitalis 5 p 40.
Vengeance on behalf of fellow-crusaders: Albert of Aachen pp 384, 411; Baldric of
Bourgueil p 50; La Chanson d’Antioche 1 p 331. Divine Vengeance: Cesta Francorum
pp 17, 54-5; Guibert of Nogent, ‘Gesta’ pp 192-3, 229; Bartolf of Nangis, ‘Gesta
Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium’, RHC Occ 3 p 501; Robert of Rheims pp
830, 868.

1 ‘ 8 ‘Mainz Anon’ p 99; also Bar Simson p 22; Bar Nathan p 80.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

It has been suggested that this scene was added to the Chanson in
ri 180 by the poet Graindor, who went on to write of the destruction
ofjerusalem by Titus and Vespasian as an earlier act of vengeance for
the crucifixion, an idea that echoed the eighth-century legend incor-
porated in the twelfth-century poem, La Venjance Nostre Seigneur.*19

But it was certainly linked to the First Crusade by contemporaries,
for the Roman destruction ofjerusalem as an act of vengeance was
referred to in a barbarously forged papal encyclical, a piece of crusade
propaganda which seems to have emanated from the south French
abbey of Moissac.120 Further evidence for the idea, although in this
case sharply distinguishing the crucifixion from the Muslim occupa-
tion of Palestine, is provided by the Jewish chronicler Bar Simson,
who reported crusaders saying to Jews

You are the children of those who killed the object of our
veneration, hanging him on a tree; and he himself had said:
‘There will yet come a day when my children will come and
avenge my blood’. We are his children and it is therefore obliga-
tory for us to avenge him since you are the ones who rebel and
disbelieve in him.121

The Church had an answer, but it was inadequate to deal with the
forces it itself had unleashed. As early as 1063, at the time of the plan-
ning of a Christian advance on Barbastro in Spain, Pope Alexander II
had been obliged to write to the Spanish bishops, forbidding attacks
on Jews.

The reasons (for the use of violence against) Jews and Muslims
are certainly dissimilar. For one may justly fight against those
who persecute Christians and drive them from the towns and
their own sees. The Jews are prepared to serve Christians
everywhere.

This letter was included in the canon law collections of Ivo of
Chartres and Gratian122 and its message was developed by later
canon lawyers.

119 La Chanson d’Antioche 1 pp 25-9, 68, 79, 223, 363, 383. For Graindor’s interpola-
tion, see La Chanson d’Antioche 2, pp 100, 125, 143. See also L. A. T. Gryting, The
oldest version of the twelfth-century poem, La Venjance Nostre Seigneur (Michigan
1952).

120 See A. Gieysztor, ‘The Genesis of the Crusades: the Encylical of Sergius IV (1009-
1012)’, Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1948) pp 21-2; 6 (1948) pp 29-30, 33-4.

121 Bar Simson p 25.
122 Ivo of Chartres, ‘Decretum’, PL 161 cols 824-5; Ivo of Chartres, ‘Panormia’, PL

161 col 1311;Gratian, ‘Decretum’, C. XXIII, q. 8, c. 11. Seealsojaffe 1 nos4532-3.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

The First Crusade and the Jews

We ought to persecute Muslims because they exert themselves
to invade us and ours, but by no means ought we to persecute
the Jews, because they are ready to serve us. In general terms we
say that we ought to persecute both Muslims and Jews when
they are in revolt. But after we have conquered them we ought
not to kill them or force them to the faith.123

In 1146, when the preaching of a Cistercian monk called Radulph
led to more anti-Jewish riots, forced baptisms and massacres in the
Rhineland, again against the background of a crusade and calls for
vengeance,124 Saint Bernard tried to make good the damage, argu-
ing that the very existence of the Jews witnessed to the success and
therefore the truth of Christianity and that violence was only jus-
tified in response to force.125 These points were repeated over a cen-
tury later by the Dominican Minister General Humbert of Romans.

There are others who say that, if we ought to rid the world of the
Muslims, why do we not do the same to the Jews? . . . I would
reply that it has been prophesied that in the end the remnant of the
Jews will be converted; as far as the conversion of the Muslims is
concerned, no one has any reason to expect it, according to the
judgement of Hell, because no man can reach them to preach the
Gospel to them. Again, the Jews are so abject, because they are in
our power and are our servants and cannot molest us as the
Muslims do. Also, if they were removed from the world, what
the scriptures say about their rejection would not be so clearly
apparent as it is now; and so their existence is an aid to our faith.
Therefore they must be tolerated because there is hope that they
may be converted, just as one does not immediately cut down a
tree’from which there is still hope of fruit; because of the fact that
we must take care that we are not cruel, and we would be acting
very cruelly if we were to kill people subject to us when they were
not rising up against us; and because of the help their existence
gives to the Christian faith, all of which factors are absent as far as
the Muslims are concerned.126

123 The Summa Parisiensis on the Decretum Gratiani, ed T. P. McLaughlin (Toronto
1952) p 40. See E.-D. Hehl, Kirche und Krieg im 12. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 1980) p
239.

124 See Ephraim of Bonn, ‘The Book of Remembrance’, trans Eidelberg, The Jews and
the Crusaders pp 121-33; Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici pp 58-9, 63.

125 Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, e d d j . Leclercq etal. 8 (Rome 1977) pp 316-17, 320-
2.

126 Humbert of Romans, ‘Opus tripartitum’, ed E. Brown, Fasciculus rerum expeten-
darum etfugiendarum 2 (London 1960) p 195.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

So strictly speaking force could only be used to meet present in-
jury, and that injury had to be apparent and material: military
aggression, the occupation of Christian property or revolt. Past acts
were relevant only in so far as their consequences still constituted
such an injury: the occupation of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 638
was relevant only because Muslims still held it. The crucifixion was
clearly not in this category. But in their eagerness to arouse the faith-
ful to what was of its very nature a voluntary exercise—not subject to
the demands of feudal service or conscription—preachers, even, it
seems, senior ones, were prepared to make use of the idea of ven-
geance, which they knew would be attractive to their audiences. The
trouble with the use of the notion of vengeance was that it involved
an abstract injury, ‘shame’ or ‘dishonour’, to which any past action,
however distant, contributed. The vengeful do not forget; and if
called upon to remember the dishonour to Christ of the occupation
of Jerusalem 450 years before they were also reminded of the dis-
honour to Christ of the crucifixion, over a thousand years before. It
was useless for churchmen to dwell on the criterion for Christian
force of present injury when at the same time they drew the attention
of their listeners to their obligations under the custom of the ven-
detta.

Royal Hollo way College University of London

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0424208400007531

https://www.cambridge.org/core

HIST118A: The Crusades in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Blumenthal
Winter 2022

THE EXPLICATION DE TEXTE METHOD
The explication de texte technique of analysis is used by historians to extract
historical insights from a primary source, a document or text written in the
historical period of focus.

There are generally FOUR parts to an explication de texte.

I. Introduction: Identify and describe the text under analysis
• What is it?
What kind of source is it? Identify the genre. How would you classify it?
And, is it an excerpt from a larger work? What is this larger work? Is it
part of a chronicle? A philosophical treatise? A court record? A letter?
A sermon? A law code? What is the usual purpose of this kind of source?
To describe contemporary events? To govern behavior? To articulate
abstract principles?
• Who wrote it?
Who composed the work? What was his/her profession? Social standing?
• What language was it written in?
• When was it written?

II. Textual Analysis:
• Give a brief overview/summary of what the text says, in your own words.
• Situate the document within its historical context. Describe what you know

about historical context in which it was written.
• Consider who the intended audience was for this work. What assumptions

would the audience need to share with the author in order of the point of the
work to be made successfully? Would the audience need to share the author’s
religious beliefs? Would they need to share assumptions about gender? About
social class?

• Articulate what you think the author’s broader aim or purpose was in
composing this text.

• Analyze the language utilized. How does the author try to achieve his/her
goals? Does the author appeal to the readers emotions? Make a reasoned
argument based on logic? Mock the opposing point of view?

III. Commentary:

• What historical insights can be gained from reading this text? (i.e., about
the Crusades in general or the specific focus of this week’s readings)

• Be sure also to demonstrate these various insights by citing/quoting
specific passages from the text directly in your discussion and then
analyzing them in greater depth.

• Be sure also to demonstrate that you are reading this text critically, that
you are bearing in mind all the observations about the author’s agenda that
you noted in the previous section. How might the author’s purpose in
writing the text shape the information contained therein? Can we take
what the author is saying here at face value?

IV. Conclusion:

• Summarize your findings.
• Also, include a more forward-looking statement which points to

possibilities for future research and discovery. Acknowledge how your
conclusion here is based on the analysis of just one document. What other
sorts of evidence might you analyze to confirm and/or extend your
conclusions?

Turn in your highest-quality paper
Get a qualified writer to help you with

“ The Crusades in Cross-Cultural Perspective ”

Get high-quality paper

NEW! AI matching with writer

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order