The Papacy and the Place of Jews in Christian Society 219
approach secular rulers and prelates of the territories where they preached and ensure
that converts be treated generously and their property protected. Nicholas empha-
sized that if the Jews, ‘like deaf adders’, rejected such preachers, he must be informed
so that as pope he could deal with the matter; indeed he ordered that he be kept
frequently informed of the friars’ progress.90 Hence, like Innocent Iv, Nicholas III
showed a sense of moral responsibility, qua pope, for what he saw as the spiritual
well-being of Jews—but with a difference—spiritual well-being now included their
immediate conversion to Christianity.91 yet such active papal endorsement of the
friars’ missionary sermons was rare in our period.
THe PAPACy AND JeWS AS SeRvANTS
During the High Middle Ages Jews in many countries literally belonged to kings
and emperors, and in exchange were protected by them.92 The idea of ‘chamber
serfdom’ implied that they were granted a special social and economic position of
dependence by Christian kings and emperors and at the same time recognized
the theological importance of their subservience to Christian authority.93 So, for
example, Frederick II’s ‘privilege’ to vienna in 1237 decreed that Jews should hold
no governmental office, since imperial authority had imposed perpetual servitude
on the Jews as a punishment for crucifying Christ.94 In practice the quality and
quantity of Jewish royal or imperial service varied with the protection kings or
emperors wished and were able to provide and with the amount of taxation they
exacted as a price for protection.95
Popes, on the other hand, promised Jews protection without price. As we have
seen, following the teaching of St Augustine, they believed that Christian theology
demanded a certain toleration of Jews and they therefore encouraged Christians to
allow them to live unharmed in their midst.96 yet they also believed servitude to be
90 Nicholas III, ‘vineam sorec velut’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.142–5; Simonsohn, pp.249–52. The Latin
is ‘veluti aspis surda’, see Nicholas III, ‘vineam sorec velut’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, p.144; Simonsohn, p.251.
91 Popes continued to issue such letters in the fourteenth century. See footnote 72 for John XXII,
‘Dudum felicis recordationis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.316–19; Simonsohn, pp.321–3. John XXII urged the
archbishop of Bourges and his suffragans to warn all Christian men and women in their provinces and
dioceses, by preaching sermons or causing them to be preached. This should be done frequently in the
cathedrals and other churches by the bishops themselves or by whoever might be appointed for
this purpose, care being taken to warn them and restrain them most strictly to try wholeheartedly to
abstain from every activity mentioned in the writings of Jews which he regarded as blasphemous. The
people were to be held in check and kept away from these activities by such spiritual punishments as
it seemed right to impose, with appeal denied, in accordance with canonical statutes: Christian men
and women, that is, as well as Jews, so that they might abstain from blasphemies, errors, curses, false-
hoods, and other evils mentioned in the letters of his predecessors.
92 Robert Mundill, England’s Jewish Solution. Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290 (Cambridge,
1998), p.260.
93 David Abulafia, Mediterranean Encounters, Economic, Religious, Political, 1100–1500 (Aldershot,
2000), XII, p.219.
94 Abulafia, Medieval Encounters, XII, p.219.
95 Anna Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom
(Harlow, 2011), p.54.
96 St Augustine, Adversos Iudaeos, pp.319–414, passim. See Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, p.14;
Alexander II, ‘Placuit nobis’ (1063), Simonsohn, pp.35–6. For example, Innocent III, ‘etsi Judeos