Deaths of יהודים YEHUDIM during the Rintfleisch persecutions.

The complete surviving applicable register follows from Siegmund Salfeld’s 1898 edition of the Nürnberger Memorbuch. Each עברית IVRIT passage is followed immediately by a TJD English translation checked against the printed facsimile and Salfeld’s German rendering. This normalized reading transcription omits printed wrapping, pointing and note numbers and normalizes abbreviation punctuation. It retains names, order, unnamed relatives, gaps and material additions. Square brackets within Hebrew reproduce editorial restorations; English explanatory brackets are TJD’s. R. preserves an honorific without assuming rabbinic ordination; Mistress renders the respectful title for women. Vernacular names sometimes admit more than one reading.

ᴏʀɪɢɪɴᴀʟ:

הרוגי הולוולט:

ר׳ יהואל ואשתו וב׳ ילדים ובנו ר׳ יצחק ואשתו וילדיו ושחט עצמו במרחץ וילדיו. ובנו ר׳ יחיאל ואשתו וילד וחתנו ר׳ שמואל ואחיו וילדיו. ר׳ אלעזר בר מנחם הבחור ואשתו הבחורה ואחיו. ר׳ אברהם בר חלפתא ואשתו וילדיו ואמו:²

ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

Those killed at Hollfeld:

R. Jehoel, his wife and two children; his son R. Isaac, his wife and his children. He slaughtered himself and his children in the bath. And his son R. Jehiel, his wife and a child; his son-in-law R. Samuel, his brothers and his children. The young R. Eleazar son of Menahem, his young wife and his brother. R. Abraham son of Halafta, his wife, his children and his mother.³

The father is identified in the running passage as Isaac, Jehoel’s son. The list records both his children and his act; these are not separate groups of children to be added together. It supplies no fuller account of the immediate threat or the motives of the people involved. The persecution remains the historical setting, but the children’s deaths must not be described as though the text attributed the physical killing directly to Christian attackers.

After Samuel, the manuscript’s pointing indicates his brothers, plural; later, after Eleazar, the same unpointed spelling means his brother in Salfeld’s reading. The translation retains that distinction. Pronouns preserve the source’s sequence without inventing a fully resolved family tree.⁴

The Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte explicitly presents the month as a possibility:

ᴏʀɪɢɪɴᴀʟ:

Vielleicht war es die dritte Welle des Pogroms in der zweiten Julihälfte⁵

ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

Perhaps it was the third wave of the pogrom in the second half of July.⁶

The word perhaps controls the dating. This is a modern hypothesis, not a date written in the medieval heading. Salfeld’s register and apparatus supply the names and the distinction between Samuel’s brothers and Eleazar’s brother.⁷

TJD assigns אב ה׳נ״ח Av, AM 5058, Av 5058, as a reconstructed month. The Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte tentatively places Hollfeld in the second half of July 1298. Lotter’s 1988 study supplies a more specific scholarly hypothesis, the last week of July:

ᴏʀɪɢɪɴᴀʟ:

Die örtliche Überlieferung hat als Datum der Vernichtung der Judengemeinde den 28. Juli festgehalten. Wir können wohl davon ausgehen, daß auch die in den Städtelisten erwähnten Orte im weiteren Umkreis von Bamberg wie Höchstadt, Eggolsheim, Forchheim, Ebermannstadt, Hollfeld, Gügel, Baunach, Lichtenfels, Niesten, Thurnau, (Burg-) Kunstadt und Kronach damals, d. h. in der letzten Juliwoche, betroffen waren.⁸

ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

Local tradition has preserved July 28 as the date of the destruction of the Jewish community. We may reasonably suppose that the places mentioned in the town lists in the wider surroundings of Bamberg, such as Höchstadt, Eggolsheim, Forchheim, Ebermannstadt, Hollfeld, Gügel, Baunach, Lichtenfels, Niesten, Thurnau, (Burg-)Kunstadt and Kronach, were also affected at that time, that is, in the last week of July.⁹

The phrase we may reasonably suppose marks Lotter’s regional reconstruction. TJD follows it provisionally: the last week of July 1298 in the historical Julian calendar falls within Av 5058. For comparison, 25–31 July converts to 15–21 Av; this calculation illustrates the month and does not turn his wording into exact endpoints. His table leaves these local date cells blank. Neither the paragraph nor the table selects a day or proves that every death in a register occurred together.¹⁰ The Hebrew heading remains undated. Both the later institutional account and Lotter’s reconstruction remain qualified; neither establishes one day for all the deaths.¹¹

• Why must the register’s account of Isaac and his children remain distinct from deaths directly inflicted by the persecutors?
• How does the word perhaps limit the calendar placement without making the names less certain?