History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)Graetz, Heinrich
History
History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)
Graetz, Heinrich
Jews -- History
clergy, who insisted that the Jews of Montpellier, who thought they
could venture on certain liberties, should re-affix the Jew-badge on
their dress. At one time they accused the Jews of Lünel with having
publicly outraged the image of Christ on the Purim festival; at
another time they ordered that two wagonfuls of copies of the Talmud
be publicly burned in Toulouse. Such occurrences, however, were mere
child's play compared with what they had to endure from the bigoted
multitude.
Philip V had the idea, repugnant to the spirit of the time, of
undertaking a crusade to wrest the Holy Land, after so many vain
attempts, from the hands of the infidels. This enterprise appeared so
foolish to the discerning, that even Pope John XXII, the second of the
popes that resided in Avignon instead of at Rome, dissuaded him from
it. Nevertheless, the fancy, as soon as it was known, inflamed the
minds of the rude populace. A young man of excited imagination gave out
that a dove had settled at one time on his head, at another, on his
shoulder, and when he had sought to seize it, it had transformed itself
into a beautiful woman, who urged him to gather a troop of crusaders,
assuring him of victory. His utterances found credulous hearers, and
the lower people, children, and swine-herds attached themselves to him.
A wicked priest and an unfrocked Benedictine monk used the opportunity
to force their way to the front, and thus arose in northern France
(1320) a numerous horde of forty thousand shepherds (Pastoureaux,
Pastorelli, Roïm), who moved in procession from town to town carrying
banners, and announced their intention of journeying across the sea to
deliver the so-called holy sepulcher. Their attention was immediately
turned to the Jews, possibly because they wanted to raise money for the
purchase of weapons by robbing the Jews of their possessions, or a Jew,
as is related, had made sport of their childish heroism. The massacre
of the Jews by the shepherds (Gesereth-ha-Roïm) is another bloody page
in Jewish history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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