Crusaders Massacre the Rhineland's Jewish Communities

In 1096, three hundred eighty five years after Jewish life flourished in Al-Andalus under Umayyad rule, already recorded here, and one hundred sixty eight years before Jewish communities were established in Poland in 1264, also recorded here, bands of Crusaders marching toward the Holy Land under the First Crusade's call massacred Jewish communities across the Rhineland. At Speyer on 3 May a dozen Jews were killed before the bishop intervened; at Worms on 18 May about eight hundred Jews died, most choosing death or suicide over forced baptism; at Mainz on 27 May, after the community had paid the bishop four hundred silver pieces for protection that failed, more than a thousand Jews were killed; and at Cologne on 30 May the massacre continued against Jews who had scattered to nearby villages seeking refuge. Contemporary Hebrew chronicles by Solomon bar Samson and Eliezer bar Nathan of Mainz, composed within a generation by the survivors' own communities, recorded the killings city by city and preserved the names of the dead. The Rhineland massacres were the first large scale, organized violence against Ashkenazi Jewish communities in medieval Christian Europe, and the communal memory of martyrdom they left shaped Ashkenazi liturgy and self understanding for centuries afterward.