Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 43
wibert of ravenna, the anti-pope Clement iii (1029–1100), and his denunciation
of Jews who, following forced conversions, returned to Judaism after the crusaders
recaptured Jerusalem from the Seljuk turks.77
Yet even if the reference is to wibert and Urban ii played no part encouraging
persecutions, why, anticipating crusader violence, did he fail to re-issue the
‘Constitutio pro iudaeis’, on the eve of the crusade?78 As we have seen, this general
letter, otherwise known as the ‘Sicut iudaeis’, was a papal promise of protection for
the Jews originally decreed by gregory i (590–604) in 598 and re-issued by a number
of Urban’s successors at times of crisis.79 to ask our present question, however, is to
approach the matter from hindsight: gregory i’s ‘Sicut iudaeis’ was originally issued
in response to a petition from the Jews of palermo who had complained about the
anti-Jewish activities of its bishop; it had no connection with papal authorization
of military action.80 Furthermore, Urban ii’s call on Christians to take the Cross
in 1095 was the first of its kind and, according to the accounts of his speech at
Clermont, he envisaged that those who answered his call to arms would be from
the knightly classes and no disordered rabble.81 perhaps naively, he seems to have
been genuinely amazed by the popular response to his summons and, with no ex-
perience of previous crusades on which to draw, failed to anticipate the ensuing mob
violence against Jews. Consequently it did not cross his mind to issue ‘Sicut iudaeis’.
indeed the earliest possible re-issues date from the pontificates of Calixtus ii (1119–
- and Eugenius iii (1145–1153), while the earliest extant version is likely to
have been composed after the time of gratian (floruit c.1140) and was not issued
until the pontificate of Alexander iii, sometime between 1159 and 1181.82 All these
re-issues were long after Urban ii’s pontificate.
Since the Jewish First Crusade chronicles portray so many aspects of Christianity
in derogatory terms, Shelomo bar Shimshon’s anti-papal rhetoric is not particularly
77 See, for example, Solomon grayzel, ‘pope Alexander iii and the Jews’, in Salo W. Baron Jubilee
Volume. American Academy for Jewish Research (Jerusalem, New York, 1975), p.556; Stow, The ‘1007
Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty, p.18; Kenneth Stow, ‘Conversion, Apostasy and Apprehensiveness:
Emicho of Flonheim and the Fear of the Jews in the twelfth Century’, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval
Studies 76/4 (2001), 926. Earlier historians had attributed this protest to Urban ii, see, for example,
roth, ‘The popes and the Jews’, 79; and his entry (1971) ‘popes’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem,
1971); another anti-pope who does not come off well in relation to the Jews is Benedict xiii (elected
1394) who was responsible for the Disputation of tortosa (1413–1414) and a wave of persecution in
the iberian peninsula, see roth, ‘The popes and the Jews’, 83. For the Jewish and Christian accounts
of the Disputation of tortosa, see Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages,
ed. and trans. H. Maccoby (rutherford, London, 1982), pp.168–86; pp.187–215.
78 Solomon grayzel, ‘The papal Bull “Sicut iudeis”’, in Studies and Essays in Honour of Abraham
A. Neuman (philadelphia, Leiden, 1962), p.251.
79 For a discussion of the various re-issues of the ‘Constitutio pro iudaeis’, see Grayzel, Vol. 1,
pp.76–8; Solomon grayzel, ‘The papal Bull “Sicut iudaeis”’, in Essential Papers in Judaism and
Christianity in Conflict, ed. J. Cohen (New York, London, 1991), pp.231–59.
80 gregory i, ‘Sicut iudaeis’ (June 598), in Simonsohn, pp.15–16; Abulafia, ‘Christians and Jews in
the High Middle Ages’, p.20.
81 See the description of Urban ii’s speech at Clermont in The Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hiero-
solimitanorum, ed. r. Hill (oxford, 1962), p.1.
82 For possible issues which are not extant, see Calixtus ii, ‘Sicut iudaeis’ (1119–1124), Simonsohn,
p.44 and Eugenius iii, ‘Sicut iudaeis’ (1145–53), Simonsohn, p.47 and discussed in Grayzel, Vol. 1,
p.76. For the extant issue of Alexander iii, see ‘Sicut iudaeis’ (1159–1181), in Simonsohn, pp.51–2.