Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 41
kingdom and demanded on pain of death that they convert to Christianity. Having
consulted among themselves:
they came to the king and told him ‘My Lord, we will not obey you and we will not
leave our religion. You must do as you will with us’. And they placed their heads before
the sword to die as martyrs.64Many were then killed and in response to this outrage, one of the great rabbis of
the eleventh century, rabbi Ya’acov bar Yakutiel, declared to those who had mur-
dered them:
‘You have no authority over israel to convert them or to try to do anything bad to
them. But the pope of rome has that authority. if you approve it i will go there and
i will meet with him and i will come back and tell you his words’.65He then travelled to rome to appeal to the pontiff, probably pope John xViii
(1003–1009).66 Addressing him as ‘head of the nations’, Yakutiel asked him to
send letters ordering an end to the massacres and to rule that:
‘no gentile is allowed to kill any Jew for any reason, nor to cause him any damage, nor
to exploit him and take what he has earned from work, nor to force him to abandon
his religion’.67in return he promised two hundred literaria (pounds) for the papal treasury, which
although not strictly a bribe—it was customary for petitioners of means to offer a
sum to the papal curia—was a very large sum: and in addition twelve horses and
two hundred silver shekels for the travelling expenses of the bishop who would
carry the letter of protection. Having summoned the rabbis of rome to look after
Yakutiel, the pope deliberated with his bishops for fifteen days, while the Jews
‘cried and prayed to god that the heart of the pope would be wholly with them’.68
The conclusion was indeed favourable: a bishop was despatched with letters of pro-
tection; the decree of robert was cancelled and the pontiff promised that:
‘if you should need anything further to be done in your country, do not bother your-
self any more but rather send a messenger to me. For i shall do whatever you wish’.69This is certainly an account which presents a pope in a very favourable light.
Following the call by Urban ii (1088–1099) for the First Crusade at the Council
of Clermont in 1095, attention to papal influence on the well-being of Jewish
communities in western Europe resurfaces in Jewish chronicles. it has been sug-
gested that in contrast to the popular legends of the Sefer Yossipon, the Hebrew
crusade chronicles subordinate the description of specific historical events to the
elaboration of a grand historical drama in which the Jewish people play a unique
64 Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.19.
65 Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.20.
66 For the bull of John xViii which has not survived taking the Jews under papal protection, see
Simonsohn, p.34.
67 Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, pp.20–1.
68 Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.21.
69 Sefer gezerot sarfat ve-ashkenaz, ed. Habermann, p.21.