102 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
groups such as heretics and Jews, both viewed as ‘the Other’.3 p erhaps fear of her-
etics as a threat to orthodox Christianity increased hostility to Jews as another po-
tential enemy in Europe.
As we saw from their re-issues of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’, which contained
the additional statement that only Jews who did not plot against the Christian faith
were to be protected, to a greater or lesser extent, popes in the thirteenth century
increasingly viewed Jews, like Cathars and other heretics, as potential enemies and
believed that the Church must be defended against them, as it must be defended
against Muslim foes in the Near East. It is even possible that concern over the threat
of heretics augmented papal sensitivities to the idea of heresy within Judaism which,
as we shall see, they came to think was manifested in the talmud. Although we
should not infer that popes systematically collapsed the categories of heretics and
Jews into one overarching ‘Other’, nevertheless the concept of ‘internal’ enemies is
no mere modern construct, developed by recent historians to group together
non-Christians living in medieval Europe.4 to some extent it reflects ideas and con-
cerns shared by all the popes of the thirteenth century who increasingly believed
they had authority over the souls of all who lived in Christian society.
Yet there were substantial differences between the two groups. whereas heretics
deviated from the Faith, Jews did not accept it. Since Judaism in western medieval
Europe was not a proselytizing religion, the papacy did not see Jews, unlike
Cathars, and at times various other heretical groups such as the waldensians, as an
immediate threat.5 Yet, as we saw in Chapter One, the Hebrew crusade chronicles
which recorded the atrocities of the First and Second Crusade show that, even
when they wished to be well disposed towards Jewish communities, secular and
religious authorities could not always control the societies—or at least sections of
the societies—which they governed, particularly when unruly mobs were seized by
crusading enthusiasm, greed for Jewish wealth, or millenarian eschatological fer-
vour.6 As we shall see, mob violence resulting from crusading fervour recurred
during later crusading enterprises: at the Shepherds’ Crusade of 1251.7 Crusading
regularly bore the potential for arousing anti-Jewish animus.8 It is therefore not
surprising that the papacy, despite its theological commitment to the protection of
Jews, often failed to prevent crusader excesses.
3 Moore, robert, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe,
950–1250, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2007), passim.
4 Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, passim.
5 Of course not all heretics were seen as a threat because they proselytized. In fact, various heresies
(notably the Heresy of the Free Spirit) were created by churchmen for theological reasons; there was no
proselytizing group involved. See robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Late Middle Ages
(Berkeley, 1972), passim; Malcom Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), p.393. Also,
Jews may well have proselytized in periods and societies where this was not prohibited and punished
by death.
6 The Jews and the Crusaders. The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, trans. and ed.
S. Eidelberg (wisconsin, 1977), pp.5–8.
7 gary dickson, The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (Basingstoke, 2008),
p.78.
8 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240. Hebrew Texts translated by John Friedman, Latin Texts trans-
lated by Jean Connell Hoff; Historical Essay by Robert Chazan (toronto, 2012), p.33.