Papal Rhetoric: Heretics, Muslims, and Jews 263
uncomfortably with the Pauline–Augustinian idea that a remnant of them would
be saved at the end of days.
ThE CorrESPondEnCE oF InnoCEnT
III And hIS SuCCESSorS
of all the popes of the high Middle Ages, Innocent III’s letters are perhaps the
most colourful and rhetorical. They are also arguably less compassionate towards
the Jews than those of his twelfthcentury predecessors or—perhaps with the
exception of Clement IV—his thirteenthcentury successors. Both the decrees of
the Fourth lateran Council and Innocent’s correspondence suggest that it was
during this pope’s pontificate that the idea of Jews as potential enemies of Christian
society first comes to the fore, since, as we have seen, it was in his correspondence
and in particular in his reissue of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ that we find for the
first time the additional final sentence that only those Jews who did not plot against
the Christian faith were to be protected.102
Although Innocent III was always careful to maintain a correct theological atti
tude towards Jews, the language he—and his notaries—employed often appears
harsh. In his letter ‘ut esset Cain’ of 1208, drawing on the old Testament motif
that ‘the elder shall serve the younger’, he emphasized the importance of Jewish
servitude:103
The lord made Cain a wanderer and a fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon
him, making his head to shake, lest any finding him should slay him. Thus the Jews,
against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not be killed,
lest the Christian people forget the divine law, yet as wanderers ought they to remain
upon the earth, until their countenance be filled with shame and they seek the name
of Jesus Christ, the lord. That is why blasphemers of the Christian name ought not to
be aided by Christian princes to oppress the servants of the lord, but ought rather be
forced into the servitude of which they made themselves deserving when they raised
sacrilegious hands against him Who had come to confer true liberty upon them, thus
calling down his blood upon themselves and upon their children.104102 Innocent III, ‘licet perfidia Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.92–4; Simonsohn, pp.74–5. See also
honorius III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.144; Simonsohn, p.102; Gregory IX, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’,
Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.218; Simonsohn, pp.154–5; Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.260–2;
Simonsohn, p.189; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.274; Simonsohn, pp.192–3.
103 Innocent III, ‘ut esset Cain’ (17 January 1208), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.126–30; Simonsohn, pp.92–4.
104 Innocent III, ‘ut esset Cain’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.126; Simonsohn, pp.92–3: ‘ut esset Cain vagus
et profugus super terram, nec interficeretur a quoquam, tremorem capitis signum dominus impo
suit super eum; quare Judei, contra quos clamat vox sanguinis Jesu Christi, etsi occidi non debeant,
ne divine legis obliviscatur populus Christianus, dispergi tamen debent super terram ut vagi, quate
nus facies ipsorum ignominia repleatur, et querant nomen domini Jesu Christi. Blasphematores
enim nominis Christiani non debent a Christianis principibus in oppresionem servorum domini
confoveri, sed potius comprimi servitute, qua se dignos merito reddiderunt cum in illum manus
injecere sacrilegas qui veram eis conferre venerat libertatem, super eos et filios suos esse ipsius san
guinem conclamantes.’