Rhineland massacres

In the spring of 1096, months after Pope Urban II called for a crusade to the Holy Land, bands of crusaders gathering in the Rhineland attacked the Jewish communities of several German cities. The violence began in Speyer on May 3, where crusaders surrounded the synagogue and eleven Jews were killed before the local bishop sheltered the rest. It grew far worse in Worms, where about 800 Jews died in attacks on May 18 and 25, and in Mainz, where more than 1,000 were killed on May 27. Further killings followed in Cologne and in smaller towns along the Rhine and Moselle. The Encyclopaedia Judaica puts the total number of victims across these communities at more than 5,000, though figures from the period are uncertain.¹²⁵

The most notorious force was led by Count Emicho of Leiningen, one of several popular leaders inspired by the preaching of Peter the Hermit. Historians point to a mix of motives: a religious zeal that cast the Jews nearby as enemies of Christ, and the chance to seize money and goods to pay for the journey east. Many local authorities, including bishops, tried to protect the Jews, sometimes by sheltering them in their palaces or cathedrals, but often they could not or did not hold out against the crowds. Jews were offered baptism or death. Many refused conversion and chose to die, and Hebrew chronicles written in the following decades describe parents killing their children and themselves rather than submit, an act they understood as Kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's name. Emicho's army never reached the Holy Land: it was routed in Hungary, and he returned home in disgrace.¹²⁴

Historians often describe 1096 as a turning point in relations between Jews and Christians in Europe. Encyclopedias such as Britannica call it a pivotal moment in the history of antisemitism, followed in later centuries by false accusations of ritual murder, compulsory badges, ghettos and expulsions from England, France, Spain and other lands. The damage was not total, however. Emperor Henry IV allowed Jews who had been forcibly baptized to return openly to Judaism, and the Rhineland communities were rebuilt in the early twelfth century. The Jewish sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, known together by their Hebrew initials as ShUM, became centers of Ashkenazi learning and were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.¹²³⁴⁶