1. Considerations of medieval historical narrative by medievalists include: Ghellinck, J. de, L'Essor de la litterature latine au Xlle siecle, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1946), 2:89–198Google Scholar; Chenu, M. D., “Theology and the New Awareness of History, ” Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Jerome, Taylor and Little, Lester K. (Chicago, 1968), pp. 162–201Google Scholar; Partner, Nancy F., Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England(Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar; Classen, Peter, “Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse: Visions of Past and Future, ” AJS Review 16 (1991): 31–56Google Scholar. in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 387–417; the essays collected in Ernst Breisack, ed., Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography(Kalamazoo, 1985); and the essays collected in Speculum65 (1990): 1–108. Note the valuable bibliography compiled by Ray, Roger, “Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research, ” Viator 5 (1974): 33–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Note the important article by Abulafia, Anna Sapir, “The Interrelationship between the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade, ” Journal of Semitic Studies 27 (1982): 221–239, and my own discussion of these issues in chap. 2 of my European Jewry and the First Crusade(Berkeley, 1987). In view of my conclusion that the narrative of Eliezer bar Nathan is derivative, I shall focus in this study, as I did in the book, on the truncated narrative and the narrative attributed to Solomon ben Samson. I shall continue to utilize the designations which I used in the book for these two narratives-S for the shorter narrative and L for the lengthier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Among those who have utilized these texts, particularly noteworthy are the insights offered by Katz, Jacob, Exclusiveness and Tolerance(Oxford, 1961), pp. 82–92Google Scholar, and Mintz, AlanHurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature(New York, 1984), pp. 84–101.Google Scholar, Mintz, AlanHurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature(New York, 1984), pp. 84–101.Google Scholar

4. Marcus, Ivan G., “From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of the 1096 Crusade Riots, ” Prooflexls 2(1982): 40–52.Google Scholar

5. There is some problem with Marcus's use of the term “chronicle” and my use of the same term as well. The broad medieval distinction between “chronicle” and “history” generally involved length of presentation and embellishment, with the term “chronicle” used for brief and unadorned presentation, and “history” denoting lengthier and fuller presentation. This distinction is emphasized in a number of the essays in the Breisach collection cited in note I. In view of this terminological issue, I have ceased utilizing the designation “chronicle” and adopted the more neutral term “narrative.”

6. Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom, ” p. 42.

7. For fuller discussion of the range of realities that may be reconstructed from medieval narrative, see below.

8. Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom, ” p. 42.

9. Marcus, it will be recalled, focused on the Solomon ben Samson narrative.

10. Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom, ” p. 43.

11. In European Jewry and the First Crusade, I addressed the Marcus article on p. 308, n. 21, disagreeing with Marcus's contention of a five-part schema which controlled the Hebrew First Crusade narratives and arguing, both in that note and on pp. 44–47, for the reliability of the data provided in the Hebrew narratives. Jeremy Cohen, in his review of European Jewry and the First Crusade, basing himself on the more skeptical general formulation of the Marcus article, expressed regret over my failure to address more fully the Marcus view; see the American Historical Review93 (1988): 1031–1032. In part, the present study was occasioned by a desire on my part to respond to Cohen's request for a fuller analysis of the issues raised by the Marcus article.

12. Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, p. 44.

13. Ibid pp. 45–46.

14. The Marcus review can be found in Speculum64 (1989): 685–688; this citation can be found on p. 686.Google Scholar

15. Ibid p. 687. I might suggest, with tongue mildly in cheek, that Marcus himself may be guilty of imposing a “preconceived schema” in his review of my book. In his 1982 article, he decried the tendency to read the Hebrew First Crusade narratives as “an almost mechanical combination of ‘facts» and a ‘religious narrative framework’. “ Despite my extensive treatment of these Hebrew narratives in chaps. 2and 5 of European Jewry and the First Crusade, Marcus leveled precisely the same criticisms in his review, in almost the same language. This perhaps suggests his own ”preconceived schema, “ although—to be fair to Marcus—it may well be that he simply found my treatment of the issues which he raised unsatisfying.

16. In his statement noted earlier, Marcus speaks of “each community'sexperience” as structured in a five-part sequence. Shortly thereafter (still p. 42), he speaks of the construction of “each communityaccount in a highly stylized way.”

17. In fact there are some serious problems in the organization of the Mainz episode in the chronicle of Solomon ben Samson. Marcus's schema is actually even better illustrated in the more tightly organized account of the events in Mainz found in the anonymous truncated narrative which Marcus designates A and which I designate S.

18. I shall refer readers to two Hebrew versions of the Solomon narrative—those found in Adolf, Neubauer and Moritz, Stern, eds., Hebrdische Berichte fiber die Judenverfolgungen wahrend die Kreuzzüge(Berlin, 1892), pp. 1–30Google Scholar, and Habermann, Abraham, ed., Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarfat(Jerusalem, 1945), pp. 24–60—and two available English translations—Google ScholarEidelberg, Shlomo, The Jews and the Crusaders(Madison, 1977), pp. 21–72, and Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, pp. 243–297. The Speyer episode can be found in Neubauer and Stern, p. 2; Habermann, p. 25; Eidelberg, p. 22; Chazan, p. 244. This episode is depicted far more fully in the truncated anonymous chronicle, which I designate S and Marcus designates A.Google Scholar

19. According to the Solomon narrative, the first assault on Worms Jewry took place on the twenty-third of Iyyar (May 18, 1096), with the second assault coming a week later. Again the shorter narrative provides fuller information. On the two Worms episodes, see Neubauer and Stern, p. 2; Habermann, pp. 25–26; Eidelberg, p. 23; Chazan, p. 245.

20. The first Mainz assault came on the third of Sivan (May 27, 1096); the second involved the band of Mainz Jews led by the parnasKalonymous, which was removed from Mainz by the order of the archbishop, and was eventually abandoned by the same archbishop and destroyed. See Neubauer and Stern, pp. 2–17; Habermann, pp. 26–43; Eidelberg, pp. 23–49; Chazan, pp. 245–273.

21. Neubauer and Stern, pp. 17–18; Habermann, pp. 43–44; Eidelberg, pp. 49–50; Chazan, pp. 273–274.

22. Neubauer and Stern, pp. 18–25; Habermann, pp. 44–52; Eidelberg, pp. 50–61; Chazan, pp. 275–287.

23. The first incident in Trier involved Peter the Hermit and his band and took place on the first day of Passover (April 10, 1096); the second took place in early June. See Neubauer and Stern, p. 25; Habermann, pp. 52–56; Eidelberg, pp. 62–67; Chazan, pp. 287–293.

24. Neubauer and Stern, p. 28; Habermann, p. 56; Eidelberg, p. 67; Chazan, p. 293.

25. Neubauer and Stern, p. 28; Habermann, p. 56; Eidelberg, p. 67; Chazan, p. 293.

26. Neubauer and Stern, pp. 28–29; Habermann, p. 57; Eidelberg, pp. 67–68; Chazan, p. 293–294.

27. In a general way, Marcus has been more reductionist than the sources which he accuses of the same fault. While he identifies two patterns of Jewish reaction to the crusading threat—political negotiations and martyrdom—the Hebrew narratives present us with a more diverse range of Jewish behaviors, including flight, refuge with Christian neighbors, battle, conversion, and a variety of martyrological behaviors that call out for the drawing of important distinctions.

28. Inter alia, the narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Josephus from antiquity and the recent histories of eyewitnesses like William L. Shirer, George F. Kennan, and Abba Eban would all seem to represent nicely “imaginative reorderings of experience within a cultural framework and system of symbols.”

29. There has surely been an effort on the part of recent historians to be less tendentious, although the level of success in that effort is debatable. However, it has regularly been noted that stylization has hardly disappeared—the complex academic trappings of acknowledgments, disclaimers, notes, and bibliography hardly constitute a flight from stylization.

30. Note, e.g., the essays in the Breisach collection that attempt to identify the ubiquitous influence of classical rhetorical patterns on major medieval historical narratives. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, in his important Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory(Seattle, 1982), p. 36, identifies “assimilation of events to old and established conceptual frameworks” as a major characteristic-and weakness-of medieval Jewish historical writing. Marcus likewise makes some valuable observations in this regard when he describes the tension between the demands of the quasi-liturgical, format and the sequential narrative format. There he speaks of the liturgy as ”almost always cast in the most general language of ‘Israel’ and ‘God, ’ not particulars, such as the ‘Jews of Mainz’ and the ‘Christians of France and Germany.’” To the extent that patterns of prior thinking are omnipresent, skepticism as to empirical observation is warranted. For a broad discussion of the impact of paradigms on medieval Jewish perceptions and the possibility of moving beyond such paradigms, see my “Representation of Events in the Middle Ages, ” History and Theory, Beiheft 27, pp. 40–65.

31. Cook, Albert, History/Writing(Cambridge, 1988), p. 15.Google Scholar

32. In fact, Marcus himself suggests that the paradigm that he found in the Solomon ben Samson narrative was the result of empirical observation: “By constructing each community account in this highly stylized way, the narrator affirms that a fundamental shift took place in the world-view of the Jews he is describing: a shift from politics to martyrdom. The narrator's plan is to justify the martyrsprime; behavior by describing how they resorted to killing only after exhausting all conventional religious and political alternatives.” Thus Marcus himself seems to suggest that the purported preconceived scheme which he identifies was actually the result of the behaviors observed in 1096. This hardly makes it a preconceived scheme.

33. This valuable early northern-European narrative was first published in Ozar Tov(Berlin, 1878), pp. 46–48; it was reprinted in Habermann, Sefer Gezerol Ashkenaz ve-Zarfat, pp. 19–21.

34. Again note the complexity of these issues. I suggested in an earlier study (“1007–1012: Initial Crisis for Northern-European Jewry, ” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research38–39 [1970–71]: 101–117) that, in view of the corroborative data, we are justified in seeing this persecution as an instance of governmentally inspired violence. In other words, the imposition of the Esther motifs was stimulated by some of the real attributes of this particular instance of persecution.

35. Not surprisingly, fresh depictions of the kind observable in the Hebrew First Crusade narratives could, with the passage of time, be subsumed into the more traditional paradigms. In European Jewry and the First Crusade, pp. 143–148, I noted the tendency of subsequent Ashkenazic authors to efface the unusual patterns of 1096 behavior and to subsume both Christian and Jewish behaviors into preexistent paradigms of oppression and required response.

36. Recall Marcus's note, cited earlier: “Variety of details in the sources … does not prove that the detail is in the events themselves and not in the narrators minds.” To be sure, variety of detail does not prove facticity; it does, however, suggest the lack of a controlling framework and hence much enhances the likelihood of facticity.

37. In my forthcoming book on the Barcelona disputation, the second chapter is devoted to an effort to reconstruct the event itself, with all due allowance for the uncertainty of such an enterprise.

38. In European Jewry and the First Crusade, my interest lay almost exclusively in reconstructing patterns of behavior and thought, both Christian and Jewish.

39. Neubauer and Stern, pp. 11–13; Habermann, pp. 36–38; Eidelberg, pp. 39–41; Chazan, pp. 262–265.

40. The passage is extremely rich in ancillary detail, e.g., the musings of Isaac about wealth, his search for the family treasure in the cellar of the house, the relationship of son to mother and father to children portrayed, the involvement of yet another converted Jew and his fate, the rumors that the synagogue would be transformed into a mint or into a church.

41. Recall Marcus's failure to identify an organizing theme around which the narratives were constructed.

42. I have focused heavily on the reconstruction of patterns of behavior and thought. In so doing, I do not wish to rule out reconstruction of specific events. I have paid less attention to this type of historiographic effort simply because it was not my goal in the utilization of the Hebrew First Crusade narratives.

43. Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom, ” p. 51. It is worth recalling the broad observation of Haim Hillel Ben Sasson, in his study of medieval Jewish historiography, that “all medieval historiography is tendentious.” “Concerning the Goals of Medieval Jewish Chronography and Its Problematics, ” Historyonim ve-Askolot Historyot(Jerusalem, 1963), p. 29. The issue is not tendentiousness; the issue is the narrators' means of achieving their purposes. Where the means they employed involve a fairly accurate portrayal of empirical realities, the data supplied can be utilized-always with requisite caution-by the modern historian.

44. For a depiction and discussion of the innovative patterns of Jewish martyrdom in 1096. see European Jewry and the First Crusade, pp. 105–136.

45. Specific materials have been rejected by modern historians. Note, e.g., the thorough skepticism that has developed with respect to the details of Urban II's speech at Clermont. Nonetheless, the major recent histories of the Crusades have shown no inclination to reject narrative materials as the basis for their reconstructions.

46. The literature on twelfth-century innovation is now extremely rich. Among the most useful treatments are Ghellinck, L'Essor de la liltéralure latine au Xlle siècleand Le mouvement theologique du Xlle siecle, 2nd ed. (Brussels, 1948); Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century; Southern, R. W., The Making of the Middle Ages(London, 1953) and Medieval Humanism and Other Studies(Oxford, 1970); the essays collected in Benson and Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century;Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy(Princeton, 1983).Google Scholar

47. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, p. 5.

48. Ibid pp. 175–176. The quotation, “true history, bit by bit, took the place of epic in the collective memory, ” was drawn by Chenu from Marc Bloch's Feudal Society.

49. This setting of the Hebrew First Crusade narratives in the context of twelfth-century intellectual and spiritual creativity leaves us with one further problem, and that is the disappearance of this vigorous new style from the Jewish scene. To be sure, the disappearance was far from instantaneous. Some of the same spirit is, it seems to me, notable in the letters that depict the Blois tragedy of 1171 and in the remarkable narrative account by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of his Barcelona encounter with Friar Paul Christian. Such instances notwithstanding, Yerushalmi's basic contention, in Zakhor, as to the rarity of this style in medieval Jewish history writing remains correct and begs explanation. At this juncture, I have no full answer to the problem. I would only note provisionally the estrangement of northern-European Jewry from those areas in which the most exciting intellectual and spiritual creativity was taking place. This is only a cursory and provisional suggestion; the issue bears further thought.

50. Marcus, Ivan G., “History, Story and Collective Memory: Narrativity in Early Ashkenazic Culture, ” Prooftexts 10 (1990): 1–23. Note Marcus's parallel abandonment of the term “chronicle” in favor of the looser designation “narrative.”Google Scholar

51. The same combination of sources is addressed by Shatzmiller, Joseph, “Politics and the Myth of Origins: The Case of the Medieval Jews, ” in Les Juifs au regard de I'histoire, ed. Gilbert, Dahan (Paris, 1985), pp. 49–61.Google Scholar

52. Marcus, “History, Story and Collective Memory, ” p. 2.

53. Ibid pp. 2–3.

54. Recall my discussion of the post–1096 reactions of Ashkenazic Jewry in chap. 5 of European Jewry and the First Crusade.55. Marcus, “History, Story and Collective Memory, ” pp. 2 and 4.

56. Marcus's conflation of diverse historiographic styles leads him to make exaggerated demands on the broad group of historians that he designates “positivist.” In his Speculumreview, he was highly critical of my failure to examine the few erasures in one of the manuscripts by ultraviolet light. Similarly, in “History, Story and Collective Memory, ” he says: “Great pains must be taken to reconstruct the best possible state of the text—every letter can be a significant datum about a person, place or date.” I would argue that such special standards apply to those involved in textual editing or with some kind of antiquarian reconstruction. However, those historians interested in reconstructing patterns of Jewish and non-Jewish behavior and thought depicted in medieval narrative materials bear no greater burden—it seems to me—than their confreres concerned with “folkloristic” and “anthropological” history. Given their utilization of reinforcing data, for such historians every letter does not bear the weight assigned to it by Marcus.

57. Note Marcus's reference to Avraham Grossman and myself as examples of “positivist” historiography. While I am truly flattered to be lumped with such a distinguished colleague, the disparity in the materials with which the two of us have worked is most striking. Marcus has in effect combined slim narrative materials written many centuries after the fact with rich, detailed, and highly nuanced materials based on eyewitness testimony and early written reports. Such combinations will not do. Each set of materials must be carefully assessed with respect to its potential facticity.