Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 55
Although, however, the polemical writers are aware of the desires of the popes
to protect Jews, they consistently deride papal claims to an ultimate spiritual
authority. This theme comes up frequently along with Jewish refutations of key
theological features of the Christian faith: the trinity, the Crucifixion and
resurrection, the honorary status of Jesus’s mother Mary—in particular belief in
the virgin birth.152 polemicists also devoted whole chapters to pointing out incon-
sistencies in New testament passages claiming to support apostolic succession,
being especially eager to debunk the idea of the pope’s authority to absolve sins.153
The Nizzahon Vetus thus rejected this claim:
For you [the Christians] say that the pope is below god and he has the power to bind
and loose... but it is to no avail because only god can forgive and even Moses who is
the greatest prophet did not have the authority to forgive.154Similarly in the Sefer Joseph Hamekane Joseph ben Nathan official disputed apos-
tolic authority.155 official is particularly interesting since he relates how pope
gregory x (1271–1276) was challenged successfully about papal powers of abso-
lution.156 gregory asked the sceptic ‘Don’t you believe that i have the power to
bind and to loose, and forgive and grant redemption?’, to which his critic wittily
replied that, although the pope could of course untie and tie the straps of his belt,
he could not forgive and redeem. gregory then asked him ‘Don’t i represent
St peter?’ His critic replied that the saint’s supposed powers, like the pope’s, were
nonsense.157 in summary official quoted psalms 130: 4: ‘But there is forgiveness
with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared’, and he concluded with the unsurprising
statement that no one can forgive but god alone.158
Such thirteenth-century texts deriding the idea of apostolic authority differed
little from their fourteenth-century successors with which it is therefore worth
comparing them.159 in the fourteenth century the papacy moved from rome to
Avignon and later there was a serious schism in the Church which might have
152 Haverkamp, ‘The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages’, p.2; Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate
in the High Middle Ages, pp.13–15; Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,
p.58; p.65, passim. For the increased emphasis in Christian medieval life on the incarnation and of
Mary’s role in bringing it about see, for example, Miri rubin, Emotion and Devotion: The Image of
Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures (Budapest, New York, 2009), p.84; Blumenkranz, ‘The roman
Church and the Jews’, p.221.
153 Christians such as odo (Eudes) of Châteauroux did the same thing in grouping together
talmudic texts and classifying them under titles such as ‘Concerning the authority of the law which is
called “talmud”’, and ‘Concerning blasphemies against Christ and the Virgin Mary’, see Cohen,
‘Scholarship and intolerance in the Medieval Academy’, p.327.
154 ‘Liber nizzachon vetus’, in Tela ignea satanae, ed. wagenseil, col. 250. For another translation
of this passage see Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, pp.223–4.
155 For biblical interpretations of the Sepher Joseph Hamekane, see Chazan, Daggers of Faith, p.51;
p.54.
156 Joseph ben Nathan official, in Sepher Joseph hamekane. Metkitse nivdamim, ed. J. rosenthal
( Jerusalem, 1970), p.86.
157 Joseph ben Nathan official, in Sefer Joseph hamekane, ed. rosenthal, p.86. St peter came in for
special derision among Jewish writers. See, for example, the discussion in Schäfer, ‘Jews and Christians
in the High Middle Ages’, pp.37–8.
158 Joseph ben Nathan official, in Sefer Joseph hamekane, ed. rosenthal, p.86.
159 Lasker, ‘Jewish philosophical polemics in Ashkenaz’, p.195.