Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 29
leaders.3 Fear of conversion to Christianity and more generally a desire to pro-
tect their communities from hostile external influences encouraged strictures on
reading Christian literature and the circulation of polemics defending Judaism and
attacking Christianity.4 Nevertheless, references to the papacy can be found in a
wide spectrum of Jewish writing.5 i t is through analysis of a combination of very
different types of Hebrew sources that we are able to piece together a limited under-
standing of Jewish ideas about popes and the papal curia in the High Middle Ages.6
As is normal with any minority community, Jewish historiography concerns itself
both with the history of the Jews in its medieval context, and with the existential
dilemmas they faced as a special group.7 Arguably, however, historiography was
not the chief conduit for preserving Jewish memory during the period.8 Histories
and chronicles were often disregarded unless they were of halakhic importance or
were subsumed under theology or law; rather, memory was preserved through
ritual and liturgy, prioritized over historical compositions.9 indeed it has been
claimed that Jewish writers often refused to explore the idea of novelty in history—
which meant that what they chose to remember correlated little with historical
data in the modern sense—but rather passed over or even ‘transcended’ particular
3 For the idea that tales and witticisms in ‘folk polemic’ reflected the views of Jews who were not
learned enough to appreciate more abstruse and complicated discussions, see David Berger, The
Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Age: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus (philadelphia,
1979), p.21.
4 peter Schäfer, ‘Jews and Christians in the High Middle Ages: The Book of the Pious’, in The Jews of
Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries). Proceedings of the International Symposium held
at Speyer, 20–25 October 2002 , ed. C. Cluse, p.35; p.37; p.39.
5 The purpose of this chapter is to discuss a selective number of representative texts which discuss
the five themes enumerated earlier, not to attempt to deal exhaustively with every Hebrew text from
the High Middle Ages which mentions popes or the papacy.
6 There is a huge literature on medieval Jewish writers and their polemical works which cannot be
discussed in detail here. See, for an early example, the discussion in Salo Baron, A Social and Religious
History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages and Era of European Expansion, 1200– 1650 , Vol. 9: Under Church
and Empire, 2nd edn (New York, London, 1965), pp.97–134; much more recently, for example,
Hannah trautner-Kromann, Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians
in France and Spain from 1100– 1500 (tübingen, 1993), pp.26–48. it is important not only to situate
Jewish writings in their correct time and place but to compare Jewish events with what we know from
Christian sources in order to analyse properly the contents and tenor of the Hebrew material.
7 David Myers, David ruderman, ‘preface’, in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern
Jewish Histories, ed. D. N. Myers, D. B. ruderman (New Haven, Conn., London, 1998), p.x; Alfred
Haverkamp, ‘The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages: By way of introduction’, in The Jews of Europe
in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries). Proceedings of the International Symposium held at
Speyer, 20–25 October 2002, ed. C. Cluse, p.8. For a summary of the wider debate about how Jewish
history is not just about the past experiences of Jews but also how their present experiences determine
their motivations, methods and perspectives, i.e. the manner in which they study it, see Jeremy Cohen,
‘i ntroduction’, in Rethinking European Jewish History, ed. J. Cohen, M. rosman (portland, oregon,
2009), p.1.
8 For example, Yosef Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Memory (Seattle, London, 1982),
p.39.
9 For example, Yerushalmi, Zakhor, pp.39–42; Susan Einbinder, Beautiful Death. Jewish Poetry
and Martyrdom in Medieval France (princeton, oxford, 2002), p.35; p.51; ivan Marcus, Rituals of
Childhood. Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, London, 1996), pp.1–17. For discus-
sion of the fact that Halakha, philosophy, and Kabbalah were important for religious and intellectual
creativity, see again Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p.52.