110 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
In the same year the Jews obtained a privilege from the roman pope that they should
not be disgracefully treated by kings or nobles in order to exact money, nor delivered
into prison.41This letter, however, may have had a detrimental effect on Jews, since Christians
accused the pope of accepting bribes to publish it and of attempting to weaken the
power of the king and his nobles by forbidding them to demand money.42 possibly,
however, Matthew paris referred not to the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ of 1235 but
to another letter of protection granted the following year, also following a com-
plaint from French Jews.43 This time gregory emphasized to the archbishop of
Bordeaux and the bishops of Saintes, Angoulême, and poitiers his anger at cru-
saders killing many Jews in Anjou, poitou, and Brittany. He ordered the clergy to
ensure that those living in their dioceses make amends for any property seized,44
and passionately urged Louis IX to force crusaders to return all stolen property.45
Nevertheless, although, as we have seen, a number of popes also continued to re-issue
the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ in the second half of the thirteenth century—Innocent
Iv in 1246 and again in 1247, Alexander Iv in 1255, Urban Iv in 1262, gregory
X in 1272 and possibly 1274, Nicholas III in 1278, Martin Iv twice in 1281,
Honorius Iv between 1285–1286/7, and finally Nicholas Iv between 1288–
1292—these re-issues were not connected with crusading. However important,
re-issues of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries were only one of a number of ways by which the papacy sought to main-
tain control over the effects of crusading on the Jews. In order to assess other
approaches we turn to an examination of the impact of papal statements on Jews
in the particular context of individual crusades.
tHE pApACY ANd vIOLENCE AgAINSt JEwS
ASSOCIAtEd wItH tHE FIrSt CrUSAdE
As we saw in Chapter One, various Hebrew chronicles recorded pogroms against
Jews in germany before the First Crusade; it seems that a number of the crusaders
then held Jews directly responsible for the death of Christ.46 The impetus for the
crusade originated in 1095 when at the Council of Clermont Urban II preached
an armed pilgrimage to the Near East to support the eastern Byzantine Christians
41 Matthew paris, Chronica majora 3, ed. H. L. Luard, rolls Series 57 (London, 1877; Kraus
reprint, 1964), p.309: ‘Eodem anno Judaei privilegium impetrarunt a pontifice romano, ne a regibus
aut principibus pro exactione pecuniae turpiter tractarentur, vel in carcere traderentur.’
42 Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.219, footnote 2.
43 Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.219, footnote 2.
44 gregory IX, ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum in’ (5 September 1236), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.226–8;
Simonsohn, pp.163–4. For the lead up to the ‘Barons’ Crusade’, see Michael Lower, ‘The Burning of
Mont-Aimé’: Thibaut Iv of Champagne’s preparations for the Barons’ Crusade’, Journal of Medieval
History 29/2 (2003), 95–108.
45 gregory IX, ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum in’ (5 September 1236), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.228–30;
Simonsohn, p.165.
46 Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of Norman England 1096–1190’, p.238.