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time-bound concerns. Our author was committed to providing maximal information on the genesis and
development of the First Crusade, on the groupings in Christian society that responded to the exciting
new initiative, on the diverse Christian reactions to crusading and crusaders, on the refraction of
crusading ardor into hostility against the Jews, on the stances of different elements in Rhineland
society toward the endangered Jews, and on the varied Jewish responses to the utterly unanticipated
danger. Depiction of these multifaceted realities is highlighted by the author's insistence that the
developments of late 1095 and early 1096 were stunning and disorienting in their rapidity and by his
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conviction that Christian and Jewish thinking and behavior were, as a result, chaotic and highly
diversified.
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As we have seen, the leitmotif of the Mainz Anonymous's presentation is the breathless pace at which
events developed. Early on, when French Jewry experienced the emergence of the crusade, it
addressed petitions to its Rhineland brethren, who knew nothing of the new threat. The French
crusaders, whose arrival in the Rhineland was unanticipated by both Christians and Jews, stirred up
the local barony and the lower classes in utterly unpredictable ways. Despite instances of random
violence and the first clumsy assault in Speyer, Worms Jewry was uncertain as to how to proceed, with
the community divided in its responses. Even in Mainz, by far the best forewarned of the three
communities depicted, there was a measure of uncertainty, with Jews opting for safety in the
archbishop's palace, in the burgrave's palace, or in private homes.
Not surprisingly, the unanticipated enthusiasm for the crusade and the rapidly escalating violence
produced chaos, uncertainty, and the widest possible spectrum of responses among Christians and
Jews. Our narrator highlights this diversity of action and reaction. The Mainz Anonymous transmitted
to its Jewish readers a precise sense of wideranging Christian attitudes and behaviors. As we have
seen, it depicts carefully the mix of Christians who participated in the anti-Jewish assaults, the varied
responses of other Christians at this crucial juncture, in some instances the contradictory behaviors of
specific groups of Christians (e. g., the burghers of Worms who first protected and then persecuted the
Jewess Minna, and the archbishop of Mainz who confidently promised protection and then utterly failed
to provide it), the steady deepening of anti-Jewish sentiment, and the increasingly intense violence to
which these feelings led.
Our author shows considerable commitment to informing his Jewish readers as fully as possible
about their Christian contemporaries. His assumption rather clearly is that Jews would go on living
among these Christian neighbors and that accurate information on patterns of Christian thinking and
behavior would be extremely useful for this future coexistence. To be sure, there had been no way to
predict the explosion of 1096, and future developments might of course take similarly unanticipated
forms. Nonetheless, the fullest possible knowledge of the complexities of 1096 would provide useful
guidance for further eruptions.[38]
The Mainz Anonymous's time-bound interest in a variety of Jewish responses is similarly manifest.
While martyrdom is certainly at the center of the author's interest, for reasons we shall examine
shortly, the narrative by no means focuses exclusively on Jewish martyrdom. Diverse
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Jewish attempts to forestall violence through the increasingly turbulent months of late 1095 and early
1096 are identified. These efforts were on occasion successful and on occasion unsuccessful.[39] The
Worms segment of the narrative introduces, along with the first significant martyrdoms, the initial
instances of Jewish conversion. To be sure, the most stirring of the Jewish responses recounted
involve Jewish willingness to sacrifice life for the God of Israel.
Interestingly, even in depicting the Jewish martyrs, our author maintains his commitment to
portraying rapid developments in thinking and behavior and the widest possible range of
martyrological responses. Clearly, Jewish martyrological fervor intensifies as we proceed from Speyer
to Worms to Mainz. Jewish martyrdom is portrayed in the Mainz Anonymous in all its specificity and
diversity. Jews fought and died; Jews were slaughtered by their enemies; Jews provoked their foes by
words and deeds of opposition, thus hastening their death at the hands of these aggressors; Jews took
their own lives in a number of ways; Jews took the lives of their family members, most strikingly the
lives of their children, again in a variety of ways. The Jewish martyrs do not fall into simple categories:
they include men and women, the aged and the young, high born and lowly. The commitment to
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