26 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
THE EVOLuTION OF PAPAL ATTITuDES
There is no doubt that thirteenth-century popes increasingly responded to a much
greater range and a more urgent number of requests than their predecessors.
Following Innocent III’s example, they showed an increased concern about the
position of Jews in Christian society. For this reason some have argued that in par-
ticular Innocent and his successor Gregory IX had a ‘policy’ towards the Jews. Yet,
the phrase ‘papal policy’ is as problematic for the thirteenth century as it is for the
eleventh or twelfth, if it implies that thirteenth-century popes collectively pur-
sued a consistent, unchanging, and overriding agenda. Certainly changes in eco-
nomic and social conditions encouraged papal centralization and goal-orientation,
as did the characters of the popes who held office. To these factors was added an
increasingly exalted vision of the papacy’s role at the head of a united Christian
society. Hence, in continuing to follow traditional and canonical interpretations of
St Augustine and St Paul, thirteenth-century popes might seem increasingly more
concerned with theory than with practicalities.
The limited and demarcated role that Jews were expected to play in Christian
society often resulted in the reality of subservience. Historians have criticized papal
statements which they argue reveal a contradictory attitude of simultaneous pro-
tection and restriction.^129 Yet there is nothing intrinsically contradictory about this
duality if it is viewed in the context of papal concerns for the overall well-being of
Christian society. Nevertheless, such an interpretation does not amount to a delib-
erate overarching policy. Whereas in the case of the authorization of crusades,
papal initiatives played a crucial role and crusading policies were generated directly
by popes in reaction to events and not necessarily in the first instance in response
to petitions, any so-called ‘papal policy’ towards the Jews was primarily responsive.
Christians increasingly complained to popes about Jewish activities, in particular
voicing concerns about the Talmud, and popes responded to these concerns.
Similarly, at times of crisis Jews might write to a pope asking for protection and he
would grant it. Yet this does not amount to a ‘policy’—unless the word is used
simply to describe the fact that individual popes decided how and when and to
what degree to reply to Jewish matters brought to their attention. A much more
nuanced picture is obtained if we view papal responses as ‘ad hoc’ rather than
static, if we accept that different popes might have different views about Jews,
and if we move away from any monolithic, unchanging papal perspective.^130 The
toward Biblical Judaism and Contemporary European Jewry (Ph.D. Dissertation, Louisiana State
university, 2005), pp.1–197. For the uninterrupted settlement of the Jews in the city of Rome itself,
see Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy, p.42. John XXII (1316–1334) briefly expelled Jews from the
Comtat Venaissin in 1320/1321. For papal rule in the Comtat Venaissin, see William Chester Jordan,
‘The Jews and the Transition to Papal Rule in the Comtat-Venaissin’, in Ideology and Royal Power in
Medieval France: Kingship, Crusades and the Jews, ed. W. C. Jordan (Aldershot, 2001), pp.213–32;
René Moulinas, Les Juifs du Pape: Avignon et le Comtat Venaissin (Paris, 1992), passim. For Jewish tax-
ation in the papal states in the early modern period, see Kenneth Stow, Taxation, Community and
State: The Jews and the Fiscal Foundations of the Early Modern Papal State (Stuttgart, 1982), passim.
129 See Grayzel, ‘Popes, Jews and Inquisition from “Sicut” to “Turbato”’, p.188: ‘This dual and
contradictory approach to their Jewish problem should have been clear to the popes long before this’.
130 For example of more recent productive work viewing papal responses as much more ad hoc, see
Stow, ‘Hatred of the Jews or Love of the Church: Papal Policy Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages’,