History of the Jews, Vol. 3 (of 6) by Heinrich Graetz

Author:Heinrich Graetz [Graetz, Heinrich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Classics
ISBN: 9785040831937
Google: F603DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Litres
Published: 2021-12-02T03:36:02+00:00

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CHAPTER XII.

PERSECUTIONS DURING THE SECOND CRUSADE AND UNDER THE ALMOHADES.

Condition of the Jews in France—The Second Crusade—Peter the Venerable and the Monk Rudolph—Bernard of Clairvaux and the Emperor Conrad—Protectors of the Jews—Persecutions under the Almohades—Abdulmumen and his Edict—The Prince Jehuda Ibn-Ezra—The Karaites in Spain—Jehuda Hadassi—The historian Abraham Ibn-Daud and his Philosophy—Abraham Ibn-Ezra—Rabbenu Tam.

1143–1170 C. E.

When the greatest neo-Hebraic poet complained, "Have we a home in the West or in the East?" his sensitive heart was probably filled with foreboding concerning the insecurity of his co-religionists. Only too soon was the Jewish race to realize the awful truth that it possessed no home on earth, and that it was only tolerated in the lands of its exile. As long as the intolerant religious principles of the Church and of the Mosque remained inoperative, either by reason of the indifference, or the inertia, or the selfish pursuits of their adherents, the Jews lived in comparative happiness; but when religious hatred was aroused, torture and martyrdom fell upon Israel, and again he was compelled to grasp the wanderer's staff, and with bleeding heart depart from his dearly beloved home. Although the Jews in general, and especially their leaders, the rabbis and sages, were, as a rule, superior to the Christian and Mahometan peoples in devotion to God, in morality, in refinement and knowledge, yet those to whom the earth belonged imagined themselves on a higher level, and with lordly haughtiness looked down upon the Jews as common slaves. In Christian countries they were declared outlaws, because they would not believe in the Son of God and many other things; and in a Mahometan realm they were persecuted because they would not acknowledge Mahomet as the prophet. In one land they were expected to do violence to their reason and to accept fables as sober truths, and in another they were asked to renounce their faith and take in its stead dry formulæ, tinged with philosophy. Both held out the cheerless choice between death and the renunciation of their ancient religion. The French and the Germans rivaled the savage Moors in the energy with which they strove to enfeeble still more the weakest of the peoples. On the banks of the Seine, the Rhine and the Danube, on the shores of Africa and in the south of Spain, there arose simultaneously, as though preconcerted, bloody persecutions against the Jews, in the name of religion, despite the fact that all that was good and divine in the oppressors' creeds owed its origin to this people. Hitherto persecutions of the Jews had been few and far between; but from the year 1146 they became more frequent, more severe, and more persistent. It seemed as if the age in which the light of intelligence had begun to dawn upon mankind desired to exceed in inhumanity the epochs of darkest barbarism. This period of suffering imprinted on the features of the Jewish race that air of suffering, that martyr's look, which even the present age of freedom has not effaced.

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