Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Massacre by crusaders en route to the Orient
Mai-juin 1096·Metz
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Metz, an Imperial city on the road to the Rhineland, saw contingents passing through on their way to the East via Lorraine. Its community, ancient and modest, was attacked as they passed.
The Hebrew chronicles mention it briefly, amid the account of the great Rhenish catastrophes of Spire, Worms, and Mayence. The figure they give is the one the catalogue repeats; it says enough that the community of Metz was at that time of small size.
Metz did not regain a continuous Jewish presence until the end of the Middle Ages, after an expulsion and a long interval; it then became, under French royal protection, one of the most important in Western Europe, with its yeshiva and its printers.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- France
Chroniques hébraïques de la Première croisade ; Memorbuch de Nuremberg.