Crusade historians and the massacres of 1096

Jewish History

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 11-31

  Kedar, Benjamin Z ^a  

^a HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 54649083222     PISSN: 0334701X     EISSN: 15728579     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF02335496     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. Thomas Fuller, The Historie of the Holy Warre, 1.12 (Cambridge, 1639), 18-19.
2. Thomas Fuller, The Historie of the Holy Warre, 1639), Ibid., 1.14, p. 21.
3. Voltaire, Histoire des Croisades avec la critique (Berlin, 1751), 17, 20-21 (my emphasis). In 1756, Voltaire incorporated this work into his Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, but here the crusaders' greatest passion is not "d'aller faire la guerre" but "de courir au pillage," and the perpetrators of the massacres are no longer presented as "croyant venger Dieu & s'enrichir," but merely as "croyant venger Dieu."
4. See the critical edition of the Essai by René Pomeau, vol. 1 (Paris, 1963), 559-61.
5. On the centrality of the conversion motif and its treatment by crusade historians, see Benjamin Z. Kedar, "The Forcible Baptisms of 1096: History and Historiography," in Karl Borchardt and Enno Bünz (eds.), Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte. Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen dargebracht, 2 vols, (Stuttgart, 1998), vol. 2, 187-200.
6. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury, vol. 6 (London, 1902 [1788]), 271, 274 with note 39 (my emphasis; Gibbon chose to emphasize the word "coolly").
7. Cf. François-Louis-Claude Marin, Histoire de Saladin, sulthan d'Egypte et de Syrie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1758), 52;
8. Charles Mills, The History of the Crusades for the Recovery & Possession of the Holy Land, vol. 1 (London, 1820), 76-9.
9. Jonathan Riley-Smith, "Reinterpreting the Crusades," The Economist, 23 December 1995 - 5 January 1996, 35.
10. Louis Maimbourg, Histoire des croisades pour la delivrance de la Terre Sainte, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Paris, 1676), 1-2, 5, 81-7.
11. Maimbourg's statement that, before killing themselves, the Jews "s'étant barricadez dans leur maisons" (84) appears to have influenced Gibbon, who writes that they "barricadoed their houses": Decline and Fall, 274.
12. Abbé Fleury, Histoire ecclesiastique, vol. 13 (Paris, 1707), 633-6;
13. e siècles, vol. 3 (Amsterdam, 1780), 238-54;
14. Friedrich Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge nach morgendlä ndischen und abendländischen Berichten, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1807), 96-9;
15. Joseph-François Michaud, Histoire des croisades, vol. 1 (Paris, 1813), 9-10, 133-6.
16. Joseph-François Michaud and Jean-Joseph-François Poujoulat, Histoire des croisades abrégée pour la jeunesse, Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne (Tours, 1860), 8, 22.
17. René Grousset, Histoire des croisades et du royaume franc de Jérusalem, vol. 1 (Paris, 1934), 9-10.
18. Heinrich von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzüges, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1881), 203-4.
19. Heinrich von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzüges, 2nd ed. (1881), Ibid., 211.
20. Bernhard Kugler, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1880), 22.
21. Adolph Jellinek, Zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge nach handschriftlichen hebräischen Quellen (Leipzig, 1854).
22. Moses Mannheimer, Die Judenverfolgungen in Speyer, Worms und Mainz im Jahre 1096 während des ersten Kreuzzuges (Darmstadt, 1877). In the preface the editor consoles the reader, who may be upset by the atrocities recounted in the text, that education and humaneness, and especially "die festen staatlichen Rechtsordnungen" prevent today the repetition of such deeds (p. iv).
23. Adolf Neubauer and Moritz Stem, (eds.), Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während der Kreuzzüge, transi. S. Baer, Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 2 (Berlin, 1892). For an attempt to justify these omissions, see Harry Bresslau's preface, xxvii-xxix.
24. Heinrich Hagenmeyer, "Chronologie de la première croisade," Revue de l'Orient latin 6 (1898): 228-41.
25. Louis Bréhier, L'Église et l'Orient au moyen âge: les Croisades (Paris, 1928), 69;
26. Frederic Duncalf, "The First Crusade: Clermont to Constantinople," in A History of the Crusades, gen. ed. Kenneth M. Setton, vol. 1: The First Hundred Years, ed. Marshall W. Baldwin (Philadelphia, 1955), 260, 264-5.
27. Neubauer, Stern and Baer, Hebräische Berichte, vol. 3 (text), 87-8 (German translation).
28. quote the English translation by Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), 247.
29. Harry Bresslau, "Zur Kritik der Kreuzzugsberichte," in Neubauer, Stem and Baer, Hebräische Berichte, xxix.
30. Hagenmeyer, "Chronologie," 228-9.
31. Reinhold Röhricht, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck, 1901), 40 n. 5 (the sentence quoted appears on p. 41). In the same footnote Röhricht goes on to say that Godfrey, having received the Jews' money, promised to spare them but did not keep his word - a misunderstanding of the German translation of the Hebrew text he refers to.
32. Duncalf, "The First Crusade," 263.
33. Hans Eberhard Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, 6th ed. (Stuttgart, 1985 [1965]), 43.
34. Jean Richard, Histoire des croisades (Paris, 1996), 51, 54.
35. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1951), 136, 146 (my emphasis).
36. Here, too, Runciman appears to have been influenced by Ferdinand Chalandon, Histoire de la première croisade jusqu'à l'élection de Godefroi de Bouillon (Paris, 1925), 97-8. On the similarities between Chalandon's and Runciman's treatment of the "German Crusade," see my article cited in note 4 above.
37. Adolf Waas, "Volk Gottes und Militia Christi - Juden und Kreuzfahrer," in Paul Wilpert (ed.), Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 4 (Berlin, 1966), 415. For the Hebrew text I use the English translation by Chazan, European Jewry, 226.
38. Chazan himself considers the stories about Ditmar and Godfrey as parallel accounts of the same incident (Adolf Waas, Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, 1966), ibid., 86),
39. but appears to be certain that it pertains to Godfrey (Adolf Waas, Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, 1966), ibid., 53, 83, 86, 88).
40. Reinhold Röhricht, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge im Umriss (Innsbruck, 1898), 24-5.
41. In a detailed, copiously annotated study published three years later, Röhricht maintained that the perpetrators of the massacres considered the Jews as their nearest enemies who had to be exterminated before the Muslims; he also mentioned, though inadequately, die conversion motif: Röhricht, Geschichte, 40-1.
42. Hans E. Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Stuttgart, 1965), 49. In a later edition Mayer qualifies this statement by introducing it with the word "frequently"; he also contemplates the possibility that Riley-Smith may be right in assuming that the crusaders initially lacked a convincing enemy-image and therefore posited the Jews as a substitute;
43. but he continues to doubt that the Jews were perceived to be punishable as the enemies of Christ: Mayer, Geschichte, 6th ed. (Stuttgart, 1985), 43 with n. 19.
44. See note 41 below.
45. Grousset, Histoire, 10-11.
46. See also, more briefly, Bréhier, L'Église, 69.
47. Runciman, History 134-5.
48. See also Walter Zöllner, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1983 [1978], 56-7;
49. Richard, Histoire, 53, where the author explains that violent outbursts triggered by the prosperity of Jewish money lenders were not limited to the Christian West, and that the first of them occurred in Muslim Granada in about 1066.
50. Duncalf, "The First Crusade," 263. Duncalf made a more substantial contribution to the subject in an earlier article in which he persuasively argued that the "Peasants' Crusade" was not diametrically different in social composition and preparation from the subsequent "Crusade of the Knights":
51. Frederic Duncalf, "The Peasants' Crusade," American Historical Review 26 (1920-21), 440-53. As we have seen above, the argument was anticipated in part by von Sybel.
52. Runciman, History, 135, n. 1.
53. "[E]s ist eine Fälschung der Geschichte wenn behauptet wird, die Juden Deutschlands hätten die Gräuel, die sie getroffen, zum Theil selbst verschuldet; sie hätten sich durch betrügerischen Handel und Wucher den Haß der Bevölkerung zugezogen, und - wie entschuldigend hinzugefügt wird - sie wären dazu gezwungen worden, da sie kein Grundeigenthum besessen hätten." Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 2nd ed., vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1871), 89-90 (I was not able to consult the first edition of this volume, which appeared in 1861).
54. Gavin Langmuir, "From Ambrose of Milan to Emicho of Leiningen: The Transformation of Hostility against Jews in Northern Christendom," in Gli Ebrei nell'alto medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centra Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 26/1 (Spoleto, 1980), 313 (his appraisal of Duncalf's formulation appears on the following page). But Langmuir erred in claiming that Runciman's "intent to disculpate the killers and Christianity is obvious." As we shall see, Runciman highlights approvingly (and excessively, in my opinion) Albert of Aachen's comment that the killers' subsequent defeat in Hungary appeared as God's punishment for the killings.
55. P.J..., "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter. 1. Die Judenverfolgungen zu Anfang des ersten Kreuzzuges 1096," Literaturblatt des Orients. Berichte, Studien und Kritiken für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, vol. 2, no. 42, 16 October 1841, col. 649-56. The author states that already before the First Crusade the Jews were the target of hatred and envy, and mentions that in Cologne burghers and crusaders, animated by hatred, avarice and fanaticism, fell upon the Jews, etc. Graetz, who remarks that Jaffé's description ought to be corrected on account of his later prominence in the field of German history (Geschichte, 393), establishes thereby that the anonymous article in question is an early work of the well-known Jewish Monumentist.
56. For his checkered career, see Horst Fuhrmann, "Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen": Gelehrtenleben im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1996), 108-15, 147-53.
57. Graetz, Geschichte, 402. Graetz's subsequent castigation of Schaab, whom he presents as having claimed that the Jews were hated on account of their usurious practices, is unwarranted:
58. see K.A. Schaab, Diplomatische Geschichte der Juden zu Mainz und dessen Umgebung (Mainz, 1855), 6-7.
59. In a vein akin to that of Graetz, Theodor Wollf (a student of Bernhard Kugler) attempted to downplay German animosity to the Jews: "Zwar waren - infolge ruhigeren Temperaments und geringeren Fanatismus - die deutschen Pilgerbauern viel weniger erbittert als die französischen. Die Hetze brach in Deutschland auch erst aus, als Franzosen ihren Fuß auf deutschen Boden setzten." Theodor Wolff, Die Bauernkreuzzüge des Jahres 1096. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs (Tübingen, 1891), 161.
60. Julius Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im fränkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 (Berlin, 1902), 81.
61. Runciman, History, 141. It is noteworthy that Wolff deduces from the very same statement by Albert that "[n]icht allzuviele Zeitgenossen mochten mit dem lothringischen Chronisten das Geschehene, Metzeleien sowohl wie gewaltsame Bekehrungen, missbilligen, es in erster Linie der Geldgier der Kreuzfahrer zuschreiben und als eine der Hauptursachen des schließlich schmählichen Endes betrachten."
62. Wolff, Bauernkreuzzüge, 169-70.
63. Albertus Aquensis, Liber christianae expeditionis pro ereptione, emundalione et restitutione sanctae Hierosolymitanae ecclesiae, 1.29, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Historiens Occidentaux, vol. 4 (Paris, 1879), 295. The last part of the sentence refers of course to the forcible baptisms.
64. Albertus Aquensis, Liber 1.26, p. 292.
65. Jean-François-Aimé Peyré, Histoire de la première croisade, vol. 1 (Paris-Lyon, 1859), 133 n. 2.
66. For a similar appraisal of Albert's reflection, see Colin Morris, "The Aims and Spirituality of the First Crusade as seen through die eyes of Albert of Aachen," Reading Medieval Studies 16 (1990): 104-5. Morris does not deal with Albert's comment on the defeat in Hungary.
67. It is noteworthy in this context that a popular, unannotated history of the crusades offers Albert's comment, in purportedly direct quotation, as follows: "Thus is the hand of the Lord believed to have been against these pilgrims, who had sinned in his sight, and slain the Jews, radier for greed of money than for justice of God." Thomas A. Archer and C.L. Kingsford, The Story of the Crusades, Famous Nations 20/1 (New York and London, 1895), 40.
68. Röhricht, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, 45.
69. Jonathan Riley-Smith, "The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews", Studies in Church History 21 (1984): 56.
70. Two years later he introduced Albert's comment matter-of-factly: "One near-contemporary was in no doubt that the pogroms were inspired by greed." Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, 1986), 52.
71. Aronius, Regesten, 81;
72. Norman Golb, "New Light on the Persecution of French Jews at the Time of the First Crusade," Publications of the American Academy for Jewish Research 34 (1966): 33-34. Aronius (1861-1893) quotes Hugh's mention of the censure of the massacres; Golb, who forcefully argues that the persecutions took place in France as well as in Germany, paraphrases Hugh's opening statement only, and omits in the footnote Hugh's sentence on the attempts to stop the massacres.
73. "Iudeorum quoque exterminium ipso anno multis in locis factum est a viris Iherosolimitanis. Quod certe mirum videri potest, quod una die pluribus in locis uno spiritus fervore exterminatio ilia facta est, quamquam a multis inprobetur factum, et religioni adversari iudicetur. Seimus tamen, quia non potuit immutari quin fieret, cum multi sacerdotes data excommunicationis sententia, multi principes terrore comminationis id perturbare conati sunt." Hugo, abbas Flaviniacensis, Chronicon, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores 8 (Hanover, 1848), 474.
74. Martin Erbstösser, Die Kreuzzüge: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Leipzig, 1977), 87;
75. Ernst Werner, Zwischen Canossa und Worms: Staat und Kirche 1077-1122 (Berlin [DDR], 1973), 145-6.
76. On the limits of argumentum e silentio, see Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction aux études historiques (Paris, 1898), 220-2.
77. Alfons Becker, too, seems to believe that the pope did not comment on the massacres: Alfons Becker, Papst Urban II (1089-1099), vol. 2, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 19/2 (Stuttgart, 1988), 408.
78. Codex Udalrici, no. 90, ed. Philipp Jaffé, Monumenta Bambergensia, Bibliotheca rerum germanicarum 5 (Berlin, 1869), 175;
79. Jürgen Ziese, Wibert von Ravenna. Der Gegenpapst Clemens III, 1084-1099, Päpste und Papstum 20 (Stuttgart, 1982), 241.
80. Michel Balard, "Postface," in Paul Alphandéry and Alphonse Dupront, La Chrétienté et l'idée de Croisade (Paris, 1995), 566.
81. Alphandéry and Dupront, Chrétienté, 1-7, 73-9, 95, 97, 131, 171-5, with the quotation appearing on 79. The crucial revelation to Emicho is presented in a somewhat garbled form and it is not made clear where Alphandéry encountered it.
82. e siècles (Paris, 1912), 7-8. Independently of Alphandéry, Carl Erdmann wrote in 1935 that the prophecy about the last emperor seems to have played a secondary role in the First Crusade, and that the persecutions of the Jews in 1096 should be understood against the background of popular perceptions of the crusade as a war aimed at infidel conversion:
83. Carl Erdmann, Die Enstehungdes Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1935), 278-9,321-2 with n. 137.
84. Emicho has been recently identified as Count Emicho of Flonheim: Hannes Möhring, "Graf Emicho und die Judenverfolgungen von 1096," Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 56 (1992): 102-1;
85. Alan V. Murray, "The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1096-1099: Structure and Dynamics of a Contingent on me First Crusade," Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 70 (1992): 320.
86. Balard, "Postface" (ç. 52 above), 566-7.
87. Balard, "Postface" (Ibid., 585.
88. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York, 1957), 56-7; see also 49-52.
89. Joshua Prawer, A History of the Crusader Kingdom in the Land of Israel, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1963), 95-103 (in Hebrew), with the quotations appearing on 95, 100-101, 102; the indebtedness to Alphandéry is only partially indicated in the footnotes.
90. Joshua Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, transi. Gérard Nahon, vol. 1 (Paris, 1969), 181-90.
91. Riley-Smith, "First Crusade," 56, 61 n. 78, 62-3;
92. Riley-Smith, idem, First Crusade, 53, 54.
93. "First Crusade," 61, 63;
94. First Crusade, 34, 54.
95. "First Crusade," 61;
96. First Crusade, 61 (only the first observation reproduced, with some variations).
97. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven and London, 1987), 271.
98. "First Crusade," 54-6;
99. First Crusade, 51-2.
100. "First Crusade," 56 (my emphasis);
101. First Crusade, 52.
102. "First Crusade," 56-72;
103. First Crusade, 52-7.
104. "Hi siquidem habebant in professione, ut vellent ulcisci Christum in gentilibus vel ludeis. " Annalista Saxo, ed. Georg Waitz in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores 6 (Hanover, 1844), 729. This is an original addition to an account taken from Ekkehard of Aura.
105. "First Crusade," 59-66, with the quotation appearing on 63.
106. "But apart from die early pogroms in Europe, there is little evidence that the crusaders misconceived their role to the extent that they thought they were fighting a war of conversion." First Crusade, 109.
107. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (Cambridge, 1997), 20. Somewhat later he writes in the same vein mat the persecutors' motives "appear to have stemmed less from avarice than from a conviction that they were engaged in a vendetta against those who had disparaged the honour of Christ, their father and lord" (41). For my own attempt at understanding the conversion motive, see note 4 above.
108. Cf. "First Crusade," 56-7,
109. First Crusade, 52.
110. The sentence about Ditmar, on the other hand, is reproduced in full, First Crusade, ibid., 54-5.
111. Jean Flori, "Une ou plusieurs 'première croisade'? Le message d'Urbain II et les plus anciens pogroms d'Occident," Revue historique 285 (1991): 3-27;
112. Jean Flori, idem, La première croisade: L'Occident chrétien contre l'Islam (Aux origines des idéologies occidentales) (2nd ed., Brussels, 1997), 47-54 (the author points out the importance of Annalista Saxo's mention of the vengeance motive and gives a full paraphrase of the passage on 'Dukus Gotbreht').