The Papal Promise of Protection 77
decreed that Jews who had been baptized in the past should be compelled to remain
christian. Yet one of the principal tenets of papal re-issues of the ‘constitutio pro
iudaeis’ in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was that baptism should never be
forced. This principle went back to the rulings of King Sisebut and to the fourth
council of Toledo, was repeated by Gregory i in his correspondence, and together
with his seminal letter ‘Sicut iudaeis’, was later included in Gratian’s Decretum and
thereby given significant status in canon law.60 Nevertheless, since the overall thrust
of canon 57 of the fourth Toledan council was that those who had already been
forcibly baptized should be compelled to remain christians, it might seem to under-
mine Gregory’s testimony against forced baptism. Perhaps for this reason in the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, popes seem to have generally ignored
the Toledan ruling. even the great twelfth-century legal mind, Alexander iii, who
in his re-issue of the ‘constitutio pro iudaeis’ insisted again that Jews should not be
forced to accept baptism—thereby deliberately recalling Gregory’s teaching—never
referred to canon 57 in any of his correspondence concerned with Jews.
Yet as the power of the papacy grew, the meaning of ‘forced’—Latin ‘coacti’—
i.e. conversion by force, was more closely defined. As we shall see in chapter Three,
when many Jews, forcibly converted to christianity by crusaders, returned to their
old faith in 1095–1096, the anti-pope clement iii (1080, 1084–1100) com-
plained bitterly—unlike the rightful pope Urban ii who made no comment on
these reversals. The pope who tackled the issue head on was innocent iii, who—
typically—exhibited a more complex and nuanced stance in his treatment of the
Jews than many of his predecessors. in his 1199 re-issue of the ‘constitutio pro
iudaeis’—entitled ‘Licet perfidia iudaeorum’—like Alexander iii he echoed
Gregory i in arguing that no christian should use violence to force Jews into bap-
tism and that only Jews who sought refuge among christians through their own
free will and religious conviction ought to be baptized.61 But, only a few years after
this re-issue, in a letter ‘Maiores ecclesie’ of 1201 to the archbishop of Arles—
deemed important enough by canonists, including Alexander of hales, to be later
entered into the Liber extra decretalium—he argued that even if enough force was
applied to indicate the unwillingness of an individual to accept christianity, he
must still remain a christian.62 it would be an insulting denial of the sacrament of
baptism if Jews reverted to their original Judaism. This seemed to undermine the
essence of ‘Sicut iudaeis’ which clearly stated that conversion by force was never
acceptable to God, and apparently attempted to reconcile Gregory’s position with
the harsher decrees of canon 57 of Toledo iV.63
Similarly, while in ‘Maiores ecclesie’ innocent confirmed that it was contrary to
the christian faith for anyone completely opposed to baptism to be compelled to
60 Gratian, d.45.c.5, cols 161–2. See dahan, Les Intéllectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge,
p.114; Schreckenberg, Die Christlichen Adversus-Iudaeos-Texte, p.145.
61 innocent iii, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’ (15 September 1199), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.92–4;
Simonsohn, pp.74–5.
62 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, pp.256–7.
63 innocent iii, ‘Maiores ecclesie causas’ (September–october 1201), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.100–2;
Simonsohn, pp.80–1; X, 3, 42, 3, cols 644–6.