CHRISTIANS CRUSADERS IN THE NAME OF THEIR GOD, then and now

Edited by Hugh Fogelman

 

Pope Urban II, proclaimed the First Crusade on November 27th, 1095 C.E. near the town of Clermont in France. The Pope pontificated about the need for Christians to liberate Jerusalem, and between 1096 to 1101 Christian armies along with the pilgrims who joined them made their death march into Asia Minor.

"In a sense, the year 1347 C.E. can be compared to the year 1096, for the repercussions for the epidemic were of two kinds: the immediate effect ― the destruction of the Jews throughout Europe; and the remote effect―the coming-of-age of the specific phenomenon which is Christian anti-Semitism." [Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Vanguard Press (NY), 1976)

"The most significant force, comprising perhaps 60,000 people, of whom about 6,000 were knights, came together in June 1097 C.E. Two years later some 15,000, of whom 1,500 were knights, took Jerusalem. They had undergone (and inflicted) the most appalling sufferings. They had struck out on their own, with no system of provisioning; during the eight-month siege of Antioch, a region roughly 50 miles around was stripped bare by foraging parties. Within a year of leaving Europe most of the crusaders' horses were dead; more seriously, their pack animals died as well, forcing them to carry their armor in sacks." [Jonathan Riley-Smith, (12/23/1995) Religious warriors (Reinterpreting the Crusades),The Economist]

"Pope Urban II had no idea that he was starting a movement that would endure for hundreds of years, involve huge numbers of people from all classes and manifest itself in so many different theatres of war ― the Spanish Armada of 1588 was an unsuccessful crusade. It is not surprising that events that impinged so directly on history should attract the interest of a broad public. More to the point, their effects still influence relations between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and between Christians, Jews and Muslims." [Riley-Smith]

The main enemy of the Crusaders were Muslims, but as Christians rampaged across Europe they looted, pillaged and they murdered Jews. On their way to kill the “infidels,” the Muslims, they sharpened their killing skills on the Jews. In the 14th century, during the Black Plague they also targeted the Jews even though Pope Clement VI published a bull explaining that Jews were dying with as much frequency as Christians and even in those areas where there were no Jews, Christians were also dying ― so how could the Jews have poisoned their wells too? They didn't. They never did so, but Christians were in need of a scapegoat and the Jews, for which they had a instinctive hatred, have always been a convenient scapegoat.

But like the Crusades, it didn't matter very much what anyone said to an unruly mob which was generally the masses, the Christian peasants who did the looting and took the initiative for these massacres. For many of the masses it became a rebellion against the establishment and against the Jews who they believed were just different enough and just privileged enough, though often not, but simply just easy ENOUGH to blame for their own suffering. Or in some cases someone might owe money to a Jew and this was the easy way to cancel the debt by killing the Jew. 

"Thus in Strasbourg, where the memory of the Armleder brothers' exploits was still vivid, these internal struggles lasted nearly three months. The municipality held an investigation and concluded that the Jews were not guilty. It was thereupon overthrown and the new municipality found nothing more pressing to do than to imprison all the Jews, numbering some two thousand, and to burn them the next day in their own cemetery (February 14, 1349), while their property was distributed among the city residents." [Poliakov]

"These massacres and lootings took place in the great majority of German cities: in Colmar, where a `Jew Hole' (Judenloch) still perpetrates its memory; in Worms and Oppenheim, where the Jews themselves set fire to their district and perished into he flames; in Frankfurt and Erfurt, where they were put to the sword; in Cologne and Hanover, where some were massacred and the rest exiled." [Poliakov]

When Jews were not being massacred they were trying to live, and sometimes just to survive, and they ALWAYS made some headway (there were improvements) before being once more reminded that they were incongruous; a nationhood of people who lived among strangers. Sometimes they married these strangers. Sometimes they had business relations with these strangers but all too often the fact that they were still strangers and would never quite be the same as everyone else became perfectly obvious by expulsions, slandering them, excluding them and finally murdering them and 500 years after the deaths wrought by the Black Plague they were reminded again by the Holocaust. And, during the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish Problem", the Holocaust came closer to eliminating the Jews than any other assault on a people in human history.

"In the extreme form, the anti-Semitic view of history portrays the Jew as a satanic force, as the root of virtually all evil in the world, from the earliest time to the present day. In this view, he is engaged in an eternal and universal conspiracy, to infiltrate, corrupt, and ultimately rule the gentile world. For this he uses a variety of methods, all of them sinister. In medieval times, Jews were accused of poisoning wells, spreading the plague, and practicing ritual murder; in more modern times with inventing both capitalism and communism, and using the one or the other or both together to dominate the world. More recently, they have been blamed for the enslavement of black Africa and even accused--by some feminists--of introducing patriarchy and male domination through the worship of Jehovah and the dethronement of the great Moterh Goddess of the ancients." [Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, Norton, p99]  Lewis also writes that "anti-Semitism and antifeminism were closely linked and Jewish responsibility for the feminist movement was a frequent theme in anti-Semitic propaganda."

History should remind us that Crusades which started out against Muslims rolled over the Jews on their way to war.    

 

NOTES & SOURCES:

Rosehell Saidel Wolk, "Anti-Semitism in America: Prophecy or Paronoia?" in Lilith (1980);

Judith Plaskow, "Blaming Jews...For the Birth of Patriarchy", in Lilith (1980);

P.G.J.Pulzer, "The Rise of Poliical Anti-Semtism in Germany and Austria (London-1964);

See anti-Semitism in Encyclopedia Judaica;

 

 

 

 

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