Introduction 11
(1009–1012) and received a promise of protection following a rumour that they
had persuaded Muslims to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.^49
So it is not surprising that, correspondingly, the issue of protection can be found
in papal correspondence in response to violence against Jews and particularly with
regard to charges of ritual murder.^50 At the same time papal letters also reflect
philosophical concerns over the problem of intentionality—whether the Jews of
the New Testament had deliberately and knowingly murdered Christ. As early
as the eighth century Pope Stephen III (768–772), angry at hearing that Jews in
Spain had taken possession of allods—territory owned and not subject to any rent—
in Christian land and were employing Christians to cultivate them, had described
Jews as ‘enemies of God’ (‘inimici Domini’).^51 This language was repeated in the
eleventh century when Gregory VII (1073–1085), dismayed at hearing that Jews
held positions of authority over Christians in Castile, referred to them as ‘enemies
of Christ’ (‘inimici Christi’).^52 Such rhetoric suggests that, despite their state-
ments of protection, popes continued to be uneasy about the role played by ‘the
Jews’ in the Crucifixion and this preoccupation resurfaces sporadically in their
correspondence.
In the twelfth and even more in the thirteenth century, the number of letters
about Jews remained small—in contrast to the ever increasing numbers emanating
overall from the papal curia. Nevertheless, the range of Jewish issues on which popes
pronounced was now greater than in the eleventh century, the content more com-
plex, and the context more urgent.^53 This partly reflects the vast growth in the
number of letters issued by the curia on almost any topic and the increasingly
diverse total number of those who petitioned Rome for judgements. Yet it also
suggests augmented papal attention to Jewish communities, resulting at least in part
from the growing numbers of Jews in western Christendom. Historians debate how
many Jews lived in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,^54 and remain
Chronicle of Ademar of Chabannes’, MGHS, Vol. 4, pp.136–7; p.139. See also the account of Benzo
of Albi who wrote to the German emperor Henry IV (1056–1105) about the plight of the Jews in
MGHS, Vol. 11, pp.615–16.
49 A forged document, purporting to be a letter of protection, was ascribed to Pope Sergius IV. See
Roth, ‘The Popes and the Jews’, 78–9.
50 For papal letters of protection, for example, see reference to one of John XVIII (beginning of
1007) following the persecution of Jews in France in 1007, in Simonsohn, p.34. See also Alexander II,
‘Omnes leges’ (1063), Simonsohn, p.35; ‘Placuit nobis’ (1063), Simonsohn, pp.35–6; ‘Noverit pruden-
tia’ (1063), Simonsohn, p.36.
51 For example, Stephen III (IV) ‘Convenit nobis’ (768–772), Simonsohn, p.25.
52 For example, Gregory VII, ‘Non ignorat prudentia’ (1081), Simonsohn, p.38.
53 Walther Holzmann, ‘Zur päpstlichen Gesetzgebung über die Juden im zwölften Jahrhundert’,
Festschrift Guido Kisch (Stuttgart, 1935), pp.217–35.
54 Estimated numbers vary considerably. For examples of different estimates compare Encyclopaedia
Judaica, ed. C. Roth (Jerusalem, 1971), Vol. 13, pp.875–9; Salo Baron, ‘Population’, in Encyclopedia
Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit, 2007), (Jerusalem, 1971), Vol. 16, pp.381–2; pp.387–9; Stow, Alienated
Minority, p.7; Sergio Della Pergola, ‘Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History’, in Papers
in Jewish Demography 1997, ed. S. Della Pergola, J. Even (Jerusalem, 2001), pp.11–13. Debate about
whether in the West there were more Jews in the thirteenth century north of the Pyrenees continues.
Recent scholarship has suggested that in England at least they were at their greatest number in the
twelfth century, and that their expulsion at the end of the thirteenth century came after a long period
of decline—although the Jewish experience in England did not necessarily equate with that in