Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Massacre of refugees from Cologne; the cantor Samuel ben Yehiel and his son Yehiel drown themselves in the castle pond
Juin 1096·Wevelinghoven
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
The refugees from Cologne hiding in Wevelinghoven were discovered by the crusaders. The cantor Samuel ben Yehiel, seeing the outcome, slaughtered his son Yehiel and then took his own life in the castle pond, along with those who followed them.
The account in the Rhenish chronicles dwells on the words exchanged between the father and the son before the act, and on the blessing pronounced over the sacrifice. It is one of the texts that gave form, in Ashkenazi Memory, to the notion of the sanctification of the Name: dying by one's own hand so as not to be compelled into baptism.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Allemagne
Chronique de Salomon bar Siméon ; Chronique d'Éliézer bar Nathan ; piyyoutim des massacres de Rhénanie.