14 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
popes relying on Jewish converts to Christianity and Christian scholars who could
read Hebrew for knowledge of the contents of the Talmud; indeed they seem to
have relied on these more than on university scholars or, from the thirteenth
century onwards, the mendicant friars.^63 From the twelfth century the papacy
encouraged Christian interest in Hebrew and encouraged its study at academic
centres, in the first instance to prove Christian exegesis and theology, but then sub-
sequently in the later Middle Ages and beyond to train missionaries and to explore
the heritage of antiquity.^64 Hence, for example, Bologna boasted one of the first
Hebrew printing houses.^65
Thus, although the number of papal letters concerned with Jews remained pro-
portionately small, popes were reacting to a number of issues of no concern to their
predecessors. Furthermore, their correspondence, in particular that of Alexander
III (1159–1181), Innocent III (1198–1216), Gregory IX (1227–1241), Innocent
IV (1243–1254), and Clement IV (1265–1268)—all dominant characters with
relatively long pontificates—reveals a desire not only to react to, but also to con-
trol, the presence of Jews in Christian society. Or rather, the increasing desire of
these popes to regulate the Jews was itself a reaction to popular appeals for such
regulations. It was bolstered by canonical concepts of the Church as a hegemonic
corporation, since these popes were unwaveringly and increasingly confident of
their spiritual role as heads of the community of the faithful.^66 Christendom
(‘Christianitas’), as defined by eleventh- and twelfth-century clerics, was a unitary
of Blois, ‘Contra perfidiam Iudaeorum’, PL 207, cols 825–70; William of Bourges, ‘Liber bellorum
Domini contra Iudaeos et contra Iudaeorum hereticos’, in Livre des guerres du Seigneur et deux homélies,
Sources chrétiennes, ed. G. Dahan (Paris, 1981), pp.66–273. There is a large amount of secondary lit-
erature on these works. See, for example, Peter Browe, Die Judenmisson in Mittelalter und die Päpste,
Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae 6 (Rome, 1942), pp.102–3; Dahan, La Polémique chrétienne contre le
judaisme, p.232; Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, p.19. For the
increase in anti-Jewish polemic and conciliar legislation in areas inhabited by a considerable Jewish
population, see Bernard Blumenkranz, ‘Anti-Jewish Polemics and Legislation in the Middle Ages:
Literary Fiction or Reality?’, Journal of Jewish Studies 15/3–4 (1964), 125–40. The works of Raymond
Lull and Raymond Martin also sought to convert Jews as well as Muslims to Christianity: Raymond
Martin, Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos, ed. J. de Voisin, J. B. Carpzovi (Lipsiae, 1687), passim
and Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Iudeos, ed. F. Lanckisi (1687; repr. Farnborough, 1967), passim;
Raymond Lull, El ‘Liber praedicationis contra Iudaeos’ de Raymond Lull, ed. J. M. M. Vallicrosa
(Madrid, 1957), passim. See also discussion of the Jews in Alexander of Hales, Doctoris irrefragabilis
Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica (Rome, 1924), passim. See Robert Chazan,
Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989),
pp.25–37.
63 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.260.
64 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, pp.328–9.
65 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.434.
66 For the idea of the community of the faithful, see, for example, Walter ullmann, The Papacy and
the Faithful (Cambridge university Library, presented by the author, 1965), p.26; pp.28–9. For the
medieval idea of the whole Christian community, whose faith could never fail, see, for example, Brian
Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150–1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty
and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1972), pp.36–7. The belief that the whole society of Christians
was something other than an aggregate of individuals was as old as the Church itself; see Brian Tierney,
Foundation of the Conciliar Theory. The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great
Schism (Basel, 1998), pp.121–40. For the idea of the community of Christians in earlier medieval
discourse see, for example, Hincmar of Reims (806–82), ‘Hincmari Remensis epistola ad Flodoard’,
Historia Remensis, Book 3, Chapter 26, MGHS, Vol. 13, p.542, line 30.