Introduction 27
reinforcement of Jewish subservience was unintentional: there was no ‘policy of
degradation’, since the aim was never to degrade. Rather, increasing papal emphasis
on the unity of Christian society went hand in hand with a gradual deterioration
in attitudes towards Jews—not least because of enthusiasm for the crusades and
increasing knowledge of the Talmud.
We have identified a particular stage in the long and complex history of papal-
Jewish relations during the High Middle Ages. Overall, it is clear that there are
parameters—the writings of St Paul, St Augustine, and Gregory I in particular—
within which the attitudes and agendas of individual popes are to be found; yet
these are wide. Within them it is important to identify and explain the devel-
oping changes which individual popes both reacted to and produced. In the sixth
century Gregory I had ensured that the precepts of the Theodosian Code remained
enshrined in papal correspondence. As we shall explore in subsequent chapters,
in the twelfth century, Calixtus II ushered in a new era with his adaptation and
re-issue of Gregory’s ‘Sicut Iudaeis’. Alexander III further defined relations between
Christians and Jews with his pronouncements that Jews must be protected, but
also that they must pay the tithe, should not hold public office, or exercise any pos-
ition of authority over Christians. Innocent III widened the scope and variety of papal
letters and became preoccupied with separation—an attitude which coloured all
subsequent papal statements and conciliar legislation. Gregory IX’s pontificate was
significant in that, although he protected Jews against extortionate nobles and cru-
saders, he also reacted to a perceived threat to Christianity from the Talmud—to
the long-term lasting detriment of their communities.^131 Innocent IV went further,
declaring that his authority as pope extended over all infidels, including Jews, as
well as over Christians, and that he had a duty to prevent heresy within the Jewish
faith itself. Clement IV encouraged the Inquisition to oversee not only heresy but
also Judaism. We shall see that each of these pontificates thus generated a signifi-
cant development in the evolution of papal attitudes towards Jews before the ‘exile’
to Avignon at the beginning of the fourteenth century. They do not amount to a
single overarching ‘papal policy’, but remain a series of important innovations in
response to social and intellectual movements largely outside papal control.
p.83: ‘Divergent opinions on the Jews were to be found among the popes themselves’. And, for example,
see Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: from St Paul to Paul IV’, p.109: ‘Also at work here is a strikingly
one-side approach, the active and aggressive Church and the passive and suffering Jews, an approach
which has more apparent than real justification... ’. For another example of such a nuanced approach
to the later early modern period, see the discussion of Salo Baron’s evaluation of the differences in
attitudes of popes in the sixteenth century discussed in Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: from St Paul
to Paul IV’, p.126.
131 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.52.