The City of Rome 231
Eugenius iii had become pope, the Commune controlled the city and he was
forced to leave immediately after his election. Arnold of Brescia (c.1090–1155),
who had originally incited the Commune against the papacy, was a friend of Peter
Abelard. Bernard of Clairvaux, who summoned the bishops to the Council of
sens (1140) to condemn Abelard’s works, referred to Arnold as Abelard’s ‘armour
bearer’—and compared innocent ii’s former rival Anacletus ii, Cardinal Petrus
Leonis—‘Peter the Lion’—with Abelard himself—thereby increasing the serious-
ness of the charges against him.33 When after ten months in exile, Eugenius even-
tually re-entered Rome in December 1145, he was eager to show his authority. His
subsequent interaction with the Roman Jews was intended to demonstrate that—
as well as perhaps to repay the loyalty of the Roman Jews to him during the Commune
and to foster continued financial backing from the Jewish community.34
‘siCuT iuDAEis’ AnD RoMAn JEWs
for Jews, God’s promises of a Messiah and his unfailing protection were proclaimed
in the Torah; for Christians, the old Testament was the repository of prophecies
fulfilled by Christ since his coming proved Christianity had inherited the old
Covenant.35 from the twelfth century there was among Christians a new era of
particular identification with biblical Judaism. it has been suggested this should be
viewed alongside the protection extended to Jews by popes in their re-issues of
‘s icut iudaeis’.36 Alexander ii’s ‘Placuit nobis’—which, as we have noted, granted
protection to spanish Jews, and praised bishops in southern france who protected
local Jews from soldiers passing through their territories to fight Muslims in
spain—was included in ivo of Chartres’ Decretum of c.1095, in the Panormia of
c.1096, and in Gratian’s Decretum. it may also have influenced Calixtus’s first issue
of ‘sicut iudaeis’ in the early 1120s.37
As we saw in Chapters Two and Three, although Jews may have appealed to
urban ii to take protective action—perhaps through the Jewish community in
Rome—it was not until almost twenty years after Emperor Henry iV’s proclam-
ation of protection that urban’s successor, Calixtus ii issued ‘sicut iudaeis’ some-
time between 1119 and 1124—probably in 1122 or 1123—and following Jewish
pleading.38 ‘sicut iudaeis’ referred to such pleading—which suggests that it was
issued in response to Jewish requests, possibly because Jews still remembered the
33 Champagne, The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews in Twelfth-Century Rome,
pp.129–30.
34 Champagne, The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews in Twelfth-Century Rome, p.101.
35 Champagne, The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews in Twelfth-Century Rome,
pp.87–8.
36 Marie Therese Champagne, ‘“Treasures of the Temple” and Claims to Authority in Twelfth-
Century Rome’, in Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Bolton, C. Meek (Turnhout,
2007), p.107.
37 Champagne, ‘Celestine iii and the Jews’, pp.279–80.
38 Champagne, ‘“Treasures of the Temple” and Claims to Authority in Twelfth-Century Rome’,
pp.117–18.