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This page intentionally left blank
 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000–1500

Between the years 1000 and 1500, western Christendom absorbed

by conquest and attracted through immigration a growing num-
ber of Jews. This community was to make a valuable contribution
to rapidly developing European civilization but was also to suffer
some terrible setbacks, culminating in a series of expulsions from the
more advanced westerly areas of Europe. At the same time, vigor-
ous new branches of world Jewry emerged and a rich new Jewish
cultural legacy was created. In this important new historical synthe-
sis, Robert Chazan discusses the Jewish experience over a 500-year
period across the entire continent of Europe. As well as being the
story of medieval Jewry, the book simultaneously illuminates impor-
tant aspects of majority life in Europe during this period. This book
is essential reading for all students of medieval Jewish history and an
important reference for any scholar of medieval Europe.

rob e rt c hazan is S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of

Hebrew and Judaic Studies in the Skirball Department of Hebrew
and Judaic Studies, New York University. His numerous books and
articles on medieval Jewish history include Fashioning Jewish Identity
in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2004).
 Cambridge Medieval Textbooks

This is a series of introductions to important topics in medieval

history aimed primarily at advanced students and faculty, and is
designed to complement the monograph series Cambridge Studies
in Medieval Life and Thought. It includes both chronological and
thematic approaches and addresses both British and European topics.

For a list of titles in the series, see end of book.

 .
THE JEWS OF
M E D I E VA L W E S T E R N
CHRISTENDOM,
1000–1500
.
RO B E RT C H A Z A N
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521846660

© Robert Chazan 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published in print format 2006

isbn-13 978-0-511-25643-1 eBook (EBL)

isbn-10 0-511-25643-4 eBook (EBL)

isbn-13 978-0-521-84666-0 hardback

isbn-10 0-521-84666-8 hardback

isbn-13 978-0-521-61664-5paperback
isbn-10 0-521-61664-6 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 For
Jonah and Adam
Gabriel and Nathan
Arlo and Eve
 CONTENTS

List of maps page ix

Preface xi
Introduction 1
1 Prior legacies 23
The Muslim legacy 24
The Christian legacy 27
The Jewish legacy 30

2 The pan-European Roman Catholic Church 43

Theological doctrine 44
Ecclesiastical policies 51
Imagery of Judaism and the Jews 66
Cultural and spiritual creativity: danger, challenge, stimulus 70
Looking ahead 75

3 The older Jewries of the south 77

Southern France 78
Christian Spain 90
Italy and Sicily 115

4 The newer Jewries of the north: northern France

and England 129
Northern France 131
England 154
viii Contents
5 The newer Jewries of the north: Germany and
Eastern Europe 169
Germany 170
Eastern Europe 198

6 Material challenges, successes, and failures 209

Obstacles and attractions 210
The governing authorities 219
Successes 231
The dynamics of deterioration 239

7 Spiritual challenges, successes, and failures 243

Proselytizing, conversion, and resistance 247
Strengthening traditional lines of Jewish cultural creativity 257
Innovative lines of cultural creativity 267
New and creative Jewish cultures 282

Epilogue 285

Notes 289
Bibliography 313
Index 321
 MAPS

1 Europe, circa 1000 page xvi

2 Europe, circa 1250 4
3 Europe, 1490 8
 P R E FAC E

This book began with an invitation extended by Cambridge Uni-

versity Press to write a one-volume history of the Jews of medieval
western Christendom for its Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series,
a series I have long used and admired. The desire of Cambridge Uni-
versity Press to include a volume on the Jews in its distinguished series
seemed to me to reflect a sea change in perceptions of the place of
the Jews on the medieval scene. Fifty years ago, such an invitation
would have been unthinkable, for the broad academic community
exhibited little interest in Jewish life in medieval Latin Christendom.1
Over the past half century, however, scholarly – and even popular –
perceptions of the Middle Ages have changed considerably, with
the prior sense of a homogeneous and static period giving way to
accelerating interest in the diversity and evolution of medieval soci-
ety, the fracture lines that afflicted it, and its variegated minority
communities.
These changes in the study of medieval history have in fact been
characteristic of the recent study of Western history in all its peri-
ods. Augmented interest in the history of minority communities in
a variety of settings and epochs has resulted in the opening of aca-
demic portals inter alia to historians of the Jews. Jewish history has
become an accepted specialty in universities, and academic presses
regularly publish scholarship on the Jews of the ancient, medieval,
and modern periods. As a result of this new openness, research into
the Jewish experience in general and the medieval Jewish experi-
ence in particular has proliferated. Scholars in North America, Israel,
xii Preface
and Europe have investigated increasingly diverse aspects of medieval
Jewish life, resulting in an impressive corpus of new books and articles
on the Jews of medieval western Christendom. Innovative questions
and perspectives have surfaced regularly, and knowledge of medieval
Jewish life has increased exponentially.2
The importance of the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series and
the challenge of presenting the new scholarship on medieval Jewry
in western Christendom warranted a positive reply on my part to the
Press’s generous invitation. I very much agreed with the sense that
a one-volume history of the Jews in medieval Latin Christendom
would be most useful at this point in time. While the Jewish expe-
rience in medieval Europe has been treated in the context of overall
histories of the Jews and while two one-volume histories of medieval
Jewry have recently appeared, the time seems ripe for a new intro-
duction to the Jews of medieval western Christendom.3
More personal factors as well influenced my decision to proceed
with this project. The first has to do with my prior books. They
have all involved carefully delimited topics and manageable bodies
of source material. At the same time, I believe – or at least hope –
that they have addressed issues of critical significance to the medieval
Jewish experience, for example Christian and Jewish imageries of
one another, Christian pressures physical and spiritual and Jewish
reactions, neglected aspects of medieval Jewish intellectual and spir-
itual creativity. The challenge of absorbing these earlier studies into
a comprehensive treatment of the medieval Jewish experience was
appealing. Readers familiar with my prior work will see these earlier
investigations reflected throughout this book.
Over and above my writing, my teaching played a critical role in
moving me to undertake this book. I have been teaching medieval
Jewish history at university level for over forty years now and have
taken this teaching responsibility very seriously. I have experimented
with a range of organizational schemes for presenting medieval Jewish
history and have tinkered with a variety of topical approaches. These
teaching efforts have left me with a full appreciation of the diffi-
culties associated with conveying the medieval Jewish experience
and with a number of ideas as to how to do so effectively. More
than imparting satisfaction with conveying medieval Jewish history,
my teaching experience has inspired me to attempt a more focused
effort at “getting it right” at last. A voice deep inside assures me that
the effort is worthwhile; to be sure, the same voice also suggests
 Preface xiii
that, when this project is finished, I shall still remain somewhat
dissatisfied.
I undertook this project fully aware that it would constitute a new
experience, in fact a very challenging new experience. I committed
myself, for the first time, to writing an extended synthetic history. All
my prior books have addressed carefully defined aspects of medieval
Jewish history. I have regularly set manageable parameters for these
studies and have felt capable of examining all relevant sources in
investigating these focused issues. Essentially, I have gathered exten-
sive data, have analyzed them, and have then followed them where
they led me. While I have aspired to present important developments
on the medieval Jewish scene, my studies have all been limited to
specific times and spaces.
The present project differs markedly in its spatial and temporal
scope. I propose to discuss Jewish experience stretching across almost
the entirety of Europe and spanning five centuries. There is more
even than simply vast territory and a lengthy time period. Neither
the territory nor the time period is homogeneous. There were, as we
shall see rather fully, enormous differences among the various Jewish
communities of medieval western Christendom and wide-ranging
changes through the centuries. Encompassing these differences and
changes constitutes a profound challenge to the historian attempt-
ing to make sense of the diversified Jewish experiences in medieval
western Christendom. Indeed, to complicate matters yet further, I
intend to discuss major developments on both the material and spir-
itual planes. This study will begin with demographic, economic, and
political realities and changes, but will include issues of Jewish identity
and Jewish intellectual and spiritual creativity as well.
The vastness of the topic and the richness of the literature have
necessitated painful decisions as to coverage or – more precisely – as
to inclusion and omission. This book was not intended by the Press
or by me to be excessive in length and exhaustive in coverage; it
was intended, rather, to provide an overview of the diverse Jewish
communities of medieval western Christendom and their material
and spiritual experience and to offer analysis of the broad evolution-
ary patterns of Jewish life in medieval Europe and the key factors
influencing those evolutionary patterns. None of the Jewish com-
munities depicted and none of the developments tracked could be
treated fully.4 Decisions as to inclusion and exclusion and the fullness
in depiction of those topics covered have been extremely difficult.5
xiv Preface
Ultimately, these difficult decisions have been made on the basis of
an over-arching view of the medieval Jewish experience in medieval
western Christendom, a view that will be articulated and will surely
give rise to criticism on the part of respected colleagues. It is out of
such articulation and criticism that historical knowledge progresses.
The conceptual framework underlying this work proposes that
medieval western Christendom was highly ambivalent in its attitude
to the growing Jewish minority in its midst, with some elements
in Christian society accepting this minority, some rejecting it, and
yet others accepting it with reservations and limitations. In response,
the Jews themselves viewed the Christian environment with parallel
ambivalence, acknowledging Christendom’s dynamism and achieve-
ments while at the same time fearing it and denigrating it. On the
spiritual plane, the same ambivalences are manifest. The Christian
majority – heir to a rich set of views of Judaism and the Jews –
despised Judaism and the Jews, respected both, and feared both. In
turn, the Jews – heirs to a far less developed tradition with respect
to Christianity and Christians – forged a new sense of the two, again
made up of repulsion, attraction, and fear.
The divergences of the medieval Jewish experience in space and
the changes in this experience over time flowed from the working
out of the inherent ambivalences on the part of Christian majority
and Jewish minority, conditioned by differing circumstances of place
and time. Beyond these divergences, however, there is an overriding
commonality: both the Christian majority and the Jewish minor-
ity were deeply affected by the mutual engagement that took place
between 1000 and 1500 ce. Both sides emerged with altered percep-
tions of one another, for good and ill. Inevitably, minorities are more
deeply affected by such interactions than majorities, and our case is
no exception. Between 1000 and 1500, the Jewish world was radi-
cally transformed in both material and spiritual terms by its encounter
with medieval western Christendom. A new constellation of Jewish
life was created, and new forms of Judaism emerged.
At times, writing this book has felt like flying over the panorama
of medieval Jewish history at 35,000 feet, perceiving and sketching
the broadest of outlines, knowing that the fields and towns were
filled with living human beings, but failing inevitably to discern and
portray them in their full reality. Such of course is the nature of a
survey. I have attempted to compensate a bit by introducing into this
account of the Jews of medieval western Christendom an occasional
 Preface xv
reconstruction of specific events and personalities and – perhaps more
important – by citing recurrently the sources from our period. All this
is done in order to recover somewhat the elusive sense of particularity
that a survey risks losing. In general, readers would be well served by
keeping at their side one or another collection of translated medieval
sources, into which they might periodically dip.6
Like all volumes in the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series,
this one also is intended for an audience of literate and interested
readers. Some of these readers will be university undergraduate and
graduate students; some will be scholars of a variety of periods of
the Jewish past or of medieval history; some will be interested lay
readers. I hope that all these disparate groups of readers will find an
account that is comprehensible, stimulating, and satisfying, albeit by
no means exhaustive. The experience of medieval Jewry in western
Christendom has taken on great symbolic significance in subsequent
Christian and Jewish thinking. This symbolic significance has often
led to gross over-simplification and distortion. I hope the present
overview will contribute in some measure to a more balanced sense
of the Jews as a vital element on the medieval scene and of western
Christendom during the Middle Ages as a formative period in the
evolution of subsequent Jewish life.
0 150 300 450 km

0 150 300 miles

Only those political units

referred to in the text
have been labeled.

ENGLAND

POLAND
KINGDOM

OF

GERMANY
FRANCE
KINGDOM HUNGARY

OF
KINGDOM
BURGUNDY OF ITALY
LEÓN
NAVARRE
CASTILE SMALL
COUNTIES PRINCIPALITY
OF BENEVENTO
PAPAL
STATES
CALIPHATE OF CÓRDOVA
COUNTY
OF CAPUA
PRINCIPALITY
OF SALERNO

M E D I T BYZANTINE
TERRITORY
E R R
A N
E
A
N
S
E MUSLIM
A TERRITORY

Map 1 Europe, circa 1000

 I N T RO D U C T I O N

An observer viewing world Jewry in the year 1000 would have readily
discerned an obvious Jewish demographic distribution and an equally
obvious configuration of Jewish creativity. The oldest, largest, and
most creative Jewish communities were located in the Muslim sphere,
stretching from Mesopotamia westward through the eastern littoral
of the Mediterranean Sea, across North Africa, and over onto the
Iberian peninsula. Somewhat smaller, but still sizeable and venerable
were the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire. Our putative
observer might have noted, as an afterthought, the small Jewish settle-
ments in western Christendom, huddled along the northern shores
of the Mediterranean Sea, in Italy, southern France, and northern
Spain; he might have – reasonably enough – not even bothered to
mention them, for they would hardly have seemed worthy of serious
attention.
Our observer would almost certainly have known that this pattern
of Jewish demography and creativity had been established more than
a thousand years earlier, long before the rise of Islam to its position
of power during the seventh century. He would have been aware
that, subsequent to the exile of the Jews from their homeland in
the sixth pre-Christian century, two major centers of Jewish life had
emerged, one as the result of Jewish resettlement in Palestine and the
other as a result of the decision of Jews to secure for themselves a
permanent place in Mesopotamia. He would have known that the
great religious–political leaders of world Jewry had been the patri-
archs of Palestinian Jewry and the exilarchs of Mesopotamian Jewry;
2 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
that the classical texts of post-biblical Judaism were the (Palestinian)
Mishnah, the Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud, and the Babylonian
(Mesopotamian) Talmud; that the distinguished rabbis whose teach-
ings were enshrined in the Mishnah and the two Talmuds were all
residents of either the Holy Land or the Mesopotamian territory that
Jews anachronistically called Babylonia.
Our hypothetical observer would also have recalled that Palestinian
Jews had, from a fairly early date, made their way westward, creating
new centers of Jewish life all along the Mediterranean shorelines.
He would have been aware that the centers in what are today Syria
and Egypt were the oldest and largest of these western communities.
Newer and smaller settlements stretched out all along the southern
and northern coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea – across North
Africa, through Asia Minor, and into what is today Italy, southern
France, and Spain.
With the rise of Islam during the seventh century and its remark-
able conquests, the overwhelming majority of world Jewry fell under
the rule of the new religion and the empire built upon it. The only
Jewries left outside the realm of Islam were the Jewish communities
of the shrunken Byzantine Empire, along the northeastern shores of
the Mediterranean Sea, and those of the relatively backward western
Christian states in Italy, southern France, and northern Spain, along
the northwestern shores of that same sea.
While we do not have the kind of observations just now suggested
from the year 1000, we do possess the writings of a European Jew
who traveled from west to east during the middle decades of the
twelfth century. This Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, did not attempt the
kind of assessments just now suggested. However, his travelogue –
generally rather dry and boring – does provide a first-hand sense of
the various areas of Jewish settlement he encountered.1
Benjamin made his way down the Ebro River from his home
town, reached the Mediterranean, visited some major Spanish port
cities, traversed much of southern France, and crossed over into Italy
and down the peninsula. Throughout this portion of his journey, he
encountered a variety of Jewish communities. The largest of these
numbered a few hundred souls or males or households.2 When Ben-
jamin reached the Byzantine Empire, he encountered much greater
urban enclaves and much larger Jewish communities. In Constantino-
ple, he found a city far exceeding in size, wealth, and culture anything
he had seen further west. The Jewish community numbered some
 Introduction 3
three thousand. Again, it is not clear whether this means souls, males,
or households. In any case, the Jewish community of Constantinople
was many times larger than any Benjamin had encountered in the
Roman Catholic sphere of southern Europe.
When Benjamin entered the realm of Islam, he was overwhelmed
by what he found. The city of Baghdad, then arguably the greatest city
in the Western world, captivated him. His description of the size and
splendor of the city reveals an utterly enthralled visitor. The Jewish
communities of the Islamic realm in general far surpassed in size and
strength those of the Roman Catholic world from which he came. In
Damascus, Benjamin found three thousand Jews; in Alexandria, seven
thousand Jews; in Baghdad, the staggering number of forty thousand
Jews.3 In Baghdad, according to Benjamin, there were twenty-eight
synagogues and a Jewish officialdom that enjoyed remarkable prestige
and respect in the caliph’s court. While Benjamin limits himself to
fairly specific and often pedestrian observations, his travelogue indi-
cates clearly an Islamic realm far superior to Byzantium and Roman
Catholic Europe, and Jewish communities that reflect the same order-
ing of size, strength, and creativity. Even though Benjamin traveled
at a time when the balance of power had already begun to shift, he
still found that the Jewries under Muslim domination were larger and
more fully developed than those under Christian control.
Pressed to predict what the future might hold, our hypothetical
observer in the year 1000 would have assumed that the known config-
uration of Jewish life would surely last into the indeterminate future.
In general, of course, most of us have great difficulty in imagining
radically altered circumstances. Such a lack of imagination would
have hardly been the only factor influencing our observer, how-
ever. For there was nothing in the year 1000 to suggest that radical
change was in the offing. The constellation of world power appeared
remarkably stable. Islam’s domination seemed to be challenged seri-
ously by no one, neither the Greek Christians of the eastern sectors
of the Mediterranean nor the Latin Christians of the western sectors
of Europe. Our observer of the year 1000 would surely have con-
cluded that the contemporary power structure was unlikely to shift
and that Jewish life would thus continue along the lines currently
discernible.
Benjamin, traveling and writing in the middle of the twelfth
century, had the benefit of a century and a half of change. By time he
made his journey, western Christian forces had driven the Muslims
0 150 300 450 km

0 150 300 miles

Only those political units

referred to in the text

R
E
have been labeled.

D
R
O

IC
LITHUANIA

N
O
T
U
TE
ENGLAND
GREAT
POLAND

LITTLE
GERMAN POLAND

BOHEMIA
MORAVIA

PRINCIPALITIES
AUSTRIA
FRANCE STYRIA
HUNGARY

N Y
S CO
A
G

NAVARRE
PAPAL

L
STATES
ON

GA
CASTILE G
A

TU
A

POR
F SICI LY
M O

GRANADA
DO

M E D I T
G

E R R
IN

A N
E K
A
N
S
E
A

Map 2 Europe, circa 1250

 Introduction 5
out of their Italian strongholds and had begun to push the Muslims
southward on the Iberian peninsula. Western Christian armies had
even managed to journey eastward and conquer portions of the Holy
Land, including the symbolically important city of Jerusalem. Yet it
is unlikely that even Benjamin could have envisioned the further
changes in the offing.
Were our hypothetical observer of the year 1000 in a position to
view world Jewry in the year 1250, halfway through our period, and
again in the year 1500, he would have been stunned by the changes.
While the Jewries of the Muslim world remained in place in the
years 1250 and 1500, they were well on their way to losing their
position of demographic and creative eminence. They were in the
process of being supplanted in their physical and cultural primacy
by the diverse Jewish communities of western Christendom. The
rise of Latin Christendom to its central role in the Western world,
achieved from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, brought
in its wake – not surprisingly – a parallel ascendancy of the Jewish
communities it harbored and attracted.
Periodically – but not all that often – new powers have erupted
from fringe areas and radically altered the power structure of the
Western world. Such an unanticipated eruption and restructuring
took place during the seventh century, when the forces of Islam
exploded unexpectedly out of the Arabian peninsula and over-
whelmed both the Neo-Persian and Byzantine empires. A more
recent example of this restructuring has involved the rise of the
United States to its central position in the West, in the process usurp-
ing the hegemony long associated with such European powers as
England, France, Germany, and Spain. It was between the eleventh
and the thirteenth centuries that these European powers – especially
England, France, and (Christian) Spain – emerged from their rel-
atively backward state and began to dominate the Western world.
The rapid and unexpected emergence of Roman Catholic western
Christendom transformed the West and, in the process, realigned
the pattern of world Jewish population, authority, and creativity that
had remained relatively static for almost a millennium and a half. As
a result of this seismic shift in the world power structure, the Jews
became and have remained a European and eventually North Atlantic
people.4
Herein lies the enormous significance of the period we shall
study for Jewish history. This era of roughly five hundred
6 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
years – approximately 1000 to 1500 – established an entirely new pat-
tern of Jewish settlement and civilization. The geographic lexicon of
the Jewish people had heretofore been almost entirely Near Eastern;
Jerusalem, Tiberias, Antioch, Damascus, Sura, Baghdad, Alexandria,
Cairo were dominant and resonant names. Now, new names came to
the fore – Mainz, Cologne, Paris, London, Toledo, Madrid, Cracow,
Warsaw, Vilna, and eventually New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles
as well. The earlier Semitic languages of the Jewish people – Hebrew,
Aramaic, Arabic – declined, to be replaced by the languages of the
West – German, French, Spanish, and English. Political ideas and ide-
als underwent radical alteration, as did cultural and religious norms
and aspirations. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of these
changes.
The relocation of the center of Jewish gravity from the Middle East
and North Africa to Europe involved, above all else, a new religious
and cultural ambiance. During the period under consideration, the
Jews established themselves firmly within the Christian orbit. To be
sure, the history of Christian–Jewish relations did not begin in the
year 1000. Christianity was, after all, born in the Jewish community
of Palestine. Fairly quickly, however, the religious vision centered
around the figure of Jesus of Nazareth won adherents beyond Pales-
tinian Jewry. The original leadership of the Jesus movement had been
entirely Jewish; as that movement evolved into Christianity, new and
gentile leadership came to the fore. The rapid spread of Christianity
took place outside of Palestine, across the length and breadth of the
Roman Empire, and involved a largely gentile population. Despite
its Jewish roots, Christianity established itself as a separate religious
faith, the patrimony of a set of non-Jewish peoples.
So long as the vast majority of Jews lived outside the orbit of
Christian power, the Jewish issue was muted for the Christian author-
ities. Church leaders, it is true, produced an extensive anti-Jewish
literature during the first Christian millennium. Much of that liter-
ature, however, was theoretical, focused on buttressing convictions
as to the rejection of Old Israel (the Jews) and the election of a
New Israel (the Christians). Genuine engagement with real Jews
was, however, limited. From the Jewish side, the lack of engage-
ment with Christianity is yet more marked. Up until the year 1000
and well beyond, we possess not one single anti-Christian work com-
posed by Jews living within western Christendom.5 Down through
the end of the first millennium, the Jews of the world, concentrated
 Introduction 7
in the realm of Islam, were hardly obsessed with Christianity and
Christians.6
With the displacement of the center of Jewish population to west-
ern Christendom, serious engagement from both sides had to begin.
Jews and Judaism penetrated the Christian consciousness in a far more
immediate way than heretofore. This meant the augmentation of anti-
Jewish argumentation, the adumbration of more extensive policies for
the Jewish minority living within western Christendom, the evolu-
tion (perhaps deterioration would be more accurate) of Christian
imagery of Jews, and the eruption of new forms of anti-Jewish ani-
mus and violence. For the Jewish minority, the changes were equally
momentous. Jewish life was now constrained by new policies and new
dangers; Jews were now regularly exposed to the blandishments of the
majority Christian religious faith; Jewish leaders had to learn more
about that majority faith and to fashion anti-Christian argumenta-
tion that would enable their Jewish followers to resist missionizing
pressures and remain loyal to Judaism.
The story of medieval Jewry in western Christendom constitutes a
critical element in the saga of the Jewish people; at the same time, this
story illuminates significant aspects of majority life in medieval west-
ern Christendom. As scholarly attention has shifted away from the
leadership groups on the medieval scene – popes, bishops, emperors,
kings, and dukes – toward a broader swath of humanity, awareness
has developed of the variegated nature of what once seemed a mono-
lithic society. The Jews have come to occupy a significant place in
recent study of medieval western Christendom. They provide an
intriguing litmus test for treatment of out-groups in an overwhelm-
ingly Christian society; they are especially valuable in that – unlike
most other out-groups – they have left a literature of their own, to
supplement the data available from the majority perspective.
Indeed, for most of the time period we shall be studying, and most
of the geographic areas under consideration, there was a very special
quality to the Jews as a minority presence in western Christendom.
Generally, the Jews constituted the only legitimate dissenting reli-
gious group in all of society.7 Minority status is never easy; to be the
only legitimate religious minority is even more precarious. Often,
as we shall see, the negative aspects of this minority status have been
highlighted, and there surely was much that was limiting and harmful.
At the same time, the successes of the venture should by no means
be overlooked. In many ways, the Christian majority – or at least
0 150 300 450 km

0 150 300 miles

Only those political units

referred to in the text
have been labeled.

L I T H U A N I A

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THE BOHEMIAN
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PRINCIPALITIES

BURGUNDY
H U N G A R Y
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SAVOY

NAVARRE
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ON

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A N SICILY
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Map 3 Europe, 1490

 Introduction 9
elements of it – and the Jewish minority cooperated effectively in
fostering Jewish presence and activity that proved of immediate and
long-term benefit to majority and minority alike.

The spatial boundaries of this study are easy to delineate and are
hardly controversial. The designation “western Christendom” points
to the distinction between the eastern and western areas of the Chris-
tian world, with the eastern centered in the imperial court at Con-
stantinople and the western centered in the papal court at Rome. On
another level, eastern Christendom was constructed around Greek
language and culture, while western Christendom was constructed
around Latin, its linguistic derivatives, and its culture. With the pas-
sage of time, these two segments of the Christian world pulled further
away from one another. This process of disengagement and differ-
entiation culminated in the bloody Fourth Crusade of 1204 and the
sacking by western Christian troops of the eastern Christian imperial
city of Constantinople.8
While there was considerable unity within western Christendom –
religious, cultural, and political – that unity should by no means be
overstated. This vast area harbored considerable differences as well.
The fault lines were both horizontal and vertical. Perhaps the most
significant fault line lay in the distinction between the Mediterranean
lands of southern Europe and the more remote lands of the north.
The Mediterranean lands of the south had been fully absorbed into
the Roman Empire and had been richly infused with Roman civiliza-
tion and culture. Remnants of Roman civilization and culture were
(and are) everywhere palpable across the southern tier of Europe. In
contrast, the lands of northern Europe had been only brushed by
the contact with Rome and had preserved much of their Germanic
heritage.9 In a general way, the southern sector of medieval western
Christendom was far more advanced in the year 1000 than were the
areas of the north. That situation, however, was to change rapidly
and dramatically.
The remarkable vitalization of western Christendom subsequent
to the year 1000 took place most markedly in the heretofore backward
north. By the year 1500, England and France had emerged as large
and powerful monarchies on the Western scene, contesting Spain for
preeminence. Indeed, part of the French kingdom’s success lay in its
absorption of previously independent southern territories into the
expanded royal domain, centered in the north. Paris and London
were the greatest cities of medieval western Christendom by the year
10 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
1500; strikingly, they had both been backward provincial towns five
hundred years earlier. There is perhaps no more eloquent testimony to
the centrality of northern Europe in the great awakening of medieval
western Christendom that took place between 1000 and 1500.10
There is a second major fault line as well, one that proceeds on
a vertical axis, and that is the distinction – particularly noteworthy
in the north – between western Europe, on the one hand, and cen-
tral and eastern Europe on the other. In the year 1000, the most
potent political authority in western Christendom seemed to be the
German emperor. Rooted in imperial lore and tradition, the German
throne seemed likely to remain the strongest political power among
the emerging states of western Christendom. Such was not, however,
to be the case. The far less imposing kings of France, England, and
Spain learned how to manipulate the feudal system to their advantage,
slowly converting local rule and royal prerogative into large, stable,
and increasingly puissant monarchies. Germany slipped far behind its
more westerly neighbors in economic development, political matu-
rity, and cultural creativity. Further east, at the fringe of medieval
western Christendom, such kingdoms as Hungary and Poland slowly
began to develop by the end of our period.
Finally, there is yet one more important geographic distinction,
involving interior areas of western Christendom and those exposed
to outside forces. On many levels, differences emerged between those
lands generally insulated from outside aggression and with a relatively
homogeneous population (in which Jews were prominent as the only
legitimate dissenters), on the one hand, and territories that bordered
on other realms and in which populations were heterogeneous, on
the other.11 The lands of the east – Italy in the south and Hungary and
Poland in the north – were very much exposed to external intrusion,
as was the Iberian peninsula in the southwest. There were salient
differences between exposed and interior areas in terms of majority
self-image and in terms of the populations with which the Christian
majority (even in a few instances the Christian ruling minority) had
to deal.
We shall have to be constantly aware of these important geographic
distinctions. They will play a key role in understanding the roots
of Jewish life in the south, the establishment of important Jewish
communities in the rapidly developing north, the banishment of these
new Jewish centers to the eastern peripheries of northern Europe
toward the end of our period, and the eventual disappearance of
 Introduction 11
almost all Jewish life from the western sectors of Europe by the year
1500. It is impossible to make the kind of generalizations necessary
in an overview such as this without occasionally slighting one or
another geographic sector of large and complex medieval western
Christendom. Ideally, there should be available more focused studies
of medieval Jewish life for each of the geographic regions included
in medieval western Christendom.12
While the geographic parameters of this study are fairly easy to
specify, the temporal boundaries are somewhat more difficult. The
designation “medieval” is fraught with problems. Medievals would
never of course have identified themselves as medievals; they very
much saw themselves as moderni, that is to say moderns, the lat-
est link in the chain of human history. The terms “Middle Ages”
and “medieval” came into being as the medieval synthesis began to
unravel; they were terms of opprobrium, used to highlight the alleged
backwardness and benightedness of the period that stretched from
late antiquity to the onset of the Renaissance. Generally, this nega-
tive sense of the Middle Ages focused on the purportedly suffocating
centrality of religion in every sphere of human endeavor. This cen-
trality of religion – monotheistic religion at that – contrasted with
the more open society of ancient Rome and with the more open
society that the men and women of the Renaissance hoped to create.
Out of this backlash the pejorative term “medieval” was fashioned.
In practical terms, how does this view of the Middle Ages trans-
late into tangible dating for the beginning and end of the medieval
period? This is an extremely difficult question to answer. Scholars
have differed regularly as to the onset and conclusion of the Middle
Ages. Happily, for our purposes, the debate over the beginnings of
the Middle Ages is irrelevant. As already noted, significant Jewish
presence in medieval western Christendom did not emerge until the
end of the first Christian millennium, the point in time when the
region began its long ascent toward dominance in the Western world.
Thus, whatever “medieval” might mean in the abstract, for this spe-
cific study of the Jews of medieval western Christendom it identifies
a period that begins around the year 1000.13
The end point for this study is more problematic. Once again,
there is considerable scholarly dispute as to marking the close of the
Middle Ages. Clearly, the Middle Ages ended at different points in
time in diverse sectors of western Christendom – generally earlier in
the western areas and later in the eastern areas. Since by the fourteenth
12 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
century the process of removal of the Jewish population to the eastern
edges of western Christendom was well under way, for the bulk
of European Jewry medieval conditions ended quite late. For the
purposes of this study, however, the adjective “medieval” will be
attached to western Christendom, not to the Jews. This will be a
history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom, rather than a
history of medieval Jewish circumstances in western Christendom.
As the medieval synthesis began to disintegrate, toward the close
of the fifteenth century, our story will conclude, even though Jews
continued to live under medieval conditions for centuries to come
in the northeastern areas of Europe.
The divergences within the Jewish communities of medieval west-
ern Christendom make the terminal date of 1500 sometimes irrele-
vant, sometimes inappropriate, and in one major case highly appro-
priate. The year 1500 is obviously irrelevant to English Jewry, whose
history came to a close in 1290, and to French Jewry, whose cre-
ative history ended in 1306. It means little for the history of German
and eastern European Jewish history. The year 1500 is actually prob-
lematic for the history of Italian Jewry, for which most historians
see the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a unified epoch.14 1500
is of course highly appropriate for Iberian Jewry, given the expul-
sion from Aragon and Castile in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
Again, the date has been chosen out of consideration of the Chris-
tian majority, rather than any special sector of the diversified Jewish
minority.
Thus, the temporal boundaries of this study will be the years 1000
and 1500. During this five-hundred-year period, the old Jewish com-
munities of the south expanded markedly and a new set of Jewish
communities was created in the north; both sets of Jewish communi-
ties developed through the thirteenth century with measures of suc-
cess and failure; they disintegrated subsequently in the more advanced
areas of western Europe and were reconstituted on the eastern periph-
eries of western Christendom, especially in the north. Despite all the
shortcomings and failures, the bulk of world Jewry made its transition
into the rapidly developing Christian orbit, a change that would not
be undone down to the present.
In some ways, the shortest word in my title – “of” – has pre-
sented the most difficulties. I vacillated regularly between The Jews in
Medieval Western Christendom and The Jews of Medieval Western Chris-
tendom. The first title suggests the relative isolation of the Jews whom
we shall be studying; the second integrates them somewhat into their
 Introduction 13
European ambience. I ultimately opted for the latter title, out of the
strong conviction that medieval Europe was far more than simply
a terrain on which Jewish life unfolded. Problems aside – and they
were manifold – the Jews upon whom we shall focus were very much
a part of the medieval European scene. They spoke the language of
their land; they were integrated into the economic and political struc-
tures of their societies; their cultural and religious lives were deeply
affected by their environment; they influenced – for good and ill –
the majority ambience within which they found themselves.15

Reconstructions of the past are ultimately determined by the source

materials bequeathed to posterity. Where the data are rich, the recon-
structions can be dense and nuanced; where the data are thin, so too
must be the historical account. To what extent are sources available
for reconstructing the story of the Jews of western Christendom from
1000 to 1500? How fortunate or unfortunate are we with regard to
the evidence? The simple answer is that we are moderately fortunate.
The data are far richer than those available for the first half of the Mid-
dle Ages; they are, at the same time, far poorer than those available
for reconstructing the experience of modern Jewish communities.
Not surprisingly, availability of source materials for reconstructing
the history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom is much
influenced by the temporal and geographical distinctions just now
drawn.
During the period between 1000 and 1500, as the various sectors of
medieval western Christendom and their Jewries matured, increasing
quantities of source material were compiled and maintained. As we
approach the close of this period, the sources – at least in certain parts
of western Christendom – become truly copious and diversified. As
the same time, the geographic distinctions just noted played a sig-
nificant role. The southern and northwestern sectors of Europe, for
example Italy, Spain, southern France, England, and northern France,
provide extremely rich documentation; the north-central and north-
easterly areas, for example Germany, Hungary, and Poland, provide
far less. The removal of Jews from the more advanced areas of west-
ern Christendom has deprived us of considerable data; the Jews, as
noted, relocated in those areas where documentation remains sparse.
Thus, we are differentially provided with data. For some periods and
places, the data are rich; for others, they are poor.
Since the focus of this study is the interrelated activities of majority
and minority in fostering Jewish presence and creativity in medieval
14 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
western Christendom, we shall necessarily depend on the evidence
provided by both the Christian majority and the Jewish minority.
With regard to the former, one of the most important developments
of our period was the maturation of authority, both religious and
temporal. A critical element in this maturation was the creation of
stable institutions and reliable record keeping.
The first truly potent institution to emerge in medieval western
Christendom was the papacy. The papal court quickly developed all
the appurtenances of power, including scrupulous record keeping.
Papal documentation grew exponentially from the twelfth century
on. While Jews constituted a fairly minor element within the com-
plex of Church priorities, they were important enough to generate
thousands of papal documents and conciliar decrees. This rich docu-
mentation was among the first bodies of non-Jewish source material
to be exploited for reconstructing the history of medieval Jewry.16
The pioneering secular authority in record keeping was Angevin
England, beginning in the latter decades of the twelfth century. The
records of the Angevin monarchy are extremely rich, and data con-
cerning the Jews are copious. Indeed, no one has been yet able to con-
trol this vast documentation. At the same time that the royal records
were multiplying at an astonishing rate, so too were the archives of
the various ecclesiastical institutions of England. An increasingly large
number of literary sources – histories, poetry, early theater pieces –
were produced and preserved as well. Thus the relatively small English
Jewish community is documented with a richness nowhere else
available for medieval western Christendom at this early point in
time.17
The French monarchy matured slightly more slowly than its
English rival, and the same is true for its archives as well. Since the
Jews were expelled from France at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the explosion of royal documentation that began during the
thirteenth century does not fully illuminate the medieval experience
of French Jews. At the same time, the rich local court and notar-
ial records of southern France have preserved valuable evidence of
Jewish life and activity. An increasing volume of Christian literary
evidence also began to accumulate prior to the expulsion.
The kingdoms of medieval Spain were yet slower to develop the
institutional and archival maturity of England, but eventually they
did. Since medieval Spanish Jewry far outlasted its English counter-
part, by time we reach the latter decades of the thirteenth century
 Introduction 15
and on into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Spanish records
become increasingly voluminous.18 Much interesting research is cur-
rently being done on the Jews of Spain, based on the available doc-
umentary evidence.19 Once more, literary evidence grew at a rapid
pace as well. Both historical accounts and belle-lettristic composi-
tions serve to round out the evidentiary base for reconstructing the
history of the Jews of medieval Spain.
For Italy, the proliferation of principalities and the longevity of the
Jewish communities have resulted in extensive archival deposits. A
voluminous set of documents has been published over the past few
decades, providing a rich evidentiary base for the reconstruction of
Jewish life all across the peninsula, at least for the latter centuries of
our period.20 The process of working through these materials and
integrating them into a synthetic view of the Jewish experience in
medieval Italy has proven most difficult. In the north-central and
northeastern areas of Europe – Germany, Hungary, and Poland – the
volume of non-Jewish source materials diminishes.
There are, unfortunately, almost no Jewish documentary materials
available from our period. Record keeping within the Jewish com-
munities of medieval western Christendom may well have begun
during our period; however, the upheavals occasioned by expulsion
resulted in the destruction of most of the documentary evidence cre-
ated by the Jews of medieval western Christendom. Thus, our major
Jewish sources are literary compositions of one or another kind.
Most valuable for our purposes are historical narratives. Medieval
Jews – in western Christendom and elsewhere – were not deeply
drawn to the writing of broad histories, as were their Christian neigh-
bors. Recurrently, however, unusual events moved Jewish observers
to record what they had seen or heard, sometimes in order to warn
contemporaries against danger, sometimes in order to memorialize
fallen heroes, sometimes in order to lodge a plea before the divine
audience, and sometimes in order to engage difficult questions asso-
ciated with Jewish suffering. The resultant narrative records, sparse
though they are, provide invaluable evidence of the minority perspec-
tive on important developments on the medieval scene. The related
literary genre of poetry, especially liturgical poetry, provides similar
evidence of important developments, although generally providing
less in the way of specific detail.21
A genre that became increasingly popular with the passage of
time was polemical literature, which constituted a Jewish response
16 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
to enhanced Christian proselytizing. While there is an element of
the timeless – and often an element of the tedious – in polemi-
cal literature, in many instances these compositions provide valuable
evidence of accelerating religious pressure exerted by the majority
on the minority and of creative minority response.22
The literary genres most favored by the Jews of medieval western
Christendom revolved around what the Jews viewed as their two rev-
elations, which they designated their Written Torah, i.e. the Hebrew
Bible, and their Oral Torah, i.e. the classics of rabbinic teachings. Bib-
lical and talmudic commentaries and codes of Jewish law, which are
central to an understanding of Jewish cultural and intellectual activ-
ity, generally shed minimal light on the quotidian lives of the Jews of
medieval western Christendom. The one popular genre of rabbinic
law that does provide considerable insight into everyday Jewish life is
the rabbinic responsum. Beginning with a query, normally generated
by a real-life situation, the medieval responsa literature reveals much
about the interactions between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors,
as well as much about internal interactions within the Jewish commu-
nity. As was true for the non-Jewish materials, so too the Jewish evi-
dence is spotty, occasionally extremely rich and sometimes quite poor.

Specific data – sometimes rich and sometimes sparse – provide the

underpinning for modern historical reconstructions. In approaching
this particular historical reconstruction, the first important decision
I had to make involved the alternative paths of narrative versus topi-
cal organization, each with advantages and disadvantages. Given the
remarkable changes in Jewish fate from the year 1000 to 1500, my
decision has been – probably not surprisingly – for narrative recon-
struction. This option enables fullest focus on the evolution of the
Jewish communities of medieval Latin Christendom. The major dis-
advantage of this choice is the loss of social history. Topics such as
religious practice and the role of family and women do not lend
themselves well to the basic narrative format I have utilized.
Having opted for a basically narrative approach, I quickly con-
cluded that the complex nature of medieval western Christendom
and its Jewish communities precluded a single narrative treatment.
The Jewries of medieval Latin Christendom were simply too diver-
gent one from another to allow for one encompassing narrative. Thus,
the narrative account of Jewish fate in medieval western Christendom
has been divided into four chapters – the first treating the one major
 Introduction 17
pan-European institution, that is the Roman Catholic Church; the
second describing the older Jewish communities of southern Europe;
the third focused on the new Jewish communities of the northwest,
i.e. northern France and England; and the fourth portraying the Jew-
ish communities of north-central and northeastern Europe, i.e. the
German lands, Hungary, and Poland.23 These four narrative chapters
will then be followed by a chapter that attempts to draw together
the material aspects – positive and negative – of medieval European
Jewish experience and a second chapter that attempts to make sense
of the Jewish spiritual and intellectual experience.24
The efflorescence of studies in medieval Jewish history has been
noted, and it has raised a number of important issues, two of which
deserve to be addressed. In the first place, as the parameters of interest
in medieval western Christendom have expanded, and as the Jews,
along with other marginal groups, have become increasingly a focus
of interest, the circle of those reconstructing the medieval Jewish
experience has – happily – expanded. In addition to the more tra-
ditional group of historians whose training and central interest has
been in the Jewish past, a growing number of general medievalists
have devoted themselves to projects involving the Jews of medieval
western Christendom.25 This development has contributed richly to
our expanding knowledge of the Jews of medieval Europe. On occa-
sion, there has seemed to be a tension between treatment of the Jews
within the context of overall Jewish history and acknowledgement
of the embeddedness of these Jews in their medieval milieu.26 The
stance of this study will be that neither context can be dismissed;
in fact, the combination is what shaped the fate of the Jews of
medieval western Christendom. For this reason, the book will insist
on acknowledgement of both the diachronic and the synchronic
aspects of the Jewish experience, that is to say the Jewish experi-
ence as shaped to an extent by the overall trajectory of the Jewish
past and the Jewish experience as shaped by the specific contours
of one or another area of Europe. The book thus begins with dis-
cussion of the legacies imposed upon and introduced by the Jews
of medieval Latin Christendom prior to indicating how these lega-
cies were preserved and altered in the new European contexts. The
dual focus on the diachronic and synchronic will be maintained
throughout.
The expanded perspectives brought to the study of medieval his-
tory in general and medieval Jewish history in particular raise yet
18 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
another important issue. As noted, attention has moved from the
leadership groups on the medieval scene – both lay and ecclesiastical –
to the more nuanced sense of medieval society as composed of numer-
ous elements and classes, each of which must be understood in its own
terms to the extent possible. The lively new interest in the Jews of
medieval western Christendom in fact flows from this new and more
open stance on the part of scholars. However, in writing a composite
history of the Jews of medieval western Christendom, I have found
myself forced to make some assessments I would have preferred not
to make, to highlight certain issues and to submerge others. In effect,
I have had to move in the direction of identifying “major” facets of
medieval Jewish experience. I have found this necessity distasteful,
but unavoidable.
Opting for a basically narrative structure necessitates some cen-
tral image or set of images, often called a meta-narrative or a master
narrative. While regularly lamented, this imagery is in fact indis-
pensable. Data must be organized in some coherent fashion, and the
master narrative affords this coherence. To be sure, the data and the
imagery must ultimately reinforce one another. Radical disjuncture
between the data and the master narrative suggests that the latter is
inappropriate.
Quite often, master narratives turn out to be quite judgmental,
in effect to reflect one or another ideological predisposition. The
history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom has conjured
up much negative imagery among the descendants of these Jews. For
subsequent Jewish memory, the Jewish experience in medieval Latin
Christendom has been synonymous with persecution and violence;
it has meant bloody crusading assaults, anti-Jewish slanders and the
popular attacks they spawned, the dreaded inquisition and the pain it
inflicted. These memories have been deeply embedded in the ritual
and liturgy of medieval and modern Jews.27 While persecution and
suffering have been projected as leitmotifs of the two-thousand-year
experience of Jewry in exile, an overwhelming majority of the catas-
trophes memorialized in post-exilic Jewish ritual and liturgy derive
from experience under medieval Christian rule.
As noted and analyzed by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, history writ-
ing was undertaken only fitfully by medieval and early modern
Jews. That limited body of historical writing very much reinforced
the popular perception of medieval Christian persecution and Jew-
ish suffering.28 When fuller integration into historically conscious
 Introduction 19
nineteenth-century European society stimulated the onset of modern
history writing within the Jewish world, the prior memory patterns
created the framework through which historical data were inter-
preted. For the first great historian of the Jews, Heinrich Graetz,
the dominant patterns of pre-modern Jewish history were suffering
inflicted by the outside – preeminently Christian – world and heroic
Jewish commitment to life of the intellect through which the suf-
fering was transcended. When Graetz’s romantic and intellectually
oriented framework was challenged by a newer nationalist and more
specifically Zionist historiography, the emphasis on persecution and
suffering was yet more pronounced, with the Jewish experience in
medieval Latin Christendom once again highlighted, without the
redeeming creativity suggested by Graetz.
Majority Christian perceptions of the Jewish experience in
medieval western Christendom have been similarly simplistic and
one-sided. While this experience looms very large in Jewish memory,
its impact is considerably reduced in Christian memory. The little rec-
ollection that remains is, once again, highly negative, although with
an opposing valence. For Christians, the folk recollections involved
Jewish hostility, which took a number of forms, including political
treachery, for example bringing the Muslims onto the Iberian penin-
sula during the eighth century; vicious anti-Christian rage, which
led Jews to murder; and the harm inflicted by Jewish moneylenders
and moneylending. For Christian memory, there was no counterpart
to Graetz’s insistence on Jewish creativity; there was no awareness of
the Jews as involved in anything other than relating negatively to the
Christian majority.
General medieval historiography has likewise been affected by
much ideological prejudgment, both negative and positive. As noted,
the very terms “Middle Ages” and “medieval” reflect damning indict-
ments made by Renaissance thinkers, determined to forge a new
European civilization. For the men and women of the Enlighten-
ment, the Middle Ages constituted a deplorable interlude in Euro-
pean history. Not surprisingly, rejection of these negative perspectives
resulted in the creation of a highly romanticized view of medieval
Latin Christendom, a world viewed in this camp as rich in ideals and
meaningful achievements, enlivened by a great Church and chival-
ric commitments, achieving heights of human creativity. Again, the
relation of these views of the Middle Ages to important assessments
of nineteenth- and twentieth-century realities and issues is patent.
20 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
Recent historiography – both Jewish and general – has moved
in new and different directions. Historians of the Jews have come
to see their Jewish subjects in all periods as living within majority
environments that challenged them in multifarious ways – not only
through persecution and violence – and that stimulated the Jewish
minority to wide-ranging creativity. For the study of Jewish life in
medieval western Christendom, this has meant a decided movement
away from the folk and earlier historiographic emphasis on suffer-
ing and toward a fuller appreciation of the many dimensions – both
positive and negative – of the Jewish experience in medieval Europe.
At the same time, as the study of medieval western Christendom
in general has abandoned its earlier focus on the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities, the tendency toward the judgmental has dimin-
ished markedly, replaced by a desire to understand the complexities
of medieval European society and life.
The present account of the Jews in medieval western Christendom
is very much anchored in the new tendencies discernible among his-
torians of the Jews and historians of medieval Europe. It begins by
rejecting the sense of the medieval Jewish experience as consisting
essentially of suffering. To the contrary, one of the most striking
aspects of the Jewish experience in medieval western Christendom
involves the growing number of Jews who became part of the Chris-
tian ambience. To be sure, some of these Jews came into Christendom
involuntarily via conquest; others, however, made a conscious deci-
sion to leave the Muslim world and to immigrate into Christendom,
which suggests positive imagery of Christian society on the part of
such Jews. Even those Jews who passed into Christian territory via
conquest still had the option of leaving and generally chose not to
exercise that option. Perhaps more strikingly yet, as the situation of
the Jews in medieval western Christendom deteriorated, the over-
whelming majority of these Jews opted to stay within their Christian
ambience, rather than abandon it.
The changing material fortunes of the Jews in medieval western
Christendom will be tracked carefully, with no sense that Jewish fate
was preordained from the outset. There were positive factors working
on Jewish fate and negative factors as well. Both sides of the story will
be presented. There was certainly enough of the positive to encourage
considerable voluntary Jewish migration into medieval Latin Chris-
tendom and to maintain the desire of most Jews to remain with its
confines. The decline of Jewish life is palpable as we move into the
 Introduction 21
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and that decline will necessitate
considerable description and analysis. There is, however, no intention
to project a teleological vision of Jewish history in medieval western
Christendom, a sense that Jewish life was doomed in this environ-
ment from the outset. Put differently, the Jews who made their way
into medieval western Christendom and elected to stay there will not
be treated in this book as myopic, unaware that there was no hope for
a Jewish future in Christian Europe. They will, rather, be projected as
vigorous and adventuresome pioneers, willing to tie their fate to the
most rapidly developing sector of the Western world. In the process,
these pioneering Jews achieved much and lost much, but such is the
way of the world.
The interactions of Christian majority and Jewish minority will
by no means be limited to the material realms of demography, eco-
nomics, and politics. Medieval western Christendom was alive with
intellectual and spiritual vigor. The Jews of medieval western Chris-
tendom were challenged by this dynamic environment, both directly
and indirectly. Directly, the Christian majority became increasingly
committed to a program of conversion. Occasionally, these efforts
were carried out violently, in contravention of ecclesiastical teach-
ings. More often, the modalities of convincing the Jews were peace-
ful and ecclesiastically legitimate, ranging from informal suasion to
formal preaching and disputation. Whatever the modality of persua-
sion, Jewish leadership was called upon to identify salient differences
between the two faiths, emphasizing of course Jewish strengths and
Christian shortcomings. Less directly, the sheer vigor and dynamism
of the Christian majority stimulated enhanced creativity among the
Jewish minority. Living in a dynamic majority, even an often hostile
dynamic majority, moved the Jews of medieval western Christendom
to a rich creativity of their own. The Jewish creativity celebrated by
Heinrich Graetz was not unrelated to the Christian environment that
he decried.
Finally, it must be acknowledged that focusing on the Jews and the
effort – in part Jewish and in part non-Jewish – to establish viable
Jewish life in medieval western Christendom has meant projecting
developments, to a significant extent, from an essentially Jewish per-
spective. History generally involves conflict of one sort or another,
and historical accounts are always written from a particular point of
view. The War of American Independence reads differently from an
American perspective than it does from a British perspective. The
22 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
conquest of the American West is perceived differently by the victo-
rious settler population than by the native American victims of that
conquest. Telling the story of the medieval Jews from an essentially
Jewish perspective means, for example, seeing Jewish resistance to
Christian missionizing as a success, although the same development
was perceived by ecclesiastical leadership as a failure on its part and
on the part of the Jews as well. Likewise, the expulsions from the
westerly sectors of Latin Christendom will be portrayed from a Jew-
ish perspective, that is to say as a negative outcome. To be sure, there
were many in western Christendom for whom expulsion of the Jews
was a signal victory. The present account will not be framed from
their perspective.
The story that will unfold herein is a complex amalgam of successes
and failures, on the part of both the Christian majority and the Jewish
minority of medieval western Christendom. It involves the best and
worst of human characteristics; it is filled with contingencies at every
point; it has no plot resolution, either happy or sad; it concludes
open-ended, with benefits and liabilities extending far beyond the
year 1500, indeed down into our own times. Those seeking a clear-
cut and obvious moral to this tale will be disappointed. Hopefully,
the complex saga of the Jews in medieval western Christendom –
not at all reducible into simple conclusions and lessons – will provide
useful insights into the Jewish, Christian, and human conditions.
 1
P R I O R L E G AC I E S

Jews were settled in medieval western Christendom prior to the year

1000, although in relatively small numbers. Those early Jews left
almost no evidence of their existence to posterity.1 They seem to
have exerted little impact on the larger number of Jews who came
to populate a rapidly changing western Christendom subsequent to
the year 1000. We find very few references in that later period to
precedents from earlier Jewish life in Europe.
This is not to say that, as Jewish numbers expanded in medieval
western Christendom, these later Jews and their Christian neighbors
were unaffected by pre-existent legacies and innovated freely with
respect to Jewish circumstances. To the contrary, Jewish life, as it
expanded all across medieval western Christendom from south to
north, was deeply affected by inherited structures and attitudes. By
the year 1000, Jews across the globe had evolved a rich social and intel-
lectual framework for living as a creative minority within monothe-
istic majority societies. At the same time, the Christian majority was
heir to a set of complex and ambivalent policies toward and percep-
tions of Judaism and the Jews. Surprisingly, perhaps, we must begin
with the prior legacy of Islam and its stances toward Jews living
under its rule. Since so many of the Jews who were absorbed into
medieval western Christendom after the year 1000 came – involun-
tarily (through Christian conquest) or voluntarily (through immigra-
tion) – from the Muslim sphere, their circumstances and expectations
played a significant role in the Jewish experience in medieval western
Christendom.
24 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom

th e mu sl i m le gac y
While it may seem somewhat strange to begin with the Muslim
legacy as part of the necessary backdrop to this study of Jewish life in
medieval western Christendom, there are a number of justifications
for so doing. First of all, prior to the year 1000, the bulk of world-
wide Jewry – as we have seen – was to be found within the Muslim
sphere. This meant that the Muslim world had enjoyed far greater
contact with a Jewish minority than had western Christendom and
had, as a result, developed far fuller policies for dealing with toler-
ated minority communities in general and with the Jews in partic-
ular. The Jews absorbed into medieval western Christendom from
the year 1000 onwards had their expectations fashioned in no small
measure from their prior experience in the Islamic world. Equally
important, the Jews absorbed into medieval western Christendom
were deeply steeped in the vibrant culture of the medieval Muslim
world and brought much of that culture with them into their new
Christian environment. Finally, the situation of the Jews in the Mus-
lim sphere will recurrently offer enlightening contrasts with Jewish
life in medieval western Christendom.2
Islam emerged onto the world scene very much in the mold of
biblical Israel, as a political and religious unity. In utterly unexpected
fashion, the Muslim armies broke out of the Arabian peninsula and
conquered in almost every direction, creating one of the Western
world’s great empires in the process. The populations subjugated
by the Muslim armies were vast and heterogeneous. The victori-
ous Islamic authorities divided the non-Muslim subject population
into two camps, that of the polytheists who had no intrinsic rights
and that of the monotheistic precursors of Islam, meaning essentially
Jews and Christians. This latter group did have a set of basic rights, to
be enjoyed in quid pro quo fashion. Jews and Christians were entitled
to physical security and the right to observe their own traditions, in
return for political loyalty to the Muslim regime, tax revenues, and
acknowledgement through a set of stipulated limitations of a status
inferior to that of what ultimately became an Islamic majority.
The guarantees of physical and spiritual security were by and large
maintained throughout the early centuries of the Middle Ages. There
are few recorded instances of Muslim infringement on these rights
during this period. In return, the Jews did prove loyal to their Muslims
rulers and did produce the obligatory tax revenues. The demand for
 Prior legacies 25
inferior Jewish status had a checkered history. To an extent, it was
maintained; to an extent, it was neglected. Jews recurrently evaded
the restrictions supposedly incumbent upon them and rose to heights
of wealth, social standing, and political power. One of the areas in
which the restrictions were most regularly evaded and in which Jews
frequently achieved wealth and power was the Iberian peninsula,
where eventual Christian conquest was to bring into the Christian
orbit large numbers of Jews accustomed to considerable latitude in
lifestyle.
As we shall see, Jews in post-1000 Christendom were subjected
to more or less the same set of theoretical policies. The differences,
however, are instructive. As Islam developed, Jews were only one
of its monotheistic precursors; fundamental Christian stances toward
the Jews were formed at a point when Jews were the sole monothe-
istic precursor community, making the Christian–Jewish relationship
much more focused and intense. Whereas Islam saw itself simply as the
third and final of the monotheistic revelations, the Christian relation-
ship to Judaism and the Jews was – as we shall shortly see – much more
involved, convoluted, and emotionally charged.3 Moreover, the pop-
ulation of the medieval Muslim world was far more heterogeneous
than its Christian counterpart; this heterogeneity again provided an
ease and latitude by and large missing in western Christendom.
Westerners today often fail to appreciate the extent to which the
Islamic world far outstripped its Christian counterparts through the
first half of the Middle Ages. We have earlier utilized the Jewish
traveler Benjamin of Tudela to convey some sense of this imbalance,
which was military, economic, technological, and cultural. The last is
especially important for our purposes. The Jews living in the vibrant
Muslim sphere were thoroughly conversant with majority culture.
They, like medieval Jews in general, spoke the language of their
environment, which in this case was Arabic. Since Arabic was the
written language as well, Jews had entrée into the dominant high cul-
ture and were creatively challenged by it. The Jews immigrating into
medieval western Christendom brought with them the high culture
of the Islamic world, which constituted simultaneously a challenge
to Jewish identity and a stimulus to Jewish creativity.
The institutional framework for maintaining Jewish life as a minor-
ity community in the medieval Muslim world was fully developed.
Alongside a rich complex of local institutions, there existed a set
of centralized institutions that claimed roots well back in antiquity.
26 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
The exilarchate housed in Baghdad claimed direct descent from the
Davidic dynasty; the great academies likewise housed in Baghdad
could be traced back into the period of the evolution of the
Babylonian Talmud. The antiquity and central authority of these
institutions contrasts strikingly with the sense of newness and limited
authority of the Jewish institutions of medieval western Christendom.
The creativity of the Muslim environment and its Jewish minority
resulted in considerable augmentation of an evolving Jewish cultural
legacy. The traditional areas of Jewish study, focused around the Bible
and the Babylonian Talmud, were much enhanced. In biblical stud-
ies, a new emphasis on lexical and grammatical accuracy emerged; in
rabbinic studies, the first efforts to examine closely and mine the rich
and diffuse talmudic corpus are discernible. In addition, new avenues
of cultural creativity developed. The most prominent of these innova-
tive areas were theological and philosophical speculation and secular
poetry. In both instances, the broad and stimulating environment
encouraged the Jewish minority to experiment with new forms and
ideas. Quickly, these Jews made the new cultural outlets their own.
To be sure, such innovation inevitably raised hackles in some sectors
of the Jewish community. Conflict around the new creativity was
inevitable and quickly materialized.
While Jewish identity in the medieval Muslim world was not
directly challenged by a majority propensity toward missionizing,
Islam was successful nonetheless in attracting polytheists, Jews, and
Christians to its ranks. Precisely how deeply these conversions cut
into the Jewish community is not clear. In any case, the conversions
were not the result of concentrated Muslim efforts to reach out to the
other monotheistic communities. There were no identifiable struc-
tures for regularly engaging Jews and Christians with Islamic truth,
and there is relatively little in the way of Muslim anti-Jewish and anti-
Christian polemical literature. As a result, there is likewise relatively
little in the way of an anti-Islamic polemical literature created by the
Jews, since there was no genuine defensive need for such a literature.
The greatest challenge to Jewish belief and identity emanated from
the philosophic inclinations of the period. Medieval Islamic culture
engaged profoundly the riches of Greco-Roman civilization, pre-
served much of that civilization through extensive translation, and
expanded the Greco-Roman legacy in its own terms. Many of the
foundations of Greco-Roman thought were inimical to monotheis-
tic principles, challenging simultaneously traditional Islam, Judaism,
 Prior legacies 27
and Christianity. The best minds of the period – Muslim, Jewish,
and Christian – were absorbed by the effort to mediate between their
received religious traditions and the impressive philosophic legacy of
Greece and Rome.
Jews lived all across the medieval Muslim world, from the great
centers of the Middle East across North Africa and over onto the
Iberian peninsula. People and ideas passed freely from east to west
and back. The large Jewish communities of North Africa and espe-
cially the Jewish settlements of the Islamic Iberian peninsula con-
stituted a considerable reservoir of new Jewish recruits to medieval
western Christendom. In some instances – particularly in the Iberian
peninsula – the transition was involuntary, as Christian armies added
ever larger portions of Spain to the realm of Christianity. In other
instances, movement from the Islamic sphere to western Christendom
represented a conscious choice on the part of Jews attracted by
the dynamic development of western Christendom. In both cases,
the Jewish communities of western Christendom were demograph-
ically and culturally strengthened by the flow of immigrants. The
enlarged Jewish population heightened Christian sensitivity to the
Jewish minority, reinforcing traditional concerns and creating new
anxieties. These Jews who had now become, in one way or another,
part of western Christendom brought with them expectations of the
ruling majority, patterns of minority existence, and a richly developed
cultural legacy.

th e c h ri st i an le gac y
Awareness of the Islamic legacy provides us, on the one hand, with an
understanding of the backdrop for Jewish life in post-1000 western
Christendom, since so many of the immigrants came from the Mus-
lim sphere and brought with them political and social expectations
and a rich cultural legacy. At the same time, awareness of the Islamic
stance toward Judaism and the Jews affords us a number of extremely
useful contrasts, which serve to highlight the special tensions that
shaped Jewish experience in the Christian orbit; this awareness indi-
cates how unusual Christian–Jewish relations have been over the ages,
how complex the stances with which Christianity has encountered
its Jewish rival.
Two contrasts are especially helpful. The first involves the early
development of the two faiths and their accession to power. As noted,
28 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
Islam emerged from its earliest days – like biblical Israel – as a religious
polity, with a conviction that the political and religious spheres of life
were unified. Islamic tradition projected Muhammed as a prophetic
communal leader and ruler, along the lines of the Israelite Moses.
Muhammed both brought laws and led the way toward their imple-
mentation. He was also a military conqueror, in this sense combining
the roles of both Moses and Joshua in Israelite history. By contrast,
the founding figure in Christianity, Jesus, exercised no worldly power,
sending forth his disciples on a distinctly religious mission of teach-
ing new truth to the world. It was only centuries later, at a point
when Christian missionizing had been highly successful and an effec-
tive ecclesiastical hierarchy had been fashioned, that power over the
political apparatus of the pre-existent Roman Empire was achieved.
For the history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom, this
contrast had potent implications. It meant that the Jews in Christen-
dom found themselves in an environment pervaded by the notion of
both ecclesiastical and temporal leadership. To an extent, this bifur-
cated authority held out benefits to the Jewish minority; it allowed
for the playing off of one leadership cohort against the other. At the
same time, the bifurcated authority was in some respects harmful,
in that it accorded considerable power to an ecclesiastical leadership
group that could afford to be relatively unconcerned with tempo-
ral gain and loss. In any case, bifurcated authority was a reality with
which the Jews of medieval western Christendom regularly had to
contend.
Far more important for Jewish fate was the importance of prose-
lytizing in the Christian scheme of things. A faith that had come to
power through religious suasion could never forget the importance
of that suasion. There were of course periods in which the mission-
izing impulse was relatively dormant; it could never, however, be
neglected in the long term. The extent to which Jews might become
the objects of missionizing involved complex and contradictory con-
siderations. There were good reasons to make the Jews secondary,
given for example their relatively small numbers and long record of
resistance. As we shall see, there were equally compelling reasons to
make missionizing among the Jews a very high priority.
A second contrast between Islam and Christianity has to do with
their relationships to Judaism and is – from the Jewish perspective – yet
more significant. Islam developed on the Arabian peninsula among a
new human community of believers. It quite simply proclaimed itself
 Prior legacies 29
an innovative religious vision. Fully aware of the prior monotheistic
traditions of Judaism and Christianity, Islam venerated these prior
traditions to an extent, but proclaimed its supersession of both. The
break was clean – a new place, a new people, a new revelation,
and a new corpus of authoritative Scripture. By contrast, Chris-
tianity emerged out of a geographic and physical Jewish matrix and
developed an extremely complex and tormented relationship to that
matrix. The complexities of that relationship form the most critical
element for the evolution of Jewish life in medieval western Christen-
dom. For centuries, the complex Christian–Jewish relationship was
central to Christian thinking only in theoretical terms and exerted lit-
tle impact on Jews, who were concentrated in the Muslim realm. The
augmented Jewish presence in the western Christian world made this
complex relationship far more important than it had previously been
to the Christian majority, crucial to the fate of the Jewish minor-
ity, and critical to our understanding of the history of the Jews in
medieval western Christendom.4
Because of the very special circumstances of its early history, Chris-
tianity has had a complicated and ambivalent relationship toward the
Jewish matrix out of which it was spawned. This complicated and
ambivalent relationship includes elements of deepest respect and – at
the same time – elements of deepest hostility. For Christians, Jews
have been viewed, over the ages, as the very noblest of humanity
in some senses, while being perceived in other respects as the very
worst of the human species. This ambiguous and ambivalent Chris-
tian relationship with Judaism and the Jews set the terms for Jewish
life throughout medieval western Christendom and demands expli-
cation as the critical element in the pre-1000 legacy that would affect
subsequent Jewish life in medieval western Christendom.5
In order to gain some sense of this complexity and ambivalence, we
must briefly trace broad lines of early Christian history (which cre-
ated the complexity and ambivalence), identify the apologetic stance
developed by Christians to differentiate themselves from Judaism and
Jews, examine the ecclesiastical doctrine and policies established at
the point in time that Christians ascended to power in the Roman
world, and conclude by ascertaining the major elements in Christian
imagery of Judaism and the Jews. Superficially, it was the doctrine and
policies of Christianity – more specifically the doctrine and policies
of the Roman Catholic Church – that overtly affected the Jews of
medieval western Christendom. At a less obvious, but even deeper
30 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
level, Jewish life in medieval western Christendom was shaped by
the imagery that everyday Christians bore of their Jewish neighbors.
Christian policy toward and imagery of Judaism and the Jews set the
stage for Jewish life in medieval western Christendom.
Our initial focus on pre-1000 Christian doctrine, policy, and
imagery should by no means be taken to imply that they were destined
to remain static during the period between 1000 and 1500. Religious
thinking is generally characterized by organic growth and develop-
ment. One of the critical elements in declining Jewish circumstances –
as we shall see – was a hardening of ecclesiastical policy toward the
Jews and a corresponding deterioration of the image of Judaism and
the Jews. Both these processes will be examined as important com-
ponents in the history of the Jews in medieval western Christen-
dom. For the moment, we shall turn our attention to the pre-1000
legacy, a legacy already rich and complex. This legacy set important
parameters for evolving Jewish circumstances in medieval western
Christendom.
The history of Jesus of Nazareth and his immediate followers can-
not be reconstructed in modern scholarly terms. Our inability to
recapture the reality of Jesus and his disciples results from a total lack
of data from his immediate time period and circumstances. What we
today know of Jesus is derived from sources composed many decades
after his death, when the vision he enunciated had undergone con-
siderable alteration. Now, if we do not have sources from the lifetime
of Jesus himself, why are modern scholars so certain that the sources
we do have – composed a number of decades after his death – come
from altered circumstances and reflect shifts in his original vision?
The answer to that question lies in historical realities of which we
can be relatively certain.
It seems obvious to the majority of students of early Christian-
ity that Jesus and his immediate followers lived within the fractious
Jewish community of first-century Palestine and were part and par-
cel of that Jewish community, sharing its assumptions, its concerns,
and its uncertainties. The Jewish community of first-century Pales-
tine lived under the stress of Roman domination, with its members
taking differing stances toward their Roman overlords. Some first-
century Palestinian Jews were comfortable enough with Roman rule;
others found it utterly intolerable. This Jewish community, plagued
by dissension in the realm of politics, was further fragmented by reli-
gious contention as well. Alternative visions of the historic covenant
 Prior legacies 31
between God and the people of Israel were abroad in the land at this
time.
Happily, we do have some first-century evidence of Jewish life
during this frantic period. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus
alerts us nicely to some of the fragmentation in first-century Jewish
life. Yet more strikingly, from the writings of the first-century Dead
Sea community we gain the sense of one vibrant sub-group of Jews,
wiped out during Roman suppression of the Jewish uprising that
began in the year 66. In these writings, we encounter a group of
Jews deeply critical of the official leadership in Jerusalem, committed
to what they believed to be purification of Jewish faith, and very
much Bible-centered in their view of history. In fact, as they read
closely the words of the prophets of Israel, the members of the Dead
Sea community became convinced that these prophets were in fact
predicting important events in their own communal experience.
In the tumultuous setting that spawned the Dead Sea community,
Jesus of Nazareth preached his own particular vision of the covenant
between God and Israel. He brought this vision to his Jewish followers
in the language of his community (either Hebrew or Aramaic) and
was surely viewed by friend and foe alike as a Jew, one of those –
like the Dead Sea group – highly dissatisfied with current religious
leadership and norms. Unlike the Dead Sea community, however,
Jesus and his immediate followers did not leave us their Hebrew or
Aramaic writings.
The very first writings from the Jesus movement that have come
down to us derive from the pen of a diaspora, Greek-speaking Jew
named Saul of Tarsus, who took the name Paul upon his acceptance
of the vision of Jesus. Saul, who never encountered Jesus first-hand,
thought and wrote in Greek, not the Hebrew or Aramaic of Jesus
and his immediate followers; his preaching was addressed largely to
diaspora Jews, not the Palestinian Jews among whom Jesus circulated;
in many cases, Paul brought his message to non-Jews as well. Thus,
even without certainty as to Jesus’ original message, the important
linguistic and social shifts reflected in the activities and writings of
Paul suggest that his teachings were hardly identical to those of Jesus
and his immediate Palestinian Jewish circle. Indeed, Paul’s writings
and the account of his life in the book of Acts reflect considerable
disagreement with the original followers of Jesus.
Paul’s stance toward Judaism and the Jews is both complex and
ambiguous. Modern scholars are deeply divided on the issue of
32 The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom
Paul’s views of Judaism and the Jews.6 For our purposes, it is suf-
ficient to note that Paul’s own letters and the account of his activities
in the book of Acts include elements of deep respect toward Judaism
and Jews, on the one hand, and elements of sharp disparagement,
on the other. This ambiguity, troubling to scholars seeking to clar-
ify the Pauline stance, may in fact be the most important aspect of
his teachings on Judaism and the Jews.7 Paul was surely aware of the
growing gulf between the Jewish world, in which he had been raised,
and the gentile Christianity he vigorously fostered. He was deeply
conscious of the need to differentiate the two. This differentiation
had to emphasize the truth of the gentile Christian views and the
errors of the Jews. Yet, Paul seems to have been unwilling to dismiss
the Jews entirely, recognizing their past greatness and holding out
hope for their future redemption.
With the further passage of time, the Palestinian Jewish group
declined in importance within the nascent Christian community; the
diaspora Jewish groups eventually declined as well; the gentile sub-
group came to dominate the young faith community. Here again,
there was much room for changes that would reflect a new social
grouping, a new linguistic and cultural milieu, and new forms of spir-
ituality. To be sure, much of the original message was undoubtedly
retained; at the same time, much was altered. Exactly what remained
and what was changed is the key question, to which no precise answer
has yet won – or is likely to win – a consensus of scholarly support.
What we do know is that the Gospels, on which subsequent knowl-
edge and imagery of Jesus are based, post-date the social, linguistic,
and ideational changes just now depicted. Thus, they reveal a Jesus as
perceived by later observers far removed from the original Palestinian
ambience within which Jesus himself lived and taught.
In this new gentile Christian setting, determined to maintain a
sense of continuity with the earlier and somewhat different Jesus
movement, the Jews constituted a vexing problem. On the one hand,
there was much in the new faith that involved traditional Jewish
thinking and that was deeply and inextricably bound up with the
Jesus legacy. For example, it was clear that Jesus and his followers
were Jews, that the ethical and spiritual norms of the Hebrew Bible
were central to their early vision, that miracles of biblical proportions
played a key role in their thinking, and that fulfillment of biblical
prophecy was a crucial element in the early Jesus movement. At the
same time, there was obviously much criticism of the established
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then took the cloth which contained our provision: having spread it,
I called upon GOD to give his blessing. My comrade said, "you pray
too much, do you think that GOD takes notice of what you say?"
surely said I, because, if He did not take notice of what I said and
asked him, He would not have provided for us: well says he, "all
your nonsense will bring nothing but bad luck."

After we had refreshed ourselves, I tied up carefully the remainder

of our food, and said to him, if you desire to take a little rest, I will
watch in the mean time: he did so, and when asleep, I went a few
yards further and rested myself in prayers, for they were the best
refreshment I ever could take; after my duty was performed, I was
easy and full of an unknown joy which I could not describe.
Some time after my comrade got up and told me to rest myself and
he would watch his turn; but I told him that I was not wearied, and
it would be better to search the wood, to see whether we could find
any fruit; he agreed with my proposal, and we went seeking for
some provisions, for ours were getting very short: after a long while
rambling up and down, we found at last a great quantity of wild fruit
of all sorts, some of them were very pleasant to the taste; we
gathered as much as we could carry, and as it was already dark, we
came out of the wood and travelled on as usual. We were several
nights and days rambling up and down in the greatest misery, till at
last one night we arrived at St. Peter's Town: there I, and my
comrade parted. I went on board of an Irish Ship which was in the
Harbour, and he on board of another. I was well received on board
of the Ship, but as I was very hungry and having had no
refreshment for some time, I told them my situation; and they gave
me some food. I was after introduced to the Captain, who told me
that I might stay in the Ship and work with the other men: I was
about three weeks on board working very hard, and receiving very ill
treatment. One day a Negroe came on board about some business,
and I asked him many questions about the people of the Town, and
especially about two Gentlemen which I perfectly knew; one was a
Knight, and the other a Baronet. I sent by the Negroe a few lines to
them, and as soon as they received them, they hurried to come to
see me: they were struck at the first sight to see me in such a
deplorable situation, as they knew my parents, they could not help
but mourn and pity my miserable state: they told me to go with
them on shore, which I did with great pleasure, though I was
ashamed of myself being very dirty. Arrived at their house I was put
into a bath to wash me, for I had need of it; and clothes were
provided for me: after I was dress'd I could not believe that it was
the unhappy me, when looking at my ragged clothes which I had on
but a few minutes ago; I was in a perfect state of happiness, for
nothing concerning the necessaries of life was wanting for me. I was
in that state of affluence for three months, and wheresoever they
went, they took me with them, so that I was acquainted with the
best company of the Town: but for all that I did not forget my GOD.
Some time after they procured me a passage on board a Ship that
was going to St. Thomas: all necessaries, both for life and body
were provided for me, and ten guineas which they gave me when
we parted, also letters of recommendation.
We went out of the Harbour and sailed towards Dominica, where we
cast Anchor to take some passengers, and from thence we sailed to
St. Kits, where a part of the convoy were waiting for us, after to St.
Bartholomew, for some other business, and from thence to St.
Thomas, where we arrived safe after a good voyage.
I went to the Gentlemen for whom I had letters of recommendation,
and was received with great civility and kindness; one of them took
me to his house while I stay'd at St. Thomas's. The first Sunday I
went to Church with him and another Gentleman that I did not
know, and that same Gentleman said to me after we came out of
Church; "I hope you love GOD, young man?" I said yes, well, said
he, "in all your troubles trust to the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and
whatsoever you stand in need off, ask it in his name, and I am sure
He will grant it unto you, for He has promised through His Blood to
make intercession for us." I kindly thanked him for his instruction,
and he withdrew.
I remained at St. Thomas three weeks, and took an opportunity of
going to Guadeloupe; but before I took leave of the Gentleman
where I was at, I thanked him for all his goodness: he said, "you are
welcome to stay longer if you chuse;" I returned him my thanks
saying, I wished to see Guadeloupe. "Here is a purse (says he,)
which I beg your acceptance of;" then shook hands with me, and
retired, he one way, and I the other. I immediately went on board,
and in a few minutes were out of sight of the place where I received
so much kindness. I had a pleasant and short voyage, and safely
landed at that most desired Island of Guadeloupe. I hasted to see
my acquaintances; and having inquired after my Brothers, I heard
that they were taken prisoners, and conducted to Plymouth in great
Britain.
As I had nothing do and no desire to go to Sea any more, I went
again to my late master (the Planter:) who was very glad to see me,
and encouraged me by raising my wages, which made me apply the
more to my business.
As I did not yet forget my Maker, I daily performed my duty towards
him who had been so gracious unto me. My master (or rather my
friend,) soon perceived a great change in me, which he did not know
what to attribute it to; at last he knew by some of the servants who
watched me, that I was in the ways of Christianity: some times he
used to plague me about it, for fun, but for all that he did not
esteem me the less.

One day having some company at home, that were invited to spend
two or three weeks with us; I retired as usual after supper to bed,
and knelt down: at the time I was pouring out my soul unto GOD in
prayers, a young lady inadvertently passed by, and seeing my
chamber door half open, stepped in; and finding me in the posture
as before mentioned, she bursted into a loud laugh and rushed out
of the room, and in a few minutes I had the whole company round
me making all sorts of jests, some laughing till they fell down on the
floor, others holding their sides with laughing, and others jumping
and stamping, &c. It was indeed such a noise as I never heard
before, for it was both a tragedy, and comedy. In all that disturbance
I was as firm as a rock, and did not move from the place in which I
was, untill I had fulfilled my duty towards my SAVIOUR. I told them
it was very unmannerly to disturb me thus, in my most precious
time: for prayers were my best delight and comfort, and without
them I could not rest nor be happy. The tale soon spread in the
neighbourhood about me being a devout,[18] so that I was
persecuted daily by my own friends, but as I did not mind them,
they were soon tired, and at last were obliged to let me be quiet,
seeing they could not get master over me.
Three weeks after that scandalous scene, I was taken very ill, of the
putrid and malign fever; three days after the Doctor gave me up, for
I was so ill that he thought I could not recover.
I was ten days and nights senseless; and saw wondrous things in my
agony; and the eleventh day I came to myself again: my keeper said
to me, "I hope you have prayed enough this time?" I did not know
what she meant, but having asked her the reason why; she said, all
the time I was senseless, I did nothing else but pray night and day
untill I came to my senses again. I was a long time before I could
recover my former strength again; and as soon as I was able, I went
to my business. I then was melancholy with thinking about my
Country, and Mother; as for my Mother I did not know in what
quarter of the world she was in; notwithstanding that, I took my pen
and wrote, first, to St. Domingo, and then to two or three other
places where I thought most likely, but all was without success, for
no answer was to be had. Again I wrote, and so on for about
eighteen months without receiving the least tidings: which made me
some how think that my poor Mother was no more. I was in such a
low state of mind that my life became a burden to me, I could not
find any comfort either in amusement or prayer; and when at prayer,
I prayed not with such a delight as I used to do: so that in a short
time I quite turned my back from the path of the truly and most
blessed LORD JESUS CHRIST, and became again as wicked as ever.
One day my master called me, and said, "the Negroes are in
rebellion, and you must go to war and fight." He provided horse and
arms for me, and sent me to join the cavalry that were encamped at
a little distance from where we lived. Some days after I was at the
camp, the Captain ordered me to go into the Town to carry some
dispatches; I made some excuse, telling him to send some others;
but he said, "you are appointed to go and you must for I dare not
trust any other." I obeyed and went out of the camp, and rode to
Town which was nine or ten miles distance from the place above
mentioned; and not being able to return the same day, I waited till
morning: but what was my great surprise at the moment I was
putting my foot in the stirrup to return? an alarm was given that the
whole camp were murdered in the night,[19] except one who
escaped having on nothing but his shirt. We being the only persons
that were spared, we were put into another company, and marched
on the same day against the rebels, and were successful in all our
attempts. I was for three weeks night and day fighting, some times
wet through with rain, and at other times suffocated with the heat:
all that while, I never knew what it was to lay down or take rest;
neither having an opportunity to put clean linen on: but at last we
returned into the Town, where we took some refreshment and put
clean linen on, for we had need of it. No sooner was I refreshed, but
I was ordered to carry some letters of consequence to a camp nine
miles off; but as the road was very dangerous, I asked one of my
comrades to go with me, which he did with great pleasure; we
arrived at the camp without the least injury or danger: but it was not
with the same luck we went back, for as we were passing through a
dark Wood, (it was then between ten and eleven o'Clock at night,) a
shower of musket balls were fired at us, which unexpected noise and
hissing, so much frighted our horses, that it was impossible for us to
lead them; they rushed through brambles and briers, and at last
plunged into a dead Lake, where we had like to have been drowned;
but our horses being stout animals, they swam and gained the other
side in a few minutes. We made the best of our way through woods
and thickets to escape the fury of the balls which were continually
flying about us, and after having wandered a great while through
unpracticable places, we found again the road, and rode as fast as
we could to the Town: since that affair I have been in many
obstinate and bloody engagements.
One day as I was reading the news-paper, I heard that St. Domingo
was in a state of tranquillity; at this I was determined to go thither:
accordingly, I went on board a Ship that was going there; we went
first to St. Thomas, to take some passengers, and for my dear
Country we sailed, and arrived safe there. My first inquiry was my
Mother; I was about two days rambling through the streets without
hearing any tidings respecting her or any other relations; till at last
peradventure I met with one of my Cousins that was in France at the
time I left that Country; she took me to her house and entertained
me with loving kindnesses; and told me that my Mother was in the
Spanish part of St. Domingo, at the distance of sixty miles from the
place where I then was.
Anxious to see the author of my days, I would have set out
immediately, but she entreated me to spend a week or two with her,
to which I agreed: we related to each other our misfortunes, and
soothed each other's sorrows. Once in my conversation I was
speaking of that barbarous and pretended Uncle of mine, who used
me so ill when I was in France; I asked her whether she knew where
he was, she told me that he was in the Town, and not far from the
house; I was indeed amazed that such a wretch was still alive; she
told me also that he came some times to see her; well, said I, if he
comes I will be ready for his reception, for I am no more what I
formerly was, [a Child,] that I should dread him. Two days after, he
heard that I was in Town, and came to see me: as soon as he came
into the house, my mind was struck with horror. He advanced
towards me and asked how I did stretching forth his hand to shake
hands with me; I refused my hand and said, Sir, I do not shake
hands with people that I know not. "why (said he) don't you know
me?" no Sir! I replied: "why don't you know your Uncle S?" no Sir! I
never had any relation of that name: "why don't you remember you
lived in France with me?" no Sir! for I am sure I never saw you
before to day, if I did, my mind does not afford me the recollection
of your features: "how is it you don't remember me, who married
your Aunt V.—— in second wedlock?" "Oh! yes I do now you
execrable villain; retire from my presence, monster of iniquities;
think not that you shall go unpunished, nor escape the wrath of
GOD, for the sword of vengeance hangs over your head, and will
crush you to atoms in an unexpected time that justice may be
satisfied." He first blushed, then became pale, and without replying
left the house; and I saw him no more while I tarried there. My
Cousin was very much pleased with my reception of him; but as the
time I agreed with her was expired, I thought of going to see my
Mother; so I took leave of her and embarked in a long-boat which
was going that way: in four and twenty hours I was landed at
Moutechristo where she resided, and was not long to find out the
place of her dwelling, the Town being small. I will just let my reader
know how I made my entrance: first, I knock'd at the door; when in,
I asked her whether she knew me; she said no Sir; I asked her
again whether she had not Children abroad; she said yes, "but,
[giving a deep sigh,] all my hopes are vanished, for it is between
thirteen and fourteen years since I have seen or heard from them." I
then said to her, behold the youngest of them before you: she
exclaimed in a transport of joy, "Oh! my Son is it you? my dear H.
—— is still existing?" and then fainted: but was not long in that
state, for her exceeding joy soon called her to her senses again. My
hard heart was melted in an instant; I could no longer withstand
that filial love; I threw myself into those arms which were so
desirous and eager to welcome me to that breast which was so
ardently panting for me: our joy was so great on both sides, that
neither of us could utter a word. Our language was only by sighs:
and those precious tears which bedewed my face when I first parted
with her, were once more mixed with mine. Our arms interwove in
each other as an emblem of the most affecting tenderness. In that
posture we remained a long time, so much were our feelings
affected, that we could not utter a single word.
Some time afterwards, she shewed me my little Brother and Sister,
by her second husband; and dispatched my Brother to go and fetch
my Father-in-law who was then at the farm, a little distance from the
Town. In the mean time she said to me; "your Father-in-law is an
honest man? he is not like many others, but he is a true Father that
I have met with for you;" she then asked me where my Brothers
were; I told her they were taken prisoners by the English and
conveyed to England: at the same time my Father-in-law came into
the house, which interrupted our conversation. He seemed to be
very joyful of my arrival, and treated me with the greatest kindness.
This was the happiest moment I ever enjoyed, being in the bosom of
my friends. But all this happiness did not last long, for the Negroes
rose up again, and killed every white man that fell into their hands.
I was then compelled to stand in my own defence, as a foot soldier;
every night, alarms were given, for the blacks were at the gates of
the Town: but having received reinforcement, they were repulsed.
Afterwards I was sent to garrison, fifteen miles off, where I stay'd
four and twenty days; at my return my little Brother fell sick of the
fever, and died in two days after; which put my Mother and Father-
in-law in such distress of mind, that I thought they would have
followed, especially my Father-in-law, for he was a man of very
tender feelings: but by degrees and length of time, their griefs were
dispersed.

Five months were expired since my arrival at my Mother's. I was

daily upon guard, or doing some other things respecting the
warfaring business. One day being on guard, I was informed of the
arrival of both my Brothers; I immediately ran home, and found it
was so; my joy was inexpressible at the sight of them, particularly at
the eldest, who was, and always has been my most intimate friend:
it was then five years and some months since they were taken
prisoners; during that time I never heard from them, which made
me think many times that they were no more in this World. Soon
after, the report of their arrival was spread in the Town; and coming
to the ears of the commander of the place, they were sent for by his
orders, and enrolled[20] them into a company of foot soldiers. The
duty was hard, the rebels being daily about us, and almost every
night there was some fighting or attempt. One day after a very
bloody engagement that was fought at the advanced post, I was
sent thither with the company which I was in to reinforce them, in
case they should be attacked again: I stay'd there four and twenty
days, and was relieved by my eldest Brother. The day after I took
leave of him, and returned into the Town. As soon as I arrived, my
Mother sent me to the Metropolis about some business. When there,
the troubles were so great, that no one was in safety of their lives:
three days after my arrival, a strong battle took place, and lasted
from four o'Clock in the morning till six in the evening. The day after
I was occupied in doing the errand for my Mother; and as soon as I
had done, I wrote a letter to her, sending an account of all the
business; and told her she must not expect me to return, nor
perhaps see me more; telling her my reason was, that St. Domingo
was a place too dangerous for me to remain in any longer: and told
her not to be uneasy about me, for I had already taken shipping.
We set out the 3d of May 1803, from the harbour of St. Domingo: I
bid my distressed Country once more Adieu; thinking to myself it is
perhaps the last.
My intention when I embarked was, to go to St. Malo, and take
shipping there for the coast of Africa. I had on board a small cargo
consisting of Sugar and Coffee, which when sold would have
enabled me to begin a trade according to my purpose. We steered
for the place above mentioned; six days after we were at Sea, we
had such a rough wind, that we were obliged to reef our main and
fore top-sails: all our efforts seemed to be unsuccessful, for we were
driven amidst dreadful Rocks; and the winds redoubled with such
violence that nothing was seen before our eyes but terrors; every
moment we expected our fatal end to take place; we fired guns of
distress from time to time hoping that some Ship would hear us and
come to our assistance, if there was any about: but our endeavours
were in vain, and we were cast in the midst of the Rocks. The scene
is too cutting for me to relate it in all its parts, for it was enough to
unman the stoutest Sailor: every man was in the most profound
consternation; nothing was seen before our eyes but Death, and
that in dreadful forms. At every instant pieces of timber were
swimming about the almost wrecked Ship; the water covered almost
the deck. We were in that deplorable situation till morning; and to
our great joy, a Ship offered itself to our view[21]; we immediately
put the long-boat out to Sea, to go to the Ship for refuge: I flung
myself into the boat with what I valued most, and five other men did
likewise. As our boat was too small to carry all the people, several
were obliged to remain upon the wreck of the Ship, till we could
return with the other Ship's boat to save them. We rowed away the
boat, and went to the Ship that was in view; when there, the
Captain asked me if all the people were come; I told him no,
because our boat was too small to carry them, and we came to beg
his assistance, for those miserable Creatures which are now upon
the remainder of the wreck. He said, "they may save themselves if
they can, but as for me I cannot go, the weather is too favorable for
me to lose a minutes time; you may go back if you like to save
them; but as for me, I will go my way." So he sailed, and we went
with him; the others remained upon the wreck of the Ship, in the
midst of a wide Ocean, without either help or hope. The Ship which
saved me was a French Ship, and steered for his own place.
The 21st day of June 1803, being at Sea, we were met by an English
Vessel who told us that war was declared between France and
England, and for that reason we were taken prisoners, and
conducted to Plymouth.
I stay'd 35 days in Plymouth, and was sent after to Tiverton in
Devonshire upon Parole of Honour; there I remained five months,
and was sent afterwards to Ashbourn in Derbyshire. I arrived at
Ashbourn the 17th of december 1803, and was in such a deplorable
state of mind, that I did not know what to do. Very often the public
house was the place where I went to seek comfort, by getting
intoxicated, and then casting all my sorrows behind me; I after
awhile took such a delight in this course of life, that it became quite
an habit to me; I was the greatest Sabbath breaker that ever
existed; I was daily fighting or swearing the most execrable Oaths,
which was enough to excite the anger of GOD against me. One
morning being half drunk, I went out to take a walk; when passing
through a dark foot path, I was persuaded by some evil spirit to put
an end to my miserable life. For that purpose I went into the darkest
part of the place, and took my knife out of my pocket to accomplish
the horrid deed.—The instrument was already lifted up, and the
stroke was to ensue; but an Angel of the LORD, (or some thing of
that kind,) stopped my rebellious hand, and my weapon dropped
from it; then many ideas came into my mind such as these, "Oh!
miserable wretch, art thou going to plunge thyself into eternal
misery? remember thou art going into Hell head-long, if thou dost
such a thing:" I was struck with terror with those ideas, and was so
frighted, that I durst not move from the place for fear that the
justice of an avenging GOD should fall upon me. I stay'd in that
place for some time, and went home with such a burden, that I
could hardly bear: having my head cast down as if I was a criminal,
for I durst upon no account lift it up.

I was for several days in a such distressed state of mind, that I had
not courage enough to go out; for I thought every body knew what
was the matter with me; and to appease my wounded conscience, I
thought that a reformation would have been sufficient to justify me
in the sight of GOD: so that I began to build, as it is said upon a
sandy foundation, by performing a few formal duties; thinking that
by my good works, I should merit the favours of GOD so as to
forgive me all my trespasses. The plan I had formed was this:
having a Roman Catholic prayer book, I thought it was all-sufficient
to calm my troubled breast, and to bring me to a perfect state of
happiness. So every night and morning I used to kneel down, and
taking the prayer book I read the morning and evening prayer; this
performance I thought would please GOD, and get me from under
the terrors of an accused conscience: but in all these vain duties I
never looked to JESUS for forgiveness or remission of sins, neither to
his precious and cleansing blood, nor could I perceive the depravity
of my corrupted nature: but I depended wholly upon my best
endeavours and good works. I continued but a little time in doing
those erroneous duties, and felt insensibly at last that all my fears
were vanished away; I was like the dog, returning to his vomit
again: for I begun the same method as before, keeping all sorts of
bad company, and breaking the sabbath with drinking, swearing and
fighting &c. I was at the least five days drunk in the week, and
always quarrelling.
One day in one of my mad fits, (though I was not drunk,) I resolved
to delay no longer to put an end to my miserable existence; for that
purpose I went into a garden near by: the same instrument that had
been lifted up before, was again employed; I was in such great
despair, that I was relentless towards my own life and happiness; so
that I lifted up my sanguinary hand and struck my left breast
twice[22].—I fell down senseless; some persons who were near,
hearing the exclamation I made, which was, Oh! Mother, I shall
never see thee again! came to see what was the matter; and to their
great surprise, found me wallowing in my own blood. They carried
me into my room for dead, and some person went to fetch the
Doctor. As soon as the Doctor saw my wounds, which were through
my lungs, he said, I can be of no use to him, for he has not ten
minutes to live; but if he does, I may be of service to him: and went
away. But he was soon fetched back again for I was not dead. When
he came the second time, he gave me something to drink which
recalled me to my senses: my inside being full of blood, he thought
it would be proper to bleed me, it might ease me a little, for I could
hardly breathe. After I was bled I fell into a swoon; the Doctor then
said, if he lives till one o'Clock it will be a wonder. Some-body went
to fetch a Catholic Minister[23], who lived in the same Town; when he
saw me, he told me to recommend my soul to GOD, saying, that I
had but a few minutes to live: and after this short exhortation he
went out of the room, saying, it was too much for him to see.
I was restless all the night, for I could not sleep on account of the
soreness of my wounds. When morning came I was so weak and so
feverish, that the Doctor thought I could not live to see the sun set.
Night came, and yet alive: but I was so tormented with ideas as
before mentioned, that I durst not shut my eyes for fear I should
awake in Hell. I was three nights without taking the least rest; for I
was afraid to fall asleep, as I made it a sure thing in my mind, that if
I fell asleep, I should awake no more. I felt myself in such a
miserable condition, that I thought GOD would never forgive me. All
the time I was in bed, I lay upon thorns as it were; for I was so filled
with grief and sorrow, occasioned by my misbehaviour towards the
everlasting being, that my life was quite miserable.

During the time of my affliction, I had such ideas and thoughts

concerning my state, that I appeared to myself the vilest of men;
but for all that I did not know from whence came these thoughts
and ideas.
I was six or seven weeks before I could walk out; and was a great
while before I could get any strength. I was five months in the most
distressing state of mind, and continually tormented by some thing
or other, which I could not discern. Some times I went out to
meditate a little, but no sooner was I out, but was forced to return
home again; because I could not rest any where. One day after
many dreadful and frightful ideas, I felt some thing extraordinary in
me; and then for the first time, I perceived that I was a sinner[24];
and one beyond expression: I saw the horrible state in which I was
plunged; I felt that I was upon the very brink of destruction: and felt
also, that no one could alleviate my pains but GOD. For that purpose
I went to church; when there, I could hear nothing that could do me
any good. At night I went to the Methodist Chapel; there I did not
find any comfort so as to set me free. When at home, I went to
prayer; but could say nothing but the LORD's prayer, which I knew
from my infancy.
I spent the week in reading the new Testament; and longed daily
with impatience for the return of Sabbath, that I might try again to
seek a place where I could lay all my burden. When that happy day
was come, I went to SION Chapel: the text was taken out of the
twenty-seventh chapter of the Prophet Isaiah, the last verse; "and it
shall come to pass when the great trumpet shall be blown" &c. I was
very attentive at the preaching, in hopes I could hear some passage
that might comfort my distressed mind. The Minister brought
forward the Brazen Serpent in his discourse, saying, when Moses
lifted it up, he said, whosoever shall believe in it, shall be saved; for
thus shall the Son of man be lifted up. I felt a little comfort from
these words, but not sufficient to calm my troubled mind; because of
the weakness of my faith. As I had not heard sufficient, I went at
night to the Methodist Chapel. I did not dislike the sermon, but did
not feel so much there as I did at SION Chapel: I spent the week
rather better than I did the last, and was not so much distressed.
One morning I went to take a walk, when fifty yards from the house,
I remembered I had not served GOD when I got up; I was so struck
with shame, that I ran back to my chamber to say my prayers. Such
a thing as that happened unto me three times, but was always
overcome by the fear of GOD, for I durst not on any account go out
of my room except I had render'd thanks to GOD for his protecting
grace and mercy; for I thought, that if I was to neglect, his wrath
would fall upon me &c.
Sunday came, which I longed for with so much impatience; and with
joy I went again to SION Chapel. The text was taken out of the
Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, the third chapter, and the ninth
verse; "and be found in him." The very word of "be found in him,"
went deeply to my heart, and proved sweet to it; for it comforted
me and released me from all my guilty fears; and convinced me of
all the errors we are liable to by Nature. I was so overjoyed at that
sermon, that I could not depart from the place till I had spoken to
the Minister[25]; to tell him the benefit I had received under his
labour. I went home joyful at what I had heard and tasted, and I
cast all my cares and sorrows away: and was only thinking to serve
him who shed his blood for me.
Now persecution began to take place by my worldly companions;
they called me all sorts of shameful names[26], even threatened me
with punishment if I did continue in hearing the word of GOD. I
could not go through the streets without meeting with some ill
treatment from them; but as I did not mind what they said, I told
them I would sooner go to the scaffold and suffer Death, than
renounce JESUS CHRIST. Their persecutions continued for a long
time, but seeing I did not take any notice, they were obliged to let
me go in peace.

I went to no other place of worship but SION, where I first found

the treasure of the Crucified One. Some times I thought myself too
unworthy to be saved; but at other times I had better thoughts,
when reflecting on Paul, Manasseh, and other characters &c.

The week before Good Friday I was taken ill, and was obliged to
keep my bed several days. In the mean time I prayed unto GOD to
give me health and strength, that I might be able to go and hear his
word that precious day he bought my Salvation; but it was not
permitted; for that very day I was extremely ill, and wept bitterly
because I could not go to SION my happy place. So I called for a
new Testament that I might read a chapter or two; but I was so
weak, that I could not read; and was forced to put the book down.
In the afternoon I felt myself a little better, and took the book I read
a chapter, by which I received some comfort.
I was very patient under my afflictions, for the more I was afflicted,
the more my mind was comforted; I did not fear the sting of Death
at all, because, I had faith to believe I should be happy. In a few
weeks I was entirely recovered, and the LORD soon after blessed me
with the Spirit of prayer, so that I could join my friends in CHRIST in
their labours.
Now I am fully convinced that I am found, and brought back to the
flock of whom JESUS CHRIST is the Shepherd: and I will adore and
praise him for what He has done for me through Grace, and trust in
Him for what He has promised to do.
"O! most blessed JESUS, thou who hast been pleased to protect me
through so many dangers, and watched over me ever since my
youthful days; be pleased I beseech thee, to keep me now that I am
found: I did not find myself, thou knowest; but it was thou, O! most
blessed JESUS who found me when lost and ready to sink into the
valley of destruction. Thou hast brought me from thousands of miles
to shew me thy light divine, and to make me a prisoner of hope
instead of a prisoner of war. O! Eternal THREE in ONE, look down on
thine unworthy servant, and water his Soul with the dew of thy
Heavenly Grace, that he may be prepared to receive that never
fading Crown, which is at the end of the race thou hast enabled him
to run: and help him to renounce all other works but thine. Now I
forsake all the riches and pleasures of this world, for the Eternal life
which was purchased by the precious Blood of thy dear Son JESUS:
to which I beseech thee, to keep me now, and to the end." AMEN.

THE
WEST INDIAN HYMN.
"This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is
found."
PRODIGAL'S FATHER.
Now though six thousand miles from home,
Yet nearer to my GOD I come
'Twas JESUS' love that set me free,
And brought me back by grace to thee,
And JESUS will lead me to see;
Eternal days.

And now that I am found,—keep me

That I may never go from thee:
Thus fill my soul with thy free grace,
That I may run the christian race,
And see my SAVIOUR face to face;
In endless days.

Thou didst seek me when a stranger,

In my guilt and road to danger,
And to bring me home to my GOD,
Didst interpos'd thy precious blood,
That I might sing with saints aloud;
Through endless days.

O! blessed be the sacred Place,[27]

Where I have found such Heav'nly grace,
That sav'd me from my nature's fall,
And give me on my GOD to call;
O! JESUS at thy feet I fall:
Through endless days.

Till then, do thou in my heart dwell,

Rule in it and do all things well:
Lead me to that e'erblessed place,
Where I hope to behold thy face,
And help me thy foot-steps to trace;
To endless rest.
 There I shall praise my SAVIOUR dear,
While his own Righteousness I wear:
I'll shout and sing redeeming love,
Which did my first affections move,
And never more will let me rove;
Through endless days.

PARKES PRINTER, and AUCTIONEER, ASHBOURN.

 Footnotes
[1]
I allude this passage to a Ship going straightways
against the wind; for it is no more in the power of a
sinner to resist the will and mercies of GOD, than it is
possible for a Ship to go straightways against the wind.

[2]
Remember, that GOD makes us sensible that we are
sinners.

[3]
Behold, He taketh away, who can hinder him? who will
say unto him, what doest thou? Job. chap. 9. ver. 12.

[4]
Being Persued by the Negroes, and as he was escaping
over an hedge, his Horse alighted; where the
Barbarous Negroes cut him in small pieces with their
Swords.

[5]
Alluding to the French Revolution.

[6]
This was the first time I ever dar'd to contend with
him, but the remembrance of my Father and former
state rose in me such a violent spirit, that I spoke to
him with such a Gloomy tone of voice, that all those
that were present could not help but pity my situation.

[7]
 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.
Isaiah chap. 54. ver. 17.

[8]
This passenger was a Captain which understood the
Navigable part of the river.

[9]
Called in Sea terms a Cabin.

[10]
Though we did not come from that place, we applyed
the untruth as you see above, only that we might
deceive them and pass for an English Ship; for our
Ship was a great deal less then theirs: besides that we
were much damaged, both by the Sea, and by
Fighting.

[11]
They were come from Demerara themselves, and they
knew that there was no Ship of war in that Harbour.
We heard after that the name of the Ship was the
Pelican, and carried eighteen Guns of nine Pounders,
which were a great advantage over us, who carried but
twelve Guns of four Pounders.

[12]
This is a real Mariners principle.

[13]
In famine he shall Redeem thee from Death. Job chap.
5. ver. 20.

[14]
He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there
shall no evil touch thee. In famine He shall Redeem
 thee from Death; and in war from the power of the
sword. Job chap. 5. ver. 19 & 20.

[15]
She kept a linen drapery shop where he boarded and
lodg'd.

[16]
A Gold coin worth thirty-six shillings.

[17]
It was a forged one as I heard after, as the Doctor did
not charge any thing for his trouble.

[18]
In England, if any profess Christianity, he is called a
methodist, and in France or any other dominions
appertaining to the same, a Devout.

[19]
Oh! reader consider and meditate? see how GOD was
pleased to spare such a rebellious Creature as I; and
how Divine Providence distinguished itself by calling
me alone, though I, with obstinacy refused to comply
to its orders: but who can resist the power of the
LORD when he says, I will and they shall. &c. "Oh!
bless the LORD O my soul, and all that is within me,
bless his holy name: for the LORD has done wondrous
things. He has lifted me up, and has not made my foes
to rejoice over me."

[20]
May it please GOD to enrol them in the Royal Regiment
of Saints, commanded by his most truly and Honorable
Son, the LORD JESUS CHRIST.

[21]
 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with
thee. Isaiah. chap. 43, ver. 2.

[22]
I have sinned: what shall I do unto thee, O thou
preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark
against thee, so that I am a burden to myself. Job,
chap. 7. ver. 20.

[23]
I did not know for what purpose they went for him;
but I supposed it was to administer unto me the
Extreme-Unction; for as it is reported among the
Roman Catholic that a man or woman dying without
having received the Extreme-Unction, (which they call
a Sacrament,) must either go to Hell, or in Purgatory.

[24]
Though I had had a taste and a view of the love of
GOD, (as you may read in the former part of my life,)
and a great desire to serve and worship him; yet I did
not feel the corruption of my fallen nature, neither the
great weight and burden of my inveterate sins and
transgressions: I was far from thinking of the
inestimable worth and want of a precious SAVIOUR. I
had a zeal, but not according to knowledge; I was like
that sect which the Apostle Paul speaks of in the tenth
chapter of Romans and the third verse: for they, being
ignorant of GOD's Righteousness, and going about to
establish their own Righteousness, have not submitted
themselves unto the Righteousness of GOD.

"I thank GOD, through the LORD JESUS CHRIST, that

He has subjected me unto his blessed and Everlasting
Righteousness; and made me sensible of this, that
 without the Blood of his dear Son, my sins must for
ever remain."

[25]
the Reverend Samuel Franklin, of Ebley in
Gloucestershire, Minister in Lady Huntingdon's
connection, then at Ashbourn in Derbyshire.

[26]
My friends scorn me; but mine eye poureth out tears
unto GOD. Job, chap. 16, ver. 20.

[27]
SION Chapel.

Transcriber's Note:
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