10 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
FROM GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE
ELEVENTH CENTuRY
To understand the development of papal attitudes towards the Jews in the High
Middle Ages it is necessary to look back to a much earlier period. Analysis of papal
correspondence from the pontificate of Gregory I the Great (590–604) up to the
eleventh century reveals that when the Jews became a subject of interest it was in
reaction to immediate problems brought to a particular pope’s attention. Among
Gregory’s surviving letters, these concern the status of existing—as distinct from
new—synagogues, of willing versus forced baptism of converts, as well as prohib-
itions on Jews from owning Christian slaves, and on money transactions between
Christians and Jews.^46 The overall aim was twofold: to regulate Christian–Jewish
interaction and to safeguard rights enshrined in the fifth-century Theodosian Code
which guaranteed that Jews might continue to practise their religion undisturbed,
but also insisted on the inferior status of Judaism as the incomplete forerunner of
Christianity. Also most influential on papal correspondence was the sixth-century
Code of Justinian and its legislation concerning Jews which sought to protect, but
also to restrict, the rights of Jewish communities in western Europe.
Such themes can be found in the small number of letters about Jews issued both
by Gregory himself and by his successors—Stephen III (768–772), Adrian I
(772–795), Nicholas I (858–867), and Leo VII (936–939)—all reacting either to
Christian queries about Jewish status and practice or to Jewish complaints of ill-
treatment.^47 The range of issues remained small: forced baptism, synagogues, Jews
and Christian slaves, commercial dealings between Christians and Jews, the
well-being of Jewish converts to Christianity. Thus, Jews were not to be forcibly
baptized; they were allowed to maintain already-established synagogues but not
build new ones; they must not employ Christians; they were to be treated fairly in
business transactions; they were to be aided financially following conversion.
PAPAL CORRESPONDENCE IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
Although the eleventh century witnessed periodic persecutions of Jewish com-
munities, letters concerned with Jews represent only a tiny percentage of papal
correspondence.^48 At the beginning of the century Jews appealed to Sergius IV
46 For the letters of Gregory I, see Simonsohn, pp.3–24, passim. For a detailed discussion of the
letters of Gregory I, see Solomon Katz, ‘Pope Gregory the Great and the Jews’, Jewish Quarterly Review
24/2 (1933), 113–36; Solomon Grayzel, ‘Pope Alexander III and the Jews’, in Salo W. Baron Jubilee
Volume (Jerusalem, New York, 1975), pp.555–6. The issue of forced baptism continued well into the
early modern period; see, for example, the work of Cecil Roth, ‘Forced Baptism in Italy: A Contribution
to the History of Jewish Persecution’, Jewish Quarterly Review, new series, 27 (1936–7), 117–36.
47 Grayzel, ‘Pope Alexander III and the Jews’, p.556. For an example of a description of Jewish
communities in the early Middle Ages (ninth century), see Agobard of Lyons, Epistolae Karolini Aevi,
Tome 3, ed. E. Dümmler (Berlin, 1899), pp.164–201.
48 For example, in 1010 and 1063 there were outbreaks of violence against Jews; see Liebeschütz,
‘Relations between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages’, 37. For expulsions of Jews in 1012, see
‘Annales Quedlinburgensis’, MGHS, Vol. 3, p.81. For accounts of forced baptism of Jews, see ‘The