The Popes of the earlier part of the Middle Ages had found enough
employment for their energies in the effort to maintain their own
position in Christendom; and they had neither the wish nor the power to
seek a conflict with a race that remained wholly outside the Church.
In the twelfth century there was no other general Church Law directed
against the Jews than that which forbade them to live in the same
houses with Christians, and to have Christian servants.[182] In England
especially, Churchmen of the twelfth century showed towards the Jews
a tolerant spirit, and made no effort to augment their unpopularity
or to diminish their privileges. The examples of Anselm, and of his
contemporary, Gilbert of Westminster, show that in the attempts made at
that time by men of high position in the Church to convert the Jews, no
method was employed except that of reasonable persuasion.[183] Churches
and monasteries took charge, at times of danger, of the money, and
even of the families, of Jews. Such friendly intercourse as existed
between Jews and Christians was allowed to go on without any attempt at
ecclesiastical interference.[184]
The accession of Innocent the Third to the pontificate brought about a
rapid change in the attitude of the Church towards the Jews. Innocent
was the first to advance, on behalf of the Papacy, the claim that the
Lord gave Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to
rule,[185] and he endeavoured with a merciless enthusiasm, from which
all unbelievers and heretics in Christian countries had to suffer, to
make good his claim, and to establish in Europe one united Catholic
Church. He took his stand on the doctrine, which his predecessors had
held[186] in a modified form, and without ever acting on it, that the
Jews were condemned to perpetual slavery on account of the wickedness
of their ancestors in crucifying Christ; and he thought that they ought
to be made to feel, and their neighbours likewise, that it was only
out of Christian pity that their presence was endured in Christian
countries.
The position of the Jews at the time of Innocent’s accession to the
pontificate was very far from being such as his theory required. They
had magnificent synagogues, they employed Christian servants, they
married, or were said to marry, Christian wives; they refused, in what
some Christians regarded as a spirit of outrageous insolence, to eat
the same meat and to drink the same wine as the Gentiles, and they made
no secret of their disbelief in the sacred history of Christianity.
Moreover, they were suspected of exercising a considerable influence on
the growth of the heresies which it was the chief work of Innocent’s
life to combat. The Vaudois, the Cathari, and the Albigenses, all
kept up Jewish observances, and were said to have learnt from the
Jews their heretical dogmas; the Albigenses, indeed, were accused of
maintaining that the law of the Jews was better than the law of the
Christians. And, nevertheless, Christian kings supported the Jews
in every way. They countenanced their usury, they refused (so, at
least, Innocent said) to allow evidence against them on any charge
to be given by Christian witnesses, and they even employed them in
high offices of State. In view of these facts, Innocent thought that
a great effort of repression should be made, and he wrote to the King
of France, the Duke of Burgundy, and other monarchs, asking for their
assistance in the work of reducing the Jews to that condition of
slavery which was their due. He decreed in his general Church Council
that Jews should be excluded in future from public offices, and that
they should wear a badge to distinguish them from Christians; and
he renewed the old regulation of the Church, which required them to
dismiss Christian servants from their houses. In order to ensure that
the last provision should be observed, he decided that any Christians
having any intercourse with Jews that transgressed it should be subject
to excommunication. For the enforcement of his other anti-Jewish
measures he relied on the help of the temporal power in all Christian
countries.[187]
The declaration of war made by Innocent III. was a terrible calamity
for the Jews; but though it affected at once the whole of Christian
Europe, still its evil results might have passed away in time. Popes
were but men and politicians; and just as Innocent had, by the
publication of his wishes and decrees concerning the Jews, set himself
in opposition to his predecessors, so might his successors, in their
turn, moved by different feelings or taking a different view of the
interests and duties of the Church, set themselves in opposition to
him, and go back to the old lenient opinions and practice. But within
a few years of the death of Innocent, the work of attacking the Jews
ceased to be in the hands of any one man, and passed over to a body of
men habitually influenced not by personal or political considerations,
but only by what they conceived to be the interest of religion,
and filled with a hatred of the Jews more fierce and fanatical and
steadfast than that of the Popes could ever have been.
The Dominican order was formally constituted in 1223, and from the
earliest years of its existence devoted itself to the task of rooting
out unbelief from the Christian world. The work that its members
at first professed to regard as peculiarly their own was that of
preaching, but on the Jews their preaching had no effect. With an
ingenuity and determination worthy of the order that in a later
century was to provide the Inquisition with its chief ministers, the
Dominicans devised and carried out another plan of action. Assisted by
converted Jews who had joined them, they undertook the study of Hebrew,
and their master, Raymundus de Peñaforte, induced the King of Spain
to build and endow seminaries for the purpose.[188] Armed with this
new knowledge, they were able to attack first, what they represented
as the foolish and pernicious contents of such Jewish books as the
Talmud, and secondly, the stubbornness of the Jews who refused to
accept the doctrines of Christianity, the truth of which the Dominicans
professed to be able to demonstrate from the Old Testament. Two
incidents which must at the time have been famous throughout Europe
illustrate their method of warfare. In 1239 Nicolas Donin, a converted
Jew who had become a Dominican friar, laid before Gregory IX. a series
of statements concerning the Talmud. Helped, no doubt, by all the
influence of his order, he induced the Pope to issue bulls to the Kings
of France, England, and Spain, and the bishops in those countries,
ordering that all copies of the Talmud should be seized, and that
public inquiry should be held concerning the charges brought against
the book. In England and Spain nothing seems to have been done, but in
Paris the Pope’s instructions were carried out, and, at the instigation
of the leading Dominicans, St. Louis ordered that all copies of the
Talmud that could be found in France should be confiscated, and that
four Rabbis should, on behalf of the Jews, hold a public debate with
Donin, in order to meet, if they could, the charges that he was
prepared to maintain. In the course of the debate, which was held in
the precincts of the Court and in the presence of members of the Royal
family and great dignitaries of the Church, Donin asserted that the
Talmud encouraged the Jews to despise, deceive, rob, and even murder
Christians, that it contained blasphemous falsehoods concerning Christ,
superstitions and puerilities of all kinds, and passages disrespectful
to God and inconsistent with morality. The Rabbis answered as best
they could, but the court of Inquisitors decided that the charges
had been substantiated, and ordered that all the confiscated copies
of the Talmud should be burnt. After a delay of about two years the
_Auto-da-fe_ took place, and fourteen cartloads of the Talmud were
sacrificed.[189] The other famous incident of the kind took place in
Spain. Pablo Christiano, a converted Jew, who, like Donin, had joined
the Dominicans, challenged the Jews of Aragon to a discussion on the
differences between Judaism and Christianity, and induced James I.
to compel them to take up the challenge. The famous Nachmanides came
forward as the representative of his co-religionists. Pablo undertook
to show that the Old Testament, and other books recognised by the Jews,
taught that the Messiah had come, that he was “very God and very man,”
that he suffered and died for the salvation of mankind, and that with
his advent the ceremonial law ceased to be of any effect. Nachmanides
denied that any of these propositions could be substantiated from the
Jewish sacred books. For four days the disputation was carried on in
the presence of the king and many great personages of Church and State.
Of course the verdict was that the Christian disputant had beaten the
Jew.[190]
The method of conducting these two controversies showed that the
Dominicans were determined to use every possible weapon against the
Jews. The Talmud, a huge, heterogeneous and unedited compilation,
contains passages which are trivial and foolish, and others, written
by men who had memories of persecution fresh in their minds, which
express bitter hatred towards the “Gentiles,” that is, the Romans who
had taken Jerusalem, and had destroyed the nationality of the Jewish
race. It was easy for an opponent to pick out such passages, to assert
that what was said against the “Gentiles” expressed, not the feelings
of the victims of persecution against the Romans of the second century,
but the feelings of all Jews towards all non-Jews, at every time and
at every place, and to convince an uncritical audience that those who
held in honour the book that contained such passages were enemies of
religion, against whose influence it behoved all Christian powers to
guard the faithful. Similarly, by compelling the Jews to take part
in a discussion concerning the prophecies of the Old Testament, the
Dominicans imposed on them the choice between the two alternatives
of betraying their religion by acquiescing in what they believed to
be a false interpretation of their scripture, or else of proclaiming
publicly their disbelief in doctrines which were at the very foundation
of Christianity. The effect on the ruling classes in Europe of the
two discussions just mentioned must have been very great. And the
Dominicans were continually carrying on the same work, though, of
course, seldom before audiences so distinguished. Pablo, for example,
travelled about Spain and Provence, compelling the Jews, by virtue of
a royal edict that had been issued in his favour, to hold disputes
with him on matters of religion.[191] Many other members of the order
devoted their lives to the same pursuit,[192] and thus did their
best to fill the rulers of the Church with a dread of the terrible
consequences that the existence of Judaism threatened to the Christian
religion.
And, unfortunately for the Jews, their religion began to be feared
at the same time as cruel and powerful fanatics like Innocent and
the Dominicans were doing their best to cause it to be hated. There
is good reason to believe, though detailed evidence is not abundant,
that towards the end of the Middle Ages Judaism exercised over the
superstitions of other faiths the same fascination as in the first
century of the Roman Empire. Thomas Aquinas believed that unrestricted
intercourse between Jews and Christians was likely to result in the
conversion of Christians to Judaism, and for that reason he thought it
right, in spite of the general liberality of his opinions concerning
the Jews, that intercourse with them should be allowed to such
Christians alone as were strong in the faith, and were more likely to
convert them than to be converted by them.[193] “It happens sometimes,”
wrote a Pope of the thirteenth century, “that Christians, when they
are visited by the Lord with sickness and tribulation, go astray, and
have recourse to the vain help of the Jewish rite. They hold in the
synagogues of the Jews torches and lighted candles, and make offerings
there. Likewise they keep vigils (especially on the Sabbath), in the
hope that the sick may be restored to health, that those at sea may
reach harbour, that those in childbirth may be safely delivered, and
that the barren may become fruitful and rejoice in offspring. For the
accomplishment of these and other wishes, they implore the help of the
said rite, and in idolatrous fashion show open signs of devotion and
reverence to a scroll, not without much harm to the orthodox faith,
contumely to our Creator, and opprobrium and shame to the Universal
Church.”[194]
The anti-Jewish feeling that grew up from the causes that have just
been described called into existence new institutions and measures
designed for the purpose of humbling the Jews and checking the growth
of Judaism. In compliance with the cruel request of Innocent, most
of the monarchs of Europe compelled their Jewish subjects to wear
a badge.[195] Local church councils, which hitherto had contented
themselves with the attempt to enforce the old prohibition against
the employment by Jews of Christian servants and nurses, now went
further, and forbade Christians to allow the presence of Jews in their
houses and taverns, to feast or dance with them, to be present at the
celebration of their marriages, their new moons, and their festivals,
and to employ their services as doctors.[196] The Popes of the latter
part of the thirteenth century appointed Dominicans in various
countries of Europe to perform the duty of preaching to the Jews, and
of holding inquisitions into their heresies, in the hope that with the
help of the secular power they might stamp them out.[197]
In England the relation of the Jews to the Christians underwent
somewhat the same changes as in Continental Europe. Before the
thirteenth century the Jews in England had, as has been said above,
been free from molestation by the Church,[198] and their chief danger
had been from the brutality and greed of the disorderly populace, of
desperate outcasts, and of marauding Crusaders.[199] The first great
attack made on them by any constituted power came from Stephen Langton,
who, not content with passing at his Provincial Synod a decree which,
in accordance with the regulations of Innocent, enforced the use of the
badge and prohibited the erection of new synagogues, went so far as
to issue orders that no one in his diocese should presume, under pain
of excommunication, to have any intercourse with Jews, or should sell
them any of the necessaries of life. The Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich
issued the same orders in their dioceses.[200] Many other bishops in
the reign of Henry III. did their best, partly by legislation in their
diocesan synods and partly by the use of their personal and spiritual
influence, to check intercourse between Jews and Christians.[201] Of
course the king’s guardians, in the interest of the royal income, a
considerable part of which was derived from the Jewry, interfered to
prevent the measures of Langton and his colleagues from being carried
into effect. And Henry, when he took into his own hands the work of
government, while, on the one hand, he showed his sympathy with the
fears of the Church by building a house for the reception of Jewish
converts,[202] and by lending the sanction of the civil power to the
decree that ordered the use of the badge,[203] nevertheless followed
the example that his guardians had set, and protected the Jews against
the aggression of the Church.
There were many reasons which might have caused Edward to sympathise
more strongly than his father had done, with the anti-Jewish feelings
of the Church. He was a pious man and a pious king, filled with a sense
of his kingly duty towards “the living God who takes to himself the
souls of Princes.”[204] He was a Crusader, though the great crusading
age was over, a founder of monasteries, a pilgrim to holy places; and
through his confessors he was in close connection with, and under
the influence of, the Dominican order.[205] Some of his bishops were
determined enemies of the Jews. John of Peckham, for example, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted at one time on the demolition of
all the small private synagogues in London, at which the Jews were in
the habit of worshipping after the confiscation of their great public
synagogues at the end of the reign of Henry III.; at another time he
demanded from the king the help of the temporal power against Jews
who having once been converted to Christianity, wished to go back to
their old faith; on another occasion he took the bold step of writing
to the Queen concerning her business transactions with the Jews,
solemnly warning her that unless she gave them up she could never
be absolved from her sins, “nay, not though an angel should assert
the contrary.”[206] At Hereford, Bishop Swinfield was so determined
to prevent intercourse with Jews that, when he heard that certain
Christians intended to be present at a marriage feast to be given by
some rich Jews of the city, he issued a proclamation threatening with
excommunication any who should carry out their intention, and, when his
proclamation was disregarded, he carried out his threat.[207]
Certain events that happened, or were said to have happened, in England
in Edward’s lifetime, some, indeed, under his own observation, may
well have seemed to him to justify the attitude of the Church. In
1275 a Dominican friar was converted to Judaism.[208] In 1268, while
Edward was in Oxford, the Chancellor, masters and scholars of the
University, and the Parochial Clergy, were going in procession to visit
the shrine of St. Friedswide when, according to a story that gained
general credence, a Jew of the city snatched from the bearer a cross
that was being carried at their head and trod it under foot.[209] At
Norwich, early in Edward’s reign, a Jew was burnt for blasphemy.[210]
At Nottingham, in 1278, a Jewess was charged with abusing in scandalous
terms all the Christian bystanders in the market-place.[211]
Edward’s conduct could not but be influenced by the general tone of
opinion in the Church, by the strong anti-Jewish feeling of some of his
bishops, and by the follies, real or supposed, of the Jews themselves.
In continuation of his father’s policy he made, throughout his reign,
such contributions as, with his scanty means, he could afford, to the
support of the House of Converts.[212] He renewed the edict concerning
the wearing of the badge, and extended it to Jewesses, whereas it had
formerly applied only to Jews.[213] In order that the Dominicans might
be able to carry on in England the same efforts at conversion as they
were already pursuing in France, Spain and Germany, he issued to all
the sheriffs and bailiffs in England writs bidding them do their best
to induce all the Jews in the counties and towns under their charge to
assemble and hear the word of God preached by the friars.[214] To meet
the danger to religion that might arise from the blasphemous utterances
of Jews, he ordered that proclamation should be made throughout England
that any Jew found guilty (after an enquiry conducted by Christians)
of having spoken disrespectfully of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the
Catholic faith, should be liable to the loss of life or limbs.[215]
Thus far, and no farther, was Edward prepared to go with measures for
the suppression of Judaism as a religion. He believed that the Jews,
so long as they remain Jews, lived in ignorance and sin, and he did
what he could to help the friars in the effort to convert them. He
believed that some among them were likely to make blasphemous attacks
on Christianity, and he did what he could to keep them in check. But he
believed that it was possible for them to live in peace and quietness,
carrying on trades and handicrafts, among Christian neighbours in
Christian towns. And it was to enable them to do so that he adopted
the policy of 1275, and bade the Jews renounce usury, giving them at
the same time permission “to practise trade, to live by their labour,
and, for those purposes, freely to converse with Christians.” But,
as we have seen, there were imposed on the Jews who attempted to
avail themselves of this permission, legal disadvantages which wholly
unfitted them for industrial competition with non-Jews, and compelled
them to continue the practice of usury. That Edward recognised this
fact is shown by the issue of the revised Statute of Usurers some years
after 1275; but that measure was inconclusive and inconsistent with the
rest of his policy. Sooner or later the conclusion would have forced
itself on him that until the Jews were, by the acquisition of the right
to become burgesses and gildsmen, enabled to enter into industrial
competition on equal terms with Christians, all his efforts to make
them traders instead of usurers would be wasted. He would then have had
before him two alternatives. He might, on the one hand, have declined
to sacrifice his seignorial rights over the Jews, whom he had described
in the Statute of 1275 as “talliable to the king as his own serfs, and
not otherwise,” and in that case he would have had to recognise that
his whole Jewish policy was an impossible one. Or he might, on the
other hand, have revoked the provision in the statute which forbade the
Jews to be in “scots, lots, or talliage with the other inhabitants of
those cities or burgesses where they remained.” Such a measure would
have been a step in the only direction which could possibly lead to the
success of his policy. But it would not by itself have been enough to
secure success; for, when the legal difficulties of the Jews had been
removed, there would still have remained the social difficulties which
proceeded from the dislike in which they were held by the Church and
the people; and, unless these difficulties also could be removed, so
that the Jews might be in a position of social equality, as well as
legal equality, with Christians, and associate with them in friendly
intercourse, the king’s policy would be as far from success as ever.
Which alternative Edward would have decided to adopt is, of course,
a question we have no means of answering; but the decision was taken
out of his hands by the interference, for the first and last time in
English history, of the head of the Catholic Church in the relations
between the Jews and the king.
At the end of 1286, Honorius IV. addressed to the Archbishops of
Canterbury[216] and York[217] and their suffragans the following bull:--
“We have heard that in England the accursed and perfidious Jews have
done unspeakable things and horrible acts, to the shame of our Creator
and the detriment of the Catholic faith. They are said to have a
wicked and deceitful book, which they commonly call Thalmud, containing
manifold abominations, falsehoods, heresies, and abuses. This damnable
work they continually study, and with its nefarious contents their
base thoughts are always engaged. Moreover, they set their children
from their tender years to study its lethal teaching, and they do not
scruple to tell them that they ought to believe in it more than in the
Law of Moses, so that the said children may flee from the path of God
and go astray in the devious ways of the unbelievers. Moreover, they
not only attempt to entice the minds of the faithful to their pestilent
sect, but also, with many gifts, they seduce to apostasy those who,
led by wholesome counsel, have abjured the error of infidelity and
betaken themselves to the Christian faith; so that some, being led away
by the treachery of the Jews, live with them according to their rite
and law, even in the parishes in which they received new life from the
sacred font of baptism; and hence arise injury to our Saviour, scandal
to the faithful, and dishonour to the Christian faith. Some also who
have been baptised they send to other places, in order that there
they may live unknown and return to their disbelief. They invite and
urgently persuade Christians to attend their synagogues on the Sabbath
and on other of their solemn occasions, to hear and take part in their
services, and to show reverence to the parchment-scroll or book in
which their law is written, in consequence of which many Christians
Judaise with the Jews.
“Moreover, they have in their households Christians whom they compel to
busy themselves on Sundays and feast-days with servile tasks from which
they should refrain. And so they cast opprobrium on the majesty of God.
They have in their houses Christian women to bring up their children.
Christian men and women dwell among them; and so it often happens,
when occasion offers and the time is favourable to shameful actions,
that Christian men have unblessed intercourse with Jewish women and
Christian women with Jewish men.
“Yet Christians and Jews go on meeting in each others’ houses. They
spend their leisure in banqueting and feasting together, and hence the
opportunity for mischief becomes easy. On certain days they publicly
abuse Christians, or rather curse them, and do other wicked acts which
offend God and cause the loss of souls.
“And although some of you have been often asked to devise a fitting
remedy for these things, yet you have failed to comply. Whereat we are
forced to wonder the more, since the duty of your pastoral office binds
you to show yourselves more ready and determined than other men to
avenge the wrongs of our Saviour, and to oppose the nefarious attempts
of the foes of the Christian faith.
“An evil so dangerous must not be made light of, lest, being neglected,
it may grow great. You are bound to rise up with ready courage against
such audacity in order that it may be completely suppressed and
confounded and that the dignity and glory of the Catholic Faith may
increase. Therefore by this apostolic writing we give orders that, as
the duty of your office demands, you shall use inhibitions, spiritual
and temporal penalties, and other methods, which shall seem good to
you, and which in your preaching and at other fitting times you shall
set forth, to the end, that this disease may be checked by proper
remedies. So may you have your reward from the mercy of the Eternal
King. We shall extol in our prayers your wisdom and diligence. Let us
know fully by your letters what you do in this matter.”