"I thought I would increase the honor I was bestowing on [Speyer] if I brought in the Jews." So wrote Rudiger, Bishop of Speyer, in a charter of 1084 granting privileges to the Jews. Bishop Rudiger's words and actions prove that, for some parts of Europe, the presence of a Jewish community brought advantages and prestige to the Christian majority. But, in 1096, a mob of crusaders and local burghers, fired up by zealous Christian rhetoric and anti-Semitism, attacked and murdered some of the city's Jews. That the massacre was not worse is due to the bishop, who, true to his word, sheltered and protected the Jews in his castle and severely punished the wrongdoers. He could not prevent, however, the spread of attacks against the Jews to other Rhenish cities like Mainz.

1. The massacre of Jews in Speyer was cruelly ironic, given the tolerance previously extended to Jews. Read the document in which Rudiger granted land and privileges to the city's Jewish community in 1084.
   http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1084landjews.html or
   http://www.jewishgates.org/history/eyewitness/speyer.stm or
   http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~his334/Sept11.html
2. Around 1140, the Jewish writer Solomon bar Sampson wrote an account of the crusaders' 1096 slaughter of the Jews in Mainz, located, like Speyer, on the Rhine river. Examine this document at
   http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1096jews-mainz.html
3. The ruins of Speyer's synagogue - the oldest extant remains of such a building in Europe - have been excavated. View pictures, including of the mikveh, or ritual bath, at
   http://www.speyer.de/de/tourist/sehenswert/judenhof/synagoge?switch_language=en