180 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Yet the Shebet Yehudah does record forced baptisms of Jews in Toulouse,101 and
that although French legislation that Jews must wear a distinguishing mark on
their coats was originally cancelled, subsequently Jews were ordered to wear red or
yellow badges. In response to this, rabbis Mordechai Man Yosef oynin, and
Shlomo de Shalom petitioned Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), King of naples
and Sicily and Count of Provence, and the decree was cancelled. Again, it seems
that in this popular history conciliar legislation was only of interest when it had the
immediate potential of impacting catastrophically on Jewish communities.
THE PAPACY AnD CAnon lAW
As part of their attempt to assert the authority of the papacy over all aspects of
Christian society, we have seen how in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries popes
were much concerned with the development of canon law. In turn, twelfth- and
thirteenth-century canon law collections profoundly influenced papal pronounce-
ments, in particular discussions concerning just wars and the treatment of minor-
ities, including Jews, in Christian society. During this period popes used the
promise of spiritual rewards to encourage Christians to take part in military cam-
paigns against those whom they considered enemies of the Church. At the same
time collections of legal texts and commentaries were multiplying across Europe,
including material concerned with the authorization of military campaigns against
Muslims in the near East and heretics and political opponents of the papacy in
Christian Europe. Many of these were widely read by popes, some of whom had
themselves been trained in canon law.
Particularly important—as we have seen—was Gratian’s Concordia discordan-
tium canonum, compiled perhaps at Bologna between 1139 and at the latest, 1158:
a massive collection of documents concerned with Church discipline.102 The
Decretum cited important texts from the Church fathers and other authorities
dealing, inter alia, with the justification of violence in a good cause and the status
of heretics, Muslims, and Jews in Christian society.103
Causa 23 and Causa 24 of the Decretum contained a large number of texts con-
cerned with heretics and schismatics. By comparison, the small number of papal
decretals and Church rulings concerning Jews pre-Gratian and the qualitative
changes in rulings about the Jews post-Gratian suggest that before the twelfth cen-
tury there was much less concern about Jews than about heretics. Admittedly, the
Decretum of Ivo of Chartres, on which Gratian’s Decretum drew, included texts
101 The Shebet Yehudah of Shelomo ibn Verga, ed. Shohat, p.148.
102 Anders Winroth argues for a ‘two stage’ theory of composition and that there were two separate
recensions of the Decretum. See Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge,
2000), pp.122–45.
103 The literature on Gratian is now enormous. See, for example, Peter landau, ‘Gratian’,
Theologische Realenzyklopedia 14 (Berlin, 1985), 124–30; Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum;
James Clarence-Smith, Medieval Law Teachers and Writers, Civilian and Canonist (otttawa, 1975),
p.19.