152 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
as possible to induce lenders to extend the payment of the principal until the
debtors had returned from the crusade.105 in return he promised them a share
in the eternal reward of the crusaders whose cause they were promoting by their
financial aid.106 Of course, such spiritual privileges would not have applied to
Jews—which suggests that innocent had in mind not Jewish but Christian
moneylenders.
Although nothing is said specifically about Jewish lending in these two letters
to the clergy of 1208, in a further letter of October of the same year to Philip
Augustus, innocent repeated that Jews must remit the interest of those departing
for the Albigensian Crusade.107 Thus Jews were forbidden to exact usury from all
those who took the Cross, not merely those bound for the near east. The pope
added that if possible the time set for the payment of the principal should be
postponed:
... we beseech your Royal Clemency in the name of God, to induce the Jews subject
to you, and to compel them by your royal power, completely to remit all usury to such
debtors as are departing for the service of their God, and also, if it can be done, to
make suitable postponement of the time originally set for the payment of the principal
... 108
He repeated this in a letter of 1209 to the archbishop of Arles and his suffragans.109
These letters suggest an equal disapproval by popes of both Christian and Jewish
lending at interest. innocent’s definitive statement, however, as summarized in the
legislation of Lateran iV, was more complex.110 As already noted, Quanto amplius,
Constitution 67, had stated:
The more the Christian religion is restrained from usurious practices, so much the
more does the perfidy of the Jews grow in these matters, so that within a short time
they are exhausting the resources of Christians. wishing therefore to see that Christians
are not savagely oppressed by Jews in this matter, we ordain by this synodal decree that
if Jews in future, on any pretext, extort oppressive and excessive interest from
Christians, then they are to be removed from contact with Christians until they have
made adequate satisfaction for the immoderate burden... 111105 Moore, ‘Pope innocent iii and Usury’, p.67.
106 Moore, ‘Pope innocent iii and Usury’, pp.67–8.
107 innocent iii, ‘Ut contra crudelissimos’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.132; Simonsohn, pp.94–5. see Moore,
‘Pope innocent iii and Usury’, pp.67–8.
108 innocent iii, ‘Ut contra crudelissimos’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.132; Simonsohn, p.95: ‘... tuam
regalem mansuetudinem in domino deprecamur, quatinus Judeos sub tuo dominio constitutos indu-
cas, regiaque potestate compellas, ut debitoribus suis in hujusmodi dei obsequium profecturis omnino
relaxent usuras, et terminos ad exsolvendum sortem prefixos, si fieri potest, prorogent competenter
... ’
109 innocent iii, ‘Gloriantes hactenus in’ (11 november 1209), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.134; Simonsohn,
p.96.
110 stow, ‘Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century’, 161–84.
111 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.265: ‘Quanto amplius christiana religio ab exactione compescitur usurarum,
tanto gravius super his iudaeorum perfidia inolescit ita, quod brevi tempore christianorum exhauriunt
facultates. Volentes igitur in hac parte prospicere christianis, ne a iudaeis immaniter aggraventur, syno-
dali decreto statuimus ut si de caetero quocumque praetextu iudaei a christianis graves et immodera-
tas usuras extorserint, christianorum eis participium subtrahatur, donec de immoderato gravamine