Popes and Jews, 1095-1291

Papal Rhetoric: Heretics, Muslims, and Jews 251

ecclesie’ to the archbishop of Arles, he noted that the Fourth Council of Toledo

of 633 had stated:26

There it is said that those who had previously been forced into Christianity,... since

their association with the divine sacrament had already been established, and the grace

of Baptism had been received, and they had been anointed with the sacred oil, and had

participated in the body of the lord, they might properly be forced to hold to the faith

which they had accepted perforce, lest the name of the lord be blasphemed, and lest

they hold in contempt and consider vile the faith they had joined.27

he then argued that although he confirmed that it was contrary to the Christian

faith for anyone completely opposed to be compelled to adopt and observe

Christianity, there were important distinctions between different kinds of unwill­

ingness. Those who had received baptism because they feared violence and wanted

to avoid loss of property should be forced to observe the Christian faith since they

had expressed a conditional willingness to embrace it. only those who had never

consented and wholly objected to baptism should not be coerced.28

however, no such legal distinction is to be found in the correspondence of

Innocent’s successors.29 Indeed, as we have seen, Gregory IX complained against

crusaders who justified killing and continuing hostility to Jews on the grounds that

they refused baptism, reiterating vehemently that Jews were only to be baptized if

they should seek it of their own free will:

But those to whom God wants to be merciful are not to be compelled to the grace of

baptism unless they want it voluntarily... 30

The canonist raymond of Peñafort summed up Gregory’s position which then

entered the canon law collections:

So one ought to ensure that the Jews like the Muslims be called upon afresh to the

Christian faith by authorities, reasons and blandishments rather than by acts of harsh­

ness, but not to be compelled, because forced servitude does not please God.31

This statement became the official teaching of the Church.32

26 Innocent III, ‘Maiores ecclesie causas’ (September–october 1201), Grayzel, Vol.  1, p.102;
Simonsohn, pp.80–1.
27 Innocent III, ‘Maiores ecclesie causas’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.100–2; Simonsohn, p.80: ‘ubi dicitur
quod qui jampridem ad Christianitatem coacti sunt,... quia jam constat eos sacramentis divinis asso­
ciatos, et baptismi gratiam suscepisse, et chrismate unctos esse, et corporis domini exstitisse partici­
pes; oportet etiam ut fidem, quam necessitate susceperunt, tenere cogantur, ne nomen domini
blasphemetur, et fides quam susceperunt vilis ac contemptibilis habeatur.’
28 Innocent III, ‘Maiores ecclesiae causas’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.100–2; Simonsohn, pp.80–1.
29 For example, honorius III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.144; Simonsohn, p.102.
30 Gregory IX, ‘lachrymabilem Judeorum in’, Grayzel, Vol.  1, p.228; Simonsohn, p.164;
‘lachrymabilem Judeorum in’, Grayzel, Vol.  1, p.228; Simonsohn, p.165: ‘Quia tamen, cui vult
dominus miseretur, non sunt ad baptismi gratiam, nisi sponte voluerint, compellendi.. .’
31 raymond of Peñafort, Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio (repr. Farnborough, 1967), Bk 1, Section
2, pp.32–3: ‘Tam iudaei quam sarraceni auctoritatibus, rationibus et blandimentis, potius quam asperita­
tibus, ad fidem christianam de novo suscipiendam provocari, non autem compelli, quia coacta servitia non
placet deo.’ For Christian polemicists, see harvey hames, The Art of Conversion, Christianity and Kaballah
in the Thirteenth Century (leiden, 2000), p.6. For raymond of Peñafort, see Grayzel, Vol. 2, p.9; p.13.
32 Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.260–2; Simonsohn, p.189; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel,
Vol. 1, p.274; Simonsohn, pp.192–3.