Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 49
Jacob describes gregory ix as ‘the king who governs all kings.... to him be fame
and glory’—not an unusual description, since, as we have already noted, both
Christian and Jewish writers frequently emphasized the pope’s claims to temporal,
as well as spiritual, authority.111 Much more interestingly, he also describes the
pope as ‘honourable’ and ‘innocent’,112 emphasizing that gregory ‘did not listen
to his [Donin’s] words and knew that they were words of stupidity and evil’.113 He
added that not only the pope but:
the kings of the country did not believe him [Donin] and neither did the inhabitants
of the whole world, except for ignorant savages and evil persons who have the same
evil in them.114we can interpret such comments in a number of ways. Either Jacob was delib-
erately flattering the pope to ensure that papal protection of Jewish communities
would continue; or he was genuinely convinced of the pope’s desire to protect Jews
against false allegation—or both, which, given the context of the debate, seems the
most likely. Jacob recognized that the spiritual and temporal power of the papacy
ensured that kings took notice of papal injunctions not to harm Jews but to allow
them to exercise their rights undisturbed, and he acknowledged that the pope was
often a safer port of refuge than monarchs or emperors. of course, this is only a
very general comment, since, as we have already noted, royal and imperial protec-
tion varied dramatically, depending on geography and the individual characters
of secular rulers. one need only compare, for example, the comparatively benign
legislation of Frederick ii—he ruled as Holy roman Emperor from 1220–1250—
for Jews in southern italy with the anti-Jewish policies, including expulsions, of
philip ii Augustus of France.115
Besides Jacob bar Elie, other contemporaries appear similarly ambivalent about
the likelihood of royal aid to communities at times of crisis and correspondingly
aware of the importance of gaining papal protection. Joseph ben Nathan official,
another thirteenth-century authority, regularly came into contact with high
111 Jacob ben Elie, ‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, in Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, p.192;
‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, ed. Kobak, Vol. 1, pp.29–30. it is worth noting that the title ‘Head
of the Nations’ appeared in a 1354 petition to the King of Aragon and in the sixteenth century
chronicle of Eliyahu Capsali who used the term provocatively to refer to both the emperor and the
pope. See Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty, p.22. Compare with the Christian
writer Alexander of roes who, despite his imperialist sympathies, declared that at the Second
Council of Lyons in 1274 all prelates, kings, Jews, greeks, and tartars confessed that the monarchy
of the world belonged to the pope; Alexander de roes, Notitia Saeculi, Vol. 8, MGH, Vol. 1, part 1,
pp.149–71. See the discussion in James Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages (London, 1973),
p.154; p.323.
112 The word used for the pope is ‘melech’ (king). See Jacob ben Elie, ‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’,
in Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, p.192; ‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, ed. Kobak, Vol. 1, pp.29–30.
113 Jacob ben Elie, ‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, in Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, p.192; ‘Vikuah
r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, ed. Kobak, Vol. 1, pp.29–30.
114 Jacob ben Elie, ‘Vikuah r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, in Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, p.192; ‘Vikuah
r. Ya’acov mivinisya’, ed. Kobak, Vol. 1, pp.29–30.
115 Expulsions of the Jews, for example from France which began during the reign of philip
Augustus, became routine in Europe after 1291; see roth, ‘The popes and the Jews’, 75; william
Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: from Philip Augustus to the Last of the Capetians
(p hiladelphia, 1989), passim.