Popes and Jews, 1095-1291

(Frankie) #1

The relationship of the medieval papacy to the Jewish communities of western


Europe remains a complex and controversial subject.^1 Historians have generally


regarded the years between Pope Calixtus II’s ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, the letter of protec-


tion of the Jews issued sometime between 1119 and 1124, and Pope Clement IV’s


promulgation of the encyclical ‘Turbato Corde’ in 1267—which in response to


Christians converting to Judaism called on the mendicant orders in Spain to inquire


into the activities of Jewish communities—as immensely important for Christian–


Jewish relations.^2 Yet they remain divided about how to interpret specifically


papal–Jewish relations during the period. Some have argued that we must look


to the First Crusade of 1096 and the ensuing massacres of Jewish communities as


altering forever a generally peaceful co-existence which had marked Christian–Jewish


1 Just as the study of beliefs about heresy and heretics remains a major subject of interest for medi-
evalists, Christian attitudes towards and treatment of Jews in Europe also continue to be an important
and extremely popular topic. Among others, Peter Browe, and, more recently, scholars such as Dahan,
Chazan, J. Cohen, M. R. Cohen, Grayzel, Haverkamp, Jordan, and Stow have all contributed to our
understanding of the legal and social status of Jews living in Christian Europe during the High Middle
Ages. See Peter Browe, Die Judenmission im Mittelalter und die Päpste (Rome, 1942); Robert Chazan,
Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989);
Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Anti-Semitism (Berkeley, 1997); Jeremy Cohen,
‘Recent Historiography on the Medieval Church and the Decline of Medieval Jewry’, in Popes, Teachers
and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Sweeney, S. Chodorow (Ithaca, 1989), pp.251–62; Jeremy
Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: the Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982); Mark Cohen,
Under Crescent and Cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, Oxford, 1994); Gilbert Dahan, Les
Intellectuels chrétiens et les Juifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1990); Gilbert Dahan, La Polémique chrétienne
contre le Judaisme au moyen âge (Paris, 1991); Alfred Haverkamp, Juden und Christen zur Zeit der
Kreuzzüge, Vorträge und Forschungen 47, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelaltische Geschichte
(Sigmaringen, 1999); William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: from Philip Augustus
to the Last of the Capetians (Philadelphia, 1989); Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: the Jews and
Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, Mass., London, 1992); Kenneth Stow, ‘Papal and Royal Attitudes
toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century’, Association for Jewish Studies Review 6 (1981),
161–84; Kenneth Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy
and Papal Policy in the High Middle Ages (Cincinnati, 1984); Kenneth Stow, ‘The Papacy and the Jews,
Catholic Reformation and Beyond’, Jewish History 6 (1992), 257–79. Also seminal has been the work
of Shlomo Simonsohn; see, for example, Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History
(Toronto, 1991).
2 ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ became the standard letter of protection popes issued for the Jews and came to be
known as the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’. See Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.9; Calixtus II, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (2 February
1119–14 February 1124), Simonsohn, p.44; Clement IV, ‘Turbato corde audivimus’ (27 July 1267),
Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.102–4; Simonsohn, pp.236–7; Solomon Grayzel, ‘Popes, Jews and Inquisition from
“Sicut” to “Turbato”’, in Essays on the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the Dropsie University,
ed. A. Katsh, L. Nemoy (Philadelphia, 1979), pp.151–88. Significant additions to the text of the
‘Sicut Iudaeis’ were made by both Innocent III and Innocent IV.


Introduction

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