16 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
Church in Spain. So although papal statements remained carefully thought-out
responses to petitioners’ requests, there was now a subtle difference in rhetoric.
Whereas the main concern of popes prior to Alexander III had been that Jews
should be protected, but with their status in Christian society limited to reflect the
inferior status of Judaism to Christianity, from Alexander’s pontificate onwards
there was an increasing and significant new insistence that Christians should have
no contact whatsoever with Jews.
INNOCENT III
Alexander’s immediate successors, Lucius III (1181–1185), Clement III (1187–1191),
and Celestine III (1191–1198), seem to have issued few letters about Jews. Innocent
III, however, with an even more exalted vision of his role as head of Christian society,
despatched a significantly larger number.^72 With Innocent we reach another
important milestone since the survival of most of his Register transforms our
knowledge of papal correspondence. Innocent was deeply influenced by the circle
of intellectuals around Peter the Chanter who found Jewish arguments against
Christianity helpful in theological debate.^73 As in so many other areas—theology,
pastoral reform, the crusades, action against heresy—so too in his treatment of the
Jews, Innocent’s pontificate would have a profound effect on his successors.
Nor was it only the number of letters about Jews that increased with Innocent: so
also did the variety, with one letter often covering multiple topics. The traditional
concerns remained: protection, forced baptism, Christian servants, the status of
synagogues, money transactions. These, however, were treated in much more detail,
as one would expect from a pope who prided himself on the length, depth, and
rhetorical power of his correspondence. Innocent was careful to reiterate his pre-
decessors’ insistence on the special place of the Jews and their soteriological
significance, yet his correspondence reveals a subtly new emphasis: as we shall
examine in Chapter Two, his re-issue of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’, for example,
was markedly different from its predecessors.^74 An additional paragraph was added
at the beginning of the letter complaining of Jewish perfidy, while a new statement at
the end limited papal protection to Jews who refrained from plotting against the
Christian faith.^75 So from now on, protection of Jewish communities was no longer
72 Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, trans. D. Peterson (Chicago, London, 2000),
pp.58–74.
73 Leopold Lucas, ‘Innocent III et les Juifs’, Revue des Études Juives 35 (1897), 247. For Peter the
Chanter and the Jews, see Gilbert Dahan, ‘L’Article Iudei de la Summa Abel de Pierre le Chantre’,
Revue des études Augustiniennes 27 (1981), 105–26.
74 Chazan, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Jews’, pp.194–7. Grayzel notes that the lack of a definite
addressee seems to indicate that the letter was given over directly into the hands of the Jews; see
Innocent III, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.92.
75 Innocent III, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.92–4; Simonsohn, pp.74–5. See
Grayzel, ‘The Papal Bull “Sicut Iudeis”’, pp.256–7; Grayzel discusses the additional paragraph at the
beginning of the re-issue but not the addition to the re-issue of the last sentence. Stow has argued that
the addition of the last sentence may derive from the Pact of Omar which had governed the relations
of Christian and Jews with Muslims in Islamic countries since the tenth century, and maybe even
earlier; see Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul to Pius IX’, p.34. In 1478 Sixtus IV included it in
his re-issue of ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, but Stow has argued that in this case it was to show that Jews who had