A.D. 1300-1400.
THE JEWS IN GERMANY, THE LOW COUNTRIES, ETC.
The history of the Jews in Germany throughout the fourteenth century
is one long series of wrongs and barbarities. Almost immediately
after its commencement, the disturbances at Nuremberg, which had been
suppressed by Duke Albert some ten or twelve years previously, broke
out afresh. In the course of these the mob, seizing on Mordecai, a
Rabbi of learning and high repute, publicly hanged him. In the next
generation, a man named Armleder, a publican by trade, incited an
outbreak among the peasants of Alsatia with such fatal effect that
more than 1500 Jews were slaughtered. In Swabia also great numbers
were murdered; while at Deckendorf we are informed that the whole of
the Hebrew inhabitants of the town were massacred, and their property
pillaged or destroyed. There appear to have been no special grounds
for these enormities. The whole atmosphere was, as it were, charged
with deadly vapours, and the slightest spark of discontent was enough
to cause a disastrous explosion. The authorities in some cases
sided with the rioters; in others they stood aloof, and allowed
them to work their pleasure; while in some few they interfered to
stay the mischief if they could, generally with but little success.
Great injury was also done to the Jews all over Germany, by the
censure passed on them by Pope Clement V. for their excessive usury.
Numberless lawsuits, we are told, were in consequence instituted
against them, in which their right to recover money lent on interest
by them was challenged. A few years subsequently the whole of the
Hebrew population of Hungary was expelled from the country by Louis
I., who displayed his intemperate zeal, not by that act only, but
by his attempts, in concert with Casimir of Poland, to force the
profession of Christianity on the Lithuanians.
But all those troubles, trying as they must have proved to the
unfortunate Jews, were as nothing when compared with the terrible
afflictions which that people were called upon to endure, in
consequence of the outbreak of the fearful pestilence known in
history by the name of the ‘Black Death.’ This appeared in Germany
1348, and was so fatal that the country was almost depopulated by it.
It was sudden and rapid in its effects. Tumours, mostly of a black
colour, made their appearance in the groin and axilla, accompanied by
spitting of blood. In three days, at longest, the crisis was reached,
and few survived it. The science of the day could not explain its
origin, any more than it could cure, or even palliate, its virulence.
In the absence of any reasonable explanation of the causes of the
outbreak, the terrified multitude caught at whatever was suggested
to them. It was first attributed to the indignation of Heaven at the
outrageous wickedness of the age; and large bodies of men banded
themselves together to make atonement for this by fasting and
penitential discipline. They formed into companies, men and women, of
all ranks and ages, naked to the waist, and marked with a red cross;
and in this state marched in procession through the chief cities,
scourging themselves as they went, and calling on all to follow them.
But a new and much more welcome theory was presently started—that
the pestilence which was slaying its thousands and tens of thousands
was due to the Jews. It is said that the Flagellants first suggested
this; but there is little reason for supposing so. The first idea in
the minds of uneducated men, when attacked by some malady of which
they have had no previous experience, is that they have been poisoned
or bewitched; the next, to fasten upon the person by whom the drug
has been administered or the spell wrought. Now, it was argued, if
this wickedness had been devised by any one, it must have been by
some inveterate enemy of Christian men; and who were such inveterate
enemies of Christian men as the Jews? They, in truth, and they only,
were capable of malice so subtle and deadly! Again, it was clear that
these operations had been carried on in some wholesale manner. The
criminals must have infected the air or poisoned the water. The idea,
once conceived, spread like wild fire. No inquiry was made; no proofs
were called for. What need of them? It was clear as the day that the
Jews had poisoned the wells and fountains! The supposed murderers
were everywhere pursued with the most merciless barbarity. Some were
dragged before the tribunals, where a form of trial was gone through.
Some were slaughtered by the mob without any investigation at all. It
mattered little which course was pursued. The result was invariably
the same.
The persecution seems to have commenced in the autumn of 1348, at
Chillon, in Geneva, where criminal proceedings were taken against
them, on the specific charge of having poisoned the wells. The same
inquiries took place in other towns, as Berne and Freiburg. Some
poison had been found in a well at Zoffingen—though by whom put in
there was no evidence to determine. But the usual mode of eliciting
evidence in those ages was resorted to, and with the customary
result. Balavignus, a Jewish physician resident at Thonon, having
been put on the rack, confessed that Rabbi Jacob, of Toledo, had
sent him, by a Jewish boy, some poison in the mummy of an egg. The
poison consisted of a powder, sewn up in a thin leathern pouch,
and it was accompanied by a letter commanding him, on penalty of
excommunication, to throw the powder into the principal wells of
Thonon, in order to destroy the people who lived there. In obedience
to this injunction he had distributed the poison in various places,
and more particularly had thrown it into a spring on the shore near
Thonon. He swore by the Law and the five Books of Moses that this
confession was true, and also implicated several other Jews as
accomplices. Another Jew, of Neustadt, named Banditono, was similarly
put to the torture, and confessed to having thrown a packet of
poison, given him by one of his brethren, into a well at Carulet,
and denounced other Jews, whom he named, as having done the same.
Eight others underwent the same treatment, and made confessions, all
nearly resembling the two above quoted, with the difference that some
admitted that the whole Jewish people, except those under seven years
of age, were privy to and participators in the plot. It is wonderful
that they did not implicate the infants in arms!
The persecution soon spread to neighbouring lands. At Basle the
populace obliged their magistrates to take an oath that they would
burn all the Jews in the town, and forbid any of their countrymen to
settle in their country for two hundred years to come. In compliance
with the order, all the Jews in the place were shut up in a wooden
building and burnt alive. At Bennefeld, in Alsace, a diet was held,
at which a similar decree was made. At Spires the Jews, driven to
despair, shut themselves up, together with their wives and children,
in their houses, which they then set on fire, and all perished in
the flames. In Mentz and Eslingen similar tragedies were enacted. In
the first-named city, when the Flagellants made their entrance, the
Jews began by repelling the violence offered them; but, perceiving
the impossibility of making any effectual resistance, they too
fired their dwellings and destroyed themselves and all belonging
to them. In Eslingen it was the synagogue, with the entire Hebrew
population of the place, that was consumed; and it is related
that mothers were seen to fling their children into the burning
pile, to prevent their undergoing compulsory baptism. At Strasburg
two thousand Jews were burned on a scaffold erected in their own
burial-ground. For months the same cruelties were perpetrated along
the Rhine and the contiguous cities. The history of these times is
one unvaried repetition of horrors, which it wearies the pen to
describe and sickens the heart to peruse. Everywhere there are the
same groundless and monstrous charges, the same blind and fanatic
fury, the same merciless and exterminating hate. And, worst of all,
these atrocities are committed in the name of Christ and His Gospel!
If we could conceive that the gates of hell had been broken open, and
its inmates had overrun the earth, the deeds we might have expected
of them were just what the rabble of these German cities actually
performed. They did not, however, wholly escape the consequences of
their own lawless cruelty. In many places the Jews, before inflicting
death upon themselves, turned their swords against their persecutors,
and inflicted severe retribution on them; while in Frankfort their
despairing rage caused the destruction of the town-hall and cathedral
and a large portion of the city.
It would not be just to omit the fact that several among the European
sovereigns condemned these proceedings, and did their best to check
them. Clement VI., a self-indulgent and easy-tempered man, whose
reign was a continued scene of slack and voluptuous living, was
nevertheless roused by the enormities of the wrongs which he saw
perpetrated on the helpless Jews, to exert himself to the best of his
power in arresting the popular frenzy and punishing the offenders.
Charles of Moravia, also, Duke Albert of Austria, and others, would
fain have saved them if they could. But the fury of the people would
not be restrained, and Albert was obliged to condemn five hundred
of them to the flames. In Lithuania alone were they permitted any
respite. Here they were protected by Casimir III., King of Poland,
known in history as the Great. He confirmed the privileges granted
them by his predecessor Boleslaus, and bestowed additional favours
on them. It is popularly believed that he was induced to show them
this consideration by his attachment to a beautiful Jewess named
Estherka.[140] It is at least certain that throughout his reign
the Jews in Poland escaped persecution, and large numbers of Jews
migrated to that country.
The history of the Jews in the Netherlands during the fourteenth
century very nearly resembles that of their German brethren. They had
settled long before in the Low Countries, where the trade had fallen
almost entirely into their hands. Their numbers were swelled by
fugitives from England and France, from which countries, as we have
seen, they had been forcibly expelled. They were treated sometimes
kindly, sometimes harshly, according to the caprice of the rulers and
the people. They were expelled from the duchy of Brabant in 1370, on
account of a charge of sacrilege, which was very frequently made in
mediæval times. It was said that they had stolen and then stabbed the
holy wafer at Brussels, which bled profusely. A banker of Enghien,
named Jonathan, was charged as the chief offender, on the evidence
of a woman, who confessed to having been an accomplice. All the
Jews suspected were put to torture, and afterwards torn with red-hot
pincers, and then burned.[141]
Such Jews as had taken refuge in Bohemia do not appear to have fared
much better than their brethren in other European countries. The
Emperor Wenceslaus, son of Charles IV., a lavish and dissipated
sovereign, anxious to recover the goodwill of his subjects, whom he
had alienated by his excesses, issued a decree discharging all his
nobles from any liabilities they might have incurred to the Jews. The
people thereupon, who had been afraid to meddle with them, because
they regarded them as living under royal protection, considering
that they had now lost the emperor’s favour, broke out into a riot
at Gotha, where they massacred large numbers of them. They were
presently joined by the peasants, and the outbreak extended to
other cities. At Spires the whole of the Jewish residents, with the
exception of some few small children, who were reserved for the font,
were put to the sword.
Soon afterwards the cry was raised again that the springs and
rivers had been poisoned; and the Jews were subjected to a second
persecution all over Germany, and in parts of Italy and France. We
are informed that the emperor was fully convinced of the falsehood
of the accusation—which, indeed, it is difficult to believe that any
person of sense and education could ever have credited. But it was
in vain to attempt to reason with the multitude; and, despairing of
obtaining peace or quiet in his kingdom so long as the Jews were
allowed to reside in it, he issued an order requiring them either
to accept Christianity or depart from the empire. The observation,
already made in the instance of other lands, naturally recurs to
us when we read his sentence. What punishment could it be to them
to leave a country where they had been so persistently and so
remorselessly wronged? Nevertheless, it is evident that it _was_ a
punishment, and a severe one to them. It is to their honour that few
of them accepted the alternative offered them, but went forth into
exile, with all its sorrows and privations, rather than forsake their
ancient faith.
The reader will not wonder that in an age of such unexampled misery,
few German Jews were distinguished for their literary success. Isaac
of Düren, Alexander Cohen of Cologne, Halevi of Mentz, Isserlein
of Marburg, and Lipman of Mulhouse, were among the most celebrated
writers of these unhappy times.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] _i.e._, Little Esther. Some historians have doubted this story.
They point out that Casimir’s demeanour towards the Jews was only of
a piece with his conduct towards the lower classes of his subjects
generally. He showed so great a regard for the rights of the despised
serfs that he was called ‘the Peasant King.’ Again, it is certain
that Casimir’s edict is dated 1343, and his connection with Estherka
did not begin till 1350. On the other hand, Casimir’s one weakness
was his passion for women, and the Polish historians say distinctly
that Estherka gained great privileges from him for her people.
Probably both explanations are correct. He granted the edict of 1343
from a sense of justice, and the monopolies of the Jews, later in his
reign, at Estherka’s entreaty.
[141] In 1820 a commemoration of this miracle took place in St.
Gudule, when eighteen pictures were painted for the church,
describing the entire action of the story, the tortures of the Jews
being minutely depicted.