Popes and Jews, 1095-1291

Papal Rhetoric: Heretics, Muslims, and Jews 247

one section of Israel has become blind, but this will only last until the whole pagan

world has entered, and then after this the rest of Israel will be saved as well.3

And he had argued that the Jews’ conversion en masse at this end of days would

signal the dawn of the new era predicted by the prophets of the old Testament:4

As Scripture says: The liberator will come from Zion, he will banish godlessness

from Jacob. And this is the covenant I will make with them when I take their sins

away.5

As we have seen, St Augustine had drawn on these words in the De civitate Dei and

elsewhere. 6

In the sixth century the letters of Gregory the Great reveal him as heavily influ­

enced by the traditional rhetoric of the Church on the subject of Jews. he was

also aware of the fifth­century Theodosian Code, which, as we have seen, despite

harsh rhetoric nevertheless protected basic rights for Jews and granted them due

legal process. In accordance with its stipulations, in his letter ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ of

598 Gregory taught that, although Jews should not be accorded any liberties

beyond what civil law allowed, in what was rightfully theirs they should not suffer

discrimination:7

Just as there ought not to be licence for the Jews in their synagogues to presume any­

thing other than is permitted by law, so in those matters which have been conceded to

them they ought not to endure any prejudice.

over twenty of Gregory’s letters expressed approval of these decrees demanding

‘just’ treatment for Jews while also limiting their rights.8

3 romans 11: 25, Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, Vol.  2, ed. Weber: ‘... quia caecitas
ex parte contigit in Israhel donec plenitude gentium intraret et sic omnis Israhel salvus fieret’.
4 Gilbert dahan, La Polémique chrétienne avec le Judaisme (Paris, 1991), p.28; david Berger,
‘Mission to the Jews and Jewish­Christian Contacts in the Polemical literature of the high Middle
Ages’, American Historical Review 91/3 (1986), 576–9; robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-
Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989), p.11; Jeremy Cohen, The Friars
and the Jews: the Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982), p.20.
5 romans 11: 26–7, Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, Vol. 2, ed. Weber: ‘... sicut scriptum est
veniet ex Sion qui eripiat avertet impietates ab Iacob et hoc illis a me testamentum cum abstulero pec­
cata eorum... .’
6 St Augustine, De civitate Dei 2, ed. B. dombart, A. Kalb (Stuttgart, 1981), Bk 18, Ch. 46,
pp.  328–9. See Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: the Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge,
Mass., london, 1992), p.19.
7 Gregory I, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (June 598), Simonsohn, p.15: ‘Sicut Iudaeis non debet esse licentia
quicquam in synagogis suis ultra quam permissum et lege praesumere, ita in his quae eis concessa sunt
nullum debent praeiudicium sustinere.’ See dahan, La Polémique chrétienne contre le Judaisme, p.27.
8 Codex Theodosianus 16,8,1–29, trans. lang, pp.84–159, passim. See James Parkes, The Conflict of
the Church and the Synagogue (london, 1934), pp.214–15. For example, Gregory I, ‘Fraternitati ves­
trae ante’ (April 596), Simonsohn, pp.12–13; ‘Pervenit ad me quosdam’ (September 602), Simonsohn,
pp.22–3; Gregorii Magni registrum epistularum libri VIII–XIV, Appendix, ed. d. norberg (Turnhout,
1982), pp.991–3; Adrian I, ‘Audientes orthodoxam’ (772–c.785), Simonsohn, p.27; ‘Institutio univer­
salis’ (785–91), Simonsohn, p.28; nicholas I, ‘Ad consulta vestra’ (866), Simonsohn, pp.29–30; ‘Ad
consulta vestra’ (866), Simonsohn, pp.30–1.