106 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
when composing his Liber extra and he retained the same arrangement of five
books. His earlier writings, especially the Summa iuris canonici and the Summa de
casibus penitentiae, had brought him to gregory’s attention and in 1234 the pope
officially communicated his new collection to the masters and students of Bologna.
Not only did the Liber extra consolidate the Quinque compilationes antiquae, it also
incorporated most of their contents, superseded them, and added some of gregory’s
own decretals. For this reason it was frequently cited as the Liber ‘extra’. 21
despite the fact that both the Quinque antiquae compilationes and Liber extra
contained a number of papal general letters concerned with crusades, there were
no special sections—known as tituli (titles)—in either of them concerned specif-
ically with crusading. So although the term ‘crucesignati’ occurs in letters of popes
recorded in the Quinque antiquae compilationes and Liber extra, there is no par-
ticular Latin noun in these letters to designate a crusade. rather, as we have seen,
popes referred to a crusade as an ‘iter sanctum’ (holy journey), a ‘peregrinatio’ (pil-
grimage) or the ‘negotium fidei’ (‘business of the faith’).22 It suggests that even in
the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Church had developed no ‘official’
vocabulary to describe crusading: legal questions relating to crusades were covered
in more general Tituli on warfare and vows. Armed with such canon law and col-
lections, however, popes and canon lawyers were anxious to convert Urban II’s
crusade-preaching into an institution capable of realizing its immediate goal—the
conquest of the Holy Land—which they saw as a righteous cause because they
believed it rightfully belonged to Christians; Muslims, who held it illicitly, could
justly be conquered and expelled.
So when in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries several popes tried to control
the physical mistreatment of Jews by crusaders, this was partly because, in accord-
ance with gratian’s Decretum, the Church was supposed to tolerate ‘infidels’ if they
were Jews. This was because, set apart from Christian society, they were not subject
to Christian law:
As for those who are not of our Law, the Apostle says in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians [I Cor. 5: 12–13]: For what does it concern me to judge those who are
outside? god will judge them.23Jews, however, it could also be claimed, were a more problematic category since the-
ology and Church tradition also dictated that they should be protected within
Christian society. Thus canon lawyers, while claiming that the Church had the
power to discipline Christians, were unsure whether Jews, ‘internal’ to Christian
society yet a potential ‘external’ threat because outside the Faith, should also be sub-
ject to ecclesiastical authority.24 As we shall see in Chapter Five, the twelfth-century
canonist Huguccio eventually decided in the affirmative, claiming ecclesiastical
21 rist, The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245, p.123.
22 tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades, p.51; riley Smith, What were the Crusades?, p.2.
23 Gratian, C.23.q.4.c.16, col. 904: ‘de his, qui non sunt nostri iuris, ait Apostolus, in epistola
prima ad Chorinthios: “Quid enim michi attinet de his, qui foris sunt, iudicare? de his enim dominus
iudicabit”.’ See walter pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews (Ebelsbach, 1988), pp.46–7.
24 pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews, pp.51–4.