The Jewish Experience of the Crusades and the Crusade Chronicles

🏰 The First Crusade in particular, but also the Second and Third Crusades, shattered the Jewish communities of the Rhineland Valley, profoundly altering the patterns of Jewish life in Ashkenaz.

Detail from the Crusader Bible (also known as the Morgan Picture Bible, the Maciejowski Bible, and the Shah Abbas Bible), made c. 1250in the court of the French “Crusader King” Louis IX, depicting King David defeating the Phillistines in the style of thirteenth-century French crusaders. The Morgan Library and Museum, MS. M.368, fol. 39r (detail).

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