146 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
additional interest should accrue from any part of the debt previously contracted. 62
so, although the language and style of papal letters was often similar to that of
contemporary church councils concerned with Jews and the crusades, concern
about Jews is often much more visible in the decrees of church councils than in
papal correspondence.
during the twelfth century Lombard and italian banking generally was begin-
ning to flourish. despite papal prohibitions which may have tilted the balance in
favour of Christian money-lending, many historians have argued that in this
period the number of specifically Jewish moneylenders increased. if so, the strict
prohibition on Christians may be an important part of the explanation.63
Grounding themselves on biblical precepts, Jews were forbidden to lend at interest
to co-religionists but not to foreigners. Furthermore, it seems that, despite rabbinic
discouragement of Jews from taking interest from gentiles in the Babylonian
Talmud, from the twelfth century onwards several european rabbis justified
exacting usury from Christians for economic reasons such as poverty, heavy tax-
ation, the exclusion of Jews from holding land, and the need to ward off persecu-
tion, if necessary through bribery.64 Yet the profits Jews and other usurers received
from their money-lending became a concern for clergy and crusade preachers
alike.65 Bernard of Clairvaux, whose influence on the political as well as religious
stage of medieval europe was immense, made it abundantly clear that he was par-
ticularly concerned about Jews lending at interest and called on kings to apply the
precepts of eugenius iii’s ‘Quantum praedecessores’.66 More radically, Peter the
Venerable, abbot of Cluny (c.1092–1156), declared that since all Jewish wealth
was the product of money-lending and therefore of theft, the property of Jews
should be confiscated and the proceeds put into financing crusades.67 According to
several chronicles, in 1171 Louis Vii expressed unusual sympathy for French Jews
after—as we saw in Chapter Two—the execution of more than thirty at Blois on
the charge of murdering a Christian child.68 Yet, as we saw in Chapter Three, in
1146, he had issued a stern edict releasing crusaders from their obligations to
Jewish lenders beyond the repayment of the principal, and had forbidden Jews
62 Mansi, Vol. 22, col. 578; Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp. 296–8; eugenius iii, ‘Quantum praedecessores’,
p. 57; ‘Quantum praedecessores’, p.304.
63 For Jews as moneylenders, see Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, pp.82–8; Christendom and its
Discontents, ed. s. waugh, P. diehl (Cambridge, 1996), pp.220–1; dobson, The Jews of Medieval York
and the Massacre of March 1190, p.9; p.38; Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community, p.304; stacey,
‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of norman england 1096–1190’, p.238.
64 Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, pp.82–3; this is a huge subject which can only be touched on
here.
65 stow, ‘Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century’, p.161.
66 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘sermo mihi ad vos’ (1146), ed. in J. Leclercq, ‘L’encyclique de saint
Bernard en faveur de la croisade’, Revue Bénédictine 81 (1971), 295–300. see Kenneth stow, The ‘1007
Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High Middle
Ages (Cincinnati, 1984), p.4.
67 Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, Harvard Historical
studies 78 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967) 1, pp.327–30. see stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews
of norman england 1096-1190’, p.241.
68 Christendom and its Discontents, ed. waugh, diehl, p.221; Robert Chazan, God, Humanity and
History: the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, 2000), pp.2–17, passim.