Introduction 13
success of subsequent crusades was vitally important to popes now committed to
maintaining the crusader states.^59 Hence, on a number of occasions, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’
was issued on the eve of crusades, often in response to local appeals from Jewish
communities. As crusading continued in the thirteenth century, popes were also
compelled to handle complaints about attacks on Jews by crusaders on their way
to the Near East, especially with reference to the violence perpetrated in 1236 by
the ‘Barons’ Crusade’ of Thibaut of Champagne and Richard of Cornwall.^60
Nevertheless, protection was only one of the ‘Jewish’ concerns of twelfth- and
thirteenth-century popes. With the burgeoning of the curia and the growth of
canon law, the Christian faithful increasingly looked to popes to pronounce on a
wider range of issues: how far Christians might mix with Jews in social and polit-
ical life; the extent to which Jews might charge Christians interest—which had
been an important issue since Gregory I; the status of Jews in a society increasingly
pre-occupied with heresy and dissent. There was also the growing problem of how
Christians should view Jewish literature, in particular the Talmud, now circulating
much more widely in the West thanks to Arabic learning and growing contact
with the Byzantine East. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, western
Christian society had become generally more aware not only of Jews, but of
Judaism. This is apparent not only in contemporary theology and biblical exegesis,^61
but also in the increased circulation of Christian and Jewish polemic and in public
disputations such as those in Paris in 1240 and Barcelona in 1263.^62 We now find
June 1247), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.274; Simonsohn, pp.192–3; Alexander IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (22 September
1255), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.55–7; Simonsohn, pp.211–12; urban IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (26 April 1262),
Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.70–1; Simonsohn, p.219; Gregory X, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (7 October 1272), Grayzel, Vol.
2, pp.116–20; Simonsohn, pp.242–3; and possibly ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (10 September 1274), Grayzel, Vol.
2 , pp.133–4; Simonsohn, p.246. The 1272 re-issue added that a mixed group of witnesses, including a
Jew, was required to convict Jews and the evidence of a Christian against a Jew accused of ritual
murder was not valid. Nicholas III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (2 August 1278), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.139–42;
Simonsohn, p.249; Martin IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (1 March 1281), Simonsohn, p.254; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (2
August 1281), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.147–50; Simonsohn, pp.254–5; Honorius IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (1285–
1286/7), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.162–3; Simonsohn, p.260; and Nicholas IV ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (1288–1292),
Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.191–2; Simonsohn, p.265. See also discussion in Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.76–8; Grayzel,
‘The Papal Bull “Sicut Iudeis”’, p.244. For discussion of the different re-issues, see pp.243–80. It is
possible that the re-issues of ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ attributed to Nicholas III and Martin IV were forgeries; see
Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul to Pius IX’, p.32. See also Hans Liebeschütz, ‘The Crusading
Movement in its Bearing on the Christian Attitude towards Jewry’, Journal of Jewish Studies 10/3–4
(1959), 97–111.
59 Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty, pp.16–17.
60 Sara Schiffmann, ‘Heinrichs IV. Verhalten zu den Juden zur Zeit des ersten Kreuzzuges’,
Zeitschrift fur die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 3 (1931), 30–58; Hans Georg von Mutius,
Hymnen und Gebete, Ephraim von Bonn (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York, 1989), passim.
61 Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 3rd edn, ed. I. C. Brady, 2 vols (Grottaferrata,
1971–81), passim; Clare Monagle, Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Discourse: Peter
Lombard’s Sentences and the Development of Theology (Turnhout, 2013), passim; Rebecca Moore, Jews
and Christians in the Life and Thought of Hugh of St. Victor (Atlanta, 1998), passim.
62 The period saw a growing number of anti-Jewish polemics in circulation, including Walter of
Châtillon’s Dialogus contra Iudaeos (1170), Alain of Lille’s De fide catholica contra hereticos (Book 3 of which
was entitled Contra Iudaeos (1180–1190)), Peter of Blois’s Contra perfidiam Iudaeorum (end of the
twelfth century), and William of Bourges’s Bellum Domini contra Iudaeos et contra Iudaeorum hereticos
(1230). See Walter of Châtillon, ‘Dialogus contra Iudaeos’, PL 209, cols 423–58; Alain of Lille, ‘Liber
tertius contra Iudaeos’, Alain of Lille, ‘De fide catholica contra hereticos’, PL 210, cols 399–422; Peter