The ''Solomon bar Simson Chronicle'' is an anonymous
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
narrative history produced in the mid-12th century (1140). Like the ''
Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle'' and the ''
Mainz Anonymous
The ''Mainz Anonymous'' (or the ''Narrative of the Old Persecutions'') is an account of the First Crusade of 1096 written soon thereafter by an anonymous Jewish author. The work is written in Hebrew. Its author is unknown, and it deals primarily ...
'', it is concerned with the
persecutions of Jewish communities in the
Rhineland
The Rhineland ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...
area, notably Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Trier, during the
First Crusade
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Muslim conquest ...
(1095-1099).
The text comes down to us in a manuscript of the 15th century, which was discovered only in the late 19th century. The transmitted text is complete, but marred by many scribal errors. A passage in the section on the Jewry in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
provides a date of 1140 for at least that part in which it occurs.
Contents and themes
The history focuses primarily on the Jewish martyrs of the persecutions. Anecdotal accounts were included to commemorate the martyrs, some of whom responded in extraordinarily radical fashion to the violence that awaited them. A Jew from Worms named Meshullam ben Isaac, for instance, is said to have sacrificed his son Isaac, killed his wife Zipporeh and finally to have committed suicide in order that their deaths will not come about at the hands of the Crusaders. The narrator comments that through his deed,
Meshullam ben Isaac surpassed the patriarch Abraham.
[Chazan, ''God, humanity and history'', p. 121.]
See also
*
Rhineland massacres
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or ''Gzerot Tatnó'' (, "Edicts of 4856"), were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096 ( ...
References
Secondary sources
* Chazan, Robert. ''God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives''. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000. .
* {{cite journal, first=Shlomo, last=Eidelberg, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uiRoOkfzg94C, title=The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, publisher=KTAV Publishing House Inc., year=1996, journal=History, isbn=978-0881255416
Crusade chronicles
Jewish medieval literature
1140s books
1140 in Europe
Hebrew-language chronicles