Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism 175
Following the Council’s lead, subsequent Councils such as that of Montélimar
of 1195 similarly emphasized that Jews must be banned from holding positions
of authority.63 In doing so they drew on ancient ideas about the status of Jews
in Christian society, particularly St Augustine’s theory of Jewish witness and
the idea that, as we have seen, since theologically Jews were deemed to serve
Christians, it would be wrong if Christians were seen to serve Jews and unseemly
for Christians to be under the power of Jews in a Christian society.64 Yet increas-
ingly in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries that idea seems to have been
combined with a growing fear that Jews, the people of the old Covenant, were
a potential threat to Christians, the people of the new, and sought to undermine
Christian society itself—an idea which, as we saw in Chapter Two, was first for-
mally expressed by popes in Innocent III’s re-issue of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’
in 1199.65 Indeed, some historians have argued that the theme was strikingly
and particularly prevalent in the correspondence of Innocent III, a point to which
we shall return in Chapter Six.
once again their correspondence reveals that popes were keen to enforce the
legislation of lateran Iv. So in 1221 Honorius III complained that nobles in
Bordeaux were flouting Constitution 69 and allowing Jews to exercise public
office.66 In 1225 he again complained to the archbishop of Colosza (Hungary) and
his suffragans that he was allowing Jews to be given preferential treatment:
In another matter we marvel at your conduct, and we have cause to be surprised at it
and to threaten you for it. For although it was decided in the Council of Toledo, and
afterwards re-affirmed in the General Council, that a blasphemer of Christ should
not be given preferment in public office, since it is quite absurd that any such
should exercise power over Christians, you, so we understand, have permitted this
statute to be violated under your very eyes by Jews and pagans, although publicly in
your synods you hurled the sentence of excommunication against all who give prefer-
ment to infidels in these offices, and although this same King long ago directed his
letters to you in which he announced that he had decreed in an immutable law that in
the Kingdom of Hungary during his own lifetime or that of his heirs no such persons
shall be given preferment in the said offices.6763 Tanner, Vol. 1, pp.266–7; X.5.6.16, col. 777. See robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and
Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, london, 1997), p.100; robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-
Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989), p.31; Dahan, Les intellectuels
chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge, p.116; Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.302; John o’ Brien, ‘Jews and Cathari in
Medieval France’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 10 (1967), 218.
64 Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley,
london, 1999), pp.35–41.
65 Innocent III, ‘licet perfidia Judeorum’ (15 September 1199), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.92–4;
Simonsohn, pp.74–5.
66 Honorius III, ‘Ad nostram noveritis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.166; Simonsohn, p.117.
67 Honorius III, ‘Intellecto jamdudum’ (23 August 1225), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.170–2; Simonsohn,
pp.120–1; ‘Intellecto jamdudum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.172; Simonsohn, p.120: ‘Ad hoc de discretione
vestra miramur, causam contra vos admirationis et comminationis habentes, ex eo, quod cum in
Toletano concilio statutum fuerit, et in generali postmodum innovatum, ne Christi blasphemus pub-
licis officiis preferatur, cum nimium sit absurdum, ut talis in Christianos vim exerceat potestatis, vos,
ut intelleximus, conniventibus oculis sustenetis, per Judeos atque paganos statutum hujusmodi violari
quamquam publice in sinodis vestris protuleritis excommunicationis sentemtiam in omnes, qui