Massacres of the Black Death

The plague from the East swept through all of Western Europe, and faced with a mortality that no body of knowledge could explain, the accusation of poison took hold: the Jews were accused of having poisoned wells and fountains. The first violence took place in Toulon, where the Jewish quarter was attacked during Holy Week.

Provence, Catalonia, and Aragon followed — Barcelone, Cervera, Tàrrega, Gérone, Lérida. At Chillon, in Savoy, confessions extorted under torture described a conspiracy originating in Spain, with names and a network; copied and sent from town to town along the Rhine, they served as proof. Berne, Zofingue, Zurich, Schaffhouse, Bâle, Fribourg, Spire, Strasbourg — where the council favorable to the Jews was overthrown and the pyre erected before the plague had even reached the city —, Worms, Erfurt, Francfort, Cologne, Mayence where people defended themselves arms in hand, Constance, Augsbourg, Wurtzbourg, Nuremberg, Breslau, Bruxelles: the lists in the *Memorbücher* cover pages.

Clément VI, from Avignon, issued two bulls recalling that the Jews were dying of the plague like everyone else and that the accusation was groundless; he threatened excommunication and protected those of the Comtat. City councils attempted to resist, then yielded before the guilds.

The survivors moved eastward, toward Poland and Lithuania whose rulers issued charters: the center of gravity of Ashkenazi Judaism shifted there for five centuries.