192 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Thus popes exerted their authority to try to protect Jews from physical mistreat-
ment. Yet they also increasingly claimed authority to punish not just offending
Christians for misdeeds against Jews, but Jews themselves if they disobeyed eccle-
siastical legislation demarcating their special role. According to Gratian’s Decretum,
the Church tolerated ‘infidels’, because, external to Christian society, they were not
subject to Christian law:
As for those who are not of our law, the Apostle says in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians [I Cor. 5:12–13]: For what does it concern me to judge those who are
outside? God will judge them.190Yet, since Jews were both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to Christian society, they were a
more problematic group. Canon lawyers, who claimed that the Church had the
power to discipline Christians, were unsure whether Jews, ‘internal’ to Christian
society yet a potential ‘external’ threat because outside the Faith, should also be
subject to ecclesiastical authority.191 The twelfh-century canonist Huguccio decided
in the affirmative, claiming ecclesiastical competence over Jews who violated the
law, and the inclusion of the decretal ‘Per miserabilem’ in the Compilatio tertia
confirmed this judgement. Apparently by the time the Liber extra was published
Jews were appearing before Church courts if they violated ecclesiastical legislation
concerning their social status; if, for example, they held public office and so defied
the decrees of the Fourth lateran Council, they were clearly regarded as subject to
ecclesiastical authority.192
Popes also tried to control money transactions between Chriatians and Jews. We
have seen how they were aware that many responding to calls for crusades turned
to Jews to borrow money. So, already realizing that many crusaders found it diffi-
cult to secure funds for the First Crusade, urban II had encouraged monasteries to
lend money as a pious contribution to the cause.193 Yet, as we observed in Chapter
Four, if crusaders could not attach themselves to a lord with connections to
monastic lands, they often had to borrow by pledging whatever land they held—
and many did not have adequate lands to pledge.194 In 1156, indeed, Alexander III
forbade the taking of mortgages as usurious and this may have encouraged cru-
saders to borrow money from Jews, particularly as the Church had condemned
Christian moneylenders, especially clerics.195 Papal prohibitions on the extortion
190 Gratian, C.23.q.4.c.16, col. 904: ‘De his, qui non sunt nostri iuris, ait Apostolus, in epistola
prima ad Chorinthios: “Quid enim mihi attinet de his, qui foris sunt, iudicare? De his enim Dominus
iudicabit.”’ See Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews, pp.46–7.
191 Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews, pp.51–4.
192 Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews, pp.60–3.
193 Jonathan riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp.125–9.
194 Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and Lay-Response to the First Crusade: the Limousin and Gascony
(c.970–c.1130) (oxford, 1993), pp.212–15; pp.268–71; pp.276–81; Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom
and the Jews of norman England 1096-1190’, p.238.
195 Eugenius III, ‘Quantum praedecessores’ (1 December 1145) in Ottonis et Rahewina Gesta
Friderici I Imperatoris 1, 3rd edn, ed. B. von Simson (Hanover, leipzig, 1912), pp.55–7; ‘Quantum
praedecessores’ (1 March 1146), in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 45,
ed. P. rassow (Berlin, 1924), pp.302–5. See Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of norman
England 1096–1190’, p.240.