Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism 199
many. Yet there is no evidence of any mass seizure of books by the other major
monarchs of western Europe.246 As the only European monarch to respond to the
papal call to confiscate Jewish books and put the Talmud on trial, we have seen
how louis IX also embraced the most radical option of outlawing Jewish usury
completely.247
Gregory IX’s ideas were clarified and formalized by his successor Innocent Iv. In
1244 Innocent wrote to the king of France to register dismay that Jews reared and
nurtured their children on the Talmud, which not only exceeded the Bible in size
but contained blasphemies, fables, abusive errors, and unheard of follies. He had
learnt that the Jews deliberately kept their sons ignorant of the laws and beliefs of
the Prophets because:
They fear that if the forbidden truth, which is found in the law and the Prophets,
be understood, and the testimony concerning the only-begotten son of God that He
appeared in the flesh, be furnished, these (children) would be converted to the Faith
and humbly return to their redeemer.248like his predecessor, Innocent ordered that throughout the French kingdom all
Jewish books condemned by the doctors of the Church, as well as commentaries
on them, should be burnt.249 Yet in 1244 he wrote to louis IX, claiming that des-
pite the king’s support for burnings, the issue of the Talmud had not been fully
resolved; he had now learnt of its ongoing Jewish use. This suggests that the inves-
tigation and burning had been confined to the Paris area, and that Innocent was
urging the king to maintain the provision originally envisioned by Gregory to burn
such books wherever they were to be found in his kingdom.250
Innocent Iv held that the Church should condemn the Talmud not only because
it blasphemed Christ and the virgin, but because it contained absurd statements
about God offensive to Jewish law itself:
And moved by this reason Popes Gregory and Innocent ordered the books of the
Talmud to be burnt, in which many heresies were contained, and they ordered those
to be punished who followed or taught the aforementioned heresies.251Innocent’s position was clearly explained by the thirteenth-century canon lawyer
Guy Terre:
The Jews are outside [the Church] only as much as pertains to the new Testament, nor
with respect to these matters are they judged by the Church, but, if the Jews should246 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.20.
247 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.36.
248 Innocent Iv, ‘Impia Judeorum perfidia’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.250; Simonsohn, p.181: ‘verentes ne
veritate, que in eisdem lege ac prophetis est, intellecta, aperte de unigenito Dei Fiio venturo in carnem
testimonium perhibente, convertantur ad fidem, et ad redemptorem suum humiliter revertantur.’
249 Innocent Iv, ‘Impia Judeorum perfidia’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.250–2; Simonsohn, pp.180–2.
250 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.23.
251 Innocent IV, Apparatus, Bk. 3, rubrica 34, cap. 8, p176r: ‘Et hac ratione motus Papa Gregorius
et Innocentius mandaverant comburi libros Talmud, in quo multae continebantur haereses et mandav-
erunt puniri illos qui praedictus haereses sequerentur uel docerent.’ See Dahan, Les Intéllectuels chrétiens
et les juifs au moyen âge, p.106; Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels, pp.9–10; pp.30–1; pp.45–6.