1 The Black Death and the Jews Various sources 1348 1349 Papal bull Sicut Judeis Clement VI July 1348 Recently it has been brought to our attention by public fame or more accurately infamy that numerous Christians are blaming the plague with which God provoked by their sins has afflicted the Christian people on poisonings carried out by the Jews at the instigation of the devil and that out of their own hotheadedness they have impiously slain many Jews making no exception for age or sex and that the Jews have been falsely accused of such outrageous behavior It cannot be true that the Jews by such a heinous crime are the cause or occasion of the plague because throughout many parts of the world the same plague by the hidden judgment of God has afflicted and afflicts the Jews themselves and many other races who have never lived alongside them We order you by apostolic writing that each of you upon whom this charge has been laid should straightly command those subject to you both clerical and lay not to dare on their own authority or out of hotheadedness to capture strike wound or kill any Jews or expel them from their service on these grounds and you should demand obedience under pain of excommunication The Confession of Agimet of Geneva Ch tel October 20 1348 By the fall of 1348 and on the authority of Amadeus VI Count of Savoy a number of the Jews who lived on the shores of Lake Geneva having been arrested and put to the torture naturally confessed anything their inquisitors suggested These Jews under torture incriminated others Records of their confessions were sent from one town to another in Switzerland and down the Rhine River into Germany and as a result thousands of Jews in at least two hundred towns and hamlets were butchered and burnt The sheer loss of numbers the disappearance of their wealth and the growing hatred of the Christians brought German Jewry to a catastrophic downfall It now began to decline and did not again play an important part in German life till the seventeenth century The first account that follows is a translation from the Latin of a confession made under torture by Agimet a Jew who was arrested at Chatel on Lake Geneva It is typical of the confessions extorted and forwarded to other towns The year of our Lord 1348 On Friday the 10th of the month of October at Ch tel in the castle thereof there occurred the judicial inquiry which was made by order of the court of the illustrious Prince our lord Amadeus Count of Savoy and his subjects against the Jews of both sexes who were there imprisoned each one separately Jews were sometimes imprisoned separately to prevent suicide This was done after public rumor had become current and a strong clamor had arisen because of the poison put by them into the wells springs and other things which the Christians use demanding that they die that they are able to be found guilty and therefore that they should 2 be punished Hence this their confession made in the presence of a great many trustworthy persons Agimet the Jew who lived at Geneva and was arrested at Ch tel was there put to the torture a little and then he was released from it And after a long time having been subjected again to torture a little he confessed in the presence of a great many trustworthy persons who are later mentioned To begin with it is clear that at the Lent just passed Pultus Clesis de Ranz had sent this very Jew to Venice to buy silks and other things for him When this came to the notice of Rabbi Peyret a Jew of Chamb ry who was a teacher of their law he sent for this Agimet for whom he had searched and when he had come before him he said We have been informed that you are going to Venice to buy silk and other wares Here I am giving you a little package of half a span in size which contains some prepared poison and venom in a thin sewed leather bag Distribute it among the wells cisterns and springs about Venice and the other places to which you go in order to poison the people who use the water of the aforesaid wells that will have been poisoned by you namely the wells in which the poison will have been placed Agimet took this package full of poison and carried it with him to Venice and when he came there he threw and scattered a portion of it into the well or cistern of fresh water which was there near the German House in order to poison the people who use the water of that cistern And he says that this is the only cistern of sweet water in the city He also says that the mentioned Rabbi Peyret promised to give him whatever he wanted for his troubles in this business Of his own accord Agimet confessed further that after this had been done he left at once in order that he should not be captured by the citizens or others and that he went personally to Calabria and Apulia and threw the above mentioned poison into many wells He confesses also that he put some of this same poison in the well of the streets of the city of Ballet He confesses further that he put some of this poison into the public fountain of the city of Toulouse and in the wells that are near the Mediterranean sea Asked if at the time that he scattered the venom and poisoned the wells above mentioned any people had died he said that he did not know inasmuch as he had left everyone of the above mentioned places in a hurry Asked if any of the Jews of those places were guilty in the above mentioned matter he answered that he did not know And now by all that which is contained in the five books of Moses and the scroll of the Jews he declared that this was true and that he was in no wise lying no matter what might happen to him This Jew does not seem to know that the books of Moses and the scroll of the Jews are identical Letter from the City Councilors of Cologne to Conrad von Winterthur and the City Councilors of Strasbourg January 12 1349 Very dear friends all sorts of rumors are now flying abut against Judaism and the Jews prompted by this unexpected and unparalleled mortality of Christians which alas has raged in various parts of the world and is still woefully active in several places Throughout our city as in yours many winged Fame clamors that this mortality was initially caused and is still being spread by 3 the poisonings of springs and wells and that the Jews must have dropped poisonous substances into them When it came to our knowledge that serious charges had been made against the Jews in several small towns and villages on the basis of this mortality …
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