Preaching of the monk Raoul

The Cistercian monk Raoul traveled through the Rhineland preaching the Second Crusade and arguing that one should begin with the enemies of the faith closest at hand. His sermons rekindled the violence of the preceding generation.

There were deaths — Simon the Pious of Trèves was killed and his body mutilated, and others perished at Spire and at Wurtzbourg. But the Archbishop of Cologne, Arnold, opened the fortress of Wolkenburg to the Jews and allowed them to arm themselves, and Bernard de Clairvaux came in person to silence Raoul, reminding all that the Jews are not to be persecuted, for their very dispersion is a testimony.

The Second Crusade thus claimed infinitely fewer Jewish victims than the first, and the Hebrew chroniclers — Ephraïm de Bonn above all — recorded Bernard's name with gratitude. This is one of the rare cases where an ecclesiastical intervention effectively halted a wave of violence.