274 THE DECLINE AND FALL separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennyless,^^ a valiant thouijh needy soldier, conducted a vanguard of pilgrims, whose condition may be determined from the proportion of eight horse- men to fifteen thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose sermons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by an herd of two hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal licence of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts and gentle- men, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil ; but their genuine leaders (may Ave credit such folly ?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine Spirit.^' Of these and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfai-e was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies were numer- ous and rich ; and they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of their religion.^^ At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred ; ^^ nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion ; but the more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricadoed their houses, and, precipitating them- selves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes. 36 [Along with his uncle Walter de Poissy.] ^Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac congregatione p'edestris populi stulti et vesanas levitatis, . . . anserem quendam divino Spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces [hujus] secundas vise fecerant, &c. (Albert. Aquensis, 1. i. c. 31, p. 196). Had these peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descendants would have glossed over with some specious and subtle allegory.
- Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish brethren from Cologne
along the Rhine : they were rich, generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the Messiah (Voyage, torn. i. p. 243-245, par Baratier). In seventy years (he VTOte about A.D. 1170) they had recovered from these massacres. ^ These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true that St. Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329y admonishes the Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judaei, noasunt trucidandL The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival monk.
