154 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
expenses, the revenues which they are meanwhile receiving from property held by
them on security’.118 That the whole of this decree of Lateran iV was repeated in
1245 at the First Council of Lyons shows that the papacy regarded it as the defini-
tive statement on the subject.119
innOCenT iii’s sUCCessORs And UsURY
during the thirteenth century papal pronouncements are set against a background
of intolerance of Jews by the French Crown. Following the death of Philip
Augustus, the position of French Jews worsened under Louis Viii. Hence a royal
ordinance of 1223 stipulated that the Crown should no longer support Jewish
usury, with the result that Jews could no longer rely on the king or his nobles to
come to their aid.120 Arrangements were put in place for ending obligations already
made by Christians to Jews: debts contracted within the last five years and still to
be paid were to be repaid over a period of three years in nine payments to those
nobles holding lands on which Jews lived.121 Legislation against Jewish usury was
also particularly harsh during the regency of Blanche of Castile. Thus there is evi-
dence for an ordinance of 1227 decreeing a prolongation for nine payments
through three years of outstanding debts contracted between the ordinance of
1223 and June 1227.122 A further ordinance of May 1228 insisted that both the
provision of the 1223 ordinance for debts prior to 8 november 1223 and the
ordinance of 1227 were to be observed.123
Louis iX’s legislation went further and his court broke all ties with Jewish busi-
ness.124 By an edict of 1235 Jews were to cease all lending, and in 1246 the king
ordered the seneschal of Champagne to take money from captive Jews and forbid
Jews from extorting further usury.125 A further edict of 1253 again prohibited
usury and stipulated that Jews unwilling to abide by its terms must leave France.
in 1254 the Council of Albi forbade ecclesiastical or secular judges from compelling
Christians to pay usury to either Christians or Jews.126 Louis sought to eliminate
usury as part of a comprehensive programme for the moral reconstruction of his
kingdom, reportedly saying of the Jews that they should abandon usury or leave
118 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.269: ‘compulsis iudaeis proventus pignorum, quos interim ipsi perceperint, in
sortem expensis deductis necesariis, computare’. see also Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.312.
119 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.299; Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.330.
120 For an excellent discussion of royal ordinances and legislation concerning the Jews during the
first half of the thirteenth century, see Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political
and Social History (Baltimore, London, 1973), pp.104–24.
121 Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. Chazan, pp.211–12; Langmuir, Toward a Definition
of Anti-Semitism, pp.146–7.
122 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism, p.153.
123 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism, p.153.
124 Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. Chazan, pp.213–15.
125 Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. Chazan, pp.215–16; Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.232–4,
footnote 2.
126 Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. Chazan, pp.216–17; Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.335–6,
especially p.335.