Editing Emicho (section)

=== Rhineland massacres ===
{{main|Rhineland massacres}}
Count Emicho's precise role in the Rhineland Massacres, the series of violent attacks and forced conversions of the Rhineland's Jews just prior to the First Crusade, has been the subject of significant debate.<ref>Stow, Kenneth. “Conversion, Apostasy, and Apprehensiveness: Emicho of Flonheim and the Fear of Jews in the Twelfth Century,” ''Speculum'' Vol. 76, No. 4 (Oct. 2001), pp. 911–933. Sourcebook.</ref> There were many crusading forces moving through the [[Rhineland]], but most were interested primarily in reaching the Holy Land. For instance, when [[Peter the Hermit]] and his mob of Crusaders passed through these towns and threatened the Jewish population, they had been amenable to bribes and largely left the Jews free from harassment.<ref name="Chazan2000">Chazan, Robert. “The Mainz Anonymous: Structure, Authorship, Dating and Objectives,” in ''God, Humanity and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives''. 28–51. University of California Press, 2000.</ref>  Although Emicho has frequently been referenced in secondary and tertiary sources as having been present during the massacres of Jews in [[Cologne]] and [[Worms, Germany|Worms]], there is sparse evidence in the primary accounts to support his involvement. Indeed, the only massacre in which Emicho definitively participated was that in [[Mainz]].<ref name="Gabriele2007">Gabriele, Matthew. “Against the Enemies of Christ: The Role of Count Emicho in the Anti-Jewish Violence of the First Crusade” in ''Christian Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: a casebook'', edited by Michael Frassetto, 61–83, New York: Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2007.</ref> The Jewish writer of the account known as the [[Mainz Anonymous]] mentions Emicho as having been in the rough vicinity of Speyer during the massacre there, but clearly notes he did not participate in the violence.<ref name="Chazan2000"/>

Yet Emicho certainly led the forces that massacred the Jews of Mainz, one of the largest European Jewish communities at the time, in May 1096. The Jews within the city were well-aware of the earlier massacres and forced conversions in other Rhineland cities and feared the worst.<ref>Krey, August C.  ''The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants'', “Ekkehard of Aura” (Princeton: 1921), 53–54, electronically published by Internet Medieval.</ref> They appealed to the Archbishop [[Ruthard]] and the area's lay lords to protect them from the approaching mob, offering money and valuable possessions to further encourage the lords. In an attempt to deter the approaching crusaders, Ruthard closed the city's gates and attempted to hide Jews in his palace.<ref name="Chazan2010">Chazan, Robert. “Chapter III, Christians: Assault, Assistance, Ambiguity,” In the ''Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews''. 51–72. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2010.</ref> Ultimately, however, the city gates were opened by sympathetic burghers within Mainz and the Jews were attacked despite the archbishop's best attempts to protect them.<ref name="Runciman1980">Runciman, Steven. “The German Crusade” in ''The First Crusade''. 82–92, Cambridge University Press, 1980.</ref>

Part of what distinguished Emicho and his army from other crusading armies that crossed the Rhineland was their unwillingness to be swayed from committing violence by bribes.<ref name="Runciman1980"/> Greed was clearly not their sole motivation, contrary to many cursory accounts of Emicho. While money was likely necessary to fund their pilgrimage to reach the Holy Land, the Crusaders could have easily taken the possessions and money offered to them by the Jews and continued on their way without a significant amount of violence. Yet, they chose to kill the majority of the Jews they encountered, even women and children whom they could have compelled to convert. Emicho and his men went to great lengths to hunt down and kill every refugee they could find in Mainz;<ref name="Chazan2010"/> they intended to inflict maximal damage. This is exemplified by the Mainz Anonymous's description of Emicho:

{{Quote
|text=He was our chief persecutor. He had no mercy on the elderly, on young men and young women, on infants or sucklings, nor on the ill. He made the people of the Lord like dust to be trampled. Their young men he put to the sword, and their pregnant women he ripped open.<ref name="Chazan2010"/>
}}

This ideologically based hatred of Jews, along with the far higher death count, is what made the massacre in Mainz distinct from previous attacks in the Rhineland. The motivations behind this hatred are yet another source of contention by historians. Certain historians have characterized these sentiments as part of the broader context of apocalyptic mythology, with the Crusaders anticipating an imminent end of the world, a "zero-sum game between good and evil”. This end of days would be precipitated by Christian control of the Holy Land and mass conversions of Jews to Christianity. For the end of time to occur, Jews had to either die or abandon Judaism and embrace Christianity.<ref name="Gabriele2007"/> Others see instead this animosity as emerging from the crusade to the Holy Land itself. With the shrines of Christendom being discussed, and the destination being Jerusalem and the [[Holy Sepulchre]], Christ's burial place, the role Jews played in Christ's crucifixion must have been in the forefront of many crusaders' minds.<ref name="Chazan2010"/> This attitude is illustrated by a crusader's supposed remark to a Jew as written by the chronicler Bar-Simson: "You are the children of those who killed the object of our veneration, hanging him on a tree. And he himself had said, 'there will yet come a day when my children will come and avenge my blood.' We are his children and it is, therefore, our duty to avenge him against you who disbelieve in him."<ref>Madden, Thomas F. ''The New Concise History of the Crusades''. Rowman & Littlefield: New York, 2006.</ref>

Beneath either motivation behind massacring the Rhineland's Jews is the reality that Jews in 1096 were alienated from their Christian neighbors. Jews and Muslims were scarcely distinguished in the eleventh century as both were seen as agents of the devil and in league with one another, plotting against Christendom. Thus, it is not surprising that a crusade ostensibly directed against one group could be seamlessly redirected against the other. Especially in the apocalyptic mindset, both Jews and Muslims had to be destroyed or converted for the Earth to reach the end of days.<ref name="Gabriele2007"/>