112 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Leiningen—set out in different groups across France, germany, and Hungary to
Constantinople. despite the fact that many of them only got as far as the Balkans,
there were ferocious persecutions of Jewish communities in which not only were
many Jews killed, but a further number were forcibly converted, particularly in the
rhineland, in Speyer, worms, and Mainz—the local Jewish community at Mainz
was almost wiped out—but also in France, Bavaria, and Bohemia.53
The attitudes Christians displayed towards the Jews after such attacks by cru-
saders were complex. Apparently several bishops, including the bishop of Speyer
and the bishop of prague, tried hard to protect the Jews, while the archbishop of
Mainz and the archbishop of trier were also prepared to assist them until it became
obvious they were powerless to control the crusader mobs.54 In 1097 Emperor
Henry Iv (1056–1105) permitted those converted by force to return to Judaism
and emphasized the need to protect Jews in a country-wide peace proclaimed at
Mainz in 1103, while in England william II (1087–1100) also attempted to pro-
tect them.55 However, despite the crusade being Urban’s initiative, we have no
evidence that he himself said anything about the pogroms or condemned the
rioters. Yet he voiced no objection to the return to Judaism of those forcibly con-
verted—in marked contrast to wibert of ravenna, the antipope Clement III
(1029–1100), who declared any reversion to Judaism contrary to canon law.
As we saw in Chapter One, it may have been for this reason that the Jewish
chronicler Shelomo bar Shimshon, who wrote about the First Crusade a number of
years after the pogroms had occurred, referred to papal protection—or the lack of
it—in derogatory terms. In his chronicle he referred to the pope as ‘Satan... the
pope of evil rome’56 and described how ‘Satan (the pope) intervened among the
nations and they all gathered as one to fulfil the command... ’.57 Some scholars
have argued that Shelomo was blaming Urban II and in particular his speech at
Clermont for the anti-Jewish riots that resulted from crusading fervour. Others
believe that Shelomo was referring rather to anti-pope Clement III who complained
that Jews who had been forcibly converted had returned to Judaism once the cru-
saders had recaptured Jerusalem from the Seljuk turks.58
53 richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.91.
54 riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, pp.53–4.
55 richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.91.
56 Shelomo bar Shimshon in Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. A. M. Habermann (Jerusalem,
1971), p.27; Eva Haverkamp, Hebräische berichte über die judenverfolgungen während des ersten kreuz-
zugs herausgegaben von Eva Haverkamp (Hanover, 2005), pp.298–9. For discussion of the Hebrew
chronicles of the First Crusade and their relationship to each other, see Chapter One, footnote 72
above; also Anna Abulafia ‘The Interrelationship between the Hebrew Chronicles on the First
Crusade’, Journal of Semitic Studies 27/2 (1982), 221–39; also on rabbi Amnon of Mainz and his
relationship to the First and Second Crusades, see Irvin Marcus, ‘A pious Community and doubt:
Qiddush Hashem in Ashkenaz and the Story of rabbi Amnon of Mainz’, in Julius Carlebach. Festschrift,
Studien zur jüdischen Geschichte und Soziologie (Heidelberg, 1992), pp.97–113.
57 Shelomo bar Shimshon, in Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.27.
58 See, for example, Solomon grayzel, ‘pope Alexander III and the Jews’, in Salo W. Baron Jubilee
Volume. American Academy for Jewish Research (Jerusalem, New York, 1975) p.556; Kenneth Stow, The
‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High
Middle Ages (Cincinnati, 1984), p.18; Kenneth Stow, ‘Conversion, Apostasy and Apprehensiveness:
Emicho of Flonheim and the Fear of the Jews in the twelfth Century’, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval