From: KELLY@SUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire-3
Date: 12 Aug 92 17:09:33 GMT


  Stanford J. Shaw (Professor of Turkish History, University of California
  Los Angeles),  'Christian Anti Semitism in the Ottoman Empire,' Belleten,
  C. LIV, 68 (1991).

  page 1075:

  <<Stimulating and exacerbating these long-held religious passions
  and economic motives were the Crusades, particularly in the twelfth
  and thirteenth centuries [6]. On November 27, 1095 Pope Urban II went
  to Clermont-Ferrand in Southern France and delivered a speech which
  started almost half a millenium of Crusades against the 'infidel' Muslims.
  With great emotion, he said the Christians of the East, and particularly
  in the Holy Land, were suffering at the hands of the Muslims, formerly
  the Arabs and now the advancing Turks. He said that Jerusalem already
  had been profaned by the anti-Christians and that Christian Constantinople
  now was under threat, and he appealed to all of Christian Europe to send
  off armies to save Byzantium and rescue the Holy Land from the unbelievers,
  offering remission from all sins, past and future, for those who shared
  in this endeavor. All of Christian Europe was stirred to frenzy by
  religious and political leaders who spread the idea of freeing the Holy
  Land and Byzantium from the infidel Muslims, though again, as with the
  blood-libel and desecration of host accusations, economic motives were
  probably as important as religious ones, at least for many of the leaders.
  There was no particular reason that these Crusades should have effected
  the Jews, but they did because of the passions involved. Those Christians
  who were stirred to believe that the Muslims were the embodiment of all
  evil soon found it convenient to include the Jews who were prospering
  in the Muslim lands and therefore supporting the Muslims against the
  Crusader attacks in fear of renewed spread of anti-Semitism into the
  Middle East, and who were in any case considered just as bad as the
  Muslims [7]. People who felt that they were servants of God, with all
  sins forgiven in advance for what they were going to do in the Holy Land,
  were in no way inhibited from plundering the Jews as they went along,
  particularly when the monks who accompanied them suggested that it would
  add to their favor with God if they forced the Jews they found to convert
  to Christianity as well. So as the  Crusaders marched along from England
  and France through Germany and Austria toward the Islamic Middle East,
  they sacked and often destroyed Jewish communities found along their paths
  massacring many as they went in Germany and Bohemia in particular.

  When one group of Crusaders led by Emmerich Count of Leinigen, reached
  Worms they demanded ransom from its Jews, who paid. But soon afterwards
  he sent his men to break into their houses, slaughtering the men and
  children and raping the women, with many commiting suicide to save
  themselves. Many Jews were burned alive in their synagogues. After
  seven days of this, the Jews who survived were offered the opportunity
  to baptism and convert to Christianity with the alternative of being
  turned over to the crowd to be torn apart. They were given time to think
  about it in the local synagogue, but when no answer came, the mob broke in
  and found all the Jews had committed suicide. The same thing happened as the
  Crusade went on to Mainz and Cologne, and throughout the Rhineland.>>

[6] A. Neubauer and M. Stern, Hebraische Berichte uber die Judenverfolgungen
    wahrend der Kreuzzuge (Berlin, 1892), and review by Charles Porges,
    'Les Relations Hebraiques des Persecutions des Juifs pendant la Premiere
    Croisade', Revue des Etudes Juives XXV (1892), 181-201, XXVI (1893),
    183-197.

[7] The situation of Jews in Europe during the Crusades is described in
    'Crusades', EJ V, 1135-1140. Bernard Lewis, Semites and anti-Semites:
    An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York and London, Norton,
    1986), 101. 'France', EJ VII, 13. 'Anti-Semitism', EJ III (Jerusalem,
    1972), 102. 'Germany', EJ VI, 462-463.
    [EJ = Encyclopedia Judaica (17 Volumes and supplements, Jerusalem, 1972).]

(To be continued)


Nejat

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