JEWS
393
JEWS
and military operations, while in the Mohammedan eral English towns (1190). About the same time,
Btates distinct from Granada, Jewish culture reached crusaders murdered them at different places from the
the zenith of its splendour. The era of Jewish persecu- district of the Rhine to Vienna. When again in 1198
tions really began with the First Crusade (1096-1099). a new crusade (1202-1204) waspreached, many barons
The crusaders enacted in May-July, 1096, bloody of northern France got released from their debts to
scenes against the Jews of Trier, Worms, Mainz, Jewish creditors, and then drove them out of their do-
Cologne, and other Rhenish towns, and repeated them minions. Philip Augustus received indeed the exiles
as they went along in the cities on the Main and the in his own territory, but he was chiefly actuated by
Danube, even as far as Hungary, bishops and princes covetousness. The Jews appealed to Innocent HI to
being mostly on the side of the victims, but proving, curb the violence of the crusaders; and in answer, the
for various reasons, powerless to protect them effec- pontiff issued a Constitution which rigorously forbade
tively. On the capture of Jerusalem, 15 July, 1099, mob violence and forced baptism, but which appar-
the crusaders wreaked a frightful vengeance on the ently had little or no effect.
Jews of the fallen city. The year 1204, in which closed the Fourtli Crusade, The interval between the First and the Second Cru- marked the beginning of still heavier misfortunes for sade was a time of respite and recuperation for the the Jews. That very year witnessed the death of Mai- Jewish race. In England, in Germany and even in monides the greatest Jewish authority of the twelfth Palestine, they were left unmolested while m Spam C( ntuiy jnd the far t of the many efforts of Innocent
and in France, they at
tained to a high degree of
prosperity and influence,
and actively pursued liter-
ary and Talmudic studies
under the guidance of
Juda Halevi and the sons
of Rashi. Yet, in 1146,
on the eve of the Second
Crusade, there began
against them the violent
persecution of the Almo-
hades in Northern .Africa
and Southern Spain which
brought about the speedy
ruin of the Jewish syna-
gogues and schools and
would have resulted in
the practical annihilation
of the Jews of Moliam-
medan Spain had not mo.st
of them found a refuge in
the Christian dominions
of Alfonso VIII (d. 1157)
Then came the Secom
Crusade (1147-1149) with
its atrocities against the
Jews in Cologne, Mainz,
^TONE Tablet from Herod s Temple
Warning non Jews ngainst passing beyond a certain boundary
III to prevent Christian
imces from showing
i\our to their Jewish
iibjectb. Soon after-
. irtls the Jews of sou th-
1 n Frince suffered griev-
u ly during the war
., anst the Alljigenses
Inch ended only in
-2S In 1210, those of
I ii_l m 1 wiTe ill-treated
I \ Km., Jolm I,:ickland
III I tilt II wealtli confis-
to the E.xchequer.
\i\t the Jews of Toledo
init to death by cru-
saders (1212).
The conciliar
legislation
of the time
was generally
unfavourable
to the Jews,
and it culmi-
nated in the
a n t i - Jewish
of
measures
the Fourth
Worms, Speyer, and Strasburg, despite the protesta- Council of the Lateran (1215), among which may be
tions of St. Bernard and of Eugenius III, and the ef-
forts of the German prelates and the Emperor Conrad
III in their behalf; and with its most deplorable result,
namely the greater enslavement of the German Jews to
the Crown. The next fifty years were, on the whole,
for the Jewish race a period of peace and jirosjierity : in
Spain, where Juda Ibn-Ezra was steward of tlic palace
to Alfonso VIII: in Mesopotamia, where Mohamnied
Almuktafi revived the dignity of exilarch; in the Two
Sicilies, where the Jews had equal rights with the rest
of the populaliou; in Italy, where Pope Alexander III
was favourable to them, and the Third Lateran Coun-
cil (1179) passed decrees protecting their religious
liberty ; in England and its French provinces, where the
mentioned the exclusion of Jews from all pul:)lic offices,
and the decree that they should weara Jew liadge. Be-
sides being thus legislated against, the Jews were di-
vided amongst themselves with regard to the ortho-
doxy of the writings of Maimonides. Gradually, the
Lateran decrees against them were enforced wher-
ever this was possible, and active persecutions from
kings and crusaders were started, the rulers of Eng-
land being particularly conspicuous for their extortions
of money from their Jewish subjects.
In many places the severity of the Lateran decrees was outdone, so that in 1235 Gregory IX felt called upon to confirm the Constitution of Innocent III, and in 1247 Innocent IV issued a Bull reprobating the
Jews were very flourishing under Henry Plantagenet false accusations and various excesses of the time
(d. 11S9) ; in France itself, where under the kind rule of against the Jews. Writing to the bishops of France
Louis VI and Louis VII (1108-1180) they greatly pros- and of Germany the latter pontiff says: "Certain of
pered in every direction. And yet, in some of these the clergy, and princes, nobles and great lords of your
coinitries there was a deep-seated hatred of the Jewish cities and dioceses have falsely devised certain godless
race and its religion. It manifested itself in 1171 plans against the Jews, unjustly depriving them by
when the Jews of Blois were burned on the charge of force of their property, and appropriating it them-
having used Christian blood in their Passover, and it selves; . . . they falsely charge them w-ith dividing
allowed Philip Augustus in the year of his accession
(1180) to decree the confiscation of all the unmovable
goods of his Jewish subjects and their banishment
from his domains.
This feeling showed itself particularly on the occasion of the Third Crusade (1189-1192). The
up among themselves on the Passover the heart of a
murdered boy. ... In their malice, they ascribe
every murder, wherever it chance to occur, to the Jews.
And on the ground of these and other fabrications,
they are filled with rage against them, rob them of
their possessions without any formal accusation, with-
Jews were massacred on the day of the coronation of out confession, and without legal trial and conviction,
Richard I (.3 Sept., 1189) and soon afterwards in sev- contrary to the privileges granted to them by the
