72 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
to preach harsh sermons against Jewish money-lending.39 And, as we have seen,
from the second half of the thirteenth century the mendicant friars increasingly
forced Jews in france, england, and Spain to listen to conversionary sermons.40
Alongside such wider attempts to regulate the behaviour of Jews in christian
society, at a more ‘unofficial’ level there was also unpleasant discrimination against
Jews by the local parish clergy. So, for example, in chalons-sur-Saône and Béziers
clergymen approved and encouraged the popular ‘custom’ of stoning Jews on Palm
Sunday as a reminder of their responsibility for condemning Jesus and as a punish-
ment for their denial that Mary was the Mother of God.41 or in Toulouse, where
in a tradition going back to the ninth century and not abolished until the twelfth,
it was customary for a Jew to be chosen to stand up in the town square before
St Stephen’s church to receive a blow on the face as symbolic punishment for an
alleged historical betrayal of the town by Jews to Muslim troops.42 And each year
in the Kingdom of Aragon a mob ritually stoned Jewish quarters during holy
Week.43 Thus not infrequently during the eleventh and twelfth centuries local
ecclesiastical sanction was given to popular violence against Jews.
despite the legislation of Lateran iV and the Paris disputation of 1240, Jewish
communities continued to seek assurances of protection from the papacy at times
of crisis and popes continued to issue statements of protection. during the reign of
Louis iX, new outbreaks of persecution surfaced in france—in particular attacks
at the outset in 1236 of the ‘Barons’ crusade’ of richard of cornwall and Thibaut
of champagne—on a number of Jewish communities in Anjou and Poitou, during
which crusaders attempted forcibly to baptize Jews and slaughtered any who resist-
ed.44 contemporary and later accounts estimate that the death toll associated with
this particular crusade was somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 Jews. Although
such figures must be treated with caution, it may well have been in the thousands.45
We know of these events not least from Gregory iX’s correspondence with french
prelates and with Louis iX in which he complained bitterly about the ill-treatment
of Jews by crusaders.46
What role did the papacy play in protecting Jewish communities throughout
the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries? from an objective perspective
papal protection was a failure. Although popes insisted on the protection of Jews
39 Kenneth Stow, ‘Papal and royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth century’,
American Jewish Studies Review 6 (1981), 161.
40 Jeremy cohen, The Friars and the Jews. The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (ithaca, London,
1982), pp.82–5.
41 James Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community. A Study of his Political and Economic Situation
(New York, 1976), pp.42–3.
42 Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community, pp.43–4.
43 Paola Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon,
1250 – 1391 (Philadelphia, 2012), pp.6–7.
44 Michael Lower, The Barons’ Crusade. A Call to Arms and Its Consequences (Philadelphia, 2005),
pp.118–20.
45 Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.226.
46 Gregory iX, ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum in’ (5 September 1236), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.226–8;
Simonsohn, pp.163–4; ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum in’ (5 September 1236), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.228–30;
Simonsohn, p.165.