Sources
- Toussaint, Ingo: Die Grafen von Leiningen. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1982. ISBN 3-7995-7017-9.
- "A Database of Crusaders to the Holy Land", 1095–1149 (archive Archived 2017-02-02 at the Wayback Machine ).
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Emicho was a count in the Rhineland in the late 11th century. He is also commonly referred to as Emicho of Leiningen or Emich of Flonheim, and not to be confused with Bishop Emicho of Leiningen. In 1096, he was the leader of the Rhineland massacres (sometimes referred to as the "German Crusade of 1096") which were a series of mass murders of Jews that took place during the People's Crusade.
The original idea for the First Crusade that had been preached by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 had already turned into a much different popular movement, the People's Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit. Peter's preaching of the Crusade spread much more quickly than the official versions of Urban's call. Peter's version influenced Emicho, who spread his own story that Christ had appeared to him. Infused with the teachings of the Gospel of Luke he felt chosen to fulfill the "end of times" prophecy. Emicho envisioned that he would march on Constantinople and overcome the forces there, taking over the title of "last World Emperor" in accordance with canonical prophetic tradition. All Christian armies, Latin and Greek, would then unite and march to seize Jerusalem from the Saracens thus prompting the Second Coming and denouement with the Antichrist. Inspired by such exulting promises, a few thousand Franks and Germans merged and marched east in April 1096.
Emicho's army attracted many unusual followers, including a group who worshipped a goose they believed to be filled with the Holy Spirit (see Women in the Crusades). [1] The army included noblemen and knights such as Drogo Count of Nesle, Hartmann I, Count of Dillingen-Kyburg, [2] Thomas, Lord of Marle and La Fère and Count of Amien, [3] and William the Carpenter, Viscount of Milun. [4] This contradicts the often repeated narrative that Emicho's army was mostly composed of peasants and burghers who were ignorant and instinctively prejudiced against Jews, mostly for economic reasons. Instead, there were a number of relatively educated and wealthy men, likely accompanied by clerics, in Emicho's army who would have known that forced conversions were forbidden according to the tenets of the Church. The violence of the Rhineland massacres cannot be explained away under the assumption that the army was mostly composed of ignorant and provincial peasants.
Count Emicho's precise role in the Rhineland Massacres, the series of violent attacks and forced conversions of the Rhineland's Jews just prior to the First Crusade, has been the subject of significant debate. [5] There were many crusading forces moving through the Rhineland, but most were interested primarily in reaching the Holy Land. For instance, when Peter the Hermit and his mob of Crusaders passed through these towns and threatened the Jewish population, they had been amenable to bribes and largely left the Jews free from harassment. [6] Although Emicho has frequently been referenced in secondary and tertiary sources as having been present during the massacres of Jews in Cologne and Worms, there is sparse evidence in the primary accounts to support his involvement. Indeed, the only massacre in which Emicho definitively participated was that in Mainz. [7] The Jewish writer of the account known as the Mainz Anonymous mentions Emicho as having been in the rough vicinity of Speyer during the massacre there, but clearly notes he did not participate in the violence. [8]
Yet Emicho certainly led the forces that massacred the Jews of Mainz, one of the largest European Jewish communities at the time, in May 1096. The Jews within the city were well-aware of the earlier massacres and forced conversions in other Rhineland cities and feared the worst. [9] They appealed to the Archbishop Ruthard and the area's lay lords to protect them from the approaching mob, offering money and valuable possessions to further encourage the lords. In an attempt to deter the approaching crusaders, Ruthard closed the city's gates and attempted to hide Jews in his palace [10] Ultimately, however, the city gates were opened by sympathetic burghers within Mainz and the Jews were attacked despite the archbishop's best attempts to protect them. [11]
Part of what distinguished Emicho and his army from other crusading armies that crossed the Rhineland was their unwillingness to be swayed from committing violence by bribes. [12] Greed was clearly not their sole motivation, contrary to many cursory accounts of Emicho. While money was likely necessary to fund their pilgrimage to reach the Holy Land, the Crusaders could have easily taken the possessions and money offered to them by the Jews and continued on their way without a significant amount of violence. Yet, they chose to kill the majority of the Jews they encountered, even women and children whom they could have compelled to convert. Emicho and his men went to great lengths to hunt down and kill every refugee they could find in Mainz.; [13] they intended to inflict maximum damage. This is exemplified by the Mainz Anonymous's description of Emicho:
He was our chief persecutor. He had no mercy on the elderly, on young men and young women, on infants or sucklings, nor on the ill. He made the people of the Lord like dust to be trampled. Their young men he put to the sword, and their pregnant women he ripped open. [14]
This ideologically based hatred of Jews, along with the far higher death count, is what made the massacre in Mainz distinct from previous attacks in the Rhineland. The motivations behind this hatred are yet another source of contention by historians. Certain historians have characterized these sentiments as part of the broader context of apocalyptic mythology, with the Crusaders anticipating an imminent end of the world, a "zero-sum game between good and evil. This end of days would be precipitated by Christian control of the Holy Land and mass conversions of Jews to Christianity. For the end of time to occur, Jews had to either die or abandon and embrace Christianity. [15] Others, instead see this animosity as emerging from the crusade to the Holy Land itself. With the shrines of Christendom being discussed, and the destination being Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, Christ's burial place, the role Jews played in Christ's crucifixion must have been in the forefront of many crusaders' minds. [16] This attitude is illustrated by a crusader's supposed remark to a Jew as written by the chronicler Bar-Simson: "You are the children of those who killed the object of our veneration, hanging him on a tree. And he himself had said, 'there will yet come a day when my children will come and avenge my blood.' We are his children and it is, therefore, our duty to avenge him against you who disbelieve in him." [17]
Beneath either motivation behind massacring the Rhineland's Jews is the reality that Jews in 1096 were alienated from their Christian neighbors. Jews and Muslims were scarcely distinguished in the eleventh century as both were seen as agents of the devil and in league with one another, plotting against Christendom. Thus, it is not surprising that a crusade ostensibly directed against one group could be seamlessly redirected against the other. Especially in the apocalyptic mindset, both Jews and Muslims had to be destroyed or converted for the Earth to reach the end of days [18]
The army continued down the Rhine until they reached the Danube, which they followed to Hungary. Here, after having run out of money and food, they began to pillage. Much of the army was killed by the Hungarians; the rest split up to join the other Crusader armies, and Emicho went back home to his family, where he was scorned for not fulfilling his vow to capture Jerusalem.
Count Emicho was said to be influenced into action by a divine vision. In the vision an apostle is giving Emicho a crown in "Italian Greece" and promising him "victory over his foes". This vision is a grave reference to the "Last Roman Emperor", [19] which is the legend of a man surrendering his "earthly power to God" and being given the power to destroy the enemies of Christians, mercilessly. In the legend the purpose of the "Last Roman Emperor" is to restore God's power in the Holy Land. To restore God's power the chosen one, the one granted the vision, is expected to kill or convert those who oppose Christianity. [20] By having such a divine vision, those who knew of Count Emicho and believed in his vision interpreted him as the main leader of the Rhineland Massacres.
Chroniclers, such as Ekkehard, saw Count Emicho's vision as his rebirth. Ekkehard was a monk of Aura who later joined a Crusading army in 1100. [21] Ekkehard, in his account, noted Count Emicho as a person who was once tyrannical, but was "called by a divine revelation, like another Saul". [22] Nevertheless, in medieval political thought, Saul was a complex character that was often employed in discussions of the nature of lay authority, and its derivation from the Church. [23] In short, medieval churchmen often evoked Saul's contest with Samuel - and used Samuel to support their position that lay authority was dependant on legitimacy granted by the Church, rather than the other way around. [23] Considering Ekkehard's support for the reform movement, and his position regarding the Investiture Controversy, a comparison to Saul may not be an entirely positive one. [23]
The account of Albert of Aachen places Count Emicho as the main leader of the Rhineland by using diction such as "Emicho and the rest of his band". [24] Emicho's vision played an important role to his ability to be a leader during the Rhineland Massacre. He was qualified to lead the crusading army because his vision was interpreted as God placing him in the role of power. Even after his death, there were accounts stating the myth that Emicho's soul was guarding the gate of Rhineland. [25]
Count Emicho has been viewed as both a person who took part in the Rhineland Massacres as a soldier as well as the person who is directly responsible for the actions committed in the Rhineland. His documented involvement in the massacres could be attributed to the legend of the Last Roman Emperor.
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The 1090s was a decade of the Julian Calendar which began on January 1, 1090, and ended on December 31, 1099.
Year 1096 (MXCVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the 11th century the Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Godfrey of Bouillon was a French nobleman and pre-eminent leader of the First Crusade. First ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1099 to 1100, he avoided the title of king, preferring that of prince (princeps) and Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri, or Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre. Second son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, Godfrey became Lord of Bouillon in 1076 and in 1087 Emperor Henry IV confirmed him as Duke of Lower Lorraine, a reward for his support during the Great Saxon Revolt.
Peter the Hermit, also known as Little Peter, Peter of Amiens or Peter of Achères, was a Roman Catholic priest of Amiens and a key figure during the military expedition from France to Jerusalem, known as the People's Crusade. He is by some called Blessed Peter the Hermit, though he has not been beatified in the Catholic Church.
Speyer is a city 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.
Iyar is the eighth month of the civil year and the second month of the Jewish religious year on the Hebrew calendar. The name is Babylonian in origin. It is a month of 29 days. Iyar usually falls in April–May on the Gregorian calendar.
The People's Crusade was the beginning phase of the First Crusade whose objective was to retake the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular, from Islamic rule. After in 1095 the head of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Urban II started to urge faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the People's Crusade was conducted for roughly six months from April to October 1096. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade, Paupers' Crusade or the Popular Crusade as it was executed by a mainly untrained peasant army prior to the main church-organized crusade. It was led primarily by Peter the Hermit with forces of Walter Sans Avoir. The peasant army of this crusade was destroyed by the forces of the Seljuk Turks under Kilij Arslan at the Battle of Civetot in northwestern Anatolia.
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096, or 4856 according to the Hebrew calendar. These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
The History of the Jews and the Crusades is part of the history of antisemitism toward Jews in the Middle Ages. The call for the First Crusade intensified the persecutions of the Jews, and they continued to be targets of Crusaders' violence and hatred throughout the Crusades.
The Mainz Anonymous is an account of the First Crusade of 1096 written soon thereafter by an anonymous Jewish author. The work is written in Hebrew. Its author is unknown, and it deals primarily with the Crusaders' actions in Mainz; hence the name commonly applied to it. However, it also deals with the ShUM-cities in the Rhineland, specifically Speyer and Worms. It is not entirely accurate: it has a definite Jewish point of view and fictionalizes anecdotes occasionally to make a point. It also includes occasional anguished supplications to God.
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. Expulsions of Jews from cities and instances of blood libel became increasingly common from the 13th to the 15th century. This trend only peaked after the end of the medieval period, and it only subsided with Jewish emancipation in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
Radulphe was a French monk who, without permission from his superiors, left his monastery in France and travelled to the Rhine Valley during the Second Crusade (1147–49) where he preached "that the Jews should be slain as the enemies of the Christian religion." At Cologne Simon "the Pious" was murdered and mutilated; at Speyer a woman was tortured on the rack to persuade her to Christianity. Secular prelates tried to protect the Jews. Arnold, the Archbishop of Cologne gave them a fortified castle as refuge, and allowed them to arm themselves; the Crusaders refrained from attacking the castle, but killed any unconverted Jew that fell into their clutches. Henry I, Archbishop of Mainz admitted into his house some Jews pursued by a mob; the mob forced its way in, and killed them before his eyes.
Ruthard was Archbishop of Mainz from 1089 to 1109, and a leading opponent of the Emperor Henry IV and his antipope Clement III. He spent nearly eight years in exile because of his opposition, and played a part in the successful revolt of Henry V against his father.
Kalonymus Ben Meshullam was a French Jew of the Kalonymos family.
The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is an anonymous Hebrew narrative history produced in the mid-12th century (1140). Like the Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle and the Mainz Anonymous, it is concerned with the persecutions of Jewish communities in the Rhineland area, notably Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Trier, during the First Crusade (1095-1099).
The Worms massacre was the murder of at least 800 Jews from Worms, Holy Roman Empire, at the hands of crusaders under Count Emicho in May 1096.
Emich or Emicho is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It is a reduced form of Emmerich. Similar names include Emrich, Emch, Emig, Amick, Emick.
The persecution of Jews during the Black Death consisted of a series of violent mass attacks and massacres. Jewish communities were falsely blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe. From 1348 to 1351, acts of violence were committed in Toulon, Barcelona, Erfurt, Basel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and elsewhere. The persecutions led to a large migration of Jews to the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There are very few Jewish sources on Jewish massacres during the Plague.
