Chapter XXIII: JEWS IN CENTRAL EUROPE (continued)

=1. The Crusades.=――Towards the close of the eleventh century there came to be national as well as individual causes for borrowing of the Jews, and national and religious, as well as individual and especial, grounds for plunder and persecution. In the year 630, Mahomed had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror, and for over 400 years the mosque which he had erected to Allah stood unchallenged on the ruins of the Empress Helena’s church. This particular conquest of Mahomed’s was a religious as well as a political eyesore to Catholic Europe. It asserted the ascendency of Islam on the very spot of all others which was to Christians most sacred. As Catholicism spread, the desire to regain the sepulchre of their Saviour from unbelievers grew strong amongst the followers of Jesus. The warlike spirit of the age sought a pious motive for its expression, and thus, blessed and encouraged on all sides, sworn soldiers of the cross set off from France and Germany and England to wrest Jerusalem from the Mahomedans. ‘Zeal is a good thing, but love is a better.’ This sudden fury of fanaticism had very sad results for the Jews. To them, as a matter of sentiment, it made little difference whether Christian or Mahomedan ruled in their lost land, and whether the cross or the crescent was set up where the שְׁכִינָה had shone. In either case alike their shrine was desolate and deserted, and Jews must have looked on this struggle between Christians and Mahomedans, for the possession of their own lost city with a sullen sense of unhappy indifference. And yet, as a matter of fact and history, the Crusades were of very terrible import to the Jews. By a process of reasoning which it is not difficult to follow, the massacre of Jews and the plunder of Jews were held to be rightful preliminaries to each of these chivalrous expeditions to the East. It was ‘unbelievers’ whom the crusaders were setting off to fight, and here were ‘unbelievers’ of an older sort, dwelling in their midst; was it not well to begin with them? Money, too, was wanted for their holy wars; was not Jewish wealth conveniently close at hand? Killing Jewish unbelievers was surely no murder; plundering Jews, to use their treasures in so holy a cause, was still less ‘robbery.’ This was crusading logic. Jews are always a little slow to appreciate the much-sung chivalry of the Middle Ages. They saw its seamy side.

An era of most wicked persecution opened for the Jews of Central Europe with the first crusade in 1096. The frenzy of intolerance and fanaticism which was called forth under the fair names of religion and chivalry spread like an epidemic. At Trèves it began; and there, the rabble, under the direction of heartless and impecunious knights, sacked the Jewish quarters and massacred the inhabitants. The example set at Trèves was followed at Metz, at Strasburg, at Mainz, at Worms, at Cologne, and at Spires. All along the banks of the Rhine, of the Moselle, of the Maine, and the Danube, in the flourishing towns which Jewish enterprise had made wealthy and prosperous, Jewish men and women, and even little children, were slaughtered like cattle. The spoils gained from murder and robbery went to defray the costs of the holy wars. Sometimes the alternative of baptism was given to the victims; oftener no choice was offered, but sacrilege followed on sacking, and murder on robbery. Some commanders burnt the Jews; some contented themselves with burning only Jewish books and scrolls. But it is a remarkable fact that although their books were burnt, lest those who read them should be contaminated, it was never thought necessary to subject their valuables in coin and jewels to the like purging process! On the whole, burning was the favourite fashion of killing Jews, but occasionally some town or some leader would hit on a more original method. Spires, for instance, drowned her Jews, and Mainz once drove hers into wholesale suicide, and Strasburg got rid of two thousand at one time in an enormous bonfire.

In 1098, Jerusalem, after many a repulse, was safe in the crusaders’ hands, and the conquerors celebrated their success by so complete a massacre of the Jews then living in Jerusalem and its suburbs, that when the city was again retaken by the Mahomedans, hardly a Jew was left to exult at the reversal of Christian arms. For fifty years Jerusalem remained a Mahomedan conquest. At the end of that time (1147) a second crusade was organised to retake it. All who joined this expedition were solemnly released by Pope Eugenius III. from all obligations to pay any debts which they might owe to the Jews. And in this second crusade, as in the first, a broad red track of Jewish blood marked the way which the crusaders took to the East, and the flames from burning Jewries were beacon-lights on their path.

=2. Glimpses of Better Things.=――There were occasional incidents which show like light in the darkness of that cruel age. The Spanish Jews, whose misfortunes were of later date, did not neglect their unhappy co-religionists. More than once we find the still prosperous Jews of Spain sending sympathetic messages and substantial supplies to the persecuted Jews of France and Germany. And amongst Christians there was many a brave, good man who had the courage to be humane, and to stand out as an exception to the general line of conduct which was pursued towards the Jews. The Bishop of Spires and the Bishop of Cologne both did their very best to protect the Jews in the terrible scenes that preceded the first crusade (1096). And in the second crusade (1147) the famous monk, St. Bernard of France, distinguished himself in the same way. He did all he could, by voice and hand and pen, to check the prevailing fashion of cruelty. Pope Alexander III. was another advocate of fair treatment for the Jews, and Pope Innocent IV. actually issued a bull laughing to scorn the accusations brought against them of killing children for the flavouring of passover cakes, and denouncing as ‘crimes’ the cruelties which were practised by Christians upon Jews. But how sadly exceptional such instances were may be judged from the fact that Church historians try to explain away the humanity of that good Bishop of Cologne in 1096 by saying that he was bribed by the Jews, and that his kindness to them was bought with their own money. ‘Save me from my friends,’ that poor bishop might well exclaim. It was defending his orthodoxy at the expense of his honesty with a vengeance.

=3. Life in France till the Expulsion thence.=――From the date of Charles the Bald’s death (877), and the accusation of poison brought against his Jewish doctor Zedekiah, the position of the Jews in France grew slowly and gradually, but quite steadily, worse, till injustice reached its climax in an edict of expulsion (1394). From the ninth to the twelfth century Jewish schools and synagogues continued to exist, and the people were tolerably protected from violence. So late as 1165, when a famous Jewish Spanish traveller named Benjamin of Tudela was visiting France, he found such institutions flourishing in most of the towns which he included in his travels, and he seems to have made a very comprehensive tour both north and south. In Narbonne the traveller speaks of great tracts of land being cultivated by Jews and being held by them, under what we should call a leasehold tenure, from the lords of the soil. Paris seems to have been a favourite city with the race even at that time, and Christian writers confirm Benjamin of Tudela’s account of the prosperous and respected condition of the Jews who were dwelling there. The crusades, and the need of money for conducting them, were the chief causes for the persecutions which were so soon to follow. The sufferings of the Jews in France were, as a rule, due less to bigotry and religious hatred on the part of the priests and the populace, than to the avarice of the kings. In Spain, Jews were hunted out of the country as heretics. In France they were treated more as sponges, first squeezed, and then tossed away. Towards the end of the twelfth century King Philip Augustus ordered them, in a body, out of his dominions (1180), and the purchase-money that the Jews gave for the right to return brought them a short interval of ‘protection.’ Expelling the Jews, and selling permission to them to come back, was found an excellent means of raising a large sum of money, and the process was repeated in 1306, when Philip IV., one of the most cruel sovereigns who ever sat on any throne, was King of France. Before they were expelled, in 1306, their goods were pillaged and confiscated to a great extent, and it must have been difficult for the poor exiles to raise the enormous sum which was demanded, a few years later, for the right to return. Like Noah’s dove, which in the whole wide world found no resting-place for the sole of her tiny foot, the Jews, at this date, had small choice or chance of safe asylum in any country, or we might wonder at their paying for permission to go back to such inhospitable shores. Under ‘Saint’ Louis (Louis IX., 1226‒1270) a new form of persecution was hit upon. Killing Jews and plundering their property was commonplace; it was decided to destroy their literature. So a raid was made on Jewish libraries, and, as a beginning, twenty-four cart-loads full of Talmudical books were burnt in Paris. It was under this king, too, that the Jews were prohibited from practising as physicians, and that they were all compelled to wear a conspicuous garment. It was called the _rouelle_, and its distinctiveness consisted in a bit of blue cloth being sewn in front of, and behind, the outer dress of both men and women. Louis the Saint must have the virtue of originality added to his other claims for saintship.

In 1320 there was another crusade, another accusation against the Jews, and another large sum of Jewish money paid into the royal treasury. These three contemporaneous occurrences, examined closely, seem to have a somewhat suspicious connection with one another. The crusade of 1320, which was called the rising of the shepherds, was set on foot by peasants, who were presumably too poor to pay its expenses, and a preliminary crusade against the Jews was a very convenient way of raising the necessary money for the holy expedition. So a cry was raised against them of poisoning the wells. Any charge against Jews was sure to result in plunder, or in a bribe big enough to make plunder unnecessary. In 1348‒1349 the Black Pestilence was raging in Europe. This frightful epidemic was said to spare the Jews. So far as it did spare them, their cleanlier lives and their more temperate habits would be quite sufficient explanation for all reasonable people of the somewhat doubtful fact. But the reasonable people would seem to have been few in those days, and the fanatics many. The Jews were accused, both of causing the pestilence and of not suffering from it, and again that ridiculous charge of poisoning the wells was brought against them. It must have been taken for granted that Jews lived without drinking! The accusation, however, was good enough for its purpose. The Jews died by the sword if not by the plague; they were not permitted the choice granted to David their king, who elected to be punished by the pestilence rather than by the sword, to fall by the ‘hand of God rather than by the hand of man.’

=4. Expelled from France.=――On September 17, 1394, on יוֹם כִּפּוּר, when Charles VI. was king, with a six weeks’ notice, the Jews were commanded to leave France altogether, and this third expulsion was decided and general, and included all the Jews in all parts of the country.

=5. Treatment of Jews in the German States.=――In the ninth and tenth centuries many French Jews had crossed the Rhine, and, emigrating into Germany, had established colonies there, which the crusaders, some two centuries later, on their way to the Holy Land, found conveniently handy to pillage. From Germany the Jews were never expelled in a body as they were from France and Spain, and, as we shall presently see, from England, but there were many local and partial expulsions; and German Jews, from the ninth till nearly the nineteenth century, lived, as it were, in the midst of alarms, and led, for the most part, a miserable existence. Throughout the Middle Ages, their legal position in these dominions was that of serfs of the Emperor, and they paid a certain tax for somewhat uncertain ‘protection.’ The Emperors themselves were often kindly inclined towards the Jews, and Frederick Barbarossa, who ruled in the twelfth century, was particularly humane. A greedy fanatic once entered this Emperor’s presence with the news that three Christian children had been found dead in a Jew’s house on the eve of the Passover; and ‘what was to be done?’ the man excitedly asked. ‘Three children dead!’ said the Emperor calmly; ‘why, let them be buried, of course.’ But all the Emperors of Germany were not like Frederick Barbarossa, and very few of the princes. The Jews were shunned and oppressed in the German states, even when and where they were not openly and violently outraged. They walked among men with Cain’s mark set upon them without Cain’s sin. Each city, each street, each house nearly in the German dominions could ‘tell sorrowful stories.’ And because _finis_ was never written on the page of Jewish history in Germany as it was for a while in Spain, and France, and England, the sad tale in this part of the world comes to no abrupt and dramatic conclusion, and breaks off with no certain and settled date.