Introduction |
Questions to Consider |
Source
The Talmud Condemned
(1244)
Pope Innocent IV
Introduction
Attacks on Jews accelerated in the western Christian world during the
High Middle Ages. Public humiliation, mob violence, and mass
expulsions made life increasingly uncertain and dangerous for Jewish
people living in medieval cities and towns. Intellectual persecution
of the Hebrew faith added to this intensification of anti-Semitism,
especially in France during the reign of Louis IX (r. 1226-1270). The
Talmud affair of the 1240s saw Christian theologians debating and
deciding what they considered "proper" Jewish religious expression,
casting the Talmud (commentaries on Jewish law) as a threat to
scripture. Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243-1254), a renowned canon lawyer,
condemns the Talmud in the following letter sent to King Louis in
1244. The French king (and future saint) would end the affair ten
years later by making possession and study of the Talmud illegal.
Questions to Consider
-
How does the pope's letter illustrate some popular attitudes about Jews endemic to western Christian society?
-
What is Pope Innocent's opinion of the proper relationship
between Jews and Christians?
Source
Innocent, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his cherished
son Louis, illustrious king of France, greeting and apostolic
benediction. The impious perfidy of the Jews--from whose hearts
because of the enormity of their crimes our Redeemer did not lift the
veil but still permits them to remain, as is fitting, in the
blindness which is characteristic of Israel--not regarding the fact
that Christian piety receives them only out of pity and patiently
endures dwelling together with them, commits those enormities which
stupefy hearers and horrify narrators. For these ingrates to the Lord
Jesus Christ, who patiently awaits their conversion out of the
richness of His long-suffering, showing no shame for their fault nor
respecting the honor of the Christian faith, and omitting or scorning
the Mosaic law and the prophets, follow certain traditions of their
seniors concerning which the Lord rebukes them in the Gospel, saying:
Why do you transgress the mandate of God and irritate Him by your
traditions, teaching human doctrines and mandates?
Upon this sort of traditions, which in Hebrew are called the
Talmud--and there is a great book among them exceeding the text of
the Bible in length, in which are manifest blasphemies against God
and Christ and the blessed Virgin, intricate fables, erroneous
abuses, and unheard-of stupidities--they nourish and teach their sons
and render them utterly alien from the doctrine of the law and the
prophets, fearing lest, if they knew the truth, which is in the law
and the prophets, and which testifies openly that the only begotten
son of God will come in the flesh, they would be converted to the
faith and humbly return to their Redeemer. And not content with these
things, they make Christian women nurses of their sons in contumely
of the Christian faith, with whom they commit many shameful things.
On which account the faithful should be afraid lest they incur divine
wrath while they unworthily allow them to perpetrate acts which bring
confusion upon our faith.
And although our cherished son, the chancellor of Paris, and the
doctors teaching at Paris in holy writ, by the mandate of pope
Gregory, our predecessor of happy memory, after reading and examining
the said abusive book and certain others with all their glosses,
publicly burned them in the presence of clergy and people to the
confusion of the perfidy of the Jews, as we have seen stated in their
letters, to whom you as catholic king and most Christian prince
rendered suitable aid and favor in this, for which we commend your
royal excellency with praises in the Lord and pursue with acts of
grace: because nevertheless the profane abuse of the Jews themselves
has not yet quieted nor has persecution yet given them understanding,
we earnestly ask, admonish, and beseech your highness in the Lord
Jesus Christ that against detestable and enormous excesses of this
sort committed in contumely of the Creator and in injury to the
Christian name, as you piously began, you laudably continue to
proceed with due severity. And that you order both the aforesaid
abusive books condemned by the same doctors and generally all the
books with their glosses which were examined and condemned by them to
be burned by fire wherever they can be found throughout your entire
kingdom, strictly forbidding that Jews henceforth have Christian
nurses or servants, that the sons of a free woman may not serve the
sons of a handmaid, but as servants condemned by the Lord, whose
death they wickedly plotted, they at least outwardly recognize
themselves as servants of those whom the death of Christ made free
and themselves slaves. So we may commend the zeal of your sincerity
in the Lord with due praises. Given at the Lateran, May 9, in the
first year of our pontificate.
Source: Lynn Thorndike, ed., University Records
and Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press,
1944), 49-50.
