18 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
an extremely important role. Since Innocent wished to encourage crusaders by
offering financial incentives, it is unsurprising that he ruled that those who took
the Cross must be protected from Jewish usury and singled out Jews when demanding
that usurers privilege crusaders with moratoria on the principal of their loans and
remit interest paid before their departure.^81 Following his lead, Innocent’s succes-
sors continued to discuss Jewish money-lending in their correspondence about
crusading.
The Near East was only one area where Innocent was concerned to promote
crusades. Anxiety about enemies not only outside but within Christian society motiv-
ated him to call the Albigensian Crusade in 1207 against heretics in the south of
France.^82 It is clear that concern about heretics also affected attitudes towards Jews
as another group of non-Christians in Catholic society.^83 Works such as the Bibles
moralisées (Moralised Bibles), commissioned for the court of Louis IX (1226–1270),
depict Jews and heretics side by side, while polemical literature lumped Jews,
Muslims, and heretics together as potential threats to Christian society.^84 To some
extent papal correspondence, like canon law, both reflected and encouraged this
image.^85 Thus, heretics were disobedient to Mother Church, pagans did not yet
know Christ, Muslims were misled, Jews were blind and obstinate to the Truth.^86
81 For Innocent III’s declaration that Jews were to remit usury to crusaders, see Innocent III, ‘Post
miserabile(m) Hierosolymitanae’ (17/15 August 1198), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.86; Simonsohn, p.71; ‘Graves
orientalis terrae’ (31 December 1199), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, p.78; ‘Nisi nobis dictum’
(4 January 1200), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, pp.78–9; ‘Quia maior nunc’ (22 April 1213),
Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.136; Simonsohn, p.97. For his amplification that actual debts of the crusaders were
not to be cancelled outright but, along with the interest, their payment was to be postponed until the
crusaders returned home, see Ad liberandam, Tanner, Vol. 1, p.269. For discussion of these papal state-
ments, see Stow, ‘Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century’, 162–3;
Stow, Alienated Minority, pp.222–3.
82 For the earliest letter of Innocent III promising the plenary indulgence to all those who would
take up arms to fight against heretics in the area of Toulouse, see Innocent III, ‘Inveterata pravitatis
haereticae’ (17 November 1207), Die Register Innocenz’ III, Publikationen des Österreichischen
Kulturnistituts in Rom, ed. O. Hageneder, H. Haidacher, A. Strnad, 8 vols in 11 (Graz, Vienna,
Cologne, 1965–), Vol. 10, pp.254–7. For a discussion of this letter which dates from November 1207,
see Rebecca Rist, ‘Salvation and the Albigensian Crusade: Pope Innocent III and the Plenary
Indulgence’, Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 100.
83 For medieval preaching and polemic against Jews and heretics, see Williams, Adversus Iudaeos: A
Bird’s Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance, pp.400–7; Miche Zink, La Prédication en
Langue Romane avant 1300 (Paris, 1976), pp.188–95; Jean Longère, Oeuvres Oratoires de Maîtres
Parisiens au Xiiè siècle. Étude Historique et Doctrinale, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1975), pp.410–33; Vol. 2 (Paris,
1975), p.318; Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist
Thought, Vol. 1 (London, 1970), pp.722–33; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. A History of the
Development of Doctrine, Vol. 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600–1300) (Chicago, London,
1978), pp.242–55. For similar themes in the later medieval period see, for example, Baldus de ubaldis,
Consilia (Venice, 1575), Vol. 5, no.428, pp.113–14.
84 Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance. The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisée
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1999), p.1, passim; Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul to Pius
IX’, p.18.
85 Roth, ‘The Popes and the Jews’, 76. The tendency to collapse Jews into a general category with
Muslims—in other words those who were outside Christian society—can be seen in Titulus 6 of the
‘Liber extra decretalium’: X.5.6, cols 771–8; by contrast heretics are given a separate Titulus 7, but are
nevertheless also dealt with in the same book, see X.5.7, cols 778–90.
86 For example, Honorius III, ‘Ineffabilis providentia Dei’ (11 December 1225), Grayzel, Vol. 1,
pp.172–4.