Crusades

The Crusades were religious wars initiated by Pope Urban II in 1095. The Crusaders were composed of Christians. The Crusaders arrived at Jerusalem during the First Crusade and massacred many of the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. The Crusaders massacred and forced Jews to convert to Christianity in multiple towns and destroyed the houses and synagogues of the Jews during the Crusades. The Crusaders persecuted and killed Jews in Speyer, Worms, Cologne, Regensburg, Metz, Prague, and more than 1,000 Jews died in Mainz during the Rhineland massacres of 1096.