Strasbourg Cathedral  |
View over the rooftops
(Photo by Finster Dernart) |
In 1960, when I lived in Strasbourg, I was told that at ten o'clock each night a bell could be heard ringing from the Cathedral for twenty minutes. I did indeed hear this night after night and it was explained to me that this was an ancient custom to warn Jews to leave the city. Jews were no longer banned from the city at night, but the custom nevertheless continued. This has always seemed a little strange, and so I decided to research it and found that two ancient customs had been confused. This extract explains the matter:
Dr. André-Marc Haarscher, secretary of the Jewish Historical Society of Alsace and Lorraine, says that the Zehnerglock (10 o'clock bell) "has no relation to the former obligation for the Jews to leave the town at the city gates at closing time, although many Strasbourgeois make this mistake. There was a horn called Judenblos (Jews' horn) that notified them to leave, a custom that was established at the time of the plague in 1349 when the Jews were suspected of wanting to betray the town by signaling the time to launch an attack to a possible besieger. On July 16, 1790, the Society of the Friends of the Revolution asked the local council to abolish this custom, and it was abolished on July 18, 1790. The 10 o'clock bell ringing at the cathedral, after the closing of the town's gates, was established by the local council in 1456 as the signal of curfew for all inhabitants living inside the walls, who were forbidden to walk on the streets without a torch or lantern. The present-day bell ringing in no way perpetuates the medieval obligation for the Jews to leave the city."
I found the explanation on this website and it makes a lot more sense to me, although there is, of course, no curfew any more. See also this website for corroborative evidence. The piece includes mention of alleged poisoning of the city wells.
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