The Papacy and the Place of Jews in Christian Society 209
voluntary baptism as much as possible and to give converts every incentive to con-
vert. As we would expect from a well-trained legal mind, in response to petitioning,
Alexander III issued a number of letters on the subject in which he attempted to
tread this fine line. Few Jews voluntarily converted to Christianity, just as few
Christians converted to Judaism.18 Hence, attempting to encourage voluntary
Jewish conversion, in 1169 he wrote to the archbishop of Rheims to ensure that a
pledge made to a certain Petrus, a Jewish convert who had been promised a prebend
in the archbishop’s office, should be kept.19 Then between 1173 and 1174 he
ordered the bishop of Tournai to install a certain Milo, another Jewish convert, in
the chapter and grant him a prebend once it became vacant,20 rebuking the chapter
and dean of Tournai who had refused to install him.21 As a further incentive to con-
version he ordered the archbishop of Spain to correct a situation whereby the move-
able property of converts was confiscated and their real estate allowed to pass to
Jewish relatives.22 During his pontificate the Third Lateran Council decreed that:
If any by the inspiration of God are converted to the Christian faith, they are in no
way to be excluded from their possessions, since the condition of converts ought to be
better than before their conversion. If this is not done, we enjoin on the princes and
rulers of these places, under penalty of excommunication, the duty to restore fully to
these converts the share of their inheritance and goods.23The issue of conversion, converts, and baptism became a subject of papal interest
once more at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Constitution 70 expressly
stipulated that Jewish converts to the Faith should not continue their old rites:
Certain people who have come voluntarily to the waters of sacred baptism, as we learnt,
do not wholly cast off the old person in order to put on the new more perfectly. For, in
keeping remnants of their former rite, they upset the decorum of the Christian religion
by such a mixing. Since it is written, cursed is he who enters the land by two paths, and
a garment that is woven from linen and wool together should not be put on, we there-
fore decree that such people shall be wholly prevented by the prelates of churches from
observing their old rite, so that those who freely offer themselves to the Christian reli-
gion may be kept to its observance by a salutary and necessary coercion. For it is a lesser
evil not to know the Lord’s way than to go back on it having known it.2418 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.286.
19 Alexander III, ‘veniens ad nos Petrus’ (7 March 1169), Simonsohn, p.52.
20 Alexander III, ‘eam te’ (1173–1174), Simonsohn, pp.54–5.
21 Alexander III, ‘Si qua in’ (1173–1174), Simonsohn, pp.55–7.
22 Alexander III, ‘Ad audientiam apostolatus’ (25 January before 1179), Simonsohn, pp.57–8.
23 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.224: ‘Si qui praeterea Deo inspirante ad fidem se converterint christianam, a
possessionibus suis nullatenus excludantur, cum melioris conditionis conversos ad fidem esse oporteat
quam, antequam fidem acceperunt, habebantur. Si autem secus factum fuerit, principibus vel potesta-
tibus eorumdem locorum sub poena excommunicationis iniungimus, ut portionem hereditatis et
bonorum suorum ex integro eis faciant exhiberi.’ See The Church in the Medieval Town, ed. T. R. Slater,
G. Rosser (Aldershot, Brookfield, 1998), p.50.
24 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.267: ‘Quidam, sicut accepimus, qui ad sacri undam baptismatis voluntarii acces-
serunt, veterem hominem omnino non exuunt, ut novum perfectius induant, cum proris ritus reliquias
retinentes, christianae religionis decorem tali commixtione confundant. Cum autem scriptum sit: mal-
edictus homo qui terram duabus viis ingreditur, et indui vestis non debeat lino lanaque contexta, statu-
imus, ut tales per praelatos ecclesiarum ab observantia veteris ritus omnimodo compescantur, ut quos