Black Death Jewish persecutions

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Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae (Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 1376/77) 1349 burning of Jews-European chronicle on Black Death.jpg
Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae (Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 1376/77)

The Black Death persecutions and massacres were a series of violent attacks on Jewish communities blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe from 1348 to 1351.

Black Death Pandemic in Eurasia in the 1300s

The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague or the Plague, or less commonly the Black Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in several forms of plague, is believed to have been the cause. The Black Death was the first major European outbreak of plague, and the second plague pandemic. The plague created a number of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history.

Contents

History of persecutions

The official church policy at the time was to protect Jews because Jesus was born into the Jewish race, but in reality Jews were often targets of Christian loathing. [1] As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating nearly half the population, people had little scientific understanding of the disease and were looking for an explanation. Jews were often taken as scapegoats and accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. [2] [3] This is likely because they were affected less than other people, [4] [5] many Jews chose not to use the common wells of towns and cities [1] and because Jews confessed to poisoning wells under torture. [1]

Well-poisoning is the act of malicious manipulation of potable water resources in order to cause illness or death, or to deny an opponent access to fresh water resources.

The first massacres directly related to the plague took place in April 1348 in Toulon, Provence, where the Jewish quarter was sacked, and forty Jews were murdered in their homes, then in Barcelona. [6] In 1349, massacres and persecution spread across Europe, including the Erfurt massacre, the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon, and Flanders. [7] [8] 2,000 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the "Valentine's Day" Strasbourg massacre, where the plague had not yet affected the city. While the ashes smouldered, Christian residents of Strasbourg sifted through and collected the valuable possessions of Jews not burnt by the fires. [9] [10] Many hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in this period. Within the 510 Jewish communities destroyed in this period, some members killed themselves to avoid the persecutions. [11] In the spring of 1349 the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main was annihilated. This was followed by the destruction of Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. The 3,000 strong Jewish population of Mainz initially defended themselves and managed to hold off the Christian attackers. But the Christians managed to overwhelm the Jewish ghetto in the end and killed all of its Jews. [9]

Toulon Prefecture and commune in Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur, France

Toulon is a city in southern France and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department.

Provence Historical province in Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur, France

Provence is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east, and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It largely corresponds with the modern administrative region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and includes the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, as well as parts of Alpes-Maritimes and Vaucluse. The largest city of the region is Marseille.

Barcelona City and municipality in Catalonia

Barcelona is a city in Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the Province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, London, Madrid, the Ruhr area and Milan. It is one of the largest metropolises on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, and bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range, the tallest peak of which is 512 metres high.

At Speyer, Jewish corpses were disposed in wine casks and cast into the Rhine. By the close of 1349 the worst of the pogroms had ended in Rhineland. But around this time the massacres of Jews started rising near the Hansa townships of the Baltic Coast and in Eastern Europe. By 1351 there had been 350 incidents of anti-Jewish pogroms and 60 major and 150 minor Jewish communities had been exterminated. All of this caused the eastward movement of Northern Europe's Jewry to Poland and Lithuania, where they remained for the next six centuries. King Casimir III of Poland enthusiastically gave refuge and protection to the Jews. The motives for this action is unclear. The king was well disposed to Jews and had a Jewish mistress. He was also interested in tapping the economic potential of the Jewry. [12]

Speyer Place in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Speyer is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the river Rhine, Speyer lies 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, and 21 km south-west of Heidelberg. Founded by the Romans, it is one of Germany's oldest cities. Speyer Cathedral, a number of other churches and the Altpörtel dominate the Speyer landscape. In the cathedral, beneath the high altar, are the tombs of eight Holy Roman Emperors and German kings.

Hanseatic League Trade confederation in Northern Europe

The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the league came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coasts of Northern Europe. Hansa territories stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages, and diminished slowly after 1450.

Baltic Sea A sea in Northern Europe bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands

The Baltic Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, northeast Germany, Poland, Russia and the North and Central European Plain.

Perceived Jewish immunity

There are many possible reasons why Jews were accused to be the cause for the plague. One reason was because there was a general sense of anti-Semitism in the 14th century. [4] Jews were also isolated in the ghettos, which meant in some places that Jews were less affected. [13] [14] Additionally, there are many Jewish laws that promote cleanliness: a Jew must wash his or her hands before eating bread and after using the bathroom, it was customary for Jews to bathe once a week before the Sabbath, a corpse must be washed before burial, and so on. [5]

Government responses

In many cities the civil authorities either did little to protect the Jewish communities or actually abetted the rioters. [15] Pope Clement VI (the French born Benedictine, Pierre Roger) tried to protect the Jewish communities by two papal bulls (the first on July 6, 1348 and another 26 September 1348) saying that those who blamed the plague on the Jews had been "seduced by that liar, the Devil" and urging clergy to protect the Jews. In this, Clement was aided by the researches of his personal physician Guy de Chauliac who argued from his own treatment of the infected that the Jews were not to blame. [16] Clement's efforts were in part undone by the newly elected Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor making property of Jews killed in riots forfeit, giving local authorities a financial incentive to turn a blind eye. [17]

Pope Clement VI (1291–1352) fourth of the Avignon Popes, 1342–1352

Pope Clement VI, born Pierre Roger, was Pope from 7 May 1342 to his death in 1352. He was the fourth Avignon pope. Clement reigned during the first visitation of the Black Death (1348–1350), during which he granted remission of sins to all who died of the plague.

Papal bull Type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church

A papal bull is a type of public decree, letters patent, or charter issued by a pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the leaden seal (bulla) that was traditionally appended to the end in order to authenticate it.

Guy de Chauliac French physician and surgeon

Guy de Chauliac, also called Guido or Guigo de Cauliaco, was a French physician and surgeon who wrote a lengthy and influential treatise on surgery in Latin, titled Chirurgia Magna. It was translated into many other languages and widely read by physicians in late medieval Europe.

Aftermath

As the plague waned in 1350, so did the violence against Jewish communities. In 1351, the plague and the immediate persecution was over, though the background level of persecution and discrimination remained. Ziegler (1998) comments that "there was nothing unique about the massacres". [18] 20 years after the Black Death the Brussels massacre (1370) wiped out the Belgian Jewish community. [19]

Jewish tales of the Black Death in the early modern period

Though told for nearly 350 years, there were no written accounts of the Black Death through Jewish tales until 1696, by Yiftah Yosef ben Naftali Hirts Segal Manzpach in the Mayse Nissim. Yuzpa Shammes, as he frequently was referred to, was a scribe and shammash of the Worms community for several decades. His accounts intend to show that the Jews were not idle but that they took action against inevitably becoming the scapegoat. Despite Yuzpa's assertion that the Jews fought against the massacres, there are contradicting accounts that claim that there was no evidence of "armed resistance". [20] These contradicting tales display the effect of oral tradition being manipulated to fit certain circumstances.

"Ordinary folk hated the Jews because they had served the merchants and aristocrats, and with their loans and with their capital, helped establish urban economy and the city's governing political and territorial independence. Further, the Jews had exploited artisans 'with loans at usurious rates'." [21] These reasons gave the "ordinary folk" the motive to kill the Jews because they were gaining political and social standings. Breuer also included that "others ... saw the massacres as the revenge of impoverished debtors against privileged elite of Jewish creditors." [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

Antisemitism is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism.

Blood libel or ritual murder libel is an antisemitic canard accusing Jews of murdering Christian children in order to use their blood as part of religious rituals. Historically, these claims—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—have been a major theme of the persecution of Jews in Europe.

Antisemitism in Christianity is the hostility of Christian Churches, Christian groups, and by Christians in general to Judaism and the Jewish people.

Year 1349 (MCCCXLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

Pogrom The deliberate persecution of an ethnic or religious group either approved or conducted by the local authorities

A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or persecution of an ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews. The Russian term originally entered the English language in order to describe 19th and 20th century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire. Similar attacks against Jews at other times and places also became retrospectively known as pogroms. The word is now also sometimes used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish ethnic or religious groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incidents, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.

The history of antisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, with antisemitism being called "the longest hatred". Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:

  1. Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in Ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
  2. Christian antisemitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
  3. Muslim antisemitism which was—at least in its classical form—nuanced, in that Jews were a protected class
  4. Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
  5. Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
  6. Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the new antisemitism

Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole based on religious beliefs, false claims against Judaism and religious antisemitic canards. It is sometimes called theological antisemitism.

Persecution of Jews has been a major part of Jewish history, prompting shifting waves of refugees throughout the diaspora communities.

History of the Jews in Germany the history of Jews and Judaism in modern and historical Germany

The history of the Jews in Germany goes back to the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages when Jewish settlers founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The community survived under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews and they fled in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms became the center of Jewish life during Medieval times. "This was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity." The First Crusade began an era of persecution of Jews in Germany. Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz and Cologne, were murdered. The war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for renewed persecution of Jews. The end of the 15th century was a period of religious hatred that ascribed to Jews all possible evils. The atrocities during the Khmelnytsky Uprising committed by Khmelnytskyi's Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. With Napoleon's fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. From August to October 1819, pogroms that came to be known as the Hep-Hep riots took place throughout Germany. During this time, many German states stripped Jews of their civil rights. As a result, many German Jews began to emigrate.

The Basel massacre of Jews took place on 9 January 1349, as part of the Black Death persecutions of 1348–1350.

History of the Jews in Europe aspect of history

The history of the Jews in Europe stretches back over two thousand years, at least. Some Jews, a Judaean Israelite tribe from the Levant, migrated to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was Pompey's conquest of the East beginning in 63 Before Common Era (BCE), although Alexandrian Jews had migrated to Rome before this event.

Consequences of the Black Death

The consequences of the Black Death are short and long-term effects of the Black Death on human populations across the world. They include a series of various biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals which had profound effects on the course of world history, especially European history. Often referred to as simply "The Plague", the Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 with an estimated one-third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease. Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million. In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas more than 150 years.

Antisemitism in the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages became increasingly prevalent in the Late Middle Ages . Early instances of pogroms against Jews are recorded in the context of the First Crusade. Expulsion of Jews from cities and instances of blood libel become increasingly common in the 13th to 15th centuries. This trend peaked only after the end of the medieval period, and subsided only with Jewish emancipation in the late 18th to 19th century.[]

Antisemitic canards are unfounded rumors or false allegations that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion, or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since at least the Middle Ages they often form part of broader Jewish conspiracy theories.

This timeline of antisemitism chronicles the facts of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group. It includes events in the history of antisemitic thought, actions taken to combat or relieve the effects of antisemitism, and events that affected the prevalence of antisemitism in later years. The history of antisemitism can be traced from ancient times to the present day.

Strasbourg massacre

The Strasbourg massacre occurred on February 14, 1349, when several hundred Jews were publicly burnt to death, and the rest of them expelled from the city as part of the Black Death persecutions. It was one of the first and worst pogroms in pre-modern history.

History of the Jews in Speyer aspect of history

The history of the Jews in Speyer reaches back over 1,000 years. In the Middle Ages, the city of Speyer, Germany, was home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire. Its significance is attested to by the frequency of the Ashkenazi Jewish surname Shapiro/Shapira and its variants Szpira/Spiro/Speyer. After many ups and downs throughout history, the community was totally wiped out in 1940 during the Holocaust. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 Jews again settled in Speyer and a first assembly took place in 1996.

Antisemitism in the Russian Empire included numerous pogroms and the designation of the Pale of Settlement, from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion.

The Erfurt massacre refers to the massacre of the Jewish community in Erfurt, Germany, on March 21, 1349. Accounts of the number of Jews killed in the massacre vary widely from between 100 to up to 3000. Some Jews set fire to their homes and possessions and perished in the flames before they could be lynched. The many Black Death persecutions and massacres that occurred in France and Germany at that time were sometimes in response to accusations that the Jews were responsible for outbreaks of the Black Death, and other times justified with the belief that killing the local Jews would prevent the spread of the Black Death to that locale. Although these beliefs, and the accompanying massacres, were frequently encouraged by local bishops or itinerant Flagellants, the Catholic Church, including Pope Clement VI under whom the Flagellants and the Black Death began, and his successor, Innocent VI, were firmly against it. In a papal bull condemning the Flagellant movement in late 1349, Pope Clement VI criticized their "shedding the blood of Jews". Erfurt later suffered the ravages of the Black Plague, where over 16,000 residents died during a ten-week period in 1350.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Diane Zahler (2009). The Black Death. Twenty-First Century Books. pp. 64–. ISBN   978-0-8225-9076-7.
  2. ↑ Anna Foa (2000). The Jews of Europe After the Black Death p. 146 "There were several reasons for this, including, it has been suggested, the observance of laws of hygiene tied to ritual practices and a lower incidence of alcoholism and venereal disease"
  3. ↑ Richard S. Levy (2005). Antisemitism p. 763 "Panic emerged again during the scourge of the Black Death in 1348, when widespread terror prompted a revival of the well poisoning charge. In areas where Jews appeared to die of the plague in fewer numbers than Christians, possibly because of better hygiene and greater isolation, lower mortality rates provided evidence of Jewish guilt."
  4. 1 2 "Blaming the Jews for the Black Death Plague". www.sixmillioncrucifixions.com. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
  5. 1 2 "The Black Death". www.jewishhistory.org. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
  6. ↑ Anna Foa (2003).The Jews of Europe after the black death . p. 13 "This was the context in which the Plague made its appearance in 1348. The Black Death The Plague was not unknown in ... The first massacres took place in April 1348 in Toulon, where the Jewish quarter was raided and forty Jews were murdered in their homes. Shortly afterward, violence broke out in Barcelona and in other Catalan cities."
  7. ↑ Codex Judaica: chronological index of Jewish history; p. 203 Máttis Kantor (2005). "1349 The Black Death massacres swept across Europe. ... The Jews were savagely attacked and massacred, by sometimes hysterical mobs—normal social order had ..."
  8. ↑ John Marshall (2006). John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture; p. 376 "The period of the Black Death saw the massacre of Jews across Germany, and in Aragon, and Flanders",
  9. 1 2 Robert S. Gottfried (11 May 2010). Black Death. Simon and Schuster. pp. 74–. ISBN   978-1-4391-1846-7.
  10. ↑ See Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, «La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire» ("The greatest epidemic in history"), in L'Histoire magazine, n° 310, June 2006, p. 47 (in French)
  11. ↑ Durant, Will. "The Renaissance" Simon and Schuster (1953), pp. 730–731, ISBN   0-671-61600-5
  12. ↑ Robert S. Gottfried (11 May 2010). Black Death. Simon and Schuster. pp. 74–. ISBN   978-1-4391-1846-7. He had a Jewish mistress and seemed well-disposed in general to Jews. Perhaps too he was anxious to have the commercial skills which some of the immigrants could offer.
  13. ↑ Pasachoff, Naomi E.; Littman, Robert J. (2005). A Concise History of the Jewish People. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 154. ISBN   0-7425-4365-X. However, Jews regularly ritually washed and bathed, and their abodes were slightly cleaner than their Christian neighbors'. Consequently, when the rat and the flea brought the Black Death, Jews, with better hygiene, suffered less severely ...
  14. ↑ Joseph P Byrne (2012). Encyclopedia of the Black Death Volume 1. p. 15 "Anti-Semitism and AntI-Jewish Violence before the Black Death .. Their attention to personal hygiene and diet, their forms of worship, and cycles of holidays were off-puttingly different."
  15. ↑ Howard N. Lupovitch Jews and Judaism in world history p92—2009 "In May 1349, the city fathers of Brandenburg passed a law a priori condemning Jews of well poisoning: Should it become evident and proved by reliable men that the Jews have caused or will cause in the future the death of Christians,..."
  16. ↑ Getz, Faye (1998). "Book review: Inventarium sive Chirurgia Magna. Vol. 1, Text". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 72 (3): 533–535.
  17. ↑ Howard N. Lupovitch Jews and Judaism in world history p. 92 2009 "On July 6, 1349, Pope Clement tried to curb anti-Jewish violence by issuing a papal bull. Its effectiveness was limited by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who made arrangements for the disposal of Jewish property in the event of a ..."
  18. ↑ Philip Ziegler (1998). The Black Death "The persecution of the Jews waned with the Black Death itself; by 1351 all was over. Save for the horrific circumstances of the plague which provided the incentive and the background, there was nothing unique about the massacres."
  19. ↑ The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia Mordecai Schreiber (2011). "In 1370, after the Black Death, the brutal Brussels Massacre wiped out the Belgian Jewish community"
  20. ↑ Die Chronik des Mathias von Neuenburg, 1955. "While a Christian chronicler reports that during the pogrom of March 1, 1349, the beleaguered Jews of Worms set fire to their own houses, as may have happened elsewhere, there is no evidence of armed resistance."
  21. ↑ The 'Black Death' and Antisemitism, 1998. "Ordinary folk hated the Jews because they had served the merchants and aristocrats, and with their loans and with their capital, helped establish urban economy and the city's governing political and territorial independence. Further, the Jews had exploited artisans 'with loans at usurious rates'."
  22. ↑ Samuel K. Cohen Jr. The Black Death and the Burning of Jews, 2007. "others ... saw the massacres as the revenge of impoverished debtors against privileged elite of Jewish creditors."
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