13th–14th centuries
Crusaders massacre communities (letter from Gregory IX)
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 crusaders gathered in the West of the kingdom before embarking turned against the Jewish communities of Anjou, Poitou, and Bretagne.
What happened is known through a letter from Pope Gregory IX to the bishops of France: he writes that the crusaders demanded that the Jews receive baptism, that they trampled under their horses' hooves those who refused, and that the books of the Law were destroyed. The Pope commands the prelates to excommunicate the guilty parties and to have the property restored; he recalls that the Jews must be neither killed nor expelled.
Saint Louis, who was himself preparing a crusade, prosecuted no one. Six years later, it was in his capital that the Talmud would be burned.
- Period :
- 13th–14th centuries
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- France
Lettre de Grégoire IX « Lachrimabilem Judaeorum » ; *Chronique de Guillaume de Nangis*.