The Papal Promise of Protection 95
Yet although Lateran iV promulgated a number of decrees about the treatment
of Jews in christian society, it made no statement forbidding Jewish physicians to
practice. indeed we know from the sixteenth-century Shebet Yehudah (The Tribe of
Judah), that the Jewish physician don isaac Benveniste, personal doctor to the
king of Aragon, was chosen by his community to represent the Jews of his region
at the council of Montpellier in 1214, and also, aware of the likelihood that anti-
Jewish legislation would be promulgated at the fourth Lateran council—a fear
which would prove well-founded—organized a delegation to go to rome.163
indeed it is possible that his standing in the Jewish community and his fame more
widely as a healer was the reason why, despite the legislation against Jews enacted
at Lateran iV, there were no specific regulations against Jewish physicians. honorius
iii granted isaac and his family the special right not to have to wear any distin-
guishing garb.164
After Lateran iV more medical legislation was promulgated. The council of
Trèves (1227) urged clergy to instruct all those under their care to take no drink or
medicine from Jews and enjoined temporal lords to make sure that no Jew offered
help or medicine to christians,165 while another such council at Trèves in 1277
similarly forbade christians from receiving medicine from Jews.166 The council of
Béziers of 1246 decreed that christians who entrusted themselves for healing and
medical treatment to Jews should be excommunicated;167 two councils of Albi in
1254 made similar pronouncements.168 No specific reason was given for such pro-
hibitions. Beside fear of poisoning it is possible that clerics were worried that
Jewish doctors might stop christians from receiving the last sacraments in extremis,
or that they might use their position of power to engage in sexual liaisons with female
christian patients.169 Perhaps it was for this latter reason that church legislation
prohibiting christians employing Jewish physicians usually followed a repetition
of the stipulation—also originally derived from the decrees of Lateran iV—that
Jews must wear distinguishing clothing.170 hence the councils of Béziers and Albi
(1255), Vienna (1267), and exeter (1287) all threatened excommunication of
christians who employed Jewish doctors.171
Popes often employed physicians. We know, for example, that Gaufre isnard,
bishop of cavaillon in the comtat Venaissin, was the personal physician to John
prohibemus, ne quis medicorum pro corporali salute aliquid aegroto suadeat, quod in periculum ani-
mae convertatur.’
163 Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.63–4, especially footnote 106; The Shebet Yehudah of Shelomo ibn Verga, ed.
A. Shohat (Jerusalem, 1947), p147.
164 honorius iii, ‘Sedes Apostolica pia’ (26 August 1220), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.152–4; Simonsohn,
pp.108–9; ‘cum te sicut’ (27 August 1220), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.154; Simonsohn, pp.109–10; ‘illum te
genere’ (3 September 1220), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.156; Simonsohn, p.110. See also Grayzel, Vol. 1,
pp.63–4.
165 Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.318–19; Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.91.
166 Grayzel, Vol. 2, p.270.
167 Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.332–3; richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.102.
168 Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.336–7; Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.91.
169 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, pp.88–9; p.91.
170 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, p.91.
171 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.177.