94 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
punished by the secular authorities, as in Bohemia in 1161 when eighty-six of
them were charged with poisoning their patients and burned at the stake,156 or
at the end of the thirteenth century when Philip iV ordered the bailiff of rouen
to imprison and seize the property of Jewish doctors who had given medicine to
patients who had subsequently died.157 in the Kingdom of Aragon Las Siete
Partidas decreed that christians be prohibited from receiving medicines or cathar-
tics prepared by Jews, with the proviso that they might obtain them on the advice
of a knowledgeable Jew, as long as they were prepared by a christian fully aware of
their content.158 The faculty of Medicine at Vienna went so far as to allege that
Jewish physicians followed a special private code requiring them to murder one
patient in ten.159
Not only civil but also religious authorities frequently warned christians against
employing Jewish doctors since contact with Jews not only encouraged sympathy
for and interest in Judaism, but also because they believed Jewish physicians might
be tempted to poison their patients as part of a wider plot to harm christian com-
munities and by extension the christian faith.160 conciliar decrees in the twelfth
century had published no rules for Jewish doctors, probably because medicine had
not yet taken off as a popular profession for either christians or Jews.161 Nevertheless,
as we have seen, a desire to control it began to appear in papal correspondence from
innocent iii onwards, becoming increasingly prominent in church councils. Thus
constitution 22 of Lateran iV decreed:
so we by this present decree order and strictly command physicians of the body, when
they are called to the sick, to warn and persuade them first of all to call in physicians
of the soul so that after their spiritual health has been seen to they may respond better
to medicine for their bodies; for when the cause ceases so does the effect. This among
other things has occasioned this decree, namely that some people on their sickbed,
when they are advised by physicians to arrange for the health of their souls, fall into
despair and so they more readily incur the danger of death. if any physician trans-
gresses this our constitution, after it has been published by the local prelates, he shall
be barred from entering a church until he has made suitable satisfaction for a trans-
gression of this kind. Moreover, since the soul is much more precious than the body,
we forbid any physician, under pain of anathema, to prescribe anything for the bodily
health of a sick person that may endanger his soul.162156 richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.102.
157 Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.74–5, footnote 147.
158 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.87.
159 richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.102.
160 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.87.
161 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.91.
162 Tanner, Vol. 1, pp.245–6: ‘decreto praesenti statuimus et districte praecipimus medicis corpo-
rum, ut cum eos ad infirmos vocari contigerit, ipsos ante omnia moneant et inducant, quod medicos
advocent animarum, ut postquam infirmis fuerit de spirituali salute provisum, ad corporalis medicinae
remedium salubrius procedatur, cum causa cessante cesset effectus. hoc quidem inter alia huic causam
dedit edicto, quod quidam in aegritudinis lecto iacentes, cum eis a medicis suadetur, ut de animarum
salute disponant, in desperationis articulum incidunt, unde facilius mortis periculum incurrunt. Si
quis autem medicorum huius nostrae constitutionis, postquam per praelatos locorum fuerit publicata,
transgressor extiterit, tamdiu ab ingressu ecclesiae arceatur, donec pro transgressione huiusmodi satis-
fecerit competenter. ceterum cum anima sit multo pretiosior corpore, sub interminatione anathematis