38 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
information about the papacy—popes rarely feature—yet there is a particularly
unusual and striking example where one does: an Ashkenazy responsum attributed
to the Maharam (rabbi Meir of rothenburg, c.1215–1293) recorded in a collection
composed towards the end of the twelfth century concerned with money-lending
and entitled The Answer of the Wise People of France or Lotharingia.49 As we have
already noted, debate continues about the extent to which Jews were involved in
lending at interest and in which areas of medieval Europe they operated; yet it is
certain that just as Christian theologians in paris puzzled over the morality of a
profit economy, so French and german halakhists frequently engaged with the
problem of usury.50
The nature of this responsum makes it difficult to know whether it refers to an
actual historical event or whether it is a case study: either way it is highly signifi-
cant.51 it relates how two Jewish creditors had turned to an (unnamed) pope when
the city’s bishop has refused them aid.52 Both creditors had lent money to the same
person without knowing that the other had done so and in each case the debtor
had provided a promissory note, but had died before the debt could be repaid.53
when the creditors go to the governor of the city to seek satisfaction, he declares
that, since the bishop is not under his jurisdiction and he does not want to incur
his enmity, he cannot help, but he advises them to:
‘go and present your claim to the pope who is the head of the bishops. And he will
order that bishop to compel the inheritors to repay the debt; for they do not come
under my jurisdiction, and i do not want the bishop to hate me. And thereafter come
back to me and i will know what to do for you’.54The creditors obey and, as the governor had foretold, ‘the pope has done so and
ordered the bishop to compel the inheritors to repay the debt’.55 So, as in the Sefer
during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries based on the Responsa Literature (Leiden, 1965), pp.1–31. For
money-lending in the responsa, see especially the classic study on the use of response as historical
sources in Haym Soloveitchik, ‘pawnbroking: A Study in ribbit and of the Halakah in Exile’,
Proceedings of the Jewish Academy for Jewish Research 38–9 (1970–1), 203–68. For more recent discus-
sions of the genre limitations of responsa, see Einbinder, Beautiful Death, p.34; Yassif, The Hebrew
Folktale, p.284; p.309; robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, trans.
J. Chipman (oxford, 1990), pp.251–69.
49 Kenneth Stow discusses this responsum in some detail in Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal
Sovereignty, pp.5–7, but its importance as one of the very few medieval Ashkenazy responsa which
mention the role of the pope as protector of Jews makes it a crucial text for further discussion in this
chapter.
50 See, for example, Charles gross, The Exchequer of the Jews of England in the Middle Ages. A Lecture
Delivered at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (London, 1887), p.7; Haverkamp, ‘The Jews of
Europe in the Middle Ages’, pp.12–14; Economic History of the Jews (Jerusalem, 1975), ed. N. gross,
S. w. Baron, A. Kahan, et al (Jerusalem, 1975), pp.30–2; pp.43–6; Lester Little, ‘The Jews in Christian
Europe’, in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: from Late Antiquity to the Reformation,
ed. J. Cohen, pp.276–81; Abulafia, ‘Christians and Jews in the High Middle Ages’, p.21.
51 Agus, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, Vol. 1, pp.xv–xxii; Agus, Urban Civilization in Pre-Crusade
Europe, Vol. 1, pp.1–27.
52 rabbinic responsum in Teshuvot hakhme sarfat ve-lotair, ed. J. Muller (presburg, Vienna, 1881),
no.34, p.206. See Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty, p.6.
53 rabbinic responsum in Teshuvot hakhme sarfat ve-lotair, ed. Muller, no.34, p.206.
54 rabbinic responsum in Teshuvot hakhme sarfat ve-lotair, ed. Muller, no.34, p.206.
55 rabbinic responsum in Teshuvot hakhme sarfat ve-lotair, ed. Muller, no.34, p.206.