Black Death Jewish Persecutions (jan 9, 1348 – apr 1, 1351)
Description:
a series of violent attacks on Jewish communities blamed for an outbreak of the Black Death in Europe from 1348 to 1351.
Christians despised Jews for their lack of conviction in Jesus Christ. The official church policy was to protect Jews because Jesus was born into the Jewish race. But in reality Jews were targets of Christian loathing.[2] As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating nearly half the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats, likely because they were affected less than other people.[3][4] Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.[5][6]
The first massacres directly related to the plague took place in April 1348 in Toulon, France, where the Jewish quarter was sacked, and forty Jews were murdered in their homes, then in Barcelona.[7] In 1349, massacres and persecution spread across Europe, including the Erfurt massacre (1349), the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon, and Flanders.[8][9] 2000 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the "Valentine's Day" Strasbourg massacre, where the plague had not yet affected the city. While the ashes smouldered, Christian residents of Strasbourg sifted through and collected the valuable possessions of Jews not burnt by the fires.[10][11] Many hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in this period. Within the 510 Jewish communities destroyed in this period, some members killed themselves to avoid the persecutions.[12] In the spring of 1349 the Jewish community in Frankfurth-am-Main was annihilated. This was followed by the destruction of Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. The 3000 strong Jewish population of Mainz initially defended themselves and managed to hold off the Christian attackers. But the Christians managed to overwhelm the Jewish ghetto in the end and killed all of its Jews.[10]
At Speyer, Jewish corpses were disposed in wine casks and cast into the Rhine. By the close of 1349 the worst of the pogroms had ended in Rhineland. But around this time the massacres of Jews started rising near the Hansa townships of the Baltic Coast and in Eastern Europe. By 1351 there had been 350 incidents of anti-Jewish pogroms and 60 major and 150 minor Jewish communities had been exterminated. All of this caused the eastward movement of Northern Europe's Jewry to Poland and Russia, where they remained for the next six centuries. King Casimir of Poland enthusiastically gave refuge and protection to the Jews. The motives for this action is unclear. The king was well disposed to Jews and had a Jewish mistress. He was also interested in tapping the economic potential of the Jewry.
Added to timeline:
Western Civ 1
Chase Odle
Date:
