How Crusades With Massacres In Germany Affected Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                    

The man on the right is the Jewish man, and the 3 other people notice his yellow pointed hat.

In Europe, forced markings for Jews and Muslims were introduced by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.  The council ruled on such vexing problems as the use of church property, tithes, judicial procedures, and patriarchal precedence. It ordered Jews and Saracens to wear distinctive dress and obliged Catholics to make a yearly confession and to receive Communion during the Lenten season. The pope explained that it was a means to prevent Christians from having sex with Jews and Muslims, thereby protecting society from “such prohibited intercourse.”  Yellow pointed hats in Germany were used to identify and target Jews.   

Under the spread of Islam (seventh‑-eighth centuries), when the majority of the Jews of the world came under its cultural influence and political con­trol, Jews easily adopted the new styles of dress and were in no way distinguishable from their Muslim neighbors as many Jews remained in the Middle East during the Middle Ages.  

Rabbinic sources always need to be used with some caution, since they tend to express the most conservative views. On the basis of some of these it has been stated, for instance, that Jews in Germany eschewed bright colors, preferring dark or even black. However, manuscript illustrations from Germany (13th through the 15th centuries) do not support this. The standard clothing for men was a robe reaching to just below the knees, and at times (probably to protect from the cold) this was covered by a cloak no different from those worn by Christians, which was fashioned with a broach. The colors of the robes and cloaks were red, blue, green, or yellow, sometimes tan.  A special garment worn only for holidays was the sargenes, or kittel, which was a broad robe or cloak with the right side sewn up to prevent carrying. It became customary to wear this garment on the Sabbath (although the community ordinances of Speyer, Worms, and Mayence had earlier prohibited the wearing of this garment in the synagogue on Sabbaths). From other sources it appears that this was also the garment used for burying the dead, and possibly because of this it became customary to wear it also on  (even now many traditional Jews wear a thin white robe, which is also called a kittel on Yom Kippur and at the Passover seder).  

Shoes were usually of leather (in Germany one of the rabbis was asked about the permissibility of making shoes from hides originally intended for  scrolls). In an interesting responsum, Ibn Adret was asked if it were permitted to wear patines in the street on the Sabbath, a word that seems to refer to a wooden shoe or shoe with cork soles to prevent slipping on the ice (in modern Spanish it means “skates,” but the medieval term used is akin to a French or Lombard word), to which he replied that it is the custom of “all the wise of the land” to wear shoes (made from leather hides intended to Torah scrolls) and is certainly permitted.

Two new Jewish communities began to make their appearance in  the principal commercial centers of Germany  by the 9th century.  They were Augsburg and Metz.  By the 10th century there was Worms,  Mainz, Magdeburg, Ratisbon, and others.  Here is a Jew of the 16th century dressed accordingly to the rules in Worms, Germany.  

Reading the Torah orally 

The densest settlements were in the Rhineland of Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne and others.  This is where, in the 11th century,  an intense intellectual life developed.  Rabbis would meet together in each other's homes to discuss sections of interest in the Bible and form opinions and suggestions.  Cultural methods of handling certain rules developed here.  It was all framed by this Franco-Jewish influence of Ashkenazi Jewry.  A problem they had were their unfavorable outside conditions, though the persecution recorded in 1012 was probably not unique to only their communities.  Persecution of Jews was happening in other places as well.   

The economic power of the Jews, who were especially active as merchants, contributed significantly to this protected standing. Another factor was the religious freedom they had been afforded by kings and emperors since the Salian dynasty {The Salian dynasty or Salic dynasty (German: Salier) was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages. The dynasty provided four kings of Germany (1024–1125), all of whom went on to be crowned Holy Roman emperors (1027–1125)}., which included the right for Jews to settle their own internal affairs.               

                                   The Synagogue in Worms, photo Rudolf Uhrig

But the legal position of the Jews and their abilities to flourish in professional life deteriorated drastically from the 14th century (pogrom of 1349), and they were placed under the supervision of the town council. The community in Worms had roughly 250 members around 1500, when many cities and territories like Electoral Palatinate had already expelled their Jews. But the community in Worms persisted nevertheless.                                              

       Worms around 1521, Jewish Quarter; 3-D rendering by FaberCourtial

Soon after 1500, the main area of Jewish settlement in Judengasse – whose structures can be traced to this present day – was gradually sealed off, while the supervision and taxation imposed on the Jews by the municipal authorities were increased continuously from the 16th century onward. The community owned a particularly 'holy' site in the cemetery, which had been in constant use from 1050 at the latest; the fabric of the Romanesque synagogue, constructed in the 12th century at the same time as the cathedral, remained almost unchanged until 1938.

                             

It was in (1096-1009 First Crusade) that the Crusaders massacred the Jews  all throughout the Rhineland and the adjacent areas.  the moral atmosphere  they were surrounded by had changed, and at all times of unrest or excitement in Germany the Jews were attacked.  This affected all of Europe's attitude towards Jews.  Jews were driven out of the trades of their businesses and and forced them into money-lending;  a talent they had left when trading on the Silk Road to China to use to support their families. Prague, Salonica also attacked with messianic ferment.  Jerusalem was captured by them in 1099,  2nd attack in (1147-1149) of France and Rhineland when Rudolf the monk was agitated, and the Pope urged that debts of crusaders to the Jews should be remitted.  The 1298 massacres  were inspired by a knight, Rindfleisch from the crusade. 

Again in 1336 massacres, a fanatic crusader dressed in a leather-jerkined  who was Armleder.   Then  only 12 years later in 1348 and 1349, during the Black Death, 350 localities where Jews lived  with 200 localities of Jews being completely wiped out !  The instigation to kill Jews  was that they were accused of deliberately having more babies (propagating).  People acted against Jews with much barbarism, possibly like the recent October 7th attacks from Hamas.  

In the 2nd half of the 14th Century, Jewish survivors were kept impoverished by the head authorities from the imperial group because they had cancelled all debts to Jews.  Despite that, the Jews maintained their intellectual groups going with Talmudic study.  There were even Jews entering into German life, becoming more Hellenized.  

At the end of the Middle Ages, most large Germany cities had banished Jews.  The 16th century began with only the population of Jews found in Frankfort-on-Main and Worms.  Local Barons did maintain a few Jews who transacted business for them.  

Resource:

https://www.worms.de/en/web/luther/Worms_1521/Worms_1521/Worms_Juden.php#:~:text=Records%20show%20that%20Jews%20had,of%201096%20inflicted%20terrible%20damage.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/nazi-yellow-star-badges-part-of-long-history-of-forcing-jews-to-identify-themselves/

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-clothing-in-the-middle-ages/#:~:text=The%20standard%20clothing%20for%20men,%2C%20or%20yellow%2C%20sometimes%20tan.