42 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
role.70 This of course was not special to medieval Jewish writing; Christian writers
too can see history as a series of events enabling god’s plans to unfold: in their case,
for Salvation.71 Yet in the case of these crusade chronicles we see a special signifi-
cance put on the events themselves and an awareness of cataclysmic change.72 it
has been argued that the new religious spirit of the eleventh century which ushered
in the crusades, combined with new social and economic factors, brought about a
considerable deterioration in Christian attitudes to Jews and so to Jewish–Christian
relations.73 The crusades themselves, both for contemporary and later writers, can
be seen as the symbol of a profound shift in attitudes in Latin Christianity.74
Unlike the anonymous chronicler of The Terrible Event of 1007, the First Crusade
chronicler Shelomo bar Shimshon, writing a number of years later, had little good
to say about papal protection, referring explicitly to the pontiff as ‘Satan... the
pope of evil rome’.75 He described how ‘Satan [the pope] intervened among the
nations and they all gathered as one to fulfil the command... ’, which suggests that
he is referring to Urban ii and his call for the First Crusade to re-capture Jerusalem.76
As we shall see in Chapter Three, the identity of the pope in question, however, is
not secure: it has been argued that Shelomo was referring not to Urban ii, but to
70 Myers, Resisting History, p.13.
71 Myers, Resisting History, p.13.
72 Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p.37. For discussion of the complexities surrounding the composition of
the Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade and of the collective memory which they record (and the
projection of the survivor’s conflicts and doubts onto the martyr to resolve dissonances between the
survivor’s weakness and the heroism of the martyr), see robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern
France. A Political and Social History (Baltimore, London, 1973), pp.1–4; pp.30–62; robert Chazan,
‘The Hebrew First Crusade Chronicles’, Revue des Etudes Juives 133 (1974), 235–54; robert Chazan,
European Jewry and the First Crusade (London, 1987), pp.40–9; robert Chazan, In the Year 1096.
The First Crusade and the Jews (philadelphia, 1996), pp.107–26; robert Chazan, ‘The Mainz
Anonymous: Historiographic perspectives’, in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honour of
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron, D. N. Myers, pp.54–69; Jeremy Cohen, ‘The
Hebrew Crusade Chronicles in their Christian Cultural Context’, in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der
Kreuzzüge, Vorträge und Forschungen 47, Konstanzer Arbeitkreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte, ed.
A. Haverkamp (Sigmaringen, 1999), pp.17–34; robert Chazan, God, Humanity and History: the
Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, 2000), pp.124–39; robert Chazan, Fashioning Jewish
Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2004), pp.91–121; robert Chazan, ‘The First
Crusade Narrative of r. Eliezer bar Nathan’, in Between Rashi and Maimonides. Themes in Medieval
Jewish Thought, Literature and Exegis, ed. E. Kanarfogel, M. Sokolow (New York, 2010), pp.191–
- For the cultural and social background of Jewish martyrdom, see grossman, ‘The Cultural and
Social Background of Jewish Martyrdom in germany in 1096’, pp.73–86, passim.
73 See, for example, Hanz Liebeschütz, ‘The Crusading Movement in its Bearing on the Christian
Attitude towards the Jewry’, in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, ed. J. Cohen,
pp.260–75 and especially pp.271–2.
74 Haverkamp, ‘The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages’, p.5.
75 Shelomo bar Shimshon, in Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. A. M. Habermann, p.27;
E. Haverkamp, Hebräische berichte über die judenverfolgungen während des ersten kreuzzugs herausgega-
ben 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 n.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 ivan 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.
76 Shelomo bar Shimshon, in Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.27.