Speyer - Schpira
Speyer – a place of refuge for the Jews of Mainz
The founding of Schpira as the youngest Jewish community within the SchUM network is directly linked to the fire in Mainz’s Jewish quarter in 1084. In the very same year, the Bishop of Speyer granted the Jews fleeing Mainz a comprehensive charter of privileges, which fundamentally altered their status in Speyer. The Bishop hoped that a Jewish community would enhance the city’s standing. Initially, Jews were settled outside the medieval city walls. Following the crusade pogrom of 1096, a new Jewish quarter emerged near the cathedral. Of this ‘Judenhof’ (Jewish quarter), the mikveh and remains of the synagogue and the women’s school have survived to this day. From the mid-14th century onwards, Speyer’s town council increasingly curtailed the rights of the once-thriving Jewish community. The complex in the ‘Judenhof’ eventually passed into the ownership of the town of Speyer in the 16th century, after the town had expelled the Jewish population from the city.
The monumental mikveh in Speyer
The ritual bath, the mikveh, was built at the beginning of the 12th century near the synagogue consecrated in 1104. It is the oldest surviving monumental mikveh in Europe and served as the model for the slightly smaller ritual bath in Worms. A long, straight flight of steps leads first into an antechamber with a changing room. A second, semi-circular flight of steps leads down to the immersion pool, which is fed by groundwater at a depth of eleven metres. The mikveh was used for ritual purification after someone had come into contact with blood or a corpse. The ritual required the person to immerse themselves three times, right up to the crown of their head. Objects, such as crockery, could also attain a state of ‘ritual purity’ in the mikveh’s water before their first use.
The Wise Men of Speyer
Towards the end of the 12th century, influential Jewish scholars founded what is known as Hasidism, a movement of piety that spread throughout Ashkenazi Judaism. Rabbi Yehuda ha-Chassid and his followers compiled the key ideas of these scholars in the ‘Book of the Pious’. Like many other scholars, Yehuda hailed from the Shum towns and was a member of the renowned Jewish scholarly family of the Kalonymos. The writings of these sages include a comprehensive lexicon of the Talmud, as well as laments and penitential songs commemorating the pogroms of the Crusades.
Liberal measures to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish community
A unique document dating from the year 1084 has survived: in it, Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer granted far-reaching privileges to the Jewish community. He allocated a separate residential quarter to the Jewish men and women and guaranteed them the right to trade freely, as well as the exercise of their own jurisdiction and administration, led by a so-called ‘Jewish bishop’. This documented autonomy of the Jewish community in Speyer was confirmed and extended by Emperor Henry IV in 1090. The imperial charter also included the Jewish community of Worms.
Following the so-called Plague Pogrom of 1349, during which the Jewish population had been murdered and driven out, the city recognised the economic benefits that the Jewish community had once brought. In 1352, a charter was drawn up to re-establish the terms of coexistence with Jews in Speyer and to encourage them to return to the city. The motivation of the city authorities is clearly illustrated in the initial letter shown here. Indeed, some Jewish families did resettle in Speyer. However, the Jewish community never regained the importance it had held for the city’s economic life prior to 1349.
