216 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Boniface also noted their complaints about the activities of inquisitors and supported
them.73 He observed that he had recently ordered that in cases involving heresy, the
names of the accusers and the witnesses should be made known, as in a normal trial,
unless the investigation involved particularly powerful people. He knew that when
inquisitors were authorized to proceed against Jews they regularly denominated Jewish
defendants as such ‘powerful people’ and refused to make public the names of wit-
nesses against them. The consequence was that they stripped these Jews of their rights
to protection. By contrast Boniface emphasized that the position of Jews in Christian
society was such that in legal terms they must be regarded as ‘powerless’. So even if
they were sometimes personally very wealthy, inquisitors must consider them as ‘weak’
(‘tanquam impotentibus’) when making legal judgements.74 Hence Boniface’s stance
was ambivalent: on the one hand his correspondence reveals that he wished inquisitors
to proceed against relapsed Jewish converts as against heretics, but on the other hand
he personally intervened to declare Jews ‘powerless’ and so protected.75
Nevertheless, despite such interventions to ensure justice for Jews, the papacy’s
employment of the mendicant orders as inquisitors to enquire into the activities of
Jewish communities was a highly significant step which would in the long term
prove detrimental to their well-being.76 Clement Iv’s ‘Turbato corde’ was an im-
mensely important decretal because the powers thereby given to inquisitors often
led to the papacy’s continuously stated aim of protection being undermined.
‘Turbato corde’ introduced no radical change in papal attitudes, since after Clement
Iv , thirteenth-century popes maintained their commitment to the theology of pro-
tection expressed in ‘Sicut Iudaeis’.77 yet their commitment to the idea of overseeing
and dioceses consign to them the Talmud and all other books with additions and commentaries on
pain of canonical punishments. Once examined by the friars and other men of learning, books con-
taining blasphemies, errors, falsehoods, and cursus should be burnt by the secular authorities, and
the business conducted quickly before the Jews had time to hide the books. He referred explicitly
to the pronouncements of Clement Iv and Honorius Iv on the subject of Jewish blasphemies, and to
similar pronouncements by Odo (eudes), bishop of Tusculum. See John XXII, ‘Dudum felicis recor-
dationis’ (4 September 1320), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.316–19; Simonsohn, pp.321–3. yet a milder ap-
proach can be seen in 1328 when John XXII commanded the inquisitors of heresy in Apulia that for
a period of two years they should not proceed against Jews and converts except at the request of the
bishop or his vicar in their presence. This followed reports that the pope had received from the bishop-
elect of Trani that the Jews of Trani, from whom in the past when there were more of them the
Church’s economy used to draw considerable income, were so oppressed by the Inquisition that the
few who remained were threatened by want and the Church economy could expect little from them.
Similar oppressions were being practised by the Inquisition from the converts from Judaism, more
attention being paid to the gain which might be derived from them to the spiritual edification which
should be provided for them, and the bishop-elect had therefore petitioned that, since he was ready to
administer punishment to Jews and converts when they deserved it, and since they were his subjects,
the pope should come to his aid against the inquisitors. See John XXII, ‘Petitio dilecti filii’ (26 January
1328), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.334–5; Simonsohn, pp.352–3.
73 Boniface vIII, ‘exhibita (nobis) pro parte’ (13 June 1299), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.204–6; Simonsohn,
pp.286–7.
74 Boniface vIII, ‘exhibita (nobis) pro parte’, Grayzel, Vol. 2, p.205; Simonsohn, p.286: ‘tanquam
impotentibus’.
75 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.348; p.355; p.363; p.404; p.407.
76 Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, passim.
77 Grayzel emphasizes a significant change of attitude with the issue of ‘Turbato corde’ (and its re-issue
by Nicholas Iv in 1288 and 1290): ‘But that was the spirit of Sicut. Unfortunately for both sides the