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Entangled Negotiations: Josel of Rosheim and the Peasants' Rebellion of 1525

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2016

Debra Kaplan
Debra Kaplan*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

At the height of the 1525 Peasants' Rebellion, Josel of Rosheim negotiated directly with the peasants. Although he described this interaction in his writings, he omitted the content of their conversation. Previous scholars have examined the contemporaneous negotiation between the Christian authorities in Strasbourg and the peasants as a parallel to Josel's negotiation. Their interpretations of what transpired between Josel and the peasants, heavily shaped by modern Jewish-Christian relations, are wanting. This article uses histoire croisée to reassess the negotiation. By considering the personal relationships between Josel and Strasbourg's political and religious leaders alongside Josel's writings, it argues that the Jewish and Christian negotiators coordinated their efforts. This case study models a method through which scholars can begin to move beyond recognizing parallels and toward analyzing the transmission of information and ideas between Jews and Chrisitians.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 125 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2016 

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References

1. Joseph of Rosheim: Historical Writings, ed. Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996), 290. Archives départementales du Bas Rhin (ADBR) C78 (54); Archives municipals de Strasbourg (AMS) III/174/21/98. Although I consulted the archives independently in the course of my own research on other topics, for readers’ convenience and accessibility I have referenced the published work of Fraenkel-Goldschmidt wherever possible. For clarity, I have differentiated my references to the primary sources published in this book from Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's commentary by referring either to Josel or to Fraenkel-Goldschmidt as the respective authors. The chronicle has been published in an English edition as The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany, trans. Naomi Schendowich, ed. Adam Shear (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Because in certain places, including the entry about the Peasants’ War, I think there is a more precise translation of the Hebrew original, I have modified Schendowich's translation and substituted my own translation of the Hebrew. Thus, unless otherwise noted, references to Fraenkel-Goldschmidt are to the Hebrew edition.

2. References to their works appear below.

3. See the edition of the Twelve Articles in Tom Scott and Bob Scribner, eds., The German Peasants' War: A History in Documents (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991), 251–276.

4. There were six peasants’ revolts from 1450–1474, eight from 1475–99, and no less than eighteen from 1500–1524. See Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (New York: Oxford, 1991), 202–203. For the 1493 Bundschuh in Alsace, see Gerd Mentgen, Studien zur Geschichte der Juden im mittelalterlichen Elsaß (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1995); Georges Bischoff, “Le Bundschuh de l'Ungersberg (1493),” in Bundschuh: Untergrombach 1502, das unruhige Reich und die Revolutionierbarkeit Europas, ed. Peter Blickle and Thomas Adam (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 53–79. In later years, the Peasants’ Rebellion held great interest for scholars focusing on class struggle. The peasants were also embraced as ideological icons by various groups, including the Nazis, who named a division of the SS cavalry after Florian Geyer, one of the leaders of the Peasants’ Rebellion, in 1944. Likewise, the peasants were idealized in East Germany, leading to the development of songs, videos, and ideologically driven interpretations of the Peasants’ Rebellion in school textbooks. One example of the popularity of the Peasants’ Rebellion is a (mock) song that deals with the 1525 events. See http://www.volksliederarchiv.de/text1272.html. It has been performed by the East German army and by contemporary punk rock bands. I thank Ruth von Bernuth for these references to East Germany.

5. Scholarship about the Peasants’ Rebellion includes both Marxist interpretations as well as studies of the Reformation. For some illustrative examples, see Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (1850). For an online version that also contains the preface to the second edition, see https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch07.htm; Peter Blikle, The Revolution of 1525, ed. and trans. Thomas A. Brady and H. C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Scott, Tom, “The Peasants’ War: A Historiographical View,” Historical Journal 22 (1979): 693–720CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 953–974.

6. For the intersection between theology and politics in Alsace, see Franziska Conrad, Reformation in der bäuerlichen Gesselschaft: Zur Rezeption reformatorischer Theologie in Elsass (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984).

7. Martin Luther, Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Articles of the Peasants in Swabia, in D. Martin Luthers Werke Kritische Ausgabe (WA), 28:291–334 (Weimar: Herman Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1883–); Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes, WA, 28:357–361.

8. The quintessential example of magisterial and clerical cooperation is from Strasbourg. See Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978); Lorna Jane Abray, The People's Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). On the Radical Reformation, see G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962). Hubmaier and Müntzer, both associated with the Peasants’ Rebellion, have been characterized as radicals. For an overview, see Cameron, European Reformation, 319–325. On Hubmaier's local impact, see Scott, Tom, “Reformation and Peasants’ War in Waldshut and Environs: A Structural Analysis,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 69 (1979): 82–102Google Scholar and 70 (1980): 140–168. On Müntzer, see Tom Scott, Thomas Müntzer: Theology and Revolution in the German Reformation (New York: Saint Martin's, 1989). For the radicals and their takeover of the city of Münster, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists,” in The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 51–69.

9. Selma Stern, Josel of Rosheim: Commander of German Jewry in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, trans. Gertrude Hirschler (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1965), 76–78; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 132–146.

10. For an overview of the Jews and the Peasants’ War, see Stern, Alfred, “Die Juden im grossen deutschen Bauernkrieg 1525,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 8 (1870): 57–72Google Scholar. Stern's approach has a clear agenda in which he asserts that Jews were also victims of the Peasants’ Rebellion. Like Engels, Stern saw the rebellion as intimately connected to the events of 1848, and as such, he sought to dispute the notion that Jews were revolutionaries. On this trend in nineteenth-century historiography, see Baron, Salo W., “The Impact of the Revolution of 1848 on Jewish Emancipation,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 3 (1949): 231Google Scholar; Ismar Schorsch, “The Lachrymose Conception of Jewish History,” in From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 377–379; Roemer, Nils, “Turning Defeat into Victory: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Martyrs of 1096,” Jewish History 13, no. 2 (1999): 65–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 49–50, 144. For a discussion of the impact of the Peasants’ Rebellion on the Jews of different regions, see Hava Fraenkel-Golschmidt, introduction to Historical Writings, 138–139.

11. Michael Toch, “The Formation of a Diaspora: The Settlement of Jews in the Medieval German Reich,” in Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History, Variorum Collected Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 55–78 (IX); Dean Philip Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).

12. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 76; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 138.

13. On refuge requested and granted see AMS V/1/13; AMS III/174/38/9; AMS III/174/24. The third document has been published in its original German and in Hebrew translation in Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 328–348. The relevant passage is on pp. 342–343.

14. Debra Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians and Reformation Strasbourg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 69–92.

15. AMS III/174/23. Published in Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 376–390.

16. The same was true of other cities in Alsace, such as Hagenau. See Èlie Scheid, Histoire des Juifs de Haguenau: suivi des recensements de 1763, 1784 et 1808 (Paris: Librarie A. Durlacher, 1885), xi–xiii.

17. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 76; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 144.

18. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 290.

19. Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 142.

20. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 290.

21. The details of the peasants’ attempt to attack Rosheim are discussed below.

22. Elisheva Carlebach, “Between History and Myth: The Regensburg Expulsion in Josel of Rosheim's Sefer ha-Miknah,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N. Myers (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), 40–53.

23. His later correspondence is discussed at length below.

24. For a biography and interpretation of Selma Stern and her work, see Marina Sassenberg, Selma Stern (1890–1981): Das Eigene in der Geschichte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).

25. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, ix.

26. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, vi–viii.

27. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, ix.

28. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 77.

29. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 275.

30. Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 76–77.

31. Sassenberg, Selma Stern, 217.

32. Josel of Rosheim, Sefer ha-miknah, ed. Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1970).

33. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings.

34. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 290.

35. Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion, 150–154.

36. Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 140. The comparison with Gerber is on p. 140 n. 24.

37. See for example the work of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, who was Fraenkel-Goldschmdt's mentor. Ben-Sasson argued this in respect to Alsace in “The Social Teaching of Rabbi Johanan Loria” [in Hebrew], Zion 27 (1962): 166–198Google Scholar.

38. Berger, David, “A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World,” Tradition 38, no. 2 (2004): 11Google Scholar.

39. This is a direct quote from Schendowich's English translation of Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 150–151.

40. Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, trans. Schendowich, 151.

41. On evidence of the consistency with which Josel acted, and the difference between his attitudes and his generally pragmatic behavior, see Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion, 158–159.

42. For a few examples from different regions, see Magda Teter, “‘There Should Be No Love between Us and Them’: Social Life and the Bounds of Jewish and Canon Law in Early Modern Poland,” in Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland, ed. Adam Teller, Magda Teter and Anthony Polonsky, Polin 22 (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 249–270; Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Jay Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Robert Liberles, Jews Welcome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2012); David B. Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York: New York University Press, 1992); Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

43. Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 115–140.

44. Ivan Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 449–516; Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Shoham-Steiner, Ephraim, “‘For a Prayer in That Place Would Be Most Welcome’: Jews, Holy Shrines, and Miracles—A New Approach,” Viator 37 (2006): 339–395CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elisheva Baumgarten, “Daily Commodities and Jewish Religious Identity in the Medieval Jewish Communities of Northern Europe,” in Studies in Church History 50: Religion and the Household, Papers Read at the 2012 Summer and 2013 Winter Meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. John Doran, Charlotte Methuen and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2014), 97–121.

45. Elisheva Baumgarten, Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Observance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). See the methodological discussion in the introduction.

46. Kaplan, Debra and Teter, Magda, “Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: European Jews and Reformation Narratives,” Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009): 365–393Google Scholar.

47. See the historiographic remarks in the preface for the second edition of Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013).

48. On the term “entangled history,” or histoire croisée, see Zimmerman, Benedicté and Werner, Michael, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50Google Scholar. On using connected histories to study early modern Jewry, see David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 224–225. See also Elisheva Baumgarten, Practicing Piety, 8.

49. Other clear exceptions include particular Christian Hebraists, such as Pico della Mirandola, Egidio da Viterbo, Johannes Reuchlin, and Johannes Wagenseil, all of whom had teachers who can be identified. Texts can also trace the transmission of knowledge, as was argued recently by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “Compilation and Observation in Johann Buxtorf's Synagogue of the Jews” (lecture, Katz Center for Jewish Studies, Philadelphia, October 30, 2014). Similarly, see Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion, 127–134.

50. Another clear example of a mechanism for exchange is the use of Christian relics as collateral in loans, which would have clearly brought Jews into contact with Christian holy objects. See Barrie Dobson, “The Role of Jewish Women in Medieval England,” in Christianity and Judaism: Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 29 (Oxford: Ecclesiastical History Society, 1992), 156; Joseph Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 22–44. On using texts to reconstruct the subjects of conversations see Kaplan, Debra, “Sharing Conversations: A Jewish Polemic against Martin Luther,” Archiv für Reformationgeschichte 103 (2012): 41–63Google Scholar.

51. See for example, Micha Perry, “Female Slaughterers: Halakhic Traditions and Late Medieval Realities” [in Hebrew], in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies, Essays in Honor of Robert Bonfil, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Roni Weinstein (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2011), 127–146, in which Perry points to both different halakhic trends as well as professionalization as factors for understanding when and where women practiced ritual slaughter; Fishman, Talya, “The Penitential System of Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Problem of Cultural Boundaries,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 201–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See p. 204, where she discusses a “proximate cause” that explains the contemporaneous adoption of similar practices among medieval Jews and Christians, and p. 215, where she suggests osmosis, shared public spaces, and economic contacts as “possibilities rooted in the historic imagination.” For an argument that the domestic space was particularly conducive to sharing “neutral” ideas, see Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children.

52. AMS III/174/21; Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 342–343.

53. AMS III/174/23. Published in Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 376–390.

54. Martin Luther, WA Briefe, 8:76–79, 89–91; WA Tischreden, 3:442.

55. AMS III/174/21/98.

56. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 289–290.

57. Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion, 151–164. The book of Esther was used frequently by many writers, likely because it tells a story of the Diaspora in which Jews were ultimately saved.

58. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 302; Josel of Rosheim, Sefer ha-miknah, 14, 74. The bishop of Brandenburg had sought to expel the Jews. See Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 99–108.

59. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 289.

60. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 294–295. For Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's overview, see p. 175.

61. M. Avot 3:2.

62. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 289–290.

63. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 342.

64. The letter, held in ADBR C78 (54), was published by Ludwig Feilchenfeld, Rabbi Josel von Rosheim: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland im Reformationszeitalte (Strassburg: Heitz, 1898), appendix 30. The letter was written in the context of an argument that Josel had with the magistrates of Rosheim. The magistrates sought to expel the small city's Jewish residents, but Josel successfully negotiated that eight Jewish households would be permitted to stay. The conflict, however, led to violence, and the windows of Josel's home were smashed while he was away on a journey. Although the magistrates punished the perpetrators, they asked Josel's son to leave the city or to pay a hefty fine; when he did not, goblets that belonged to Josel were impounded. It was at this point that the case was submitted to the magistrates of Hagenau, who were to serve as a court to decide the matter. As part of the documentation for that case, Josel wrote a letter in which he expressed his dismay that this happened, especially given his advocacy for the city over the years. He details that he had saved Rosheim's inhabitants during the Peasants’ Rebellion decades earlier. Although the letter has a clear agenda, as Josel's purpose in writing it was to remind the magistrates of his proven loyalty to his home city, neither the magistrates of Rosheim nor those of Hagenau dispute his narrative; the details of what happened twenty-nine years earlier may therefore be considered reliable.

65. The contract is AMS III/174/21/98. The right, Hellersrecht, protected Jewish lenders who had taken as collateral an item that had, unbeknownst to them, been stolen. Josel had protected this right at the Ausgburg Reichstag in 1530. On the Hellersrecht, see Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 170, especially n. 16. This right was specifically waived by Josel in his negotiations with Strasbourg's magistracy. See Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion, 84–85.

66. AMS III/174/21/98.

67. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 313–349. On Bucer, see Martin Bucer, Judenratschlag; and Bucer, Von der Juden: Brief an einen guten Freund, Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften, 7: Schriften der Jahre 1538–1539, ed. Robert Stupperich (Gütersloh: E. W. Kohl, 1964); Eels, Hasting, “Bucer's Plan for the Jews,” Church History 6 (1937): 127–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Carl, “Martin Bucer and His Influence on the Jewish Situation,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 12 (1968): 93–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Historical Writings, 313–322.

68. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 342–343.

69. Josel of Rosheim, Historical Writings, 342.

70. The methodology of histoire croisée, which treats each community on its own terms, while mining sources that include the intersections between different communities, is particularly useful when considering the distinctiveness of each community. See Baumgarten, Practicing Piety, 220–224.

71. For recent works that examine the impact of the Reformation on local Jews, see R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., In and out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jutta Braden, Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie 1590–1710 (Hamburg: Hans Christians, 2001); Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett, eds., Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion.

72. For an overview, see Scott, “Peasants’ War,” 706–713. The respective works of Blikle and Scott (“Peasants’ War in Waldshut”), referenced above, are relevant to this point.

73. Tom Scott, Regional Identity and Economic Change: The Upper Rhine, 1450–1600 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Scott, Town, Country, and Regions in Reformation Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

74. Scott, “Peasants’ War,” part 2, 166–168.

75. For several examples in which these themes have been discussed, see Magda Teter, “Material Possessions and Religious Boundaries in Early Modern Poland” (lecture, The Early Modern Workshop, University of Maryland, College Park, August 21, 2007), accessed at http://www.earlymodern.org; Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchanges; Kaplan, “Sharing Conversations.”