Mainz Anonymous

The Hebrew Crusade chronicle known as the Mainz Anonymous, composed sometime before 1140, tells of the violence that Christian Crusaders perpetrated against German Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz in 1096. Although it survives only in a single late medieval manuscript, it was also integrated into Solomon bar Samson’s twelfth-century Chronicle. One of the striking features of this work is that, alongside the brutality of the Crusaders, it describes how bishops and other Christian leaders undertook to save some Jews. This excerpt recounts Jewish ritualized suicides, acts later remembered as paradigmatic holy actions performed by a saintly community. Many historians have argued that the number of Jews who chose to convert to Christianity, at least temporarily, far outnumbered those who committed suicide.