The first wave of the First Crusade, the People's Crusade of 1096, was a mixture of peasants and knights led by dynamic and persuasive rabble-rousers such as Peter the Hermit, Walter the Penniless, Count Emicho of Leiningen, the priest Volkmar, and the monk Gottschalk.
Although many of these crusaders got no further than the Balkans, they often took part in ferocious persecution of Jews, particularly in the Rhineland, in towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Speyer and Worms, but also in France, Hungary, Bavaria and Bohemia, where they sacked Jewish quarters, massacred the inhabitants and destroyed whole communities. Some tried forcibly to baptise Jews, despite the fact that forced baptism was contrary to canon law.
In response, some Jews preferred to martyr both themselves (the practice of Kiddush ha-Shem, ‘sanctifying the…