Popes and Jews, 1095-1291

250 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291

since he Who wants none to perish, mercifully still awaits their conversion, for God

will not forever forsake his people.. .’20

or in a letter to the archbishops and bishops of Germany he emphasized the same

point:

... since we do not want the said Jews to be unjustly harassed, whose conversion our
lord in his Mercy expects, for, in accordance with prophetic testimony, we should
believe that a remnant of them will be saved... 21

or to the king of navarre he emphasized eventual conversion as part of his refuta­

tion of the blood libel charge:

... the merciful God, who wants no­one to perish, still expects their [the Jews’] con­
version no matter how great their hardheartedness. For God will not forever repel his
people, since even the prophets testified that their remnant would be saved.... 22

These moving and powerful statements, remarkable for their time, reveal Innocent’s

sense of the papacy’s responsibility for the protection, not just the restriction, of

Jewish communities.

We saw in Chapter Two that another frequently recurring theme in papal cor­

respondence was that Jews must not be baptized by force; in the sixth century

Gregory I had already gone out of his way to emphasize this important theological

position. Yet Christian theology expounded that Christ had died for all men—

including infidels, and popes regarded it as part of their duty and an important

part of the Church’s mission to convert non­Christians to the truth, and compel

them to receive the Faith—‘compelle intrare’ (‘to compel them to come in’).23 We

have seen how the Fourth Toledan Council of 633 decreed that those already bap­

tized by coercion should be compelled to remain in the Faith and that this seemed

to undermine Gregory’s teaching.24 Yet popes such as Alexander III and Innocent III

continued to repeat that Jews were not to be forced to accept baptism.25

nevertheless, Innocent’s statements were more complex than they might at

first appear, since, as we have seen, in 1201 he attempted to reconcile Gregory’s

position with the harsher decree of the Council of Toledo. Writing ‘Maiores

20 Innocent IV, ‘Ex parte Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.268; Simonsohn, p.193: ‘Quantumcumque
igitur fuerit eorum perfidia, quia tamen ille qui neminem vult perire, conversionem misericorditer
expectat ipsorum, quoniam non repellet in eternum dominus plebem suam... ’
21 Innocent IV, ‘lachrymabilem Judeorum Alemannie’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.270; Simonsohn, p.194:
‘n olentes igitur prefatos Judeos injuste vexari, quorum conversionem dominus miseratus expectat,
cum testante propheta credantur reliquie salve fieri eorumdem... ’
22 Innocent IV, ‘Ex parte Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.272; Simonsohn, p.195: ‘... quod misericors
deus qui neminem vult perire, quantumcumque sit eorum duritia, ipsorum tamen conversionem
expectat, quoniam non repellet in eternum dominus plebem suam, cum testante propheta illorum
reliequie salve fient.. .’
23 Aron Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. l. Campbell (london, Boston, Melbourne,
henley, 1985), p.75.
24 Mark Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, oxford,
1994), p.36.
25 Alexander III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (1159–1181), Simonsohn, pp.51–2. See Stow, Alienated Minority,
p.119; Innocent III, ‘licet perfidia Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.92–4; Simonsohn, pp.74–5.