The Impact of the Crusades 135
noted, references to papal aid in times of need continue to be prominent not only
in chronicles and responsa but in the works of later literary histories looking back
to the Middle Ages. The Shebet Yehudah, a sixteenth-century account of the perse-
cutions of Jews in various countries and epochs, including their expulsion from
Spain in the fifteenth century, distinguished carefully between kings (and aristoc-
racy) and the papacy; the latter, it claimed, being generally well disposed to the Jews
while the masses and lower clergy were usually hostile.183
Chapter Fourteen of the Shebet Yehudah described ‘a gracious (hasid) pope who
had good qualities’ and whose ‘leadership is of one who is a truthful man’.184 This
seems to be a reference to the same John XXII who, although during his pontificate
called for the burning of the talmud, and expelled Jews from papal territory, as we
have seen, also defended Jewish communities against the Crusade of the Shepherds
of 1320.185 ‘Hasid’ implies more than justice alone, both in biblical and post-
biblical Hebrew, and possessed strong overtones of going much beyond the letter
of the law.186 So throughout the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and
into the fourteenth, popes showed their willingness to protect Jews against such
‘popular’ crusades, and indeed against crusading in general. Yet, at the theological
level, the papacy’s stance was much clearer and less convoluted before the advent of
the crusades. Furthermore, as we have seen, popes were also deeply concerned to
prevent Jews charging extortionate rates of interest to crusaders. It is to Jewish
money-lending and more widely to the papacy’s involvement in monitoring mon-
etary transactions between Jews and Christians to which we now turn.
Jews in 1322 in the Comtat venaissin this decision was quickly annulled. See rené Moulinas, Les Juifs
du Pape: Avignon et le Comtat Venaissin (paris, 1992), pp.25–6; p.31; Moulinas, Les Juifs du pape en
France, pp.24–5.
183 Yosef Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah
(Cincinatti, 1976), pp.44–6; p.49.
184 The Shebet Yehudah of Shelomo ibn Verga, ed. A. Shohat (Jerusalem, 1947), Chapter 14, p.60. It
is worth noting that elsewhere in his work Ibn verga even describes Manuel I, king of portugal
(1495–1521) as ‘hasid’, even though he had ordered the mass conversion of portuguese Jews in 1497.
This seems to be because he allowed the New Christians (former Jews) to emigrate from portugal in
- See Yerushalami, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah, p.3;
p.62. Other kings are also described as ‘hasid’, p.42.
185 Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah, p.43.
186 Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Inage in the Shebet Yehudah, pp.42–3.