Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism 167
It is possible that such allegations were largely false, invented by Christians wishing
to stir up hatred, perhaps through jealousy at the wealth or influence of their
Jewish neighbours. If they were true and Jews were indeed blaspheming against
Christianity and mocking Christians, then despite the threat of persecution and
even expulsion, certain Jewish communities in France—or certain members of
such communities—felt large enough and strong enough not to fear reprisals.
In the same letter Innocent also complained that Jews in France were extorting
massive amounts of usury, appropriating Christian possessions, employing
Christian wet nurses and servants in their homes, and obtaining preferential treat-
ment in the law courts.14 He added that he had heard in Sens they had built a new
synagogue higher than the town’s church (insulting because it again made
Christianity look inferior to and less powerful than Judaism), were hindering the
celebration of the Mass, and were blaspheming against Christ and ridiculing
Christianity.15 He also echoed a widespread belief in claiming that Jews deliber-
ately left their doors open at night to thieves so that if stolen goods were found in
their houses it was impossible to prosecute them. He even stated that he had
received reports that a scholar had been found murdered in a Jewish latrine.16
Such correspondence reflected an increasing number of anti-Jewish allega-
tions—to be explained at least in part by the huge interest which Jews were char-
ging Christians and which caused envy and anger.17 These accusations were not
new to the thirteenth century. In the twelfth century Peter the venerable had
levelled a similar charge at Jews when he complained to louis vII that goods
stolen from churches were secreted away in Jewish houses to be sold in
synagogues,18 and, as we saw in Chapter Two, charges of Jews killing Christians
increased in England after the murder, supposedly, by Jews, of William of norwich
in 1144, following the execution at Blois in 1171 of more than thirty Jews
accused of the murder of a Christian child.19 Innocent’s reference to the story of
the murdered scholar suggests that he himself might have believed allegations of
Judeorum... In die quoque parasceves, Judei contra veterem consuetudinem per vicos, et plateas
publice discurrentes, concurrentes, juxta morem, undique Christianos ut adorent crucifixum in
cruce, derident, et eos per improperia sua student ab adorationis officio revocare.’
14 lateran III had decreed that Christians were allowed to testify against Jews; Tanner, Vol. 1,
pp.223–4; X.2.20.21, col. 322. See Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge,
p.115.
15 Innocent III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn, pp.82–4. See robert
Chazan, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Jews’, in Pope Innocent III and his World, ed. J. C. Moore
(Aldershot, 1999), pp.193–4.
16 Innocent III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn, pp.82–4.
17 Some historians have argued that, among the learned, a growing awareness of the role played by
intention in human action and behaviour encouraged the idea of Jewish culpability for Christ’s cruci-
fixion, and so horror and anger at the Jews. See Christendom and its Discontents, ed. P. Diehl, S. Waugh
(Cambridge, 1996), pp.227–8.
18 Innocent III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn, pp.82–4.
19 richard Barrie Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190 (York, 1974),
p.19; Gavin langmuir, Toward a Definition of AntiSemitism (Berkeley, london, 1990), p.307; robert
Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of norman England 1096–1190’ in Juden und Christen
zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, Vorträge und Forschungen 47 , Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche
Geschichte, ed. A. Haverkamp (Sigmaringen, 1999), p.236; Kenneth Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and
Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High Middle Ages (Cincinnati,