Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 59
some of its arguments are stronger than others, the Sefer Klimat Ha–Goyim shows
a detailed knowledge of how Christians rely on the gospels for the formation of
petrine claims—as they also do for their defence of the theology of penance, abso-
lution, and the doctrine of the treasury of Merits.178 Duran also stressed the all too
likely exploitation of indulgences by the papal curia for financial gain, an abuse of
which many contemporary Christian writers also complained.179
works like Duran’s vary in their appraisal of popes, both individually and
collectively, the tone switching from serious to passionate, or even light and play-
ful.180 Some of them—particularly those written in Northern France and
germany—were strikingly aggressive.181 The Sefer Joseph Hamekane expressed the
wish that the soul of gregory x might rot in hell; the Sefer Klimat Ha-Goyim, as we
have seen, referred to Jesus’ teaching as falsehood and witchcraft: Christians, it tells
us, are poor, silly souls with weak arguments whom the pope has tricked, seizing
their gold and silver and emptying it into the ‘treasury of the Church’.182 Yet, given
the gradually deteriorating status of European Jewry which inevitably heightened
defensiveness, when compared with what some contemporary Christian polemi-
cists said about the Jews, the language used in much Jewish polemic about indi-
vidual popes, as distinct from that in discussion of the papacy as an institution,
was comparatively mild.183 Such a relatively positive theme was probably not only
Christians as having had two leaders as popes for approximately twenty years, a reference to the schism
in the Catholic Church which had begun in 1378. For discussion and this reference to the pope, see
The Refutation of the Christian Principles by Hasdai Crescas, ed. and trans. D. J. Lasker (Albany, 1992),
p.2; p.4; p.66. Like Duran, Crescas noted that the Christian idea of the pope as head of their religion
was based on Matthew 17: 13–19 and that Christians believe that this text signifies ‘that Jesus has
given peter permission to renew the torah, to add to it and take out from it, as he wishes’. According
to Crescas this contradicts Matthew 5: 17–18, in which Jesus said ‘Do not think that i have come to
refute the torah, or the prophets. i did not come to undermine but to build’. He then argued that, if
Jesus could not change the torah, his disciples likewise could not. And, like Joseph Albo, he pointed
out that pope Sylvester i had changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Crescas also tried another
line of argumentation. According to both Matthew 26: 75 and John 13: 38, peter had betrayed Jesus
three times. How then, he asks, ‘did the popes sit on the chair once held by a false witness and a liar,
and were not ashamed?’ Like Joseph Albo, Crescas also cited Matthew 18: 18, John 21: 117, Acts 6:
5, 2 peter 3: 16, and galatians 2: 7, to argue that the power Jesus had given to peter had also been
given to all his disciples and that peter was therefore given no special advantage. For Chapter 18 of the
work devoted to ‘The Matter of the pope’, see Hasdai Crescas, ‘Bitul ‘iqarei dat ha-nosrim’, in Osar
wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, pp.307–8; ‘Sefer ha-‘iqqarim / Book of principles’, in Ma’amar 3, ed. Husik,
Chapter 25, Vol. 3, p.241. For Joseph Albo, see Joseph Albo, ‘Vikuah r. Yosef Albo’, in Osar wikuhim,
ed. Eisenstein, p.115; ‘Sefer ha-‘iqqarim / Book of principles’, in Ma’amar 3, ed. Husik, Chapter 25,
Vol. 3, p.241. Jewish authorities used their commentaries as a medium for refuting Christological
interpretations of those passages of the Bible which they shared with Christians; see Abulafia, Christians
and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, p.69.
178 As does the ‘Bitul ‘iqarei dat ha-nosrim’. See Hasdai Crescas, ‘Bitul ‘iqarei dat ha-nosrim’, in
Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, pp.307–8; ‘Sefer ha-‘iqqarim / Book of principles’, in Ma’amar 3, ed.
Husik, Chapter 25, Vol. 3, p.241. profiat Duran, ‘Sefer klimat ha-goyim’, in Osar wikuhim, ed.
Eisenstein, pp.279–80; talmage, The Polemical Writings of Profiat Duran, p.30; p.35; p.44; p.45; p.81.
179 Lasker, ‘Jewish philosophical polemics in Ashkenaz’, pp.164–5.
180 Blumenkranz, ‘The roman Church and the Jews’, p.215.
181 Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, p.3; pp.20–4.
182 Joseph ben Nathan official, in Sepher Joseph Hamekane, ed. rosenthal, p.86; profiat Duran,
‘Sefer klimat ha-goyim’, in Osar wikuhim, ed. Eisenstein, p.279; talmage, The Polemical Writings of
Profiat Duran, p.30; p.35; p.44; p.45; p.81.
183 Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, pp.19–22.