The Papal Promise of Protection 99
against the values of christianity and especially against crusading ideals.194 hence
it has been argued that Jewish chroniclers of the first crusade such as Kalonymos
Bar Yehuda and eliezer Ben Natan manipulated the rhineland events to normalize
the practice of dying for qiddush ha-Shem and to emphasize how important it was
that their communities resist any attempt to impose christianity, even if this
meant death.195
So we have seen how the emergence of accusations of ritual murder, blood libel,
host desecration, and charges of magic against Jews in the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries coincided with and encouraged the developing notion that
Jews might be capable of and willing to plot violence against christian communi-
ties. it is likely that as christians became increasingly aware of and interested in the
works of Jewish writers this influenced their perception of Jews. The hebrew cru-
sade chronicles began to emerge in western europe just as the first accusations of
ritual murder also began to circulate. That has led some historians to argue that as
christians gained knowledge of these chronicles and so aware of the events of the
rhineland at the time of the first crusade in which children were killed—and, as
they saw it, Jews were actively preventing themselves from achieving salvation
through conversion—they might also easily have been led to believe that Jews were
capable of extreme violence against children, and in particular of killing christian
children as an enactment of a mock crucifixion.196 certainly in relating the events
at Blois in 1171 ephraim bar Jacob of Bonn described the suicide of Jews following
charges of ritual murder as ‘obligatory Jewish behaviour’, which suggests that
Jewish writers might use such events to advocate qiddush ha-Shem.197 Since Jews at
Blois had been accused of ritual murder, and had chosen death rather than conver-
sion, there might appear to be a connection between such accusations and the
possibility of Jews practising qiddush ha-Shem; all of that would have reinforced
beliefs about ritual murder in christian minds.198 it is therefore possible that the
effect of crusading on the Jews had a direct connection with the development of
charges of ritual murder and blood libel.
There are, however, considerable difficulties with this argument. Although in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries christian scholars and intellectuals may have
become acquainted with hebrew crusade chronicles, it is unlikely that they would
have been widely circulated and known in more popular levels of society. indeed,
even if they had been, it was easy for christians to build up negative images of Jews
without recourse to the works of Jewish writers, which in any case they probably
viewed with great suspicion. So it seems unlikely that these chronicles had a direct
influence on charges that Jews deliberately targeted and killed christian children.
Yet it is undoubtedly true that tales christians heard of Jews killing their own children
194 Jeremy cohen, ‘A 1096 complex constructing the first crusade’, in Jews and Christians in
Twelfth-Century Europe ed. M. A. Signer, J. Van engen (Notre dame, ind., 2001), p.13, p.19; Jeremy
cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God (Philadelphia, 2006), p.39.
195 Goldin, ‘The Socialisation for Kiddush ha-Shem among Medieval Jews’, 117–38.
196 MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’, p.109.
197 Bale, ‘fictions of Judaism in england before 1290’, pp.129–44, passim.
198 Goldin, ‘The Socialisation for Kiddush ha-Shem among Medieval Jews’, 117–38.