This chapter explores the relationship between the papacy and Jews in Rome, the
seat of the pope’s power not as Europe’s spiritual leader but as the city’s bishop.
During the High Middle Ages Jewish communities in Europe were of limited rele-
vance to popes whose primary aims were to provide leadership to the episcopacy,
to develop pastoral care, to formulate doctrine and canon law, to engage in polit-
ical life, and to control the papal states. We must not exaggerate papal interest
in the Jewish communities of medieval Europe, and in particular the importance
of such communities to popes. Yet in the papal states and in particular in Rome
itself there was a flourishing Jewish community which enjoyed the most favourable
conditions, by contemporary standards, of anywhere in Europe.
THE JEWisH CoMMuniTY of RoME
Many Jews had lived voluntarily in Rome’s Jewish quarter in Trastevere, the home
of Roman Jews since at least the first century bc.1 The community often interceded
unofficially on behalf of similar communities in other parts of Europe.2 in Rome
it came to participate not only in the Church’s annual carnival games but also, as
we shall see, in papal adventus ceremonies.3 Although there was no Jewish Charter
in the city to offer immunity and exemption for Jews from possible reprisals, there
was also no carnival tax on the community until the fourteenth century, while the
vicesima tax—a tax of a twentieth of all possessions, revenues, income, earnings,
and money imposed on Jews in Rome and the papal states—did not come into
effect until the fifteenth century.4
We know of many Jewish translators, exegetes, religious poets, and doctors of
the Law who lived in the city.5 in the Liber Pontificalis (c.1154–1178), Cardinal
1 s hlomo simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History (Toronto, 1991), p. 409; Marie Therese
Champagne, The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews in Twelfth-Century Rome: Papal Attitudes
toward Biblical Judaism and Contemporary European Jewry (Ph.D. Dissertation, Louisiana state university,
2005), p.111. The Jewish ghetto in Rome was not established until the sixteenth century and the
pontificate of Paul iV (1476–1559) with his issue of ‘Cum nimis absurdum’ (1555).
2 simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, History, p.39; p.403.
3 simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.403.
4 simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, pp.416–17; pp.418–21.
5 Abraham Berliner, Storia degli Ebrei di Roma, dall’antichità allo smantallamento del ghetto (Milan,
2000), pp.104–16.
7
The City of Rome