448 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Of a different mind was Bernard. When the prepara tions were being made for the Second Crusade, and the monk Radulf went up and down the Rhine, inflaming the people against the Jews, the abbot of Clairvaux set him self against the "demagogue," as Neander called Radulf.1 He wrote a burning epistle to the archbishop of Mainz, re minding him that the Lord is gracious towards him who returns good for evil. " Does not the Church," he exclaimed, " triumph more fully over the Jews by convincing and con verting them from day to day than if she once and for all should slay them by the edge of the sword! " How bitter the prejudice was is seen in the fact that when Bernard met Radulf face to face, it required all his reputation for sanctity to allay the turbulence at Mainz.2
Turning to England we find William of Newburgh, Roger de Hoveden, and other chroniclers approving the Jewish per secutions. Richard of Devizes3 speaks of "sacrificing the Jews to their father, the devil," and of sending " the blood suckers with blood to hell." Matthew Paris, in some of his references, seems not to have been in full sympathy with the popular animosity.
Among great English ecclesiastics the Jews had at least two friendly advocates in Hugh of Lincoln and Robert Grosseteste. Grosseteste laid down the principle that the Jews were not to be exterminated, on the grounds that the law had been given through them, and that, after passing through their second captivity, they would ultimately, in accordance with the eleventh chapter of Romans, embrace Christianity. He, however, declared that Cain was the type of the Jews, as Abel was the type of Christ. For the sake of God's mercy, they should be preserved, that Christ might be glorified; but for the sake of God's justice, they were to be held in captivity by the princes, that they might fulfil the predic-
I0tto of Freising says that "very many were killed in Mainz, Worms, Spires, and other places." De gestis Frid. I. 37-39.
2Graetz, VI. 148, 151, pronounces Bernard "a truly holy man, a man o* apostolic simplicity of heart."
3 Hewlett's ed., p. 383.
§ 77. THE JEWS. 449
tion concerning Cain, and be vagabonds and wanderers on the earth. They should be forcibly prevented from pursuing the occupation of usurers.1 The bishop was writing to the dowager countess of Winchester, who had offered a refuge on her lands to the Jews expelled by Simon de Montfort from Leicester. That he was not altogether above the preju dices of his age is vouched for by a letter, also written in 1244, in which he calls upon his archdeacons to prevent Jews and Christians living side by side. Grosseteste's predecessor, Hugh of Lincoln, protected the Jews when they were being plundered and massacred in 1190, and Jews showed their respect by attending his funeral.2
No charge was too serious to be laid at the door of the Jews. When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1348, it did not occur to any one to think of the Saracens as the authors of that pestilence. The Jew was guilty. In Southern France and Spain, so the wild rumor ran, he had concocted poisons which were sent out wholesale and used for contaminating fountains. From Barcelona and Seville to the cities in Switzerland and Germany the unfortunate people had to suffer persecution for the alleged crime. In Strassburg, 1349, the entire Hebrew population of two thou sand was seized, and as many as did not consent to baptism, were burnt in their own graveyard and their goods confis cated. In Erfurt and other places the entire Jewish popu lation was removed by fire or expulsion.
The canonical regulations against usury gave easy excuse for declaring debts to the Jews not binding. Condemned by Tertullian and Cyprian, usury was at first forbidden to laymen as well as clerics, as by the synod of Elvira; but at the council of Nice, 325, the prohibition was restricted to the clergy. Later Jerome, Augustine, and Leo I. again ap plied the prohibition to all Christians. Gratian received it into the canon law. Few subjects claimed so generally the
1 Grosseteste's Letters, Luard's ed., 33-39. Stevenson, Life of Grosseteste, 97-101, holds that he had no intention of discouraging the countess in her humane effort.
2 Thurston, Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, 277 sqq., 547.
2o'