The Black Death In Europe

The Black Death was a devastating time period for all of Europe, but especially gruesome for the Jewish society, who was blamed for poisoning the wells and spreading the Plague. In Basel, the Jewish community was imprisoned, 130 children were separated from their parents, then baptized by force, and 600 adults were burned nearby on the sandbanks of the Rhine River. Historian Alfred Haverkamp explained that the initial impetus for the mistreatment of the Jews in Basel came from the upper classes and regional princes. The Jews were moneylenders who made loans to upper class people rather than lower class. Furthermore, they raised interest rates to extremes, while pressing clients harshly to ensure their own safety. They were easy scapegoats

for the Plague because many people were anti-Semitic during fourteenth century. The upper class people especially hated the Jews because they wanted to reprimand them for the usurious rates they were charging and to expel them from their lands. Although the elites were persecuting the Jews, they did not kill the moneylenders, but instead they often killed the cantors, doctors, and the especially the Rabbis. The upper classes’ persecution of religious figures in the Jewish community, such as Rabbis, but initial hatred of the Jews as moneylenders, leads one to question their true motives for the mass persecution of the Jews; whether it was more about religious hatred or economic gain. While there were many different reactions to the inexplicable death that surrounded Europeans during the Black Death, the Jews were the easiest scapegoat because of the anti-Semitism that already existed in Europe. Religious loathing was a contributing factor for why they were blamed and killed, but as revealed by primary source account “The Cremation of the Strasbourg Jews,” the leading cause of their persecution all over Europe was because of the potential for financial gain after their death.