02/ The Massacre of Jews in the First Crusade (1096)

Introduction 

This series is not written to attack Christians, but to confront a tragic historical pattern. When antisemitic ideas have taken root in Christian societies, they have led to violence against Jews—not faithfulness to the Messiah’s mission. History shows that antisemitism rarely announces itself as hatred at first; it often presents itself as theology and concern. These stories are shared so we can recognize how the enemy has twisted religious language in the past and refuse to repeat it today.

Paul was clear: God has not rejected Israel (Rom. 11:1, 11), and her calling is “irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). He warned Gentile believers that failing to understand the mystery of Israel could lead to arrogance—and even judgment (Rom. 11:21–22, 25

What the Crusaders Really Did 

Recently, a pastor—also a best-selling author—posted online that “the blood of the Crusaders is screaming from heaven,” in response to King Charles knighting London’s Muslim mayor. I have little interest in weighing in on the king or the mayor. What concerns me is the historical and theological ignorance behind such a statement.

If one takes even a few minutes to learn what many of the Crusaders actually did—massacring Jews, murdering civilians, looting cities, committing acts of sexual violence, and carrying out acts of brutality ‘in Christ’s name’—it becomes clear how misplaced this kind of romantic language is. Whatever else they were, these men were not models of Christlike faithfulness. To celebrate them uncritically is not only historically dishonest, but spiritually dangerous. 

I have referred to Crusaders in other writings as “Christian Al-Qaeda.” Below you will see why!

Why go to the Holy Land when we can murder Jews here? 

In 1096, as thousands of Christians set out for Jerusalem in what became known as the First Crusade, some never made it past Europe. Inflamed by apocalyptic preaching, promises of absolution (the idea that the crusaders who die in battle inherit eternal life), and a sense of holy destiny, bands of crusaders turned their attention not toward distant Muslims, but toward their Jewish neighbors. What followed was one of the first large-scale eruptions of mass violence against Jews in Christian Europe.

“From the time of the Crusades, killing these so-called Christ killers would be transmuted into ‘an act of faith.’ The leader of the First Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon, even promised in 1099 ‘to leave no single member of the Jewish race alive.’” (Historian Robert S. Wistrich)¹ 

The crusade was launched after Pope Urban II’s call at the Council of Clermont in 1095, urging Christians to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control. Although Urban did not explicitly call for violence against Jews, his rhetoric framed the campaign as a cosmic struggle between Christianity and its enemies. The goal was to push the Muslims out of the Holy Land. However, the Crusaders reasoned, “If Jews were seen as enemies of Christ, why should they be spared while Muslims were targeted?”

No Daily Devotions 

Remember, at that time the average believer—and even many priests—did not have personal access to Scripture. Most were illiterate, the printing press had not yet been invented, and the Bible was mediated mainly through clerical authority. Few were encouraged to wrestle personally with Jesus’ commands to love enemies and to make disciples through the persuasion of the Holy Spirit rather than through threats or violence. When the Messiah’s teachings are filtered primarily through power structures—popes, bishops, and institutions—brutality becomes far easier to justify.

As crusading mobs moved through the Rhineland—cities such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Cologne, and Trier—they unleashed horrific violence on Jewish communities that had lived there for generations. Jews were offered a brutal choice: forced baptism or death. Many were slaughtered outright. Others, facing the prospect of forced conversion, chose suicide rather than abandon their faith—acts recorded with anguish in Jewish chronicles of the period.

Massacre in Mainz 

In May 1096, during the First Crusade, the Jewish community of Mainz—one of the largest and most prominent in medieval Europe—was nearly annihilated when Crusader mobs reached the city. About 800–900 Jews sought protection in the bishop’s palace, but when local defenses failed, Crusaders forced their way inside and carried out a mass slaughter. Jewish men, women, and children were murdered with swords, subjected to forced conversion, or killed after refusing baptism.

Solomon bar Simson recorded that the attackers sang Christian hymns while killing, treating the massacre as a sacred act. The destruction of Mainz became the most infamous of the Rhineland pogroms and a defining trauma in Jewish memory of the Crusades.

• Entire communities were wiped out. 

• Torah scrolls were desecrated and destroyed. 

• Homes were looted. 

• Sexual violence, including rape, occurred frequently during the First Crusade, not only against Jewish women, but also against Christian and Muslim women. 

• The violence was often accompanied by prayer, hymns, and appeals to Christian righteousness, making their crimes an act of faith and devotion—more akin to ISIS than Jesus the Messiah.

  
  

Not Allegation, but Atrocity 

No, these are not myths. Contemporary Christian sources themselves acknowledge that sexual violence accompanied the First Crusade. Albert of Aachen, a German cleric writing soon after the events and drawing on eyewitness testimony from returning crusaders, records widespread moral disorder among the crusading mobs, including the mistreatment and sexual violation of women during the march and after the sack of cities. 

Likewise, Guibert of Nogent, a Benedictine abbot and theologian, criticized the undisciplined religious zeal of crusaders and lamented the corruption, brutality, and sexual immorality that followed in the wake of their violence. These men were Christian witnesses to the barbaric behavior of the Crusaders in real time. 

These were not crimes committed in secret or under cover of darkness. They were public acts, carried out by people who believed they were doing God’s will. Murder was committed with religious zeal.

That kind of zeal is not unique to the Middle Ages. We saw something chillingly similar on October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel—celebrating, often under the influence of drugs, as they raped civilians and burned entire families alive. In both cases, violence was sanctified by ideology and carried out with a sense of divine approval.

A Righteous Remnant 

Some bishops attempted to intervene. In Speyer, the bishop sheltered Jews in his palace and punished a few attackers. In other cities, church authorities offered protection—sometimes sincerely, sometimes temporarily. But the overall pattern was unmistakable: when popular religious zeal overwhelmed moral restraint, Jewish lives were expendable. 

Called to “ Avenge Christ’s Death” 

What makes the Rhineland massacres especially chilling is how they were justified. Crusaders argued that avenging Christ’s death should begin at home. Yes, somehow they felt God was calling them to avenge the death of Jesus, though it was specifically his sacrificial death that brought salvation! 

Jews were portrayed as perpetual enemies, collectively guilty, and spiritually dangerous. False theology was turned into a murderous weapon. I see this same “theology” daily online, collectively blaming all Jews from all time for the death of Jesus.

“Posts claiming that ‘Jews killed Jesus’ increased by more than 1,000% on the X platform, formerly Twitter, in the first week after the Oct. 7 massacre and before Israel had even begun its operations against Hamas in Gaza. The reach of posts containing the phrase ‘Jews killed Jesus’ in the days after the attack … climbed from 2.8 billion views before Oct. 7 to 4.2 billion views between Oct. 7 and Oct. 24.” (www.firmisrael.org) 

These Rhineland massacres marked a turning point. Violence against Jews was no longer limited to isolated incidents or local accusations. Whole communities were rounded up and slaughtered. The idea that Christians could kill Jews as an act of faith had crossed a line—and once crossed, it would be crossed again. Mass murder and rape are demonic and addictive manifestations that always lead to more killing and sexual crimes. Instead of seeking to “provoke Israel to jealousy” (Rom 11:11), instead of lovingly seeking to bring the physical brothers of Jesus to faith, they chose revenge and bloodlust.

The Stain of the Crusades 

The First Crusade ended with the bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099. But for European Jewry, the catastrophe had already come. The massacres of 1096 demonstrated that Jewish survival in Christian lands was precarious, dependent not on law or justice, but on the restraint of the majority.

When Crusader forces captured Jerusalem at the end of the First Crusade, the city’s Jewish population was caught up in the broader massacre of Muslims that followed the breach of the walls. According to Muslim chroniclers such as Ibn al-Qalanisi and later historians, hundreds of Jews fled to the city’s great synagogue seeking refuge, but Crusaders set the building on fire, burning those inside alive. The Crusaders reportedly encircled the burning building with their shields and sang “Christ We Adore Thee!”. All this was carried out as an act of Christian faith in the same way that ISIS might behead an “infidel.” 

“Between a quarter and a third of the Jewish population in Germany and northern France (about ten thousand people) were killed in the first six months of 1096, mainly as a result of mob actions reinforced by religious fanaticism. The Crusades exacerbated preexisting grassroots hostility to the Jews, embedding the notion of Christ killers more firmly in the popular consciousness. Theological scapegoating of Jews also hardened.” (Wistrich) 

Remembering the Rhineland massacres forces Christians to confront a sobering truth: religious passion, when untethered from humility and love of neighbor, can become lethal. These events were carried out by people who prayed, fasted, and sang hymns—yet utterly failed to reflect the heart of Jesus or the witness of the apostles. 

Sadly, in our times, we have those who identify as Christians, even pastors, who are daily calling for not only the persecution of the Jews, but women and minorities in the name of Christian nationalism. Yes, just yesterday, I saw a pastor calling for the repealing of the 19th Amendment—women should not vote.  

This story, like so many others, is not told to assign blame across centuries. It is told because history teaches patterns. And patterns ignored will become patterns repeated. 

 [1] Wistrich is quoting a source, not Godfrey of Boullion directly.