Through conciliar legislation and canon law and eventually the establishment of
the Inquisition, during the High Middle Ages the papacy attempted to assert its
authority over Jews in a number of important ways. Since the Church’s legislation
tended to be reactive rather than proactive—councils often responding to social
and political changes in society many years after their inception—the appearance
of ‘anti-Jewish’ legislation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which was then
codified in law and enforced by thirteenth-century inquisitors, suggests not only a
growth in the prominence of Jewish communities in medieval Europe but also that
popes felt an increasing need to monitor, supervise, and assert authority over their
activities. Popes wished to prevent Jews from holding public offices—acting as bai-
liffs, tax collectors, treasurers, minters, or diplomats—and hence holding positions
of authority over Christians, because they believed this undermined their vision of
the correct subservient role Jews were supposed to play in Christian society, and
increased the possibility of effective Jewish proselytizing.1 For the same reasons
they were concerned about intermarriage and even sexual intercourse between
Christians and Jews.2
ECuMEnICAl CounCIlS: THE PAPAl PErSPECTIvE
In the sixth century Gregory I had prohibited Jews from owning Christian slaves.
Influenced by Gregory’s pronouncement and in recognition that it was not theo-
logically suitable for Jews to lord it over Christians, during the pontificate of
Alexander III, the Third lateran Council banned any employment of Christians as
servants in Jewish homes.3 Hence Canon 26 decreed:
Jews and Saracens are not to be allowed to have Christian servants in their houses,
either under pretence of nourishing their children or for service or any other reason.
let those be excommunicated who presume to live with them. We declare that the
evidence of Christians is to be accepted against Jews in every case, since Jews employ
their own witnesses against Christians, and that those who prefer Jews to Christians in
this matter are to lie under anathema, since Jews ought to be subject to Christians and1 Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History (Toronto, 1991), pp.147–54.
2 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, pp.154–6.
3 X.5.6.19, col. 778; Tanner, Vol. 1, pp.223–4; X.5.6.5, col. 773. See Gilbert Dahan, Les Intellectuels
chrétiens et les Juifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1990), p.116; James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the
Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (london, 1934), pp.214–15.
5
Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism