Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism 203
fears by making them seem part of a larger threatening coalition.269 Finally, he
argued that although erroneous doctrines might have redeeming features, they
were still dangerous and intolerable. Just as in the case of heresy, the errors of her-
etics required the destruction and prohibition of heretical literature, so the Paris
tribunal in condemning the Talmud had concluded the same was true for the ‘oral
Torah’ of the Jews.270
odo thus set out a very full case against Innocent Iv’s softer approach. We do
not know what, if anything, Innocent replied, but we do know that odo enacted
a formal condemnation of the Talmud in mid-1248 after a new enquiry by four
scholars which he convened in response to Innocent’s letter of 1247. So although
odo scrupulously obeyed the order to have the Talmud re-examined, the new
commission did not permit its return to the Jews—the second part of Innocent
Iv’s revised approach. rather, invoking the language of Gregory’s initial corres-
pondence of 1239, the refusal to return their books to the Jews was based on the
simple grounds that the Talmud had been re-examined and found once again to
contain errors, insults, and offensive material: it was therefore so harmful that it
could not, as Innocent had suggested, be returned.271 Whereas Gregory and the
Paris jury had decreed destruction and prohibition of the Talmud, Innocent had
suggested both that the traditional Church permission for Jews to live by the
Talmud should continue and that the prohibition of Jewish blasphemy could be
retained by censorship of the Talmud: a clever compromise which odo’s corres-
pondence reveals found little favour with the Paris ecclesiastical hierarchy.272
Hence odo rejected the papal change of heart.273
To recap: Innocent Iv continued to exercise himself over the Talmud, initially
re-affirming in1244 the findings of the Paris jury, initiated by Gregory IX, that
supported nicholas Donin, but three years later rejected some of its findings, thus
altering the stance initiated by his predecessor and executed in Paris. His change of
heart in 1247 led to Innocent’s ordering his legate in Paris to organize a new com-
mission to re-examine the Talmud and to return non-offensive materials to the
Jews.274 This revised position is extremely important because it re-established the
rights of Jews to practice rabbinic Judaism in western Christendom. Although
Innocent continued to accept the Paris findings that there was intolerable content
in the Talmud, and established procedures for getting rid of it, he rejected the
charge that the Talmud was in and of itself unacceptable to Christian society as a
deviation from divine revelation.275
Jews, of course, argued that the Talmud was divinely mandated; Innocent could
not accept that because he continued to believe it was an error-ridden human com-
position. Yet in response to Jewish pleas he did acknowledge that the Church had
269 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, pp.28–9.
270 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.29.
271 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.30.
272 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.35.
273 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.31.
274 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.53.
275 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.54.