130 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Christians and which caused envy and anger.152 These accusations were not new to
the thirteenth century. In the twelfth century peter the venerable had levelled a
similar charge at the Jews when he complained to Louis vII that goods stolen from
churches were secreted away in Jewish houses to be sold in synagogues,153 and, as we
saw in Chapter two, charges of Jews killing Christians increased in England after
the murder, supposedly, by Jews, of william of Norwich in 1144, following the exe-
cution at Blois in 1171 of more than thirty Jews accused of the murder of a Christian
child.154 Innocent’s reference to the story of the murdered scholar suggests that he
might have believed allegations of ritual murder even though the scholar in question
does not seem to have been a child and ritual murder accusations typically involved
children.155
Nevertheless, despite these letters, only a very small proportion of the corres-
pondence of Innocent III, Honorius III, and gregory IX concerned with the
Albigensian Crusade refer to Jews, and those that do are primarily concerned with
usury, as, for example, ‘gloriantes hactenus in’ of 1209.156 Yet Church councils
from the same period tell us much about the position of Jews in the south of
France vis-à-vis the Church. Since such councils legislated against heretics, it is not
surprising that they also issued decrees against Jews as another minority group.
Indeed, both the decrees of Lateran Iv and Innocent III’s correspondence had a
profound influence on the legislation of Church councils in France and vice versa.157
Thus the decrees of the Council of Montpellier (1195) declared that Jews must
exercise no office over Christians nor employ Christian servants or nurses, that
converts from Judaism to Christianity should receive back from Christians their
stolen goods and patrimony, and that all such converts were under the protection
of the Apostolic See—which anticipated similar statements of Innocent III.158 The
Council of Montélimar (1209), which addressed the perceived close relationship
between the nobility in the south of France and suspected heretics, seems to have
been directly influenced by ‘Si parietem cordis’, a letter of Innocent of 1207 to
152 Some historians have argued that, among the learned, a growing awareness of the role played
by intention in human action and behaviour encouraged the idea of Jewish culpability for Christ’s
crucifixion, and so horror and anger at the Jews. See Christendom and its Discontents, ed. p. diehl,
S. waugh (Cambridge, 1996), pp.227–8.
153 Innocent III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn, pp.82–4.
154 dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, p.19; gavin Langmuir,
Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism (Berkeley, London, 1996), p.307; Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom
and the Jews of Norman England 1096-1190’, p.236; Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal
Sovereignty, p.23; Christendom and its Discontents, ed. diehl, waugh, p.221; Chazan, God, Humanity
and History: the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, London, 2000), p.2.
155 Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.108, footnote 8.
156 Innocent III, ‘gloriantes hactenus in’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.134; Simonsohn, p.96.
157 Innocent III, ‘post miserabile(m) Hierusolymitanae’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.86; Simonsohn, p.71;
‘g raves orientalis terrae’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p. 98; Simonsohn, p.78; ‘Nisi nobis dictum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1,
p.98; Simonsohn, pp.78–9; ‘Maiores ecclesie causas’ (September-October 1201), Grayzel, Vol. 1,
pp.100–2; Simonsohn, pp.80–1; ‘Quia maior nunc’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.136; Simonsohn, p.97; ‘Quanto
melior est’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.138–40.
158 Mansi, vol. 22, col. 669; Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.298. See also Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.299, footnote 1; Innocent
III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn, pp.82–4; ‘Etsi Judeos quos’ (15 July
1205) Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.114–16; Simonsohn, pp.86–8; ‘Si parietem cordis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.124;
Simonsohn, p.92.