Abbot Peter of Cluny (“Peter the Venerable”, a.k.a. Peter of Montboissier), abott of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, France, advises Louis VII to confiscate Jewish property to help finance the Crusade.
[Fast–Forward: At his weekly general audience in Saint Peter’s Square on October 14, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI used Peter as an ‘example of compassion and understanding,’ citing Peter’s “diplomacy and governance.”]
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Abbot (and later saint) Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153 CE) [French] apparently goes to the Rhine Valley [Germany] to call for a stop to anti–Jewish massacres inspired and/or conducted by the German monk Rudolphe a.k.a. Raoul in Cologne, Mainz, Worms and Speyer.
Bernard of Clairvaux was a primary builder of the reforming Cistercian monastic order.
It is not clear why murderous German Crusaders would listen to a gentle French abott. It is also not clear why the formidable Christian Archbishops of Cologne and Mainz seem to be thoroughly impotent, had they wished to expend political capital, to confront a cowardly murderous rabble within the Christian religious enterprise. Presumably the bloody corpses of the murdered Jewish men, women and children were long swept down the Rhine by the time gentle and decent Abott Bernard of Clairvaux made his trek from France to Germany.