Along with many others, Meir left Germany with family and followers, but was captured in the mountains of Lombardy, having been recognized by a baptized Jew named Kneppe, and imprisoned in a fortress near Ensisheim in Alsace. Tradition has it that a large ransom of 23,000 marks silver was raised for him by Asher ben Jehiel, but Rabbi Meir refused it for fear of encouraging the imprisonment of other rabbis. He ruled on his own abduction in light of Talmudic law.