Introduction 17
unconditional. Rather, it was implied that although Jews lived in Christian Europe,
they remained outside the corporate identity of Christian society and could not ne-
cessarily be trusted. It is highly significant that this additional final sentence was
repeated by Innocent’s thirteenth-century successors when they re-issued the
‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’.^76
Innocent’s additions were consonant with his desire to protect Christian society.
He saw its principal external enemies as Muslims in the Near East who by recap-
turing Jerusalem in 1187 again controlled the holy places of Christ’s life and
Passion—which led him to call for crusades.^77 His enthusiasm for crusading
seemed to know no bounds and the consequent need to raise money heightened
his concerns about usury and consequently about Jews as moneylenders. Long
before his pontificate, the Third Lateran Council had already emphasized the papa-
cy’s commitment to combating usury, a growing practice in Europe as trade and
mercantile activity intensified;^78 indeed from the beginning of the twelfth century,
popes had increasingly expressed concern about money-lending at interest.^79
Some historians have even argued that the strict prohibition of usury by
Christians was a crucial factor in the growing number of Jewish moneylenders,
although others have countered that in the twelfth century Lombard and Cahorsin
bankers redressed the balance in favour of Christian money-lending.^80 Yet although
debate still rages as to whether by the end of the twelfth century Jews were the
principal moneylenders in Europe, the evidence of the Angevin royal Exchequer
suggests that at least in the wealthy and influential kingdom of France they played
been charged with the blood libel in the city of Trent were NOT guilty of plotting against the Christian
faith and so must merit just treatment and be protected, see Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul
to Pius IX’, p.34; p.42.
76 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; Alexander
IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.55–7; Simonsohn, pp.211–12; urban IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel,
Vol. 2, pp.70–1; Simonsohn, p.219; Gregory X, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.117–20; Simonsohn,
pp.242–3; and possibly ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.133–4; Simonsohn, p.246; Nicholas III,
‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.139–42; Simonsohn, p.249; Martin IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Simonsohn,
p.254; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.147–50; Simonsohn, pp.254–5; Honorius IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’,
Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.162–3; Simonsohn, p.260; and Nicholas IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.191–2;
Simonsohn, p.265. Interestingly, however, the additional sentence at the end was not included in the
‘Liber extra decretalium’ of Gregory IX, which cited Clement III’s re-issue of ‘Sicut Iudaeis’; see X.5.6,
col. 774. See Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul to Pius IX’, p.34.
77 The Deeds of Pope Innocent III by an Anonymous Author, ed. and trans. J. M. Powell (Washington
D.C., 2004), pp.77–228.
78 James Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community (London, 1938), pp.282–3. For economic
growth, see Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, pp.77–82; pp.87–8; Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes
and Modern Anti-Semitism (Berkeley, 1997), p.305; Stow, Alienated Minority, p.222. For the growth
of usury as witnessed by the number of sermons by, for example, James of Vitry and Thomas of
Chobham, see Jacques le Goff, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages (New
York, London, 1998), p.17, passim.
79 Earlier collectors of legal texts had for many years been eloquent on the subject of usury. Popes seem
to have become increasingly sophisticated in their statements, and more resolutely hostile; see, for example,
Gilchrist, ‘The Perceptions of the Jews in the Canon Law of the Period of the First Two Crusades’, 9–24.
80 For Jews as moneylenders see, for example, Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, pp.82–8;
Christendom and its Discontents, ed. Waugh, Diehl, pp.220–1; Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and
the Massacre of March 1190, p.9; p.38; Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community, p.304; Stacey,
‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of Norman England 1096–1190’, p.238.