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Jerusalem by the Babylonians, of Nehemiah and Ezra, of the martyrs of the Seleucid period, of the
heroes of the Jewish resistance to Rome, of Rabbi Akiba and his associates, of the codification of the
Mishnah, of the crystallization of the two Talmuds God had seen fit to select the Jews of 1096 to bear
the burden of expiating the sin of the golden calf. While the experience of expiation involved enormous
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pain, the glory of being singled out by God in such a way had to be perceived as unique and noble.
The Jews so chosen could only in the eyes of our editor have been the very worthiest of all time.
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As noted, the essential thrust of the thinking of the editor of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is
toward the future: the roots of the present calamity are in the far distant Jewish past; the present
shows a picture of bloodshed and pain; the meaning of the events of 1096 will be fully felt in the
future. Moreover, that future will involve great reward, on an individual and group basis, for the
heroism of the martyrs; it will likewise entail punishment for the perpetrators of the catastrophe, the
crusaders and their burgher allies. Like the other voices we have encountered, this one reflects a
striking counter-crusade mentality. Christian triumphalism, which by the 1140s meant deep
satisfaction over the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, was ultimately misplaced selfcongratulation. Both
Jewish defeat and Christian victory would give way to stunning reversal. It may well be that our editor
saw in the agitation of the new crusade the beginnings of such a reversal. Looking back, we may well
feel that such projections of the future represented nothing more than a weak rationalization of the
present and its pain; again, however, our editor did not project this reversal in the abstract. His
central message was that this ultimate reversal of the roles of 1096 was rooted in the inevitable divine
reaction to the realities as perceived by all our narrators unprecedented heroism on the part of the
Jewish men, women, and children subjected to the cruelty of the crusaderburgher assault in 1096.[27]
CERTITUDE AND PETITION:
THE HUMAN AND DIVINE AUDIENCES
To the extent that the Hebrew First Crusade narratives undertake time-bound objectives, they are of
course addressed to an immediate human audience; to the extent that they commit themselves to
timeless objectives, their audience is somewhat more complex. Even in undertaking timeless
objectives, the Hebrew narratives were surely addressed to a set of human audiences the immediate
survivors of 1096 and, beyond them, succeeding generations of Jewish readers. At the same time,
they were addressed to God himself. We have analyzed the thrust of the timeless message addressed
to a human audience; we must now attend to the message addressed to the divine auditor.
The Mainz Anonymous is somewhat less expressive in this direction
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than is the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle. Nonetheless, even in the Mainz Anonymous there are
occasional instances of direct outcry and petition to the Lord. These petitions, which are in large
measure cries of pain and outrage, are artfully dispersed throughout the narrative. In its early
segments, as the tension and level of violence build, there are no such outbursts. It is only after the
second assault on Worms Jewry, with the resultant destruction of that great community almost in its
entirety, that our narrator permits himself his first outcry, echoing the words of Isaiah: "At such things
will you restrain yourself, O Lord, [will you stand idly by and let us suffer so heavily?]"[28] Implicit
here is the setting within which the prophetic question was originally raised. This question-assertion is
found at the end of a lengthy passage bemoaning the ills of Jerusalem after its destruction by the
Babylonians. They cap a sequence of the following images:
Zion has become a desert,
Jerusalem a desolation.
Our holy Temple, your pride,
Where our fathers praised you,
Has been consumed by fire;
And all that is dear to us is ruined.[29]
Implicit here is, once more, identification of Worms Jewry with the Jerusalem of yore; both images
evoke an outcry of pain, despair, and even anger addressed to the God who had permitted such
tragedies to take place.
A second and lengthier outburst and petition is introduced at the end of the victorious and bloody
entrance of Emicho's troops into the palace courtyard of the archbishop of Mainz:
Sun and moon, why did you not hide your light? You stars, to whom Israel has been compared, and you twelve planets,
like the number of the tribes of Israel, the sons of Jacob, how is it that your light was not hidden, so that it not shine on
the enemy intending to blot out the name of Israel?[30]
Ostensibly addressed to the sun, moon, stars, and planets, these queries were in fact intended for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
