The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

All Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Silesia, and Flanders did homage to them; and they at length became as formidable to the secular as to the ecclesiastical power. The influence of this fanaticism was great and threatening. The appearance, in itself, was not novel. As far back as the eleventh century many believers in Asia and Southern Europe afflicted themselves with the punishment of flagellation.

The author of the solemn processions of the Flagellants is said to have been St. Anthony of Padua (1231). In 1260 the Flagellants appeared in Italy as Devoti. "When the land was polluted by vices and crimes, an unexampled spirit of remorse suddenly seized the minds of the Italians. The fear of Christ fell upon all; noble and lowly, old and young, and even children of five years of age marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf round the waist. They each carried a scourge of leathern thongs, which they applied to their limbs, amid sighs and tears, with such violence that the blood flowed from the wounds. Not only during the day, but even by night and in the severest winter, they traversed the cities with burning torches and banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars. The melancholy chant of the penitent alone was heard; enemies were reconciled; men and women vied with each other in splendid works of charity, as if they dreaded that divine omnipotence would pronounce on them the doom of annihilation."

But at length the priests resisted this dangerous fanaticism, without being able to extirpate the illusion, which was advantageous to the hierarchy, as long as it submitted to its sway.

The processions of the Brotherhood of the Cross undoubtedly promoted the spreading of the plague; and it is evident that the gloomy fanaticism which gave rise to them would infuse a new poison into the already desponding minds of the people.

Still, however, all this was within the bounds of barbarous enthusiasm; but horrible were the persecutions of the Jews, which were committed in most countries with even greater exasperation than in the twelfth century, during the first crusades. In every destructive pestilence the common people at first attribute the mortality to poison. On whom, then, was vengeance so likely to fall as on the Jews, the usurers and the strangers who lived at enmity with the Christians? They were everywhere suspected of having poisoned the wells52 or infected the air, and were pursued with merciless cruelty.

These bloody scenes, which disgraced Europe in the fourteenth century, are a counterpart to a similar mania of the age which was manifested in the persecutions of witches and sorcerers; and, like these, they prove that enthusiasm, associated with hatred and leagued with the baser passions, may work more powerfully upon whole nations than religion and legal order; nay, that it even knows how to profit by the authority of both, in order the more surely to satiate with blood the swords of long-suppressed revenge.

The persecution of the Jews commenced in September and October, 1348, at Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, where the first criminal proceedings were instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and in Freiburg, in 1349. Under the influence of excruciating suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zofingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince the world; and the persecution of the abhorred culprits thus appeared justifiable.

Already in the autumn of 1348 a dreadful panic, caused by this supposed poisoning, seized all nations; in Germany, especially, the springs and wells were built over, that nobody might drink of them or employ their contents for culinary purposes; and for a long time the inhabitants of numerous towns and villages used only river-and rain-water. The city gates were also guarded with the greatest caution: only confidential persons were admitted; and if medicine or any other article which might be supposed to be poisonous was found in the possession of a stranger—and it was natural that some should have these things by them for private use—he was forced to swallow a portion of it. By this trying state of privation, distrust, and suspicion the hatred against the supposed poisoners became greatly increased, and often broke out in popular commotions, which only served still further to infuriate the wildest passions.

The noble and the mean fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to extirpate the Jews by fire and sword, and to snatch them from their protectors, of whom the number was so small that throughout all Germany but few places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people were not regarded as outlaws and martyred and burned. Solemn summonses were issued from Bern to the towns of Basel, Freiburg in Breisgau, and Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as poisoners. The burgomasters and senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basel the populace obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews and to forbid persons of that community from entering their city for the space of two hundred years. Upon this, all the Jews in Basel, whose number could not have been inconsiderable, were enclosed in a wooden building, constructed for the purpose, and burned, together with it, upon the mere outcry of the people, without sentence or trial, which, indeed, would have availed them nothing. Soon after the same thing took place at Freiburg.