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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
*
debrakap@gmail.com

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.

Information

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

During the height of the 1525 Peasants' War in Alsace, Josel of Rosheim, the representative of the German Jewish community, went to negotiate with the peasants. His aim was to protect the Jews living in the Alsatian countryside, where he himself resided. According to a chronicle he composed in 1547, the negotiation had initially been successful. Although references to this negotiation have been preserved both in Josel's Hebrew chronicle and in his correspondence, housed in local archives, no detailed record of what was said during the conversation remains.Footnote 1 Previous biographers of Josel have sought to reconstruct his negotiation with the peasants, but their respective analyses were heavily shaped both by the time and place in which they lived, and by the particular methodologies in use at that time.Footnote 2 This article reassesses Josel's negotiation using the tools of histoire croisée, exploring the episode as a case study that highlights the necessity of studying Jewish history in a broader context.

The Context: Josel of Rosheim and the Peasants' Rebellion in Alsace

In late 1524 and 1525, the peasants in the Holy Roman Empire rebelled, seeking various rights, including the right to fish and hunt, the right to use the woods and meadows, the right of each community to appoint its own preacher, the elimination or reduction of certain taxes, and the abolition of serfdom.Footnote 3 Although this was not the first peasant rebellion in western Europe, the Peasants' Rebellion of 1525 is one of the most famous, both because of its importance in the larger context of the Protestant Reformation, and because of the romance and significance that it held for subsequent generations.Footnote 4

The Peasants' Rebellion began in southwest Germany and Alsace, spreading eastward to central Europe.Footnote 5 The violence reached a high point in the spring and summer of 1525. While the peasants' specific demands varied from region to region, the most popular iteration, the Twelve Articles, was printed and widely read. The articles presented a mix of economic and religious demands, employing Protestant rhetoric to argue that the Bible granted the peasants the rights they desired.Footnote 6

Despite the Protestant overtones of the peasants' claims, their cause was not championed by reformers such as Martin Luther. Luther ultimately argued that reform of the church should be implemented with the acquiescence of princely and urban authorities. Indeed, Luther wrote against Thomas Müntzer, one of the theologians who had embraced the Peasants' Rebellion.Footnote 7

Luther's decision to advocate for a magisterial rather than a radical reformation had significant impact on how Protestantism was adopted in various cities and villages. The Peasants' War is recognized as a central turning point that crystallized some of the distinctions between the mainstream reformers, who cooperated with magistrates to usher in reform, and the radical reformers, some of whom sought to establish utopian societies.Footnote 8 The ultimate defeat of the radical reformers and of the peasants by the princes of the Holy Roman Empire is thus viewed as a significant milestone in the early Reformation, paving the way for partnership between reformers and local rulers.

In Alsace, the peasants mobilized their forces in Altdorf, about eighteen kilometers southwest of Strasbourg, and seven kilometers northeast of Josel's hometown, Rosheim. Christian political leaders, including the local Landvogt and Martin Herlin, a councilor from Strasbourg, attempted to negotiate with the leader of the Alsatian peasants, Erasmus Gerber. Strasbourg's clerics, including Protestant reformers Matthias Zell, Wolfgang Capito, and Martin Bucer, also visited the peasants' leaders, claiming that their actions were not in line with Christian teaching. Though Strasbourg's reformers disagreed with various aspects of Luther's theology, they strongly agreed with his call for a magisterial reformation. They too argued that the peasants must heed the social order to usher in reform, and that the peasants must not use violence to attain their goals.Footnote 9

As residents of the areas in which the peasants rebelled, Jews were naturally also affected by the violence.Footnote 10 Indeed, in German lands in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Jews lived primarily in rural areas, and interacted frequently with peasants and with those who joined forces with them.Footnote 11 Jewish residents were also fearful of the peasants. In various parts of Germany, preachers who had been instrumental in securing the expulsions of Jews from various cities were actively involved as advocates on behalf of the peasants. Examples include Balthasar Hubmaier, who had been involved in the expulsion from Regensburg in 1519, and Johann Teuschlin, who had helped expel the Jews from Rothenberg in 1520.Footnote 12

The Jewish community in Alsace adopted several strategies for dealing with the peasant threat. First, the Jews sought and were granted refuge within Strasbourg's walls.Footnote 13 Although Strasbourg had expelled its Jewish population in 1390, and maintained a policy under which no Jews were permitted residence until 1791, the Jews of the Alsatian countryside frequently entered the city for economic purposes. They sold various goods, including wine, food, and animals; lent money; and adjudicated frequently in Strasbourg's courts.Footnote 14 Josel was in close contact with Strasbourg's magistrates, and had a close relationship with the reformer Wolfgang Capito, even attending his sermons and discussing Jewish books with the noted Hebraist.Footnote 15 Despite the expulsion, the relationship between the Jews of Alsace and the magistrates of Strasbourg was extensive, as reflected in the magistrates' agreement to grant the Jews refuge at this dangerous time.Footnote 16

In addition to securing refuge for the Jews of Alsace in Strasbourg, Josel of Rosheim went to the peasants' camp to negotiate directly with the leaders of the rebellion. Josel also personally knew one of the leaders of the peasants, Georg Ittel, as the latter had once served as Schultheiss, or mayor, of Rosheim.Footnote 17 In his 1547 chronicle, Josel explained that he had secured a promise from the peasant leaders not to harm the Jews: “By God's mercy, I came to them [the peasants] at the abbey called Altdorf, and spoke to their hearts with the Book [the Bible], to instruct the leaders of their forces who proclaimed aloud that the Jews were not to be harmed. Many letters of safe conduct for every city and region were also written.”Footnote 18 As Josel's most recent biographer, Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, has noted, the peasants gave similar written promises to other groups with whom they negotiated, and thus Josel's account is consistent with what we know about the Peasants' War.Footnote 19

Josel's chronicle continues by relating that the peasants did not keep their initial promise to the Jews, and also reports the peasants' ultimate failure:

Although in the end they [the peasants] went back on and broke their word and written promises, in any event, this announcement [the promise not to harm the Jews] constituted relief and deliverance for the Jews until it was the time and season for their [the peasants'] defeat, for the duke of Lorraine descended upon them to kill them with a great slaughter. Also in other territories thousands and tens of thousands were slain and drowned. Blessed be God who delivered us from their hands and from their evil thoughts. May He continue to save us. Amen.Footnote 20

Josel did not provide the specifics of how the peasants had breached their promise, although the fact that they had attempted to raid Rosheim, his home town, may have been at the forefront of his mind.Footnote 21

As is the case with almost all of the entries in his chronicle, Josel omitted many of the details of his own involvement, and instead shared his interpretation of the events he was describing.Footnote 22 Josel did not include the content of what he said to the peasants in either his chronicle or in any of his later correspondence in which he referenced the negotiations.Footnote 23 Thus, historians have sought to fill in this gap as they endeavor to understand Josel's initial success.

What Did Josel Negotiate? A Historiographic Perspective

The fact that both Josel of Rosheim and Strasbourg's lay and clerical leaders negotiated with the peasants did not escape scholarly attention. Lacking the aforementioned details about Josel's negotiation, scholars have turned to the negotiation between Strasbourg's leaders and the peasants, employing it as either a counterpoint or as a parallel to Josel's dialogue with the peasants. These historiographic approaches, as will be discussed below, were deeply shaped by modern Jewish-Christian relations. A reassessment of Josel's accounts alongside sources that document his relationships with Strasbourg's leaders indicates that earlier scholarship is wanting. The evidence suggests that the Jewish and Christian negotiations with the peasants were explicitly coordinated.

The first scholar to explore Josel's conversation with the peasants in depth was Selma Stern, who discusses the Peasants' War in her 1959 biography of Josel of Rosheim. Stern's interest in Josel was directly linked to her perceptions of her native Germany before, during, and after the Second World War. Stern was among the first female research fellows at the Akademie für Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. In 1941, she fled Germany for the United States, and after writing a series of novels about the medieval Jews of the Rhineland, turned her attention to Josel of Rosheim.Footnote 24 Stern's interpretation of Josel was based on the conviction that her own experience resembled that of Josel and his contemporaries: ”We are better able than previous generations were to understand the personality of Josel of Rosheim, and we feel a closer kinship to this man—who was bound to his people with a magic bond and who served with self-sacrificing devotion at a fateful turn in its history—than to our more fortunate ancestors of later centuries.”Footnote 25 Stern's reading of Josel's life was thoroughly shaped by the Holocaust. As she argued in the preface:

One could easily compare the fate of the sixteenth-century Jews, whose social and economic situation was so radically changed by their expulsion from most of the Imperial Cities and larger territories of the Reich with the great social and economic changes in our own lives. It is possible to draw a parallel between the host desecrations and ritual murder accusations, which so gravely imperiled the lives of the Jews of Germany in the beginning of the Modern Era, and the horrors of the gas chambers and concentration camps which we have witnessed in our own time. The inexplicable eruption of primitive and irrational forces in a century in which “the arts flourished and the sciences awakened” resembles in uncanny ways the breakthrough of sinister underworld powers in our own age, which boast of having mastered all the mysteries and of having conquered the unconscious passions and impulses of man.Footnote 26

Dedicating her book to her friend Leo Baeck, the rabbi of the German Jewish community, who had survived the Second World War, she noted that Baeck was “in many ways akin to Josel of Rosheim.”Footnote 27 For Stern, Josel, like Leo Baeck, was a hero dedicated to saving the Jews of Germany.

Stern's treatment of the Peasants' Rebellion follows this same line. Stern explained that Josel “had the gift of inspiring oratory which few opponents could withstand … he succeeded where both the Unterlandvogt, who was skilled in the art of political intrigue, and the Burgomaster, Martin Herlin, who had a sound, practical approach, had failed.”Footnote 28 According to Stern, Josel's success at negotiating with the peasants was due to his own personal charm and charisma, to his “political experience and diplomatic skills.”Footnote 29 Her admiration for Josel as a hero is clear from her comment that “we have no picture of him which would reveal how majestic his forehead was, how commanding his look, or how firm and steady his hands.”Footnote 30 Stern compared Josel's negotiation with the peasants to the Christian leadership's similar attempts solely to provide a backdrop for highlighting Josel's talents, heroism, and superior negotiation skills. Despite the fact that Josel actively participated in some of the most important European (Christian) events of his time, integrating Josel (and Jews) into European history was not Stern's goal. Rather, the history she presented is a “Jewish” history, distinct from the German narrative. This reflects Stern's own struggles with German and Jewish identity, which she grapples with throughout the book.Footnote 31

In recent decades, Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, an Israeli scholar, published two editions of Josel's writings. The first volume was his Sefer ha-miknah, a philosophical-theological treatise.Footnote 32 Twenty-six years later, she published a collection of Josel's writings, including various archival materials and a critical edition of his chronicle.Footnote 33 Each volume includes an extensive introduction that provides the larger context for his various works. Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's treatment of the Peasants' Rebellion is found both in her introduction and in her annotations of the chronicle.

Fraenkel-Goldschmidt presented a comprehensive narrative that includes Josel's involvement in the negotiations with the peasants, his attempts to save Rosheim (discussed below), and the refuge granted by the city of Strasbourg to Jews during the rebellion. Like Stern, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt analyzed factors that made Josel's negotiation with the peasants successful. Unlike Stern, who had attributed Josel's success to his charisma and innate talent, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt argued that it was the content of his words that swayed the peasants. Fraenkel-Goldschmidt looked to the text of the chronicle, cited again here: “I came to them at the abbey called Altdorf, and spoke to their hearts with the Book, to instruct the leaders of their forces who proclaimed aloud that the Jews were not to be harmed.”Footnote 34 Fraenkel-Goldschmidt correctly pointed out that Josel had based his argument on the words of the Bible, something that he had also done when communicating with Christians on other occasions.Footnote 35

She further explained: “It is possible to describe without difficulty what Josel said to the peasants and how he convinced them. The arguments that Josel was accustomed to press in his petitions to the authorities, concerning divine law, according to which all human beings possessed certain basic rights, could not fail to find a responsive chord with the peasants, who identified with the selfsame principles.”Footnote 36 Since Fraenkel-Goldschmidt knew that what Josel had said must have resonated for the peasants (at least in their initial meeting), in order to identify the content of the negotiation, she searched in Josel's other writings for ideas that would have appealed to the peasants. She also examined the writings of Erasmus Gerber, the leader of the Alsatian peasants. Noting that both Josel and Gerber had made similar arguments about human rights to political authorities in Alsace, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt posited that Josel must have drawn on these same principles in his own negotiation with Gerber, which is what caused Gerber to be receptive to Josel's request.

The claim that Gerber and Josel shared a belief in human rights implicitly acknowledges that Jews and Christians in premodern Europe operated on parallel tracks. Like her mentors and peers, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt did not engage in analyzing how or why these parallels existed, but the methods that she employed demonstrate a growing recognition among scholars that the European narrative was relevant to understanding Jewish history.Footnote 37

Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's approach differs markedly from Stern's, who cast the events of the sixteenth century in light of the tragedies of the twentieth century. As David Berger has noted, both Zionism and the decrease in anti-Semitism “in its medieval form” facilitated a historiographic shift that “liberated” historians from “the constraints of the past,” and opened their eyes to the connections between Jews and Christians.Footnote 38 Stern's interpretation, driven by the Holocaust, looked to Josel as a Jewish hero; by contrast, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt assumed that Josel and Gerber must have shared attitudes, and that when Josel negotiated on the basis of those shared values, he was successful.

In her analysis of Josel's attitude towards the peasants and the suppression of their rebellion, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt also commented that his negative view of the peasants was “in contrast to what might have been expected.” She felt compelled to explain what she saw as Josel's lack of sympathy for the peasants' “grave predicament, for the exploitation and oppression to which they felt themselves to be subject.”Footnote 39 Although many historians from Friedrich Engels on sympathized with the peasants, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's contention that Josel had argued to Gerber that he supported “human rights” for the respective peasant and Jewish underdogs likely heightened her need to explain Josel's indifference to their plight.

Fraenkel-Goldschmidt attempted to justify Josel's position, writing, “It is also difficult to expect that he [Josel] would empathize with the tragedy that befell the peasants, at a time when most of the Christian population, led by Luther and the princes of a number of states, reacted in the way that they did.”Footnote 40 She explained that Josel's views were more similar to members of the Christian upper class, pointing to folksongs that vilified the peasants.

Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's conclusions that Josel's attitudes paralleled both the upper class and the peasantry are difficult to accept, for these views were directly at odds with one another. Had Josel truly shared the upper class's perspective, he would have had a hard time siding with the peasants who demanded rights for everyone; had he truly identified with the peasants, one would have expected him to feel more empathy about their violent defeat. His purported simultaneous desire for human rights for all and his support for the extant hierarchical political structure do not form a coherent position.Footnote 41 While it is possible to argue that Josel was a ruthless pragmatist who did whatever he could to safeguard the Jews, this defense of Fraenkel-Goldschmidt's interpretation has shortcomings of its own. Josel, Strasbourg's Christian leaders, and the peasants were all acquainted; if Josel were to be seen as vacillating between supporting the peasants and the establishment, his credibility would have been eroded.

Entangled History and Collaborative Negotiation

Current paradigms of Jewish-Christian relations allow for a new analysis of Josel's negotiation, one that avoids suggesting that Josel held an incoherent position. Recent studies of early modern European Jewish history have built on the work of scholars such as Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, and have further demonstrated both the deep cultural and intellectual parallels and relationships that existed between Jewish and Christian residents of various locales. In the cities and towns of eastern Europe, the villages and ghettos of the Holy Roman Empire, and the ghettos of Italy, Jews and Christians worked with one another and often engaged in similar intellectual and cultural pursuits.Footnote 42 Specific concerns, such as when markets were open and closed, led Jews and Christians to be aware of and to devise calendars depicting one another's sacred time.Footnote 43 These parallels did not begin in early modern Europe, as during the Middle Ages members of these two communities were already deeply familiar with one another's material objects, theology, and religious rituals.Footnote 44

Contemporary scholars of Jewish studies assume that there were deep intersections between Jews and Christians in particular locations, and have thus employed Christian sources in parallel with Jewish sources, under the assumption that the former include data that will enrich our understanding of the latter.Footnote 45 The converse is also true, and data about Jews has been used to illuminate trends in “general” European history.Footnote 46 If the Jews living in a particular place were necessarily “of” that place, the use of comparative methodology is not just possible, but obligatory.Footnote 47

Employing the method of histoire croisée, or entangled history, reveals new information about what Josel said, why he said it, and how his approach was planned.Footnote 48 Entangled history considers the Jews as both intertwined with and separate from their neighbors, and mandates exploring the broader context of the “Jewish story” by recognizing and exploring the tangible connections between Jews and Christians.

Several factors render Josel's negotiation with the peasants an excellent case study for employing the methods of entangled history. The larger context of the Peasants' War is well documented; some documentation on Josel's negotiation is extant; and we have substantial and concrete knowledge about Josel's relationships with his Christian contemporaries. By contrast, in many other cases, it is challenging to identify the cultural mediators or specific mechanisms through which exchanges between Jews and Christians took place.Footnote 49 The precise avenues and discussions in which knowledge was shared are undocumented because Jews and Christians did not record these conversations, many of which may have transpired over the course of routine interactions.Footnote 50 In such cases the opacity of the sources has led scholars to debate whether seemingly parallel ideas and behaviors among Jews and Christians reflect any sort of appropriation, and, if so, how and why those parallels emerged.Footnote 51 The example of Josel, in contradistinction, provides ample data to explore the concrete connections between Jews and Christians.

First, it is essential to consider the broad context of the strategy for securing protection for the Jews during the Peasants' War. A two-pronged approach was employed, in which the Jews sought and were granted refuge in the city of Strasbourg; Josel also went to the peasants' camp in order to negotiate directly with them. While at first glance, these may appear to be two discrete strategies, the fact that Josel was in dialogue with Strasbourg's magistrates is not only relevant to the negotiation that took place between him and the peasants, but is essential to understanding the content of his negotiation with them.

Josel engaged in direct negotiations with Strasbourg's political leadership in order to obtain refuge for the Jews in the city. He had had a close relationship with Strasbourg's magistracy for many years, as is recorded in his correspondence maintained in the city archives, and attested to in his own writings to the Jewish community.Footnote 52 Josel also had close relations with the reformer (and negotiator) Wolfgang Capito. As mentioned above, Josel related that he had attended Capito's sermons and that Capito turned to Josel with questions about Jews and books.Footnote 53 In later years, Josel asked both Capito and the city magistrates to write a letter of recommendation on his behalf when he sought an audience with Martin Luther, and each granted his request.Footnote 54

Given the enduring relationships between Josel and Strasbourg's political and religious leadership, and the fact that Josel was, at the time of his negotiations with the peasants, in dialogue with the magistrates about the Peasants' War, it is difficult to fathom that Josel conducted an unrelated negotiation with the peasants, without the knowledge of Strasbourg's magistrates and reformers. Rather, it seems clear that Josel and Strasbourg's leading authorities strategized together about how to maintain calm and order in the region. Indeed, the Jews were dependent on Strasbourg's magistrates for both safety and economic stability, as is demonstrated from an episode nine years after the war, when Josel hastened to address the magistrates' displeasure over a high-interest loan, citing the essential nature of the relationship between the city magistrates and the Jews.Footnote 55 Given these circumstances, it is highly likely that Josel coordinated his dialogue with the peasants with the Christian leaders of Strasbourg, whom he knew, respected, and with whom he discussed this very matter.

It is not only the broader context that supports this interpretation. Josel's own words support this analysis of the event. Once again, let us examine Josel's description of what transpired in his discussion with the leaders of the rebellion:

In the year 5285 [1524/25] there was a tumult amongst the villagers, who gathered in all parts of Germany, and, above all, in this region—Alsace. They wished to make themselves masters and it was their intention to swallow us alive. And the scourge had already begun in certain places. And by God's mercy, I came to them at the abbey called Altdorf, and spoke to their hearts with the Book, to instruct the leaders of their forces who proclaimed aloud that the Jews were not to be harmed. Many letters of safe conduct for every city and region were also written.Footnote 56

As is the case throughout the chronicle, the language with which Josel chose to express himself was essential to the message he sought to convey. Like other Jewish writers, Josel made extensive use of biblical references throughout the chronicle. These references were intended to clue his readers into his interpretation of the historical events that he depicts. In this particular passage, for example, Josel cited the book of Esther several times. The phrases “every city and region,” “relief and deliverance for the Jews,” “also in other territories,” and “from their evil thoughts” all reference the book of Esther directly. The implicit meaning, readily apparent to Hebrew readers who were well versed in the Esther text, was that just as in the biblical narrative, the Jews faced a threat from which they were saved; the hand of God, though hidden, was protecting the Jews.Footnote 57 Josel makes similar use of the book of Esther throughout his text, referring to the convert Johannes Pfefferkorn, to Martin Luther, and to the elector of Brandenburg as respective Hamans.Footnote 58

Josel's interpretation of various historical events was embedded in the language that he employed in his chronicle. This can also be seen in his description of the Peasants' Rebellion. In that entry, Josel utilized a peculiar phrase to describe the peasants' desires: “It was their intention to swallow us alive.”Footnote 59 Fraenkel-Goldschmidt attributed this reference to Psalm 124:3, where the narrator notes that had God not intervened, “they” would have “swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us.” Although this verse could refer to any event in which someone was being threatened by an outside party, we must ask why Josel opted to use this particular terminology to describe the peasants. Whereas Josel's chronicle comprises a series of events in which the Jews were being threatened, the phraseology “swallowed alive” only appears one other time in the chronicle; the Esther terminology, by contrast, is an almost constant refrain. The attribution of this verse to Psalm 124:3 does not shed light on Josel's choice to use this specific language to describe this particular incident.

The other entry in the chronicle in which Josel employed the phrase “swallowed alive” is in reference to his travels to Flanders and Brabant. There, he explained, he was chased by a “cruel soldier,” whom Fraenkel-Goldschmidt tentatively identifies as Martin van Rossem, a mercenary hired by various noblemen and feared by the local population in Flanders.Footnote 60 Josel's deliberate use of the phrase “swallowed alive” in the respective contexts of the Peasants' Rebellion and his escape from van Rossem indicates that Josel perceived the incident with van Rossem to have something in common with the events of 1525.

The link Josel drew between these two events is clearly discernable once we recognize that he was not citing Psalm 124. Rather, Josel was quoting a different classical source when he chose the language “swallowed alive” to describe the peasants' intentions—Mishnah Avot: “Rabbi Ḥaninah the prefect of the priests said: Pray for the peace of the kingdom, since but for fear [of the ruler] each man would swallow his neighbor alive” (emphasis mine).Footnote 61 In this mishnah, Rabbi Ḥaninah teaches that one should pray for the ruling authorities' well-being, for without that, chaos would ensue. He uses the biblical phrase “each man would swallow his neighbor alive” in order to describe the chaos resulting from challenging the legitimate rule of the kingdom.

This context is far more relevant to the rebellions that threatened the social order in the Alsatian countryside. The peasants posed a direct threat to the ruling authorities. Similarly, van Rossen was a mercenary who wreaked havoc on the population in Flanders. In both instances, the subject who would have swallowed someone alive was a group or individual who did not hold legitimate power, but threatened the local population with violent raids.

Josel, in quoting this particular text from Avot, suggested that the proper course of action was to support the ruling authorities, as Rabbi Ḥaninah had urged in the mishnah. In the case of the Peasants' Rebellion, Josel's description indicates that he “spoke to their hearts with the Book, to instruct the leaders of their forces who proclaimed aloud that the Jews were not to be harmed.”Footnote 62 Josel therefore told the peasants that that the ruling order needed to be sustained, arguing that the peasants' rebellion against the ruling authorities ran counter to what religion demanded of them. Violence against the Jews and against the princes and cities of Alsace would transgress this traditional teaching.

This reinterpretation makes sense on a textual level, as it connects the classical allusion to the events at hand. Moreover, this reading also helps avoid contradictions, indicating that Josel indeed held a consistent political position. Maintaining that the authorities in power at the time should remain in power, Josel did not support the peasants; his words were internally congruous, and corresponded to his actions.

When Josel went to meet with Gerber, he likely used the Bible as a source for arguing this position to the peasants. In other places in his writings, Josel argued that God blessed leaders who were benevolent to the Jews, and who were “generous to all mankind.”Footnote 63 Josel likely told Gerber that Scripture prescribed negotiating with leaders to attain their support, rather than rebelling. It is plausible that he further explained that God would compensate leaders who treated the peasants with dignity, just as Josel believed that God rewarded leaders who were kind to the Jews. It may have been meaningful to Gerber to hear this position argued by a Jew, who was both oppressed and learned in Scripture.

This rereading is the most plausible explanation of what Josel negotiated both because it best explains his choice of the terminology “swallowed alive”—a call to prevent chaos and to maintain the ruling powers—and because it fits the local context of how both Jews and Christians in Alsace dealt with the looming rebellion. Indeed, a central facet of this analysis is that this line of argument was exactly what the religious and political leaders of Alsace were contending. They, too, approached the peasants in Altdorf and urged them to cease the rebellion against the princes and cities of the empire. Reform was to come with the help of the magistrates and princes, they posited, not through unrest and the seizure of power. Josel, then, was, like Capito, Zell, Bucer, and Herlin, advocating for a magisterial reformation. The similarities in their respective approaches were not happenstance, but were coordinated attempts at halting the peasants, initiated by men who knew one another, who knew the peasants' leaders, and who were in dialogue about how to handle the escalating situation.

The idea that Josel's negotiation, while independent, was planned together with the ruling Christians in the region is also supported by a separate incident in which Josel was instrumental in saving his home town of Rosheim. In a letter written in 1554, Josel related that while he had been at the peasants' camp negotiating, he heard (or had been told) that the peasants planned to attack Rosheim.Footnote 64 After hearing this, Josel informed the mayor of Rosheim, and instructed him to lock the city's gates. When the peasants arrived, they were unable to enter the small imperial city. Josel had averted a crisis. Shortly thereafter, the peasants came to Rosheim once again. Josel reported that he had collected the sum of eighty gulden from local Jews, which he handed to Rosheim's magistrates to give to the peasants. After receiving this sum, the peasants agreed that they would leave Rosheim alone until such time as they had conquered the whole region. That time, of course, never came, as within weeks, the duke of Lorraine vanquished the peasant forces. By seeing Josel's negotiation with the peasants as part of a coordinated regional strategy for dealing with the threat, the central role he played in saving Rosheim is more easily explained. As one of various diplomats who met with the peasants, Josel was actively engaged in preserving regional peace for Jewish and Christian residents of Alsace.

Recognizing that Josel had collaborated with Strasbourg's leaders during the Peasants' War also clarifies some of the references that he made to the rebellion in his writings over the subsequent decades. When, as a result of the two aforementioned high-interest loans made by two local Jews, the relationship between the city of Strasbourg and the Jews was jeopardized, Josel negotiated the terms of an economic contract between the city and the Jews, conceding certain Jewish rights that he had previously staunchly defended.Footnote 65 Among his stated reasons for this decision was the refuge the city had offered Jews during the Peasants' War.Footnote 66 Josel's reference to a joint endeavor with Strasbourg's magistracy that had successfully secured the Jews refuge was a justification for the negotiations about the contract, which he believed would yield similarly good results. In addition, sixteen years after the rebellion, Josel wrote to the Jews of Hesse after Martin Bucer wrote against the Jews.Footnote 67 In that letter, a translated copy of which he provided to Strasbourg's magistrates, he similarly extolled the magistracy for having granted the Jews protection when they were vulnerable to the peasants.Footnote 68 If the contention that the negotiation was collaborative is correct, the meaning of Josel's letter is even clearer. In contrast to the praise he lavished upon the magistrates, Josel criticized Bucer for writing against the Jews without having consulted with them first. By referring specifically to the Peasants' Rebellion, in which he had directly coordinated with Strasbourg's leaders—including with Bucer himself, Josel presented a stark contrast between the direct coordination he had conducted in 1525 and what happened with Bucer years later. It was in this context that Josel drew the distinction between leaders who were good to the Jews and who were blessed by God, and those who worked against the Jews.Footnote 69

The fact that Jews and Christians worked together to avert crisis during the Peasants' War does not mean that their experiences in that war were identical. The Jews had far less power than the Christian elites, and it was the former who were beneficiaries of the refuge granted by the latter. Indeed, the fact that the Jews had their own representative negotiating with the peasants indicates that they constituted a distinct unit. Nevertheless, the coordination between the Jewish representative and his Christian counterparts demonstrates the extensive connections and collaboration between these two separate communities.Footnote 70

Ultimately, both Strasbourg's leaders and Josel had overlapping if distinct interests in maintaining the current social order. Supporting the ruling political authority clearly benefitted the ruling magistrates who sought to maintain calm, stability, and, of course, their own governance; it benefitted the reformers, who sought to implement change in local parishes, and who saw the benefit of working with the ruling authorities rather than against them; and it benefitted the Jewish population of Alsace, who would be protected by Strasbourg's fortified walls and by its leaders, who were more favorably disposed toward them than the preachers affiliated with the peasant leadership.

The Historical Significance of the Collaborative Negotiation

Recognizing the joint, rather than parallel, effort between Jews and Christians offers several important insights and points to new directions for research. First, the episode discussed here demonstrates that both Jewish and Christian leaders had a common political approach, in which they sought to maintain the status quo when it came to the power of ruling elites, even if their interests in doing so differed from one another. Moreover, it is essential to note that the negotiations with the peasants during the Peasants' War reflected not merely a shared attitude, but that they were a collaborative project. The fact that Christian reformers, local authorities, and Jews consulted with one another about the threat of the peasants adds to our understanding of Jewish-Christian relations during the Reformation.Footnote 71

Recognizing the Jewish role in negotiations with the peasants also raises new questions for the vast and rich European historiography of the Peasants' War. Scholars of general European history have already investigated the nuances of the Peasants' Rebellion, noting how some guildsmen supported the peasants while others did not.Footnote 72 Including the Jews in the narrative of the Peasants' Rebellion adds further nuance with regard to the complex interplay between town and country, particularly in Alsace.Footnote 73 Within Rosheim, a small imperial city, loyalties were divided, even among the relatively powerful: Georg Ittel, the city's former Stettmeister, joined the rebellion, while Josel opposed it. These alliances, coupled with the refuge granted by Strasbourg to rural residents, provide scholars with additional data attesting to the different facets of the town-country divide, and underscore the complex intersections between religion, class, and politics during the Peasants' War.Footnote 74

Moreover, the negotiation between Josel and the peasants serves as a case study for examining Jewish history in a broader context. It is not that scholars such as Fraenkel-Goldschmidt did not know about the relationships between Josel, the magistrates, and the reformers; on the contrary, Fraenkel-Goldschmidt herself published some of the very documents that attest to these relationships. It is not always new data, but rather the appraisal of different sets of data in tandem that can aid us in our quest to uncover how knowledge was transmitted between different groups. The approach of writing entangled history, which looks purposefully at each group as well as at the connections and boundaries between groups, allows us to connect various parts of a narrative that may have previously seemed unrelated. Rather than seeing the “Christian” negotiation as incidental to the “Jewish” negotiation, or vice versa, this approach insists on examining the Christian side, the Jewish side, and the intersections between them as pieces of the same story. While there is no source that definitively records a tactical conversation that transpired between Josel and Strasbourg's leadership, by considering the Jewish and Christian sources and negotiations together, it is nevertheless possible to trace how the attitudes and strategies common to Strasbourg's leaders and Josel were forged. As Josel discussed the Peasants' Rebellion with Strasbourg's leaders (and likely negotiated for the Jews to receive refuge there), they jointly discussed how to approach the peasants—likewise, men with whom both Josel and the magistrates had relationships.

The case of Josel's negotiations with the peasants in 1525 encourages historians to go beyond pointing to parallel attitudes between Jews and Christians, and to ask how it came to be that Jews and Christians shared so much in common. In Josel's case, it is quite clear that his attitudes did not parallel those of his contemporaries through osmosis or happenstance. How he negotiated with the peasants was a result of direct conversations he had with the very men sent by the city of Strasbourg to negotiate with the peasants. His relationships with the various Christian parties should not be treated as incidental information, but as essential to thinking about how Josel came to deal with the peasants in the same way that his contemporaries did. Looking for the specific contacts that individual Jews and Christians had with members of the other faith, with an eye toward thinking about what concrete opportunities they would have had to communicate with one another about the topic at hand, can help scholars begin to trace how that knowledge was transmitted across religious lines.

In cases other than the one described here, contacts between Jews and Christians may not be as well documented. Nevertheless, scholars must probe those opportunities that arose through proximity between neighbors, be they the economic ties that exposed Jews and Christians to one another's ideas, or the rituals and media such as print or processions that made religion accessible beyond church or synagogue walls.Footnote 75 Historical sources are largely silent on the content of the conversations and daily interactions between Jews and Christians, even among the elite. Nevertheless, the knowledge that such conversations and relationships did take place is essential for determining which sources we deem relevant to our inquiry, and how to interpret those sources that we do have.

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.”