View source for Mainz Anonymous

{{Short description|Medieval Jewish manuscript}}
{{italic title}}
{{no footnotes|date=August 2013}}

The '''''Mainz Anonymous''''' (or the '''''Narrative of the Old Persecutions''''') is an account of the [[First Crusade]] of 1096 written soon thereafter by an [[Anonymity|anonymous]] [[Jew]]ish author. The work is written in [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]]. Its author is unknown, and it deals primarily with the Crusaders' actions in [[Mainz]]; hence the name commonly applied to it. However, it also deals with the [[ShUM-cities]] in the [[Rhineland]], specifically [[Speyer]] and [[Worms, Germany|Worms]]. It is not entirely [[Fact|accurate]]: it has a definite Jewish [[point of view (literature)|point of view]] and fictionalizes [[anecdote]]s occasionally to make a point.{{cn|date=May 2025}} It also includes occasional anguished [[supplication]]s to [[God]].

==References and further reading==
*[[Robert Chazan]], ''European Jewry and the First Crusade'' ([[University of California Press|California]], 1987).
*Robert Chazan, ''In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews'' ([[Jewish Publication Society of America|JPS]], 1996).
*A. M. Habermann, ''גזרות אשכנז וצרפת'' [''Massacres of France and Germany'', Hebrew] (c. 1945).

==External links==
{{Wikisource|Mainz Anonymous (Wikisource)|Mainz Anonymous}}
* Google Books copy of ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=uiRoOkfzg94C&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq= "The+Narrative+of+the+Old+Persecutions"]''
* Copy of ''The Narrative of Old Persecutions'' at [[York University]][http://www.yorku.ca/lockshin/courses/huma2850/assignments/documents/Mainz.pdf]

[[Category:Anonymous works]]
[[Category:Crusade chronicles]]
[[Category:Chronicles about the Holy Roman Empire]]
[[Category:Jewish medieval literature]]
[[Category:Hebrew manuscripts]]
[[Category:11th-century history books]]
[[Category:Jews and Judaism in Mainz]]
[[Category:First Crusade]]
[[Category:Hebrew-language chronicles]]


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