The Rintfleisch or Rindfleisch movement was a series of massacres against Jews in 1298. [1] The event, in later terminology a pogrom, was the first large-scale persecution in Germany since the First Crusade.
It occurred in the Franconian region during the civil strife between the elected King of the Romans, Count Adolf of Nassau, and his Habsburg rival Duke Albert of Austria, when Imperial authority, traditionally concerned with the protection of the Jews, had temporarily collapsed. Already in 1287, the death of Werner of Oberwesel in the Rhineland had been blamed on Jews, and about 500 were killed in a violent outburst of random violence, followed by a series of blood libels. When King Adolf was finally deposed and killed in the Battle of Göllheim on 2 July 1298, the Franconian nobility gathered at Albert's election in Frankfurt.
When at the same time the Jews in the Hohenlohe town of Röttingen were accused of having obtained and desecrated a consecrated host, one "Lord Boels Von Rindtfleisch", who the sources refer to either as an impoverished knight or—more probably—a butcher (the term Rindfleisch means "beef" in modern German spelling), gathered a mob around him and burned the Röttingen Jews on Sunday, April 20. Rintfleisch declared to have received a mandate from heaven to avenge the sacrilege and exterminate the Jews. The Colmar Dominican Rudolph refers to him in Latin as a carnifex , [2] i.e. butcher or executioner, but it is not clear if Rudolph meant his original profession, or his behaviour as a slaughterer of the Jews. [3] According to contemporary sources, the Lord of Röttingen, Kraft von Hohenlohe, was encumbered with debts to Jewish lenders.
After this, he and his mob went from town to town and killed all Jews that fell under their control, destroying the Jewish communities at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Würzburg, Bamberg, Dinkelsbühl, Nördlingen and Forchheim. In the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg, the Jews sought refuge in the fortress and were assisted by the Christian citizens, but Rintfleisch overcame the defenders and butchered the Jews on 1 August. The Nürnberger Memorbuch contains the names of thousands of murdered Jews in numerous cities, among them Mordechai ben Hillel, a pupil of Meir of Rothenburg, with his wife and children. The communities at Regensburg and Augsburg alone escaped the mass killing, as the cities' magistrates protected them. Spreading from Franconia to Bavaria and Austria, the persecutors destroyed 146 communities, and 20,000-100,000 Jews were killed. [4]
The Austrian Chronicle of 95 Seigneurs about 100 years later alleged that King Albert I finally had Rintfleisch arrested and hanged. The cities in which Jews had been killed were required to pay fines to the king.
Albert I of Habsburg was a Duke of Austria and Styria from 1282 and King of Germany from 1298 until his assassination. He was the eldest son of King Rudolf I of Germany and his first wife Gertrude of Hohenberg. Sometimes referred to as 'Albert the One-eyed' because of a battle injury that left him with a hollow eye socket and a permanent snarl.
Albert the Magnanimous, elected King of the Romans as Albert II, was a member of the House of Habsburg. By inheritance he became Albert V, Duke of Austria. Through his wife he also became King of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, and inherited a claim to the Duchy of Luxembourg.
Year 1298 (MCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Marranos is a term for Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or by Spanish or Portuguese royal coercion, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but who continued to practice Judaism in secrecy or were suspected of it. They are also called crypto-Jews, the term increasingly preferred in scholarly works over Marranos.
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.
Rudolf I, also known as Rudolf of Habsburg, was a member of the House of Habsburg, the King of Bohemia and titular King of Poland from 1306 until his death. He was also Duke of Austria and Styria from 1298.
The persecution of Jews has been a major event in Jewish history prompting shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities. As early as 605 BCE, Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted and deported. Antisemitism was also practiced by the governments of many different empires and the adherents of many different religions (Christianity), and it was also widespread in many different regions of the world.
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,. These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
Mordechai ben Hillel HaKohen, also known as The Mordechai or, by some Sephardic scholars, as The Mordechie, was a 13th-century German rabbi and posek. His chief legal commentary on the Talmud, referred to as The Mordechai, is one of the sources of the Shulchan Aruch. He was killed in the Rintfleisch massacres in 1298.
The House of Hohenlohe is a German princely dynasty. It formerly ruled an immediate territory within the Holy Roman Empire, which was divided between several branches. In 1806, the area of Hohenlohe was 1,760 km² and its estimated population was 108,000. The motto of the house is Ex flammis orior. The Lords of Hohenlohe were elevated to the rank of Imperial Counts in 1450, and from 1744, the territory and its rulers were princely. In 1825, the German Confederation recognized the right of all members of the house to be styled as Serene Highness, with the title of Fürst for the heads of its branches, and the title of prince/princess for the other members. From 1861, the Hohenlohe-Öhringen branch was also of ducal status as dukes of Ujest.
Röttingen is a town in the district of Würzburg, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Würzburg, and 15 kilometres (9 mi) east of Bad Mergentheim.
This timeline of antisemitism chronicles events in the history of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as members of a religious and ethnic group. It includes events in Jewish history and the history of antisemitic thought, actions which were undertaken in order to counter antisemitism or alleviate its effects, 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.
The Duchy of Styria was a duchy located in modern-day southern Austria and northern Slovenia. It was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806 and a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary until its dissolution in 1918.
Martyrdom in Judaism is one of the main examples of Jews doing a kiddush Hashem, a Hebrew term which means "sanctification of the Name". An example of this is public self-sacrifice in accordance with Jewish practice and identity, with the possibility of being killed for no other reason than being Jewish. There are specific conditions in Jewish law that deal with the details of self-sacrifice, be it willing or unwilling.
The persecution of Jews during the Black Death consisted of a series of violent mass attacks and massacres. Jewish communities were often blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe. From 1348-1351, acts of violence were committed in Toulon, Barcelona, Erfurt, Basel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and elsewhere. The persecutions led to a large migration of Jews to Jagiellonian Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There are very few Jewish sources on Jewish massacres during the Plague.
Arnold III von Uissigheim, also blessed Arnold und "König Armleder", (c.1298–1336) was a medieval German highwayman, bandit, and renegade knight of the Uissigheim family, of the village Uissigheim of the same name. He was the leader of the "Armleder" massacres against Jewish communities throughout the Alsace in 1336.
The Lisbon massacre started on Sunday, 19 April 1506 in Lisbon when a crowd of churchgoers attacked and killed several people in the congregation whom they suspected were Jews. The violence escalated into a city-wide, antisemitic riot that killed between 500 and 4,000 "New Christians" (Cristãos-Novos), the name for Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity.
The Black Death was present in the Holy Roman Empire between 1348 and 1351. The Holy Roman Empire, composed of modern-day Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, was, geographically, the largest country in Europe at the time, and the pandemic lasted several years due to the size of the Empire.
The Armleder persecutions were a series of massacres against Jews in Franconia and Alsace in 1336–1339.