Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge (review)

Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge. Edited by Alfred Haverkamp. [Vorträge und Forschungen, Band XLVII.] (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag. 1999. Pp. xx, 371. DM 89.)

The twelve studies of relationships between Christians and Jews that make up this collection are, like those in other volumes in this distinguished series, products of a conference of the Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte, this one held at Reichenau in 1996. Five chapters are written in English; the author's introduction and the remaining chapters are in German.

Medieval Jewish history, as Professor Haverkamp points out in his introduction, cannot be isolated from general European history, for medieval Jewish culture was no less European than it was Jewish. Both he and Bianca Kühnel in the volume's opening chapter on Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages stress that however much some leaders of Jewish communities may have dreamed of sheltering themselves and their co-religionists within an exclusively Jewish environment, there was no escaping from the practical reality that they had to deal with the overwhelmingly Christian society amidst which they lived. Likewise, while some church authorities may have counseled Christians to insulate themselves against close intellectual and social contact with their Jewish neighbors; that, too, was largely impractical, at least in regions such as Spain and the cathedral cities of the Rhineland that had substantial Jewish populations.

As is only natural, most chapters in this book deal in one way or another with the horrific pogroms of 1096 in which crusading forces attacked Jewish communities (especially but not solely) in the Rhineland during the First Crusade. Jeremy Cohen focuses specifically on the accounts of these events that Hebrew chronicles provide, while Eva Haverkamp examines in exhaustive detail the experiences of the Jewish community at Trier. Avraham Grossmann deals with a singular feature of the 1096 pogroms, namely, self-martyrdom, that is, episodes in which Jews slew members of their own families and then themselves in order to avoid falling into the hands of crusaders. Prominent among the factors that Grossman explores in attempting to explain this phenomenon was the fear that the crusaders might force any Jews who survived their onslaughts to undergo baptism. Friedrich Lotter in a lengthy chapter reviews the opinions of Catholic canonists and theologians on the vexed questions that baptism procured by force or fear presented.

Attacks on Jewish communities by crusaders in the period after 1096 form the subject of three further chapters. Rudolf Hiestand deals with the anti-Jewish incidents that disfigured the Second Crusade, despite St. Bernard's vigorous admonitions warning crusaders not to engage in such things. Hiestand also gives passing attention to some attacks during the run-up to the Third Crusade, while Robin Stacey contributes a chapter devoted to crusader massacres of Jews in England, the most savage of which occurred in 1189-1190, in connection with the Third Crusade. Gerd Mentgen rounds out the series of chronological studies with a chapter that examines sporadic episodes of anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by crusaders during the period between 1190 and 1421.

Three further chapters develop topical themes. Israel Jacob Yuval contributes a fascinating study of the ways in which medieval Jews and Christians expressed their hostility toward one another through myths and symbolic acts, while Elchnan Reiner examines the religious responses of pious Jews to the crusades. This response, he argues, took the form of a new emphasis on Jewish pilgrimages to the holy places and a fresh interest among Jews in attempting to identify the location of biblical events.

Michael Toch reviews the economic explanation that modern historians have often favored to account for crusader attacks on Jews. Participation in a crusade was an expensive venture and would-be crusaders had to raise vast amounts of ready money, either in cash or cash equivalents such as precious metals. Since few, even among the wealthiest and most powerful crusaders, could readily...