speculum volume 84 issue 02 2009 [doi 10.1017%2fs0038713400018054] chazan, robert -- “let not a...

"Let Not a Remnant or a Residue Escape":Millenarian Enthusiasm in the First Crusade

By Robert Chazan

The First Crusade, which continues to attract scholarly and popular attention,was dramatic, sprawling, and complex. It involved the rapidly evolving papacyand innovative papal initiatives, the newfound military prowess and religiosity ofthe warrior class of Western Christendom, the emergence of popular preachingand radical views of Christianity in general and the crusading expedition in par-ticular, and wide-ranging spiritual exhilaration and militancy within the broadEuropean populace. The remarkable successes of the crusading armies that con-quered Jerusalem during the summer of 1099 created a natural focus for the his-torical records that were composed at the time and have continued to providesuch a focus ever since. Four contemporary narratives penned by participants inthe successful expedition have set the parameters for much of the subsequentrecounting and analysis of this fascinating and complicated juncture in the historyof medieval Western Christendom.1

As attention has turned increasingly to the ideas and ideals that set in motionthe innovative venture, the thinking of the organized church leadership and thebaronial participants in the successful enterprise has necessarily taken pride ofplace. There has been awareness, to be sure, that the papal announcement set inmotion unexpected responses all across the European social spectrum, but the fullrange of those responses has been difficult to track, largely because of the natureof the data that have survived.2 Especially intriguing has been the issue of mille-narian expectations associated with the call to the crusade. A number of historians

This study has been long in the writing. I want to thank three distinguished colleagues who readand commented on drafts—Professors Eva Haverkamp, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Haym Soloveit-chik. My deepest appreciation to all three.

1 These eyewitness narrators include the anonymous Gesta Francorum, Raymond of Aguilers,Fulcher of Chartres, and Peter Tudebode, with the first two dominating subsequent historical writing.Note also the later and derivative accounts of Guibert of Nogent, Baldric of Bourgueil, and Robertthe Monk, all three of which were heavily dependent on the Gesta Francorum. All these narrativesfocus on the travails encountered by the ultimately successful militias and on the remarkable conquestof Jerusalem.

2 The most interesting recent explorations of this thinking include Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety andthe Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c. 970-c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993);Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (Cambridge, Eng., 1997); Jonathan Phillips,ed., The First Crusade: Origins and Impact (Manchester, Eng., 1997); Marcus Bull et al., eds., TheExperience of Crusading, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 2003); and Christopher Tyerman, Fighting forChristendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford, 2004). A number of major overviews of the FirstCrusade have appeared over the past decade and accord considerable discussion to the ideas behindthe expedition. These include Jean Richard, Histoire des croisades (Paris, 1996); Jonathan Phillips,The Crusades, 1095-1197 (Harlow, Eng., 2002); Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History(Oxford, 2004); and Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge,Mass., 2006).

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290 Millenarian Enthusiasm

have argued that eschatological anticipation was associated with the onset of theFirst Crusade. The evidence for that thesis has, however, been exceedingly slim,leading most recent historians either to downplay it or to dismiss it entirely.

Until recently, only two historians—Norman Cohn and Jean Flori—had ad-dressed at all seriously the apocalyptic element in First Crusade thinking.1 Quiterecently, Flori has expanded his treatment of the apocalyptic elements in the FirstCrusade considerably, in his L'islam et la fin des temps.4 Flori's new treatment isrich and thoughtful. He begins by emphasizing the scope and diversity of the FirstCrusade, then turns to a discussion of the diverse motivations behind the crusadingenterprise. Flori points to the emergent consensus that the motives were largelyreligious and identifies elements such as the creation of a dignified religious po-sition for the warrior class, the important role of penitence, and the influence ofpotential martyrdom. He emphasizes an irredentist element in the First Crusade,that is to say, the sense that the Holy Land was Christian territory taken by othersbut was destined to be returned by God one day to its rightful owners. Implicitin the First Crusade, according to Flori, was the sense that this time had arrived.5

From this discussion of the motivations for the First Crusade, Flori moves onto an analysis of the prophetic-eschatological dimensions of the undertaking, ad-ducing a range of sources to establish the reality of millenarian thinking amongsome crusading contingents. Again, Flori exhibits full recognition of the diversityof the various crusading groups and the related variations in crusader thinkingand motivation. In his presentation Flori highlights the presence of the propheticand eschatological among the bands responsible for assaults on Rhineland Jewishcommunities in 1096, although the evidence he adduces is quite limited.

It is well known that the call to the First Crusade occasioned inter alia anti-Jewish violence, particularly in the Rhineland. A number of major RhinelandJewish communities were wiped out in their totality. Three Hebrew accounts ofthese attacks have survived and provide rich evidence on the 1096 assaults andthe radical Jewish responses to them.6 Since one of the three Hebrew accounts

' Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anar-chists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York, 1970), pp. 61-70; and Jean Flori, haPremiere croisade:L'Occident chretien contre l'islam, Historiques 107 (Brussels, 1997), pp. 40-54. The foci of these twostudies differ markedly. Cohn is concerned with a broad swath of socioreligious movements, whileFlori is concerned solely with diverse aspects of the First Crusade. In neither study is the case formillenarian enthusiasm rigorously argued.

4 Jean Flori, L 'islam et la fin des temps: L 'interpretation prophetique des invasions musulmanes dansla chretiente medievale (Paris, 2007), pp. 250-81. In his study of the role of Count Emicho in the FirstCrusade, Matthew Gabriele makes some valuable observations on the impact of apocalyptic thinkingon that shadowy figure; see "Against the Enemies of Christ: The Role of Count Emicho in the Anti-Jewish Violence of the First Crusade," in Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: ACasebook, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York, 2007), pp. 61-82.

5 The relationship of the irredentist thinking on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas to this facet ofcrusade thinking is a theme worth pursuing.

6 The three Hebrew First Crusade narratives were published in a critical edition with German trans-lation by Adolf Neubauer and Moritz Stern, Hebra'ische Berichte iiber die Judenverfolgungen wdhrendder Kreuzziige (Berlin, 1892). The narratives were republished by Avraham Habermann, Sefer GezerotAshkenaz ve-Zarfat (Jerusalem, 1945). These prior editions have now been superseded by the newcritical edition with German translation by Eva Haverkamp, Hebra'ische Berichte iiber die Judenver-

Millenarian Enthusiasm 291

incorporates a number of previously composed narratives, we are in fact providedwith five separate voices depicting from a Jewish perspective the events of 1096.These five voices are (1) the chronicle of the so-called Mainz Anonymous, a nar-rative that moves from the onset of the crusade in France through the appearanceof French crusaders in the Rhineland and the arousal of crusading fervor amongthe German populace and on to the fate of the Jewish communities of Speyer,Worms, and Mainz, where it is suddenly and unfortunately cut short—a numberof recent scholars have concluded that this narrative was composed shortly afterthe events themselves; (2) a unit in the composite Solomon bar Sitnson Chronicledevoted to the fate of the Jewish community of Trier—again this unit seems tohave been composed fairly close to the events themselves; (3) a unit in the com-posite Solomon bar Sitnson Chronicle devoted to the fate of the Jewish communityof Cologne—this unit seems to have been composed in 1140, not long before theonset of the Second Crusade; (4) the portions of the Solomon bar Simson Chron-icle produced by its medieval editor, which begin with an adaptation of the chron-icle of the Mainz Anonymous and then proceed to an account of the Colognecommunity, the Trier community, and a few additional Jewish communities aswell; and (5) the Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle, which is a prose abridgment ofthe Solomon bar Simson Chronicle embellished with valuable liturgical poems.The first two of the five compositions were roughly contemporaneous with theevents themselves and are especially useful in providing rich insight into bothChristian and Jewish thinking.7

The present paper focuses on one aspect of the 1096 assaults, the commitmenton the part of some Rhineland crusaders and burghers to wipe out Jewish enclavesin their entirety. I shall argue that this unusual cast of mind—by no means sharedeven by all those involved in the 1096 anti-Jewish violence—suggests millenarianenthusiasm in segments of the crusading and noncrusading population. The evi-dence for this millenarian enthusiasm comes largely from a close reading of theJewish accounts of the 1096 violence, combined with the more cursory evidenceprovided by two Christian chroniclers focused on events in the Germanic lands—Albert of Aix and Ekkehard of Aura.8 Since the evidence drawn from the Hebrew

folgungen wdhrend des Ersten Kreuzzugs (Hannover, 2005). The Haverkamp edition presents theHebrew text in two formats, first comparatively with the three texts lined up side by side and then ina straightforward presentation. In general, I shall cite the latter. An English translation of all threenarratives was provided by Shlomo Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chroniclesof the First and Second Crusades (Madison, Wis., 1977). Translations of the chronicle by the MainzAnonymous and the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle are also available in Robert Chazan, EuropeanJewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, Calif., 1987). Throughout this paper I shall cite the Hebrewtexts in the Haverkamp edition (as Haverkamp, with citation of the Hebrew pagination) and—becauseof its accessibility—the Habermann edition (as Habermann); I shall also cite the two English trans-lations (as Eidelberg and Chazan, with quotations taken from the latter). Important recent observationson these texts can be found in Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and JewishMemories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia, 2004).

7 The five voices are described in detail in Robert Chazan, God, Humanity, and History: The HebrewFirst Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, Calif., 2000), pp. 19-111, where the case for dating the five ele-ments is adduced.

8 Albert's Historia Hierosolymitana is now available in a new edition and translation: Albert ofAachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007). Ekkehard'sbriefer Hierosolymita can be found in Recueil des historiens des croisades, historiens occidentaux, 5vols. (Paris, 1844-95), 5:10-40.


narratives shows that Jews were aware of the millenarian enthusiasm that per-meated some of the crusading bands and their noncrusading accomplices, I shallfurther ask whether this millenarian enthusiasm may have been absorbed to anextent by the Jewish victims of the 1096 violence. The conclusions as to Christianand Jewish millenarian thinking, reached on the basis of the Jewish and Christiansources from Germany, will then be reinforced by a curious Jewish source fromByzantium. Finally, I shall also note the striking contrast between Jewish fateduring the First Crusade and Jewish circumstances in the subsequent major cru-sades and suggest that the presence of millenarian expectations in the former andthe lack of such expectations in the latter constitute important factors in under-standing the differences.

Let me begin by reviewing the data provided by the Rhineland Hebrew narratives.The Mainz Anonymous—one of the two early Hebrew voices—begins his accountby orienting the reader to the beginnings and nature of the First Crusade:

It came to pass in the year one thousand twenty-eight after the destruction of the [Second]Temple that this evil befell Israel. There first arose the princes and nobles and commonfolk in France, who took counsel and set plans to ascend and "to rise up like eagles"[Obadiah 1.4] and do battle and "to clear a way" [Isaiah 40.3, 57.14, 62.10] for jour-neying to Jerusalem, the Holy City, and for reaching the sepulcher of the Crucified.9

Reflected here is a Rhineland Jew's perspective on the First Crusade, as he saw it,and—given what we know of the early stages of the crusade from other sources—it is focused and perceptive. The crusade is viewed as a French initiative; it iscorrectly understood as involving a combination of elements in the French popu-lation; the objective of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre is fully recognized. De-spite the rich allusions to biblical verses, there is no tendency to accommodate thecrusade to biblical instances of danger and threat. The Mainz Anonymous wasfully grounded in the realities of 1096. He continues by quickly noting the deflec-tion of crusading fervor against the Jews, crucial to the saga he was about tounfold.10 He then depicts the fright of the French Jews and their reactions to thenew threat, which is contrasted with the tragic lack of awareness of the crusadeand its dangers on the part of the Rhineland Jews.

It is with the passage of French crusaders—in all likelihood the large band thatcoalesced around Peter the Hermit—into the Rhineland that the body of the storytold by the Mainz Anonymous commences. The earliest phase of the story includesthe following elements:(1) the crusaders demand funding to be utilized for provisions; the Jews comply, and theseFrench crusading bands pass peacefully eastward;11

(2) the appearance of the French crusading bands arouses the animosity of the Rhinelandburghers against the Jews—according to the Mainz Anonymous, "their [the burghers']

' Haverkamp, 88; Habermann, 93; Eidelberg, 99; Chazan, 225.10 See below, p. 303, for this important citation.11 See below, pp. 295-96, for the corroborating and fuller information provided in the Trier account.

Millenarian Enthusiasm 293hands were also with them [the crusaders] to destroy vine and stock all along the way toJerusalem";12

(3) the appearance of the French crusading bands also arouses Rhineland barons to takethe cross—once again crusade fervor quickly translates into anti-Jewish sentiment, with arumor spreading that "anyone who kills a single Jew will have all his sins absolved"—andthe Mainz Anonymous cites one particular Rhineland nobleman named Ditmar, "whoannounced that he would not depart from this empire until he would kill one Jew—thenhe would depart";13

(4) the Jews of Mainz, deeply distressed over all this accelerating danger, fast and pray forrelief;(5) incidental crusader violence breaks out, to the point that the Jews are "afraid even tocross [their] thresholds."14

The initial assault depicted by the Mainz Anonymous took place in Speyer; itinvolved a ragtag combination of crusaders and burghers who attacked the Jewson their way out of the synagogue on Sabbath morning, taking eleven Jewish lives.This poorly conceived and organized assault was met with the determined resis-tance of the local bishop, who then took the further step of placing his Jews infortified rural redoubts in order to insure their ongoing safety. Speyer Jewry wasthus only minimally affected by the 1096 violence, in stark contrast with whatwas to happen in Worms, Mainz, and Cologne.

The first of the devastating attacks depicted by the Mainz Anonymous tookplace in Worms. There, the Jewish community—not yet fully alerted to the pro-found dangers associated with crusading—divided itself into two segments, a partof the community electing to seek safety with non-Jewish neighbors and friendsand a second group opting for the protection of the bishop's palace. The MainzAnonymous portrays in some detail the destruction of both camps. In depictingthe fate of the former group, the author describes a plot to arouse both crusadersand burghers against the Jews. A recently interred Christian corpse was exhumedand paraded through the town, with the allegation that the Jews had boiled thecadaver in water and had then poured the water into the town wells in order topoison the Christian populace.15 The ploy produced the anticipated outrage. Anad hoc coalition of crusaders and burghers assaulted the Jews who had soughtsafety with neighbors, killing many of these Jews and converting others.

Almost two weeks later, the second set of Jews was assaulted by an expandedad hoc coalition, consisting of crusaders, burghers, and villagers from the sur-rounding area. The tripartite coalition besieged and attacked the episcopal palace,overran it, and killed the Jews. The author depicts a variety of heroic Jewishreactions. He also adds the story of a Jewess who had survived both assaults by

12 Haverkamp, 88; Habermann, 94; Eidelberg, 100; Chazan, 226. Again, see below, pp. 295-96,for the corroborating and fuller information in the Trier account.

" Haverkamp, 88; Habermann, 94; Eidelberg, 100; Chazan, 226. It is worth recalling the exhilaratedreaction of Bohemond of Taranto to the appearance of crusaders and his immediate decision to jointhe expedition. See Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill(Oxford, 1962), p. 7.

14 Haverkamp, 90; Habermann, 94; Eidelberg, 100; Chazan, 227.15 This incident was a crucial factor in the initial sense of the account by the Mainz Anonymous as

a late composition.


hiding outside town with friends but who met her death at the hands of hererstwhile protectors, convinced that the Jews had been abandoned by God.

The centerpiece of the story told by the Mainz Anonymous is its account of thedestruction of Mainz Jewry, which followed a much different pattern from eventsin Speyer and Worms. The Jews of Mainz learned quickly what had happened atSpeyer and Worms and sought the protection of their archbishop. No longer will-ing to entrust themselves to the care of friendly neighbors, the Jews of Mainzstruck an agreement with the archbishop, with almost all of them seeking safetyin the archbishop's palace.16 The destruction of the Jewish community of Mainzwas not carried out by an ad hoc coalition; rather, it was perpetrated by an or-ganized crusading band led by a Rhineland nobleman, Emicho of Flonheim. CountEmicho and his militia reached the walls of Mainz on Sunday, May 25. The Jewsof Mainz, fully aware of the peaceful passage of Peter the Hermit and his followersin return for financial assistance, attempted to win over Count Emicho in the sameway but were quickly rebuffed. Peter the Hermit and Count Emicho were movedby differing sentiments with regard to crusading and its implications relative tothe Jews.

The gates to Mainz had been locked by the anxious archbishop, but they werequickly opened to Count Emicho and his band by sympathetic burghers. On Tues-day, May 27, the crusading militia entered Mainz and made straight for the arch-bishop's palace, where most of the Jews were sequestered. Abandoned by thearchbishop and his followers, the Jews attempted to hold off their attackers butfailed to do so. Making their way into the palace, Emicho's followers committeda protracted and thorough massacre of the Jews they found therein. Jews refusedescape from death through baptism, submitting to the swords of Emicho's follow-ers or—in many cases—choosing to take their own lives and the lives of lovedones. Count Emicho's commitment to the utter destruction of Mainz Jewry ismanifest in the description of what happened in the archbishop's palace. Indeed,after destroying the bulk of Mainz Jewry in this way, his crusading militia pro-ceeded to hunt down the few remaining Jews of Mainz in their alternative refuges.

While the Cologne unit of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle—seemingly writ-ten a number of decades after the events of 1096—is less interested in depictingthe details of the Christian assaults and more focused on heroic Jewish responsesonly, the portrayal of the fate of the Jews of Cologne does provide some interest-ing, albeit less fully developed, reflections of the Christian attacks. The Cologneunit indicates that the very first violence suffered by the Jews of Cologne wasperpetrated by burghers and largely involved plunder of homes and desecrationof the synagogue. A few Jews who made the mistake of venturing forth from theirrefuges lost their lives. Subsequently, the archbishop of Cologne moved his Jewsout of town, spreading them among seven rural fortifications.

While the archbishop's ploy was reasonable and in fact had proven successfulin saving the lives of the Jews of Speyer, the Jews of Cologne were systematicallyhunted down in their refuges by a crusading band.17 In describing the destruction

16 While most of the Jews of Mainz sought safety in the episcopal palace, there are recurrent refer-ences to small numbers of Jews who hid themselves elsewhere.

17 This technique was adopted regularly and successfully in the subsequent crusades.


of most of the enclaves of Cologne Jews, the author of the Cologne unit repeatedlydepicts the approach of an armed force.18 Again, lack of concern with the attacksthemselves led the author of the Cologne unit to omit details on the attackingmilitia. The conception of crusading reflected in the activity of this militia is highlyreminiscent of Emicho and his followers. The crusading troops who destroyedalmost all of Cologne Jewry were committed to a policy of total destruction.

The Trier unit of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle has been relatively ne-glected by historians. It lacks the brutality and the heroism related by the MainzAnonymous and the Cologne segment of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle. Formy purposes, however, it is invaluable, in that it focuses single-mindedly on oneJewish community and portrays the complex fate of that one community over aspan of more than two months.

During this extended period of time, the Jewish community of Trier faced asequence of challenges, which the author is committed to depicting in all theirdiversity:(1) Peter the Hermit and his followers pass through Trier—Peter is described as carryingwith him a letter from the Jews of France, urging fellow Jews to support him with fundingfor provisions; the Jews of Trier follow this advice, and Peter's masses leave Trier withoutinflicting any harm on the Jewish community;(2) Peter's success in extracting funds from the Jews emboldens the burghers of Trier alsoto extort funds from the beleaguered Jews, who pay them large sums;(3) frightened, the Jews flee to the bishop's palace;(4) a house in which the community's Torah scrolls had been hidden for safekeeping isattacked and the scrolls desecrated; some Trier Jews, accompanied by episcopal function-aries, endanger themselves by proceeding to the safe house and rescuing the desecratedscrolls;19

(5) the Jews fast, give alms, and tax themselves severely to raise money for extensive bribery;(6) on Pentecost, a large crowd is addressed by the bishop, who warns them against harm-ing the Jews—the message proves so unpopular that the bishop has to go into hiding;(7) the mob then besieges the bishop's palace, where the Jews are sequestered, but is unableto break into it;(8) the bishop subsequently argues to the Jews that they have no option other than con-version—the Jews are depicted as steadfastly refusing;(9) the Jews are given four days for reflection;(10) the Jews then offer a bribe, which is refused by the bishop's representative;(11) with a mob of crusaders and burghers surrounding the entrance to the palace, adelegation of episcopal officials and leading townsmen enters the palace and informs theJews that they must either convert or be exposed to the fury of the mob;

18 The appearance of "the enemy," in a manner that suggests an organized militia, is especiallyapparent in the Cologne unit's report on the second of the refuges, identified in the later Eliezer barNathan Chronicle as Wevelinghofen (Haverkamp, 50-52; Habermann, 45-46; Eidelberg, 51-53;Chazan, 275-78); in the report on the fifth of the refuges at Xanten (Haverkamp, 56-60; Habermann,48-50; Eidelberg, 55-58; Chazan, 280-83); and in the sixth of the refuges, for which negotiationswith a besieging militia are depicted (Haverkamp, 60-64; Habermann, 50-51; Eidelberg, 58-59;Chazan, 284).

19 Note the claim for heroism on the part of the Jews who accompanied the episcopal functionariesto the safe house.


(12) a few Jews are led out and are killed;(13) in the face of ongoing Jewish intransigence, the women of the community are led tochurch and forcibly baptized;(14) while the narrative closes with a small number of Jewish women who martyr them-selves, it is in fact clear that the bulk of the Jewish community of Trier was forcibly con-verted.

Treatment of these developments in Germany by Albert of Aachen and Ekke-hard of Aura is much slimmer; however, the reportage of the Jewish narrators andof the two Christian chroniclers dovetails considerably. Like the Jewish narrators,Albert also highlights the role of Peter the Hermit, his preaching, and the appear-ance of his forces on German soil. Albert in fact focuses extensively on Peter,making large claims for the centrality of his role in the First Crusade.20 In theRhineland, according to Albert, Peter's appearance and preaching spawned fur-ther popular preaching. A band organized around a priest named Gottschalkmoved eastward and met the same ignominious fate suffered by Peter's followers.

Albert also notes the emergence of anti-Jewish sentiment, and—like the Hebrewnarratives—he is aware of its complex nature. According to Albert, anti-Jewishactivity first broke out in Cologne and initially involved burghers and plunder. Asa result of this initial violence, the Jews of Cologne attempted to flee and werecaught and killed by crusaders. While the story is far less detailed than that foundin the Cologne segment of the Solomon bar Simson narrative, its basic outlinesare consistent with the latter.

Albert focuses his account of anti-Jewish violence on Mainz. Here he identi-fies—as does the Mainz Anonymous—Count Emicho of Flonheim and his bandas the decisive figures. Like the Hebrew narrative, Albert portrays a concertedeffort to kill or convert the Jews of Mainz and radical Jewish resistance. Notsurprisingly, the radical nature of this resistance, so profoundly valorized by theJewish observers, was horrifying to the Christian chronicler. Despite the differ-ences in assessment, the Christian narrator reinforces the reality of the extremeJewish reactions.

Ekkehard's report on the early aspects of the crusade is even briefer than thatof Albert, but it is useful nonetheless. Ekkehard begins by noting lack of awarenessin Germany of the development of the crusade, which he explains as resultingfrom the long-standing tension between the papacy and the empire. In that regardEkkehard adds substance to the Hebrew report of German-Jewish insouciance,which the Mainz Anonymous found so tragic. Like the latter, Ekkehard suggeststhat it was the appearance of the army of Peter the Hermit that sparked awarenessof the crusade. Ekkehard complicates the picture somewhat. He reports that theinitial German reaction was derision for those who were willing to leave the fa-miliar for the unknown, their homeland for the remote Holy Land. According to

20 The role of Peter the Hermit in the First Crusade—once projected as central and subsequentlydiminished—has been discussed again of late. For some of this discussion see E. O. Blake and C.Morris, "A Hermit Goes to War: Peter and the Origins of the First Crusade," in Monks, Hermits andthe Ascetic Tradition, ed. W. J. Sheils, Studies in Church History 22 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 79-107; JeanFlori, Pierre I'Ermite et la Premiere croisade (Paris, 1999), pp. 19-29; and Colin Morris, "Peter theHermit and the Chroniclers," in Phillips, The First Crusade, pp. 21-34.


Ekkehard, two factors served to change views of the crusade. The first was theappearance of impressive celestial signs; the second was exhilarating preaching,which Ekkehard views somewhat negatively.

Ekkehard does not provide details on the anti-Jewish violence and does nothave a sense of the complexity of its participants and the thinking underlying it.He focuses on crusaders and their role in the violence. He singles out Count Emi-cho and notes the commitment among Emicho's followers either to slaughter theJews whom they encountered or to force them to conversion. Like both the He-brew narratives and Albert, Ekkehard sees the anti-Jewish violence of Count Emi-cho and his followers as ideological in nature.

From the foregoing it is clear that the Hebrew narratives of 1096 can hardly beaccused of stereotypic reporting. In fact, they present a bewilderingly complexpicture of the early months of crusading in the Rhineland. As noted, the Christianeyewitness accounts and modern research have focused on the organized bandsof crusaders, especially the successful bands. The Hebrew narratives introduce usto a far more complex reality. Only two organized militias make an appearancein the Jewish sources—the large popular army that coalesced in France aroundthe charismatic preacher Peter the Hermit (which did not inflict physical damageon the Jews) and the baronial force led by Count Emicho of Flonheim (which did).Neither played any role in the great successes of the First Crusade; both metdisaster early on. Albert and Ekkehard add further nuance to this picture, iden-tifying a number of additional bands that coalesced in the wake of Peter's ap-pearance and preaching, one led by a knight named Walter and two led by priestsnamed Gottschalk and Folcmar.

The Hebrew narratives introduce us to the reality of individuals who took thecross and circulated in Christian society prior to linking themselves to crusadingunits. Such "floating" crusaders appear recurrently in the Hebrew accounts, oftenas participants in the anti-Jewish violence of 1096. Moreover, noncrusaders weremuch influenced by crusade preaching and the appearance of crusader bands. Bothburghers and villagers also appear regularly as factors in the anti-Jewish violenceof 1096. "Floating" crusaders, sympathetic burghers, and aroused rural folk couldon occasion join forces with one another and form temporary, active, and destruc-tive groupings alongside the crusading militias.

While many modern treatments of the assaults of 1096 assume that all anti-Jewish violence was perpetrated by one crusader band or a number of crusaderbands, in fact the careful Hebrew narratives indicate that this was not at all thecase. Crusading sparked anti-Jewish thinking in a number of sectors of northernEuropean society, and anti-Jewish actions were perpetrated by disparate groupingsof Christians—individual crusaders; individual burghers; groups of crusaders andburghers acting in concert; groups of crusaders, burghers, and villagers acting inconcert; and organized crusading militias. Even the most radical forms of anti-Jewish violence cannot always be traced to organized crusading militias. InWorms, for example, almost the entire Jewish community was destroyed by an adhoc coalition of crusaders and burghers and then an expanded coalition that in-cluded rural allies.

The anti-Jewish actions stimulated by the call to the crusade or by the appear-


ance of crusaders were even more diversified. Some of the crusade-related anti-Jewish actions involved Jewish property, which became the object of despoliationin a number of ways. In both Cologne and Trier, Jewish homes were plunderedby burghers, who were perhaps stimulated to do so by the crusade or at least usedthe crusade as a pretext for their depredations. The testimony of the Hebrewsources is corroborated by Albert, who notes specifically that burghers intent onplunder perpetrated the initial violence in Cologne.

Peter the Hermit represents another, more orderly, and more principled varia-tion of the expropriation of Jewish property. Peter made Jewish contribution tohis crusading efforts the basis for assuring Jewish safety. In part, this probablyinvolved simple exploitation of Jewish fears; in part, Peter may have adumbratedsome elemental doctrine of vengeance upon the Jews through utilization of theirgoods. The sense that Jewish sinfulness toward Christ and Christianity requiredsome sort of Jewish material contribution to the crusading enterprise was destinedfor a long subsequent history, typified most notably in the letter of Peter the Ven-erable to King Louis VI on the eve of the Second Crusade.21 Interestingly, theburghers of Trier, who had seen firsthand Jewish willingness to purchase safetythrough payment of funds, proceeded to exploit the Jews in the same way, seem-ingly without any crusade-related justification.

Yet another style of assault on Jewish property involved the desecration of Jew-ish sacred space and objects. In Cologne, the synagogue was attacked and dese-crated. In Trier, the safe house in which the community's Torah scrolls had beendeposited was invaded; the ornamentation on the scrolls was plundered; and thescrolls themselves were ripped apart and trampled. In these incidents there is asense of wreaking vengeance on the sancta of Judaism for the purported sins ofthe Jews.

The crusade-related anti-Jewish activity focused far more intensely on the Jewsthemselves than on their property. Some of the killing of Jews was incidental,related to the plundering already noted. This was the case, for example, in the cityof Cologne, where three Jews who were foolhardy enough to attempt to save someof their possessions paid with their lives.

Incidental violence was manifest well beyond the spillover from plunder. TheMainz Anonymous, in his broad depiction of the arrival of the French crusadersin the Rhineland, speaks of threatening behavior that made the Jews fearful ofstepping outside their homes. While no details are provided, the sense conveyedis of random violence committed in individual and chaotic fashion. The attack onthe Jews of Speyer seems to have been almost spontaneous in nature and waspoorly organized. The success of Bishop John of Speyer in squelching this earlyassault was, in all likelihood, related to its disorganization.

In his broad depiction of the arrival of the French crusaders in the Rhineland,the Mainz Anonymous adds a curious variant to the physical violence stimulatedby crusading. The early portion of the narrative tells of a rumor that swept throughthe Rhineland, suggesting that "anyone who kills a single Jew will have all hissins absolved." According to the Mainz Anonymous, one particular nobleman,

21 For the letter of Peter the Venerable see Giles Constable, ed., The Letters of Peter the Venerable,2 vols., Harvard Historical Studies 78 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 1:328-29.


Ditmar, said "that he would not depart from this empire until he would kill oneJew—then he would depart."22 Here anti-Jewish sentiment is shown leading tothe notion of symbolic vengeance. The crusade is perceived as justifying anti-Jewish action, and that action was to be carried out in limited and symbolic fash-ion, through the killing of one individual Jew. With the fulfillment of this symbolicanti-Jewish violence, the main activity of the crusade could then be undertaken.

Clearly, the anti-Jewish sentiment among those who destroyed the Jewish com-munities of Worms, Mainz, and Cologne was quite different from that of thosewho extorted funds, those who engaged in spontaneous and random violence, orthose who sought symbolically to kill one Jew. Among the Christian groupingsthat destroyed the Jewish communities of Worms, Mainz, and Cologne almost intheir entirety, the commitment was to extirpate the Jewish population totally,either physically through slaughter or spiritually through conversion.23

Indications of this radical anti-Jewish commitment abound throughout the He-brew narratives. As the Mainz Anonymous describes the movement of Frenchcrusaders into the Rhineland and their extortion of funds for provisions, the au-thor indicates sadly that this initial Jewish success meant little, that the passageof the French crusaders sparked excitement among the German burghers: "Theburghers in every city to which the crusaders came were hostile to us, for their[the burghers'] hands were also with them [the crusaders] to destroy vine andstock all along the way to Jerusalem."24 The imagery of cutting off vine and rootis meant to conjure up the sense of a commitment on the part of crusaders andburghers to the total destruction of Jews and Jewish life.

I have noted the ruse that sparked the first devastating assault on the Jews ofWorms. This was immediately followed by the cry "Now let not 'a remnant or aresidue' [Ezra 9.14] escape, even 'an infant or a suckling' [1 Samuel 15.3] in thecradle."25 Reflected here once more is the Jewish author's sense of a commitmentto elimination of Jews, this time encompassing a significant segment of the Jewishcommunity of Worms. In light of this commitment, it is not surprising that theinitial assault in Worms was followed thirteen days later by a more carefullyplanned assault on the bishop's palace, where most of the remaining Jews hadsought refuge. The objective of this assault was the elimination of the remainderof Worms Jewry, and that objective seems to have been realized.

The commitment to total destruction of a Jewish community is reflected most

22 See above, n. 13.23 David Malkiel, "Destruction or Conversion: Intention and Reaction, Crusaders, and Jews, in

1096," Jewish History 15 (2001), 257-80, has advanced the view that the Rhineland crusaders andburghers were in fact oriented toward killing Jews, not toward their conversion. This view has manyproblems, including the following: it contradicts the explicit testimony of both the Hebrew and Latinnarrators, who agree in imputing to the popular groupings the desire to kill or convert the Jews; in anumber of instances, protracted negotiations aimed at converting Jews are detailed; crusader intentionsto kill the Jews make the martyrological behavior of the Jews in 1096 incomprehensible—if death wasgoing to be the result in any case, then the martyrdoms do not make sense; and there is recurrentmention of Jews killing their children so that they would not fall into the hands of the Christians andbe baptized.

24 Haverkamp, 88; Habermann, 94; Eidelberg, 100; Chazan, 226.25 Haverkamp, 92; Habermann, 95; Eidelberg, 102; Chazan, 228.


fully in the description by the Mainz Anonymous of events in Mainz. CountEmicho is portrayed at the outset of the account as utterly pitiless, determined tokill every element in the Jewish community, ranging from the very youngest to theoldest. As already noted, Count Emicho's intention to destroy Mainz Jewry in itsentirety seems to have been carried out. When his troops, abetted by sympatheticburghers, made their way into the archbishop's palace, they engaged in a system-atic effort to kill or convert every Jew they found. Indeed, upon completion of theelimination of the Jews gathered in the archbishop's palace—which surely con-stituted the overwhelming majority of Mainz Jewry—Emicho's followers pro-ceeded to hunt down individual Jews who had sought safety elsewhere. They seemindeed to have been determined to "let not a remnant or a residue escape."

The same determination to wipe out a Jewish community in its entirety is re-flected in the Cologne unit of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle. In Cologne, asnoted, the initial violence was perpetrated by burghers, was random, and cost fewJewish lives. The archbishop of Cologne seems to have decided that distancing hisJews from the town and placing them in rural fortifications would constitute thetactic likeliest to preserve them. Whether he knew of the successes of this strategyin Speyer or simply came to a parallel conclusion is unclear. What both authori-ties—the bishop of Speyer and the archbishop of Cologne—counted on was thatthe crusading bands would be disinclined to waste time and effort in trackingdown Jews, that they would be occupied with amassing provisions and proceedingwith their ultimate mission. That reckoning, while perfectly reasonable, provedto be incorrect. An organized military force, in all likelihood the militia of CountEmicho, hunted down the Jews of Cologne systematically, destroying almost allthe groups of Cologne Jews dispersed into the countryside. The fate of CologneJewry serves as perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the radical policy of de-stroying Jewish communities in their entirety.

Once again, Albert and Ekkehard corroborate the testimony of the Jewishsources. Both concur in rooting the most destructive anti-Jewish violence in anideological commitment that saw the crusade as oriented in some way towardtotal elimination of the Jews either through physical destruction or spiritual con-quest. In the case of Albert, he describes the anti-Jewish violence in Cologne andMainz as total, resulting in the obliteration of those two sets of Jews; he describesthose involved in the violence as "claiming that this was the beginning of theircrusade and service against the enemies of Christianity."26 Ekkehard depicts CountEmicho and his followers in the following terms: "Being in this matter as wellzealously devoted to the Christian faith, they busied themselves destroying theexecrable Jewish people wherever they found them or forcing them into the bosomof the Church."27

The anti-Jewish animus stirred up by the call to the crusade could be channeledin a number of different directions—financial exploitation; the symbolic killingof a Jew; random anti-Jewish violence; or the planned effort to wipe out groupsof Jews totally, either through slaughter or conversion. Not surprisingly, both theHebrew narratives and the few Christian accounts concerned with the anti-Jewish

16 Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, pp. 50 -51 .27 Ekkehard of Aura, Hierosolymita, p. 20.


violence focused on the last modality of anti-Jewish action, which involved aconcerted effort to destroy enclaves of Jews completely. Modern scholars have byand large followed the lead of these sources, especially the Hebrew narratives, andhave likewise focused on these radical efforts. In order to evaluate properly theseextreme actions, however, it is important to remember that they did not constitutethe only anti-Jewish response elicited by the call to the crusade. Setting theseradical anti-Jewish actions in the larger context of a variety of anti-Jewish behav-iors associated with crusading raises significant questions as to the thinking thatlay behind the anti-Jewish actions of 1096.

The complex web of anti-Jewish actions spawned by the call to the crusade orby the appearance of crusaders in fact generates two questions. The first involvesthe broad issue of crusade-related anti-Jewish hostility and action. What was itabout crusading that stirred up some crusaders, some burghers, and some ruralfolk to anti-Jewish violence of one kind or another? Beyond that first question,however, lies yet another. What moved some of those stirred up to anti-Jewishsentiment and action to envisage their anti-Jewish undertaking in radical terms asan effort to wipe the Jews out entirely? In many ways, the second question is themore challenging of the two.

The first question has been regularly addressed, with widely accepted answersreadily available. The core crusading ideals of doing battle with and taking ven-geance upon the Muslim enemy and of conquering Jerusalem and regaining theHoly Sepulchre each bore the potential for arousing anti-Jewish hostility. The first,often accompanied by exaggerated imagery of Muslim cruelty, is directly reflectedin the anti-Jewish slogan reported by both Jewish and Christian sources. Crusadersbent on assaulting Jews are portrayed as highlighting the more heinous nature ofJewish enmity toward Christianity. Whatever anti-Christian acts might have beenperformed by Muslims—it was alleged—paled in comparison with the Jewishcrime of deicide.28 Thus, the basic crusading notion of a war of vengeance againstthe hostile Muslims bore considerable potential for arousing anti-Jewish animus.It must, of course, be recalled that not all crusaders made the leap from enmitytoward Muslims to enmity toward Jews. Indeed, only a small minority did. Thatsome crusaders made the leap, however, is hardly surprising.

A second central motif of the crusading enterprise—the reconquest and liber-ation of Jerusalem and the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre—similarly bore consid-erable potential for arousing thoughts of the Jews and anti-Jewish animus. Asportrayed in the Gospels and regularly celebrated in Christian ritual and liturgy,it was, after all, the Jews who allegedly controlled the Jerusalem in which Jesuspreached and was crucified, and it was the Jews who were ultimately responsiblefor his crucifixion, out of which the Holy Sepulchre became Christendom's centralshrine. Once again, only a minority of crusaders made this association, but thefact that some did is not difficult to comprehend.

Understanding the potential for anti-Jewish sentiment in these core crusading

2K For citation of both Hebrew and Latin sources that portray these notions, see below, p. 303. Foran important analysis of this theme see Jonathan Riley-Smith, "The First Crusade and the Persecutionof the Jews," in Persecution and Toleration, ed. W. J. Sheils, Studies in Church History 21 (Oxford,1984), pp. 51-72.


ideals surely helps us to understand much of the anti-Jewish action portrayed inthe Hebrew sources and in some of the Latin narratives; it still leaves unaddressedthe question of what turned some of those so affected to notions of total exter-mination of the Jews. I would argue that the explanation for the radical programof total extermination of the Jews lies with millenarian enthusiasm, which grippedsome of the popular crusading forces and their urban and rural sympathizers. Thismillenarian enthusiasm was one of the offshoots of the broad campaign, an off-shoot more or less neglected by the medieval Christian narrators and—as a re-sult—by modern scholars as well.

One of the interesting questions posed with respect to the popular preaching andexhilaration of 1095-96 has been the presence or absence of millenarian enthu-siasm.29 It seems fairly clear that millenarian thinking did not loom large amongthe organized militias that successfully reached Jerusalem and conquered it in1099.30 However, a few scholars—most notably Jean Flori in his recent study—have emphasized the importance of this cast of mind in the early and popularstages of the First Crusade. Flori contends that, among the charismatic preachersand their enthusiastic followers, the sense of the dawning of a new era was promi-nent; this sense—it is alleged—fueled the vigorous preaching and engenderedmuch of the explosive popular response.31 Close examination of the Hebrew FirstCrusade narratives lends considerable support to the suggestions that millenarianexhilaration was aroused in Rhineland circles by the arrival of the popular cru-sading band of Peter the Hermit, that this apocalyptic excitement accounts for theextreme quality of some of the assaults on the major Jewish communities of theRhineland, and that the radical Jewish reactions to these assaults indicate Jewishrecognition and absorption of some of the millenarianism.

Two sets of preliminary observations are in order. The first has to do with thenature of millenarian thinking. Rooted in biblical writings, the sense that a newday would dawn and that Scripture provides clues as to the dating of the new erawas deeply embedded in medieval Christianity and Judaism. From the Book ofDaniel, medieval Christians and Jews derived considerable fodder for speculatingabout the onset of the new era; in addition, Christians had the equally enigmaticBook of Revelation to enhance their thinking about the end of the present era and

291 have wrestled extensively with the terminology that is appropriate to the crusading mood de-picted in the Hebrew narratives. I have benefited considerably from the ongoing investigations of boththe phenomenon and the terminology by Bernard McGinn. See especially his Visions of the End:Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, 96 (NewYork, 1979), pp. 28-36. There McGinn discusses the terms "messianism," "millenarianism," and"apocalypticism." While he is drawn to the breadth offered by the term "apocalypticism," his senseof "millenarianism" seems to me to fit better the phenomenon discussed in this essay. Building on theprior work of Norman Cohn, McGinn depicts "millenarianism" as "a particular type of salvationismwhich always pictures salvation as collective, terrestrial, imminent, total, and miraculous" (p. 29). Tothis I would add that "millenarianism" also generally omits the dark side of the apocalyptic, focusinginstead on the imminent and the positive.

30 Re c al l that this group has attracted the bulk of the attention of crusade historians. The fullesttreatment of the eschatological element in these organized and successful bands can be found in Flori,L'islam et la fin des temps, pp. 267-81 .

" See above, n. 4.


the beginning of the new epoch. Much modern study of medieval millenarianthinking has revolved around the issue of dating or—more precisely—the rela-tionship of millenarian enthusiasm to numbers and dates.32 What is important formy purposes is to note that much millenarian exhilaration was unrelated to nu-merical clarification and speculation. On occasion, both Christians and Jews wereovercome by the sense of earthshaking developments that shattered the normalorder of things and that presaged the onset of new and different times. The ex-citement generated by a movement as unanticipated and explosive as the FirstCrusade certainly bore the potential for generating such a sense of the new, thedifferent, the dawning of promised times.

Secondly, we must remind ourselves that those overwhelmed with the excite-ment of the crusading endeavor and a concomitant conviction that a new stage inhuman history had dawned were exhilarated masses, not skilled theologians. Itwill be futile to seek out theological clarity and consistency within the thinkingwe shall encounter. We should anticipate, rather, a jumble of half-baked notions,selectively focused on some of the major themes in the millenarian tradition. Lackof theological sophistication may be lamentable from a number of points of view;it by no means attenuated the power of the intense convictions we shall encounterin some sectors of the crusading population.

The Hebrew First Crusade narratives, reflecting Christian thinking and behaviormanifest in the Rhineland, show considerable sensitivity to millenarian strains inthe thinking of the Christian groupings that assaulted Rhineland Jewry. Let mebegin by recalling the opening observations of the meticulous Mainz Anonymous:

It came to pass in the year one thousand twenty-eight after the destruction of the [Second]Temple that this evil befell Israel. There first arose the princes and nobles and commonfolk in France, who took counsel and set plans to ascend and "to rise up like eagles"[Obadiah 1.4] and do battle and "to clear a way" [Isaiah 40.3, 57.14, 62.10] for jour-neying to Jerusalem, the Holy City, and for reaching the sepulcher of the Crucified."

The acuity of these perceptions alerts us to the need for reading the followingsentences carefully. The author proceeds immediately to indicate the deflection ofcrusader animosity against the Jews.

They said to one another: "Behold we travel to a distant land to do battle with the kingsof that land. 'We take our souls in our hands' [Judges 12.3, 1 Samuel 28.21, Job 13.14]in order to kill and to subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified.How much more so [should we kill and subjugate] the Jews, who killed and crucifiedhim."'4

The Mainz Anonymous creates a striking disjuncture here. While describing thecrusade as an armed expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre,he has those diverting hostility against the Jews express an alternative view of theenterprise. For these crusaders, the objective is total war against the non-Christian

'2 For a heavy focus on numerical calculation see, for example, the work of Richard Landes, inparticular Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989-1034, HarvardHistorical Studies 117 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 285-327.

" See above, n. 9.'" Haverkamp, 88; Habermann, 93; Eidelberg, 99; Chazan, 225.


world, in other words, a historic, indeed millenarian undertaking. Again, this isby no means the author's sense of the entire crusade; it is his perception of astrand—specifically an anti-Jewish strand—in it.

The anti-Jewish crusader slogan is attested, as is well known, beyond the MainzAnonymous. Both Guibert of Nogent, writing in the 1120s, and the Solomon barSimson Chronicle, composed in the 1140s, include variants on this rallying cry.The differences between these later versions and the earlier version by the MainzAnonymous are instructive. Guibert has the anti-Jewish crusaders arguing:

Traveling long stretches of land, we seek to attack the enemies of God in the East. Yetbefore our eyes are the Jews, and there is no people more hostile to God than they.35

Written some time after the events, this version of the anti-Jewish slogan betraysno sense of apocalyptic enthusiasm. The grounding for the anti-Jewish violencelies simply in the notion of enemies greater and lesser. The enemies of God in theEast, that is, the Muslims—it is argued—are lesser than the enemies of God athome, that is, the Jews.

The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle's version of the anti-Jewish slogan, writtenin all likelihood in the 1140s, shows similar blurring of the complex realities of1095-96 perceived and portrayed by the Mainz Anonymous:

Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine56 and to take vengeanceupon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed himand crucified him groundlessly.37

Again, the passage of time effaced the more immediate sense conveyed by theMainz Anonymous of intense apocalyptic exhilaration among some of the cru-saders, who defined their undertaking in terms of an all-encompassing battleagainst the forces of infidelity.

Both the Mainz Anonymous and some of the early material embedded in theSolomon bar Simson Chronicle reinforce this sense of millenarian exhilaration inthe Rhineland. In its depiction of the ruse that aroused a coalition of crusadersand burghers in Worms to wipe out the set of Jews who had sought safety in theirneighbors' homes, the Mainz Anonymous portrays the enraged reaction to theruse in the following terms: "Behold the time has come to avenge him who wascrucified, whom their [the Jews'] ancestors slew."38 Reflected here is again a senseof a portentous moment in human history. Jesus had been crucified more than tencenturies earlier; during the intervening millennium, the church had developed theteaching that the Jews should not be assaulted for their purported role in thatcrucifixion. Yet the Mainz Anonymous depicts those attacking the Jews in Wormsas convinced that a very special moment in human history had arrived, the mo-ment for avenging actions taken more than a thousand years previously. The cru-sading endeavor is perceived as the backdrop for something new, different, andepochal on the historical scene.

" Guibert de Nogent, Autobiographic, ed. and trans. Edmond-Rene Labande, Les Classiques del'Histoire de France au Moyen Age 34 (Paris, 1981), p. 246.

36 This is a Jewish term of denigration for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.37 Haverkamp, 12; Habermann, 24; Eidelberg, 21; Chazan, 243-44.!s Haverkamp, 92; Habermann, 95; Eidelberg, 102; Chazan, 228.


The editor of the later Solomon bar Sintson Chronicle clearly based his accountof the attacks on the Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz on theearlier chronicle of the Mainz Anonymous, with occasional embellishments.39 Thenotion of an appointed time for vengeance upon the Jews is reprised but in thecontext of the early account of events in Mainz.40 The editor of the Solomon barSimson Chronicle indicates the following general sentiment among the enemies ofthe Jews:

You are the descendants of those who killed our deity and crucified him. Indeed he said:"A day will surely arrive when my children will come and avenge my blood." We arehis children and it is our responsibility to avenge him upon you, for you are the oneswho rebelled and transgressed against him.41

Reflected here once more is the sense of a long-awaited appointed time that hasfinally arrived, the time for avenging a crime that took place in the dim and distantpast.

The Mainz Anonymous highlights the radical animosity toward the Jews of oneparticular crusading leader—Count Emicho—but does not adequately explain it.As already noted, the Mainz Anonymous remarks early on that some of the Frenchcrusaders crossing over into the Rhineland demanded funding for the purchase ofprovisions, a demand to which the Rhineland Jews responded and thus escapedharm at the hands of the French crusaders. When Count Emicho, defined by theMainz Anonymous as "our chief persecutor,"42 makes his first appearance in thenarrative, at the gates of Mainz, the Jewish leaders attempt to buy him off inthe same way, with the additional element of providing him with letters that couldbe used with subsequent Jewish communities that he would encounter.43 TheMainz Anonymous concludes plaintively that these efforts were fruitless, thatCount Emicho was bent on total destruction of the Jewish community of Mainzand proceeded to carry out his radical intentions.

The editor of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle adds an explanation for theextreme stance of Count Emicho, which the Mainz Anonymous had highlightedbut left unexplained. In repeating almost verbatim the latter's description of CountEmicho,44 the editor of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle inserts the followingfascinating elements:

He became head of the bands and concocted the story that an emissary of the Crucifiedhad come to him and given him a sign in his flesh indicating that, when he would reach

39 For clarification of the use of the Mainz Anonymous by the editor of the Solomon bar Simson

Chronicle and for the role of the editor see Chazan, God, Humanity, and History, pp . 7 0 - 8 2 , and

Haverkamp, Hebraische Berichte, p p . 9 3 - 1 1 8 .40 The early section on Mainz in the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is quite chaotic.41 Haverkamp, 18; Habermann, 27; Eidelberg, 25; Chazan, 248.42 Haverkamp, 98; Habermann, 99; Eidelberg, 107; Chazan, 234.43 Recall fuller mention of such a letter in the Trier unit, above, p. 295.44 The two depictions of Count Emicho are more or less parallel, with the exception of the passage

cited here.


Byzantium, then he Jesus] would come to him [Emicho] himself and crown him with[the] royal diadem and that he would overcome his enemies.45

Here the millenarian element is unmistakable. According to this Hebrew account,Count Emicho saw himself as singled out by Jesus for a unique and dominant roleon the historical scene.

The sense of Count Emicho as a divinely appointed leader is found as well inEkkehard, suggesting that neither the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle nor Ekke-hard was creating something out of whole cloth:

Just at that time, there appeared a certain soldier, Emicho, count of the lands aroundthe Rhine, a man long of very ill repute on account of his overweening manner. Calledby divine revelation, like another Saul as he claimed, to the practice of religion of thiskind, he usurped to himself the command of almost twelve thousand crusaders. As theywere led through the cities of the Rhine and the Main and also the Danube, being inthis matter as well zealously devoted to the Christian faith, they busied themselves de-stroying the execrable Jewish people wherever they found them or forcing them into thebosom of the Church.46

Thus, the Mainz Anonymous, the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, and Ekke-hard of Aura concur in noting millenarian elements in the thinking of some of thepopular groupings, stimulated by the call to the crusade or by the appearance ofFrench crusading forces in the Rhineland. That observation is no means intendedto suggest the ubiquitous presence of such exhilaration among the warriors of theFirst Crusade. Such exhilaration was limited; it was, however, prominent in par-ticular among the popular forces responsible for the most intense of the anti-Jewish attacks in the Rhineland.

Interesting in its own right as yet another reflection of the anarchic diversitythat characterized the explosive First Crusade, the millenarian exhilaration servesin addition to further our understanding of the radical assaults on RhinelandJewry. While the less radical anti-Jewish violence can be readily comprehendedagainst the backdrop of standard crusade thinking, the radical intention to "letnot a remnant or a residue escape" requires further explanation, and that expla-nation—I am suggesting—lies in the millenarian exhilaration that gripped seg-ments of Rhineland society in 1096.

Christian thinking had long posited the notion that, with the arrival of the long-awaited redemption, Jews would be rejoined into the True Israel. While there isgreat ambiguity in Paul's view of Judaism and the Jews, the notion of an eventualacceptance by the Jews of Christian truth is clearly present and significant in histhinking.47 This notion was embedded in the Augustinian synthesis that set the

45 Haverkamp, 22; Habermann, 29; Eidelberg, 28; Chazan, 250-51. Flori cites this source as wellas the following in L'islam et la fin des temps, pp. 263-64.

46 Ekkehard of Aura, Hierosolymita, p. 20.47 For a detailed discussion of Paul and his stances toward Judaism and the Jews see John G. Gager,

Reinventing Paul (New York, 2000). Gager is especially useful in presenting the polarized positionson this issue, with some scholars seeing Paul as the key villain in the emergence of Christian super-sessionist thinking vis-a-vis Judaism and the Jews and others emphasizing Paul's positive views ofJudaism and the Jews. At the very beginning of his important Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of theJew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, Calif., 1999), pp. 6-9, Jeremy Cohen presents a pithy butpenetrating statement of the ambiguity in Pauline thinking. The critical passage in the Pauline corpusfor eventual Jewish acknowledgment of Christian truth and hence salvation is in the Epistle to theRomans 9-11.


foundations for Jewish existence in the Christian world. Among the central jus-tifications for the Jewish presence in Christian society was the conviction that Jewswould eventually recognize Christian truth and be reintegrated into a postre-demption community of Christian believers.48

To be sure, the rich Christian apocalyptic tradition was also rife with violentimagery, which portrayed Jews as enemies of the ultimate redemption in the sameway as they had been the enemies of the initial redemption heralded by Jesus. Inthis tradition, there were gruesome images of the vengeance to be exacted uponthe Jews.49 It does not seem amiss to suggest that, among some of those exhilaratedby a sense of crusading as the dawning of a new era in human history, the com-bination of images—Jews converting on the one hand and utterly destroyed onthe other—may have worked to elicit the exterminatory state of mind projectedby the sources examined above. Again it must be emphasized that neither themillenarian exhilaration nor the exterminatory conclusions were shared amongall crusaders. Those involved in the exterminatory behavior and moved by thethinking I have identified were very much in the minority. This, however, is theminority that was responsible for the exterminatory efforts in the Rhineland thatare the focus of attention here.

Identification of millenarian enthusiasm among some of those drawn to the FirstCrusade raises the question of Jewish absorption of this frame of mind. Might theRhineland Jews of 1096, assaulted as a result of millenarian enthusiasm, havebeen themselves influenced by this eschatological excitement?

Jewish behavior in the face of the variegated dangers of 1096 was highly di-versified. The first line of response was regularly to seek safety in one way oranother. When safety was no longer available and the only options were conver-sion or death, the Jews of 1096 occasionally chose the former. Striking amongthese Rhineland Jews, however, was the high level of willingness to give up liferather than accept baptism. While some of the Jewish martyrs chose the traditionalposture of quiescent rejection of the call to abandon Judaism, others more activelyopted to take their own lives. Yet more radical was the murder of spouses andchildren in order to save them from the perceived ignominy of baptism.50 Thesepatterns are depicted in considerable detail in the Hebrew narratives and are cor-roborated by Albert.

Recently, a number of students of the Jewish past have attempted to discern thehistorical roots of the radical Jewish actions.51 Haym Soloveitchik has treated this

48 For the best available description of the Augustinian synthesis see Cohen, Living Letters of theLaw, pp. 23-65. Augustine's Tractatus adversus ludaeos is suffused with this sense of the eventualsalvation of the Jews through acknowledgment of Christian truth.

49 See, for example, Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascinationwith Evil ([San Francisco], 1994), which is rich in association of the Jews with the Antichrist figureand the consequent punishments to be suffered by them.

50 For a review of these diverse behaviors see Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, pp.85-114.

51 The history of Jewish martyrdom has been studied comprehensively by Shmuel Shepkaru,/<?M^s^Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge, Eng., 2006). For the martyrdoms of 1096see pp. 161-210 and the rich literature cited therein.


issue most closely and exhaustively. Soloveitchik examined various proposals foridentifying the antecedents of the extreme Jewish behavior of 1096 and rejectedthem all. He further argues that the post-1096 justifications advanced by medievallegalists are weak and argues that the radical behavior of 1096 represents a clearbreak with prior Jewish legal norms. Soloveitchik views the choice of death in1096 as a deflection of Jewish legal tradition and urges seeing in such deflectionextraneous influences; in his view something monumental must have occurred toelicit such unusual Jewish responses.52

Given this sense of a sharp break with prior Jewish tradition and the suggestedintrusion of extraneous influences, we may well wonder at the relation betweenthe radical Christian behavior of 1096 and the extreme Jewish responses. Sometime ago, I suggested a Jewish countercrusade mentality that linked the two setsof unusual behavior—the Christian and the Jewish.53 Now I would like to refinethat suggestion a bit, advancing the notion that Rhineland Jews, threatened bythe millenarian extremism spawned in certain circles by the call to the crusadeand the appearance of impressive crusading bands, shared the sense of an epochalevent, in effect transforming the crusade into a decisive confrontation betweenChristians and Jews.54 In the light of such a decisive confrontation, the prior normsof Jewish law were abandoned in favor of radical rejection of the Christian alter-native, a rejection that—it was felt—would have an enduring impact on the Jew-ish future.

In fact, the Hebrew narratives are replete with suggestions of an epochal junc-ture in world, indeed cosmic history. This sense is conveyed at numerous pointsin the Hebrew First Crusade narratives. Let me note merely two illuminating re-flections of the decisive nature of the confrontation of 1096 as seen in the oldestof the narratives, the chronicle by the Mainz Anonymous. The first involves thesense that the martyrs of 1096 reached a new level of Jewish heroism, beyondthat achieved at any previous time or place. Recurrently, they are compared withthe giant figures of Jewish history, with the suggestion that the Rhineland martyrsin fact surpassed these great heroes of the past. A very striking instance of this

52 Haym Soloveitchik, "Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazi Example," AJS Review12 (1987), 205-21, and, more recently and fully, "Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Me-dieval Ashkenaz," Jewish Quarterly Review 94 (2004), 77-108 and 278-99.

53 Chazan, FMropean Jewry and the First Crusade, pp. 132-36.54 Again retail that, for the Christian millenarian enthusiasm, I suggested no numerical reckoning

but rather the sense of an extraordinary event that presaged the dawning of a new era. The samewould hold true for the Jews of 1096 as well. Interestingly, the later editor of the Solomon bar SimsonChronicle does provide some numerical reckoning in his introduction, where he defines the year 4856,the Jewish equivalent of 1096, as "the eleventh year of the two hundred and fifty-sixth cycle |eachcalendrical cycle is composed of 19 years, thus two hundred fifty-five cycles constitute 4,845 yearsplus the 11 years of the next cycle equaling 4,856], during which we had hoped for salvation andcomfort according to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah: 'Cry out in joy [r-n-u, corresponding tothe Hebrew number 256] for Jacob, shout at the crossroads of the nations!'" (The biblical citation isfrom Jeremiah 31.6; the entire passage can be found in Haverkamp, 12; Habermann, 24; Eidelberg,21; Chazan, 243.) This reckoning is so convoluted that it can only be an after-the-fact thought; noJews in 1096 would have anticipated salvation on such grounds. Inclusion of this convoluted reckoningby the later editor suggests subsequent recollection of the earlier Jewish millenarian excitement, whichhad been elicited by crusading millenarian exhilaration rather than by arcane numerology.


comes early in the account of the destruction of Mainz Jewry: "Ask and see—wasthere ever so numerous a set of sacrifices (akedah) from the days of Adam?"55

Introduction of the term akedah points to what is perceived in Jewish tradition asone of the momentous acts of Jewish history—Abraham's near sacrifice of his sonIsaac. In the biblical narrative (Genesis 22.15-18), this near sacrifice is projectedas the source of divine blessing for Abraham and all of the generations to descendfrom him. Subsequently, Jewish tradition placed the site of the two Jerusalemtemples at precisely the place where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, and Jewishliturgy and ritual regularly advanced this act as the basis for divine mercy uponthe Jewish people. Strikingly, some of the martyrs of 1096 are portrayed as re-prising Abraham's act, with the difference, of course, that the 1096 heroes areportrayed as carrying out the sacrifice of their sons and daughters.56 In the passagejust now cited, the Jews of 1096 are presented as exceeding Abraham's greatnessmany times over, sacrificing far more children than the one the patriarch wasprepared to offer up to the divine will. Projection of the 1096 Jews onto thepatriarchal plane, indeed beyond the patriarchal plane, suggests from the Jewishside a sense of epochal events, of a turning point in Jewish history.

Early in the depiction of the destruction of the first segment of Worms Jewry,the Mainz Anonymous introduces an even lengthier historical spectrum ontowhich he projects the Rhineland Jews of 1096. In so doing, the Jewish author infact draws a sharp contrast between the depths of the Jewish past and what hesees as the paltry scope of Christian history onto which the crusaders projectthemselves. As noted earlier, in the face of the ruse involving a Christian cadaverand the allegation of well poisoning, an ad hoc coalition of crusaders and burghersassaulted the Jews, alleging that "the time has come to avenge him who wascrucified."57 I suggested Jewish reflection of a Christian sense of epochal circum-stances, with the time having arrived for revenge against the Jews for their role inthe Crucifixion.

The Mainz Anonymous portrays the Christian intention to destroy the Jews intheir entirety and the execution of that intention. All elements of the Jewish com-munity are depicted as accepting death willingly

for the sanctification of the Name which is awesome and sublime, . . . who rules aboveand below, who was and will be. Indeed the Lord of Hosts is his Name. He is crownedwith the splendor of seventy-two names; he created the Torah nine hundred and seventy-four generations prior to the creation of the world. There were twenty-six generationsfrom the creation of the world to Moses, the father of the prophets, through whom[God] gave the holy Torah. Moses came and wrote in it: "The Lord has affirmed thisday that you are, as he promised you, his treasured people which shall observe all hiscommandments [Deuteronomy 26.18]."58

The events in Worms are portrayed as a unique fulfillment of the demands of theTorah, an unprecedented moment in the relationship of the Jewish people and

" Haverkamp, 28; Habermann, 100; Eidelberg, 109; Chazan, 236.56 Note especially the striking story of Meshullam ben Isaac of Worms, who is portrayed as slaying

his son Isaac in direct imitation of the patriarch Abraham.57 See above, n. 38.58 Haverkamp, 92; Habermann, 95; Eidelberg, 102; Chazan, 228-29.


their God. According to the Mainz Anonymous, the Christian enemies saw theiractions as a special juncture in the thousand-year history of their faith; thosethousand years, for the Jewish author, pale into insignificance when contrastedwith the unique Jewish fulfillment of the demands of a Torah that predated thecreation of the universe by 974 generations. In the view of the Mainz Anonymous,the Jewish sense of the historically unique parallels that of their Christian op-pressors but exceeds it decisively. The Rhineland Jews of 1096 would seem to havebeen aware of the millenarian mood of their attackers, to have absorbed elementsof that mood, and to have felt that they in fact were the ones truly fulfilling genuinemillenarian expectations.59

The sources—both Jewish and Christian—upon which my analysis thus far hasbeen based have all come from the Rhineland areas of Germany and suggest mil-lenarian exhilaration among segments of the aggressive Christian majority andthe beleaguered Jewish minority. A curious source from Byzantium reinforces theconclusions reached on the basis of the Rhineland materials. Back in 1897, theindefatigable manuscript editor Adolf Neubauer published in the Jewish QuarterlyReview an unusual letter found in the Cairo Genizah. The letter, in poor conditionand in places difficult to decipher and understand, depicts millenarian excitementin a number of Byzantine Jewish communities, seemingly generated by the arrivalof German crusaders moved by potent millenarian expectations.60

The letter focuses at the outset on the arrival of exhilarated German crusaders.These German crusaders are described in the following terms:

In this very year, the word of our God has been fulfilled.61 The Germans came in infinitenumbers, thousands of thousands—they along with their wives and all their moneys.Our God gathered them together as in a threshing floor.62 Both Christians and Jewsasked them: "Why have you left your homes and places of residence and gone forth?"63

Their leaders responded: "The mountains of darkness are close to us. Now, however,they have been illuminated in great light. We have seen a people with an infinite numberof tents, and we do not understand their language. One of them came forth and said tous: 'Go forth on your way.' Thus we have come."64

59 The Jewish actions in 1096 are often projected as the norms for Jewish response to persecution,with Jewish communities failing to achieve that standard denigrated as failures. The careful Soloveit-chik studies noted above (n. 52) raise questions as to the normative status of the 1096 behavior. Thecurrent analysis of the special circumstances that gave rise to exterminatory persecution and to radicalJewish responses should reinforce the questions raised by Soloveitchik and help lead to reassessmentof subsequent Jewish responses to persecution.

60 Adolf Neubauer, "Egyptian Fragments, II" Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1897), 26-29. The letterwas reedited by Jacob Mann as the centerpiece of his "The Messianic Movements in the Days of theFirst Crusades" [in Hebrew|, Ha-Tekufah 23 (1925), 243-61. Aaron Zeev Aescoly, Jewish MessianicMovements [in Hebrew], ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 176-80, absorbedthe Mann edition into his collection of sources on Jewish messianic movements. (I am much indebtedto Prof. Haym Soloveitchik for urging me to devote deeper consideration to this unusual source.)

61 For the explanation of this comment, see what follows shortly.hl A phrase from Micah, again to be clarified shortly.63 Recall Ekkehard's indication of similar reactions in Germany to the arrival of the French crusaders,

above, p. 296.64 Neubauer, "Egyptian Fragments," p. 27; Mann, "The Messianic Movements," pp. 253-55; Aescoly,

Jewish Messianic Movements, pp. 176-77.


Reflected here is a Jewish sense of the German crusaders as moved by visions ofsome kind of historic mission miraculously and divinely revealed to them, thusbuttressing the impression found in the Rhineland sources—both Jewish andChristian—of millenarian excitement in segments of the popular German crusad-ing bands.

Equally striking is the Jewish reaction to this Christian millenarian exhilaration.The author of the Hebrew letter introduces his report on the German crusadersby citing verses from Micah 4.11-12:

. . . as in the word of our God:"Indeed, many nations have assembled against you,who think: 'Let our eyes gaze lasciviously on Zion.'But they do not know the designs of the Lord;they do not divine his intent.He has gathered them like cut grain to the threshing floor."However, the threshing floor has not yet been filled.6''

This is a remarkable Jewish perspective on crusading. God has—as it were—aroused the German crusaders to their mission in order ultimately to entice themto their destruction, "like cut grain to the threshing floor."

After his description of the German crusaders, the Jewish author further ex-plains:

We [the Jews] say: "Our God has surely fulfilled his word: '[Saying] to those who are indarkness—show yourselves [Isaiah 49.9].' These are the other tribes.66 When all theGermans reach the Land of Israel, the 'threshing floor will be filled.' Then our God willsay:

'Up and thresh, fair Zion!For I will give you horns of ironand provide you with horns of bronze,and you will crush the many peoples [Micah 4.13].'"67

Then all the [Jewish] communities were moved and returned to the Lord.68

From this curious letter we can see that the millenarian excitement of the Ger-man crusaders sparked a parallel enthusiasm among the Byzantine Jews, just as Ihave suggested earlier occurred in the Rhineland areas. In the latter case, Jewsviolently assaulted responded with extreme behavior, killing themselves and theirfamilies, reflecting their sense of an ultimate confrontation between Christians andJews. In the former case, there do not seem to have been exterminatory attacks;rather, the Byzantine Jews saw an eschatological drama unfolding, with God en-

65 Neubauer, "Egyptian Fragments," p. 27; Mann, "The Messianic Movements," p. 25.5; Aescoly,]ewish Messianic Movements, p. 176. The reference to the unfilled threshing floor will be clarifiedshortly.

66 This is the Jewish explication of the imagery of the infinite multitude with a strange languagepresented by the German crusaders. The vision they saw—according to the Jewish observer—involvedthe lost tribes of Israel.

67 God's intention in arousing the German crusaders to their mission was—according to this Jewishobserver—to entice them to the Holy Land, where the forces of the True Israel, that is, the Jews, wouldthen destroy them entirely.

68 Neubauer, "Egyptian Fragments," p. 27; Mann, "The Messianic Movements," p. 255; Aescoly,Jewish Messianic Movements, p. 177.


ticing the crusaders to the Holy Land, where Jewish warriors would fulfill biblicalprophecy by destroying them completely. In effect, in the Byzantine sphere themillenarianism of the German crusaders triggered parallel (and similarly aggres-sive) millenarian exhilaration among the Jews, which is then the subject of therest of this unusual missive.

The identification of millenarian enthusiasm as the grounding for the extermi-natory assaults on Rhineland Jewry in 1096 paves the way for fuller understandingof the striking difference between the events of 1096 and the fate of Europe's Jewsduring the subsequent crusades, beginning with the second.

The Jewish chronicler of the Jewish-related events of the Second Crusade—Ephraim of Bonn—has left us a useful memoir of those events.69 A youngster ofthirteen at the time, Ephraim later turned his pen to a valuable narrative of theevents of the 1140s. He begins by highlighting the importance of Bernard of Clair-vaux, whose resolute rejection of anti-Jewish violence played—according toEphraim—a major role in sparing the Jews repetition of the 1096 massacres. Healso notes the importance of preparedness on the part of the Jews and their pro-tectors. Utilizing the lessons of 1096, the Jews sought the aid of the politicalauthorities in finding refuge in rural fortresses, the tactic that had worked well forthe Jews of Speyer and badly for the Jews of Cologne during the First Crusade.Ephraim asserts that this strategy, along with the stance adopted by Bernard ofClairvaux, precluded reenactment of the First Crusade tragedy. While he adducesa string of attacks on Jews, in fact all the incidents he portrays fall into the categoryof incidental violence occasioned by the broad anti-Jewish implications of thecrusading message.

Utterly absent from Ephraim's narrative are the exterminatory assaults identi-fied above as so devastating in 1096. Without rejecting Ephraim's suggestion ofthe influence of Bernard of Clairvaux and the impact of Jewish and non-Jewishpreparedness for violence, I might suggest that equally—if not more—importantwas the lack of the millenarian enthusiasm that in fact sparked the most destruc-tive of the 1096 assaults. In effect, like the bishop of Speyer in 1096, those rangedin opposition to anti-Jewish violence during the Second Crusade were confrontedwith a far lesser danger than that faced by the bishop of Worms, the archbishopof Mainz, and the archbishop of Cologne.

Late-eleventh-century Western Christendom manifested a newfound sense ofpower along with innovative thinking and ideals. Out of that mix emerged theFirst Crusade, an exceedingly complex movement of arms and ideas. In the im-mediate wake of the remarkably successful expedition and ever after, attentionhas understandably focused on the achievements of the Christian armies and thenew crusading practices and aspirations introduced into Christian tradition. TheFirst Crusade, however, was a richly sprawling enterprise, whose component ele-ments far exceeded the military successes it achieved and the new practices and

69 Neubauer and Stern, Hebraische Berichte (above, n. 6), pp. 58-66; Habermann, 115-23; Eidel-berg, 121-3?.


ideals it introduced. Lesser strands emerged, and they as well are worthy of un-derstanding, since they, too, were destined to constitute a legacy for the future.

The testimony of the Hebrew narratives, the German-based Christian chroni-cles, and the curious Hebrew letter from Byzantium enable us to follow two ofthose lesser strands of the First Crusade. The first—reflected in the Rhinelandsources—involved the extension of anti-outsider animus from the focused enemyof the crusading venture, that is, the Muslims, to other outsider groups as well.The malleability of the crusading ideal of going to battle against the Muslim enemyfirst manifested itself against the major identifiable outsider group in late-eleventh-century Western Christendom—the Jews. Subsequently, this malleability was toreemerge with the deflection of later crusades in numerous directions—againstthe pagans of northern Europe, against Byzantium, and ultimately against thoseperceived as internal enemies within the Christian fold itself. For the Jews, theinitial victims of this malleability of enmity, the notion of them as a historic enemywas subsequently to take yet more threatening turns, as Western Christendomcontinued to deepen its sense of cohesion, thus heightening the sense of the Jewsas outsiders and—with the growing perception of Jewish neighbors as here-and-now enemies—as ever poised to inflict harm on Christianity and unsuspectingChristians.70

A second lesser strand in First Crusade thinking, which was similarly destinedfor a long and destructive life, was the millenarian exhilaration aroused in certaincrusading circles. I have suggested that such millenarian excitement lay at the coreof the exterminatory assaults on a few Rhineland Jewish communities. The per-ception that an epochal transformation was under way served, on the one hand,to remove normal societal and doctrinal restraints. At the same time, the sense ofa new historical era fostered the drive to realize dreams and fantasies long har-bored for a distant future. The subsequent and destructive history of such mille-narian outbursts deserves further and deeper consideration.71

70 For further on this later development see Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Anti-semitism (Berkeley, Calif., 1997).

71 This means in effect pursuing some of the lines adumbrated by Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium.

Robert Chazan is S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies atNew York University, New York, NY 10012 (e-mail: [email protected]).

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