1. B. Blumenkranz,Le juif médiéval au miroir de l'art chrétien (Paris, 1966), 13, notes the difference between the artistic depiction of Jews before and after the First Crusade; for example, Jews replace the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion (ibid., 100–104). There are several useful studies of the Jews in the time of the Crusades, among them E. L. Dietrich, “Das Judentum im Zeitalter der Kreuzzüge,”Saeculum 3 (1952): 94–131; H. Liebeschutz, “The Crusading Movement and its Bearing on the Christian Attitude towards Jewry,”Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (1959): 97–111; A. Waas, “Volk Gottes und Militia Christi — Juden und Kreuzfahrer,” inJudentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, ed. P. Wilpert (Berlin, 1966), 410–434; and, most recently, J. Riley-Smith, “The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews,”Studies in Church History 21 (1984): 51–72. I. G. Marcus, “The Jews in Western Europe: Fourth to Sixteenth Century,” inBibliographical Essays in Medieval Jewish Studies (New York, 1976), vol. 2,The Study of Judaism, 15–105 and K. R. Stow, “The Church and the Jews: From St. Paul to Paul IV,” ibid. 107–165, provide valuable bibliographical data and commentary. Also useful isGli Ebrei nell'alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 26, 30 marzo–5 aprile 1978 (Spoleto, 1980).
2. Stow, “Church and the Jews,” 111; J. Trachtenberg,The Devil and the Jews (New York, 1943), 59; W. Pakter,“De his qui foris sunt”: The Teachings of the medieval canon and civil lawyers concerning the Jews (Ph. D. diss. Johns Hopkins University, 1974, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1974), xxxi; Waas, “Volk Gottes und Militia Christi”, 414 “in diese wesentlich ruhige Welt brachen die Erschütterungen durch die Kreuzzüge ein.” B. S. Bachrach,Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1977), 133, argues that early ecclesiastical legislation that sought to segregate Jews from Christians was largely ignored by the secular rulers from the fifth to the ninth centuries. He explains this as a consequence of the general political impotence of the Church. The same argument applies a fortiori to conditions in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. I would add that the political ideology of the Church, combined with the ethnic, cultural, and political diversity of European society, created favorable conditions for the Jews. Even on the eve of the First Crusade the Jews of Speyer (1090) and Worms (ca. 1096) received imperial confirmation of their right to swear “according to their own law” in cases involving a Christian (W. Pakter, “Did the canonists prescribe a Jewry-oath?,”Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law NS 6 (1976): 81–87, esp. 84, but this right never became established in the ecclesiastical law.
3. E. Synan,The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (New York, 1969), 152f.; for details S. Eidelberg, trans. and ed.,The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 4–6. Toward French Jewry there was a “relative lack of popular violence” in 1096, according to R.Chazan,Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political and Social History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 212. N. Golb, “New Light on the Persecution of French Jews at the time of the First Crusade,” in R. Chazan, ed.,Medieval Jewish Life (1976, New York), 289–333, here, 313f., describes the French as major participants in the anti-Jewish hostilitics of that year, especially at Rouen. Golb's conclusions are not universally accepted, but it is clear that after the disastrous crusade of 1101, French Jews were attacked, as in 1104 at Orléans, Blois, Loches, Paris, Sens, and Tours (Synan,Popes and the Jews, 69).
4. See esp. Hans Liebeschutz, “The Crusading Movement,” 97–111, and Stow, “Church and the Jews”, 141.
5. Eidelberg,Jews and the Crusaders, 8. Peter the Venerable assured the French king that the Jews served no useful purpose; their wealth, gained by trickery, could be confiscated (Synan,Popes and the Jews, 76).