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noted earlier eventuated in spontaneous crusader violence that was met resolutely by a number of
Mainz burghers. This battle between the two sets of Christians eventually cost the life of a crusader,
suggesting the intensity of the clash. Throughout the Mainz Anonymous, Jews are depicted as turning
in their desperate straits to neighboring Christians, obviously anticipating assistance. Here the Cologne
report corroborates the Mainz Anonymous, showing the Jews of Cologne responding to the first
outbreak of hostility in their town by fleeing to neighboring Christians and finding successful refuge
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with them. Albert of Aachen tells much the same story; his vilification of Christian anti-Jewish violence
opens a window on the kind of Christian thinking that opposed the assaults on Jews.
Both early Jewish sources the Mainz Anonymous and the Trier report and a number of Christian
sources agree on the protective stance adopted by the local bishops of the Rhineland towns.
Perceptions of the bishops' opposition to crusader and burgher anti-Jewish violence are widespread
and can hardly be doubted. Our parallel Jewish and Christian sources on the events in Trier, however,
serve to warn us that perceptions of episcopal behavior could inevitably vary to some extent.[44]
All in all, the Jewish and Christian sources reinforce one another at every turn in their description
of the anti-Jewish violence of 1096 its origins, the styles of assault, and the various groupings
implicated in the anti-Jewish attacks. Once more, the sense with which we emerge is that of a high
level of reliability in our two early Hebrew accounts. Again, the time-bound goals of the Mainz
Anonymous and the Trier report produced a need for more-or-less accurate detail. Comparison of the
available Christian and Jewish sources and the inner consistency
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among the disparate Jewish sources combine to suggest that our Jewish narrators did in fact sketch
their portraits in a way that was faithful to the events they depicted.
THE JEWISH RESPONSES
All five Hebrew narratives focus heavily on the Jewish responses to the persecution instigated and
perpetrated by some of the crusading bands in western Germany. Again, the Christian narrative
sources are by and large oblivious to or uninterested in this fringe violence and even less interested in
the Jewish reactions. What then might be said of the reliability of our narrative records in this area,
where corroborating Christian evidence is yet more minimal? It is precisely with respect to the Jewish
responses to crusader and burgher violence that the Jewish sources are most suspect. Given their
desire to memorialize properly the Jewish victims and given the place that martyrdom plays in the
theological solace they propose, exaggeration and outright fabrication might be most readily
anticipated in the description of Jewish behaviors and thinking in 1096.
In assessing the reliability of the narrative reports of Jewish responses in 1096, we must note the
existence of yet one more set of sources, and those are the Hebrew dirges composed both
immediately and long after the events themselves. These dirges are of no value in reconstructing
crusader and burgher behaviors, since they are focused so singlemindedly on the Jewish responses,
and indeed only on the Jewish response of martyrdom. Their facticity is, of course, far more suspect
than that of the Hebrew narratives. Thus it might seem that they provide no assistance whatsoever.
However, the existence of descriptive evidence of Jewish actions and even more strikingly of
motivations and symbols observable among the Jewish martyrs can be useful, as we shall shortly
see.[45]
Both the more detailed Hebrew narratives and the less detailed Christian sources agree that Jews
reacted in a variety of ways to the unanticipated threat that materialized so suddenly. There can be no
serious doubt as to the reality of Jewish dependence on the local authorities, extensive Jewish
negotiation with these authorities, the place of financial incentives in these negotiations, and the
positive response of the authorities to these overtures. Further, there is no question as to the essential
elements of the protection offered, involving sequestering endangered Jews in urban fortifications or
sending them forth into rural
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redoubts. A complex record of success and failure is obvious from both the Jewish and Christian
records as well. Finally, there can be no real doubt as to the accuracy of the portrayal of eventual
episcopal efforts in some places to dissolve the dangers by cajoling or forcing Jews into baptism. Our
sources, both Jewish and Christian, fail us in their assessment of the thinking behind these episcopally
argued or forced conversions. Did the bishops actually come to the conclusion that theologically there
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