1000 - 1400

(My original has many pictures and illustrations.  Please excuse this installment until I am able to complete it.)

1000         1000         1000         1000

Holy Roman Empire ~1000ad:

1000 - Christianity accepted by common consent in Iceland by parliament (Alþingi).  Leif the Lucky introduces the Gospel to Greenland, possibly Vinland (Newfoundland).

1008 - Sigfrid (or Sigurd), English missionary, baptizes King Olof of Sweden.  Olof Skötkonung (c980–1022) was the King (995-1022).

 Jews (1000?)

 ****Peace of God.  The early Middle Ages had been a chaotic time in Europe.  However, the 11th century began a long period of renewed stability. Commerce and trade revived, and new towns and cities sprang up throughout the continent.  In this comparatively peaceful climate, the Church tried to curb the warlike spirit of the feudal nobility.  In the 11th century, for instance, Church councils met throughout Europe and adopted the programs known as the Peace of God and the Truce of God.  The Peace of God forbade knights from attacking peasants, women, priests, and merchants, while the Truce of God prohibited battle on Sundays and holy days.  Although the Church lacked the power to enforce them, the Peace of God and the Truce of God reveal the emergence of new values that questioned the wholesale warfare in Western Europe typical of the 9th and 10th centuries.

The Truce of God extended the Peace by setting aside certain days of the year when violence was not allowed.  Where the Peace of God prohibited violence against the church and the poor, the Truce of God was more focused on preventing violence between Christians, specifically between knights.  It was first proposed in 958 and then proclaimed in 1027.  An initial ban on fighting on Sundays and holy days was extended to include all of Lent, and even the Friday of every week.  It prohibited fighting from 9 P.M. Saturday to 3 A.M. Monday, which was soon extended to span Wednesday evening to Monday morning.  Religious days were also included.  That left only 80 days a year for fighting.  The truce spread from France to Germany, Italy, Flanders, and Spain, and from 1123, it was backed by the threat of excommunication.  The increasing power of kings (the “peace of kings”) and the subsequent rise of strong national governments rendered the truce of God unnecessary and ineffective for enforcing internal peace.  It lapsed in the 13th cent.

Judgment of God (Ordeals) For the better part of a millennium, Europe’s legal systems decided difficult criminal cases in a most peculiar way.  When judges were uncertain about an accused criminal’s guilt, they ordered a cauldron of water to be boiled, a ring to be thrown in, and the defendant to plunge in his naked hand and pluck the object out.  The defendant’s hand was wrapped in bandages and revisited three days later.  If it survived the bubbling cauldron unharmed, the defendant was declared innocent. If it didn’t, he was convicted.  They reached their height between the 9th and 13th centuries, and the methods varied.  The ordeal system accurately determined who was guilty and who was innocent. The trials worked, because they weren’t widely practiced, but they were widely believed in.  Guilty believers expected God to reveal their guilt by harming them in the ordeal.  They anticipated being boiled and convicted.  Innocent believers, meanwhile, expected God to protect them in the ordeal.  They anticipated escaping unscathed, and being exonerated.  The only defendants who would have been willing to go through with the ordeal were therefore the innocent ones.  Guilty defendants would have preferred to avoid the ordeal - by confessing their crimes, settling with their accusers, or fleeing the realm.  The next thing to understand is that clerics administrated ordeals and adjudged their outcomes - and did so under elaborate sets of rules that gave them wide latitude to manipulate the process.  Priests knew that only innocent defendants would be willing to plunge their hands in boiling water.  So priests could simply rig trials to exonerate defendants who were willing to go through with the ordeal. The rituals around the ordeals gave them plenty of cover to ensure the water wasn’t boiling, or the iron wasn’t burning, and so on.  If rigging failed, a priest could interpret the ordeal’s outcome to exculpate the defendant nonetheless (“His arm is healing well!”).

Over time, as people’s belief that God was behind ordeals weakened, so did ordeals’ power to satisfactorily deal with criminal defendants.  In the early 13th century, Pope Innocent III spearheaded a damning denunciation of ordeals on the grounds that ordeals were antithetical to Christian doctrine.  His edict banned priests from further involvement with them.  The Church’s condemnation of ordeals seriously undermined the superstition on which ordeals relied. Oath swearing survives today.  No doubt part of the reason for this is that the superstition underlying its ability to promote justice has survived.  -Peter T. Leeson

****From the 12th century onward chivalry came to be understood as a moral, religious and social code of knightly conduct. The particulars of the code varied, but codes would emphasize the virtues of courage, honor, and service.  Chivalry also came to refer to an idealization of the life and manners of the Knight at home in his castle and with his court.

 The Knights Code of Chivalry described in the Song of Roland and an excellent representation of the Knights Codes of Chivalry are as follows: To fear God and maintain His Church;  To serve the liege lord in valor and faith;  To protect the weak and defenseless;  To give succor to widows and orphans;  To refrain from the wanton giving of offence;  To live by honor and for glory;  To despise pecuniary reward;  To fight for the welfare of all;   To obey those placed in authority;  To guard the honor of fellow knights;  To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit;  To keep faith;  At all times to speak the truth;  To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun;  To respect the honor of women;  Never to refuse a challenge from an equal;  Never to turn the back upon a foe.  Of the seventeen entries in the Knights Codes of Chivalry, according to the Song of Roland, at least 12 relate to acts of chivalry as opposed to combat.

The ideals described in the Code of Chivalry were emphasized by the oaths and vows that were sworn in the Knighthood ceremonies of the Middle Ages and Medieval era.  These sacred oaths of combat were combined with the ideals of chivalry and with strict rules of etiquette and conduct. The ideals of a Knights Code of Chivalry were publicized in the poems, ballads, writings and literary works of Knights authors.  The wandering minstrels of the Middle Ages sang these ballads and were expected to memorize the words of long poems describing the valor and the code of chivalry followed by the Medieval knights. The Dark Age myths of Arthurian Legends featuring King Arthur, Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table further strengthen the idea of a Knights Code of Chivalry.  The Arthurian legend revolves around the Code of Chivalry which was adhered to by the Knights of the Round Table - Honor, Honesty, Valor and Loyalty.  The Man of la Mancha-“I am brave and courteous, bold and generous...               affable and patient.”

The chivalric virtues of the Knights Code of Chivalry were described in the 14th Century by the Duke of Burgundy.  The words he chose to use to describe the virtues that should be exhibited in the Knights Code of Chivalry were as follows: Faith ; Charity ; Justice ; Sagacity ; Prudence ; Temperance ; Resolution ; Truth ; Liberality ; Diligence ; Hope; Valor

 ****The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural, mythological or semi-legendary personages who were established in the Middle Ages as a set of heroes personifying the ideals of chivalry.  All may loosely be termed "Princes", whether kings, rulers, sons of kings, dictators, or simple leaders.  In French they are the "Nine Valiants", that of soldierly courage and generalship.  The study of the life of each would thus form a good education for the aspirant to chivalric status. They were first described in the early fourteenth century, by Jacques de Longuyon in his Voeux du Paon (1312).  The Nine Worthies comprise a triad of triads as follows:   Pagans: Hector, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar;   Old Testament Jews: Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus;   Chivalric Christian Heroes: King Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon

As a group, the nine worthies represented all facets of the perfectly chivalrous warrior.  All brought glory and honor to their nations and were noted for their personal prowess in arms.  As individuals, each displayed some outstanding quality of chivalry, which made them exemplars of knighthood.  The virtues that they manifest are to be understood as timeless and universal.

 ****Female Worthies - In the late 14th century, Lady Worthies began to be chosen from scripture, history and legend to be placed alongside their male counterparts, though the choices for the Lady Worthies were not standardized and often varied by region, author and artist.

Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) was a French poet and wrote as many as 1,175 ballads, and he is sometimes credited with inventing the form.  He included Penthesilea, Tomyris and Semiramis as Female Worthies to be emulated. =1)Penthesilea was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope and Melanippe. She died as a warrior and an Amazon in battle in the Trojan War, fighting on the side of Troy's defenders.; 2)Tomyris was a queen who reigned over an Iranic people of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, in approximately 530 BC.  The history of Tomyris has been incorporated into the tradition of Western art; Rubens, Allegrini, Luca Ferrari, Mattia Preti, Gustave Moreau and the sculptor Severo Calzetta da Ravenna are among the many artists who have portrayed events in her life and her defeat of Cyrus and his armies.; 3)Semiramis was the Assyrian queen and for whom the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built.  The name of Semiramis came to be applied to various monuments in Western Asia.  Ultimately every stupendous work of antiquity by the Euphrates or in Iran seems to have been ascribed to her.

Thomas III of Saluzzo (1356–1416) was a man of great culture, the author of one of the most important chivalry texts of the Middle Ages.  Thomas III has as the Nine Female Worthies: Deiphille, Synoppe, Hippolyte, Menalyppe, Semiramis, Lampetho, Thamarys, Theuca, Penthésilée. = Deiphille was themother of Diomedes, a hero in the Trojan War; Synoppe was a warrior queen; Hippolyte was the Amazonian queen who possessed a magical girdle; Hippolyte was an Amazonian queen killed by Hercules; Menalyppe was an Amazonian queen; Semiramis was an Assyrian queen; Lampeth(?); Thamarys(?); Theuca(?); Penthesilea was a queen of the Amazons.

Hans Burgkmair the elder (1473–1531) was a German painter and printmaker in woodcut.  He was an important innovator of the chiaroscuro woodcut, and seems to have been the first to use a tone block, in a print of 1508.  Burgkmair was also a successful painter, mainly of religious scenes.  In the German Renaissance Hans Burgkmair showed: the Pagan Lucretia, Veturia and Virginia;   the Jewish Esther, Judith and Jael; and the Christian Saints Helena, Bridget of Sweden and Elizabeth of Hungary.

1)Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to the story, her rape by the king's son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman Republic.   St. Augustine made use of the figure of Lucretia in The City of God to defend the honor of Christian women who had been raped in the sack of Rome and had not committed suicide.  The story of Lucretia was a popular moral tale in the later Middle Ages.  The story has been recounted in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, John Gower's Confessio Amantis (Book VII), and John Lydgate's Fall of Princes.

2)The Romans honored Veturia for her courage, patriotism, and strength in a crisis; she had succeeded where all men before her had failed.  She became a model of Roman female virtue.

3)Verginia, or Virginia through her actions restarted the Roman Republic.  Livy compared to this to the rape of Lucretia and the overthrow of the monarchy in 509 BC.  The tale is retold, with varying fidelity, in several works of Western literature, including Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Physician's Tale" in his Canterbury Tales, and in Thomas Babington Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.

4)Esther is the heroine of the Book of Esther.  She was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus.  She saved her people and her story is the basis for the celebration of Purim in Jewish tradition.

5)Judith, (from the book of Judith) is a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors.  She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, with whom she slowly ingratiates herself, promising him information on the Israelites.  Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night as he lies in a drunken stupor.  She decapitates him, and then takes his head back to her fearful countrymen.  The Assyrians, having lost their leader, disperse, and Israel is saved.  In the Christian West from the patristic period on, Judith was invoked for the virtues – Humility, Justice, Fortitude, Chastity.

6)Yael (or alternately, Jael) is a character mentioned in the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible, as the heroine who killed Sisera to deliver Israel from the troops of king Jabin.  She was the wife of Heber the Kenite.

7)Saint Helena (ca. 246/50 – 8/18 330) was the consort of Emperor Constantius, and the mother of Emperor Constantine I.  She is traditionally credited with finding the relics of the True Cross, with which she is invariably represented in Christian iconography.  She is considered a Christian female worthy.

8)Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303 – 7/23, 1373) of Sweden was a mystic and saint.  She is considered a Christian female worthy.

9)Elisabeth of Hungary (7/7, 1207 – 11/17, 1231) was a princess of the Kingdom of Hungary and a Catholic saint.  Elisabeth was married at the age of 14, widowed at 20, relinquished her wealth to the poor, built hospitals, and became a symbol of Christian charity in Germany and elsewhere after her death at the age of 24.  She is considered a Christian female worthy.

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 Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration.  Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility.  It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife.  It was meant to be non-consummated.  The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris in 1883, and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses, even being dismissed as nineteenth-century romantic fiction.  Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of critical debate.

 ****Mystery plays and Miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe.  Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song.  They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre.  The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle, but an occasionally quoted derivation is from misterium, meaning craft, a play performed by the craft guilds.   Many of these “mystery plays” of Medieval Europe emphasized Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus.   The twin masks of the Jew-mutilator and usurer thus had Biblical sanction "at a time when literature flourished under clerical auspices and when nine tenths of the corpus poeticum derived from Biblical paraphrases and martyrologies. . ."   In ballads and morality plays the two roles were already being joined, and the mere physical presence of the Jews in England between the Norman Conquest and their expulsion under Edward I did nothing to change the myth.

Mummers Plays are seasonal folk plays (or guisers or by local names such as rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, tipteerers, galoshins, guysers, and so on), wrenboys), They are sometimes performed in the street but more usually as house-to-house visits and in public houses.  "mummers" has been used since medieval times.  Mumming plays should not be confused with the earlier mystery plays.  According to German and Austrian sources dating from the 16th century, during carnival persons wearing masks used to make house-to-house visits offering a mum(en)schanz, a game of dice, by the 18th century, had lost its association with gambling and dice.

Hoodening, dates back at least to the mid-18th century. Traditions relate to work such as ploughing teams or men-at-sea.  The common feature to all groups was the appearance of a Hooden Horse - a wooden horse's head mounted on a pole, with a sackcloth attached to hide the bearer.  The head would normally have a hinged jaw which could snap shut with a mighty crack.  The groups would tour the area in the period leading up to Christmas (or the Winter Solstice), engaging in tomfoolery (horseplay) at local landowners' houses and requesting 'largesse', i.e. funds to tide them over the slack period of the year.  The edited (~1000) Pseudo-Penitential of Archbishop Theodore (d. 690) speaks of any who, on the kalends of January (January 1), clothe themselves with the skins of cattle and carry heads of animals.  This, coupled with the fact that among the pagan Scandinavians the horse was often the sacrifice made at the winter solstice to Odin for success in battle,[to Dalarna horse] has been thought to justify the theory that "hodening" is a corruption of Odining.

Guising In Scotland and Ireland, "guising" — children going from house to house in disguise — is traditional, and a gift in the form of food, coins or "apples or nuts for the Halloween party" (the earliest record is in 1895).

Wren day, in the Isle of Man, Ireland, Wales and Newfoundland may be a celebration of the Druids and the Samhain or midwinter sacrifice and/or celebration, as Celtic mythology considered the Wren a symbol of the past year.

The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing.  Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2).  Modern Trick or treating began after WWII from the influence within national children’s magazines and television shows.

Religious Dramas:

The Chaumont Christmas Play. France. It introduces Jews as devil's agents.

The Frankfurt Passion Play. Germany. It shows the evil Jews commit.

Le Mystére de la Passion. France. It has diabolical depictions of Jews.

The Play of the Sacrament. Pan-European. It discusses Jewish ritual murder of Christian children and desecration of church hosts.

The Theophilus Legend. Pan-European. It shows Jews as evil geniuses.

 Pilgrimage is an important part of spiritual life for many Christians.  Christians see life itself as a journey, coming from God and returning to God.  The pilgrim seeks to separate himself from the everyday concerns of the world, and to spend time in the presence of God as he travels to a place of special meaning.  A pilgrimage is a symbol that is acted out.  Back in the Middle Ages pilgrimages were very popular. Pilgrimage was long and very dangerous and may have taken many years.  The pilgrims would usually travel in groups, and stay in monasteries or inns overnight.

Important sites for pilgrimage are in the Holy Land, Rome and places where Apostles are connected.  The centers of the greater pilgrimages were the tomb of the Apostles at Rome, the shrine of St. James at Compostella, Thomas Becket at Canterbury, and the relics of the Three Kings at Cologne. 

The Tombs of the Apostles in Rome: Rome claims to be the final resting place of at least seven Apostles, although portions of these relics have been divided up among other churches worldwide.  Peter, Jude and Simon the Zealot, Paul, Phillip and James the Just, Bartholomew, Matthias, Andrew.  The Tombs of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke.

The Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried.  The earliest records of visits to The Way of St. James date from the 8th century.  It was one of the most important Christian pilgrimages during medieval times, together with Rome and Jerusalem.

The Shrine of the Three Kings is said to contain the bones of the Biblical Magi placed at the Cologne Cathedral.

There are dozens of other places of pilgrimages, many dedicated to Mary and various miracles.  Some are older, but many have been created since the middle ages.  A couple of others are:  Iona, Scotland: In 530, Columba travelled from Ireland and landed at Iona to convert the people to Christianity.  The Via Francigena is an ancient road between Rome and Canterbury, passing through England, France, Switzerland and Italy.  In mediaeval times it was an important road and pilgrimage route.  To pilgrims headed south, it was the Via Romea; to those headed north, the Via Francigena.  The route was first documented as the "Lombard Way", as early as 725.

Jongleurs –Acrobats, Jugglers, Animal exhibiters, Musicians, and Reciters who performed near the shrines along the pilgrimages.

 A Jester, or fool was employed to entertain a ruler.  There were two types: those of the natural fool type and those of the licensed fool type.  Whereas the natural fool was seen as innately nit-witted, moronic, or mad, the licensed fool was given leeway by permission of the court.  In other words, both were excused, to some extent, for their behavior, the first because he "couldn't help it," and the second by decree.  Jesters could verbally challenge Rulers that no one else would.  Entertainment included music, juggling, clowning, and the telling of riddles. Jesters ended in England in the 17^th.  In the 18th century, jesters had died out except in Russia, Spain and Germany.

  Medieval Games and Sports: Tournaments are famous, and included all sorts of martial arts, in addition to jousting. but there were games of various types.  There was a sort of football (soccer), and it was pretty much soccer mixed with rugby and minus almost all rules.  Archery competitions, though the nobility were usually only spectators.  Games included chess, nine men's Morris, checkers or draughts, backgammon, and various games of dice.

THE ANONYMOUS PILGRIM OF BORDEAUX (333 A.D.) The earliest Christian description of the Holy Places

Route of Santiago de Compostela *UNESCO World Heritage Site

 1000 Dragons in history - "The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past.  They are much like the great reptiles which inhabited the earth long before man is supposed to have appeared on earth.  Dragons were generally evil and destructive.  Every country had them in its mythology." The fathers of modern paleontology used the terms "dinosaur" and "dragon" interchangeably for quite some time.  Stories of dragons have been handed down for generations in many civilizations.  In medieval times, the Scandinavians described swimming dragons and the Vikings placed dragons on the front of their ships to scare off the sea monsters.  These creatures have perhaps even been (rarely) seen into modern times.  Saber-toothed Lions, Mastodons and Giant Sloths were hunted to extinction by the American Indians.  Wolves, grizzlies, and others nearly by Americans, why not late-era dinosaurs/dragons?

A few Legendary European Beasts:

 The griffin is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.  As the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle was the king of the birds, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature.  While griffins are most common in the art and lore of Ancient Greece, there is evidence of representations of griffins in Ancient Persian and Ancient Egyptian art as far back as 3,300 BC.   Griffins not only mated for life, but also, if either partner died, then the other would continue throughout the rest of its life alone, never to search for a new mate.  The griffin was thus made an emblem of the Church's views on remarriage.  Being a union of a terrestrial beast and an aerial bird, it was seen in Christendom to be a symbol of Jesus, who was both human and divine.  As such it can be found sculpted on some churches. 

 In Greek mythology, a phoenix is a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn.  Associated with the sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor.  The phoenix was subsequently adopted as a symbol in Early Christianity. The phoenix is referenced in modern popular culture.  In his study of the phoenix, R. van der Broek summarizes, that, in the historical record, the phoenix "could symbolize renewal in general as well as the sun, Time, the Empire, metempsychosis, consecration, resurrection, life in the heavenly Paradise, Christ, Mary, virginity, the exceptional man, and certain aspects of Christian life".

 The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard and cloven hooves.  First mentioned by the ancient Greeks, it became the most important imaginary animal of the Middle Ages and Renaissance when it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin.  In the encyclopedias its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness.  Until the 19th century, belief in unicorns was widespread among historians, alchemists, writers, poets, naturalists, physicians, and theologians.

 In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Architects often used multiple gargoyles on buildings to divide the flow of rainwater off the roof to minimize the potential damage from a rainstorm.  A trough is cut in the back of the gargoyle and rainwater typically exits through the open mouth.  Gargoyles are usually an elongated fantastic animal because the length of the gargoyle determines how far water is thrown from the wall.  When Gothic flying buttresses were used, aqueducts were sometimes cut into the buttress to divert water over the aisle walls.

 Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder in ancient Roman religion.  Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until the Empire came under Christian rule.  His identifying implement is the thunderbolt, and his primary sacred animal is the eagle.  As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend.  His sacred tree was the oak.  The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of Greek Zeus.  In the Greek-influenced tradition, Jupiter was the brother of Neptune and Pluto.  Each presided over one of the three realms of the universe: sky, the waters, and the underworld.  Jove is the older name the Romans had for the god Jupiter (which derives from an alteration of Jovis pater, father Jove).  From medieval times, Jove has been used in English as a poetical way of referring to Jupiter.  It has also been linked to Jehovah, a form of the Hebrew name of God used in some translations of the Bible.  By Jove was a mild oath, an exclamation that indicated surprise or gave emphasis to some comment, which dates from the sixteenth century.  It was originally a neat way of calling on a higher power without using the blasphemous by God. 

 Gentiles eat pig, Jews do not:  Boar hunting has often been a test of bravery.  The wild boar (Sus scrofa) is the wild ancestor of the domestic pig.  It is native across much of Central Europe, the Mediterranean Region (including North Africa's Atlas Mountains) and much of Asia as far south as Indonesia, and has been widely introduced elsewhere.  Currently wild boars are hunted both for their meat and to mitigate any damage they may cause to crops and forests.  A charging boar is considered exceptionally dangerous quarry, due to its thick hide and dense bones, making anything less than a kill shot a potentially deadly mistake.  In Ancient Greek culture, the boar represented death.  The first recorded mention of a boar hunt in Europe occurs in 700 BC in Homer's rendition of the hunt for the Calydonian boar. The third labor of Heracles involved the live capture of the Erymanthian Boar.  The Ancient Romans left behind many more representations of boar hunting than the Ancient Greeks in both literature and art.  Hunting was seen as a way of fortifying character and exercising physical vigor.  The Germanic tribes responsible for the sack of Rome were avid hunters, though unlike the Greeks and Romans, they considered the deer and not the boar as the most noble quarry.

 The phrase "Seven Seas" appears as early as 2300 BC in Hymn 8 of the Sumerian Enheduanna to the goddess Inanna.  The Seven Seas refers to the Phoenicians names for the seven seas of the Mediterranean: Alboran, Ligurian, Balearic, Tyrrhanean, Ionian, Adriatic, Aegean.  The Medieval concept of the Seven Seas has its origins in Greece and Rome: Adriatic, Mediterranean (& its marginal seas, ie Aegean), Black, Caspian, Persian Gulf, Arabian (which is part of the Indian Ocean), Red (& Dead & Galilee).  The seven seas in medieval times also included: Aegean, Indian Ocean, North.

Top 10 Reasons We Should Revive the Dark Ages by Jamie Frater, February 15, 2011

First off, I must apologize for using the term “dark ages”, as it is a false term coined in the post-medieval period to cast aspersions over the middle ages. The dark ages were not dark – they were, in fact, a great time to live. I am a medievalphile, and suffer from hesternopothia so this list should come as no surprise! Here, we look at ten differences between then and now that are (subjectively of course) better than today. I expect this will probably be a controversial list, so do be sure to keep your comments friendly!  NOTE: Many of the comments which are complaining about factual errors on this list are repeating myths already exposed on the previous list Top 10 Myths about the Middle Ages. Please read that list before commenting negatively.

10            Low Tax  The tax rates in medieval England varied a lot, depending on the King and what was happening in society. The taxes seldom went above 15% but were more often closer to the 10% mark. For most people today this is nearly one third or half of the tax currently being paid. The taxes went to support the military and the King, and even in times of war the taxes were never excessive. Taxes were usually paid based on the quantity of land you owned, so people like serfs were often exempt from national taxes and paid, instead, tithes in the form (usually) of wheat to their land owners.

9              Great Lifestyle  We all know the Middle Ages had a more obvious separation of classes. However, regardless of which class you were in, you would have lived a better lifestyle. By “better” I mean healthier and easier. If you were an aristocrat you wouldn’t have worked a day in your life. You would eat delicious food all the time, and would have plenty of activities to keep you occupied. On the other hand, if you were a serf, you would work your fields during the summer months and laze about during the winter months enjoying your harvests (after the taxes you pay to your land owner). The only real requirement as a serf was that you pay your tithes (usually in wheat) and do a few other odd jobs, but, aside from that, you could do anything you wanted with your land, and the land owner had to guarantee you protection from criminals and provide for you in times of famine. Some serfs became incredibly wealthy through the wise use of their land.

8              Crime  The middle ages knew roughly 5 serial killers. Most of you will be able to name three of them: Elizabeth Bathory, Gilled de Rais and Sawney Bean (who may not have existed at all). Now try to name as many serial killers from the modern ages that you know. A lot more I bet. There were definitely a lot of murders in the Middle Ages, but the chances of the average person being a victim of murder were low. Murderers were tried and executed, and those who committed petty crimes were usually publicly shamed or fined. The stories we hear of people’s hands being cut off for stealing were usually from Eastern countries, or were during the very early years of the Middle ages, when Europe was establishing itself into the formation we generally know it today.

7              No Lobbyists  Unlike most of our countries today, there were no lobbyists, and governments (mostly ruled over by Kings) were not prone to switching policies every other year. In our current system we can expect to see fairly drastic changes to the laws under which we live every few years – in the Middle ages you had the same law (with a few exceptions) for most of your life. Life under a benevolent King was good for law abiding citizens, and you knew that unless the King was old, sick, or off fighting a war, tomorrow would be the same as today. This stability is something most of us have never known, so it can be hard to appreciate how much better it was than the present systems which have given rise to all manner of bizarre ideas such as the fart tax.

6              Money was Money    Since the end of the gold standard, money has become more a concept than a reality. In the Middle Ages, money was money. If you had gold, you had gold. Today’s monetary systems are largely controlled by the International Monetary Fund, and the ability of a nation to print money on demand has caused the recent devaluation of many currencies. The old adage says money doesn’t grow on trees – but, unfortunately, modern governments don’t know it. Food prices were relatively constant (with the exception of times of famine and during the price revolution), and people didn’t need to spend half their income paying off debts for things they didn’t need. In fact, society took a great turn for the worse in the so-called renaissance, which started a smear campaign against the Medieval feudal system in order to gain support for the new capital-based system. An economy based on production was replaced by an economy based on how much gold the King released to the public. Here is a quote from Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back.

“Land was no longer a thing the peasants could grow stuff on, land became an investment, land became an asset class for the wealthy. Once it became an asset class they started Partitioning and Enclosure, which meant people weren’t allowed to grow stuff on it, so subsistence farming was no longer a viable lifestyle. If you can’t do subsistence farming you must find a job, so then you go into the city and volunteer to do unskilled labor in a proto-factory for some guy who wants the least-skilled, cheapest labor possible. You move your whole family to where the work is, into the squalor, where conditions are overcrowded and impoverished — the perfect breeding ground for plague and death!”

Oh – and for a point of reference, the average wage in the mid 1400s was about 6 pennies a day – that equates to 130 modern pounds a day – compared to the current average in the UK of around 96 pounds per day.

5              Live Long and Prosper   People in the Middle Ages did (on average) prosper. And, contrary to popular belief, they also lived long! In general, a person in the Middle Ages who reached the age of 21 would live to just one or two years below the current average human life expectancy rate (mid-late sixties). Where the idea of dying at thirty came from, I do not know, but this myth has given rise to untold others, such as the “fact” the people had to marry in their early teen years (or worse – pre-teen years) because they would be dead before long. Infant mortality rates were higher than today, but, generally, people in the Middle Ages didn’t have on-demand access to the medical knowledge we have now. And, despite the death rates, most families had more children than today’s planned family structures, which could potentially result in a human population decline, as is already happening in some nations. Such nations include Italy and Russia (contrary to the bizarre and wrong notion that the Earth is overpopulated). Out of interest, here is a small list of countries currently in population decline: Russia, including Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. And here are nations about to go into decline: Greece, Spain, Cuba, Uruguay, Denmark, Finland, Austria and Lesotho.

4              Beauty    While a lot of people like modern art, many don’t. But most who do like it also appreciate the beauty of traditional art. In the Middle Ages virtually everyone in the West had access to at least one or two items of beauty. Whether it be a statue, or an image in a Church or beautiful tapestries made by family members – life was not a dull gray existence. Tapestry making was a popular pastime in the Middle Ages, and the survival of many of those works of art teaches us a lot about history (the Bayeux tapestry being the most well known example). And, even if you didn’t have access to tapestries or paintings, you could see some of the most incredible works of art in the vestments worn by priests at Mass every day, which were often woven with the addition of gold thread.

3              Knights And Damsels    I am pretty sure that no one will disagree with this entry. Who wouldn’t want to live the life of a knight? You get to run around slaying the enemy in battles, dressed in armor and riding huge warhorses – and when you get some time off you get to save damsels in distress; and if we are to believe the story books, there are plenty of those to go around! Knights only had to give 40 days a year to their lord – after that they would spend their days in tournaments (initially very dangerous battles, but later more like games and competitions). A young man would start his knight training early and would become a full fledged knight between the ages of 16 and 20.

2              Amazing Food    No genetically modified food, no chemicals, no intensive farming, no need for the “organic” label. These are just four of the many reasons that medieval food was better than what we have today. But, perhaps most importantly, none of the food had had its flavor bred out of it in order to make it look appealing to supermarket shopping masses. And, contrary to popular belief, people in the middle ages ate very well. Here is what BBC says: “The average medieval peasant, however, would have eaten nearly two loaves of bread each day, and 8oz of meat or fish, the size of an average steak. This would have been accompanied by liberal quantities of vegetables, including beans, turnips and parsnips, and washed down by three pints of ale.” That equates to around 3,500 to 4,000 calories per day (the average man eats 2,700 these days).

1              Plenty of Work    The Middle Ages didn’t really have unemployment troubles like we do these days. If you were a serf, you worked the land. If you were in the unnamed middle class, you ran a shop or worked for a Lord. If you were upper class, you had hunting and fun stuff to do. In most cities huge Cathedrals were being built so most men could work in some capacity on those. If you really couldn’t work, it was usually because you were sick or had disabilities. People who couldn’t work were taken care of by charitable nuns and monks – or by their own families if they had sufficient funds to do so.

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Top 10 Myths About The Middle Ages by JFrater, January 7, 2009

The Middle Ages spanned roughly from the 5th century to the 16th century – a total of 1,100 years. During the time following the Middle Ages (which is often referred to as the Enlightenment), the previous millennium was criticized and condemned – just as we now condemn the actions of some during the Victorian Period (sexual prudishness for example). Many of the writers of the newly invented Protestant movement harshly attacked the Middle Ages because of its Catholicity. Unfortunately many of the myths and misconceptions that sprung up at the time are still believed today. This list aims to set things straight.

10            Death Penalty         Myth: The death penalty was common in the Middle Ages

Despite what many people believe, the Middle Ages gave birth to the jury system and trials were in fact very fair. The death penalty was considered to be extremely severe and was used only in the worst cases of crimes like murder, treason, and arson. It was not until the Middle Ages began to draw to a close that people like Elizabeth I began to use the death penalty as a means to rid their nations of religious opponents. Public beheadings were not as we see in the movies – they were given only to the rich, and were usually not performed in public. The most common method of execution was hanging – and burning was extremely rare (and usually performed after the criminal had been hanged to death first).

9              Locked Bibles          Myth: Bibles were locked away to keep the people from seeing the “true word”

During the Middle Ages (until Gutenberg came along) all books had to be written by hand. This was a painstaking task which took many months – particularly with a book as large as the Bible. The job of hand-printing books was left to monks tucked away in monasteries. These books were incredibly valuable and they were needed in every Church as the Bible was read aloud at Mass every day. In order to protect these valuable books, they would be locked away. There was no conspiracy to keep the Bible from the people – the locks meant that the Church could guarantee that the people could hear the Bible (many wouldn’t have been able to read) every day. And just to show that it wasn’t just the Catholic Church that locked up the Bibles for safety, the most famous “chained bible” is the “Great Bible” which Henry VIII had created and ordered to be read in the protestant churches. You can read more about that here. The Catholic diocese of Lincoln makes a comment on the practice here.

8              Starving Poor          Myth: The poor were kept in a state of near starvation

This is completely false. Peasants (those who worked in manual work) would have had fresh porridge and bread daily – with beer to drink. In addition, each day would have an assortment of dried or cured meats, cheeses, and fruits and vegetables from their area. Poultry, chicken, ducks, pigeons, and geese were not uncommon on the peasants dinner table. Some peasants also liked to keep bees, to provide honey for their tables. Given the choice between McDonalds and Medieval peasant food, I suspect the peasant food would be more nutritious and tasty. The rich of the time had a great choice of meats – such as cattle, and sheep. They would eat more courses for each meal than the poor, and would probably have had a number of spiced dishes – something the poor could not afford. Wikipedia has an interesting article here which describes the mostly vegetable and grain diet of the peasants in the early Middle Ages, leading to more meat in the later period.

7              Thatched Roofs       Myth: Peasants had thatched roofs with animals living in them

First of all, the thatched roofs of Medieval dwellings were woven into a tight mat – they were not just bundles of straw and sticks thrown on top of the house. Animals would not easily have been able to get inside the roof – and considering how concerned the average Middle Ager was, if an animal did get inside, they would be promptly removed – just as we remove birds or other small creatures that enter our homes today. And for the record, thatched roofs were not just for the poor – many castles and grander homes had them as well – because they worked so well. There are many homes in English villages today that still have thatched roofs.

6              Smelly People         Myth: People didn’t bathe in the Middle Ages, therefore they smelled bad

Not only is this a total myth, it is so widely believed that it has given rise to a whole other series of myths, such as the false belief that Church incense was designed to hide the stink of so many people in one place. In fact, the incense was part of the Church’s rituals due to its history coming from the Jewish religion which also used incense in its sacrifices. This myth has also lead to the strange idea that people usually married in May or June because they didn’t stink so badly – having had their yearly bath. It is, of course, utter rubbish. People married in those months because marriage was not allowed during Lent (the season of penance). So, back to smelly people. In the Middle Ages, most towns had bathhouses – in fact, cleanliness and hygiene was very highly regarded – so much so that bathing was incorporated into various ceremonies such as those surrounding knighthood. Some people bathed daily, others less regularly – but most people bathed. Furthermore, they used hot water – they just had to heat it up themselves, unlike us with our modern plumbed hot water. The French put it best in the following Latin statement: Venari, ludere, lavari, bibere; Hoc est vivere! (To hunt, to play, to wash, to drink, – This is to live!)

5              Peasant Life            Myth: Peasants lived a life of drudgery and back-breaking work

In fact, while peasants in the Middle Ages did work hard (tilling the fields was the only way to ensure you could eat), they had regular festivals (religious and secular) which involved dancing, drinking, games, and tournaments. Many of the games from the time are still played today: chess, checkers, dice, blind man’s bluff, and many more. It may not seem as fun as the latest game for the Wii, but it was a great opportunity to enjoy the especially warm weather that was caused by the Medieval Warming Period.

4              Violence Everywhere              Myth: The Middle Ages were a time of great violence

While there was violence in the Middle Ages (just as there had always been), there were no equals to our modern Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Most people lived their lives without experiencing violence. The Inquisition was not the violent bloodlust that many movies and books have claimed it to be, and most modern historians now admit this readily. Modern times have seen genocide, mass murder, and serial killing – something virtually unheard of before the “enlightenment”. In fact, there are really only two serial killers of note from the Middle Ages: Elizabeth Bathory, and Gilles de Rais. For those who dispute the fact that the Inquisition resulted in very few deaths, Wikipedia has the statistics here showing that there were (at most) 826 recorded executions over a 160 year period – from 45,000 trials!

3              Oppressed Women                 Myth: Women were oppressed in the Middle Ages

In the 1960s and 1970s, the idea that women were oppressed in the Middle Ages flourished. In fact, all we need to do is think of a few significant women from the period to see that that is not true at all: St Joan of Arc was a young woman who was given full control of the French army! Her downfall was political and would have occurred whether she were male or female. Hildegard von Bingen was a polymath in the Middle Ages who was held in such high esteem that Kings, Popes, and Lords all sought her advice. Her music and writing exists to this day. Elizabeth I ruled as a powerful queen in her own right, and many other nations had women leaders. Granted women did not work on Cathedrals but they certainly pulled their weight in the fields and villages. Furthermore, the rules of chivalry meant that women had to be treated with the greatest of dignity. The biggest difference between the concept of feminism in the Middle Ages and now is that in the Middle Ages it was believed that women were “equal in dignity, different in function” – now the concept has been modified to “equal in dignity and function”.

2              Flat Earth                                Myth: People in the Middle Ages believed the earth was flat

Furthermore, people did not believe the Earth was the center of the universe – the famous monk Copernicus dealt a death blow to that idea (without being punished) well before Galileo was tried for heresy for claiming that it proved the Bible was wrong. Two modern historians recently published a book in which they say: “there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference.”

1              Crude and Ignorant                 Myth: People of the Middle Ages were crude and ignorant

Thanks largely to Hollywood movies, many people believe that the Middle Ages were full of religious superstition and ignorance. But in fact, leading historians deny that there is any evidence of this. Science and philosophy blossomed at the time – partly due to the introduction of Universities all over Europe. The Middle ages produced some of the greatest art, music, and literature in all history. Boethius, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli are still revered today for their brilliant minds. The cathedrals and castles of Europe are still standing and contain some of the most beautiful artwork and stonework man has been able to create with his bare hands. Medicine at the time was primitive, but it was structured and willing to embrace new ideas when they arose (which is how we have modern medicine).

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1009 The burning of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  The rumor spread throughout the West that the Fatimid caliph had destroyed the church on the advice of the Jews of Orleans.  The caliph is portrayed as gullible rather than ill-intentioned and his Christian mother started rebuilding the church.

Jew Simeon ben Isaac ben Abun [Simeon the Great] (d. c. 1015) calls on God ‘to take His sword and slaughter the Gentiles’.

Saint Stephen I (967/969/975 – 8/15 1038), born Vajk, was Grand Prince of the Hungarians (997–1000) and the first King of Hungary (1000–1038).  He greatly expanded Hungarian control over the Carpathian Basin during his lifetime, broadly established Christianity in the region, and is generally considered to be the founder of the Kingdom of Hungary.  The conversion of Stephen of Hungary opened the overland route to the Holy Land.

1012 Jews Expelled from Mainz, Germany.  Anti-Jewish riots held periodically throughout Germany for centuries.  Expulsions have happened since antiquity periodically in lands where the Jews resided.  The Jews with their anti-Gentile tribal Supremacy would wear out their welcome.  Jews rarely owned property.  In the cities it may have been prevented due to previous knowledge of their practices, but in the vast expanse of Europe, Jews could have easily settled in villages as they did centuries later in shetls in Russia.  The main expulsion was ridding the area of the Jews, many times paying them for any landed property and many times taking their goods.  Their lives were rarely on the line except from the lower class elements.  In many instances where they were offered conversion over expulsion, they committed suicide.

1015 - Russia is said to have been "comprehensively" converted to the Orthodox faith; Olaf II Haroldsson becomes the first king of the whole of Norway.  Over the next 15 years he would organize Norway's final conversion and its integration into Christian Europe.

1016 - The Swedish Vikings (Kievan Rus) conquer the Jewish Khazar kingdom situated in present day Russia.

“Tractate against the Jews” by converted Jew Fulbert of Chartres (d 1028)

  ****Jewish Ghettos in Europe primarily existed because the Rabbis wanted final control over their Jewish communities.  The ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a usually relatively affluent population (for instance the Jewish ghetto in Venice).  In other cases, ghettos included places of terrible poverty especially during periods of population growth.  Ghettos often had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses.  Residents had their own justice system.  Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving during those times.

1025 From the founding of the Kingdom in 1025, Poland becomes center of Jewish influence, due to Jewish conversion of Khazars.  From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was one of the most tolerant countries in Europe. Known as paradisus Iudaeorum (Latin for Jewish paradise) it became a unique shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and a home to the world's largest Jewish community. According to some sources, about three-quarters of all Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.  (It was certainly bolstered by the conversion of the Khazars!)  With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland’s traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. After the partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews were subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, primarily the increasingly anti-Semitic Russian Empire, but also Austro-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later known as the German Empire).  Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, it was the center of the European Jewish world with one of world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million.  (Many more were located in nearby Russian and Ukrainian territories, especially with the Jewish Communist system.)  Anti-Semitism, however, from both the political establishment and from the general population, common throughout Europe, was a growing problem.

Adémar de Chabannes (sometimes Adhémar de Chabannes) (c. 988-1034) was a French monk, a historian who wrote the first annals to have been compiled in Aquitaine since Late Antiquity, a musical composer and a successful literary forger of the life of St. Martial.  ‘After traversing great distances, we desire to attack the enemies of God in the East, although the Jews, of all races the worst foes of God, are before our eyes. That's doing our work backward.’(?)

St Hallyard - Hallvard Vebjørnsson (c1020–1043) is the patron saint of Oslo.  He is considered a martyr because of his defense of an innocent woman.  His mother was reportedly related to St. Olaf, the patron saint of Norway.  Hallvard defended a pregnant woman, most likely a slave, who had been given sanctuary on his ship from three men accusing her of theft.  Hallvard, together with the woman, were killed by arrows from the men.  The woman was buried on the beach.  Hallvard, however, was bound with a millstone around his neck, and the men attempted to drown his body but it refused to sink and as a result their crimes were discovered.   He is celebrated as a local saint in Norway since the mid-11th century.

Rodulfus (or Ralph) Glaber (985–1047) was a monk and chronicler of the years around 1000 and is one of the chief sources for the history of France in that period.  “…the envious devil again began to pass on to the worshippers of the true faith the poison of his iniquity through the race of the Jews who were accustomed to him.”

Pope Clement II (Germany  -October 1047), served from 12/25, 1046 until his death.  He was the first in a series of reform-minded popes from Germany.  Clement II initiated an improvement in the state of affairs within the Roman Church, particularly by enacting decrees against simony.  A toxicological examination of his remains in the mid-20th century confirmed centuries-old rumors that the Pope had been poisoned with lead sugar.  It is not clear, however, whether he was murdered or whether the lead sugar was used as medicine.

Pope Damasus II (  -8/9, 1048) served from 7/17, 1048 to death.  The shortness of Damasus II's reign led to rumors that he had been poisoned, but a more likely scenario is that he died of malaria.

Pope Saint Leo IX (6/21, 1002 – 4/19, 1054), served from 2/12, 1049 until his death.  He was a German aristocrat and a powerful secular ruler of central Italy while holding the papacy.  He is regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, his feast day celebrated on 4/19.  Leo IX is widely considered the most historically significant German Pope of the Middle Ages.  His citing of the Donation of Constantine in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople brought about the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Pope Victor II (c1018 – 7/28, 1057) served from 1055 to death.  He was one of a series of German reform Popes.  Although there have been eight German Popes, Victor II is one of only three Popes from the territory of present-day Germany, the others being Pope Clement II (1046–47) and the current Benedict XVI.

Pope Stephen IX (c1020(considered German) – 3/29, 1058) served from 8/3, 1057 to death.

 1054 The Great Schism took place between Rome and Constantinople, which led to separation from the Church of the West, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Byzantine Churches, now the Orthodox. There were doctrinal issues like the filioque clause and the authority of the Roman Pope involved in the split, but these were greatly exacerbated by political factors of both Church and state, and by cultural and linguistic differences between Latins and Greeks.  (Is this court history?  Or was the Great Schism because of the Jewish limitations in the East?)

1060  The Ezzolied, or Anegenge, is an old German poem written by Ezzo, a scholar of Bamberg.  The subject of the poem is the life of Christ.  Very popular during the late Middle Ages, the Ezzolied had a great influence on the poetry of south Germany, and is valuable as a monument of the poetical literature of the time.

 1066   Battle of Hastings.  Jews enter England with the Norman Invasion and establish banks.  They purchased various privileges and trade monopolies. There is quite a history of Court Jews both as Advisors and Bankers.  Just like Matthew the tax-collector in the Gospels, kings have used Jews, as foreigners, to collect taxes.  Periodically the kings would then banish the rich Jews and keep their money.  The story is that Jews were forbidden to own land, but in reality, they eschewed manual labor and gravitated to trade and haggling.  They had ample opportunity in the Middle Ages in the vastness of wilderness in Europe to farm and begin their own villages.  Jews arrived in increasing numbers from Normandy to settle in London, and then spread in ever widening circles to York, Norwich, Oxford, Bristol, and Lincoln. They tended to settle in large towns and commercial centers, close to the royal castle for protection against the sheriff. (Was the sheriff appointed by the king or elected by the people?  Perhaps the people were aware of their deceit towards them.)

The whole feudal system was one of mutual responsibilities between serfs, freemen and royalty, with good kings and bad.

1070    The Minor Renaissance of the High Middle Ages included social, political and economic transformations, and an intellectual revitalization of Western Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots.  For some historians these changes paved the way to later achievements such as the literary and artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century and the scientific developments of the 17th century.  “The 12th century in Europe was in many respects an age of fresh and vigorous life.  The epoch of the Crusades, of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, it saw the culmination of Romanesque art and the beginnings of Gothic; the emergence of the vernacular literatures; the revival of the Latin classics and of Latin poetry and Roman law; the recovery of Greek science, with its Arabic additions, and of much of Greek philosophy; and the origin of the first European universities.  The twelfth century left its signature on higher education, on the scholastic philosophy, on European systems of law, on architecture and sculpture, on the liturgical drama, on Latin and vernacular poetry...“

Annolied of Anon of Cologne (d1075).  The poem consists of three parts: the religious or spiritual history of the world and its salvation, from the creation to the time of Anno II; the secular history of the world up to the foundation of the German cities (including the theory of the world empires derived from the vision of the Book of Daniel); and finally the biography of Bishop Anno II.

[****The New Chronology:  This is a fascinating theory that conventional chronology is fundamentally flawed, that events attributed to antiquity such as the histories of Rome, Greece and Egypt actually occurred more recently.  The New Chronology is commonly associated with Anatoly Fomenko, although it is collaboration between Fomenko and several other mathematicians, astronomers, and scientists.  The New Chronology is radically shorter than the conventional chronology, because all ancient history is "folded" onto the Middle Ages.  Since Christ, there have only been 1200 years with modern history starting at 800ad.  There is little information between AD 800-1000, and most known historical events took place in AD 1000-1500.  The Renaissance of 1200 was only re-birthing the culture of a couple of centuries earlier.  Through mathematics, several cycles of people and events seemed similar and that histories of the new European Nations were expanded to lend more credibility to their identities.

While some researchers have developed revised chronologies of Classical and Biblical periods that shorten the timeline of ancient history by eliminating various "dark ages", none of these are as radical as that of the New Chronology.  The New Chronology is rejected by mainstream historians and is inconsistent with absolute and relative dating techniques used in the wider scholarly community.  Most Russian historians considered the New Chronology to be pseudoscientific.  It has also been viewed as an expression of Russian nationalism.

Jean Hardouin (1646 – 9/3, 1729), a French classical scholar wrote a new chronology (1696) that, with the exception of the works of Homer, Herodotus and Cicero, the Natural History of Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Satires and Epistles of Horace, all the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were spurious, having been manufactured by monks of the 13th century, under the direction of a certain Severus Archontius.  He denied the genuineness of most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, and declared that the New Testament was originally written in Latin.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov (7/7, 1854 – 7/30, 1946) was a Russian revolutionary who spent a quarter of century in prison before turning his attention to various fields of science.  Based on the astronomical records (such as the Almagest) he speculated that much of human history has been falsified.

Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko (3/13 1945-  ) is a Russian mathematician,  well-known as a topologist, and a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  He is a supporter of revising historical chronology.]

1071-1080 Seljuk Turks conquer Anatolia, most of the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire.  It had been Christian for 1000 years.  The Emperor asks Western Europe Christians to aid their brothers.

The Byzantine–Seljuk Wars shifted the balance of power in Asia Minor and Syria from the Byzantine Empire to the Seljuk Turks.  Riding from the steppes of Central Asia, the Seljuk Turks replicated tactics practiced by the Huns hundreds of years earlier against a similar Roman opponent but now combining it with new-found Islamic zeal; in many ways, the Seljuk Turks resumed the conquests of the Muslims in the Byzantine-Arab Wars initiated by the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abassid Caliphate in the Levant, North Africa and Asia Minor.  Today, the Battle of Manzikert is widely seen as the moment when the Byzantines lost the war against the Turks.  On August 26, 1071, the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army and the capture of the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes played an important role in undermining Byzantine authority in Anatolia and Armenia.  Power shifted to the Mamelukes by the 14th century and then back to the Turks in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.  Never again would a Christian Kingdom yield so much military and political power in the Middle East.  As the Turks steadily gained ground in Anatolia, the local population converted to Islam, further reducing any chances of a successful reconquest.     ** The Byzantine Jews supported the invading armies of Seljuk Turks against the Chrsitians..

****Spain - Toleration and Jewish immigration (1085 to 1212) Alfonso VI, the conqueror of Toledo (1085), was tolerant and benevolent in his attitude toward the Jews, for which he won the praise of Pope Alexander II. To estrange the wealthy and industrious Jews from the Moors he offered the former various privileges.  Most of these immigrants are Sephardic Jews from around the Mediterranean and Babylon. 

“Concerning the Advent of the Messiah, Whom the Jews Vainly Await” by converted Jew Samuel of Morocco (1085)

 (El Cid) Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (AD. 1043 – July 10, 1099) – known as El Cid Campeador – was a Castilian nobleman, a military leader and diplomat who, after being exiled, conquered and governed the city of Valencia. Rodrigo Díaz was educated in the royal court of Castile and became the chief general of Alfonso X, and his most valuable asset in the fight against the Moors.

1086 Battle of Zula (Zallaka) (Spain) -It is reported that 40,000 Jews fought together with King Alfonso VI against the Almoravides.  The Moslem armies also had a large amount of Jews serving in them - so much so that the battle was arranged not to fall on the Sabbath.  Although the numbers may be exaggerated, they reflect the fact that Jews actually took part in most of the Spanish wars and fought valiantly (to protect their freedom within Christendom.)

1086  Domesday Book is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales.  The survey was executed for William I of England (William the Conqueror).  One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine who held what and what taxes had been liable under Edward the Confessor; the judgment of the Domesday assessors was final—whatever the book said about who held the material wealth or what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal.

1090 Granada, Spain captured by Iban Iashufin, King of the Almoravides.  The Jewish community, believed to have sided with the Christians, was destroyed.  Many fled, penniless, for Christian Toledo.

1090 Worms, Germany -The Emperor confirmed the right of Jews to live anywhere in the city, although many preferred to live in their own quarter. (self-imposed ghetto.)

~1096  Jews have colonized large areas of Europe where they are active in the financial services sector as money-lenders  or involved in slavery.  In Mainz, “The Jews here were especially hated, on account of their usurious customs, and famous for their wealth.”  In 1096, on their way to war, Christians “in their journey the Rhine downwards they approached the towns chiefly inhabited by wealthy Jews.” (Business was run by them)  The Jews were running the city and wasted no time in sending their ‘law enforcement staff’ to bar the gates.’  The Jews and their bought politicians and police were inside the walls.  So Emicho, Graf von Leiningen ahead of the army was welcomed by anti-Jewish riots within the city.  For awhile the Jew-controlled police tried to control the crowds, but the population turned against the Jews. 

“Wherever Jews have lived, following their collectivist strategies and aggressive opportunism, they have often risen to extraordinary economic and social power. This was true in the Muslim world where Jews in the eleventh century... attained the highest level of political power in Muslim Spain.”-“The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State” (1994) by Benjamin Ginsberg

In North Africa in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Jews were important bankers, financiers, and advisors to the caliphates. 

“In the tenth and eleventh centuries a great part of the city of Paris was owned by Jews.”-  “Reformed Judaism” (1877) by Felix Adler

  Adam of Bremen was a German medieval chronicler in the second half of the eleventh century.  He is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church). His position and the missionary activity of the church of Bremen allowed him to gather information on the history and the geography of Northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries.  Adam of Bremen's best-known work is the (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church) of four volumes about the history of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, and the isles of the north.  The first book gives a history from 788 onwards of the Church in Hamburg-Bremen, and the Christian mission in the North.  This is the chief source of knowledge of the North until the thirteenth century.  The second book continues the history, and also deals with German history between 940 and 1045.  The third book is about the deeds of archbishop Adalbert and is considered a milestone in medieval biographical writing.  The fourth book, in 1075, is about the geography, people and customs of Scandinavia, as well as updates of the progress of Christian missionaries there.

The description of the Uppsala temple is one of the most famous excerpts of the Gesta, however no archaeological site has ever been found.  Some historians question his account.  In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side. (…) Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather crops.  The other, Wotan – that is, the Furious – carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies.  The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals.  His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus.  Adam also presents idolatry, human sacrifice as religious practice: For all their gods there are appointed priests to offer sacrifices for the people.  If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor; if war, to Wotan; if marriages are to be celebrated, to Frikko.  Adam was a supporter of converting the Northern people.  Scandinavia had only just recently been explored by missionaries, and since the fourth book was perhaps created to inspire and guide future missionaries, its detailed descriptions make it one of the most important sources about pre-Christian Scandinavia.  It is also the first known European record (in chapter 38) that mentions Vinland (Winland) island (insula), a land centuries later possibly identified as Newfoundland, Canada, North America, as well as dog-headed people in Scandinavia.

1100         1100         1100         1100

1099 First crusade called by Byzantine Alexios I after Turkish warlords seized some of his most precious territories.  He issued plea to Pope Urban to help with discussion including one to unite the Catholic and Orthodox branches.

1096 -1270 First –Eighth Crusades to Palestine. French anti-Jewish riots.  The Crusades were an attempt to retake conquered Christian lands.  The Muslims were the Imperialists and had taken two-thirds of the old Christian world.  Many times the lower classes on Crusade would cause trouble for the Jews as they traveled to Palestine.  The Jews were always ‘the Other’ and were demonized from a distance, but those living near knew their anti-Gentile ways.

“Fairest Lord Jesus” -The "Crusader's Hymn" was sung by German Crusaders as they made their way to the Holy Land.  English lyrics first appeared in 1677.  The German title is "Schönster Herr Jesu". :  1.Fairest Lord Jesus! Ruler of all nature! O thou of God and man the Son! Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown! 2.Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands, Robed in the blooming garb of spring; Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, who makes the woeful heart to sing! 3.Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight. And all the twinkling starry host; Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer, than all the angels heav'n can boast! 4.Beautiful savior! Lord of all the nations! Son of God and son of Man! Glory and honor. Praise, adoration, now and forevermore be Thine!

 A Bestiary is a compendium of beasts.  Bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks.  The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson.  This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus.  The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.  Bestiaries were particularly popular in England and France around the 12th century and were mainly compilations of earlier texts. The earliest bestiary in the form in which it was later popularized was an anonymous 2nd century Greek volume called the Physiologus, which itself summarized ancient knowledge and wisdom about animals in the writings of classical authors such as Aristotle's Historia Animalium and various works by Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Solinus, Aelian and other naturalists.

~1100 Anti-Semitic Legends (or stories, the first several have exact dates.): 1. The Jews' Stone (Austria);   2. The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews (Germany);   3. Pfefferkorn the Jew at Halle (Germany);   4. The Expulsion of the Jews from Prussia (Germany) ;   5. The Bloody Children of the Jews (Germany);   6. The Imprisoned Jew at Magdeburg (Germany);   7. The Chapel of the Holy Body at Magdeburg (Germany);   8. The Lost Jew (Germany);   9. The Story of Judas (Italy);   10. Malchus at the Column (Italy);   11. Buttadeu (Sicily);   12. The Eternal Jew on the Matterhorn (Switzerland)

William the Carpenter (Guillaume de Charpentier) (fl. 1087–1102), was a French nobleman who participated in the Reconquista in Spain and on the First Crusade.  He was notorious for defecting from the army both in Spain and on the crusade, but he was also known for his strength in battle, whence he earned his nickname "the Carpenter." He returned to the Holy Land after the crusade, and nothing further is known of his life or death.    When armies were formed to fight the first crusade, they often made it their first order of business on the way to the 'Holy' Land to administer justice in the larger and more booty-loaded Jewish ghettoes.  There they liberated property and gold stolen through anti-human usury, disposed of immoral loan-shark contracts and sometimes dusted off the caftans of any Jews who objected to the righting of wrongs.  The three most prominent liberators of the common folk at this time were Guillaume, his fellow French commander, Thomas de Feria, and the German, Emicho von Lieringen.

 Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki)(2/22, 1040 – 7/13, 1105), was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible).  He is considered the "Father" of all commentaries that followed on the Talmud and the Tanakh.   Rashi said “tob sebegoim barog” (Kill the Best of the Goyim)!!

Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060 – 7/18, 1100) was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death.  After the liberation of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, although he refused the title "king" as he said that title belonged to God.  In The Divine Comedy Dante sees the spirit of Godfrey in the Heaven of Mars with the other "warriors of the faith." In the Middle Ages he was a member of the Nine Worthies, a group of heroes encapsulating all the ideal qualities of chivalry.

1100 - 1135 Reign of Henry I (England) -Henry I granted a charter to Jews which allowed freer settlement, seeing it as a way to increase revenues.  Henry I (c. 1068/1069 – 12/1 1135) was nicknamed Beauclerc for his scholarly interests and Lion of Justice for refinements which he brought about in the royal administration, which he rendered the most effective in Europe, rationalizing the itinerant court, and his public espousal of the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.

Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 4/21, 1109), also called of Aosta for his birthplace, and of Bec for his home monastery, was a Benedictine monk, a philosopher, and a prelate of the church who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109.  Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God.  “With the inmost affection of my heart I order you and beg your religion to take care of this Robert, with that joyful piety and pious joy with which all Christians ought to help and assist one fleeing from Judaism to Christianity.  Let no poverty or other accident which we can avert cause him to regret having left his parents and their Law for Christ's sake. . . . Do not let him and his little family suffer any harsh want, but let him rejoice that he has passed from perfidy to the true faith, and prove by our piety that our faith is nearer to God than the Jewish.  For I would prefer, if necessary, that there should be spent in this all that belongs to me from the rents of the archdeaconry, and even much more, rather than that he who has fled out of the hands of the devil to the servants of God should live in misery amongst us. . . . For his misery both in victual and in clothing touches my heart. Release my heart from this wound if you love me.   Farewell.”

1110 Petrus Alfonsi was a Jewish Spanish writer who converted to Christianity.  Wrote Dialogues: Four chapters attack Judaism, one attacks Islam, and the last seven defend Christianity.  His polemics are against Judaism, but demonstrates that the Jewish people were misguided by rabbis and not impenitently heretical.

1113 Kiev, Russia - After the death of Prince Svyatopolk, the local populace attacked and robbed the Jewish inhabitants.  Russian historians claim that the new Prince Vladimir Monomakh expelled all the Jews from Russia, but there is no evidence that this actually happened.

“A Dialogue between a Christian and Jew” by Rupert, Abbot of Deutz (1080-1135)

“On the Incarnation Against the Jews” by Guibert of Nogent (1053-1124)

Sicut Judaeis (the "Constitution for the Jews") was the official position of the papacy regarding Jews throughout the Middle Ages and later. The first bill was issued in about 1120 by Calixtus II, intended to protect Jews who suffered during the First Crusade, and was reaffirmed by many popes, even until the 15th century.  The bill forbade, besides other things, Christians from forcing Jews to convert, or to harm them, or to take their property, or to disturb the celebration of their festivals, or to interfere with their cemeteries, on pain of excommunication.

1123 First Lateran Council, 9th Catholic Council - The first General Council after the Great Eastern Schism was held in Rome for the first time at the Lateran Basilica in 1123 and convened by Pope Callistus II.  At issue was the Lay Investiture controversy between secular power and ecclesial power.  The Council confirmed the Concordat of Worms that had been signed the year before between Emperor Henry V and Pope Callistus II.  This assured all elections of prelates and abbots would be made by ecclesial authorities solely with the Emperor having approval only in Germany.  The Council declared priests in the Latin rite must remain celibate.

1124/28 - Otto von Bamberg succeeds in the Conversion of Pomerania.  Saint Otto of Bamberg (1060 or 1061 – 6/30 1139) was a medieval German bishop and missionary.  He entered the service of the Emperor Henry IV in 1090 and was appointed Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1101.  In 1102, the Emperor appointed and invested him as Bishop of Bamberg in Franconia (now in the state of Bavaria), and Otto became one of the leading princes of medieval Germany.

1130  Pope Anacletus II –Jewish Pope in Rome.  German-French alliance backs Pope Innocent II.  (Pope versus antipope depends on whose history one is reading.)

An antipope is a person who opposes a legitimately elected or sitting Pope and makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Catholic Church.  At times between the 3rd and mid-15th century, antipopes were typically those supported by a fairly significant faction of religious cardinals and secular kings and kingdoms.

1135 - 1154 Reign of Stephen (England) -During his reign there was intermittent civil war between Matilda (Maud), daughter of Henry I, and her cousin Stephen, grandson of the William the Conqueror. In the end, Matilda's son succeeded in becoming King Henry II.  The Jews suffered more than the Christians during the war. Stephen indulged in one of the common practices of kings: freeing Christians from the debts owed to Jews in return for the payment of part of the debt to the king.  However, he also protected them from the Second Crusade.

1139 Second Lateran Council, 10th Catholic Council -The Papal schism in which Pope Innocent II declared null and void all acts and decrees by the deceased antipope Anicletus II.  The Council also condemned the heresies of Peter Bruys and Arnold of Brescia as well as enacting reforms suggested by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who also preached a crusade against the threat of the Crescent Moon of Islam.

1139 Pope Innocent II in 1139 declared the crossbow "hateful to God and unfit for Christians."  The second Lateran Council of churches stated that, "We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on."  The Church of England also attempted to outlaw the crossbow.  Gentleman knights wielded heavy weapons and with their steeds, wore heavy armor for protection against those same weapons wielded by their noble opponents in battles fought on the field of honor.   The invention of the crossbow upset the balance, however, as one small bolt from a crossbow fired by even the least skilled, most common peasant farmer could topple even the mightiest and most gentlemanly knight wearing the heaviest armor.  Once toppled to the ground, the knight became immobile and, therefore, an easy kill for a common peasant with a stiletto.  

~1140 Poem of Mio Cid. (The Song of my Lord) Anonymous 12th c. Spanish epic.  The great poem has an interlude in the Jewry of Burgos in which two Jewesses plot to steal the Cid's treasure and spirit it away to the Moors. (Jews were constantly accused of collusion with the Moors in medieval Spain.)  Based on a true story, it tells of the Spanish hero El Cid, and takes place during the Reconquista, of Spain from the Moors.

Peter Abelard (1079 – April 21, 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician.  “Whether,  therefore, Christ is spoken of as about to be crowned or about to be crucified it is said that He “went forth”; to signify that the Jews, who were guilty of so great wickedness against Him, were given over to reprobation, and that His grace would now pass to the vast extent of the Gentiles, where the salvation of the Cross and His own exaltation by the gain of many peoples, in the place of the one nation of the Jews, has extended itself. Whence, also, to-day we rightly go forth to adore the Cross in the open plain, showing mystically that both glory and salvation had departed from the Jews and had spread themselves among the Gentiles.  But in that we afterward returned [in procession] to the place whence we had set forth, we signify that in the end of the world the grace of God will return to the Jews; namely, when, by the preaching of Enoch and Elijah, they shall be converted to Him.”

 Abelard and Heloise are one of the most celebrated couples of all time, known for their love affair... and for the tragedy that separated them.  It's perhaps the most tragic love story ever ... Abelard and Heloise were two well-educated people, brought together by their passion, then separated by the act of her uncle's vengeance.  Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French philosopher, considered one of the greatest contemporary thinkers. Heloise (1101-1164) was the niece and pride of Canon Fulbert.  She was well-educated by her uncle in Paris.  Wishing to become acquainted with Heloise, Abelard persuaded Fulbert to allow him to teach Heloise.  Using the pretext that his own house was a "handicap" to his studies, Abelard further moved in to the house of Heloise and her uncle.  She was supposedly a great beauty, one of the most well-educated women of her time and more than 20 years younger than Abelard.  They were separated, but that didn't end the affair.  Instead, they discovered that Heloise was pregnant... She left her uncle's house when he was not at home; and she stayed with Abelard's sister until Astrolabe was born.  Secretly married, the couple left Astrolabe with Abelard's sister.  When Heloise went to stay with the nuns at Argenteuil, her uncle and kinsmen believe Abelard had cast her off, forcing her to become a nun.  “Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed.  There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow.”

Hugo of St. Victor (1097-1141) and Richard of St. Victor (d.1173) wrote against the Jews, but with a full appreciation of the values of Hebrew scholarship.

1141 Alfonso VII (Castile, Spain) -In order to encourage a Christian merchant class, he allowed Christians to retain hereditary ownership of their shops.  Jews and Moslems were only allowed to be tenants.  Alfonso VII (3/1 1105 – 8/21 1157), became the King of Galicia in 1111 and King of León and Castile in 1126.  During his tenure, Portugal became de facto independent, in 1128, and was recognized as de jure independent, in 1143. He was a patron of poets, including, probably, the troubadour Marcabru.

Saint William of Norwich (c. 1132 – 3/22, 1144) was an English boy whose violent death was attributed to the Jewish community of Norwich.  Although it was alleged that there had been other similar cases of ritual murder by Jews throughout European history, it is the first known medieval allegation of ritual murder or blood libel against Jews.

 A depiction of 12 year old William being ritually murdered by Jews.

Thomas of Monmouth, a monk in the Norwich Benedictine monastery, wrote in 1173 a detailed tractate, called “The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich”, holding that Jews tortured to death a Christian child during Passover.

  ****Blood Libel True or Not?  It has been suggested that medieval Christian notions that Jews killed Christian children for their blood might have origins, however misconstrued, in authentic Jewish practice.  Jews in Europe had been known to commit suicide en masse, with parents killing their children "as an act of piety," when under forcible threat to convert to Christianity in the Middle Ages.  Perhaps the sight of a Jewish mohel (circumcision specialist) cutting an infant's penis, and then sucking its blood at the wound, might be an origin?  Perhaps "One of the most popular remedies among the Sephardi Jews was the mumia (i.e., mummy).  This consisted of a piece of mummified human body which was pulverized and taken internally (often with honeywater, as a cure against all kinds of complaints.  Its origin goes back to antiquity ... By the twelfth century, in response to growing demand; the Jews of Alexandria had developed a lively mummy trade.  Among the Sephardi Jews mumia continued to be taken internally down to the present time, even among the Sephardim living in Seattle, Washington." [PATAI, R., 1971, p. 149] [Patai says that this medicinal practice became "popular" in the non-Jewish European community in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  One would imagine that to be inevitable, especially given the fact that Jews have been so numerous as physicians throughout the centuries: "The Jews as physicians have always played an important part in the life of the human race ... In Spain and Italy their only competitors were the Moors."] [Osborne, 1939, p. 22]

 William of Norwich, 1144

 Child Sacrifice -  In 1071, at Blois, a child was crucified by the Jews, and then cast into the river.  In 1114, in Norwich, England, a child twelve years old was coaxed into a Jewish house, and was frightfully tortured.  In 1179 a child that the Catholic Church venerates under the name of St. Richard, and whose feast occurs the 25th of March, was assassinated by the Jews on Easter Sunday. In 1236, near Haguenau, three children were sacrificed by the Jews.  In 1244 a Christian child was made to suffer martyrdom.  In 1255 a child in Lincoln, England, was concealed until Easter, and then the Jews collected from all parts of England and crucified it.  In 1257 and in 1261 the same crimes were committed by the Jews at Welsenbourg. In 1261, at Pfortzheim, near Baden, a little girl seven years old was strangled by the Jews. In 1283, at Mayence, a child was sold by her nurse to the Jews, who killed it.  In 1285, at Munich, a child was bled to death. In 1286 a child fourteen years old, named Uthernher, was made to suffer martyrdom, three days being consumed in putting it to death.  In 1287, at Berne, a little boy, Rudolph by name, was killed during Easter. In 1292, 1293 and 1295 the same crimes were committed at Berne.

In 1303 a little boy, Conrad by name, the son of a soldier, was killed by the Jews.  In 1345, Henry, who has been canonized by the Catholic Church, was strangled by the Jews.  In 1401, at Düssenlofen, in Wurtemburg, a child four years old suffered death at the hands of the Jews in the same way. In 1407 the Jews were expelled from that country in consequence of these crimes.  In 1429, at Rovensbourg, Louis Von Bruck was killed by the Jews at Easter.  In 1454, in Castile, a child was cut to pieces by the Jews, and his heart was thrown to the dogs.  In 1462 a child called Andrea was crucified.  In 1475 Simon, who has also been canonized by the Catholic Church, was killed by the Jews at Trente.  In 1480 a repetition of the same crimes occurred in Venice.  In 1486, at Ratisbonne, six children were killed by the Jews.  In 1520, at Biring, two children were bled to death by the Jews.  In 1541 a child four years old, Michael by name, was tortured for three days and then put to death.  In 1547, at Rave, a child was strangled by the Jew Jacques de Leozyka.  In 1547 a little girl seven years old was assassinated by the Jew Joachim Smieilavicz.  In 1597 the Jews strangled a child in order to sprinkle with its blood their new synagogue.  In 1550, at Ladaen, a child five years old, Matthews by name, was assassinated. In 1670 the Jew, Raphael Levy, was cast into the flames for having bled to death a child.

Theobald, a monk and a Jewish convert, of Cambridge, came forward at the time when enquiry was being made into the death of St. William of Norwich, and said that as a Jew in Norwich he himself had known that a child was to be sacrificed at that place in 1144.  He said that the custom of the Jews was to draw lots as to where the deed should be done, and that it fell to Norwich to supply the blood which was required by them in the year 1144; the Jews believed that without the shedding of human blood, they could never gain their freedom and return to Palestine.  A convert in Norwich explained that ‘Jews believe that without human blood shed they can’t regain their land and their freedom’.  It is, according to Israel Jacob Yuval in 2000, a correct interpretation of the Ashkenazi idea of Vengeance as the path to Salvation.  “Jews actually believed that their Salvation depends on Extermination of Gentiles”.  

The Medieval Sourcebook offers the following list of saints and martyrs: William of Norwich, d. 1144, Richard of Pontoise or of Paris, d. 1179, Herbert of Huntingdon, d. 1180 -, Dominic of Val, 1250, Hugh of Lincoln, d. 1255, Werner of Oberwesel, d. 1287, Rudolf of Berne, d. 1294, Conrad of Weissensee, d. 1303 , Louis or Ludwig of Ravensburg d. 1429, Anderl of Rinn, d. 1462, Simon of Trent, d. 1475, Lorenzino Sossio, d. 1485.

 Martyrdom of Simonino and Jews with Eyeglasses, woodcut, Northern Italy 1475-85

 Gandolfino da Roreto d'Asti, Martyrdom of Simonino, tempera on wood, end of 15th century, Jerusalem, Israel Museum.

The old Jewish Encyclopaedia lists the following cases, beginning with William of Norwich: 5 other cases given for the twelfth century, 15 for the thirteenth, 10 for the fourteenth, 16 for the fifteenth, 13 for the sixteenth, 8 for the seventeenth, 15 for the eighteenth, and 39 for the nineteenth, going right up to the year 1900 (total 113).  There have been more cases in the 20th century.  

****Jew Cover-up: Omertà (Used for Italian mafia) is a popular cultural attitude and code of honor that places heavy importance on a deep-rooted "code of silence", non-cooperation with authorities, and non-interference in the illegal (and legal) actions of others.  A criminal is not supposed ever to surrender a fellow criminal to justice.  This approach was integrated into the inner life of Jewish communities.  They even adopted a criminal label ‘moser’ (an informer), one who informs non-Jewish authorities of crimes perpetuated by Jews against non-Jews.  Such a moser is ‘ben mavet’: he may be and should be killed by any Jew, preferably on Purim or Passover, but Yom Kippur is also a suitable day.  For instance, a Jew who learnt of a raving fanatic who committed ritual murders was not allowed under pain of death to inform the Gentile authorities of the crime. This medieval attitude is still with us, as it found its new life in the philosemitic concept of a priori innocence of Jews.

Jews tend to harbor criminals because their world view is so different from the Christian one.  Jews believe in collective salvation, guilt and innocence, Christians – in individual salvation, guilt and innocence.  That is why a sin committed by a Christian has no bearing for the rest of Christians.  For a Jew, the admitted guilt of one Jew would turn all Jews into guilty ones.  That is why for Jews, all Christians (or all Germans, all Palestinians etc) are guilty for an offence committed by some of them.  That is why non-Jews are always guilty in Jewish eyes.  

Jews, whose religion contains the religious duty of genocide (Amalek), the religious duty to curse Gentiles, who actually practiced ritual murder of children (albeit their own), were ready to vouch for co-members of Israel: Jews could not do it.  This extraordinary degree of tribal solidarity positions Jews in a separate category.  Not a nation, not a religion, but a mutual protection syndicate.

By 2000, this Jewish idea of collective responsibility has been forced upon Christendom.  The Germans have taken collective guilt.  The Catholic Church even asked forgiveness of the Jews.  

The Birkat ha-Minim is a Jewish Curse on heretics and Christians.  The writing of the benediction is attributed to Shmuel ha-Katan in the 1st century.  "For the apostates let there be no hope.  And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days.  Let the noẓerim and the minim be destroyed in a moment.  And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous.  Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant" (Schechter)."  Two medieval Cairo copies equate Minim and Notzrim "Nazarenes", "Christians."  During the medieval period, whether the birkat included Christians was the subject of disputations, a potential cause for persecution and thus a matter relevant for the safety of Jewish communities.  Many scholars have seen reference to the Birkat haMinim in Justin Martyr's complaint to Trypho of the Jews "cursing in your synagogues those that believe on Christ."

Pulsa diNura or Pulsa Denoura. ("lashes of fire") is a kabbalistic ceremony in which the angels of destruction are invoked to block heavenly forgiveness of the subject’s sins, causing all the curses named in the Bible to befall him resulting in his death.  The source for this modern ritual is found among the Hebrew magical manuals of antiquity, such as Sefer ha-Razim and Harba de-Moshe.  The origin of this phrase seems to come from the Babylonian Talmud.  Accusations of the use of this curse by religious Jews against Jewish figures who have committed major transgressions has been made often over the past 50 years and quoted in mostly Israeli media.

****Christian Love versus Jewish child murder: (Israel Shamir)

Professor Israel Yuval of Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered actual irrefutable child murder beyond the Blood Libel.  During the First Crusade, impatient folk tried to forcibly baptize Jews of Rein Valley in order to save their souls from the satanic cult of hate, as they saw it.  Their refusal to be baptized was seen as stubborn adherence to Satan: for the pre-modern people, our present religious indifference was unacceptable. They saw a direct connection between faith and behavior, and felt the need for communal worship, for unifying communion.  A Jew permanently residing in a Christian land created a complicated situation: he was free from duty of brotherly love and could (and often did) act in anti-social way, for instance he practiced usury and sorcery.  The Christians were particularly worried by the well-attended Jewish custom of cursing Gentiles.  Every day Jews asked God to kill, destroy, humiliate, exterminate, defame, starve, impale Christians, to usher in Divine Vengeance and to cover God’s mantle with blood of goyim.  Israel Yuval’s book offers its reader a good selection of bloodcurdling curses.

The Crusaders were non-racists.  They did not think the Jews were irredeemably evil, but they rejected the ideology of hate and vengeance expressed in the curses. They also feared the curses, as much as Jews did. (In modern Israel, cursing is a criminal offence punishable by prison). Indeed, for Jews and for Christians of that time the curses were not just silly offensive words, but potent magic weapon.  They offered Jews expulsion or conversion.

The Jews did not take the attempt to bring them into New Israel lightly.  Whenever the ‘danger’ of baptism became imminent, many of them murdered their own children and committed suicide.  It is not deniable: Jewish and Christian chroniclers of the period describe these events at length, with Jews glorifying this behavior, and Christians condemning it.  The murder was performed as ritual slaughter followed by victim’s blood libation, for the Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles.   Others used the victim’s blood for atonement.  In Mainz, Yitzhak b. David, the community leader, brought his small children into the synagogue, slaughtered them and poured their blood on the Arc, proclaiming ‘Let this blood of innocent lamb be my atonement for my sins’.  It happened two days after the confrontation with Christians, when the danger passed by. 

The picture of Jews slaughtering children for cultic reasons exerted huge impact on the Christian peoples of Europe. This behavior was not comparable to Christian martyrdom. While Christian martyrs allowed others to kill them for their faith, they never committed suicide, and certainly never murdered their (or anybody else’s) children for such purpose.  It enforced an image of Jewish cruelty and ruthlessness.  Over the years, the actual circumstances of the child murders were forgotten, but the picture of a Jew slaughtering children remained imprinted in the European matrix.

(Yuval uses the thesis of Robert Graves, who explained many traditions of the Church by its misreading of old images.) This was the source of the idea that Jews murder Christian children, while in fact, Jews murdered their own children, writes Professor Yuval.  If some Jews committed this heinous crime, and other Jews exalted this crime as exemplary behavior even in Israeli historical books written in 1950s, is there any place left for indignation and horror concerning similar accusations?  If a Jew can use only Jewish blood for libation to wake up af Adonai (the fury of Yahweh), in some cases, the kidnapped child was circumcised before being murdered, i.e. ‘made a Jewish child’.  

Numerous medieval stories about Jews killing their children for visiting a church or for considering baptism do not surprise.  Parents and relatives of converts went into full mourning for converts.  The mourning rite for a person alive is a traditional magic means to kill the person.  Greater believers in the power of magic probably died of it, as Frazer tells us in his enormous collection of lore.  If you try to kill somebody by magic means why restrain yourself from more mundane killing?

The concept of the magic powers of blood was embedded in the Jewish thinking.  Blood was used for atonement libation.  Jews hated Christianity with all their hearts and had many magic ceremonies at the time of Easter, Purim and Passover, directed against Christ and Christianity.

They made dolls attached to a cross and burned them or defamed them in various ways; they desecrated host and parodied communion.  The custom of ‘leaven eradication’ on the Passover morning was also meant to symbolize and to lead magically to the eradication of goyim. Occasionally they killed priests and nuns.  Prayers of Passover were full of anti-Christian references, some of which have survived to the present day, namely Shepoch Hamatha, a prayer demanding God’s vengeance upon goyim, and Aleinu Leshabeyach, a prayer describing Christ and His Mother in most blasphemous terms.

In Jewish Passover rites, a small piece of unleavened bread, afikoman was the symbol of the Paschal Lamb.  It was hidden at the beginning of the Passover Seder. It was claimed by many Jews who left the fold and joined the Church, and they also noted that afikoman was baked secretly and separately.  Some of them explained that blood was not added directly into dough, but burned and its ashes are used in a ritual reminiscent of the Red Heifer purification.

 ‘Jews believe that without human blood shed they can’t regain their land and their freedom’.  This is the Ashkenazi idea of Vengeance as the path to Salvation.  “Jews actually believed that their Salvation depends on Extermination of Gentiles”.  

There are many quotes in the Bible, Talmud and later Cabbalistic books in support of human sacrifices.  i.e. Numbers 23:24 (‘drinks the blood of his victims’).  Talmud: “It is good to pierce a goy even on Yom Kippur if it falls on Sabbath day.  That is found in today’s Talmud in Israel.  A slaughter demands blessing, while one can pierce without blessing.

The Jews’ unspoken axiom was ‘a Gentile may not judge a Jew’.

Christian love: The Jews daily wished the Christians to drop dead, while the Christians wanted the Jews to join them and be saved.  The generosity of the Church was fabulous - even Jews who committed cruel murder could save themselves through baptism.

 Medieval Jews were also harbingers of capitalism and globalization.  They were usurers, and usurers ‘suck the lifeblood’ of their debtors even in modern usage.  Thus, an accusation of blood sacrifice was a powerful ‘scarecrow’, a metaphoric warning to potential borrowers to stay away from the usurers, and to be suspicious of burgeoning capitalism.  Poor people of the medieval days used the language of myth.  Indeed, all victims of ritual murder belonged to the working classes, and belief in the Jewish ritual murder was widespread among the poor who were the first to suffer from the advent of capitalism.  On the other hand, the royalty and upper classes were usually supportive of Jews and punished those who complained of ritual murders.  In some countries, the complainers were punished by death, while in Russia, the Tsar forbade even considering the possibility of ritual murder by a Statute of 1817.  Indeed, the ruling classes were not afraid of capitalism and usury.

1144 “Tractate against the Jews, their Inveterate Stubbornness” by Peter the Venerable.  He assails the Talmud.

1145 Pope Blessed Eugene III ( -7/8 1153), was Pope from 1145 to 1153.  He offered absolution for any debts owed to Jews to anyone who would join a crusade.

Peter the Venerable (Pierre de Cluny) (about 1092 – 12/25, 1156 in Cluny, France), also known as Peter of Montboissier, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, born to Blessed Raingarde in Auvergne, France.  He has been honored as a saint but has never been formally canonized.  Peter is well known for collecting sources on and writing about Islam (see below) and also as the author of vast amounts of correspondence, having authored letters on common theological questions, the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ, current heresies, and miracles.  His writings are counted as some of the most important documents of the 12th century.  He initiated work on translations of the Koran and the Talmud in 1141, after which the Koran was required reading for all preachers of the crusades.  Peter claims that Jews own half of Paris.  “If the jews fill their granaries with fruit, their cellar with victuals, their bags with money and their chests with gold, it is neither by tilling the earth, nor by serving in war, nor by practicing any other useful and honorable trade, but by cheating the Christians and buying, at low price,  from thieves the things which they have stolen…”  "My advice is not to kill the Jews, but to their wickedness to punish them in an appropriate way.  What is more just than to take back what they see on won by fraud?  What they possess is stolen shamefully, and because they know what the worst part is, for their insolence so far remained unpunished, they must be withdrawn.”

1147 – 16th century Northern Crusades (Baltic Crusades) against people of North Eastern Europe around the Baltic Sea.  The east Baltic world was transformed by military conquest: first the Livs, Latgallians and Estonians, then the Semigallians, Curonians, Prussians and the Finns underwent defeat, baptism, military occupation.

1150         1150         1150         1150

A Brief History of Prussia - The area known as Prussia was inhabited in early times by West Slavic tribes, ancestors of the modern Poles, in the West, and Baltic tribes, closely related to Lithuanians, in the East.  Sometime after the seventh century, the area was invaded and settled by pagan German tribes, later known as Prussians.  In 1226, Prussia was conquered by the Teutonic Knights, a military religious order, who converted the Prussians to Christianity.  The Protestant Reformation in the early to mid 1500s saw most Prussians convert to Protestantism whereas Poland remained, and still remains, solidly Roman Catholic.  The German Empire was established under Prussian leadership with Bismarck as Chancellor.

1150 "Die Gedanken sind Frei" is a German Folk Song about the freedom of thought. In the 12th century, an Austrian minnesinger possibly composed the song.: Thoughts are free, who can guess them? They flee by like nocturnal shadows. No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them with powder and lead: Thoughts are free! / I think what I want, and what delights me, still always reticent, and as it is suitable. My wish and desire, no one can deny me and so it will always be: Thoughts are free! / And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon, all this would be futile work, because my thoughts tear all gates and walls apart: Thoughts are free! / So I will renounce my sorrows forever, and never again will torture myself with whimsies. In one's heart, one can always laugh and joke and think at the same time: Thoughts are free! / I love wine, and my girl even more, Only her I like best of all. I'm not alone with my glass of wine, my girl is with me: Thoughts are free!

 1150   Reynard the Fox: is a literary cycle of allegorical French, Dutch, English, and German fables largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure.  The name derives from the "made hard by the gods", "staying steady under a rain of blows from weapons in battle" denoting someone who is wise, clever, or resourceful. In the typical setting, Reynard has been summoned to the court of King Noble, or Leo, the Lion, to answer charges brought against him by Isengrim the Wolf.  Other anthropomorphic animals, including Bruin the Bear, Baldwin the Ass, Tibert (Tybalt) the Cat, all attempt one stratagem or another.  The stories typically involve satire whose usual culprits are the aristocracy and the clergy, making Reynard a peasant-hero character.   Some of the tales feature Reynard's funeral, where his enemies gather to deliver maudlin elegies full of insincere piety, and which feature Reynard's posthumous revenge.  Reynard appears first in the medieval Latin poem Ysengrimus, a long Latin mock-epic written ca. 1148-1153 by the poet Nivardus in Ghent, that collects a great store of Reynard's adventures. 

Among others, Geoffrey Chaucer used Reynard material in the Canterbury Tales.  Reynard is also referenced in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the third hunt.  Reynard the Fox was in an 1869 children's book.  In 1941 it was published as an antisemitic Dutch book.  The story features rhinoceroses, referring to the perceived typical Jewish nose.  One of them is called Jodocus (Jew).  The story also features a donkey, Boudewijn, occupying the throne, a reference to the Belgian Nazi leader Léon Degrelle, leader of the Rex-movement ("Rex" is Latin for "King").  In the story, Reynard rounds up and kills most of the rhinoceroses, including Jodocus. It was also released as a cartoon film by Nederlandfilm in 1943. 

 1152 Frederick I Barbarossa (1122 – 6/10 1190) crowned as King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor in 1155.  Frederick's charisma led to a fantastic juggling act which over a quarter of a century, restored the imperial authority in the German states.  His formidable enemies defeated him on almost every side, yet, in the end, he emerged triumphant.  When Frederick came to the throne, the prospects for the revival of German imperial power were extremely thin.  The great German princes had increased their power and land holdings.  The king had been left with only the traditional family domains and a vestige of power over the bishops and abbeys.  The backwash of the Investiture controversy had left the German states in continuous turmoil.  Rival states were in perpetual war.  These conditions allowed Frederick to be both warrior and occasional peace-maker, both to his advantage.

1154 - 1172 Travels of Benjamin of Tudela (Spain) -Jewish traveler and historian. His book Sefer Hamasot (Book of Travel) recounted his travels throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, Ceylon and China. He gave details about each Jewish community: its size, scholars, and economic conditions. Almost everything we know about the Jewish communities of his day came from his book.

1157 Worms, Germany -Frederick Barbarossa renewed in perpetuity the privileges granted the Jews by Henry IV.

****List of Jewish Messiah Claimants - The Messiah in Judaism has a number of interpretations, including any king chosen by God; a holy king who will lead Israel; and someone who will usher in an idyllic age of peace and justice.  Some messianic movements later split from Judaism, including the followers of Jesus whose religion became Christianity, and some of the followers of Sabbatai Zevi, who became the Dönmeh.

[Messiah is Hebrew;  Christ is Greek;  Savior is English]

The literal translation of the Hebrew word moshiach (messiah) is “anointed,” which refers to a ritual of consecrating someone or something by putting holy oil upon it.[1 Sam. 10:1-2]  It is used throughout the Hebrew Bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals and objects; for example, a Jewish king,[1 Kings 1:39] Jewish priests,[Lev. 4:3] and prophets,[Isa. 61:1] the Jewish Temple and its utensils,[Ex. 40:9-11] unleavened bread,[Num. 6:15] and a non-Jewish king (Cyrus king of Persia).[Isa. 45:1].  Anyone annointed is the Messiah or Savior of his People.

Simon son of Joseph (c. 4 BCE) a former slave of Herod the Great who rebelled. The messiah of Gabriel's Revelation.

Athronges (c. 4-2? BCE), leader of a rebellion with his four brothers against Archelaus and the Romans after proclaiming himself the Messiah[1]. He and his brothers were eventually defeated.

Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC - AD 30), in Galilee and the Roman province of Judea.  Jews who believed him to be the Messiah were the first Christians.  It is estimated that there are between 1.5 and 2 billion Christians in the world today.

Menahem ben Judah, the son or grandson of Judas of Galilee, was a leader of the Sicarii.  When the war broke, he armed his followers with the weapons captured at Masada and besieged the fortress Antonia in Jerusalem, overpowering the troops of Agrippa II and forcing the Roman garrison to retreat.

Shimeon Bar Kokhba revolted against Rome and was hailed as Messiah-king.  After stirring up a war (133-135) that taxed the power of Rome, he at last met his death on the walls of Bethar.  His Messianic movement ended in defeat and misery for the survivors.

Moses of Crete, as the Messiah was expected in 440.

Isḥaḳ ben Ya'ḳub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani of Ispahan. Persia, 7^th century.  He claimed to be the last of the five forerunners of the Messiah and to have been appointed by God to free Israel.  According to some he was himself the Messiah. He founded the first sect that arose in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple.  His disciple Yudghan, called "Al-Ra'i" (= "the shepherd of the flock of his people"), who lived in the first half of the eighth century, declared himself to be a prophet, and was by his disciples regarded as a Messiah.

Yudghan, lived and taught in Persia in the early eighth century. He was a disciple of Isḥaḳ ben Ya'ḳub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani of Ispahan.

Serene, a Syrian between 720-723 appeared as the messiah. This Messiah promised the expulsion of the Muslims and the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. He was hostile to rabbinic Judaism.  His followers were received back into the fold upon giving up their heresy.

Under the influence of the Crusades the number of Messiahs increased, and the twelfth century records many of them.  One appeared in France (c. 1087) and was slain by the French; another appeared in the province of Córdoba (c. 1117), and one in Fez (c. 1127).  Of these three nothing is known beyond the mention of them in Maimonides' "Iggeret Teman" (The Yemen Epistle).

*David Alroy or Alrui, who was born in Kurdistan, about 1160 declared himself a Messiah.

An alleged forerunner of the Messiah appeared in Yemen (in 1172) just as the Muslims were making determined efforts to convert the Jews living there.

Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (b. 1240; d. after 1291), the cabalist, begin the pseudo-Messiahs whose activity is deeply influenced by their cabalistic speculations.  He announced 1290 as the year for the Messianic era to begin. Two of his disciples, Joseph Gikatilla and Samuel, both from Medinaceli, later claimed to be prophets and miracle-workers.

Nissim ben Abraham, fixed the last day of the fourth month, Tammuz, 1295, as the date for the Messiah's coming.  The credulous prepared for the event by fasting and almsgiving, and came together on the appointed day.  Instead of finding the Messiah, some saw on their garments little crosses, perhaps pinned on by unbelievers to ridicule the movement.  In their disappointment some of Nissim's followers are said to have gone over to Christianity. What became of the person is unknown.

Moses Botarel of Cisneros. One of his adherents and partisans was Hasdai Crescas.  Their relation is referred to by Geronimo da Santa Fé in his speech at the disputation in Tortosa 1413.

Asher Kay (Käei), in 1502, a German proclaiming himself a forerunner of the Messiah and found believers in Italy and Germany, even among the Christians. However, the "Messiah" either died or disappeared.

David Reuveni (early 16^th) denied expressly that he was a Messiah or a prophet but many believed that he was a forerunner of the Messiah.

Solomon Molcho (early sixteenth century).

*Sabbatai Zevi (also Shabbethai Zevi) (b. at Smyrna 1626; d. at Dulcigno 1676) Followers become crypto-Satanic Jews within Islam and Turkey.

After his death, Sabbatai was followed by a line of putative messiahs. Jacob Querido, son of Joseph Filosof, and brother of the fourth wife of Sabbatai, became the head of the Shabbethaians in Salonica, being regarded by them as the incarnation of Shabbethai.  He pretended to be Shabbethai's son and adopted the name Jacob Tzvi.  With 400 followers he went over to Islam about 1687, forming a sect called the Dönmeh. He himself even made a pilgrimage to Mecca (c. 1690).  After his death during the pilgrimage his son Berechiah or Berokia succeeded him (c. 1695-1740).  A number of Shabbethai's followers declared themselves Messiahs.  Miguel (Abraham) Cardoso (1630-1706), born of Marano parents, may have been initiated into the Shabbethaian movement by Moses Pinheiro in Leghorn. He became a prophet of the Messiah, and when the latter embraced Islam he justified this treason, saying that it was necessary for the Messiah to be reckoned among the sinners in order to atone for Israel's idolatry.  He applied Isaiah 53 to Shabbethai, and sent out epistles to prove that Shabbethai was the true Messiah, and he even suffered persecution for advocating his cause. Later he considered himself as the Ephraitic Messiah, asserting that he had marks on his body, which were proof of this.  He preached and wrote of the speedy coming of the Messiah, fixing different dates until his death (see Cardoso, Miguel).

Mordecai Mokiaḥ ("the Rebuker") of Eisenstadt, follower of Shabbethai, also pretended to be a Messiah. His period of activity was from 1678 to 1682 or 1683. He preached at first that Shabbethai was the true Messiah, then declared that he was the Davidic Messiah.

Löbele Prossnitz, Shabbethaian, taught that God had given dominion of the world to the "pious one," i.e., the one who had entered into the depths of Kabbalah.  Such a representative of God had been Shabbethai, whose soul had passed into other "pious" men, into Jonathan Eybeschütz and into himself.  Another, Isaiah Hasid (a brother-in-law of the Shabbethaian Judah Hasid), who lived in Mannheim, secretly claimed to be the resurrected Messiah, although publicly he had abjured Shabbethaian beliefs.

*Jacob Frank (b. 1726 in Podolia; d. 1791) Followers become crypto-Satanic Jews within Christianity in Western Europe.

Shukr Kuhayl I, 19th-century Yemenite pseudo-messiah

Judah ben Shalom (Shukr Kuhayl II), 19th-century Yemenite pseudo-messiah

Menachem Mendel Schneerson; a 20th century Rebbe and charismatic leader who is believed to be the Messiah by mainstream orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic Judaism.

“If the Jews of Roumania maintain at great expense the Isrolzka family, the supposed sacred family, from which it is believed that the Messiah will at some time issue, if the Jews of Poland leave their windows open when it thunders for the Messiah to come in, the great body of the civilized Jews no longer believe in the coming of the Redeemer.  They believe only in Israel, in Israel at large, which will be the Messiah, or, in other words, the great future reigning nation.” –Mr. Jacobs (1888)

Since the Jewish Enlightenment in the late 1800’s, most Jews believe that they themselves are the Messiah, which will then stomp out idolatry in this world.  Christianity is idolatry.

1160 David Alroy – false Messiah (Persia) -Promised to lead the Jews and take Jerusalem from the Crusaders.  One evening he told the Jews of Baghdad that they were all going to fly to Jerusalem that night and asked them to give him their property.  That night much of the Jewish population stood on their roofs waiting to fly.  Alroy was killed, according to Benjamin of Tudela, after one "successful" battle, by his father-in-law, who was allegedly bribed and threatened by the governor of Amaida. Alroy's followers called themselves Menahemites and continued to live in the Azerbaijan area. They eventually faded out of existence.  Disraeli's novel Alroy (1833) became a well-known, if fictionalized, version of his life.

****Jewish Heretics: Five peoples who can be classified as Minim: One who: denies the existence of God; believes in more than one God; says God has a form; denies that God is the Creator; serves intermediaries between self and God.  According to Hilchot Teshuva 3:6 Minim do not have a portion in the world to come.  Their souls are cut off and they are judged for their sins.  The Birkat haMinim is a malediction (curse) on heretics.  It was called against Christians.  An Epikoros Heretic: denies prophecy and communication from God; disputes the prophecy of Moses; denies the Creator is aware of other deeds.  'One Who Denies Torah' Heretic: denies Inerrancy; denies Torah's interpretation, accepts further Scripture as Muslims and the Christians.

Jews accused of heresy: Kórach by the Talmudic Sages; Galilean Jesus; Elisha ben Abuyah, Talmudic Sage; Anan ben David who rejected the Oral Torah; Maimonides, initially condemned; Gersonides condemned by Shem Tov; Abraham Abulafia, condemned by Shlomo ben Aderet; Shabbethai Zvi; Jacob Frank; Baruch Spinoza for his pantheistic views; Moshe Haim Luzzatto for teachings regarding the messianic era; Jonathan Eybeschutz charged with the Sabbatean heresy by Jacob Emden; Shneur Zalman of Liadi Charged by the Vilna Gaon; David Zvi Hoffman by Samson Raphael Hirsh; Mordecai Kaplan following his Sabbath Prayer Book; Louis Jacobs.

Henry II (3/5, 1133 – 7/6, 1189) ruled as King of England (1154–1189).  In order to prevent the conversion of Jews, another English king, Henry II, decreed that the goods of Jews embracing Christianity, would be attached by the Crown, to make up for the losses in revenues that the Jews would have brought the king if they had not been converted. 

1163 Baghdad (Persia) -Benjamin of Tudela found 40,000 Jews living in Baghdad, with 28 synagogues and 10 Torah academies.

C. 1170 Kalisz (Poland) -Probably the oldest Jewish community in Poland.  Jews were invited there by Mieszko III the Oldster, prince of Great Poland (1127-1202) and worked as minters (see 1264).

“By the 1170s there were two primary incentives for the establishment of a Jewish community in York… The first was the existence within the city of an important royal castle, which could be used in times of danger to protect the town's Jewish community… A second and even more significant incentive was the emergence amongst the lords, gentry, and religious houses of Yorkshire of a need for financial credit.  Jewish money-lenders were well equipped to satisfy this demand and the king himself had set a precedent by using their services from about 1164 onwards. Indeed, the Jews were to become a source of enormous wealth to the Crown, not only as money-lenders but as the target of relentless taxation.”- “Clifford's Tower and the Jews of Medieval York” (1995) by R.B. Dobson

1171 Bologna, Italy -Jews were expelled. This was one of the few times during this period that Italian Jews were persecuted.

Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 9/17, 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.  She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and arguably the oldest surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.  Christian inhabitants attacked the small Jewish quarter on Rosh Hashanah in 1198 or 1199, and the money lending Jews were driven from the city.

1179 Third Lateran Council, 11th Catholic Council -Pope Alexander III called to undo the damage done by antipopes Victor IV and others.  The Council also set the election of the Roman Pontiff must be by two-thirds of the majority of cardinals voting, establishing the Sacred Conclave as the voting body.  The Council condemned the heresies of Albigenses and Waldenses.  Viciously attacked the practice of usury (banking or money lending at any interest) and also suspected the Jews of complicity with heretics.

 1180  The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations.  The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan (Tristram) and the Irish princess Iseult (Isolde, Yseult, etc.).  The narrative predates and most likely influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, and has had a substantial impact on Western art, the idea of romantic love and literature since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same. Chrétien de Troyes (-1160-1181-) was a French poet whose work on Arthurian subjects represents some of the best regarded of medieval literature. His use of structure, particular in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, has been seen as a step towards the modern novel.

Pope Gregory VIII (c. 1100/1105–12/17, 1187), born Alberto di Morra, was Pope from October 25, 1187 until his death.  He forbade Jews to have power over Christians, in a letter to Alfonso VI of Castile.

 Maimonides (1137 or 1138- 12/12, 1204) was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher, one of the greatest Torah scholars of the Middle Ages.  He worked as a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt.  With the contemporary Muslim sage Averroes, he promoted and developed the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, which gave both men prominent and controversial influence in the West, where Aristotelian thought had been lost for centuries.  Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas were notable Western readers of Maimonides.  One of the central tenets of Maimonides's philosophy is the impossibility for truths arrived at by human intellect to contradict those revealed by God. Maimonides held to a strictly apophatic theology in which only negative statements toward a description of God may be considered correct. Thus, one does not say "God is One", but rather, "God is not multiple".  Although his writings on Jewish law and ethics met with opposition during his life, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history, his copious work a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship, His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah still carries canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law.  Maimonides says in Mishnah Torah, chapter 10: “It is a mitzvah (religious duty) to eradicate Jewish traitors, minnim, and apikorsim, and to cause them to descend to the pit of destruction, since they cause difficulty to the Jews and sway the people away from God, as did Jesus of Nazareth and his students… May the name of the wicked rot.” 

The 613 Mitzvot are statements and principles of law, ethics, and spiritual practice contained in the Torah or Five Books of Moses.  The traditional view is based on Maimonides' enumeration, but there are many other rabbinical orderings.  The 613 commandments are either "positive commandments" to perform an act or "negative commandments" to abstain from certain acts.  There are 365 negative commandments, corresponding to the number of days in a solar year, and 248 positive commandments, ascribed to the number of bones and significant organs in the human body.  Though the number 613 is mentioned in the Talmud, its real significance increased in later medieval rabbinic literature, including many works listing or arranged by the mitzvot.  Three types of negative commandments fall under the yehareg ve'al ya'avor, meaning "One should let himself be killed rather than violate it".  These are murder, idolatry, and forbidden sexual relations.  [Remember Jews as humans and Gentiles as animals.  Murder is killing another Jew.  Idolatry is accepting Christianity.  Forbidden sexual relations are marital relations with Gentiles.]

 The tzitzit ("knotted fringes") of the tallit ("[prayer] shawl") are connected to the 613 commandments by interpretation.  This reflects the concept that donning a garment with tzitzit reminds its wearer of all Torah commandments.

1180 - 1223 Philip II Augustus (8/21, 1165 – 7/14, 1223) was the last King of the Franks from 1180 to 1190, and the first King of France from 1190 until his death.  Philip was one of the most successful medieval French monarchs in expanding the royal demesne and the influence of the monarchy.  He reorganized the government, bringing financial stability to the country and thus making possible a sharp increase in prosperity.  His reign was popular with ordinary people because he checked the power of the nobles and passed some of it on to the growing middle class. 

Encouraged by the Hermit of Vincennes, he decided to use the Jews for his own purposes.  Badly in need of money both for his own use and to acquire new estates so he could gain greater control over his barons, he first impoverished the few wealthy Jews and then cancelled all Christian debts to Jews for a percentage.  This way of generating quick revenue was known as "totbrief".  It was widely used among royalty.

On March 14, 1181, the King ordered the Jews arrested and despoiled of their money and their investments.  In April, 1182, he published an edict of expulsion, but according the Jews a delay of three months for the sale of their personal property.  Immovable property, however, such as houses, fields, vines, barns, and wine-presses, he confiscated.  The Jews attempted to win over the nobles to their side, but in vain.  In July they were compelled to leave the royal domains of France (and not the whole kingdom); their synagogues were converted into churches.  In July 1198, Philip Augustus, "contrary to the general expectation and despite his own edict, recalled the Jews to Paris and made the churches of God suffer great persecutions" (Rigord).  The king adopted this measure since then he had learned that the Jews could be an excellent source of income, especially as money-lenders.  He gave state sanction by his ordinances to their operations in banking and pawnbroking.

 Expulsion from France, 1182

 Teutonic Knights formed after Third Crusade.  It was formed to aid Catholics on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals to care for the sick and injured.  Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, since they also served as a crusading military order during the Middle Ages.  The membership was always small and whenever the need arose, volunteers or mercenaries augmented the military forces.

Teutonic Knights -Teutonic Order or The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem is a German Catholic religious order.  It was formed around 1200 to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals to care for the sick and injured. Its members also served as a crusading military order during the Middle Ages.  The membership was always small and whenever the need arose, volunteers or mercenaries augmented the military forces.  After the loss of Prussia in 1525, the Teutonic Knights concentrated on their possessions in the Holy Roman Empire.  The Order gradually lost control of these holdings until, by 1810, only the bailiwicks in Tyrol and Austria remained.

The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke used imagery of the Teutonic Knights to promote pro-German and anti-Polish rhetoric. During World War II, Nazi propaganda and ideology made frequent use of the Teutonic Knights' imagery, as they sought to depict the Knights' actions as their Nazi soldiers.  The Order itself was abolished in 1938 due to the belief, that the Catholic military-religious orders, were simply tools of the Holy See.  “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat” (Christ Wins, Christ Reigns, Christ Governs) Motto of the Teutonic Order.

1186 Aaron of Lincoln (born c.1123) (England) -The richest man in England died. King Henry II immediately seized his estate when he died worth over 15,000 pounds.  Aaron had such vast sums owed to him that the royal officials set up a special branch of the exchequer called the "exchequer of Aaron" (Scaccarium Aaronis) to deal with it.  After 16 years they only succeeded in recovering about half of the debts owed him.  Some of his debtors included the King of Scotland, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Count of Brittany and many other nobles. It was the forerunner of the system of debt registries for Jewish loans (the archae), in selected cities established by Richard's administration in 1194; these registries enabled the king's men to keep their finger on the pulse of Jewish lending (and allowed easier raising of money from the Jews).  [He was the Rothschild of his age, with ill-gotten gains.]

1186 Saladin Tax (England) -A tithe for the Third Crusade.  Jews were taxed 10,000 marks or 25% of their income and personal property worth, while Christian (non-Crusaders) were taxed 10% of their property alone.

 Salidin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb) (ca. 1138 – 3/4, 1193) was a Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty.  He led Muslim opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant.  At the height of his power, his sultanate included Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, Yemen, and parts of North Africa.  Under his personal leadership, his forces defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin, leading the way to his re-capture of Palestine, which had been seized from the Fatimid Egyptians by the Crusaders 88 years earlier.  Though the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem would continue to exist for a period, its defeat at Hattin marked a turning point in its conflict with the Muslims and Arabs.  As such, Saladin is a prominent figure in Kurdish, Arab, and Muslim culture.  Saladin was a strict adherent of Sunni Islam.  His noble and chivalrous behavior was noted by Christian chroniclers, and won the respect of many of them, including Richard the Lionheart; rather than becoming a hated figure in Europe, he became a celebrated example of the principles of chivalry.

 Richard I (9/8, 1157 – 4/6, 1199) was King of England from 7/6, 1189 until his death.  He was known as Richard the Lionheart, even before his accession, because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior.   Richard was coronated on 9/2, 1189.  As per orders given by him, the Jews were not granted permission to be part of the coronation ceremony.  Many Jewish leaders who dared to attend the ceremony were thrown out of the court.  This event triggered rumors of the king ordering the execution of the members of the Jew community residing in London.  This initiated a miserable phase for the Jews in London with many being robbed, burned alive and being compulsorily baptized.  By virtue of the Crusader’s Vow taken by Richard at Poitou in the year 1187, he was bestowed the title of Richard the Lion heart.  He had sworn to guard Christianity and rescue his land from the inhabitation of Muslims.

~1190  “The Art of Courtly Love” or "About Love" by Andreas Capellanus (The book's realistic, somewhat cynical tone suggests that it is in some measure an antidote to courtly love.)  His real identity has never been determined, but has been a matter of extended academic debate.  Andreas Capellanus is sometimes known by a French translation of his name, André le Chapelain.  Rules of Courtly Love: 1.Marriage should not be a deterrent to love.;  2.Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.;  3.A double love cannot obligate an individual.;  4.Love constantly waxes and wanes.;  5.That which is not given freely by the object of one's love loses its savor.;  6.It is necessary for a male to reach the age of maturity in order to love.;  7.A lover must observe a two-year widowhood after his beloved's death.;  8.Only the most urgent circumstances should deprive one of love.;  9.Only the insistence of love can motivate one to love.;  10.Love cannot coexist with avarice.;  11.A lover should not love anyone who would be an embarrassing marriage choice.;  12.True love excludes all from its embrace but the beloved.;  13.Public revelation of love is deadly to love in most instances.;  14.The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.;  15.The presence of one's beloved causes palpitation of the heart.;  16.The sight of one's beloved causes palpitations of the heart.;  17.A new love brings an old one to a finish.;  18.Good character is the one real requirement for worthiness of love.;  19.When love grows faint its demise is usually certain.;  20.Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.;  21.Love is reinforced by jealousy.;  22.Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.;  23.Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.;  24.The lover's every deed is performed with the thought of his beloved in mind.;  25.Unless it please his beloved, no act or thought is worthy to the lover.;  26.Love is powerless to hold anything from love.;  27.There is no such thing as too much of the pleasure of one's beloved.;  28.Presumption on the part of the beloved causes suspicion in the lover.;  29.Aggravation of excessive passion does not usually afflict the true lover.;  30.Thought of the beloved never leaves the true lover.;  31.Two men may love one woman or two women one man.

1190 England (Jewish Population) -The Jewish population in England numbered approximately 2,500 Jews.  Until this time they enjoyed relative freedom of movement, education, and the right to own real estate as compared to the Jews on the continent.

1190 Montpellier Jews (France) -Were prohibited from holding any "high" office in France.

“Disputation Against the Jews” by Evrard of Bethune

“Tractate or Dialogue Against the Jews” by Walter of Castellio (1160-1200)

“A War of the Lord Against the Jews and Against the Heretics of the Jews” by converted Jew William of Bourges (1160-1210)

“Book Against the Perfidy of the Jews” by Peter of Blois (1160-1200)

 1190 or 1200 The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German.  The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge.  The Germanic Burgundians sacrificed themselves to the Huns for the remainder of the German tribes. (437)  Some scholars, consider the historical figure of Arminius (Hermann), who defeated the Roman imperial legions (clad in scale armor) at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, a possible archetype for the dragon-slayer Siegfried.

The Nibelungenlied is based on pre-Christian Germanic heroic motifs (the "Nibelungensaga"), which include oral traditions and reports based on historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries. Old Norse parallels of the legend survive in the Völsunga saga, the Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda, the Legend of Norna-Gest, and the Þiðrekssaga.

Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga.  The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving (c. 1000) and the Gök Runestone (11th century).  As Siegfried, he is the hero in the German Nibelungenlied, and Richard Wagner's operas Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.  As Sivard Snarensven(d) he was the hero of several medieval Scandinavian ballads.

Purim is the Jewish holiday of Revenge against Gentiles.

  Both Jewish and Christian records from the 12th century relate a Jewish community’s execution of Christian murderer after the criminal was paraded through town with a crown of thorns on head (in a transparent burlesque of Jesus’ crucifixion); the incident led to the martyrdom of the local Jewish community on order of the king.

Ephraim of Bonn (1132–1200) was a Jewish writer who documented the massacre of the (80) Jews in the city of York in 1190, in response to this atrocity.  The Jewish children were baptized and saved.

1200         1200         1200         1200

1200 Boon or Bane: Blessing or Curse.  Both terms are from Middle English of the 12th century.

 An Ordensburg was a fortress built by crusading German military orders during the Middle Ages.  "Ordensburg" was also used during Nazi Germany to refer to training schools for Nazi leaders.  The Ordensburgen were originally constructed by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and later the Teutonic Knights to fortify territory in Prussia and Livonia against the pagan aboriginals.  Later, Ordensburgen were used to defend against Poland and Lithuania.  The Ordensburgen often resembled cloisters.  While they were considerably larger than those in the Holy Roman Empire, they were much scarcer in the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights.  While a normal castle in the Reich would control about 38 km², a castle would control 370 km² in Prussia and 789 km² in Livonia, Courland and Estonia.  The few small castles are considered to be of vassals, while the larger ones might have served as arsenals and strongholds against rebels and invaders.  There were 159 of these medieval Ordensburgen that have been counted.

The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were a military order founded by Bishop Albert of Riga in 1202.  The membership of the order comprised German "warrior monks".  Alternative names of the Order include the Christ Knights, Sword Brethren, and The Militia of Christ of Livonia.  Following their defeat by the Samogitians and Semigallians in the Battle of Schaulen (Saule) in 1236, the surviving Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order as an autonomous branch and became known as the Livonian Order.

 12-16th Speculum Literature, was encyclopedic knowledge within a single work.  The speculum image, of the mirror that reflects far and wide, was drawn from the magical mirror that was supposed to belong among the treasures of legendary Prester John somewhere in the East.  Through it every province could be seen.  In the genre "Speculum of Princes", the prince's realms were surveyed and his duties laid out.  Other specula offered mirrors of history, of doctrine or morals.  A number of medieval book titles include the word speculum: 

Speculum alchimiae, the "Mirror of Alchemy", by Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon, O.F.M. (c. 1214–1294), (scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, meaning "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods.

Speculum astronomiae, the "Mirror of Astronomy", by Albertus Magnus. Albertus Magnus, O.P. (1193/1206 – 11/15, 1280), also known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, is a Catholic saint. He was a German Dominican friar and a bishop, who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion.

Speculum ecclesiae, the "Mirror of the Church", by Edmund Rich. Edmund Rich (1175–1240) was a 13th century Archbishop of Canterbury in England.

Speculum historiale, the "Mirror of History", part of Speculum Maius the "Great Mirror" by Vincent of Beauvais. The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais (Vincentius Bellovacensis or Vincentius Burgundus) (c. 1190–1264?) wrote the Speculum Maius, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages.  Vincent's Speculum Maius (The Great Mirror), the compendium of all of the knowledge of the Middle Ages, seems to have consisted of three parts, the Speculum Naturale, Speculum Doctrinale and Speculum Historiale. All the printed editions, however, include a fourth part, the Speculum Morale, added in the 14th century and mainly compiled from Thomas Aquinas, Stephen de Bourbon, and a few other contemporary writers.

Speculum Humanae Salvationis, the "Mirror of Human Salvation", (c1309-24), perhaps by Ludolph of Saxony. It focused on the medieval theory of typology, whereby the events of the Old Testament prefigured, or foretold, the events of the New Testament.  Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1300 – 1378), also known as Ludolphus de Saxonia and Ludolph the Carthusian, was a German Roman Catholic theologian of the fourteenth century.  His principal work, Vita Christi (Life of Christ), was written in 1374.  It had significant influence on the development of techniques for Christian meditation by introducing the concept of immersing and projecting oneself into a Biblical scene about the life of Jesus which became popular among the Devotio Moderna community, and later influenced Ignatius of Loyola.

Speculum judiciale, the "Mirror for Judges", by Guillaume Durand. Guillaume Durand, or William Durand, (c. 1230 – 11/1, 1296), also known as Durandus, Duranti or Durantis, from the Italian form of Durandi filius, as he sometimes signed himself, was a French canonist and liturgical writer, and Bishop of Mende.

Speculum meditantis, the "Mirror of Meditations", by John Gower.  John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.

Speculum perfectionis, the "Mirror of Perfection", by Brother Leo. Brother Leo (died c. 1270) was the favorite disciple, secretary and confessor of St Francis of Assisi.

Speculum stultorum, the "Mirror of Fools" by Nigel de Longchamps. Nigel de Longchamps, also known as Nigel Wireker, (fl. c. 1190, died c. 1200), was an English satirist and poet of the late twelfth century, writing in Latin. He is known to have been a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, from 1186 to 1193, and perhaps earlier

Speculum regale, the "Mirror of Kings", which contains instructions for a young prince. (several versions through the centuries.)

  ****Jew Business Practices throughout the Middle Ages:

As an illustration of the far-reaching impact of Jewish usury, Achille Luchaire shows that in medieval Europe even many churches and monasteries were closed because of debts owed to the Jewish moneylenders.  Jacob R. Marcus, one of the world’s leading Jewish historians, in his Encyclopaedia Britannica article “Jews,” states, “the floating wealth of the country was soaked up by the Jews, who were periodically made to disgorge into the exchequer.”

Jewish teaching commanded Jews to aid their brothers and not to compete with one another in attempts to exploit Gentiles.  Jacob Katz traces a large body of Jewish literature forbidding competition between Jews.  They were barred from interfering with monopolies controlled by other Jews and from underbidding fellow Jews.  They were always to cooperate with other Jews in the face of Gentile competition so as “not to lose the money of Israel.”

Historically there are many examples of this “team effort” utilized for economic and political advantage.  Roth discusses the appointment of a Marrano Jew, Diego Arias Davilia, as state treasurer in 15th century Spain.  The terms “Marrano” and “New Christian” are used to denote Jews who falsely converted to Christianity, while practicing Judaism covertly.  Roth points out that through Davilia’s influence many other “New Christians” rose to high positions.  He also shows that the Marranos also controlled all New World imports and exports as well as their distribution in Spain.  If Roth is right and the Jews, as a closed syndicate, controlled all the trade during that period, would not that cause hostility from Gentile merchants?

All over Europe the Jews used their common languages and organizations to gain a competitive advantage over Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean region.  In his book The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, Stanford Shaw shows how Jews had a system of bills of exchange honored only by other Jewish traders and bankers, giving them a competitive edge. 

A case study in Opatow, Poland, during the 17th and 18th centuries by Gershon Hundert called The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatow in the Eighteenth Century illustrates how the Jews came to dominate commercial life.  There were constant complaints that the Jews refused to join the craft guilds; that they controlled the trade and prices of raw materials; that they imported finished goods into the town, undercutting the local Christian artisans; that they did not buy from Christians; that there were complaints . . . that Jews had pushed Christians entirely out of commerce, with the result that Christian merchants were forced to move elsewhere.  Hundert writes that "Jewish domination of the town's commerce . . . was almost complete."  He also notes that Jews came to dominate all phases of the alcoholic beverage business, including its manufacturing, distribution and retail.

“The Tale of Igor's Campaign” is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.  The poem gives an account of a failed raid of Igor Svyatoslavich (d. 1202) against the Polovtsians of the Don River region. The Tale of Igor's Campaign was adapted by Alexander Borodin as an opera “Prince Igor” in 1890 and became one of the great classics of Russian theatre.

 1204-1850s Donnybrook Fair was held in Donnybrook, Dublin.  It has given its name to an Irish jig, a broadsheet ballad, and a slang term for a brawl or riot.  In the year 1204 King John of England granted a license to the corporation of Dublin to hold an eight-day fair in Donnybrook. In 1252 the duration was extended to fifteen days.

 ****Genghis Khan (~1162–1227) Khan (ruler) and Khagan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.  Genghis Khan is credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment.  This allowed increased communication and trade between the West, Middle East and Asia, thus expanding the horizons of all three cultural areas.  Some historians have noted that Genghis Khan instituted certain levels of meritocracy in his rule, was tolerant of different religions and explained his policies clearly to all his soldiers.  In Turkey, Genghis Khan is looked on as a great military leader, and it is popular for male children to carry his title as name.  Traditionally Genghis Khan had been revered for centuries among the Mongols, and also among certain other ethnic groups such as the Turks, largely because of his association with Mongol statehood, political and military organization, and his historic victories in war.  He eventually evolved into a larger-than-life figure chiefly among the Mongols and is still considered the symbol of Mongolian culture.

Destruction under the Mongol Empire refers to widespread loss of life and devastation caused by the Mongolian conquests of the 13th century.  Mongol raids and invasions were generally regarded as some of the deadliest in human history.  Nonetheless due consideration should be given to the age of sources recounting the events, and that the accounts were written primarily by survivors of the Mongol attacks.  If a population agreed to pay the Mongols tribute, they were spared invasion and left relatively independent.  Different tribute were taken from different cultures.

"The 13th century reign of Genghis Kahn was a significant time for the growth of Christianity, which had been introduced as early as the 8th century by Nestorian Christian missionaries from Persia.  Genghis Kahn was married to a Christian woman.  One of the Khan's daughters-in-law, Sorkaktani, was a Nestorian Christian who became the mother of three great emperors, including Kublai Khan.  Another significant Christian influence in the 13th century was the assignment by Pope Innocent the IV of more than a dozen Dominican and Franciscan missionaries to Mongolia."  Jewish Khazaria was finally wiped out as an Kingdom by the forces of Genghis Khan.

Victor Valerianovich Bunak in the article "On the Origin of the Northern Race" (Anthropological Journal, № 1, 1934): “In general, a serious surge of Mongoloid blood in Central Asia began only in the XIII century, that is, from the time of the Mongol invasion." (Before this were tall, blue-eyed, blonds.)

 ~1230? Bevis of Hampton is a legendary English hero and the subject of Anglo-Norman, French, English, Venetian and other medieval metrical romances that bear his name. The tale also exists in medieval prose versions, was transmitted to Roumania and Russia, and was adapted into Irish, Welsh, Old Norse and Yiddish.   The exploits of Bevis, his defeat of Ascapart, his love for the king's daughter Josiane, his mission to King Bradmond of Damascus with a sealed letter demanding his own death, his imprisonment, his final vengeance on his stepfather are related in detail.  After succeeding to his inheritance he is, however, driven into exile and separated from Josiane, to whom he is reunited only after each of them has contracted, in form only, a second union.  The story also relates the hero's death and the fortunes of his two sons.

Parzival (early 13th) is a major medieval German romance by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, is based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Story of the Grail and mainly centers on the Arthurian hero Parzival (Percival in English) and his long quest for the Holy Grail following his initial failure to achieve it.  Parzival begins with the knightly adventures of Parzival's father, Gahmuret, his marriage to Herzeloyde, and the birth of Parzival.  Parzival meets three elegant knights, decides to seek King Arthur, and continues a spiritual and physical search for the Grail.  Among the most striking elements of the work are its emphasis on the importance of humility, compassion, sympathy and the quest for spirituality.  A major theme in Parzival is love: heroic acts of chivalry are inspired by true love, which is ultimately fulfilled in marriage.   The poem was widely influential in Germany in the Middle Ages and beyond.  Wolfram's story of Loherangrin has been rewritten.  Richard Wagner based his famous opera Parsifal on Parzival.

Lohengrin is a character in some German Arthurian literature.  The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity.  His story, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources.  Wolfram's story was expanded in two later romances.  In 1848 Richard Wagner adapted the medieval tale into his popular opera Lohengrin.

Romance of the Rose, is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision.  It is a notable instance of courtly literature to both entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love.  At various times in the poem, the "Rose" of the title is seen as the name of the lady, and as a symbol of female sexuality in general.  The first 4058 lines, written by Guillaume de Lorris circa 1230, describe the attempts of a courtier to woo his beloved. This part of the story is set in a walled garden.  In this walled garden, the interior represents romance, while the exterior stands for everyday life.

 Peter Waldo, Valdo, or Waldes (c. 1140 – c. 1218) is credited as the founder of the Waldensians, a Christian spiritual movement of the Middle Ages, descendants of which still exist in various regions of southern Europe. From about 1160 he began living a radical Christian life giving his property over to his wife, while the remainder of his belongings he distributed as alms to the poor.  At about this time, Waldo began to preach and teach publicly, based on his ideas of simplicity and poverty, notably that "No man can serve two masters, God and mammon" accompanied by strong condemnations of Papal excesses and Catholic dogmas, including purgatory and transubstantiation, while accusing them of being the harlot from the book of Revelation.  In 1179, Waldo and one of his disciples went to Rome where they were welcomed by Pope Alexander III, and the Roman Curia.  They had to explain their faith before a panel of three clergymen, including issues which were then debated within the Church, as the universal priesthood, the gospel in the vulgar tongue, and the issue of self-imposed poverty.  The results of the meeting were inconclusive, and Waldo's ideas, but not the movement itself, were condemned at the Third Lateran Council in the same year, though the leaders of the movement had not been yet excommunicated.  They were again condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 where they are mentioned by name for the first time, and regarded as heresy.  The Roman Catholic Church began to persecute the Waldensians, and many were tried and sentenced to death in various European countries during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. The sect persisted by fleeing to the Alps and hiding there.  Centuries after his death, the Waldensian denomination joined the Genevan or Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation.

 Waldensians -Some groups of Mennonites, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, other Protestants and Church Historians claim that the Waldenses' history extends back to the Apostles.  They are instead named after the Valois Valley and that Peter Waldo in fact got his name by association with the Waldenses. 

****Proto Philo-Judaism  “Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements” (1924) by Rabbi Louis Israel Newman is a comprehensive compendium on this subject.  Christians have had an handicap with acknowledgement of the Old Testament.  Catholics, Orthodox and historic Protestants have understood the concept that Israel=the Church, but without a strong theological foundation, many Christian groups have originated, along with the influences of pagainism, by influences of Judaism.  Jews have been quick to deliver by offering translating abilities and hence interpreting influences.  Newman’s Contents include: Book I: The term ‘Judaizing’, Types and Content of Jewish Influence, Transmission of Content, Christian Hebraists of England.  Book II: Jewish Influence on the Heresies of the 12^th and 13^th Centuries (Catharism, Kabbalah, Waldenses, Passagii, Inquisition Judaizers, Jewish Proselytism).  Book III: Jewish Influence on some Pre-Reformation and Reformation Movements (John Huss, Zwingli, Michael Servetus(& Jew birth)).  Book IV: Briefer Studies (Iconoclastic Controversy, Martin Luther, American Puritanism).

 ****Catharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries.  Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria which took influences from the Paulicians.  Like many medieval movements, there were various schools of thought and practice amongst the Cathari; some were dualistic (believing in a God of Good and a God of Evil), others Gnostic, some closer to orthodoxy while abstaining from an acceptance of Catholicism.  The dualist theology was the most prominent, however, and was based upon an asserted complete incompatibility of love and power.  As matter was seen as a manifestation of power, it was believed to be incompatible with love.  The Cathari did not believe in one all-encompassing god, but in two, both equal and comparable in status.  They held that the physical world was evil and created by Rex Mundi (translated from Latin as "king of the world"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful; the second god, the one whom they worshipped, was entirely disincarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter.  He was the god of love, order and peace.

The Cathars had no official name, preferring to refer to themselves only as Good Men and Good Women or Good Christians. The word Cathar is from Greek (Katharoi), "pure ones”.  The Cathars were also sometimes referred to as the Albigensians.  There are certainly similarities in theology and practice between Gnostic/dualist groups of Late Antiquity (such as the Marcionites, Manichaeans and Ebionites) and the Cathars.  They claimed an Apostolic succession from the founders of Christianity, and saw Rome as having betrayed and corrupted the original purity of the message.

“... they usually say of themselves that they are good Christians, ... hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel as the apostles taught ... occupy the place of the apostles.... ...they talk to the laity of the evil lives of the clerks and prelates of the Roman Church... ... they attack and vituperate, in turn, all the sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ... Of baptism, they assert that the water is material and corruptible ... and cannot sanctify the soul... ... they claim that confession made to the priests of the Roman Church is useless... They assert, moreover, that the cross of Christ should not be adored or venerated... Moreover they read from the Gospels and the Epistles in the vulgar (common) tongue, applying and expounding them in their favour and against the condition of the Roman Church...”– Bernard Gui, On the Albigensians

Besides the New Testament, Cathar sacred texts include The Gospel of the Secret Supper, or John's Interrogation and The Book of the Two Principles.   Cathar society was divided into two general categories, the (Perfects) and the (Believers).  While the Perfecti pledged themselves to ascetic lives of simplicity, frugality and purity, Cathar (believers) were not expected to adopt the same stringent lifestyle.  They were, however, expected to refrain from eating meat and dairy products, from killing and from swearing oaths.  The Catharist concept of Jesus resembled modalistic monarchianism (Sabellianism) in the West and adoptionism in the East.  Many embraced the Gospel of John as their most sacred text, and many rejected the traditional view of the Old Testament — proclaiming that the God of the Old Testament was really the devil, or creative demiurge.  They proclaimed that there was a higher God—the True God—and Jesus was variously described as being that True God or his messenger.  The God found in the Old Testament had nothing to do with the God of Love known to Cathars.

The Catholic Church regarded the sect as dangerously heretical.  Faced with the rapid spread of the movement across the Languedoc region, the Church first sought peaceful attempts at conversion, undertaken by Dominicans.  These were not very successful and after the murder on 15 January 1208 of the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau by a knight in the employ of Count Raymond of Toulouse, the Church called for a crusade.  This was carried out by knights from northern France and Germany and was known as the Albigensian Crusade.

The publication of the book Crusade against the Grail by the young German Otto Rahn in the 1930s rekindled interest in the connection between the Cathars and the Holy Grail.  Rahn was convinced that the 13th century work Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach was a veiled account of the Cathars.  His research attracted the attention of the Nazi government and in particular of Heinrich Himmler, who made him archaeologist in the SS.  As with many minority Christian sects, their own writings were destroyed and most of the information we have is from secondary sources.  Not accepting the Old Testament of the Jews might be an insight into their view of the Jews.  The dualistic ideas of equal good and bad gods, is very present in current Christianity among the unlearned when talking about God vs Satan.  In Scripture, Satan, if personified is only a fallen angel, a created being.  There is no equality between a fallen angel and God Almighty.

  C. 1200 Rise of Kabbalah (Jewish Philosophical Mysticism) -As persecutions increased in the wake of the crusades, Jews began searching for a deeper meaning of existence to help them understand the harshness of life around them.  One of the basic beliefs of Kabbalah is that in addition to leading a righteous life, one may also contemplate mystic traditions which can bring one closer to God.  There are two kinds of Kabbalah: theoretical, which is more speculative and epistemological; and practical, which is more mystical and magical, using amulets and the various names of God.  Abracadabra: cabalistic charm from initials of Hebrew words for Father, Son and Holy Spirit -in a Jewish sense.

Gematria  is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like.  Although ostensibly derived from Greek, it is largely used in Jewish texts, notably in those associated with the Kabbalah.  The best-known example of Gematria is the Hebrew word Chai ("life"), which is composed of two letters which add up to 18. This has made 18 a "lucky number" among Jews, and gifts in multiples of $18 are very common among Jews.  Some identify two forms of gematria: the "revealed" form, which is prevalent in many hermeneutic methods found throughout Rabbinic literature, and the "mystical" form, a largely Kabbalistic practice.

An unusual swastika, composed of the Hebrew letters Aleph and Resh, appears in the 18th century Kabbalistic work "Parashat Eliezer" by Rabbi Eliezer Fischl of Strizhov, a commentary on the obscure ancient eschatological book "Karnayim", ascribed to Rabbi Aharon of Kardina.  The symbol is enclosed by a circle and surrounded by a cyclic hymn in Aramaic.  The hymn, which refers explicitly to the power of the Sun, as well as the shape of the symbol, shows strong solar symbolism.  According to the book, this mandala-like symbol is meant to help a mystic to contemplate on the cyclic nature and structure of the Universe.  The letters are the initial and final characters of the Hebrew word, אוֹר, or "light".

 36 Just Men: The Tzadikim Nistarim (hidden righteous ones), refers to 36 Righteous people.  Mystical Hasidic Judaism as well as other segments of Judaism believe that there is the Jewish tradition of 36 righteous people whose role in life is to justify the purpose of humankind in the eyes of God.   Tradition holds that their identities are unknown to each other and that, if one of them comes to a realization of their true purpose then they may die and their role is immediately assumed by another person:

 The legends of Prester John (also Presbyter Johannes), popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient.  Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy.  Reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, Prester John was said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided.  His kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates of Alexander and the Fountain of Youth, and even bordered the Earthly Paradise.  Among his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen, the fabled original from which derived the "speculum literature" of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, in which the prince's realms were surveyed and his duties laid out.  At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India; tales of the Nestorian Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend.  After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves they had found him in Ethiopia.  Prester John's kingdom was thus the object of a quest, firing the imaginations of generations of adventurers, but remaining out of reach.  He was a symbol to European Christians of the Church's universality, transcending culture and geography to encompass all humanity, in a time when ethnic and interreligious tension made such a vision seem distant.

Pierre de Blois (in Latin Blessensis Petrus) (c. 1135 - c. 1203) is a diplomat and poet Latin Middle Ages.  Wrote “Against the Perfidy of the Jews”

  1209 - 1229 Albigensian Crusade (France) -Called by Pope Innocent III. The Albigensians, who were named for the city Albi in southern France, were one of a number of heretical Christian sects.  Although they rejected Judaism on theological grounds, many also rejected the notion of Jesus as God and accused the Church of social and economical corruption.  Jews fared well in areas under their control, even attaining positions of prominence. The Church - furious that Jews still held public office and angry at the Albigensian's heresy - called for a crusade against the Albigensians.  King Philip refused to lead it, but did not prevent Cardinal Bertrand and Simon de Montfort from attacking the South.  Prince Raymond VI surrendered at Toulouse on September 22, 1229.  The Cathars embraced the Albigensian heresy, according to which there are two gods, one of good and one of evil.  Possibly 200,000 were killed.  After capturing the city of Bram in 1210 they took a hundred of the defeated soldiers, cut off their noses and upper lips, gouged out the eyes of all but one, and had him lead the others to the city of Cabaret to terrorize its citizens into surrendering.  There may have been one million deaths.

 (19^th cent.) King Richard I (9/8, 1157 – 4/6, 1199) was King of England from 7/6, 1189 to death.  He was known as Richard Cœur de Lion, or Richard the Lionheart, even before his accession, because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior.  By the age of sixteen, Richard commanded his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father, King Henry II.  Richard was a central Christian commander during the Third Crusade, leading the campaign after the departure of Philip II of France and scoring considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, Saladin, although he did not reconquer Jerusalem.  When he was crowned, Richard barred all Jews and women from the ceremony, but some Jewish leaders arrived to present gifts for the new king.  According to Ralph of Diceto, Richard's courtiers stripped and flogged the Jews, then flung them out of court.  When a rumor spread that Richard had ordered all Jews to be killed, the people of London began a massacre.  Many Jews were beaten to death, robbed, and burned alive.  Many Jewish homes were burned down, and several Jews were forcibly baptized.  Realizing that the assaults could destabilize his realm on the eve of his departure on crusade, Richard ordered the execution of those responsible for the most egregious murders and persecutions, including rioters who had accidentally burned down Christian homes.  He distributed a royal writ demanding that the Jews be left alone.  However, the edict was loosely enforced.

King John (12/24, 1166 – 10/18, 1216), was King of England from 4/6, 1199 to death.  The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of the Magna Carta, a document often considered to be an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.

1210 November 1, King John (England) was the brother of Richard the Lionhearted. He imprisoned much of the Jewish population until they paid the enormous sum of 66,000 marks as a tax called a "tallage".  This tax could be imposed by any lord on his serfs without special permission, or the king on his Jews as well as the serfs on crown lands.  Abraham of Bristol, who refused to pay his "share" (10,000 silver marks) had a tooth pulled every day until he agreed to pay.  He lost seven teeth before he was able to raise the funds.

The Crusaders began the "holy war" in Toledo (1212) by robbing and killing the Jews, and if the knights had not checked them with armed forces all the Jews in Toledo would have been slain.  Under Ferdinand III, the clergy's endeavors directed against the Jews became more and more pronounced.  The Spanish Jews of both sexes, like the Jews of France, were compelled to distinguish themselves from Christians by wearing a yellow badge on their clothing; this order was issued to keep them from associating with Christians, although the reason given was that it was ordered for their own safety.

1215 Fourth Lateran Council, 12th Catholic Council -In 1215 Pope Innocent III called trying to recover from the immense sadness three years earlier of the failed Children's Crusade (5th Crusade) , successfully regained his power.  It marked the pinnacle of papal power in medieval times. It was Innocent who defined ex cathedra - from the chair of Peter and who declared in that position that "There is but one Universal Church, outside of which there is no salvation."  The Council officially set in stone the term 'Transubstantiation' for the mystery of the bread and wine confected into the body and blood of Jesus Christ and reformed disciplines of ecclesiastical life, as well as directing all Catholics to partake in the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist no less than once a year.  Lateran IV also condemned as anathema once more the heresies of Albigensianism, which taught marriage and the sacraments were not needed, and Waldensianism, which taught that the laity could perform the same duties as a priest when said priest was in mortal sin.  Old anti-Jewish decrees were expanded and Jews were compelled to wear the Yellow Patch - the "Badge of Shame" - to distinguish them from Christians.  These decrees were enforced in France, England, Germany and later in Hungary.  Jews are restricted for the antisocietal behavior of slavery and prostitution.

Pope Innocent III, Lothar of Segni (1160– 7/16 1216) was Pope (1/8, 1198-7/16, 1216).

Pope Innocent III decreed as follows:  "As Cain was a wanderer and an outcast, not to be killed by anyone but marked with the sign of fear on his forehead, so the Jews . . . against whom the voice of the blood of Christ cries out . . . although they are not to be killed they must always be dispersed as wanderers upon the face of the earth."

"Although Christian piety tolerates the Jews . . . whose own fault commits them to perpetual slavery . . . and allows them to continue with us (even though the Moors will not tolerate them), they must not be allowed to remain ungrateful to us in such a way as to repay us with contumely for favors and contempt for our familiarity.  They are admitted to our familiarity only through our mercy; but they are to us dangerous as the insect in the apple, as the serpent in the breast… Since, therefore, they have already begun to gnaw like the rat, and to stink like the serpent, it is to our shame that the fire in our breast which is being eaten into by them, does not consume them…. As they are reprobate slaves of the Lord, in whose death they evilly conspired (at least by the effect of the deed), let them acknowledge themselves as slaves of those whom the death of Christ has made free."

Under this same pope, Innocent III, the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, adopted canons Nos. 67-70, decreeing the Roman Catholic attitude towards the Jews: The first is financial, containing protective measures for Christians against the rapacity of Jews as usurers.  Only Jews were permitted to lend money at interest.  The second decrees that all Jews be distinguished for all time from Christians by color of dress and distinctive badge.  The third forbids Jews to have Christians as nurses, tutors, and domestic servants and forbids Christians to cohabit with Jews and Jewesses. Legal marriage with them was impossible.  The fourth forbids the acceptance of legal testimony of Jews against Christians and orders preference for the testimony of a Christian against a Jew. An order is also added that all in authority in Church and State must watch continually lest converted and baptized Jews continue to practice the rites of their former faith.

A few years later Pope Innocent III reiterates and confirms these edicts of the Lateran Council as follows:  “To the King of France that he must Crush the Insolence of the Jews residing in his Kingdom, "Although it be not displeasing to the Lord, but rather acceptable to Him, that the Jewish Dispersion should live and serve under Christian princes …. they greatly offend in the sight of God's Divine Majesty who prefer the offspring of the Crucifiers before those who are the heirs of Christ. … It has come to our knowledge that in the kingdom of France Jews have so much liberty that, under a species of usury—by which they not only extort interest, but interest from interest—they obtain control of the goods of the churches and the possessions of the Christians. … Furthermore, although it was decreed in the Lateran Council that Jews be not permitted to have Christian servants in their homes, either as tutors for their children or for domestic service, or for any reason whatsoever, they still persist in having Christians as servants and nurses, with whom they commit abominations of a kind which it rather becomes you to punish than us to explain.  And again, although the same Council laid it down that the testimony of Christians against Jews is to be admitted, even when the former use Jewish witnesses against Christians, and decreed that in a case of this kind anyone who would prefer Jews before Christians is to be condemned as anathema, yet up to the present time things are so carried on in the kingdom of France, that the testimony of Christians against Jews is not believed, whereas Jews are admitted as witnesses against Christians.  And at times, when they to whom Jews have loaned money with usury produce Christian witnesses about the facts of payment, the Deed which the Christian debtor through neglicence indiscreetly left with them is believed rather than the witnesses whom they bring forward.  On Good Friday also, contrary to the law of old, they walk through the streets and public squares, and meeting Christians who everywhere according to custom go to adore the Crucifix, they deride them and strive to prevent them from this duty of adoration.  We warn and exhort Your Serene Majesty in the Lord (adding the remission of your sins) that you force the Jews from their presumption …. and see to it that due punishment be meted out to all such blasphemers, and that an easy pardon be not given to delinquents!"

  ****Jews & Finance ". . . there was an inevitable tendency for him to specialize in commerce, for which his acumen and ubiquity gave him special qualifications.  In the dark ages the commerce of western Europe was largely in his hands, in particular the slave trade, and in Carolingian cartularies Jew and merchant are used as almost interchangeable terms."  [Encyclopedia Britannica, page 57, vol. 13—1947.] This hold over European commerce finally became so utterly complete that few gentiles engaged in trade at all; it had become almost entirely a Jewish monopoly.  In Poland and Hungary, the coins bore Jewish inscriptions ...  Throughout the Medieval "Dark Ages, which lasted from 500 A.D. to 1300 A.D., the Jew merchant was dominant all over Europe (except Scandinavia, where he was never permitted to enter) and this dominance included control over the eastern trade routes to the Levant.  There was to be no relief from this situation until the Jews were evicted from Europe in the century directly preceding the Renaissance.  In 1215 the Catholic Church, at the Fourth Lateran Council, broke the back of European Jewry with a set of restrictions designed to curb their commercial monopoly.  These decrees restricted Jews to residence in their own communities, prohibited absolutely their hiring of Christian employees and prohibited them from engaging in many types of commercial activity.

The Fourth Lateran Council restricted Jewish commercial advantage but it did not end the Jewish problem.  Beginning in the latter part of the 13th century, one European country after another expelled its Jewish population as the only final solution to the problem.  First to take the step was England which banned them in 1290.  Fifteen years later in 1306 the French followed suit.  In steady succession the various states of Europe emulated this example with Spain being one of the last to enforce the ban in 1492. The rich Spanish Jews we see being evicted in 1492 were not down-trodden folk. They were the wealthy, the privileged, the exploiters: they were the well-fed merchants and the gouging tax collectors ... So it was in Portugal; in that country we find that the deportation of the Jews ... "deprived Portugal of its middle class and its most scientific traders and financiers." [Encyclopedia Britannica, page 279, vol. 18 - 1947.] A wealthy merchant group was ousted from its seat of vested privilege by a thoroughly outraged, and a thoroughly exploited Christian society.

The situation in England was similar.  The Jews had come to England in the wake of the Norman Conquest and had quickly gained a position of wealth and prosperity. Says Valentine's Jewish Encyclopedia of this period: "Their numbers and prosperity increased, Aaron of Lincoln being the wealthiest man in England in his time ... his financial transactions covering the whole country and concerning many of the leading nobles and churchmen ... On his death his property passed to the crown and a special branch of the exchequer had to be created to deal with it."

****Usury - The usury practiced by the Jews of the medieval world are outrageous by modern standards.

• In A History of the Jews in England, Cecil Roth finds Jews charging interest rates between 22 and 43 percent. 311 In northern France the interest rate was limited to 43 percent in 1206 as the authorities tried to reduce the prevailing rate of 65 percent plus compounding.

• In The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800, writer Bernard Weinryb shows similar outlandish rates in Poland in the 14th and 15th centuries.

• In the 1942 book The Jews in Spain: Their Political and Cultural Life During the Middle Ages, the Jewish author A. A. Neuman writes that in Castile the authorities allowed Jews to charge an interest rate of 33 1/3 percent. When farmers desperately needed to purchase seed during the great famine in Cuenca in 1326, the Jews refused to lend money unless they were allowed 40 percent

Brian Pullen quotes a rabbi of 16^th century, who noted: “Usury makes them unpopular with all the orders of the city; engaging in crafts with the lesser people; the possession of property with nobles and great men. These are the reasons why the Jews do not dwell in many places. But these circumstances do not arise in Venice, where the rate of interest is only 5 percent, and the banks are established for the benefit of the poor and not for the profit of the bankers.”

Jewish Usury: There were many Talmudic rules regarding loans to other Jews.  Gentiles, not considered human were fair game.  The early Christian Church declared that any usury was against divine law.  In 1179, Pope Alexander III excommunicated the worst Christian usurers.  However, Canon law was not regarded by medieval society as having any authority over Jews, and thus Christian monarchs looked to the Jews to supply capital to them; in many European countries, medieval civil law also allowed the monarchs to inherit all remaining income and property that had been acquired by usury upon the death of the Jewish usurer involved.  Medieval European monarchs thus supported the Jews and suppressed any attempts to convert them to Christianity since it would deprive the monarch of potential income; in England and France, the monarchs demanded compensation from the church for every Jew who was converted, and, until 1281, the English monarch had the legal right to claim half the property of any Jew that converted to Christianity. 

The Jewish usurers had no competition in medieval Christian lands and could charge very high interest; the legal limitations imposed were particularly generous in many countries: in Sicily, under Frederick II in 1231, up to 10% per annum; in Aragon, under the Cortes of Tarragona, up to 20% per annum; in Navarre, under Philip III in 1330, up to 20% per annum; in Castile, under Alfonso X, up to 25% per annum; in Portugal, under Alfonso IV in 1350, up to 33.33% per annum; in France, under Philip Augustus, up to 43.3% per annum; in England, under King John, up to 86.6% per annum.  The huge size of the interest rates that were permitted, together with the effect of compound interest, meant that if the loan was not quickly repaid, it would soon become unmanageable, and the security would be lost to the usurer; for example, an abbot in 1173 borrowed 40 marks from Benedict the Jew, and seven years later, the amount to be repaid had grown to 583 marks.  (Benedict the Jew is commended in Jewish memory for his financial inventions.)

The papacy protested the usury of the Jews, with Eugenius declaring that all interest charges were null and void if the debtor went on a crusade, and Innocent XIII calling upon all Christian princes to demand that the interest was returned; Louis IX of France and Edward I of England answered the call, in 1254 and 1275 respectively, and tried to influence the Jews within their kingdom away from usury, but without effect.  By the later Middle Ages, Christian Merchants who lent money with interest were without opposition, and the Jews lost their privileged position as money-lenders; from the 15th century, Jews were mainly found as dealers in second-hand clothing, yet always involved in banking.

 “In Christian Spain, in Castile, the Jews are bankers, tax farmers, quartermasters to the king.  Royalty protects them as its economic and political supporters.  Jehuda de Cavallera is a characteristic example of a great Jewish capitalist of the thirteenth century. He leased salt mines, coined money, supplied the army and possessed great estates and great herds of cattle. It was his fortune that made possible the construction of a battle fleet for the war against the Arabs…

In the early Middle Ages, the Jews were indispensable to the nobles in their capacity as principal suppliers of Oriental products. Later on, the noble wastrel, living without foresight, needed the Jews as a money reserve always ready to satisfy his caprices. For many a powerful lord the Jew was, as he was for the kings, an important source of revenue. In the epoch when royalty had not yet asserted its complete authority over the nobility, frequent conflicts broke out between princes, lords, and kings for possession of the Jews…

It was, of course, only a tiny part of the nobility which profited from Jewish usury. For the majority of feudal lords, the Jew was a direct cause of their ruin. For the king or the prince to be able to despoil the Jews, it was necessary that the majority of the nobles should groan under the weight of their debts… The indebtedness of the nobles to the Jewish usurers contained the germs of bloody conflicts… - “The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation”(1946) by Abram Leon

By the thirteenth century: “The Jewish moneylender became the creditor of the poor classes of feudal society.  He came face to face with those who could least afford to pay interest and carry the burden of medieval usury... The religious motive propagated and stimulated by the Crusaders was hardly a decisive factor in the hatred and persecution of the Jews.  Jewish pogroms in the Middle Ages were of a strictly socio-economic character.  The main purpose was the destruction of promissory notes.  –“The Economic Role of the Jews in Medieval Poland: The Contribution of Yitzak Schipper” (1984) by Jacobo Litman

12th The Kaiserchronik ('chronicle of emperors') runs from Julius Caesar to Conrad III, and seeks to give a complete account of the history of Roman and German emperors and kings, based on a historiographical view of the continuity of the Roman and German successions.  The overall pattern is of a progression from pagan to Christian worlds, and theological disputations stand at the turning-points of the Christianization of the Empire.

 Konig Rother epic recounts King Rother's adventurous quest to the Middle East for a bride.  The King on the advice of his nobles is concerned about the royal succession.  He acts on their advice to seek the hand of the beautiful daughter of King Constantine of Constantinople.  The problem with this however, is that all previous suitors lost their lives in the process.…..   The city of Constantinople and King Constantine are spared the onslaught.  Rother then returns with his new bride, where she gives birth to a son, Pipin, later the father to Charlemagne.

Spielmannsdichtung (lyric poetry)or Spielmannsepik (epic) is a genre of wandering minstrels (Spielmann) of the twelfth century.  The term was used to classify several early Middle High German works that predated the Minnesang and the Höfische Epik.

Höfische Epik is a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe.  They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest.

12th The Ludus de Antichristo is a liturgical drama which warned its audience of the dangers posed by the Antichrist, a prophesied figure of evil whose coming (according to the Old and New Testaments) was an indication that the end of the world, or apocalypse, was near.

 Walther von der Vogelweide (c1170 – c1230) is the most celebrated of the Middle High German lyric poets.  His earlier lyrics are full of the joy of life, of feelings for nature and of the glory of love.  Greatly daring, he even rescues love from the convention which had made it the prerogative of the nobly born; and puts the most beautiful of his lyrics into the mouth of a simple girl.  Religious and didactic poems become more frequent; and his verses in praise of love turn at times to a protest against the laxer standards of an age demoralized by political unrest.  Throughout his work, his attitude is regarded as healthy and sane.  He preaches support for the crusade; but at the same time he suggests the virtue of toleration.

~early 13th Gudrun (Kudrun), a German epic by an Austrian poet, but the story itself belongs to the cycle of Scandinavian sagas.  The epic falls into three parts—the adventures of King Hagen of Ireland, the romance of Hettel, king of the Hegelingen, who woos and wins Hagen's daughter Hilde, and the more or less parallel story of how Herwig, king of Seeland, wins, in opposition to her father's wishes, Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel and Hilde. Gudrun is carried off by a king of Normandy, and her kinsfolk, who are in pursuit, are defeated in a great battle on the island of Wiilpensand off the Dutch coast.  The finest part of the epic are those in which Gudrun, a prisoner in the Norman castle, refuses to become the wife of her captor, and is condemned to do the most menial work of the household.  Here, 13 years later, Herwig and her brother Ortwin find her washing clothes by the sea ; on the following day they attack the Norman castle and carry out the long-delayed retribution.  It was infused with Christian ethics.

Frauendienst (Service of the Lady) is autobiographical poetry by medieval minnesinger Ulrich von Liechtenstein (1200–1275).  He writes of himself as a protagonist who does great deeds of honor to married noblewomen, following the conventions of chaste courtly love.  He wrote noted works about how knights and nobles may lead more virtuous lives, and was a powerful leader in the 13th century Eastern Alps.

1227 - Prince Bort converted and baptized in the Ukraine.

1230 “Romance of the Rose” is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision, a notable instance of courtly literature.  The work's stated purpose is to both entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love.  At various times in the poem, the "Rose" of the title is seen as the name of the lady, and as a symbol of female sexuality in general.  Likewise, the other characters' names function both as regular names and as abstractions illustrating the various factors that are involved in a love affair.

1244 - Christians are reported in Lithuania with King Mindaugas (1200-1263) being baptized in 1251.

  ****Host desecration, also called host-nailing, is a form of sacrilege in Christianity (Anglicanism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, and Roman Catholicism) involving the mistreatment or malicious use of a consecrated Host— the sacred Bread used in the Mass.  In Roman Catholicism, Host desecration is a mortal sin, in that, unless it is forgiven and fully absolved, condemns a person to Hell after death.  Throughout history, a number of groups have been accused of desecrating the Eucharist; because of the spiritual importance of the consecrated Wafer.  Accusations against Jews were a common pretext for massacres and expulsions throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.  Similar accusations were made in witchcraft trials; witch-hunter's guides such as the Malleus Maleficarum refer to Hosts as being objects of desecration by witches.  It is part of many descriptions of the Black Mass, both in ostensibly historical works and in fiction.

****Jewish persecution - Throughout History, Jews and other minorities have been periodically persecuted and killed for many reasons.  Sometimes the Truth of Jewish Supremacy becomes known and at other times, simple natural calamities have been blamed on the innocent.  Jews and other minorities who do not fit in with general society or who shun general society become scapegoats.  Perhaps sometimes written history has shown innocence when in reality there is guilt.  In this paper, there has been Host desecration, well-poisoning, ritual murder, coin-clipping, usury, all manner of controlling vices to destroy Gentile society, slavery, Deicide, Black magic, Witchcraft and other topics.  Which are truly showing Jewish Supremacy and which are not?  Are Gentile communities inflamed with religious fanaticism or are persecutions the result of actual harmful situations?  Which persecutions are begun through irrationalities such as Deicide and which by Royalty’s greed?  I suggest we be on our guard against fanaticism and watch for the truth of Jewish Supremacy.  History shows that the Church and Royalty have often protected Jews from the justified passions of the People and have also periodically instigated persecution.  Since history is many times shaped by Jewish authors, perhaps some historical incidents in this paper which show unjustified persecution are in fact justified.  In 2010, most ‘truth’ is shaped by Jewish power in the Media.

****Victimhood: “Since first appearing in history we find the Jews propagating the idea that they are an abused and persecuted people, and this idea is, and has always been, central in Jewish thinking.  The myth of persecution is the adhesive and cement of Judaism; without it Jews would have long since ceased to exist, their racial-religious nationality notwithstanding.  It is a fact that the Jewish people have suffered hardships in the course of their history, but this is true of other peoples too.  The chief difference is that the Jews have kept score—they have made a tradition of persecution.  A casual slaughter of Christians is remembered by no one in 50 years, but a disability visited upon a few Jews is preserved forever in Jewish histories.  And they tell their woes not only to themselves, but to a sympathetic world as well ...” (Frank Britton)

 ****Medieval Music:  A troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350) and it spread into Italy, Spain, and even Greece.  Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, and others in Galicia and Portugal, and northern France.  The art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and eventually died out around the time of the Black Death (1348).  The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love.  Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic.  Many were humorous or vulgar satires. 

Minnesang (12th-14th) was the tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany which people who wrote and performed Minnesang are known as Minnesingers (Minnesänger).  The name derives from the word minne, Middle High German for love which was their main subject, and an individual song was a minnelied.  The Minnesänger were similar to the Provençal troubadours and northern French trouvères; they wrote love poetry in the courtly love tradition in Middle High German in the High Middle Ages.

1449  Bard:  In medieval Gaelic and British culture (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Brittany and Cornwall) a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.  The first recorded example in English is in 1449, Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation.

A Meistersinger (German for "master-singer") (14th-16th) is a term referring to a German lyric poet who carried on and developed the traditions of the medieval Minnesingers.   Meisters were poets who could both write new verses to existing melodies and invent new melodies.  The songs were all sung without accompaniment.  Three times a year, at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, special festivals and singing competitions were instituted.  Meistersinger poetry played a large part in German town life.  The tradition often reinforced German burgher values; as such, it was middle-class popular art rather than high art.  Meistersinger traditions lingered in southern Germany as late as the 19th century.

 1215   The Magna Carta document states: “If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife may have her dower and pay nothing towards the debt from it.”  This helps to protect British citizens from aggressive Jewish bankers.  The original Magna Carta was destroyed by King John and a Civil War ensued.

Magna Carta is an English charter had modified versions.  The later versions excluded the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority that had been present in the 1215 charter. The 1215 charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.  Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges.  It was preceded and directly influenced by the Charter of Liberties in 1100, in which King Henry I had specified particular areas wherein his powers would be limited.  Runnymede is a water-meadow alongside the River Thames.

Mark Twain said “In the England of King John’s time everybody got into debt to the Jew.  He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands.  He was the King of Commerce, he had to be banished from the realm.  For like reasons, Spain had to banish him 400 years ago, and Austria a couple of centuries later.  In all ages, Christian Europe has been obliged to curtail his activities.  If he entered upon a trade, the Christian had to retire from it.  If he set up as a doctor, he took the business.  If he exploited agriculture, the other farmers had to get at something else.  The law had to step in to save the Christian from the poorhouse.  Still, almost bereft of employments, he found ways to make money.  Even to get rich.  This history has a most sordid and practical look.  Religious prejudices may account for one part of it, but not for the other nine.  Protestants have persecuted Catholics; but they did not take their livelihoods from them.  Catholics have persecuted Protestants, but they never closed agriculture and the handicrafts against them.  I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the world’s attitude toward the Jew; the reasons for it are much older than that event….  I am convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not in any large degree due to religious prejudice.  No, the Jew is a money-getter.  He has made it the end and aim of his life.  He was at in Rome.  He has been at it ever since.  His success has made the whole human race his enemy.”

1216 - 1272 Henry III of England was raised by the papal legate and influenced by the Church.  While still a minor (until 1232) his affairs were handled by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, whose policy was favorable to the Jews.  Henry III squeezed English Jews financially, leaving them practically penniless.  Henry considered Jews his private property to do with as he pleased.  Earlier English kings borrowed from Jews and sometimes even repaid those loans.  Henry III, however, began the policy of imposing tallage (arbitrary taxation in the Jews) and gradually impoverished them.  When the Jews requested permission to leave England, Henry refused so as not to endanger his financial reserves.

1218 March 30, Henry III (England)  -The men administering England for the minor king, enforced the anti-Jewish canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) including that Jews wear a distinctive dress to prevent Jews from socializing with Christians

Henry III (10/1 1207 – 11/16 1272) was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216.  England prospered during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster.  He spent much of his reign fighting the barons over Magna Carta and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to call the first "parliament" in 1264.  He was also unsuccessful on the Continent, where he endeavored to re-establish English control over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine.

 Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170 – c. 1220) was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time.  As a Minnesinger, he wrote lyric poetry.  He also said, “It(the Grail) was preserved by Joseph of Arimathea, who was imprisoned by the Jews and was miraculously kept alive by the vessel.”  Wagner’s Parsifal - is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival,

1220 - 1258 Mongol Conquest of Persia -The Mongols attacked Persia (beginning under Genghis Khan, who died in 1227), and captured Baghdad in 1258.  The Jews and other religious minorities were tolerated.

1222 GOLDEN BULL (Hungary) -As a reaction to the growing influence (especially economically) of Jews, nobles helped enact a Bull which prevented Jews from becoming "nobles" as well as holding certain offices.

1219 Francis went to Egypt where a Crusader army had been encamped hoping to convert the Sultan of Egypt.  Francis and his companion crossed the Saracen lines and were brought before the Sultan, remaining in his camp for a few days.  The Sultan received Francis graciously and that Francis preached to the Saracens without effect, returning unharmed to the Crusader camp.

 1225 Saint Francis of Assisi (Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone; 1181/1182 – 10/3, 1226) was a Catholic friar and preacher.  He founded the Franciscan Order.  No Jews lived in Assisi.

“All creatures of our God and King” Words: Francis of Assisi, circa 1225 (Song of Bro­ther Sun).: 1)All creatures of our God and King Lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia!  Thou burning sun with golden beam, Thou silver moon with softer gleam!  Refrain:  O praise Him! O praise Him! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!  2)Thou rushing wind that art so strong Ye clouds that sail in Heaven along, O praise Him! Alleluia!  Thou rising moon, in praise rejoice, Ye lights of evening, find a voice! -Refrain.  3)Thou flowing water, pure and clear, Make music for thy Lord to hear, O praise Him! Alleluia!  Thou fire so masterful and bright, That givest man both warmth and light. -Refrain.  4)Dear mother earth, who day by day Unfoldest blessings on our way, O praise Him! Alleluia!  The flowers and fruits that in thee grow, Let them His glory also show. -Refrain.  5)And all ye men of tender heart, Forgiving others, take your part, O sing ye! Alleluia!  Ye who long pain and sorrow bear, Praise God and on Him cast your care! -Refrain.  6)And thou most kind and gentle Death, Waiting to hush our latest breath, O praise Him! Alleluia!  Thou leadest home the child of God, And Christ our Lord the way hath trod. -Refrain.  7)Let all things their Creator bless, And worship Him in humbleness, O praise Him! Alleluia!  Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son, And praise the Spirit, Three in One! -Refrain

1226 - 1270 Louis IX (Saint) of France -Sanctioned laws against Jews and encouraged disputations between Jewish and Christian theologians (Nicholas Donin,1240) in order to convert more Jews.  At the same time that he oppressed the Jews (i.e. canceling all debts owed to them by Christians), he gave gifts and favors to any who converted. He recommended that the best way of winning an argument with a Jew was to drive a sword as far as it would go into his stomach.

Pope Gregory IX, born Ugolino di Conti, was pope from March 19, 1227 to August 22, 1241.  The successor of Pope Honorius III (1216–27), he fully inherited the traditions of Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) and of his uncle Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), and zealously continued their policy of Papal supremacy.  Pope Gregory IX sent the following to the archbishops of Germany:  "The Jews, who are admitted to our acquaintance only through our mercy, should never forget their yoke of perpetual slavery, which they bear through their own fault.  In the Council of Toledo it was decreed that Jews of both sexes, and for all time, should be distinguished from others by their mode of dress.  We therefore command that each and every one of you to have all the excesses of the Jews completely repressed, lest they should presume to raise their necks from the yoke of servitude in contumely of the Redeemer; forbidding them to discuss in any way concerning their faith or rites with Christians. In this matter calling to your aid the help of the civil power, inflicting upon Christians, who offer opposition, due ecclesiastical punishment …”

Gautier de Coincy (1177–1236) was a French abbot, poet and musical arranger, chiefly known for his devotion to the Virgin Mary.  “More bestial than naked beasts Are all the Jews, without a doubt. . . Many hate them, as do I, And God hates them, as well I wist, And everyone must hate them indeed” (Miracle de Saint Hyldefonse)  “To Christian kids he looked full fair, and played with them both front and rear.  Without the little Jew, they knew not what to do!” (The Miracles of Notre Dame)  “I am so bitterly opposed to them [the Jews] That if I were king, not in one place Would I allow any to remain.” (Ibid.)  While De Coincy was against Jewish offenses, he was unusual for his time in being equally hostile to the Christian establishment that, he believed, actively sheltered and collaborated with the Jewish exploiters: "Through the Jews, they ruin the world," he wrote. He depicted the simple folk as languishing in the toils of the Jewish usurers, while nobles and prelates fattened on their share of the take.

    1231 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Holy Roman Emperor) (12/26 1194 – 12/13 1250), was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen.   In 1220, he was crowned Emperor.  In 1231, he decided to combine the manufacturing of silk and the dying trades and to give them over to a number of Jewish families.  Both these trades were for many years almost the exclusive activities of Jews in Sicily, Naples, and other parts of Italy. (and into modern times.)  In 1236, he declared Jews of Germany servi camerae nostre (servants of our treasury).  The simple legal meaning of this was that Jews and all their possessions belonged to the king.  Frederick was the last HRE who tried to unite Germany and Italy.  He did control Sicily and Southern Italy.  He could speak 6 languages including Greek and Arabic.

 Elisabeth of Hungary (July 7, 1207 – November 17, 1231) was a princess of the Kingdom of Hungary and a Catholic saint.  Elisabeth was married at the age of 14, widowed at 20, relinquished her wealth to the poor, built hospitals, and became a symbol of Christian charity in Germany and elsewhere after her death at the age of 24.  She is considered a Christian female worthy.

 1233 Exchequer Roll, with the tax payments made by the Jews of Norwich, during the reign of King Henry III.  The three-headed monster with the crown towering over the center of the drawing is Isaac fil Jurnet, a wealthy Jewish moneylender from Norwich who was banker to King Henry, the Abbot and monks of Westminster, the Bishop of Norwich and many, many other movers and shakers.  The man and woman facing each other beneath him with Satan between them are Mosse Mokke and his wife Abigail both of whom were employed as debt collectors by Isaac.  On the left there’s a poor Christian monk, his scales full of coin that Isaac is trying to wrest from him using one of the many devils at his command.  Isaac had sued the Westminster monks to get the interest from money they had borrowed after they refused to pay it.

Saint Raymond of Penyafort, O.P. (c.1175 – 1/6, 1275) He received doctorates in both civil and canon law.  He was chaplain to Pope Alexander IV, and confessor of King James I of Aragon.  He was instrumental in the founding of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy.  When approached by Peter Nolasco, Raymond encouraged and assisted him in obtaining the consent of King James I of Aragon for the foundation of the Order.  Returning to Barcelona in 1222, he entered the Dominican Order.  His collection of canon law, known as the Liber extra or Gregorian Decretals, became a standard for almost 700 years.  Canon law was finally fully codified by 1917.  Raymond returned to the Iberian Peninsula in 1236.  There, his principal aim became to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and for the furtherance of this aim he caused both Arabic and Hebrew to be studied and taught in the higher schools conducted by Dominicans.  He also encouraged Thomas Aquinas to write his work Summa contra Gentiles.

1237 - 1241 Winter Mongol Invasion (Tartars) (Germany) -Across Russia, Eastern Europe and parts of Germany Batu (son of Genghis) Khan led what was known as the Golden Horde (centered in Jewish Khazaria).  In their wake, many communities (Jewish and Christian) were destroyed.  This coincided with the beginning of the 6th millennium according to the Jewish calendar which led to speculation of the arriving of the messiah.  In some German communities (Frankfort) the Mongols were thought to be remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes and accused the Jews of helping the invaders.

On April 8, 1962, Rev. Swift stated: "Remember that Genghis Khan's invasion of Europe was precipitated by the children of the Dragon and was a part of the Dragon conspiracy.  And it was directed against your race. Actually, the hoards of Genghis Khan were gathered together by the Chinese Jew, Chepe Naayon (Chepe Noyon), who was working for the hordes of International Jewry which then existed in ancient Venice."

April 9, 1241 The Christians of Europe have a final Battle with the Mongols.  Christian Kings Bela IV of Hungary, Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Louis IX of France, and Henry II of Silesia join the Battle.  Nearly every soldier fastened a cross to their clothing.  The Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and knights of the Teutonic Order all join the Battle.  The Mongols’ Leader Ogedei dies a few months later and the Mongol armies retreat for good.

 In 1239 Pope Gregory orders the Talmud to be put on trial because it allegedly contains lies.  The Talmud is ordered confiscated and burned.

1240 YEAR 5000 IN CREATION -Believed to be the age of the Messiah.  For this reason, many Jews did not prepare a proper defense against the Crusaders and were helpless against their onslaught.

1240 - 1305 Moses ben Shem Tov Leon (Lyon, France) -Publisher and possibly the author of the Zohar, which he attributed to the second century Tanna, Shimon bar Yochai.  Written in Aramaic, it flowed with complex symbolism and mythology.  It became the major component of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), expounding four steps of biblical interpretation: literal, aggadic, philosophical and Raza de Mehmanuta - secret mystery of faith.

1240 - the Disputation of Paris during the reign of Louis IX of France (St. Louis) between a member of the Franciscan Order Nicholas Donin, who earlier converted from Judaism and persuaded Pope Gregory IX to issue a bill ordering the burning of the Talmud, and four of the most distinguished rabbis of France: Yechiel of Paris, Moses of Coucy, Judah of Melun, and Samuel ben Solomon of Château-Thierry.  The commission of Christian theologians condemned the Talmud to be burned and on June 17, 1244, twenty-four carriage loads of Jewish religious manuscripts were set on fire in the streets of Paris.

 Clopin, French Jongleur wrote and performed the popular “Desputaison de la Sainte Église et de la synagogue”, which told the story of a public dispute on the contents of the Talmud in Paris that ended in the public burning of the book in 1240.  Clopin portrayed organized Jewry not only as murderers and poisoners of the body, but as poisoners of the mind.

 Nicholas Donin (Nicolas Donin) of La Rochelle, a Jewish convert to Christianity in early thirteenth-century Paris, is known for his role in the 1240 Disputation of Paris, which resulted in a decree to publicly burn all available manuscripts of the Talmud.  Donin's first act of retaliation towards the Jews as a Franciscan was to stir up the Crusaders to the bloody persecutions in Brittany, Poitou, and Anjou, in which 3,000 Jews were killed, 500 accepting the alternative of baptism.  Donin was a whistleblower and said that rabbis instructed the Jews to kill Christians and ruled that the Jew may blamelessly cheat and deceive Christians in any way possible.  The Talmud licensed murder, theft and religious intolerance, and it included strictures against trusting Gentiles, honoring them, or even returning a lost piece of property to them.  Donin said that the Jews’ daily liturgy uttered against Christians and apostates.

Pope Gregory IX, born Ugolino di Conti, was pope from March 19, 1227 to August 22, 1241. “The Talmud contains every kind of vileness and blasphemy against Christian Truth.

 ****The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the thirteenth century.  The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming.  He was first named Cartaphilus, but later changes.  In some versions of the legend of the Wandering Jew, his true name is held to be "Ahasuerus."

Sefer Nizzahon Yashan "The (old) Book of Victory" is an anonymous 13th Century Jewish apologetic (?) text originating in Germany.  “In the End of the days (when the Messiah comes) God will destroy, kill and exterminate all the nations but the sons of Israel” 

Rabban Bar Sauma (c.1220–1294) is the Marco Polo of the East, and yet is relatively unknown.  He was a Turkic/Mongol monk, turned diplomat, of the Nestorian Christian faith.  He is known for embarking on a pilgrimage from Mongol-controlled China to Jerusalem with one of his students, Rabban Markos.  Due to military unrest along the way, they never reached their destination, but instead spent many years in Mongol-controlled Baghdad.  Markos was eventually chosen as Nestorian Patriarch, and later suggested his teacher, Rabban Bar Sauma, be sent on another mission, as Mongol ambassador to Europe.  The elderly monk met with many of the European monarchs, as well as the Pope, in attempts to arrange a Franco-Mongol alliance.  The mission bore no fruit, but in his later years in Baghdad, Rabban Bar Sauma documented his lifetime of travel.  His written account of his journeys is of unique interest to modern historians, as it gives a picture of medieval Europe at the close of the Crusading period, painted by a keenly intelligent, broadminded and statesmanlike observer. His travels occurred prior to the return of Marco Polo to Europe, and his writings give a reverse viewpoint of the East looking to the West.

1244 June 1 Austrian Duke Frederick II (The Quarrelsome), was the last Babenburg duke. He issued a charter to the Jews granting them freedom from interference in their synagogues and cemeteries, and protection from the kidnapping of their children.  Many later charters were based on it, including those in Poland, Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia.  It assured freedom of movement within the ducal territories, and the obligation to pay the same tolls as their Christian neighbors.

The Pope orders Jews to wear distinctive badges.

In 1244, Pope Innocent IV also ordered the burning of Jewish books.  He exhorted the King of France as follows: "Our dear Son, the Chancellor of Paris, and the Doctors, before the clergy and people, publicly burned by fire the aforesaid books (The Talmud) with all their appendices.  We beg and beseech your Celestial Majesty in the Lord Jesus, that, having begun laudably and piously to prosecute those who perpetuate these detestable excesses, that you continue with due severity.  And that you command throughout your whole kingdom that the aforesaid books with all their glossaries, already condemned by the Doctors, be committed to the flames.”  He also firmly prohibited Jews from having Christians as servants and nurses.

1245 First Council of Lyons, 13th Catholic Council -Pope Innocent IV called the First Council of Lyons in 1245, having been forced to flee Rome for the refuge of Lyons France at the invitation of the holy French Monarch King Saint Louis IX.  The latter was designated to lead the Seventh Crusade against the infidel Saracens.  Though only 140 bishops were at Lyons, it had the support of the Patriarchs of Antioch, Constantinople, Venice and the Emperor of the East.  The Council reinforced the excommunication Pope Gregory IX had imposed on Frederick II, the slacker emperor who had betrayed the trust placed in him.  He was deposed.  Great concern was also given to the Mongol hordes (including Khazaria) invading Europe and the loss of Jerusalem to the infidel, as well as problems with lax clergy.

1250         1250         1250         1250

 ****The Star of David or Shield of David (Magen David) is a generally recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism.  It is named after King David of ancient Israel; and its earliest known communal usage began in the Middle Ages, alongside the more ancient symbol of the menorah. Geometrically it is the two triangles, with one flipped and laid over the other. It shows the male and female principles connected and is seen as far back as Egyptian religion.  It was also adopted by Muslim tribes.

The Star of David or the Magen David, like the Pentagram or the Swastika, was originally a magical protective symbol and was only later associated with the Jews.  It didn't become generally associated with the Jews until the 17th century when the Jewish quarter of Vienna was formally distinguished from the rest of the city by a boundary stone having a hexagram on one side and a cross on the other.  It didn't become internationally associated until it was adopted as the symbol of the Zionist movement after the Dreyfus affair in France in the 19th century.  With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 the Star of David on the Flag of Israel has also become a symbol of Israel and has become associated with the Zionist movement.  The Menorah, the candelabra of seven oil lamps from the Temple in Jerusalem, is a more ancient symbol of Jewish identity.

****C. 1250 YIDDISH (Jewish)-The earliest use of what became know as Old Yiddish in South East Germany.  Yiddish is based on German but also Hebrew and even Slavic words (depending on the region).  The old Khazar tongue was crude, lacking an alphabet.  Along with their conversion to Talmudic Judaism, Hebrew became a handy linguistic tool.  The script is written in Hebrew with German prefixes and suffixes.  Yiddish was used for almost 1000 years as the main Jewish language of communication, especially within Eastern Europe.  Another example of Jewish deception given by Professor Shahak concerns the etymology of the Yiddish word for a Gentile girl, shiksa.  He cites the popular English-language book "The Joys of Yiddish" (New York, 1968), by Leo Rosten, which tells its readers that shiksa comes from the Hebrew word sheqetz, meaning "blemish".  Shahak writes, "This is a barefaced lie, as every speaker of Hebrew knows.  The Megiddo Modern Hebrew-English Dictionary, published in Israel, correctly defines sheqetz as follows: 'unclean animal; loathsome creature, abomination...'"  Many Yiddish vulgarities are entering the English language through Hollywood and popular culture.  Schmuck entered English as a borrowed pejorative from a common Yiddish insult.  The Online Etymology Dictionary defines it as "contemptible person," 1892, from E. Yiddish shmok, lit. "penis."  Dork also means penis.

Judaeo-Spanish, commonly referred to as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish.  As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where Sephardic exiles settled around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire.  Currently, speakers are almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, principally those in or from Thessaloniki (Greece), Istanbul, Mexico and Izmir (modern Turkey), all localities into which the Sephardim re-settled centuries ago.

The papal bull issued by Pope Innocent IV in April, 1250, to the effect that Jews might not build a new synagogue without special permission, also made making proselytes was forbidden to the Jews under pain of death and confiscation of property. They might not associate with the Christians, live under the same roof with them, eat and drink with them, or use the same bath; neither might a Christian partake of wine which had been prepared by a Jew.  The Jews might not employ Christian nurses or servants, and Christians might use only medicinal remedies which had been prepared by competent Christian apothecaries.

"Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath) is a Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano (1200 – c. 1265).  The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.

The term Edda (13th) applies to the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, both of which were written down in Iceland reaching back into the Viking Age.  The books are the main sources of medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology.

Tannhäuser (-1245-1265-) was a German Minnesänger and poet.  Tannhäuser became the subject of legend, first attested in 1430, propagated in ballads from 1450.  The legendary account makes Tannhäuser a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, and spent a year there worshipping the goddess.  After leaving the Venusberg, Tannhäuser is filled with remorse, and travels to Rome to ask Pope Urban IV if it is possible to be absolved of his sins.  Urban replies that forgiveness is as impossible as it would be for his papal staff to blossom. Three days after Tannhäuser's departure Urban's staff blooms with flowers; messengers are sent to retrieve the knight, but he has already returned to Venusberg, never to be seen again.  The legend has been interpreted as a traditional folk tale which has been subject to Christianization where the familiar story of the seduction of a human being by an elf or fairy leads to the delights of the fairy-realm but later the longing for his earthly home.  His desire is granted, but he is not happy, and in the end returns to the fairy-land.  The legend was made famous in modern times through Richard Wagner's three-act opera Tannhäuser, completed in 1845.

~1250 Morality plays also known as "interludes".  Christian monks developed these by adding actors and theatrical elements to their sermons.  The masses could more easily learn the basics of Christianity through dramatic spoken word.  The main theme of the morality play is this: Man begins in innocence, man falls into temptation, Man repents and is saved.  The central action is the struggle of Man against the seven deadly sins that are personified into real characters.  It is believed that the allegory of vices and virtues fighting over Man’s soul goes back to the 4th century Roman epic, Psychomachia.  This allegorical application of theatre to Christianity is intended to help the audience understand the greater concepts of sin and virtue.  The three greatest temptations that Man faces in morality plays are The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 

Marionettes: Even though Puppetry is as old as society, the Christian church used marionettes to perform morality plays.  It is believed that the word marionette originates from the little figures of the Virgin Mary, hence the word "marionette" or "Mary doll.

 ~1250 Julian the Hospitaller, also known as Julian the Poor, was a legendary Roman Catholic saint.  His story is today believed to be fully legendary (why?).  According to the legend, the night Julian was born, near the time of Christ, his father, a man of noble blood, saw pagan witches secretly jinx his son into killing both his parents.  His father wanted to get rid of the child, but his mother did not let him do so.  As the boy grew into a handsome young man, his mother would regularly fall into tears because of the sin her son was destined to commit.  When he finally found out why she would cry at him, he swore he "would never do such a sin" and "with great belief in Christ went off full of courage" as far away as could be from his parents. When after fifty days of walking he finally reached Galicia where he married a "good woman", said to be a wealthy widow.  Twenty years later, his parents decided to go look for their now thirty-year-old son.  When they arrived they visited the altar of St. James, and "as soon as they came out of the church they met a woman sitting on a chair outside, whom the pilgrims greeted and asked, for Jesus' love, whether she would host them for the night as they were tired".  She let them in and told them that her husband, Julian, was out hunting.  (This is why he is also known as the patron of hunters).  The mother and father were overjoyed to have found their son, as did Julian's wife.  "She took care of them well and had them rest in the bed of Julian and hers".  But the enemy went off seeking Julian and told him: 'I have sour news for you. While you are here, hunting, your wife is in bed embracing another man.  There they are right now, still sleeping.'"  Legend continues: "And Julian felt deep sadness and his face drew into a frown.  He rode back home, went to his bed and found a man and a woman sleeping in it.  He drew his sword and killed them both.  He was to take off and never step foot on that land, but as he was leaving he saw his wife sitting around the other women.  She told him: 'There are your mother and father resting in your room'.  And so Julian knew, and fell in rage.  'The shrewd enemy lied to me when he said my wife was betraying me', and while kissing their wounds he uttered 'Better had I never been born, for in soul and body I am cursed.'  And his good wife comforted him and said 'Have faith in Christ Almighty, a stream of life and mercy.'  They had no children... Gold and silver they had a lot...  And after seeking redemption in Rome, Julian built seven hospitals and twenty-five houses.  And the poor started flowing to him, to Jesus' Almighty's love."

1253 January 31, Henry III (England) -Ordered Jewish worship in Synagogues be held quietly so that Christians should not have to hear it when passing by.  In addition, he forbade Jews from employing Christian nurses or maids, and prevented other Jews from converting to Christianity.

 1255   Little Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 8/27, 1255) is ritually murdered by Jews in England.  There is a long history to ritual murder charges, the last well-publicized ones occurring a century ago.  There are strong suggestions that these rituals continue to this day under various guises, i.e.  snuff films, abortion, harvesting organs from Palestinian captives, satanic rituals and especially Jewish revenge against Gentile ‘dogs’.

The following text from 1783, about the murder of Hugh of Lincoln, as it was depicted in a popular ballad.:  She's led him in through ae dark door, And sae has she thro' nine; She's laid him on a dressing-table, And stickit him like a swine./ And first came out the thick, thick blood, And syne came out the thin; And syne came out the bonny heart's blood; There was nae mair within./ She's row'd him in a cake o'lead, Bade him lie still and sleep; She's thrown him in Our Lady's draw-well Was fifty fathom deep. (Also see 1889)

Alfonso X (11/23, 1221 – 4/4, 1284) was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death. He also was elected King of the Germans in 1257.  The famous Slete Partidas law code describes Jews' evildoings in capturing and crucifying Christian children for their Good Friday (Passover) rituals.

1258 February 10, - 1335 Il-Khan (Mongol) Dynasty PERSIA -With the fall of Baghdad to the grandson of Genghis Khan, the Mongol dynasty replaced the Abbasids in Persia.  The Mongols were for the most part tolerant of Judaism.  An Arab writer reported that there were 36,000 Jews and 16 Synagogues in the city on the eve of the Mongolian invasion.  Most of the city was destroyed during the siege.  It is during this period that Judeo-Persian literature flourished, specifically the poetry of Shahin whose most famous work was Sefer Sharh Shain al Hatorah.

Matthew Paris (Latin, Matthæi Parisiensis, ie. Matthew the Parisian) (c. 1200 – 1259) was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.  He wrote a number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly colored with watercolor washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings".  Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse.  His Chronica Majora is an oft-cited source, and he tended to glorify Emperor Frederick II and denigrate the Pope.  Widely recognized as the greatest English historian of the Middle Ages.  His Chronica majora is full of references to the problems caused the people by Jews living among them prior to their expulsion.  In regard to the ritual murder of Hugh of Lincoln, he wrote: “About the feast of Peter and Paul [in the year 1255], the Jews of Lincoln stole a child called Hugh, being eight years old; and when they had nourished him, in the most secret chamber, with milk and other childish aliments, they sent to almost all the cities of England wherein the Jews lived, that, in contempt and reproach of Jesus Christ, they should be present at their sacrifice at Lincoln. . . And, coming together, they appointed one Lincoln Jew for the judge, as if it were for Pilate. By whose judgment, by the consent of all, the child is afflicted with sundry torments.  He is whipped even unto blood and lividness, crowned with thornes, wearied with spitting and stickings... And after they had derided him in diverse manners, they crucified him.

1263 - the Disputation of Barcelona before King James I of Aragon: between the monk Pablo Christiani (a convert from Judaism) and Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (also known as Nachmanides).  At the end of disputation, king awarded Nachmanides a monetary prize and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended."  The Dominicans claimed the victory and Nahmanides was exiled and his report of the proceedings was condemned and burned.  A committee appointed by the king censored the passages from the Talmud they deemed offensive.

 1263 Pablo Christiani (or Paul Christian), a figure of the thirteenth century, was born to a pious Jewish family, with the name Saul.  He became a Christian convert and Dominican friar.  He was known for following Nicholas Donin's lead in attempting to ban the Talmud.  His arguments centered on the "irrational" material within the text.  He went on missionary journeys, compelling the Jews everywhere to listen to his speeches and to answer his questions, either in their synagogues or wherever else he pleased.  They were even required to defray the expenses of his mission.  He denounced the Talmud, asserting that it contained passages derogatory to Jesus and Mary.  The King obliterated all passages which seemed to them to be hostile to Christianity.  In 1269 Christiani interceded with King Louis IX of France and obtained from him the enforcement of the canonical edict requiring Jews to wear badges.

1267 Breslau Synod -Jews were forbidden from becoming tax or toll farmers.  According to customary practice, anyone could have bought these rights in a specific area for an agreed upon sum to be paid to the king.  Despite this ruling, Jews often found this to be one of the few economic possibilities opened to them.  This in turn caused resentment from both the local population and Christian tax farmers who saw them as competition.

 Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (c.1225 – 3/7, 1274) was an Italian priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis.  He is frequently referred to as Thomas because "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his surname.  He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology.  His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.  Aquinas is held in the Catholic Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood. The works for which he is best-known are the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles.  One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher.  Thomas Aquinas “On the Governance of the Jews” –“The Jews should not be allowed to keep what they have obtained from others by usury; it were best that they were compelled to work so that they could earn their living instead of doing nothing but becoming avaricious.”    The traditional view, built upon Augustinian doctrine, saw the Jews as blind to the truth, as limited to the physical world of the body, materialistic (“greedy usurers” was a common stereotype), and literal readers of biblical law, in contrast to Christians who were spiritual and attuned to the truth.  However, Aquinas depicts Jews as consciously rejecting the truth; just as Jews of Jesus’ time knew they were killing their savior, so, too, Jews of Aquinas’ time consciously deviated from the law established by their ancestors in the Old Testament.  Thus, the Jews were not simply ignorant, like pagans; they were consciously evil, like heretics (364-89).

Saint Thomas Aquinas, who knew the danger of Jews in Christian society, held it to be correct to allow them to live in eternal servitude.  This opinion of St Thomas Aquinas is perfectly justified. If the Jews in every land in which they live constantly instigate conspiracies upon command of their religion in order to conquer the people that magnanimously offered them hospitality and if, furthermore, they fight to rob it of its goods and to destroy its religious belief, there is no other choice: either they must be expelled from the land or they can be allowed to liver there but in hard servitude, which binds their hands and prevents them from doing so much evil.

 King Edward I (6/17, 1239 – 7/7, 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. “After a ritual murder controversy, he expelled all Jews from his kingdom, to which they were not readmitted until the Jewish-financed dictator, Oliver Cromwell killed a later king and seized power.  He considered Jews to be a monetary asset, taxing them and confiscating their property without any concern for the depletion and impoverishment of the community.  A "good crusading prince", he was also an imperialist and a builder.  He was determined to rid his kingdom of anti-Christian practices such as usury.  

In the wars between the King of England and barons, Jews are considered instruments of the king's oppressions.  Jewish communities are attacked and many inhabitants killed.

1275 ENGLAND, “Statute Concerning the Jews” (Statutum de Judaisno) –King Edward banned usury and tried to encourage Jews in agriculture, crafts and local trades.  He failed, partly because of local prejudice and opposition.  Jews were forbidden to lend money at interest and the order was renewed that all Jews over the age of seven had to wear a badge shaped like the twelve tablets of law.  This was similar to the edict of Louis IX (1254).  The Jews, mostly financially drained and impoverished, were replaced by the Lombards of Italy as the bankers of the King - and were thus no longer considered an asset.

“In the uneasy intervals between confiscation the Jewish bankers prospered, and some became too visibly rich.  They not only advanced capital to build castles, cathedrals, and monasteries, but they raised for themselves substantial houses.” -Will Durant

1272 October 7, Pope Gregory X (590-604) -Condemned the ritual murder libels.  In addition, since Jews could not bear witness against Christians, he refused to accept testimony by a Christian against a Jew unless it was confirmed by another Jew.

1274 Second Council of Lyons, 14th Catholic Council -Blessed Pope Gregory X called to attempt to reunite with the Eastern Church, but it was only temporary and the schism grew wider after the solidification of the Dogmatic Filioque in which it was reaffirmed emphatically that the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Also addressed were regulations for Papal election and how to recover Palestine from the Turks.

Ramón Martí (Raymond Martin) was a thirteenth century Catalan Dominican friar and theologian.  He is remembered for his polemic work Pugio Fidei (c. 1280).  In 1250 he was one of eight friars appointed to make a study of oriental languages with the purpose of carrying on a mission to Jews and Moors.  He worked in Spain as a missionary, and also for a short time in Tunis.  He engaged in polemics against Jews and Moors and helped to censor of the Talmud in Spain.  Martí was the author of two anti-Jewish books, one of which, the Capistrum Judaeorum, has never been printed.  His refutation of the Koran is lost.  There is at Bologna a manuscript of his Capistrum Judaeorum (The Harness of the Jews), aimed at the errors of the Jews. 

Pugio Fidei, describes God's omniscience, the Creation, immortality, and the resurrection of the dead, and attempts to show the falsity of the Jewish religion; the latter part of the work is valuable on account of its extracts from the Talmud, the Midrash, and other sources.  This work was used by Porchetus de Salvaticis at the beginning of the 14th century, by Hieronymus de Sancta Fide and Petrus Galatinus.   His fundamental views, were that Jesus is announced in rabbinical literature as the Messiah and son of God; that the Jewish laws, although revealed by God, are abrogated by the advent of the Messiah; and that the Talmudists corrupted the text of the Bible, as is indicated by the "Tikkun Sopherim".

1278 November 17, Edward I (England) -Arrested all the Jews for alleged coin clipping and counterfeiting. 680 were arrested, jailed and put on trial. The judges were given prior instructions clearly biased against the Jews. Although many Christians were accused, many more (ten times as many) Jews were hung than Christians (269 Jews and 29 Christians). Edward received 16,500 pounds from the property of the executed Jews and the fines of those charged. At that time Jews comprised 1% of the English population. 16,500 pounds was almost 10% of the exchequer's national income.

1279 Synod of Offen (Germany) - Christians were prohibited from selling or renting real estate to Jews.

Konrad von Würzburg (  -8/31, 1287) was the chief German poet of the second half of the 13th century.  One of his songs included the lines: “Woe to the cowardly Jews, deaf And wicked, who have no care To save themselves From the sufferings of hell.  The Talmud has corrupted them And made them lose their honor.” (Von der Hagen, Minnesinger)

1282 LONDON (England) -All synagogues were closed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Pectin.  Jewish physicians were prohibited from treating Christians.

Werner of Oberwesel (1271 - 1287) was a laborer whose unexplained death was blamed on Jews and to a bloody persecution of the Jews in the Middle Rhine.  He has long been revered as a saint of Catholic people, on April 19.  Werner worked for a Jewish family.  In 1963 the Werner cult was canceled.  Werner was depicted as a saint with the attributes as well as sickle blade and bucket and was considered a saint of winemakers.

1287 May 4, ENGLAND -Jews were arrested and again accused of "clipping" the coinage.  Although there was no evidence, the community as a whole was convicted and ordered to be expelled.  A ransom of 4,000 (others say 12,000) pounds of silver was paid.

1289 GASCONY (France) -Jews were expelled from France and their property was confiscated. (Edward I of France had incurred large debts and he needed money quickly.)

1290   The Jews are Expelled from England by King Edward I due to their anti-British culture.

1290   The Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism, is written by Moses de Leon in Spain.  It is used by the Jewish Kabala mystics.

 Aaron ben Joseph ha-Levi of Barcelona (1235 – c.1290) was a Spanish Talmudist and critic. “A gentile slave has to be enslaved forever ... one of the main reasons being that since the Jewish nation is the elite of the human race and the Jews were chose to worship their creator and to serve before Him they deserve to have slaves to serve them. If they will not have slaves from the midst of the neighboring nations they will have to get slaves from their own midst and they (i.e., the Jewish slaves) will be unable to serve God; therefore we are command to keep gentiles slaves forever ...”

 Marco Polo (c. 1254 – 1/8, 1324) was a (possibly Jewish) merchant from the Venetian Republic who wrote Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China.  He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time.  The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned, and dictated his stories to a cellmate.  [Polo discovered a Christian community of about one million in China.]

Seifried Helbling (b.~1230) was an Austrian poet.  Helbling is the supposed author of 15 small books of poetry.  These poems, composed between 1282 and 1300, are instructional satires written in the form of a dialogue between the poet and his servant.  They thoroughly and wittily describe the current state of life and the social mores in the poet's time.  One of his songs on the Jews says: "It would be well to forbid /Their heretical Talmud, / A false and ignoble book." (Haupt, Zeltscbrift für Deutscbes Altertum, vol. 4)

Rindfleisch of Franconia was a 13th c. German popular leader.  When Jews in the town of Röttingen were caught performing a black magic ceremony with a communion wafer in 1298, it was the last straw for a populace long enchained to moneylending oppression.  Rindfleisch became leader of an armed band that entered the Jewish quarter seeking the culprits, as well as demanding retribution for the long years of usury and tax-farming.  Emboldened at the success of unofficial justice in Röttingen, numerous other civic groups as far afield as Bavaria welcomed the assistance of Rindfleisch's liberation force.  Jewish history, predictably, claims that enormous numbers - some say more than one hundred thousand - of Jews were killed.  But the total of those who foolishly tried to intervene to hang onto illicitly acquired foreclosure property and the like, and lost their lives, was actually only a few dozens.

 A gathering of thirteenth-century French Rabbis.

 Jews of Germany, 13th century   (?)

 ****The Vehmic Courts (Vehmgericht) was a tribunal system of Westphalia active during the later Middle Ages, based on lay judges.  The courts took jurisdiction over all crimes during the Late Middle Ages, and those condemned by the tribunal were done away with by secret means.  After the execution of the death sentence, the corpse was hung on a tree to advertise the fact and deter others.  The peak of activity of these courts was during the 14th to 15th centuries, with lesser activity attested for the 13th and 16th centuries, and scattered evidence establishing their continued existence during the 17th and 18th centuries.  They were finally abolished in 1811.

Any free man "of pure bred German stock" and of good character could become a judge.  The new candidate was given secret information and identification symbols.  The “knowing one” had to keep his knowledge secret, even from his closest family.  Lay judges had to give formal warnings to known troublemakers, issue warrants, and take part in executions.  The procedure of the fehmic courts was practically that of the ancient German courts generally.  Legend and romance have combined to exaggerate the sinister reputation of the Fehmic courts; but modern historical research has largely discounted this, proving that they never employed torture, that their sittings were only sometimes secret, and that their meeting-places were always well known.  This court was needed to combat the growing feudal anarchy. 

 A Christmas market or Christkindlmarkt (Christ child market) is held during the four weeks of Advent.  These markets originated in Germany, during the Late Middle Ages. The earliest recorded dates back to 1294.  Popular attractions include the Nativity Scene (a crèche or crib), (figures made of decorated dried plums), (carved Nutcrackers), (candied, toasted almonds), traditional Christmas cookies such (gingerbread), Christstollen, a sort of egg bread with candied fruit, Bratwurst, and Glühwein, hot mulled wine.  There were many other handmade items, toys, books, Christmas tree decorations and ornaments.

1300         1300         1300         1300

The Major Renaissance (born again) is a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century.  As a cultural movement, it encompassed a resurgence of learning based on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. 

The Renaissance: The period marked by the evictions—1300 to 1650—also marks the period of the Renaissance which broke over Europe as the Jews departed.  Starting at first in the trading cities of northern Italy in about 1300, there began a great rebirth of culture and learning which at first was based almost entirely on the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  Very quickly this renascent culture spread over Europe and when the age had ended, in about 1650, Europe was by comparison with her former status, enlightened and civilized.  Quite obviously all this could not have taken place had it not been for a great upsurge of commercial activity which occurred simultaneously with, and as an adjunct of, the Renaissance. Not until the nations of Europe had wrested commercial control from the ghetto did this rebirth of western civilization occur. (Britton)

Humanism was the main theme of the Renaissance.  Everything was infused with Christian ethics (not Christian theology).  Humanist education was based on the program of 'Studia Humanitatis', that being the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and rhetoric.  The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife with a perfect mind and body.  This transcending belief can be done with education.  The purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of functioning honorably in virtually any situation.  This ideology was referred to as il uomo universal, an ancient Greco-Roman ideal.  The education during Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient literature and history.  It was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior.

Golden Ratio: In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one.  At least since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing.  The golden ratio is also used in the analysis of financial markets, in strategies such as Fibonacci retracement.  It is applied in Aesthetics, Architecture, Painting, Book design, Perceptual studies, Music, Industrial design, Nature, Optimization, and Finance.

During the Renaissance, the citizens of the German town of Hirschau, “opposed allowing Jews to live there because Jews were seen as aggressive competitors who ultimately dominate the people they live among : ‘If only a few Jewish families settle here, all small shops, tanneries, hardware stores, and so on, which, as things stand, provide their proprietors with nothing but the scantiest of livelihoods, will in no time at all be superseded and completely crushed by these [Jews] such that at least twelve local families will be reduced to beggary, and our poor relief fund, already in utter extremity, will be fully exhausted within one year.  The Jews come into possession in the shortest possible time of all cash money by getting involved in every business; they rapidly become the only possessors of money, and their Christian neighbors become their debtors.”

1300 -The Jewish community in Spain lived as Spaniards, both as regards their customs and their language.  They owned real estate, they filled public offices, and they became wealthy.  But this prosperity roused the jealousy of the people and provoked the hatred of the clergy; the Jews had to suffer much through these causes.  There were about 120 Jewish communities in Christian Spain around 1300, with somewhere around half a million or more Jews, mostly in Castille.  Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia were more sparsely inhabited by Jews.

Abbot Hermon of Lehnin (d. 1300) “Toward the end of the world Israel will commit a crime for which it will cease to exist. (Note: At the time of this prophecy, Israel did not exist nor did anyone seriously believe that it ever would.)

A mention of a Jewish quarter in Kraków comes from the year 1304.  The first Jewish institutions, a synagogue, bathhouse and hospital.

 Jewish bathhouses, Middle Ages (1300’s?)

 Sir William Wallace (1272– 8/23 1305) was a Scottish knight and landowner who became one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence.  Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army in 1297, and was Guardian of Scotland, serving until his death. Wallace was captured and handed over to King Edward I of England, who had him hanged, drawn, and quartered for high treason and crimes against English civilians.  Since his death, Wallace has obtained an iconic status far beyond his homeland.  Wallace was written about by Sir Walter Scott and was shown in the film, Braveheart.  Wallace was the hero of Scotland, but Edward I was the hero of the Isles by expelling the Jews.

Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (c.1265 – 11/8, 1308) was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages.  He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.  He went further than Thomas Aquinas and proposed to Christianity a solution of the Jewish problem on the basis of the complete destruction of this devilish sect.  In this connection a renowned Rabbi complains that Duns Scotus “instigated the forceful baptism of Jewish children and recommended that parents who refused to be converted should be brought onto an island, where they could practise their religion until the prophecy of Isaak concerning those remaining, who wished to return, was fulfilled. (4.22)”

 1307 William Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th century Swiss chronicle.  According to the legend, Tell was an expert marksman with the crossbow who assassinated Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of Habsburg Austria.   Gessler raised a pole in the village's central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat.  When Tell passed by the hat without bowing to it, he was arrested.  As punishment, he was forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter.  Otherwise, both would be executed.  Tell was promised freedom if he successfully made the shot.  On 18 November 1307, Tell split an apple on his son's head with a bolt from his crossbow. Gessler noticed that before the shot Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one, and after the shot asked him why.  Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself.  Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler's ship.  As a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would capsize, and unbound Tell, asking him to steer.  Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the site now known as the Tellsplatte.

1310 - 1380 Council of Zarmora (Spain) -The Council, under the patronage of the Queen Mother Maria, decreed the wearing of the "Badge of Shame" for Jews, the exclusion of Jews from all state occasions, and a ban on the employment of Jewish physicians.  Jews were also forbidden to use Christian names, to be crypto-Jews.  However, the council rejected the request of Pope Clement V to cancel all debts to Jews.

1311 Council of Vienne, 15th Catholic Council -Six years into the 'Avignon Exile' (1305-1377), the Council of Vienne lasted two years.  It was called in 1311 by the first of the Avignon Popes Pope Clement V in the city of Vienne just south of Lyons.  Though the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria joined the Pope, it was a noticeable difference from the last Council for far fewer bishops and dignitaries attended.  Nevertheless, the council suppressed the Knights Templars.  Politics also played a huge role in this council with King Philip IV ruler of France being reinstituted in the Church after his legendary excommunication battle with Clement's predecessor Pope Boniface VIII who had issued his famous ex cathedra bull Unam Sanctam.  The Council also condemned various heresies.

“Amadis de Gaula” is a landmark work among the knight-errantry tales which were in vogue in 16th century Iberian Peninsula, and formed the earliest reading of many Renaissance and Baroque writers, although it was written at the onset of the 14th century.  As a knight, Amadís is courteous, gentle, sensitive and a Christian who dares to defend romantic love.  Unlike most literary heroes of his time Amadís is a handsome man who would cry if refused by his lady, but is invincible in battle and usually emerges drenched in his own and his opponent's blood.

 ****Templars -The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders.  The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages.  Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom, and grew rapidly in membership and power.  Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.  Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building many fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.  The Templars' existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded.  Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, took advantage of the situation.  In 1307, many of the Order's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake.  Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312.  The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the modern day.

A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armor of faith, just as his body is protected by the armor of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men."— Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135

King Philip was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English and decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes.  He began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.  On Friday, October 13, 1307 Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested.  The arrest warrant started with the phrase : "God is not pleased.  We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom").  The Templars were charged with numerous offences (including apostasy, idolatry, heresy, obscene rituals and homosexuality, financial corruption and fraud, and secrecy).  After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.  Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions.

In 2001, a document known as the "Chinon Parchment" was found in the Vatican Secret Archives, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628.  It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the Order in 1312.  It is currently the Roman Catholic Church position that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust; that there was nothing inherently wrong with the Order or its Rule; and that Pope Clement was pressured into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and the dominating influence of King Philip IV.

The Holy Grail quickly became associated with the Templars, even in the 12th century, but was a fiction that began circulating in medieval times.  One legendary object that does have some connection with the Templars is the Shroud of Turin.  In 1357, the shroud was first publicly displayed by the family of a Templar who had been burned at the stake with Jacques de Molay in 1314.  The shroud's origins are still a matter of controversy, but in 1988, a carbon dating analysis concluded that the shroud was made between 1260 and 1390, a span that includes the last half-century of the Templars' existence.  The validity of the dating methodology has subsequently been called into question, and the age of the shroud is still subject of much debate.

1306 King Philip of Spain cracked down on the Jews and in 1307 against the Templars. 

Opinion- The Templars were the result of a joint agreement between Jewish financiers, Christian monarchs and the Papacy to "manage" the affairs of the Crusades, and to give the Crusades an organizational structure. There have always been the Court Jews and then the common Jewish population.  One of the positive aspects of the Crusades was to open up more trade routes for Jewish merchants.  The Jews always were drawn to Christians who were seen as ambitious and pragmatic, and it is these people they courted in the Christian kingdoms, those that were men of faith and true to their word the Jews had nothing to do with, realizing that only those who were power hungry and dreamt of both kingdoms and riches in the East could be of use to them.  Also, back then in order to gain influence in society Jews often hid their real names and adopted Christian names so they could gain more opportunities within a kingdom and arise to higher positions within the realm. 

Relics associated with Jesus: A number of relics associated with Jesus have been claimed and displayed throughout the history of Christianity.  Some people believe in the authenticity of some relics; others doubt the authenticity of various items.  For instance, the sixteenth century Catholic theologian Erasmus wrote sarcastically about the proliferation of relics, and the number of buildings that could have been constructed from the wood claimed to be from the cross used in the Crucifixion of Christ.  Similarly, while experts debate whether Christ was crucified with three or with four nails, at least thirty Holy Nails continue to be venerated as relics across Europe.

    

A barber's pole dates back to the Middle Ages, a staff or pole with a helix of colored stripes (usually red, white, and blue in the United States; often red and white in other countries).  The pole may be stationary or may revolve.  The origin of the red and white barber pole is associated with the service of bloodletting and was historically a representation of bloody bandages wrapped around a pole.  During medieval times, barbers performed surgery on customers, as well as tooth extractions. The original pole had a brass wash basin at the top (representing the vessel in which leeches were kept) and bottom (representing the basin that received the blood).  The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow.  At the Council of Tours in 1163, the clergy was banned from the practice of surgery.  From then, physicians were clearly separated from the surgeons and barbers.  Later, the role of the barbers was defined as academic surgeons of the long robe and barber surgeons of the short robe.  After the formation of the United Barber Surgeon's Company in England in 1308, a statute required the barber to use a blue and white pole and the surgeon to use a red pole.

~1319 “Concerning the Intolerable Blasphemy of the Jews against Christ and His faith and the Christian People” by Bernard Gui

 Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) was a Catholic layman who wrote "The Divine Comedy", which is really three epic poems in Italian: "Inferno", "Purgatorio", and "Paradiso", which are about Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven/Paradise, respectively.  In "Purgatorio," Dante places each of the seven sins on a level, with the higher levels closer to Paradise and the lower ones closer to Hell.  Dante considers these sins as offenses against love, and groups them accordingly:  Perverted Love: Pride, Envy, Wrath/Anger;   Insufficient Love: Sloth;   Excessive Love of Earthly Goods: Avarice/Greed, Gluttony, Lust.

Here are Dante's levels of Hell, from The Inferno -  Portal: entranceway ;    Acheron: river separating world from underworld ;    Circle 1/Limbo: home of unbaptized ;    Circle 2: home of "carnal sinners" ;    Circle 3: home of the gluttonous ;    Circle 4: home of the prodigal and avaricious ;    Circle 5/Styx: home of the wrathful ;    Dis: walled city containing the remainder of Hell ;    Circle 6: heretics ;     Circle 7: Phlegethon (those violent to neighbors), those who were violent to themselves, and those who were violent to nature and God ;    Abyss ;    Circle 8/Malebolge: has 10 deeper bastions, including Boldia, flatterers, buyers/sellers of pardons, fortunetellers, grafters, hypocrites, robbers, evil counslors, scandalmongers, liars ;    Circle 9/Cocytus: a frozen lake, including a pit of giants and all traitors ;    Center of the Earth: home of Lucifer

 Harlequin is a popularly known comic servant characters.  Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell, which explains the red and black colors of Harlequin's mask.  It goes back at least as far as Dante, perhaps old enough to identify with Woden.

 1325 Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore.  His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France. He made his main entrance in English-speaking culture late in the nineteenth century as "Owlglass".  Till Eulenspiegel was an entirely imaginary figure, but according to the tradition, Eulenspiegel was born in Kneitlingen near Brunswick around 1300.

Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) (c1260 – c1327) was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition.  Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defence" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent.  The central theme of Eckhart's German sermons is the presence of God in the individual soul, and the dignity of the soul of the just man.  Although he elaborated on this theme, he rarely departed from it.  In one sermon, Eckhart gives the following summary of his message:  “When I preach, I usually speak of detachment and say that a man should be empty of self and all things; and secondly, that he should be reconstructed in the simple good that God is; and thirdly, that he should consider the great aristocracy which God has set up in the soul, such that by means of it man may wonderfully attain to God; and fourthly, of the purity of the divine nature.”  His anonymous "Theologia Germanica" is viewed as pivotal in provoking Luther's actions and the subsequent Protestant Reformation.

Abner of Burgos (ca. 1270-ca.1347, or a little later) was a Jewish philosopher, a convert to Christianity and polemical writer against his former religion.  He was known after his conversion as Alfonso of Valladolid.  As a student he acquired a certain mastery in Biblical and Talmudical studies, to which he added an intimate acquaintance with Peripatetic philosophy and astrology.  He was graduated as a physician at 25, but throughout a long life he seems to have found the struggle for existence a hard one.  In 1295, he reportedly treated a number of Jews for distress following their experiences in the failed messianic movement in Avila.  As Abner reports in his Moreh Zedek/Mostrador de justicia, he himself "had a dream" in which a similar experience of crosses mysteriously appearing on his garments drove him to question his ancestral faith.  He resolved to embrace Christianity.  Abner's most distinguishing characteristic was his use of postbiblical literature, including hundreds of Talmudic and Midrashic sources as well as much medieval Jewish and Arabic (in translation) literature, all in an effort to prove the truth of Christianity.  Equally striking is the fact that he wrote his anti-Jewish polemics in Hebrew, unlike virtually every polemicist in the history of Christianity.  His most major work, the Moreh Zedek (Teacher of Righteousness), which now survives only in a 14th century Castilian translation as Mostrador de Justicia, is one of the longest and most elaborate polemics against Judaism ever written and is one of the key sources for the history of anti-Jewish thought in thirteenth and fourteenth century Western Europe.  Abner's text rivals (and in many ways surpasses) the Pugio Fidei in length, complexity, variety of sources, and psychological impact, although there is no evidence that Abner actually knew of the polemical Dominican work.

Abner, accused his former brethren of using a prayer-formula in their ritual which blasphemed the Christian God and cursed all Christians.  He further accused the Jews, for instance, of constantly warring among themselves and splitting into hostile religious schisms; in support of this statement he adduces an alleged list of the "sects" prevailing among them: Sadducees, Samaritans, and other extinct division.  He makes two "sects" of Pharisees and Rabbinites, says that cabalists believe in a tenfold God, and speaks of a brand-new "sect" believing in a dual Deity, God and Metatron.

1334 October 9, Casimir III the Great (1310-1370) (Poland) -Re-affirmed the policies of Boleslav regarding protection of the Jews.  This document was instrumental in encouraging Jews to begin to flee Germany and move East.  In general, Casimir protected Jewish interests.  It was claimed that it was due to influence of a beautiful Jewish mistress, Esterka of Opoczno.

The Hundred Years' War was a series of wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by two factions for the French throne.  The conflict lasted 116 years but was punctuated by several periods of peace.  Though primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of both French and English nationalism.  Militarily, it saw the introduction of new weapons and tactics, which eroded the older system of feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry and began to erode the dominance of heavy cavalry in Western Europe.  The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire were introduced for the war, thus changing the role of the peasantry.  In France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines and marauding mercenary armies (turned to banditry) reduced the population by about one-half.  The French understood that warfare was necessary to expel the foreigners occupying their homeland.  Furthermore French kings found alternative ways to finance the war - sales taxes, debasing the coinage.  Black Death and warfare depleted the overall population of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.  France, for example, had a population of about 17 million, which by the end of the Hundred Years War had declined by about one-half. 

Arnold III von Uissigheim, (also blessed Arnold und "König Armleder"), (executed 11/14, 1336) was a medieval German highwayman, bandit, and renegade knight.  He was the leader of the "Armleder" massacres against Jewish communities throughout the Alsace in 1336.  Arnold became a wanted man in 1332 on the charge of highway robbery. He then commenced a wave of populist banditry and massacres against the Jewish population of the Alsace.  Arnold and 47 of his band were taken captive in 1336, and Arnold tried and sentenced to death.

 ****The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350.  It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but this view has recently been challenged.  Usually thought to have started in Central Asia, it had reached the Crimea by 1346.  Probably carried by fleas, residing on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships, it spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.   The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population, reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400.  This has been seen as creating a series of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history.  It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover.  The plague returned at various times, resulting in a larger number of deaths, until it left Europe in the 19th century.  Often the Jews were charged with poisoning wells and initiating the epidemic.   Somewhat true as the plague was spread by unsanitary water as well as fleas and migrated with merchants from the East.   Jews were the primary international traders. 

1348  Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–6/15, 1361) was a German mystic, a Catholic preacher and a theologian.  A disciple of master Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order.  Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland Mystics.  The Black Death came there in 1348, and it is said that when the city was deserted by all who could leave it, Tauler remained at his post, encouraging his terror-stricken fellow-citizens with sermons and personal visits.  Tauler was one of several notable Christian universalists in the Middle Ages, along with Amalric of Bena, John of Ruysbroeck, and Julian of Norwich.  He taught that "All beings exist through the same birth as the Son, and therefore shall they all come again to their original, that is, God the Father."  Tauler was famous for his sermons, which were considered among the noblest in the German language -- not as emotional as Henry Suso's, nor as speculative as Eckhart's, but rather intensely practical, and touching on all sides the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life.

Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270–October 1349(1340)), a Franciscan teacher, was among the most influential practitioners of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages.  His major work, Postillae perpetuae in universam S. Scripturam, was the first printed commentary on the Bible.  Nicholas utilized all sources available to him, fully mastered Hebrew and drew copiously from Rashi and other rabbinic commentaries, the Pugio Fidei of Raymond Martini and of course the commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas.  His lucid and concise exposition, his soundly-based observations made Postillae the most-consulted manual of exegesis until the 16th century. Martin Luther depended upon it.   Like others in the 14th century, he was occupied by the possibility of the conversion of the Jews, to whom he dedicated hortatory addresses.  He wrote Pulcherrimae, which was one of the sources Martin Luther used in his On the Jews and Their Lies.  He wrote “Disputation against the Perfidy of the Jews” 1305

*****Las Siete Partidas of 1265 was a set of laws passed during the reign of Alfonso the Wise of Castille.  The laws were not put into effect until 1348 and lasted for about 350 years.  Las Siete Partidas constitute one of the outstanding landmarks of Spanish, and indeed of world law, and occupy a unique place in its evolution.  For they stand midway between the Forum Judicum of the 7th century and the Civil Code of the 19th, being about six hundred years after the former and before the latter.  Laws within relating to Jews were:

Law 2: “Jews should pass their lives among Christians quietly and without disorder, practicing their own religious rites, and not speaking ill of the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ... Moreover, a Jew should be very careful to avoid preaching to, or converting any Christian… by exalting his own belief and disparaging ours.

Whoever violates this law shall be put to death and lose all his property. And because we have heard it said that in some places Jews celebrated, and still celebrate Good Friday, which commemorates the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by way of contempt: stealing children and fastening them to crosses, and making images of wax and crucifying them, when they cannot obtain children; we order that, hereafter, if in any part of our dominions anything like this is done, and can be proved, all persons who were present when the act was committed shall be seized, arrested and brought before the king; and after the king ascertains that they are guilty, he shall cause them to be put to death in a disgraceful manner, no matter how many there may be. 

Law 8: “We forbid any Jew to keep Christian men or women in his house, to be served by them; although he may have them to cultivate and take care of his lands, or protect him on the way when he is compelled to go to some dangerous place… No Christian shall take any medicine or cathartic made by a Jew; but he can take it by the advice of some intelligent person, only where it is made by a Christian, who knows and is familiar with its ingredients. 

Law 9: “Jews who live with Christian women are guilty of great insolence and boldness, for which reason we decree that all Jews who, hereafter, may be convicted of having done such a thing shall be put to death. For if Christians who commit adultery with married women deserve death on that account, much more do Jews who have sexual intercourse with Christian women. 

Law 10: “A Jew shall not purchase, or keep as a slave, a Christian man or woman, and if anyone violates this law the Christian shall be restored to freedom and shall not pay any portion of the price given for him, although the Jew may not have been aware when he bought him, that he was a Christian; but if he knew that he was such when he purchased him, and makes use of him afterwards as a slave, he shall be put to death for doing so. Moreover, we forbid any Jew to convert a captive to his religion, even though said captive may be a Moor, or belong to some other barbarous race. 

Law 11: “Many crimes and outrageous things occur between Christians and Jews because they live together in cities, and dress alike… we order that all Jews, male and female, living in our dominions shall bear some distinguishing mark upon their heads so that people may plainly recognize a Jew, or a Jewess; and any Jew who does not bear such a mark, shall pay for each time he is found without it ten maravedis of gold; and if he has not the means to do this he shall receive ten lashes for his offense. 

 Tomb of Abbot Simon de Gillans [1345 CE], Paris.

Celtic Cross (when?)

   Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, dressed in a robe and carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device (which represents time's constant one-way movement, and more generally and abstractly, entropy).  This image derives from several sources, including the Grim Reaper and Chronos: Greek God of Time.  Chronos (Greek) is the personification of Time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.

Baby New Year was used by the ancient Egyptians used the baby as a symbol for a new year, and so did the Germans, who are credited with bringing Baby New Year to America.  The Germans brought their traditional New Year's Banner adorned with the image of a baby to early America.  This German tradition had been popular since the fourteenth century.

1350         1350         1350         1350

 A Freischütz ("freeshooter"), in German folklore, is a marksman who, by a contract with the devil, has obtained a certain number of bullets destined to hit without fail whatever object he wishes.  As the legend is usually told, six of the magic bullets, are thus subservient to the marksman's will, but the seventh is at the absolute disposal of the devil himself.  Stories about the Freischütz were especially common in Germany during the 14-16th centuries.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 12/21, 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular.  Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.  The Decameron, is an allegory, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people.  The bawdy tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic.  Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic.  In addition to its literary import, it documents life in 14th-century Italy.  Decameron combines two Greek words, that means "ten-day event".  Ten days is the time period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales.

Giovanni Fiorentino, 14th c. Italian poet. His Il Pecorone contains a brutal tale of a usurer and a pound of flesh that inspired Shakespeare's Shylock ("The First Novel, Fourth Day").

Juan Ruiz (c1283 – c1350), the Archpriest of Hita, was a medieval Spanish poet.  He is best known for his ribald, earthy poem, (The Book of Good Love).  In this book, he remarked how quickly "the Jew of today doubles his evil money."

1362 The Vikings settle the middle of North America as proved by the Kensington Runestone.  It is known that Greenland was settled by Vikings around 970, a settlement which lasted until the 15th century.  ca. 1440 The Vinland map is claimed to be a 15th-century mappa mundi with unique information about Norse exploration of America.

1367 Jews Expelled from Hungary

1357-1371 “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville”, written in Anglo-Norman French, was an early exposer of Jewish plots to take over the world.  Popular identification of Gog and Magog was with the lost tribes of Israel who lived behind Alexander’s fabled Caspian Gates to be released in the last days to slaughter Christians.  In his case the maneuver involved an escape from a secret mountain dwelling and Hebrew as a secret, apocalyptic language:  “And so all the Jews in the different parts of the world learn to speak Hebrew, for they believe that the Jews who are enclosed among those hills will know that they are Jews (as they are) by their speech when they arrive.  And then they will lead them into Christendom to destroy Christian men.  For those Jews say they know by their prophecies that the Jews enclosed among the hills will issue out and the Christians will be under their sway, just as they have been under Christian domination.”

   The Red Jews: A German tradition claimed a group called the Red Jews would invade Europe at the end of the world; the "Red Jews" became associated with different peoples, but especially the Eastern European Jews and the Ottoman Turks.  The Red Jews were a legendary Jewish nation who appeared in vernacular sources in Germany during the medieval era until about 1600.  According to these texts, the Red Jews were an epochal threat to Christendom, and would invade Europe during the tribulations leading to the end of the world.  Many pamphlets circulated interpreting such events as the rise of Turkish power in the context of the legendary Red Jews.  Philipp Melanchthon, for example, claimed that the Ottoman Turks were the Red Jews.

In ("Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew"), Christian of Stavelot refers to the Khazars as Hunnic descendants of Gog and Magog, as well as having been "enclosed" by Alexander, but having since escaped, and owing to the Khazars' adoption of Judaism, and they are described in Arabic sources as having red hair, a trait associated with the Devil in medieval Germany and possibly the source of the term "Red Jews".  Alternatively, 'Red Jews' refers to the 'Edomites' who (were forced) converted to Judaism a few generations before King Herod.  Edom in Hebrew means 'red'.

 Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303 – 7/23, 1373) of Sweden was a mystic and saint.  She is considered a Christian female worthy.

1375 - Public disputations held at Burgos and Avila by Moses Cohen de Tordesillas with converts from Judaism John of Valladolid and Abner of Burgos.  Another disputation was held at about the same time in Pampeluna by Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut of Tudela with Cardinal Don Pedro de Luna, afterward Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, the disputations being made the subjects of the books "'Ezer ha-Emunah" (by Moses) and "Eben Bohan".

 Wenceslaus (2/26, 1361 – 8/16, 1419), was, by election, the German King (formally King of the Romans) from 1376 and, by inheritance, King of Bohemia (as Wenceslaus IV) from 1378.  He was the third Bohemian and second German monarch of the House of Luxembourg.  He was deposed in 1400 as the German King, but continued to rule as King of Bohemia.  King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia sought to protect the religious reformer Jan Hus and his followers against the demands of the Roman Catholic Church for their suppression as heretics.

1378 - 1400 Good King Wenceslaus (Germany) -During the fights between the cities and the nobility, he tried a compromise proposal using the Jews as a pawn (1385).  He later retracted and broke up the Swabian League, (the league of free cities in S. Germany) remitting all debts owed to Jews, with the Emperor getting his percentage.  This provided further impetus for the Jews to move eastward.

Henry II (Henry of Trastámara)(1/13, 1334 – 5/29, 1379) took the throne after defeating and killing Peter in the Castilian Civil War (1366–1369).  Henry was the first ruler since King Ergica to talk about the Jews in Iberian Peninsula.  "But in spite of his aversion for the Jews, Henry did not dispense with their services.  He employed wealthy Jews as financial councilors and tax-collectors.  The clergy demanded that the Jews should be kept far from the palaces of the grandees, should not be allowed to hold public office, should live apart from the Christians, should not wear costly garments nor ride on mules, should wear the badge, and should not be allowed to bear Christian names, to defraud others as crypto-Jews.  The king granted the two last-named demands, as well as a request made by the Cortes of Burgos (1379) that the Jews should neither carry arms nor sell weapons; but he did not prevent them from holding religious disputations, nor did he deny them the exercise of criminal jurisprudence. The latter prerogative was not taken from them until the reign of John I, Henry's son and successor.”

 9/8 1380 The Battle of Kulikovo was a stand-off between Christian Russians and Golden Horde (centered in Jewish Khazaria!)  However the political situation at time was much more complicated and concerned the politics of the Northeastern Rus'.  The traditionally Russian point of view sees the battle as the first step in liberation of the Russian lands from the Golden Horde dependency.  Some analysts of the Eastern Orthodox approach portray the battle as a stand off between the Christian Rus and steppe non-Christians.  The Russian historian Sergey Solovyov saw the battle as critical for the history of the Eastern Europe in stopping another invasion from the Asia, similar to the Battle of Châlons of the 5th century and the Battle of Tours of the 8th century in the Western Europe.

~1380 Slovakia expels Jews for usury and pimping.

Giovanni Fiorentino (14^th century) was a writer, Italian author of a collection of stories that goes by the name of " The Pecorone ".  The plot of one of these stories that of Giannetto, was picked up by Shakespeare, and made it matter in his "Merchant of Venice", the story of a Jew lendi,ng money on security of a pound a flesh.

 The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle-English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century.  Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat.  The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.  The Prioress Tale is a story of an innocent child whose throat is cut by a band of Christian-hating Jews.  The Jew’s life was ended torn by wild horses and hanged also.  "The Prioress's Tale" of his Canterbury Tales of a devout little Christian child who was murdered by Jews affronted at his singing a hymn as he passed through the Jewry, or Jewish quarter, of a city in Asia:  “Our primal foe, the serpent Sathanas, Who has in Jewish heart his hornets' nest, Swelled arrogantly: "O Jewish folk, alas! Is it to you a good thing, and the best, That such a boy walks here, without protest, In your despite and doing such offense Against the teachings that you reverence?" From that time forth the Jewish folk conspired Out of the world this innocent to chase; A murderer they found, and thereto hired,  Who in an alley had a hiding-place; And as the child went by at sober pace, This cursed Jew did seize and hold him fast, And cut his throat, and in a pit him cast. I say, that in a cesspool him they threw, Wherein these Jews did empty their entrails. O cursed folk of Herod, born anew, How can you think your ill intent avails? Murder will out, 'tis sure, nor ever fails, And chiefly when God's honour vengeance needs.”

John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer.  Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins: Being the Confessio Amantis.   Gower has a lion tearing a Jew to death.

 ****Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore.  A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor," assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men."  Robin and many of his men wore Lincoln green clothes.  First mentioned in late 14th century and speaks of 1160.  The story has ambivalent meanings.   In thirty-seven of the thirty-eight ballads, Robin Hood appears in that pub drinking with the outlaws and renegades and also the Jews.  Historically, the pub is on a street dating to 1152 on Jews’ Lane in Nottingham.  Historically, it was strange that the Jews lived there, as it was a cross-point for non-Jewish commerce too; it was unusual for the two to be together.  The Jews of Lincoln were one of the richest communities in the country.  (Was King Richard, the Jew-tolerant and King John, the Jew-intolerant (the good one for the people?  King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215.)

 Piers Plowman (written ca. 1360–1387) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland.  It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step").  Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages.   The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life.  One of the more explicit allegories, with every character named for the quality or emotion he or she displays.  In Malvern Hills, Worchestershire, a man named Will (free will) dreams of a tower on a hill, and a fortress in a valley (Heaven and Hell), and a “fair field full of folk,” between them (mankind).  He sets out on a journey to attain the tower.  Piers, a plowman, appears and offers to guide Will to the tower.  On the way, Piers speaks to him of Truth, while Will searches for anyone who might enter the tower with him, namely Dowel (Do well), Dobet (Do Better) and Dobest (Do Best).  Will is searching for how a Christian should live, according to Catholicism.

late 14th “Pearl” is a Middle English alliterative poem which may be divided into three parts: an introduction, a dialog between the two main characters in which the Pearl instructs the narrator, and a description of the New Jerusalem with the narrator's awakening.  Sections I - IV (stanzas 1- 20) The narrator, distraught at the loss of his Pearl, falls asleep in a green garden - and begins to dream.  In his dream he is transported to an other-worldy garden; the divine is thus set in opposition to the terrestrial, a persistent thematic concern within the poem. Wandering by the side of a beautiful stream, he becomes convinced paradise is on the other shore.  As he looks for a crossing, he sees a young maid whom he identifies as his Pearl.  She welcomes him.  Sections V - VII (stanzas 21 - 35) When he asks whether she is the pearl he has lost, she tells him he has lost nothing, that his pearl is merely a rose which has naturally withered. He wants to cross to her side, but she says it is not so easy, that he must resign himself to the will and mercy of God.  He asks about her state. She tells him that the Lamb has taken her as His queen.  Sections VIII - XI (stanzas 36 - 60) He wonders whether she has replaced Mary as Queen of Heaven.  He also objects that she was too young to merit such a high position through her works.  She responds that no one envies Mary's position as Queen of courtesy, but that all are members of the body of Christ.  Adopting a homiletic discourse, she recounts as proof the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.  He objects to the idea that God rewards every man equally, regardless of his apparent due.  She responds that God gives the same gift of Christ's redemption to all.  Sections XII - XV (stanzas 61 - 81) She instructs him on several aspects of sin, repentance, grace and salvation.  She describes the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem, citing the Apostle John and focusing on Christ's past sacrifice and present glory.  She wears the Pearl of Great Price because she has been washed in the blood of the Lamb, and advises him to forsake all and buy this pearl.  Sections XVI - XX (stanzas 82 - 101) He asks about the heavenly Jerusalem; she tells him it is the city of God.  He asks to go there; she says that God forbids that, but he may see it by a special dispensation.  They walk upstream, and he sees the city across the stream, which is described in a paraphrase of the Apocalypse.  He also sees a procession of the blessed. Plunging into the river in his desperation to cross, he awakes from the dream back in the green garden and resolves to fulfill the will of God.

 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists.  Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism".

 John Wycliffe (c. 1324 – 12/31, 1384) was an English theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformist and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century.  His followers are known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached anticlerical and biblically-centered reforms and a precursor to the Protestant Reformation (for this reason, he is sometimes called "The Morning Star of the Reformation").  He was one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power.  Wycliffe was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common tongue.  He completed his translation directly from the Vulgate into vernacular English in the year 1382, now known as Wyclif's Bible.

1385 ULM (Germany) -At a meeting of the Swabian League cities it was decided that one fourth of the debts owed to Jews should be cancelled and the other three-quarters should be paid to the cities.  Jews were prevented from emigrating.

1389 July 1, Grand Duke Witold (Vitold) (Vytautas the Great) (1350-1430) (Lithuania) -Established the basis for the legal status of Jews, including freedom of trade and worship originally in the Grodno Province and then on his other regions.  This bill of rights "Cartia" was in sharp contrast to the medieval position of the Jews throughout Poland.  Individual Jews were not taxed but the community itself was responsible for the collection and their lives and property were protected.  The Duke also brought Jews from the Crimea and settled them in Vilna and even proposed that synagogues and Jewish cemeteries be tax exempted.

  1389 – Battle of Kosovo. Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović rallies Serbian nobility to stand up to Turkish expansion into Europe.  Europe celebrates the victory of Christianity because of the death of Turkish sultan and Turkish retreat, but Serbia cannot recover as most of its nobility, including Prince Lazar, perished in the battle. He is succeeded by his underage son Stefan Lazarević who becomes a Turkish vassal.

Henry III (10/4, 1379 – 12/25, 1406), sometimes known as Henry the Sufferer or Henry the Infirm (Spanish: Enrique el Doliente, Galician: Henrique o Doente), was the son of John I and Eleanor of Aragon, and succeeded him as King of Castile and León in 1390.  He was poisoned by the Jew Meise (Meire?).

Franco Sacchetti (c. 1335 – c. 1400), was an Italian poet and novelist.  This colleague of Bocaccio, in his I Novelle, satirized unscrupulous Jewish physicians and their gullible patients.

1391 Jews Expelled from Brittany

1391 June 6, Forced Conversions (Seville, Spain) -Ferrand Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija, began to incite mobs into attacking the Jewish quarter. The campaign soon spread throughout Spain, except for Granada.  The Jewish quarter in Barcelona, located for over 400 years near the castle, was totally destroyed.  Over 10,000 Jews were killed, and many others chose conversion and became New Christians or Conversos. Of these, many continued to practice Judaism in secret while paying lip service to the Church.  They became known by the Christians as Marranos.  The Jews never used the term Marrano themselves although some knew of it.  Many scholars have speculated that the origins of the word stemmed from Latin, Arabic and even Hebrew, but in fact it was the Spanish term for pig or pork an expression of extreme disgust on the part of the Christians.  Jews referred to them as the Anusim, "those who were forced to convert".  Eventually, these mass forced conversions led to the establishment of the Inquisition.

In July 1392, King Henry wrote to the local leaders in the city of Burgos – “The Jews of your aljama (community), have informed me that when they were attacked they left their homes in fear of death and took refuge in the house of the best of you, where they live today in your safe custody, not daring to return to their houses in the aljama, for fear that certain Jews who now have become Christians will persecute them and do the much harm ...”

1393 August 18, KING JOHN I (Spain) -In an effort to prevent "backsliding" by converted Jews, he prohibited them from living in the same quarter as unconverted Jews or even eating with them.

Charles VI (12/3, 1368 – 10/21, 1422), was the King from 1380 to 1422.  His bouts with madness (propaganda?) were exploited by the powers of England and Burgundy and by the end of his reign much of France was under foreign occupation.

On September 17, 1394, Charles VI declared because of the many complaints and investigations provoked by the excesses and misdemeanors of the Jews that thenceforth no Jew should dwell in his domains.  The decree was not immediately enforced, a respite being granted to the Jews in order that they might sell their property and pay their debts.  Those indebted to them were enjoined to redeem their obligations within a set time; otherwise their pledges held in pawn were to be sold by the Jews.  The provost was to escort the Jews to the frontier of the kingdom.  Subsequently the king released the Christians from their debts.

1399 Jews Expelled from Posen, Poland.  Polish anti-Jewish riots throughout next few centuries. 

1400         1400         1400         1400

 The Borgias were a European Papal family of Italian and Spanish origin which became prominent during the Renaissance.  The Borgias were patrons of the arts, and their support allowed many artists of the Renaissance to realize their potential.  The Borgias became prominent in ecclesiastical and political affairs in the 1400s and 1500s.  They produced two popes during this period, Alfons de Borja who ruled as Pope Calixtus III during 1455–1458, and Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, as Pope Alexander VI, during 1492–1503.  Today they are remembered for their corrupt rule during the reign of Alexander VI.  They have been accused of many different crimes, including adultery, simony, theft, rape, bribery, incest, and murder (especially murder by arsenic poisoning).  Because of their search for power, they made enemies of other powerful families such as the Medici and the Sforza, as well as the influential Dominican friar Savonarola.  There were numerous claims that the family was of Jewish origin.  The family were frequently described as marranos by political opponents: the rumors persisted in popular culture for centuries, listed as such for example in the Semi-Gotha of 1912.  

The Borgias are often used as the example par excellence of Catholic corruption, treachery, gluttony, murder, lechery, greed, cronyism, nepotism and worse.  What the 'modern world' choose to forget is that the Borgias were Marranos, the "secret Jews" of Iberia* whose very scandals against Christianity (secretly continuing their Talmudic and Khabbalah wickedness) caused the Spaniards to embrace the Inquisition.  *Whilst being corrupt and degenerate, the Borgia Marrano Pope Alexander VI, according to his Wikipedia entry ..."distinguished himself by his relatively benign treatment of Jews.  After the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, some 9,000 impoverished Iberian Jews arrived at the borders of the Papal States. Alexander welcomed them into Rome, declaring that they were "permitted to lead their life, free from interference from Christians, to continue in their own rites, to gain wealth, and to enjoy many other privileges." He similarly allowed the immigration of Jews expelled from Portugal in 1497 and from Provence in 1498.

Jean Froissart (c.1337 – c.1405), was one of the most important chroniclers of medieval France.  For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century Kingdom of England and France.  His history is also one of the most important sources for the first half of the Hundred Years' War.  His famous Chronicles - the source material for so many great poems and plays - are studded with complaints at reputed Jewish crimes, and with regrets at their presence in Gentile lands.  He vigorously accepted and propounded the ritual murder accusation against Jews.

Saint Vincent Ferrer (1/23, 1350 – 4/5, 1419) was a Valencian Dominican missionary and logician.  Vincent is also said to be responsible for the forced conversion of many Jews to Catholicism.  One of his converts, a former rabbi by the name of Solomon ha-Levi, went on to become Bishop of Cartagena and later Archbishop of Burgos.

1413 - The Disputation of Tortosa in Spain, staged by the Antipope Benedict XIII. In result, the Pope gave instructions by which all books of the Talmud would be handed over to his functionaries for censorship.

1414-18 Council of Constance, 16th Catholic Council -Because of the Great Western Schism the legitimate Pope Gregory XII abdicated the Papal throne during the Council at the Emperor Sigismund's request for the sake of unity so that the Council could sort out the mess and end the Schism amid the confusion of the multi-popes which included the anti-popes of Avignon - Benedict XIII and John XXIII.  The latter had called a Council in Pisa in 1403 which was not recognized because of its illegality.  The Council took control and elected Pope Martin V to the seat of Peter in 1417, three years after the Council was opened.  It brought to an end the Great Schism and opened a whole new can of worms with the struggle between papal power and conciliar power.  Condemned were the heresies of John Wycliffe and John Hus, the tip of the iceberg that would erupt a century later.

 Jan Hus (c1369– 7/6, 1415), was a Czech priest, philosopher, pre-Reformation Christian reformer, and master at Charles University in Prague.   The Hussites initiated an important change in the attitude toward the Jews through the interpretations of one of their leaders, Matthias of Janov (d. 1394), of figures like Antichrist as being Catholic and not Jewish, as was maintained by medieval Christianity.  However, Huss himself attacked the Jews for their implacable opposition to Christianity.

1418 May 18, Regional Conference (Flori, Italy) -Representatives from the Jewish communities of central and northern Italy met to discuss raising funds for self-defense as well as instituting sumptuary regulations so as "not to show off in the presence of Gentiles."  It is plausible that the issuing of these sumptuary regulations influenced Pope Martin V to issue a protective Bull the following year.  [Part of the Jewish Problem is that they have often been ostentatious and have brought Gentile ire upon themselves.]

Pope Martin V declared in 1419: "Whereas the Jews are made in the image of God and a remnant of them will one day be saved, and whereas they have besought our protection: following in the footsteps of our predecessors we command that they be not molested in their synagogues; that their laws, rights, and customs be not assailed; that they be not baptized by force, constrained to observe Christian festivals, nor to wear new badges, and they be not hindered in their business relations with Christians."   Martin however issued a bull in 1425 ordering Jews to wear a "badge of infamy".

1420 Jews ordered to convert in Austria or Expelled.

 1424 Dance of Death, (Danse Macabre -French, Totentanz –German and throughout Europe) is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.  The Danse Macabre consists of the dead or personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and laborer.  They were produced to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life.  It is represented in Paintings, Printing, Musical settings and other allusions.  EG: Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Triumph of Death (c. 1562).

Paul of Burgos (1351- 8/29, 1435) was a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, Lord Chancellor, and exegete.  He is known also as Pablo de Santa Maria, Paul de Santa Maria, and Pauli episcopi Burgensis.  His original name was Solomon ha-Levi.  He was the most wealthy and influential Jew of Burgos, a scholar of the first rank in Talmudic and rabbinical literature, and a rabbi of the Jewish community.  Following his conversion, Paul, like fellow convert Joshua ha-Lorki (Gerónimo de Santa Fe) took an active role in persecuting Spanish Jews.  His intelligence and scholarship, as well as his gift of oratory, gained for him the confidence of King Henry III of Castile, who in 1406 appointed him keeper of the royal seal, in succession to Pero Lopez de Ayala.  In 1416 King Henry named him Lord Chancellor.  Paul tried his best, frequently with success, to convert his former coreligionists.   Impelled by his hatred of Talmudic Judaism, Paul in the year preceding his death composed the Dialogus Pauli et Sauli Contra Judæos, sive Scrutinium Scripturarum (Mantua, 1475; Mayence, 1478; Paris, 1507, 1535; Burgos, 1591), which subsequently served as a source for Alfonso de Spina, Geronimo de Santa Fé, and other Spanish writers hostile to the Jews, and Martin Luther in Germany for his treatise On the Jews and their Lies. 

  Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (ca. 1412 – 5/30, 1431), is considered a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint.  A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII.  She was captured and burned at the stake when she was 19 years old.  At present the French political party Front National holds rallies at her statues, reproduces her likeness in party publications, and uses a tricolor flame partly symbolic of her martyrdom as its emblem.   Traditionalist Catholics, in France and elsewhere, also use her as a symbol of inspiration.  Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.  She is – along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux – one of the patron saints of France.

1432 Enactment of the Sumptuary Laws (Castile, Spain) -Sumptuary laws regulating what Jews may wear, how they may marry, what they may serve at a wedding, etc. and were enacted from time to time in Europe even among Christian populations.  Based on the Latin word sumere, meaning to spend, it usually delineated class distinctions especially when they were enacted upon the Jews by Christians.  The laws at Castile were voluntarily placed on the Jewish community by its leaders hoping to lessen ostentation and appear less flamboyant to the gentile population. Similar laws can be found starting from the 13th century (Rhineland) until the 18th century (France).

1434 September 7, Council of Basel (Switzerland) –It instituted new measures against the Jews throughout Europe.  The council, aside from adopting many of the old measures like preventing interaction between Jews and Christians, prohibited Jews from entering universities, and forced them to listen to conversion sermons.

    1438

****The House of Habsburg, (or Hapsburg) is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian and Spanish Empires and several other countries.  Originally from Switzerland, the dynasty first reigned in Austria, which they ruled for over six centuries.  A series of dynastic marriages brought Burgundy, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and other territories into the inheritance.  In the 16th century, the family separated into the senior Habsburg Spain and the junior Habsburg Austrian branches, who settled their mutual claims in the Oñate treaty.  As royal houses are by convention determined via the male line, technically the reigning branches of the House of Habsburg became extinct in the 18th century.  The Spanish branch ended upon the death of Charles II in 1700.  The Austrian branch went extinct in 1780 with the death of Empress Maria Theresa.  The new successor house styled itself as House of Habsburg-Lorraine.  On August 6, 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved under the French Emperor Napoleon I's reorganization of Germany.  However, in anticipation of the loss of his title of Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria (as Francis I) on August 11, 1804, three months after Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of the French on May 18, 1804.

Under the terms of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 effective autonomy was given to Hungary.   This prevailed until the Habsburgs' deposition from both Austria and Hungary in 1918 following defeat in World War I.  The Habsburgs did not formally abandon all hope of returning to power until Otto von Habsburg, Emperor Charles' eldest son, renounced all claims to the throne.  The current Habsburg family consists of the direct descendants of Emperor Karl and Empress Zita.

1437 Emperor Sigismund D’Est (Holy Roman Emperor 1368-1437) -Though he drained the Jews of their wealth whenever he could, he protected them from some of the worst excesses.  His successor, Austrian Archduke Albert V (Emperor Albert II), hated the Jews passionately and welcomed any excuse for persecuting them.

 

Jan van Eyck (~1395 – 7/9 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century.  His Art was fully Christian with the parallel anti-Jewish motifs.

Saint Bernardino of Siena, O.F.M., (sometimes Bernardine) (9/ 8 1380 – 5/ 20 1444) was an Italian priest, Franciscan missionary, and is a Catholic saint.  He argued that Jews oppress Christians in two ways: by extorting their money through usury, and by destroying their health through false medicine.  He quoted the confession of a Jewish doctor of Avignon who "at his last hour declared he died a happy man because he had had the pleasure, throughout his life, of killing thousands of Christians with so-called remedies that were actually poisons." (Abbe de Saint Julien, A Great Benefactor of the People)Robert Greene and Marlowe, among others, also believed that some Jews were expert poisoners.

 Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c1395 – 2/3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe.  His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period.  It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.  Gutenberg was the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439.  Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period.  His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system which allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike.  Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type.  His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

Pope Eugene IV (1383 – February 23, 1447), born Gabriele Condulmer, was Pope from March 3, 1431, to his death.

Pope Eugenius IV, in 1442, issued the following decree: "We decree and order that from now on, and for all time, Christians shall not eat or drink with Jews; nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them.  Christians shall not allow Jews to hold civil honors over Christians, or to exercise public offices in the State.  Jews cannot be merchants, Tax Collectors, or agents in the buying and selling of the produce and goods of Christians, nor their Procurators, Computers or Lawyers in matrimonial matters, nor Obstetricians; nor can they have association or partnership with Christians.  No Christian can leave or bequeath anything in his last Will and Testament to Jews or their congregations.  Jews are prohibited from erecting new synagogues.  They are obliged to pay annually a tenth part of their goods and holdings.  Against them Christians can testify, but the testimony of Jews against Christians in no case is of any value.  All and every single Jew, of whatever sex and age, must everywhere wear the distinct dress and known marks by which they can be evidently distinguished from Christians.  They cannot live among Christians, but in a certain street, separated and segregated from Christians, and outside which they cannot under any pretext have houses…."

~1444 Netherlands expels Jews for usury, treason and pimping.

[1445 CE] “The Seven Sacraments” by Rogier van der Weyden.

1450         1450         1450         1450

The term ‘Wars of The Roses’ signifies an immensely turbulent and unsteady period in the history of England stretching from 1450 to 1500.  During this phase, the country experienced 3 regional revolts, 13 battles, 10 coups d’etats, 15 assaults, and 5 usurpations.  There were continuous changes at the top level as well with 5 kings, 7 reigns, and 5 alterations of dynasty.  The opposing parties in the Wars of the Roses were the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster and the White Rose of the House of York.

Morality plays - abstract personifications- The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme.  Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, they represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre. e.g “Everyman” is one of the morality plays.

 Carnival Game Fastnachtsspiel (Shrovetide) simple slapstick comedy with a clear moral message.   Their origins go back to Germanic fertility rites.  Hans Sach was a populizer of these.  Most popular in the 15th & 16th  centuries.

Purim, the Jewish holiday of Revenge against Gentiles.

1451 The Jews of Candia (Italy) crucify suckling lambs in contempt of Christianity, with an anti-ritual.  Actually the ancient Hebrew custom is roasting the Passover lamb skewered on a spit in a vertical position, with the head upwards, to ridicule and deride the crucified Christ. 

Peter Schwartz was a 15th c. German citizen. His 'common man's' explanation of the troubles of the Jews: “The Jews have been punished severely from time to time.  But they do not suffer innocently; they suffer because of their wickedness, because they cheat people and ruin whole countries by their usury and secret murders, as everyone knows. That is why they are so persecuted, and not innocently.  There is no People more wicked, more cunning, more avaricious, more impudent, more troublesome, more venomous, more wrathful, more deceptive and more ignominious.” (J. Janssen)

1453 The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire which occurred after a siege laid by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Sultan Mehmed II.  The siege lasted from Thursday, April 5-May 29, 1453 (according to the Julian Calender), when the city fell to the Ottomans.  Constantinople was defended by the army of Emperor Constantine XI.  The event marked the end of the political independence of the millennium-old Byzantine Empire, which was by then already fragmented into several Greek monarchies.  The Jews thought of this as Redemption from Christians and perhaps many helped the Muslims.

1431-45 Council of Florence, 17th Catholic Council -Called by Pope Martin V but opened by his successor Blessed Pope Eugene IV and met open resistance from many of the bishops. Therefore he dissolved the Council, moving to Ferrara, Italy in 1438 because of the schismatic bishops who elected the antipope Felix V.  In 1439 the bubonic plague forced the entire Council to move again, this time to Florence where it was closed eight years later in 1447 by the Eugene IV.  Though the Greek Church agreed to accept Filioque, it was short-lived for the infidels conquered Constantinople six years after the Council closed and, demoralized, the Eastern Church stuck to their stubborn agenda.  The most stunning aspect of this Council was that Papal Authority triumphed over conciliar authority.  Pope Eugene IV, backed by the Council proclaimed infallible the dogma of no salvation for anyone outside the Church.

1453 - 1821 Greece -Under Turkish (Ottoman) rule.  Jews arrived from Spain, Portugal, and even Poland.  For the most part they were free to engage in trade and crafts.  Their economic situation varied greatly, depending on the area.  In Salonika the Jews controlled much of the trade, to such a degree that the port was closed on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.  They provided the administration, coordination and financing for the Turkish conquests in the Balkans and the Turkish invasions of Eastern Europe. 

1453 May 29, Constantinople (Ottoman Empire) -Fell to the Turks under Mohammed II.  Jews were assembled from all over Europe to repopulate the conquered city.   Turkey provided a refuge for thousands of Jews who were soon forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula.

“Germania” by Tacitus recovered in 1455

 John of Capistrano, (6/24, 1386 – 10/23, 1456), was a Franciscan priest from Italy.  Famous as a preacher, theologian, and inquisitor, he earned himself the nickname 'the Soldier Saint' when in 1456 at age 70 he led a crusade against the invading Ottoman Empire at the siege of Belgrade.  He was also nicknamed "Scourge of the Jews".   He was a mighty orator and a skilled political agitator. In Aquila, before a throng of a hundred thousand, he was said to have evoked an army of demons whom he forced to kneel, raging and roaring before him - or so many witnesses testified. He angrily threatened corrupt princes who collaborated with Jewish usurers with such hellish torments in the hereafter - and with such risky civic commotion in the here and now - that many of them fearfully begged him to desist. The result was that John was able to abolish what he called the "diabolic privileges of the Jews" in many areas, including all of Poland for a considerable time. In Silesia, he pushed forward the prosecution and execution of a number of Jews for ritual murder after 1453.

The Moravian Church began in 1457 in Bohemia.  It places a high premium on Christian unity, personal piety, missions, and music.  The church's emblem is the Lamb of God with the flag of victory, surrounded by the Latin inscription: "Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him".   The movement that was to become the Moravian Church was started by Jan Hus in the late 14th century.

 Haggadah of Passover:  The Telling of the Passover.

 The Pharaoh's Bath of Blood, woodcut, 1526
The Pharaoh's Bath of Blood, woodcut, circa 1580

The Pharaoh's Bath of Blood, woodcut, 1560
The Pharaoh's Bath of Blood, woodcut, 1609

Enchanters and Necromancers, woodcut, 1609
Children Drowned in the Nile, woodcut, 1526Children Drowned in the Nile, wood, 1560
Children Drowned in the Nile, woodcut, 1609
 Children Drowned in the Nile, woodcut, 1609

Edward IV (4/28, 1442 – 4/9, 1483) was King of England from 3/4, 1461.  An extremely capable and daring military commander, Edward destroyed the House of Lancaster in a series of spectacular military victories; he was never defeated on the field of battle.  Edward was a popular and very able king.  While he lacked foresight and was at times cursed by bad judgment, he possessed an understanding of his subjects, and the vast majority of those who served him remained unwaveringly loyal until his death.                                        …versus

“The Last of the Barons” is a historical novel by the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton first published in 1843.  Its plot revolves around the power struggle between the English King Edward IV and his powerful minister Earl of Warwick.  The King is portrayed as effeminate, capricious and licentious, in contrast with the Earl, shown as a distinguished warrior and politician, great patriot and affectionate father.  Romance and science in the Middle Ages are the secondary themes of the novel.  The novel ends tragically with the Battle of Barnet.

Sir Edward Brampton, (1440–1508) was the Governor of Guernsey, a knight, adventurer, ship commander and the godson and protégé of King Edward IV of England.  (Duarte Brandão) came from the Jewish community of Portugal.  Duarte emigrated to England during the late 1450s.  In order to be accepted at court, he converted to Christianity, having as his sponsor King Edward IV.

1462 Monti Di Pieta (Perugia, Italy) -A free loan association, the Funds of Piety was established by Fra Michele da Milano as a replacement for Jewish money lenders.  The problem of usury even pertained to such societies and fierce debate raged as to whether they could take even enough interest to cover expenses.  Over the next 50 years, over 30 Monti opened in Italy eventually receiving the pope's blessing (1515) and often Jewish money lenders worked side by side with these institutions.

  Death of Andreas of Rinn, a three-year old boy killed by Jews in the village of Rinn, Austria in 1462.  July 12, Andrew (Anderl) of Rinn (Austria) was an alleged victim of a ritual murder.  He was supposedly bought from his Uncle by four Jewish travelers.  The cult of Andrew of Rinn was introduced in 1475, but it became popular only in the 17th century. The local church designed panels describing in detail the "martyrdom" of Anderl at the hands of Jews.  Each year there was a procession to his grave.  In the 1990's, the bishop of Innsbruck (Bishop Stecher) succeeded in replacing the panels after trying to forbid the cult.  There are still people who make the pilgrimage.

The Judenstein [Jewry-Stone]Translation by Paul Halsall - The story connected to the above picture was recorded by the German folklorists, the Brothers Grimm, in the early nineteenth century. What follows is my translation of the story. - In 1462 it so happened that in the Tyrol, in the village of Rinn, several Jews persuaded a poor farmer give up his little child, by paying him a lot of money. They took the child out into the forest and in the most horrible manner, martyred him there on a big stone, which is ever since called the "Judenstein" ["the Jewry-stone"]. The dead corpse they hung on a birch tree standing near a bridge. Now, the mother of the child was working in a field as the murder happened, and at once her thoughts turned to her child and without knowing why she became very afraid, and then, one after another, three fresh drops of blood fell on her hand. Full of anxiousness she hurried home and sought after her child. Her husband led her into the room and confessed what he had done. He wanted to show her the money which had released them from poverty, but it had all transformed into leaves. Then the father lost his mind and died of grief, but the mother went out to look for their little-child, and when she found it hanged on a tree, took it down with hot tears and carried it into the church in Rinn. And still the child lies there and is viewed by the people as a sacred child. The Judenstein was also brought there. It is said that a shepherd chopped down the tree on which the child had hanged, but when he wanted to take it to his home, he broke a leg and had to die.

1428, 1471? Blood libel

1466 Alfonso de Spina (Spain d~1491, possible Jewish convert) -A Franciscan friar published his Fortalitium Fidel (Fortress of Faith), in which he exceeded the usual anti-Marrano attacks by using past libels.  The direct result of this was the birth of the racist concept of Limpieza de Sangre, purity of blood.  (Alonzo da Spina?)

Espina recorded that a notable Jewish convert Maestro Salomone tole him of a famous Jewish physician from Padua had obtained a 4 year old child and had sacrificed him.  Salamone then reported that he had participated with numerous Jews the crucifixion of a 2 year old child.

1468.   Bishop Jean d'Avila, himself the son of a converted Jew, actually investigated the Ritual Murder case in Segovia, Spain, and himself found the Jews guilty, who were afterwards executed.

Charles the Bold (or Charles the Rash) (11/10, 1433 – 1/5, 1477), baptized Charles Martin, was Duke of Burgundy from 1467 to 1477.  Sedecias who betrayed and then poisoned Charles the Bold was a Jew.

Alonso de Hojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabel of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478.  A report, produced by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, and by the Segovian Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, corroborated this assertion.

Pedro De la Caballeria (d 1488), from a Marano (Jewish) family of Aragon, Spain, which was influential through its wealth and scholarship.  The sons of Isaac Fernando were engaged in farming the public taxes, and through their wealth secured high positions in the state.  Pedro de la Caballeria negotiated the marriage of Queen Isabella of Castile to Don Ferdinand of Aragon, and had the honor of presenting to the royal bride a costly necklace, valued at 40,000 ducats, defraying part of the cost himself.  Pedro wrote “Wrath of Christ Against the Jews”.

 1470 Everyman - Elckerlijc is a Dutch morality play and was the source for the English play Everyman.  (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play.  Like John Bunyan's novel Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman examines the question of Christian salvation by use of allegorical characters, and what Man must do to attain it.  The premise is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book.  The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind.  In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account.  All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, (material) Goods, and Knowledge.  The conflict between good and evil is dramatized by the interactions between characters.

1470 The Rütlischwur is a legendary oath of the Old Swiss Confederacy, taken on the Rütli, a meadow above Lake Lucerne.  The oath is notably featured in the Wilhelm Tell drama of 1804 by Friedrich Schiller.  It was prior to 1470.  Rutli Oath: “We shall be a single People of brethren, Never to part in danger nor distress.  We shall be free, just as our fathers were, And rather die than live in slavery.  We shall trust in the one highest God  And never be afraid of human power.”

 Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380 – 7/25, 1471) was a Catholic monk and author of “The Imitation of Christ”, a handbook for spiritual life.  The text is divided into four books: "Helpful Counsels of the Spiritual Life", "Directives for the Interior Life", "On Interior Consolation", "On the Blessed Sacrament".  The approach taken in the Imitation is characterized by its emphasis on the interior life and withdrawal from the world, as opposed to an active imitation of Christ by other friars. 

 Oratory of German Jews with the "almemor", 1475 or ‘Bema’, the pulpit

1475 on the eve of Passover the mutilated body of Simonino, a 2 year old was found.

1475.   Hans Vayol, converted Jew, charged the Rabbi of Ratisbon with Ritual Murder for the sake of the blood. Authority: Jewish Encyclopædia, Vol. II, p. 16 (1903).

1475.   Wolfkan of Ratisbon, Jewish convert to Christianity, charged the Jews with the Ritual Murder of St. Simon of Trent for the sake of the blood they required for their Passover celebrations. Authority: Ibid, Vol. XII, p. 554 (1906).

1475.   A converted Jew, Jean de Feltro, described to the officer investigating the Ritual Murder of St. Simon of Trent, how his father had told him that the Jews of his town had killed a child at Passover to get the blood for their Passover bread.

1477 Peter Schwarz: "The Jews deceive the people and destroy the nations and pillage the countries with usury. - There is no more evil, cunning, greedy, unchaste, unsteady, poisoned, angry, arrogant, deceitful, or vicious people, who holds credence to the people."

 Jews in Purgatory or Hell: “Thus be said about the Jews” German ~1480

1480 Heldenbücher (singular Heldenbuch "book of heroes") is the title under which a group of manuscripts and prints of the 15th and 16th centuries has come down to us.  Each Heldenbuch contains a collection of primarily German epic poetry, typically including material from the Theodoric cycle, and the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit.  The Heldenbuch texts are thus based on medieval German literature, but adapted to the tastes of the Renaissance, remodeled in rough Knittelvers or doggerel.

 Ostentatious:  “The Spanish Jews were fond of luxury.  Their women wore expensive clothing and were adorned with costly jewels, which caused considerable envy and jealousy among the less fortunate Christians.  They were quarrelsome and arrogant.  Many were inclined to robbery and often attacked and insulted each other even in the synagogues and prayer-houses, frequently inflicting wounds with the rapier or sword which they usually carried.  Many Jews had two wives, which privilege, however, was conferred by royal permission.”  [This is usually their downfall in nation after nation.]

1489 an Epistle from the “Prince of the Jews” has similar attributes as the infamous Protocols.  In 1889, the Revue des Etudes Juives, financed by James Rothschild, published this document:

**** “Beloved brethren in Moses, we have received your letter in which you tell us of your anxieties and misfortunes which you are enduring.  We are pierced by as great pain to hear it as yourselves.  The advice of the Grand Satraps and Rabbis is the following:

1. As for what you say that the King of Spain (Ferdinand) obliges you to become Christians: do it, since you cannot do otherwise.

2. As for what you say about the command to despoil you of your property: make your sons merchants that they may despoil, little by little, the Christians of theirs.

3. As for what you say about making attempts on your lives:  make your sons doctors and apothecaries, that they may take away Christian lives.

4. As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues:  make your sons canons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches.

5. As for the many other vexations you complain of:  arrange that your sons become advocates and lawyers, and see that they always mix in affairs of State, that by putting Christians under your yoke you may dominate the world and be avenged on them.

6. Do not swerve from this order that we give you, because you will find by experience that humiliated as you are, you will reach the actuality of power. -Signed: Prince of the Jews of Constantinople.”

1490 GENEVA (Switzerland) -Jew were expelled and not allowed to return for 300 years.  Jews had lived there since their expulsion from France by Philip Augustus in 1182.

Alphonso de Spina (  – ~ 1491) was a Spanish Franciscan Catholic Bishop, preacher and writer.  Earlier suggested to be a convert from Judaism, accused the Jews of murdering children for ritual purposes.  He occupied the high position of Rector of Salamanca University, and his accusation was made in his work Fortalitium Fidei.

 1492   Christopher Columbus discovers America.  Is Columbus Jewish?  Many nationalities claim him, but Jewish merchants came to America quite early.

The Total Catholic Inquisition may have included the earliest “heretics” through modern history.  Many of the heretics were called “Jews” in papal writings, but might not have been.  Heretical groups included all the proto-Protestants along with Gnostic and others.  With a total of over 1200 years from when the Pope in Rome claimed primacy among Christian Bishops until the Protestant Reformation, the extreme total of dead has been estimated at 80 million.

 The Spanish Inquisition: 

Tomás de Torquemada, O.P. (1420 – 9/16, 1498) was a fifteenth century Spanish Dominican friar, first Inquisitor General of Spain, and confessor to Isabella I of Castile.  He is known for his campaign against the crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims of Spain.  He was one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492.  Concerning the number of autos-de-fé during Torquemada's tenure as Inquisitor General: According to the Catholic Church, about 2000 people were burned at the stake due to prosecution by the Spanish Inquisition in the whole of Spain between 1480 and 1530.  According to the Jewish archives, as many as 140,000 Catholics and non-Catholics, including Jews, Muslims and Pagans, were persecuted and burned at the stake during the period known as the Spanish Inquisition.

Every Spanish Christian over the age of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) was accountable to the Inquisition.  Those who had converted from Judaism or Islam but who were suspected of secretly practicing their old rites, as well as others holding or acting on religious views contrary to Catholicism, were targeted.  Anyone who spoke against the Inquisition could fall under suspicion – as did saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross.  To stem the spread of heresy and anti-Catholicism, Torquemada promoted the burning of non-Catholic literature, especially the Talmud and, after the final defeat of the Moors at Granada in 1492, Arabic books as well.   Although the Inquisition is often viewed as being directed against Jews, in actual fact it had no jurisdiction or authority over unconverted Jews, or Muslims.  Only baptized Christians faced investigation; and of those called to appear before the Holy Office, most were released after their first hearing without further incident.

Accusations of excess regarding the Spanish Inquisition can be supported by reference to a papal bull by Pope Sixtus IV dating from early 1482 (before Torquemada's appointment as Grand Inquisitor), affirming that, many true and faithful Christians, because of the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other low people—and still less appropriate—without tests of any kind, have been locked up in secular prisons, tortured and condemned like relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and properties, and given over to the secular arm to be executed, at great danger to their souls, giving a pernicious example and causing scandal to many.  So hated did he become that at one point Torquemada traveled with a bodyguard of 50 mounted guards and 250 armed men.  After 15 years as Spain's Grand Inquisitor, he died in 1498 in Ávila.  For his role in the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada's name has become a byword for fanaticism in the service of the Catholic religion.  Secrecy being one of the keys to the workings of the Inquisition, Torquemada's Manual of Instructions did not appear publicly in print until 1576, when it was published in Madrid.  In 1832, Torquemada's tomb was ransacked, his bones stolen and burnt to ashes.  Torquemada appears to have had Jewish ancestry, he was a Converso.   Torquemada, himself of Jewish blood (Roth, History of the Marranos, 1931, p. 39), must have confirmed the sentence of death against the Jews responsible for the Toledo ritual murder, and it would be through him that Ferdinand and Isabella would learn about it.  The Ritual Murder case was one of the main factors which disposed the King and Queen to expel the Jews from Spain.

The Spanish Empire:

The Portuguese Empire:

1492   The Jews are Expelled from Spain accused of helping the Moors, among other reasons.  Some Jews, called Marranos, convert to Catholicism but secretly practice Judaism.  They are also still prevalent in mercantilism, money-lending and court influence.  Jews have a long history of being Crypto or hidden Jews, usually to simply assimilate or for safety, but often for subterfuge.  Jewish center of influence leaves Spain for Turkey and Turkish-controlled southern Europe.  “Ritual murder was one of the chief factors, if not the decisive one, in the decision of Fernando and Isabel for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.” - William Thomas Walsh (Isabella of Spain)  1492 March 31, EDICT OF EXPULSION (Spain)  Since professing Jews were not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, the Church leveled a ritual murder accusation against them in Granada and was thus able to call for the expulsion of both Jews and Marranos from Spain. The Marranos themselves were accused of complicity in the case, and both were ordered to leave within four months.  Torquemada, the director of the Inquisition (and incidentally of Jewish descent), defended this against Don Isaac Abarbanel.  It is estimated that approximately 200,000 Jews were living in Spain.  Approximately half of them found temporary sanctuary in Portugal.  Many also flee to Amsterdam.  Another 50,000 fled to friendlier shores and the rest remained as "Christians".  Expulsion from Spain scattered Jews throughout Europe to influence, promote and fund Protestant groups within the Reformation.

King Ferdinand (1452-1516) and Queen Isabella (1451-1504) of Spain: “We are informed by the Inquisition and others of the great harm that persists for the Christians when they communicate with the Jews.” -From the decree of expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492).

 **** Jewish Immigration to Turkey - After Sultan Mehmed II's Conquest of Constantinople he found the city in a state of disarray.  After suffering many sieges, a devastating conquest by Catholic Crusaders in 1204 and even a case of the Black Death in 1347, the city was a shade of its former glory.  As Mehmed wanted the city as his new capital, he decreed the rebuilding of the city.  And in order to revivify Constantinople he ordered that Muslims, Christians and Jews from all over his empire be resettled in the new capital. 

The number of native Jews was soon bolstered by small groups of Ashkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421–1453. Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis to save the Sephardic Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire.  The Sultan issued a formal invitation to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal and they started arriving in the empire in great numbers.  A key moment in Judeo-Turkic relations occurred in 1492, when more than 150,000 Spanish Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition, many to the Ottoman Empire.  At that point in time, Constantinople's population was a mere 70,000 due to the various sieges of the city during the Crusades and the so-called Black Death of the 14th century, so this historical event was also significant for repopulation of the city.  These Sephardic Jews settled in Constantinople as well as Salonika.  The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire: the Muslim Turks were largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions.  They also distrusted the Christian subjects whose countries had only recently been conquered by the Ottomans and therefore it was natural to prefer Jewish subjects to which this consideration did not apply.

The Spanish Jews were allowed to settle in the wealthier cities of the empire, especially in the European provinces, Western and Northern Anatolia, but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions.   The Jewish population at Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1,500 at the beginning of the 16th century. That of Safed increased from 300 to 2,000 families and almost surpassed Jerusalem in importance.  Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families.  Istanbul had a Jewish community of 30,000 individuals with 44 synagogues.

It is undeniable that the tolerance was enjoyed. Under the millet system they were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets (e.g. Orthodox millet, Armenian millet, etc.).  In the framework of the millet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by the Hakham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi.  There were no restrictions in the professions Jews could practice analogous to those common in Western Christian countries.  There were restrictions in the areas Jews could live or work, but such restrictions were imposed on Ottoman subjects of other religions as well.  Like all non-Muslims, Jews had to pay the harac ("head tax") and faced other restrictions in clothing, horse riding, army service etc., but they could occasionally be waived or circumvented.

Jews who reached high positions in the Ottoman court and administration include cabinet ministers, physicians and treasurers.  During the Classical Ottoman period (1300–1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity.  Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well in diplomacy and other high offices. 

As mentioned before, the overwhelming majority of the Ottoman Jews lived in the European-provinces of the Empire.  As the Empire declined however, the Jews of these regions found themselves under Christian rule.  The Bosnian Jews for example came under Austro-Hungarian rule after the occupation of the region in 1878, the independence of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia further lowered the number of Jews within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.

“Byazid II, the Ottoman sultan, considered the Spanish and Portuguese kings stupid for expelling the Jews. He saw the economic advantages of courting such a group… Many Jews left Hungary to join the Ottomans… They raised the financial level of his kingdom... They even helped him militarily by showing him how to use the latest weapons, including cannon. – “Gates to Jewish Heritage” by Rabbi David E. Lipman

With this new weaponry, the Ottomans were able to conquer all of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine in 1516…

More than 30,000 Jews settled in Constantinople, where they prospered and grew under this more benevolent rule. 

The Blessed Bernardine of Feltre (sometimes Bernardinus of Feltre) was a Friar Minor and missionary, (1439-1494).  During his iterant preaching he stirred up anti-Judaism throughout Italy, which in Trent led to accusations of blood libel against Jewish residents after the death of Simon of Trent, resulting in the torture and execution of seventeen Jews and the Expulsion of Jews from that city which lasted 300 years.  A mild man who extolled patience and charity in normal circumstances, he described himself as a "barking dog" when dealing with Jews:  "Jewish usurers bleed the poor to death and grow fat on their substance, and I who live on alms, who feed on the bread of the poor, shall I then be mute before outraged charity?  Dogs bark to protect those who feed them, and I, who am feed by the poor, shall I see them robbed of what belongs to them and keep silent?" (E. Flornoy, Le Bienbeureux Bernardin the Feltre)

  ****The House of Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century.  The bank was the largest in Europe during the 15th century, seeing the Medici gain political power in Florence — though officially they remained simply citizens, rather than monarchs.  The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church and in 1531 the family became hereditary Dukes of Florence.  By 1700, the Medici were both morally and fiscally bankrupt. 

 Their wealth and influence initially derived from the textile trade.  Like other signore families they dominated their city's government. They were able to bring Florence under their family's power, allowing for an environment where art and humanism could flourish.  The Medici Bank was one of the most prosperous and most respected institutions in Europe. There are some estimates that the Medici family was the wealthiest family in Europe for a period of time.  From this base, they acquired political power initially in Florence and later in wider Italy and Europe.  A notable contribution to the profession of accounting was the improvement of the general ledger system through the development of the double-entry bookkeeping system for tracking credits and debits.  This system was first used by accountants working for the Medici family in Florence.  On at least two occasions (between 1494–1512 and 1527–1530), popular revolts sent the Medici into exile.  [What caused these popular revolts that were more powerful than the King?, Usury and Jewish Supremacy?] The fate of the Jewish community was tied to the fate of the Medici family in Florence.  [The Jews have traditionally been in banking and textiles.  Were the Medici, Jews?]

 “The Medici didn’t start out as the most powerful family in Italy.  Other families were just as rich, and just as ambitious.  But no one knew more about getting ahead - and staying ahead - than the Medici.  They clawed their way to the top, sometimes through bribery, corruption and violence. Those who stood in their way could end up humiliated - or dead...  Governing Florence like a medieval mafia, the power of the Medici stretched all the way to Rome, where even the papacy was something to be bought and sold. They were the Godfathers of the Renaissance.”      “The Medici created a lucrative partnership with another medieval power, the Catholic Church.  In what had to be one of the most ingenious enterprises of all time, the Medici bank collected 10% of the people’s earnings for the Church.  If you couldn’t pay, you faced excommunication - a one-way ticket to hell. The Pope himself had a massive overdraft, and the Medici bank became the most profitable business in Europe.  By 1434, half the bank’s revenue came from the ‘Rome branch’, which was in fact little more than a mobile bank that followed the Pope around the world. Papal connections gave the Medici bank immense power; soon everyone wanted an account with the Pope’s personal bank.  The Medici kept ahead of their banking rivals because of the invention of limited liability.  Giovanni di Bicci had set up a franchise system, where regional branch managers shared a stake in the business.  Giovanni also banned loans to princes and kings, who were notoriously bad investments.  Consequentially, the Medici business remained in the black while its competitors lost fortunes.” (The Medici)   “The Jews and the Medici” affirms that while the Medici were in power, from 1537 to 1737, Jews were well protected in Tuscany, the region of northern Italy where Florence, the centre of the Renaissance, is located.  The fate of Tuscan Jewry in the early modern period was inextricably linked to the favor and the fortune of the House of Medici.

  ****Pawn Shops - Deuteronomy 24:6-13 it states: "No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man's life to pledge".  What this means is: you should not take as a pledge anything a man needs to make a living.  One of the least known origins is the coin known as the "Silver Shekel" of 68 ad.  One side of the coin depicted three pomegranates, with a common stalk.  According to legend, a Medici employed by Charlemagne slew a giant using three bags of rocks.  The three ball symbol became the family crest. (But why 6 balls on the crest?)  The symbol of the three balls was part of the coat of arms of the Medici family, who established the Medici trading and banking empire of the 15th century.  When the family was split in two, one half of the family became bankers and the other, pawnbrokers.  The pawnbroking side of the family took with it half of the family crest, the three gold balls.  Once other merchants involved in monetary dealing adopted the three golden balls as their symbol, the three balls came to symbolize the entire profession founded on the ethic of mutual trust.  The Italian 'Lombard' pawn shop method became famous.  The use of the term 'Lombard' for pawn shop grew spread throughout Europe.

1493  Hartmann Schedel (2/13 1440–11/28 1514) was a German physician, humanist, historian, and one of the first cartographers to use the printing press.  In 1493 he published Schedel's World Chronicle whose Maps in the Chronicle were the first ever illustrations of many cities and countries.  Johannes Gutenberg had invented the printing press in 1447.

 (portrait by Durer) Maximilian I (3/22, 1459 – 1/12, 1519), the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans (also known as King of the Germans) from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1493 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky.  He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from c. 1483.  He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today's Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy.  By marrying his son Philip the Handsome to the future Queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, Maximilian established the Habsburg dynasty in Spain and allowed his grandson Charles to hold the throne of both León-Castile and Aragon, thus making him the first de jure King of Spain.  Having outlived his father Philip, Charles succeeded Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and thus ruled both the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire simultaneously.

1495 Jews Expelled from Florence, from Naples in 1591, Milan in 1597

1497 Jews Expelled from Portugal.

The Jews leaving the Iberian Peninsula are Sephardic.  The slight, but continuing assimilation of gentile tribes and individuals have created a tribe different than those Jews leaving Palestine.  The Cohen-Levi priests had less assimilation.  Both priests and masses continue together in Western European nations.  Other priests and masses join with other their co-religionists in Eastern Europe, primarily Polish Ukraine and assimilate with the converted Khazars who have had their own assimilations.

**The Dutch Empire (Holland) now begins to supplant the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.

The Dutch Empire in orange and light orange

Many of the Expelled Jews from the Iberian Peninsula emigrated to the Netherlands region and later under Cromwell to England.  Many went to Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, which was giving sanctuary for their economic skills.  Some also began migrating to Poland / Russia to join their Khazarian Jewish co-religionists.  The Sephardic Jews of Spain were dark skinned with much Berber ancestry, not Hebrew.  The Askenazic or Khazarian Jews were lighter skin and are the majority (90%) of Jews today with  Mongol / Turkic ancestry, not Hebrew.

Johannes Trithemius (2/1 1462 – 12/13 1516), born Johann Heidenberg, was a German abbot, lexicographer, historian, cryptographer, polymath and occultist who had an influence on later occultism.   “It is clear that an objection to the usurious Jews is gradually developing amongst the high and low.  I approve of lawful methods of preventing the exploitation of the people by Jewish usury.  Shall a foreign invading people rule over us?  And rule over us not on account of their greater strength or higher virtue but through their wretched money?  Shall these people dare to fatten themselves without punishment on the sweat of the peasant and the craftsman?” (J. Janssen)

 Girolamo Savonarola (9/21 1452 – 5/23 1498) was an Italian Dominican friar, a Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498.  He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which began in his Florence—ought to become.  He preached vehemently against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time.  His main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia, who was Pope Alexander VI from 1492, through Savonarola's death in 1498.   We must abolish the pestiferous affliction and cankerous worm of usury, endured for sixty years in Florence, of the perfidious and God-hating Hebraic sect. (Sermons of 1495) Reportedly one of the most powerful orators of all time, Savonarola was successful for a time in ridding his city of the Jews who - supposedly barred from other pursuits – were lending money at interest rates as high as thirty per cent.  Savonarola and Giordano Bruno were both burned at the stake; oddly, they were also the only pair who spoke out against what they regarded as Jewish crimes against the non-Jew.

When Lorenzo de Medici -- Lorenzo the Magnificent, as he was known -- was on his deathbed in 1492, it is said that he called the very popular Savonarola to his side and begged him to administer the last rites.  Savonarola agreed, but on the condition that Lorenzo would grant three wishes to Savonarola.  1.Lorenzo, you must truly repent…agreed.  2.Lorenzo, you must give up your wealth…agreed.  3.Lorenzo, you must renounce any claim on behalf of the de Medici family to rule Florence and you must allow the city to become a democratic republic.  Lorenzo flatly refused. Savonarola therefore refused to administer this most sacred of the sacraments.  Later the Reformation also combined these 3 elements: a religious protest, a protest against wealth and splendor and a protest of a political nature.  The three ingredients are Religion, Economics and Politics.  With Lorenzo dead, Savonarola controlled the city of Florence until 1498.  Savonarola declared Florence a Christian republic, of which God was the sole sovereign, and His Gospel the law: the most stringent enactments were made for the repression of vice and frivolity.  Gambling was prohibited and the vanities of dress were restrained by sumptuary laws.  Even the women flocked to the public square to fling down their costliest ornaments and Savonarola's followers made huge "bonfires of the vanities".   The new system proved impracticable and the Medici regained its power.

 2/7, 1497 Bonfire of the Vanities refers to the burning of objects that are deemed to be occasions of sin.  The most known one took place on this date, when supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy, on the Mardi Gras festival.  The focus of this destruction was nominally on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, paintings, playing cards, and even musical instruments.  Other targets included books that were deemed to be "immoral," such as works by Boccaccio, and manuscripts of secular songs, as well as artworks, including paintings and sculpture.

 Sandro Botticelli (c1445 – 5/17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance.   Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera.  He was in agreement with Savonarola and painted religious scenes.

 ****Medieval Laborers “in the 13^th century, when the Teutonic races began to build up their new world, the agriculturist over nearly the whole of Europe was a freer man, with a more assured existence, than he is today; copyhold was the rule, so that England, for example-today the seat of landlordism- was even in the 15^th century almost entirely in the hands of hundreds of thousands of farmers, who were not only legal owners of their land, but possessed in addition far-reaching free rights to common pastures and woodlands.” Chamberlain  The average laborer worked only 14 weeks a year, and not surprisingly there were 160-180 holidays a year.  “The men of the 15^th century were very well paid.”-Lord Leverhulme

  "John Barleycorn" is an English folksong.  The character of John Barleycorn in the song is a personification of the important cereal crop barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it, beer and whisky.  In the song, John Barleycorn is represented as suffering attacks, death and indignities that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting.  -printed before 16^th century

1494 Aldine Press issued the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics (Latin and Greek masterpieces plus a few more modern works).  The press was the first to issue printed books in the small octavo size, similar to that of a modern paperback, and like that intended for portability and ease of reading.  The firm continued until 1597.

 Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (3/16, 1445 –3/10, 1510), was a Swiss-born priest, considered one of the greatest of the popular preachers of the 15th century.  "Are the Jews better than the Christians because that they do not want to work with their hands?  They are not under the saying of God: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn your bread!”  Making money by usury is not working; it is flaying others while themselves remaining idle."

 The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem is a Roman Catholic order of knighthood created in 1496.  Until 1949, the office was vested in the papacy, now by cardinals.  The Order is now primarily honorific.  Its principal mission is to reinforce the practice of Christian life by its members in absolute fidelity to the Popes; to sustain and assist the religious, spiritual, charitable and social works of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land; and to conserve and propagate the faith in the Holy Land and the rights of the Catholic Church there.  As it is a papal honor aspirant members must be practicing Catholics of good character, recommended by their local bishop with the support of several members of the Order, and are required to make a generous donation as "passage money" (echoing the ancient practice of crusaders paying their passage to the Holy Land) as well as an annual financial offering for works undertaken in the Holy Land.  

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