Jews and Money 145
rightly saw as necessary for europe’s economic prosperity. indeed popes never chose
simply to forbid money-lending to Jews.56 As we shall see, their stance on the issue
of lending at interest, whether that involved Jewish or Christian lenders, was much
more complex than might at first appear.
Papal letters reveal a regular concern that crusaders should not be prevented from
embarking on their journey because they could pay back neither the money they
had borrowed in order to set out nor the interest accruing from it. The cost of trav-
elling to the near east, which has been estimated as at least four times many cru-
saders’ annual revenue, meant that, despite small subsidies paid to crusaders from
the mid-thirteenth century onwards, most of them needed to borrow money for
their journey.57 As we have seen, in his major crusading encyclical ‘Quantum
praedecessores’ (1145) eugenius iii had ruled that crusaders must be absolved
from the payment of interest on debts accrued either previously or in order to take
the Cross for the second Crusade:
... with regard to the past, they should not pay usurious loans, and if they themselves,
or others, are bound by them, by oath or pledge, we absolve them by apostolic
authority.58
These rules were then repeated, often word for word, for the benefit of Christians
by later popes in their letters authorizing crusades. Yet neither eugenius iii nor his
successors until innocent iii ever prohibited Jews in particular from lending at
interest.59 Up to 1198, no papal letter had pronounced on specifically Jewish
money-lending to crusaders.60
nevertheless, although there was silence on Jewish money-lending in ‘Quantum
praedecessores’, the Council of Paris (1188) imitated an earlier english council in
specifically decreeing that crusaders, and even clergy and nobility who were not
embarking on crusades, were to be absolved from the debts they owed to both
Christians and Jews prior to the king taking the Cross—not the usual procedure
for crusaders’ debt set out in ‘Quantum praedecessores’.61 This alleviation was
to be extended after the king’s departure for two years from All saints day
(31 October) and creditors were to be given one third of the debt on each of
the next three All saints days. From the day on which debtors took the Cross no
56 nor indeed to regulate the rate of mortgages as for money-lending.
57 Riley-smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, p.112; stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the
Jews of norman england 1096–1198’, pp.237–8. For subsidies, see simon Lloyd, English Society and
the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1988), pp.145–53; Jonathan Riley-smith, ‘The Crown of France
and Acre, 1254 –1291’, in France and the Holy Land, ed. d. H. weiss, L. Mahoney (Baltimore, London,
2004), pp.45–62.
58 eugenius iii, ‘Quantum praedecessores’, p.57; ‘Quantum praedecessores’, p.304: ‘... de praet-
erito usuras non solvent; et si ipsi, vel alii pro eis occasione usurarum astricti sunt, sacramento vel fide
apostolica eos auctoriate absolvimus.’
59 For example, Gregory Viii, ‘Audita tremendi severitate’ (29 October 1187), Chronicle of the
Reign of Henry II and Richard I, 2, Chronicles and Memorials, ed. w. s tubbs, Rolls series 49 (London,
1867), pp.15–19. see stow, Alienated Minority, p.114.
60 innocent iii, ‘Post miserabile(m) Hierusolymitanae’ (17/15 August, 1198), Grayzel, Vol. 1,
p. 86; Simonsohn, p. 71; ‘Graves orientalis terrae’ (31 december 1199), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn,
p.78; ‘nisi nobis dictum’ (4 January 1200), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, pp.78–9.
61 For details, see Grayzel, Vol. 1, p. 297, footnotes 1 and 2.