194 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
the bishop of Cordova he expressed grave concern that in the provinces of Cordova
and Baeza, Jews frequently not only wore no visible sign to distinguish them from
Christians but even pretended to be Christians in order to deceive people.205
Hence refusal to wear distinguishing grab might be taken as a sign of mockery.
Yet if controlling Christian treatment of Jews was part of a much wider attempt by
popes to regulate and supervise Jewish communities without directly intervening
in their religious observances, the most obvious example of the papacy attempting
to exert authority over Jewish communities in Europe concerned the alleged blas-
phemy and heresy to be found in the Talmud.
THE P APACY AnD THE TAlMuD
The history of papal involvement in the burning of the Talmud is long and com-
plex.206 The Talmud was a Jewish work made up of two components, the Mishnah,
a written compendium of rabbinic Judaism’s ‘oral Torah’ and the Gemara, an
exposition of the Mishnah and related writings. Peter Alfonsi, originally a Spanish
Jew named Moses of Huesca, who converted in 1106 and took his new name fol-
lowing the town’s conquest by Peter I of Aragon in 1097, accurately observed that
the sayings of the Sages—otherwise known as the ‘oral Torah’—as distinct from
the writings of the Prophets or ‘Written Torah’, was the foundation of medieval
Judaism.207 Yet how much did Christians really know about the Talmud in the
High Middle Ages?
Peter Alfonsi—like Peter the venerable—assumed that reason was the criterion
against which Christian and Jewish religious views were ultimately to be assessed.208
Hence for Peter the venerable the Jews and their Talmud were alike in their utter
lack of reason: a reflection of the Jews’ inhumanity.209 We have seen in Chapter
Four how, in a letter to louis vII of France about the Second Crusade, Peter, like
Bernard of Clairvaux, insisted that Jews should in no way be harmed since this was
prohibited by Scripture. Yet at the same time he identified them as enemies, both
historically and contemporaneously, of Christ and Christianity. So although he
believed that they should be spared physical violence, he also thought that they
must contribute resources to the crusading venture.210 Indeed he regarded Jews as
worse than Muslims because, whereas Muslims accepted a degree of Christian the-
ology, Jews rejected it totally. Furthermore, he believed that Jews expressed their
disagreement actively by continually deriding and blaspheming Christianity, even
claiming that they frequently bought stolen goods to give themselves the oppor-
tunity to abuse Christian sacred objects 211
205 Gregory IX, ‘Significantibus dilectis filiis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.244; Simonsohn, pp.174–5.
206 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, pp.300–7.
207 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240. Hebrew Texts translated by John Friedman, Latin Texts trans-
lated by Jean Connell Hoff; Historical Essay by Robert Chazan (Toronto, 2012), p.8; pp.9–10.
208 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.12.
209 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.13.
210 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, pp.14–15.
211 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.15.