RESPONSES (II): THE EMPIRE
If the French were the first to be approached, numerically and politically the most significant recruits came from the German empire. For six months from late summer 1146, the imperial lands, including northern Italy, became the focus of preaching and recruiting. Eugenius III wrote to encourage Italians to take the cross.30 After his swing through Flanders Bernard himself spent late October 1146 until mid-January 1147 crisscrossing western Germany, beginning in the central Rhineland at Worms (c.1 November) before turning north to Mainz and Frankfurt, where he met Conrad III, then south to Basel and Constance (12 December), before returning northwards again to attend the imperial court at Christmas in Speyer (24 December to 3 January), returning to Worms and finally taking in Cologne (9 January) and Aachen (15 January), before arriving on 18 January at Liège, which he had left three months earlier. This represented frenetic activity over hundreds of miles in midwinter. With the exceptions of his time at Mainz and Frankurt in November and at Speyer over Christmas, Bernard rarely spent more than a night or two at any one place, in contrast to the more stately progress of Urban II through France in 1095–6. No doubt conducting Cistercian business as well, given this hurried if extensive itinerary, Bernard’s crusade preaching operated as the sharp edge of a wider campaign of information and exhortation prepared by letters and emissaries, with Conrad III taking the cross at an emotional ceremony at Speyer on 27 December forming the centrepiece. As notable as the recruits Bernard secured were those who took the cross without the abbot’s personal touch, such as Welf VI of Bavaria, at his own estate of Peiting on 24 December, or, further east, King Ladislaus of Bohemia, the margrave of Styria and the count of Carinthia or the large gathering at Regensburg in February 1147 run by Conrad and Bernard’s representative, the Cistercian abbot of Ebrach.31
By his German trip, Bernard was able to retain control of a recruitment process. Twice, in late October 1146 and late January 1147, he passed near the monastery at Huy founded after 1099 by Peter the Hermit, the memory of whose remarkable but disastrous expedition remained green. On the first occasion Bernard was in pursuit of another rabble-rousing evangelist, Radulf (or Raoul or Rudolph), whose preaching threatened to confuse the plans of pope and abbot. Radulf, another Cistercian, once possibly a hermit, had undertaken a hugely popular preaching tour of the Rhineland, from Cologne to Strassburg, in the summer and autumn of 1146. Although attacked by the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz and demonized by Bernard and most subsequent commentators, some remembered Radulf fondly for his sanctity and humility, ‘a splendid teacher and monk’.32 In Hainault, he may have received support from the Benedictine abbot of Lobbes. Even the fastidious Otto of Freising admitted Radulf’s true monastic profession, his effectiveness in recruitment and his popularity, reserving his disdain for his lack of scholarship and message of violence against the Jews.33 Initially, at least, Radulf may not have been far outside the pale of licensed preachers. Like many charismatic twelfth-century holy men, including Bernard, Radulf established himself as an arbiter of social behaviour outside the formal political and religious hierarchies: two of Bernard’s main criticisms of Radulf concerned his ‘unauthorized preaching and contempt for episcopal authority’. Otto of Freising noted disapprovingly how Radulf’s preaching against the Jews encouraged men to rebel against their lords, who generally appeared willing to protect local Jewish communities.34 Even Bernard’s condemnation of Radulf’s anti-Semitic propaganda focused narrowly on its theologically misguided incitement to murder and its reprehensible display of ambition and arrogance.
Radulf’s demotic anti-Semitism was expressed in a simple argument. In summoning men to take the cross to fight the Muslims abroad, he drew the same parallel that had been drawn in 1096, as a Jewish eyewitness recalled: ‘Avenge the crucified one upon his enemies who stand before you; then go to war against the Muslims,’ or, as Otto of Freising put it: ‘the Jews whose homes were scattered throughout the [Rhineland] cities and towns should be slain as foes of the Christian religion’.35 Such approaches were not the unique preserve of ‘barking’ demagogues (the phrase of one of Radulf’s victims, Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn). Overt anti-Semitism dominated the academy of western Christendom in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, often expressed by those unmoved by practical or communal resentment or fear. The monks, not the townspeople, of Norwich invented the Jewish blood libel of William of Norwich in 1144 to raise funds for their priory. Not all intellectuals could keep their dislike and prejudice separate from their academic detachment. Writing in 1146 or 1147 to Louis VII, Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny argued a point very close to Radulf’s; if it is a meritorious act to fight enemies of Christianity in distant lands why are Jews allowed to live undisturbed in the heart of Christendom? If Muslims were detestable, how much more were the Jews? In profiting from Christians, even the church, through usury, they polluted Christendom. Abbot Peter was careful to follow the theologically orthodox line that Jews should not be killed but, he insisted, they should be punished as enemies of Christ. While Christians were being taxed for the crusade, why not the Jews?36 Peter’s letter mirrored the social and financial resentments, heightened by crusade preparations, on which Radulf played so effectively. Ephraim of Bonn identified the persecution of the Jews specifically with the preaching of the cross, which wrecked the normally peaceful relations between the communities of the Rhineland. Radulf, Peter the Venerable and Otto of Freising all noticed the association of Jews with other enemies of Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘a decent priest’ in Rabbi Ephraim’s grateful memory, while rejecting simple and violent analogies, lacked sympathy or more than legal tolerance, stating:
The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed or even put to flight… The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered. They are dispersed all over the world so that by expiating their crime they may be everywhere living witnesses of our redemption. Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity… when the time is ripe all Israel shall be saved [i.e. converted]. But those who die before will remain in death. If Jews are utterly wiped out, what will become of our hope for their promised salvation, their eventual conversion?37
Radulf’s robust populism represented the obverse of Bernard’s refined passion, his message a product of the mass appeal to avenge the injuries done to Christ’s heritage by the ‘enemies of the cross’ (a phrase used by Bernard and Eugenius). Although the focus of official censure, Radulf did not operate in isolation. Attacks on Jews may have begun in Mainz as early as April 1146. With the heaviest persecution in the Rhineland in the autumn of 1146, Jews in Würzburg suffered from a possibly unrelated blood libel in February/March 1147 and a rabbi at Ramerupt in Champagne was beaten up, his house looted and the Torah scroll desecrated in the spring probably of 1147 by French crusaders perhaps on their way to join the king’s muster at Metz. Three other massacres were recorded by Ephraim of Bonn a quarter of a century later, although it is unclear whether they occurred in France or central Europe. In England, the new Jewish communities, planted since the Norman Conquest with royal approval, needed and received the king’s protection.38 Bernard’s encyclical letter inter alia condemning Jewish persecution acknowledged a potentially widespread problem. Anti-Jewish motifs found extended circulation. The crusaders at Ramerupt were reported as having deliberately, almost ritualistically, inflicted five wounds on the head of Rabbi Jacob, jeering as they did so: ‘Thus we shall take vengeance on you for the crucified one and wound you the way you inflicted five wounds [i.e. the stigmata] on our god.’ A song composed in France in 1146 that closely echoed official crusade propaganda contained exactly the same image of the Jews, to whom God gave his body at the Passion and Crucifixion, wounding Him in five places.39
The scale and course of the Rhineland assaults provoked by Radulf differed from the 1096 pogroms. The secular and ecclesiastical authorities provided more consistent and competent protection for the Jewish communities, encouraged, perhaps,
by the proximity of King Conrad. The Jews themselves appeared cannier in their own defence. Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn was thirteen in the autumn of 1146, living in Cologne, when he, his family and neighbours with members of other local Jewish communities, took refuge in the archbishop of Cologne’s fortress of Wolkenburg.40 The archbishop was well paid for his charity, as was his castellan. Similar precautions were followed across the Rhineland, as were Jewish payments to Christians of protection money. Radulf progressed from Strassburg to Cologne, whipping up enthusiasm for the crusade and violence against the Jews in equal measure. By the time Bernard caught up with him at Mainz in November 1146, Radulf had established himself as a local celebrity, Bernard attracting local hostility when successfully browbeating him to return to the cloister (presumably by the threat of something much worse, probably temporal punishment by the king under whose protection the Jews lay). Unlike 1096, the impetus to attack the Jews came not from the local nobility, who seemed to have provided shelter, but from crucesignati and ‘the poorer segment of the population who derive joy from things of no consequence’.41 Church, town and village authorities attempted to maintain order, at a price, and even justice: one Christian murderer of Jews near Cologne was punished by having his eyes gouged out, dying soon after. The archbishop of Mainz complained directly to Bernard of Clairvaux about Radulf, perhaps suggesting the abbot’s responsibility.42 But in common with 1096, economic jealousy and financial anxiety fuelled the ferocity of the attacks at a time when converting capital into cash had become a major concern for crusaders, especially as Eugenius III’s bull that excluded legitimate Jewish banking, by also prohibiting interest repayment by crucesignati, discouraged loans by bankers of any faith without lucrative material collateral.
If the violence appeared more random than in 1096 and the perpetrators less well connected, the horrors were real enough. Some reported large numbers of Jews seeking the king’s protection as far away as Nuremberg to avoid the Christian fury.43 Rumours circulated of massacres of hundreds of Jews; opportunist killings of men, women and children proliferated. Rabbis, synagogues, religious ceremonies and Torah scrolls became targets. Forced baptisms led to suicides as well as murder. In late summer 1146, Simon of Trier, returning from a trip to England, was caught by a mob at Cologne; on his refusal to abjure his faith, his head was severed from his body by being squeezed in a winepress. For a fee, the civic authorities returned the body and the remains of the head for Jewish burial.44 Others drowned rather than receive baptism in the local rivers; those who submitted returned to their faith once the Christian militants had passed. After Radulf’s removal, sporadic outbursts of violence continued until preaching ceased, when communal relations were restored. In contrast with England where the Jewish communities were of relatively recent origin and, on this occasion, peace reigned, areas with long-established Jewish communities had proved most susceptible to prejudice and persecution. The Rhineland had become a centre of Jewish settlement and business but also inter-faith dialogue and dispute. One of the most famous medieval Jewish converts to Christianity, Hermann ‘quondam Judaeus’, i.e. the former Jew, had been born c.1107 Judas Levi of Cologne, where, in 1172, he rose to be a canon in the church of Sta Maria ad Gradus. Judging from his autobiography, as with many zealous converts Hermann may not have been sympathetic to his former co-religionists and relatives in their sufferings in 1146. Yet his career demonstrated contact, communication and occasional respect, Hermann arguing that conversion of the Jews would, like his own, happen through love not force or dialectic.45 Few, anywhere in Christendom, were listening.
One of those most affected by the Rhineland disturbances was King Conrad III. Jews and their property were royal charges and undisciplined recruitment and violence threatened his own plans for the crusade, the main purpose of Bernard’s mission to imperial lands. The formal story of Conrad’s reluctance to commit himself when he first met Bernard at Frankfurt in November 1146, his continued reluctance at the Christmas assembly at Speyer overcome by an electrifying sermon by the abbot, conceals a carefully orchestrated process begun many months earlier which culminated in Conrad taking the cross on 27 December. It is unlikely that Radulf’s tour, beginning in northern France but soon directed at the Rhineland, was accidental or, as some have suggested, determined by the need to run away from the pursuing Bernard, nor that Bernard’s own evangelism had no prospect of substantial dividends. His itinerary suggests a long-planned meeting with Conrad at Frankfurt in November, his subsequent journey south to Constance received royal encouragement and his attendance at Speyer was anticipated. If startling in its success, Bernard’s preaching tour was no surprise, hardly coming, as one local monk piously maintained, out of the blue, ‘as if from Heaven’.46 It is barely conceivable that Conrad’s army of many tens of thousand could have been prepared to leave for the east by May 1147 if its leadership had only been settled five months before. One guest at Speyer was an ambassador from Byzantium, responding to a secret embassy earlier in the year from Conrad to Emperor Manuel, conducted by the bishop of Würzburg, on which the crusade, the subject of negotiations between Manuel and the French since the spring, almost certainly featured.47
Politics as well as ritual lay behind Bernard’s oratory. In mid-1146, the tensions within the German nobility and between the empire and its eastern neighbours, especially Hungary, precluded Conrad’s personal involvement in the eastern adventure. Bernard’s visit was closely associated with attempts to engineer peace within the empire. Taking the cross could act as a focus for honourable resolution to domestic conflict under ecclesiastical supervision and guarantee. At Frankfurt in November, Bernard mediated a dispute between Count Henry of Namur and Albero of Trier, joining the crusade forming part of their reconciliation. On his visit to Constance in December, Bernard made contact with the circle of Conrad’s chief domestic opponent, Welf VI, a move that led to Welf taking the cross on 24 December. In the hyperbole of the chronicler Otto of Freising, ‘suddenly almost the entire West became so still that not only the waging of war but even the carrying of arms in public was considered wrong’.48 By the time Bernard reached Speyer for Christmas 1146, it may have been clear to Conrad that his involvement was required to complete this unifying process by providing him with a share in the honour and privileges of a crucesignatus.
Conrad held a unique position among the monarchs of the west. By now in his fifties, an intermittently successful general and monarch caught in unpropitious times, he had previous experience of fighting in the Holy Land. His two military expeditions east, in 1124 and 1147–8, suggest, as with Thierry of Flanders’s four visits (1138, 1147, 1157 and 1165), a more than formal engagement with the needs of Outremer and the appeal of holy war. No other western medieval monarch campaigned twice in the Holy Land. The German empire possessed a strong tradition of holy war, on its borders, as part of internal feuding and, since 1096, in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite a lack of prominent settlement in Outremer, no cultural or emotional barrier needed breaching, no introduction to an alien concept was required. The German crowds that flocked to hear Bernard were as primed and receptive as those further west. Conrad’s elaborately staged assumption of the cross operated to a familiar pattern, a public ritual that emphasized a procedure of conversion and submission to the will of God, each participant following the choreography of a well-oiled religious ceremony. Ritual provided expression for religious and political messages as theatre. Even with interpreters in southern Germany, Bernard’s message transcended language, not least when, as at Speyer, it was delivered in the context of the Eucharist. During mass on 27 December, Bernard, ending his sermon by listing the material benefits bestowed on the king, adopted the voice of God: ‘O man, what is there that I should have done for you and did not?’ Responding to this familiar call to reject worldly priorities, amid loud cries of excited religious fervour, Conrad fulfilled the ceremonial fiction of sudden conversion, declaring: ‘I am ready to serve Him,’ before receiving from Bernard both the cross and a hol
y banner conveniently placed on the altar. Significantly, Conrad was accompanied in taking the cross by his nephew Frederick of Swabia.49 This was not a quixotic act. The old, dying duke of Swabia, Conrad’s brother, bitterly resented the king enrolling his son as his absence might jeopardize the family holdings. That was the point. Only if as many of the great feudatories of the Empire as possible accompanied the king or, by virtue of taking the cross, were compromised if they stayed behind, could Conrad ensure both the success of the crusade and the security of his realm.
To confirm the political solidarity behind the enterprise, Conrad and Bernard’s representative, Abbot Adam of Ebrach, presided over another crusade mass at Regensburg in February 1147, where Conrad’s half-brother, Henry Jasomirgott, duke of Bavaria and margrave of Austria, and the bishops of Regensburg, Freising and Passau took the cross with a large press of recruits including notorious thieves and footpads, perhaps attracted by the prospect of legal immunity if not amnesty. One participant recalled the careful preparation, ‘all present had been aroused by previous report’, his subsequent insistence that everyone had taken the cross ‘of their own accord’ satisfying canonical requirements if not historical accuracy.50 The adherence of Henry of Bavaria revealed the irenic uses of the crusade: he was now a fellow crucesignatus with the disgruntled and dispossessed pretender to his duchy, Welf VI. Conrad’s crusade, like Louis’s, embraced family, friends and foes and offered support for a sometimes beleaguered status. During his stay in the east, Conrad, although never crowned emperor, added the imperial ‘semper augustus’ to his titles, perhaps in response to his association with the Greek emperor or, even, a nod to the revived interest in the so-called Sibylline eschatological prophecies of the Holy Land and the Last Emperor. The image of the tall, well-built Conrad rescuing the slight, frail Bernard from an adoring mob during the Diet of Frankfurt in March 1147 by picking him up and carrying him out of the crowd provided a less cosmic but no less potent opportunity for royal association with the great forces of Christendom.51
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