Event
Persecution of Jews during the Black Death
Torture, burning and expulsion of Jews in the Rhine lands and elsewhere in 1348–50, after a false charge of poisoning wells.
- Dates
- 1348–1350
Connections 5
involved
- Amadeus VI of Savoy his court ordered an inquiry in which prisoners were tortured Primary record 1
- Clement VI wrote that the charge could not be true Scholarship & press 2
- Strasbourg Primary record 1
includes
- Mandate of Clement VI, 1348 1348 Scholarship & press 2
- Strasbourg massacre, 1349 Primary record 1
Timeline 2 dates
- 1348–1350 Persecution of Jews during the Black Death
- 1348 Mandate of Clement VI, 1348 part of Persecution of Jews during the Black Death
Proof 2 sources
-
The Black Death and the Jews, 1348-1349 CE (translated confession of 1348 and the chronicle of Jacob von Königshofen), Internet Jewish History Sourcebook, Fordham University.
Primary record
the judicial inquiry which was made by order of the court of the illustrious Prince, our lord, Amadeus, Count of Savoy
By authority of Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, a number of the Jews who lived on the shores of Lake Geneva, having been arrested and put to the torture, naturally confessed anything their inquisitors suggested.
Records of their confessions were sent from one town to another in Switzerland and down the Rhine River into Germany, and as a result, thousands of Jews, in at least two hundred towns and hamlets, were butchered and burnt.
On Saturday - that was St. Valentine's Day-they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery. There were about two thousand people of them.
Thus were the Jews burnt at Strasbourg, and in the same year in all the cities of the Rhine, whether Free Cities or Imperial Cities or cities belonging to the lords.
-
July 6: Clement VI and the Black Plague, Jewish Currents.
Scholarship & press
It cannot be true that the Jews, by such a heinous crime, are the cause or occasion of the plague, because through many parts of the world the same plague, by the hidden judgment of God, has afflicted and afflicts the Jews themselves and many other races who have never lived alongside them.
A second Bull would follow on September 26, but the pope’s commands were little obeyed, especially in Germany.
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