Persecutions under Robert the Pious; expulsion from Mainz (1012); violence in Limoges, Rouen

The reign of Robert the Pious coincided, in France as in the Rhineland, with the first wave of large-scale violence against the Jewish communities of the West — half a century before the Crusade.

A Hebrew account known as the *Decree of 1007* relates the arrest of community leaders, the offer of baptism or death, and the embassy of one Jacob bar Yequtiel to the pope to put an end to the persecutions. In Limoges, the bishop summoned the community to choose between conversion and departure; in Rouen, the violence was carried out by mobs. In Mayence, Emperor Henry II expelled the community; the son of Rabbenou Gershom, "the Light of the Exile," was among those who received baptism, and his father mourned him as one dead.

Christian chroniclers link these persecutions to a rumour from the East: the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by the caliph al-Ḥākim, for which the Jews were accused of having been the instigators. The exiles returned within a few years, and Gershom issued the prohibition against reproaching one who had returned his baptism.