Papal Rhetoric: Heretics, Muslims, and Jews 255
light of Christ’ and who subsequently wanted his son also to be brought up in the
Catholic faith and not in the faith of his Jewish wife, the boy should be assigned to
his father.57 Innocent IV also made reference to the ‘shadows of Jewish blindness’,58
and the ‘blindness of Jewish error’.59 And in a letter of 1267 to John de Salins,
Count of Burgundy, Clement IV complained that the count’s lands harboured
Jews who after baptism had reverted to ‘the old and corrupt Jewish blindness’.60
Similarly, reissues of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ emphasized a Jewish ‘duritia’,
the obstinacy of the Jews in refusing to accept Christianity:
although they prefer to remain hardened in their obstinacy rather than acknowledge
the prophetic words, and the eternal secrets of their own scriptures, that they might
thus arrive at the understanding of Christianity and Salvation... 61This metaphor suggested not just ‘obstinacy’ but a spiritual ‘hardness of heart’ since
the idea behind it was that Jews deliberately refused to recognize Jesus as Christ
and accept his teachings as revealed in the new Testament. In his letter ‘Vineam
sorec’ of 1278 to the prior of the dominicans in lombardy urging him to organize
missionary sermons, nicholas III referred in graphic language to the Jews as a stub
born and hard hearted people who merited their punishment. We have seen how,
although he believed that it was his duty as pope to make them see the the light of
truth, he emphasized that if ‘like deaf adders’ they do not listen to the friars, they
must be reported so that he himself might deal with those remaining obstinate.62
So both ‘duritia’ and ‘Caecitia’ indicated a refusal, incomprehensible to Christians,
to acknowledge Christ as the Messiah prophesied in the old Testament. Yet such
language must be understood in the context of its time. When one considers the
way Jews were frequently described by Christian writers and polemicists such as
Peter the Venerable or raymond lull, papal correspondence does not stand out as
unusually harsh nor condemnatory of Jews. Whenever medieval popes referred to
Jews as ‘blind’ or ‘stubborn’ or ‘hard of heart’ they were trying to explain in simple
terms what they believed to be the correct Christian theological attitude. That does
57 Gregory IX, ‘Ex litteris tuis’ (16 May 1229), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.180–2, especially p.180;
Simonsohn, pp.128–9, especially p.128: ‘quidam videlicet de Judaice cecitatis errore ad Christum
lumen verum (et viam veritatis) adductus’.
58 Innocent IV, ‘Cum a nobis’ (21 April 1250), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.284; Simonsohn, pp.201–2, espe
cially p.201: ‘de Judaice cecitatis tenebris’.
59 Innocent IV, ‘Sicut dilecta in’ (15 July 1250), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.286–8, especially p.286;
Simonsohn, pp.203–4, especially p.203: ‘de Judaice cecitatis errore’.
60 Clement IV, ‘Professionis Christianae’ (17 August 1267), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.104–6, especially
p.105; Simonsohn, pp.237–8, especially p.238: ‘caecitatis iudaicae veterem et corruptam’ and ‘herbam
mortiferam’.
61 Innocent III, ‘licet perfidia Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.92; Simonsohn, p.74: ‘licet in sua magis
velint duritia perdurare, quam prophetarum verba, et suarum scriptuarum arcana cognoscere, atque
ad Christiane fidei et salutis notitiam pervenire / licet in sua magis velint duritia perdurare quam
vaticinia prophetarum et legis archana cognoscere, atque ad Christiane fidei notitiam pervenire.. .’.
See also, for example, the phrase in the following letters: honorius III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1,
p.144; Simonsohn, p.102; Gregory IX, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.218; Simonsohn, pp.154–5;
Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1 , pp.260–2; Simonsohn, p.189; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1,
p.274; Simonsohn, pp.192–3.
62 nicholas IV, ‘Vineam sorec velut’ (4 August 1278), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.142–5, especially p.144;
Simonsohn, pp.249–52, especially p.251: ‘veluti aspis surda’.