100 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
to avoid conversion would only have added to a general hostility to Judaism in the
society at large.199 for this and other reasons explored in the next chapter, papal
authorization of crusades had an indirect but profoundly negative effect on the
Jewish communities of western europe and popes found it increasingly difficult to
retain the spirit of Pauline/Augustinian protection in the ever-changing social and
political conditions of the age.
199 Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. r. chazan (New York, 1980), p.161.