The Papacy and the Jews: Catholic Reformation and Beyond

Author(s): Kenneth R. Stow

Source: Jewish History, Vol. 6, No. 1/2, The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume (1992), pp. 257-
279
Published by: Springer
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Jewish History . Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 1992

The Papacy and the Jews:

Catholic Reformation
and Beyond

Kenneth R. Stow

The Fifteenth Century:

The Call for Inner Reform and a New Jewry Policy
With the coming of the sixteenth century, many of the assumptions and values that
had shaped and sustained European society for more than a thousand years were
challenged and subsequently rejected. One of these assumptions was that the Jews
played an indispensible role inChristian society. Their social marginality and legal
singularity, in the context of unshakable religious non-conformity, furnished a
necessary example of the fate awaiting all social and doctrinal deviants. Jews
provided the requisite balance to Christian virtue on the architectonic scholastic
scale of values. In the explosive atmosphere of the sixteenth century, this traditional
posture proved to be quintessentially medieval and no longer viable. New ways of
perceiving and dealing with the Jews had to be devised.

The lead in reformulating approaches to the Jews was ultimately taken by the states
of western Europe. In the sixteenth century, the source of innovation was the
Catholic Church, which completely restructured its postures toward the Jews with
the intention of completely resolving the Jewish question. Paradoxically, and
contrary to the will of its formulators, the new Church policy foreshadowed the
programs to be initiated by the secular states and foreshadowed the emancipation of
the Jews of western Europe. The innovations inChurch policy of the later sixteenth
century mark the beginning of the transition from themedieval to the early modern,
in Jewish-Christian relations.

The specific reasons for these innovations are complex. They are rooted in evolving
conceptions of the Jews entertained at all levels of Christian society. Within the
body of the Church itself, the most direct stimulus for a clean break with the past
258 Kenneth R. Stow

was provided by the fifteenth-century Franciscans. At this time - and not before, as
has been recently proposed - these preachers concluded that the moment had
arrived for Christian society to rid itself of the Jews. In their estimation, the Jews
had become too dangerous and potentially corrupting. Other churchmen had been
moving toward this conclusion since the ninth century, if not earlier, but none had
directly arrived at it. They were always deterred by the fundamental principle,
elaborated in 1063 by Pope Alexander II, that since (and, implicitly, as long as)
Jews were ready to behave submissively, they must enjoy legal protection and the
right freely to practice Judaism.1 This principle was repeated explicitly by Humbert
of Romans the former General of the Dominican Order in the platform he composed
at the request of Pope Gregory X for the Second Council of Lyons held in 1274.2
Franciscans such as Bernardino da Feltre3 and Bernardino da Busti4 also referred to
it when, respectively, they argued that Jewish lending activities and the so-called
blasphemies of the Talmud made the Jews into the superiors of Christians and
nullified the Christian obligation to approach the Jews with love and Christian
charity. The Franciscans were motivated by a view first expressed by Paul in
Galatians and expanded later by such as John Chrysostom. Contacts with Jews
could do the work of that single piece of leaven sufficient to sour the entire lump of
dough.5 The fear of contact with Jews was so great that even the hope for
conversion did not deter the Franciscans. As revealed in some of their less
sophisticated activities, the real Franciscan goal was not to end so-called Jewish
crimes, but to rid society of the Jews themselves. Bernardino da Feltre's
sermons, for contributed to the atmosphere
rabble-rousing example, surrounding
the Trent Blood Libel of 1475; a wave of sermonic terror inmid-fifteenth-century
Umbr?a resulted, perhaps unexpectedly, in an enormous number of conversions.6
The Franciscans supported their position with
legal and canonical arguments, but
these were intended primarily to parry counter-claims made by defenders of
traditional policies. Arguing in 1422 that the preachers' actions were
counter-productive to the true ends of the Church, Martin V, for example, warned
the Franciscans that they should desist from their inflammatory rhetoric; it was
provoking threatening behavior and preventing the conversion of Jews who might
otherwise be convinced by "sweet preaching." A similar argument was made by
Julius II as late as 1510.7

These opposing stances of the popes and the friars placed the fifteenth-century
Church in an awkward position. On the one hand, the Church could not easily
reject its traditional posture of protection coupled with restriction. On the other,
sophisticated and novel calls had arisen to expel the Jews. Based on both the
canons and the texts of
the Roman law, these calls could not be cavalierly
dismissed. Lex nullus, especially, argued that Jews who accepted Christian
dominion must be protected; but it also implied that Jews who were rebellious
would be severely punished. A number of fifteenth-century legists argued that the
scope of these punishments included expulsion.8
 The Papacy and the Jews 259

The possibility of expulsion was not the only novelty in fifteenth-century

ecclesiastical policy. Between 1412 and 1415, by means of missionary sermons,
the enforcement of severe laws, and the trauma of the Disputation at Tortosa,
Benedict XIII confronted head on the issue that the papacy had long avoided,9
namely, whether to pursue through an articulated and sustained policy the
conversion of the Jews. One will search in vain for any such formal papal mission
to the Jews before this time; most such efforts were short-lived, reflex reactions to
outside, usually mendicant stimuli.10 This policy was about to change. Yet, in the
fifteenth century atmosphere of conflicting drives, change came slowly. Events at
the Councils of Constance and Basel prove the point. Despite the pressures brought
to bear by Spanish ecclesiastics and a momentary flirtation with the idea of
missions, the Councils rejected all novelty and called only for the rigid application
'
of the normative regulatory canons.1

Taking their cue from this conciliar impetus, the fifteenth-century popes also
structured their Jewry policy along traditional canonical lines. Martin V set the tone
when he decreed that Jews must be content with those privileges fixed by ius
commune. Their status was to be regulated by strict legal rigor. Neither extra
privilege nor extra restriction were to be allowed.12 This policy was clearly one of
temporizing that could not last. The many and varied forces calling for a
reformulation of policy toward the Jews forced matters to a head early in the
sixteenth century.

Early Sixteenth-Century Missions and Eschatology

The sixteenth-century Church went through a process of restructuring and
conscious self-redefinition. In distinction from the medieval Church, which
perceived itself as being coterminous with medieval society, the Church that
emerged at the end of the sixteenth century was a streamlined, and less pretentious
body. This diminished size and presence was advantageous. In its broader
medieval existence, the Church had been forced to live with a measure of
diversity.13 Now, in its new limited self, it could afford to insist on rigid
conformity. It could try to make the previously elusive "Idea of Reform" - the
achievement of a "pure and unified Church" headed by an equally "pure clergy,"
- into a
existing within a thoroughly Catholic society working reality. Such a
Church had been a clerical ambition since the days of St. Benedict and St.
Augustine, but the comprehensive scope of the medieval Church prevented its
fulfillment.14

By the second decade of the sixteenth century, the process of reform was well
under way. Given its nature, the place of the Jews in Catholic society had to be
260 KennethR. Stow

reconsidered. For had not the Jews always been the arch-symbol of impurity and
division in the Catholic world?15

The r??valuation of traditional Jewry policies commenced in 1513 at the Fifth

Lateran Council. To provide a blueprint for reform, two Camaldulese monks, Peter
Quirini and Paul Justiniani, addressed a tract to Pope Leo X.16 Most of the tract
discusses missions. The recent New World discoveries had spurred on intensive
missionary activities. Souls whose existence was hitherto unknown could now be
saved.17 Missions also perennially symbolized a reforming Church. Enhancing
these motivations were a number of indirect factors. For one thing, missionary
success refuted Lutheran claims about a moribund and erring Church, as well as
highlighting the essential absence of any Protestant mission to the Jews.18 Missions
also promoted what contemporaries perceived as the need to turn inward and unify
the faith in order to consolidate social foundations. No less consequential was the
passion for discipline and uniformity that had become the motto of the monks and
friars, devotees of the Roman Inquisition, who were coming to dominate the Italian
episcopal hierarchy, and would, indeed, soon dominate the papacy itself.19 The
Theatine, Paul IV, the Dominican, Pius V, and the Franciscan, Sixtus V, were all
inquisitors. In addition, missionary activity was catalyzed by the ultimate extension
of the common sixteenth-century perception that society was coming unstuck,
a potent ferment.
namely, eschatological

In Catholic circles, the sense of an impending climax to world events was

ubiquitous. Cardinal Giles of Viterbo, for example, delivered an uninhibitedly
chiliastic oration to open the Fifth Lateran Council. The influential jurist,
Marquardus de Susannis, advised taking appropriate measures, since "The end of
the world is upon us." Eschatological fervor animated the papacy itself. In 1549,
Cardinal Carafa, soon to become Paul IV, told his sister that the "End of Days" was
fast approaching and added that he himself had been divineLy chosen to hasten its
arrival through his activities as Chief Inquisitor.20 These eschatological impulses
automatically raised the question of the Jews' conversion. For one thing, itwas a
central feature of all Christian eschatology, as Paul had described it in Romans
11:15-26. The relative absence of missions to the Jews during the Middle Ages
may certainly be linked to the rarity of eschatological movements, especially in
establishment circles. The new eschatological climate of the sixteenth century
forced past attitudes to be reconsidered. The missionary reform tract of Quirini and
Justiniani is a case in point. Never before had the mission to the Jews been
discussed so candidly, purposefully, and at length. For the first time, a detailed and
optimistic missionary strategy was elaborated. Addressing themselves to Leo X,
Quirini ^nd Justiniani proposed:

Perhaps you will be able to make progress with the Jews if they are led to the
faith by blandishments of the spirit and by all offices of humanity. However, if
so led, they do not wish to convert, on account of their stiff-necked perfidy,
they should be handled with bitter and sharp measures; not because you wish to
 The Papacy and the Jews 261

harm them, for no one should be forced to the faith; but so that seeing the loving
treatment of those who have wished to convert and the harsh treatment of others
never - as
who have had the repose to do so, they will be more easily incited if
-
by two spurs to seize the way of truth and life.21

Among the blandishments Quirini and Justiniani suggested were feeding and
clothing the poor and permitting the wealthy to retain their justly acquired property.
To support the poor, they add, is not the equivalent of buying their conversion. "To
lead them (to convert) with these subsidies of life is not illicit." Converts should
also be allowed to attain both secular and ecclesiastical benefices. As for those who
do not respond to the blandishments, they may be harshly treated,

Not because at any time for Christians

it is equitable to pursue Jews with odium,
but so that with a certain
great measure of paternal those whom we are
piety,
not able to soften with blandishments we can force, in a manner of speaking,
with threats and pious lashes to return to the heart.

Specifically, these "lashes" - which were already proposed, but rejected in the
thirteenth century by Alexander of Hales, although they were apparently adopted
- should include a
successfully by St. Louis IX prohibition against usury, a ban
against engaging in commerce or in the arts, the establishment of higher tolls for
Jews than for Christians, restrictions on the length of time Jews may reside in one
locality, a limit on the number of synagogues thatmay be erected, qualifications of
the privilege to observe Jewish ritual, a prohibition against Jews dwelling with
Christians or mingling socially with them, and the requirement that Jews wear a
distinguishing badge, so that Christians may both recognize and avoid them. The
pope should also designate individuals

To instruct the [Jews] assiduously in theword of life; so that not from the reason
of philosophers, nor from the authority of our doctors, but from their own

Scriptures the Jews be convinced, and so that, their perfidy expelled, they be
shown the light of truth and the doctrine of the sacred Gospel and of the
Apostles.

Prayers for the Jews' conversion were also to be offered. If, however, the pope
has tried everything and the Jews remain obdurate, then "last of all will be that you
order them, as dead sheep, to be completely separated from the flocks of
Christians, so that you do not permit them to remain in any place of Christian
sovereignty, or even to journey therein." Quirini and Justiniani's program thus
single-mindedly envisioned a society without Jews, preferably achieved by way of
their mass conversion.

The emphasis, moreover, was indeed on conversion, on the Jews' absorption into
society, as Catholics, rather than on their exclusion. Irrespective of the growing
influence on Jewry policies of the segregationist and anxiety-laden doctrines of
Galatians - especially as they were interpreted and applied by the friars, the
and the inquisitor-popes, -
inquisitors, eventually commencing with Paul IV
262 Kenneth R. Stow

Quirini and Justiniani did not propose a repetition of the fifteenth century
Franciscan reign of terror. They said little, if anything, about Jewish "excesses;"
they do not seem even to have been concerned about potentially real problems, such
as the possibly corrupting and seductive effects of Jewish observances being
carried on before the eyes of wavering New Christians,22 or the reading by the
growing number of Christian Hebraists of those talmudic texts that for centuries the
Church had condemned for being blasphemous.23 Rather, Quirini and Justiniani's
concerns were primarily linked to the question of uniform belief. Their hopes for
the Jews' conversion were thus expressed as one component in a grand reforming
scheme whose goal was to achieve a homogeneous Catholic society. And
eventually, their point of view prevailed. Even during the reigns of the
inquisitor-popes, as we will see, itwas their social vision more than any other that
determined Catholic policy toward the Jews.

Yet, Quirini and Justiniani's methods were not so quickly adopted. With the
exception of one furtive and ambivalent permit for obligatory sermons issued by
Leo X (of all popes!), the politically dominant forces in the Church at the moment
their tract was written were committed to converting Jews through an entirely
different means, or at least so they said. Toward the end of the fifteenth century,
the popes issued letters calling for Jews to be treated kindly. Kindness might
promote their conversion.24 By the 1520s, this assertion had become a fixture,
appearing in over five hundred papal letters. Many of these letters also asserted that
Jews were tolerated for the specific end of converting them. No longer a
component of an idealized future, conversion had been made into the main
ideological justification for toleration itself. Never before had the papacy so
consistently devoted itself to pursuing the Jews' conversion.25 However, it was
questionable whether kindness was an appropriate instrument for attaining this
goal. As critics charged later in the sixteenth century, kindness favored the Jews
and convinced few to convert. It seems as though the papal commitment to the new
policy was a political one, made to parry and defuse pressures like those exerted by
Quirini and Justiniani. The popes had verbally committed themselves to
conversion, but that was their limit.

This was not so. The "method of kindness" was first proposed by Sts. Augustine
and Gregory the Great, the acknowledged founders of medieval Christian thought
and the medieval papacy. Quirini and Justiniani themselves had proposed
"kindness," and the atmosphere of the early sixteenth century was also both
favorable and propitious to its use. It was favorable, because humanists like Pico
della Mir?ndola believed that through the exploitation of the kabbalah and a more
rational approach to individual Jews, large numbers could be converted; these
humanists influenced members of the Church hierarchy. "Kindness" was
propitious, because the events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had left the
Jews vulnerable and despairing. Thousands of Jews, Spanish ones in particular,
had sought escape through conversion, and often they had done so willingly.26
 The Papacy and the Jews 263

These voluntary conversions in part prompted the founding of the Roman Domus
catechumenorum fifteen years before the initiation of the more drastic and coercive
measures of the later sixteenth century. Converts also composed testimonies to their
beliefs, such as the polemical letter of Ludovico Carrito, which beckons his sons to
join him in Christianity.27 Defendants at the trials held by the Venetian Inquisition
between 1548 and 1560 also strongly affirmed their beliefs (and, for once, they do
not appear to have been dissimulating). These sincere professions of belief
convinced many that the time was opportune to apply the conversionary methods
prescribed by ancient tradition.
But the goal was the Jews' mass - or at least their large scale - conversion. In the
first decades of the sixteenth century, that goal was not realized. Consequently, the
more radical methods, the "pious lashes," also proposed by Quirini and Justiniani,
began to appear more inviting. The intensive application of these radical methods
began on July 17, 1555. Only weeks after his accession to the Apostolic See, Paul
IV (G.P. Carafa) issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum. He anticipated the bull two
years earlier, while he was Chief Inquisitor. Taking advantage of a dispute between
Venetian printers, Carafa ordered the Papal Inquisition to burn the allegedly
blasphemous Talmud. No doubt Carafa, like his predecessors, as well as all those
who came after him, was particularly concerned that anyone - Jew or Christian -
read these texts. Yet, also like so many others, Carafa was
purportedly dangerous
convinced that burning the Talmud would punitively awaken the Jews to the
Talmud's "lies" and Christianity's "truth."28 Cum nimis absurdum was intended to
have the same "salutary" punitive effect. The introduction to the bull thus demanded
that the canons restricting Jewish freedom be uncompromisingly enforced, for
these canons had been established ad hoc ut, for the very purpose, of convincing
the Jews to convert. Discipline was to promote conversion. Accordingly, Paul IV
decreed the establishment of a ghetto at Rome, and the most rigorous enforcement
of the canons restricting Jewish behavior.29 A year later, at the Adriatic seaport of
Ancona, Paul IV burned at the stake twenty-four Portuguese Jewish (butmanifestly
ex-New Christian) merchants.30

The essentially repressive character of Cum nimis absurdum has convinced many
that the bull initiated but another "draconian phase" in the history of
Jewish-Christian relations. "Draconian" it was, although it took even the Jews of
Rome more than thirty years to fully appreciate the extent of its severity. But to
leave it at only that, and to view Paul IV s decrees as but an exquisite example of
the Counter-Reformation papacy in action would be insufficient. Nor should we
too quickly assume that, following the teachings of fifteenth-century Franciscans,
Paul IV was taking the advice of Paul in Galatians 4:30 that "the son of the
handmaiden should be sent away," lest he corrupt the faithful. The wider purpose
behind Paul IV's new severity is best revealed by the De Iudaeis et aliis infidelibus
of Marquardus de Susannis, published at Venice in 1558. Ostensibly a
comprehensive discussion of Jewry law and a manual for judges, the De Iudaeis
 264 Kenneth R. Stow

was written to provide an extended exegesis on the legal aspects of Paul IV s

program. In a lengthy discourse on the true ends of mankind, the conversion of the
and the - which
Jews, rapidly approaching eschaton occupies one-third of the
work's three hundred pages - de Susannis argued that stringently applied law
would persuade the Jews of Christian truth. By seeing their complete desolation,
the Jews would realize that the prophecies concerning the transfer of rule and
power to Christ had been fulfilled.
De Susannis' thinking, like that of Paul IV, openly rested on chiliastic hopes and
logic. By stressing the law's persuasive powers, Paul IV and de Susannis indicated
that to achieve their goal they were relying on more than divine intervention. They
had placed their trust in something the lawyers called "predisposing force,"
meaning the resort to vigorous pressures just short of outright coercion. Such
pressures were deemed proper and legal. Perhaps the first ecclesiastic to urge using
"predisposing force" was the early fifteenth-century convert, Abner of Burgos.
Abner wrote that "when the foolishness of the rabbis, that is, the Talmud, has been
removed from before their eyes, and when, through want, they have been brought
to understanding, the Jews will surely convert." Abner's ideas convinced his
contemporaries, the evangelical Vincent Ferrer and the anti-Pope, Benedict XIII, to
fashion a policy nearly identical to that eventually to be instituted by Paul IV.31 But
with the deaths of these two men, Abner's ideas went underground. They
resurfaced one hundred years later in the De sola lectione legis, of the Jesuit,
Francisco de Torres.32 The Talmud, wrote de Torres, must be condemned by the
Inquisition. It blasphemes Christ and Christianity, and it also "holds the Jews back
from embracing the Faith." If the inquisitors wish "to attend to saving the [Jews']
remnant, therefore, they must remove that [the Talmud] which brings the Jews to
grief." They must also take the initiative in "forcing the Jews to hear theWord of
God, as they have been empowered to do." But above all, the inquisitors must
undermine the Jews' standard of living. They must prevent the Jews from
Living where they wish, from going without a distinguishing sign, from
becoming rich, from our physicians, and, by the grace of usuries, from
being
acquiring power in the association and society of Christians: That is, from being
abundant, extended, and strengthened, so that they vehemently resist the Holy

Spirit. Seeing that things go well with them, the Jews believe they enjoy God's
favor. Permit them, rather, to be destitute and to be consumed by hunger, rather
than to exact usuries and to be physicians. For you [the inquisitors] surely know
that when the [Jews] begin to be in want or when, choked with hunger, they
desire to attack even like revert to God.
husks, then, the prodigal son, they will
[As Isaiah has said:] "Vexation will give understanding to the sense of
hearing..."33

De Torres was not alone. Marquardus de Susannis, too, wrote that the stringent
application of law, will "bring (the Jews) to their senses." In fact, the writings of
de Torres and de Susannis reflect a consensus. Their will to bring about a massive
conversion of the Jews by repressive means represented the conventional wisdom
 The Papacy and the Jews 265

in sixteenth-century Catholic circles on how to cope with the Jews in a

revolutionary society. That wisdom, moreover, held currency for a long time. In
about 1670, a lawyer at the Apostolic Camera, Bernardinus Jacobelli, argued that
the tribulationum flagella created by reducing the interest rates Jewish lenders were
allowed to charge would "incite the Jews to convert."34

The Jews themselves gradually came to understand their predicament. The initial
shock of Paul IV s revolutionary policy left them dazed and unsure. But one Jew,
at least, knew exactly what was happening. Responding directly to de Susannis and
citing the De Iudaeis, the physician and linguist David de Pomis insisted that if
Jews were entitled to justice, as de Susannis had written, they should also be
entitled to legal equality, as well as to religious liberty. They should not be
subjected to "predisposing [conversionary] force."35 But de Pomis was more than
two hundred years ahead of his time. In the age of religious uniformity, his call for
pluralism and tolerance fell on deaf ears.

The New Equilibrium and Its Fortunes

The appearance of the principle of "predisposing force" marks the end of an epoch.
For fifteen hundred years the Church had taught that force should not be a factor in
Jewish conversion. The Church legitimized forced conversions after the fact, since
allowing converts to revert to Judaism would have been condoning apostasy and
relapse. Before the fact, force was illegitimate. This attitude was not only a
theoretical one. For example, on the rare occasions when popes consented to
conversionary sermons, they stopped short of compelling attendance.36 Gregory
XIII's decision of 1584, tomake attendance at such sermons obligatory, radically
altered past practice. The traditional doctrine of the Jews "Necessary (Social)
Presence" had been replaced with a new one that most aptly may be called "The
Imperative of Social and Religious Unity." The first to apply that doctrine
unexceptionally was Paul IV.
Popes after Paul IV remained faithful to his aims. To be sure, one might question
just what these aims really were. Did even a belief in themillennium's imminence
mean that a pope truly wanted mass conversion, or did he (or they) go through the
motions, outwardly calling for conversion, but inwardly being anxious lest its
achievement fail to herald theMessiah's return or themillennium's realization?37
This is an imponderable. More concretely, the fact is that Pius IV (1559-1565)
mitigated the severity of Paul IV s rulings, loosening restrictions concerning the
possession of real property and the scope of Jewish business activities. Sixtus V
has been accused of doing the same, although, in fact, his policy was a more subtle
one. Sixtus sought to take advantage of Jewish economic activity while
the Roman - a fact Jews had
simultaneously reaffirming ghetto's permanence
 266 Kenneth R. Stow

refused to recognize until that time - by expanding it, rather man by allowing a few
select Jews to live outside its walls. One who persists in viewing Sixtus V as a
"mild" pope, must contend with the judgment of Clement VIII, who in 1593
correctly wrote that Sixtus V, as well as Pius IV, were returning to the early
sixteenth-century policy of "conversion through kindness."38 To fully complicate
matters, the fact is that irrespective of their true intentions, papal programs were
often counter-productive. Measures which popes often justified as being consistent
with a policy of religious unity actually eroded it.The expulsions of 1569 and 1593
illustrate this point well. In 1569, Pius V expelled the Jews from all the localities of
the Papal State except Rome and Ancona. Sixtus V temporarily cancelled this
decree in 1585, but in 1593, Clement VIII irreversibly renewed it, repeating
verbatim the expulsion decree of Pius V. These two popes justified their action by
accusing the Jews, as had the fifteenth-century Franciscans, of unpardonable
crimes, for which the only possible remedy was expulsion. Yet, the popes also
insisted that expulsion would promote conversion.39

What explains this strange linkage of expulsion and conversion is the unusual term,
"dead sheep," and, in particular, its use by Quirini and Justiniani to refer to those
Jews who could not be converted. Like "dead sheep," they were to be expelled
from Christian lands. Following the teachings of Joachim da Fiore, Quirini and
Justiniani must have viewed unconvertible Jews as potential members of the army
of Antichrist, poised to challenge Christendom at Armageddon. They had best be
expelled before they caused irreparable damage.40 The term "dead sheep" itself
originated in the crucial eschatological verse John 10:16. Cited frequently by
sixteenth-century reformers (and in its plain eschatological sense), the verse is
transparent. "Other sheep I have," it says, "who are not of this fold; them also I
must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock and one
pastor." These other sheep included, of course, the Jews, whose ultimate
conversion and inclusion in the eschatological flock of Christ would grant them
"eternal life." By contrast, those Jews who rejected Christ and so committed
themselves to "eternal death," were "dead Moreover, all of this was
sheep."
prophetically ordained. By expelling the recalcitrants, the "dead sheep," the goal of
converting the remaining Jews would be advanced. The flock of Christ would be
moved ever closer to its ultimate fulfillment.

Such thinking (or casuistry) facilitated maintaining ideological integrity. It also

provided an escape clause for confronting the fact that the Jews were not about to
convert en masse. There had been a significant increase in the number of converts.
The Domus catechumenorum in Rome had been enlarged; and additional Domus
were opened in other cities as the papal conversionary program spread throughout
the Italian peninsula. In 1582, Gregory XIII claimed that he was forced to reduce
taxes because most of the wealthy Jews of Rome had converted. Jewish records,
too, indicate an unprecedented movement to Christianity.41 Still, there was no rush
to the baptismal font. The Jews did not imitate the Indians of South and Central
 The Papacy and the Jews 267

America.42 By the end of the sixteenth century it was clear that some policy
was needed.
adjustment

One was the use of (canonically

alternative illegal) direct force. But that was
unthinkable, just as was a return to earlier policies. The programs pursued since
1555 had been too radical, the break with the past too firm, and the ideological shift
- - was
too A compromise in fact, a rationalization in order. That is what
thorough.
the expulsion edict, openly influenced by the "Dead Sheep" theology of Quirini and
- even from itself - behind the rhetoric of
Justiniani, and hiding "expulsion as a
conversionary device" clearly spelled out. This compromise-rationalization signals
the achievement of a new equilibrium. From now on the Church was going to
tolerate only that small number of Jews it could hope possibly to convert.

This compromise was not an elegant one. From the beginning, it created
contradiction, confusion, and even paradox. For example, on July 22, 1593, only
five months after his decree of expulsion,43 Clement VIII issued a breve stating that
Jews travelling for purely commercial or financial reasons, would be permitted to
move freely throughout the Papal State. They might lodge wherever they wished,
including inChristian inns, and wear the biretta negra (the black hat customarily
worn by Christians). But Jews were not permitted permanently to settle outside of
Rome or Ancona. In subsequent years, this letter was reissued to scores of Jewish
merchants and bankers, enabling them to open (or reopen) their places of business
throughout the Papal State, and, on rare occasions, actually to reestablish old
settlements.44

Clement VIII's motives in issuing these letters were economic, one might even say
mercantilistic, as were those of his predecessor, Sixtus V. However, Sixtus had
been forthright. Despite a certain commitment to pursuing the Jews' conversion,
Sixtus openly revoked Pius Vs 1569 edict of expulsion on the grounds that Jewish
commercial activity was indispensible to the state. In particular, Jews were still the
best source to provide the Christian poor - whose welfare was one of Sixtus's
- with small scale credit. Sixtus also understood
special concerns well, as in fact all
his economic programs attest, that the Papal State, which had become a true
political entity during the sixteenth century,45 required a firm economic base. By
contrast, Clement VIII's policies were self-contradictory. Unlike Sixtus V, Clement
refused to admit, even to himself, that he was returning to a modified version of the
early sixteenth-century policy of "conversion through kindness." In fact, Clement's
expulsion decree of 1593 reprimanded Sixtus for doing precisely that. Clement
believed that he could pursue a doctrine of religious unity while simultaneously
encouraging Jewish commercial success. By decreeing expulsion and then by
following the decree with ad hominem and theoretically temporary dispensations,
Clement deluded himself into thinking that he was not abandoning the doctrine of
"predisposing force." According to Paolo Prodi, programs such as this one, with
its obvious contradictions between temporal and spiritual goals, were unavoidable
268 KennethR. Stow

in a body whose head was both the spiritual leader of a universal church and the
temporal leader of a secular state.46

A second area of contradiction involved the law. The popes accepted the argument
of Marquardus de Susannis that conversionary results required combining the
strictest application of repressive measures with the meticulous observance of
canonically prescribed Jewish rights. The absence of arbitrary treatment, de
Susannis had claimed, would make the Jews see that canonically legislated
repression fulfilled the prophecies foretelling the desolation of those who rejected
Christ; they would then hasten to convert. The concept of punctiliously observing
the Jews' legal rights was also compatible with Church tradition. However, when
translated into reality, such theorizing led to ambivalence and paradox. By their
commitment to observing the rights of the Jewish "remnant" in Rome, the popes
-
obligated themselves to protect the rights and, thus, indirectly, to support the
continued existence - of the very group that they were seeking to eliminate.
The papal role in administering Jewish justice exacerbated the problem. The popes
exercised primary jurisdiction over the Jews not only in canonical matters, but in
ones as well. On numerous occasions, this arrangement favored the Jews.
temporal
For example, as long as the popes continued to license Jewish loan banks, they had
to safeguard the bankers' privileges.47 Toward this end, jurisdiction over banking
affairs was placed in the hands of the chief papal financial officer, the Cardinal
Camerarius. Debtors involved in litigations with Jews tried to circumvent the
Camerarius by appealing before alternate jurisdictions. The Camerarius responded
by periodically issuing mandates of "Inhibition," prohibiting anyone from
interfering in Jewish banking activities, including the Papal Vicar in Rome (who
otherwise did possess jurisdiction over Jewish affairs).48 As the records of the
Camerarius' court show, he also ensured that contracts for debts owed to Jews
were regularly enforced. On one occasion even a Duke was jailed and his property
distrained.49 The result was a paradox. Consistent enforcement of their contracts
gave the Jews legal mastery over their Christian debtors. This was precisely the
kind of situation that the medieval canons, the bull, Cum nimis absurdum, and all
of the sixteenth-century conversionary tracts bitterly decried.
In one matter connected with lending, the directives of Cum nimis were carried out
to the letter. No document addressed Jewish creditors by an honorific title, not even
the simple Messer (sir). Christian debtors invariably benefited from an appropriate
title. In name, at least, Jews were never conceded mastery over Christians.50 But
thematter of titles is of questionable significance. In decisive areas, such as that of
legal procedure, the Jews did not suffer from second-class rights. When the debtor
was a Jew, the legal forms and procedures followed were the same as those used
for Christians. Similarly, the permits exempting both Christian and Jewish
merchants from road tolls and customs duties are identically worded.51 Jews also
had free access to the courts, including when they sought extensions of their
privileges. And here, the results could be truly unexpected
 The Papacy and the Jews 269

In 1597, the papacy incorporated the Duchy of Ferrara into its State. Rather than
expel the Jews of the Duchy, it decided to establish a ghetto. This decision meant
the Jews would have to liquidate their real property, as Cum nimis prescribed, but
these liquidations proceeded at a snail's pace. Ten years later, Jews were still
applying for extensions of the time limit fixed for disposing of their property,52 and
these extensions were granted as a matter of routine. Nonetheless, all the rescripts
granting the extensions bore prominently the proviso that Jews were tolerated by
the Church so that (ad hoc ut) they convert. The commitment to a conversionary
- at least in
policy had not been forgotten theory.
In no area were the inner contradictions of papal policy more visible than in that of
taxation. Early in the sixteenth century, the popes levied an annual 5 percent tax,
known as the Vig?sima, on Jewish incomes. When the Vig?sima a success,
proved
a similar direct tax was levied on the clergy and laity of the Papal State. The clergy
paid five times the rate paid by the Jews. Direct taxes of this kind were
revolutionary in the Papal State. To urge the Jews to remit the Vig?sima without a
struggle, they were offered extensive privileges. These privileges were also
supposed to promote conversions. By witnessing the clemency extended them by
the Church, itwas said, the Jews would soon be moved to convert.

However, in about 1550, the Vig?sima rate was ominously increased and large
fines appended to the tax on the grounds that Jewish bankers had been lending at
excessively high rates of interest. These fines reflect the trend toward conversion
through "predisposing force." Immediately prior to their expulsion in 1569, the
Jews of Bologna were fined 40,000 sc. for alleged irregularities involving lending
and taxation. This fine was four times greater than the largest Vig?sima the Jews of
the entire Papal State had ever paid. Pius V, who levied the fine, was following the
advice of Francisco de Torres that the Jews would convert when they had been
reduced to "sucking at husks."53 He was also mindful of the principle of Gregory
the Great, canonized in the law rusticus, that the ignorant and the boorish should be
induced to baptism by burdening them with great financial weights. Late medieval
canonists frequently applied this principle to the question of Jewish taxation.54
Onerous taxes and fines did stimulate numerous conversions.55 They also
threatened to destroy the Jewish communities. For the communities, who paid
taxes as a body to the Apostolic Camera, could not withstand the combination of
fines, a decreasing number of taxpayers (as a result of conversion and flight), and
the imposition of new direct levies and special payments. Their resources were
soon eroded, and the communities themselves faced bankruptcy. This situation
should have delighted the conversionary forces. Conversionist policy dictated that
the Jewish communities of the Papal State be dismembered; they embodied that
pernicious "Jewish authority" which obscured the Jews' Perpetual Servitude, bred
ill-will against Christianity, and hindered missionary efforts.56 Nevertheless, the
threat of communal bankruptcies, and that of the Roman Jewish Community in
particular, unnerved officials at the Apostolic Camera. A Roman bankruptcy would
270 Kenneth R. Stow

have forced the papacy to support a large number of indigents. Therefore, to

prevent a bankruptcy, the Apostolic Camera decided to fund the Jewish debt. The
Jews were to participate in luoghi di monti, the functional equivalent of modern
government bonds. The Jews were considered the vendors of these luoghi,
responsible for their eventual repurchase, as well as for paying the constantly
accruing interest, whose amount soon surpassed that owed in taxes. Only the
issuance of new luoghi di monti kept the impoverished community solvent. Itmay
be said that against its own interests the papacy was actually supporting the
organized Jewish community.

Support did not mean allowing the community to govern its own affairs at will. The
pope's Roman Vicar undercut the strength of Jewish courts of arbitration by
systematically interfering in their operations. The Vicar also insisted that numerous
cases involving Jewish law be adjudicated in his tribunal. On one occasion in the
eighteenth century, he even summoned expert Jewish witnesses to testify if
adultery had been committed according to Jewish law. Still, observing canonical
tradition, the Vicar did not entirely quash Jewish courts. The case of the Scola
-
Catalana-Aragonese versus the Scola Castigliana-Francese with each side
-
charging the other with violating its building space dragged on for years, with
ever new rules and procedures proposed, complaints lodged, and most important,
- -
new arbitrators all Jews, of course During the period of the
impaneled.57
ghetto, Jews seem to have turned to their own arbitrators at every opportunity.
The Roman Jewish Community was also allowed to establish voluntary aid
societies. These societies supervised the burial of the dead, provided dowries for
indigent brides, cared for the poor, and even established funds for freeing Jews
imprisoned for debt.58 Alongside these societies, the Cinque Scole, the five
synagogues housed in a single structure, focused social and devotional energies.
Originally, these scole were organized according tomembers' geographic and ethnic
origins. But "outmarriage" and social mobility brought Jews freely to change their
allegiances from one scola to another. This fluidity engendered a sense of
communal cohesion. In turn, this sense of cohesion was paradoxically reinforced
by a weak rabbinate that quietly submitted to the control of the Fattori, the elected
communal officials.59 The frictions between rabbis and the community that
disrupted Jewish life elsewhere were thus avoided.
This is not to say that the Jews of the Roman Ghetto were "secularized." They saw
themselves rather as constituting a "holy community," as had all medieval Jewish
aggregates. Accordingly, holy and profane were to be constantly integrated. The
sense of this integrative need may even have been heightened at Rome by the
erection of the ghetto walls. These walls created a perimeter, a boundary, within
which all actions had to be carried out according to the precepts of the halakhah. For
some, this perimeter may have also been reminiscent of the ritual boundary wall
constructed by the biblical Nehemiah, which defined the limits of the Holy City,
Jerusalem. In this spirit, the members of the Scola Nova declared in the course of a
 The Papacy and the Jews 271

litigation that: "It never even crossed our minds to bring harm to the [Scola
Siciliana]; we are the "Fearers of the Lord," (the Hebrew name of the Scola Nova).
We are all the sons of one man; and the entire community is holy; God's presence
dwells within it; and all our intentions are for the sake of Heaven."60 At least in
theory, the Jews of Rome were fortified and united by their commitment to
community and to that community's sense of a common ideal. Were they not, as
they themselves said, living in // nostro ghet, a pun meaning not only "our ghetto,"
but also "our divorce," a divorce, that is, from society at large into a uniquely
Jewish zone of residence and activity?
An important effect of this strong communal sense was the creation of a
framework, or an "arena," as it has been called, that individual
encouraged

expression.61 Literally thousands of notarial records, housed in the Archivio Storico

Capitolino, the Roman civic archive, reveal the daily and personal lives of Roman
Jews. Despite the constant pressures of the ghetto, their lives were remarkably
vibrant ones. Women, in particular, were not restrained. Most women could read,
and many headed complex businesses. Others were guardians and executors. There
was a women's prayer forum. No woman was forced to marry against her will.

One twenty-year-old
even sued to annul an
arranged betrothal, and won. Spouses
were assumed to love each other, or at least "to get along well with each other."
Children were loved and wanted. One middle-aged couple formally adopted an
infant girl!

Individuality was further reinforced by a remarkably loose family structure.

Extended families did not exist, nor did any absolute sense of family obligation.
One brother contributing to the dowry of his orphaned sister had written into the
notarial act ratifying the sum he was giving that he did so willingly, not out of
necessity. Indeed, one father-in-law went to a notary to draw up the conditions of
payment for the "hospitality" he was going to extend to his son-in-law, his
daughter, and their children during the forthcoming Passover festival. Should the
children misbehave, he stipulated, out they were all to go.62 Individuals, within a
family, in other words, could take nothing for granted. If they desired emotional
and other forms of support, they had to achieve it on their own. It should be hardly
surprising, therefore, that Roman Jews also sought acceptance and emotional

support from outside sources such as the community and its formal structures. But
even more so, Roman Jews depended for stability and for personal well-being on
their "neighborhoods," the shekhunot, as they themselves called them - which they
defined both geographically and in terms of the specific persons with whom they
daily came into contact

Such a vibrant and personally based social structure obviously worked against
papal goals. A system based on emphasizing the individual but also on establishing
viable instrumentalities for coping with challenge was not one thatmade Roman
Jews vulnerable to the resignation and depression that the popes had aimed to create
in order to stimulate conversion. However, the popes never abandoned their
272 Kenneth R. Stow

conversionary dreams.
CG. Imbonati's Bibliotheca Latino-Heb raie a, a
comprehensive collection of conversionary polemics, ending with an original
missionary sermon, was produced in Rome as late as 1694. During all this time,
- as indeed - in a
moreover, converts were trained to preach they subsequently did
special neophytes' collegio.63 Others censored Hebrew books. Their intention was,
in part, to prepare accurate texts. These would serve to teach and preach thatwhich,
as far back as the Pugiofidei of Raimundo Martini (written in 1278) and as recently
as the Per la conversione degli Ebrei of Tommaso Campanella ( 1568-1639),04 had
been labelled the true and pristine rabbinic doctrine, as opposed to the deceptively
false one purportedly concocted by later rabbis. The order issued by Julius III, in
1553, to burn the Talmud in fact specified, as had a similar bull issued by Innocent
IV, in 1247, that those texts bespeaking true Judaism might be allowed. Operating
on the basis of these decrees, however, censors paradoxically, self-defeatingly, but
no doubt, unwittingly, provided Jews with traditional materials that otherwise
would have been banned.

Greater conversionary success was enjoyed by the Roman Domus

catechumenorum. This institution wooed converts by various means. The indigent,
for example, were offered food and shelter. The Archive of the Roman Vicar
possesses an enormous documentation of the monies spent on clothing, bedding,
and meat. More subtle means were used to attract Jews who entered the Domus, but

had yet to commit themselves to Christianity. Ex-Jews, for example, were

appointed to teach the catechism. One of them, Fabiano Fioghi, translated a number
of Latin prayers into Hebrew in order to ease the convert's transition from Judaism
to Christianity.65 Occasionally, the Domus also resorted to force. A relative had
only to suggest that a member of his family had indicated a passing interest in
Christianity for the unsuspecting victim to be dragged off to the Domus for
"safekeeping." Jews did not react passively to these kidnappings. Family members
invariably struggled to free unwilling inmates, but their struggles were always in
vain. Such was the story of the three children "playing at baptism" who were seen
by a Domus spy and whisked away; their parents were unable to secure their
release by any means.66

On the average, it seems that ten to fifteen Jews converted each year. In a
community with a population of approximately three to four thousand, the effect of
these conversions must have been traumatic. Each year some friend or relative,
close or distant, might accept baptism. Why then did the community not fall apart
and its members all become
Christians? Communal organization, individual
resilience, and the ambivalence
of papal political and legal behavior certainly played
a role in preventing this result But, most of all, itwas the Jews' mentality and their
attitude toward Christianity thatmade survival possible. For the Jews of the ghetto,
Christians were all "Goim," the other, who traditionally were viewed as the
followers of an idolatrous faith. Their symbols and practices merited derisive
taunts: Mary was a harlot, and monks and nuns burned up in their unconsummated
 The Papacy and the Jews 273

sexual passions. The dominant Jewish defense was satire. A supposedly sincere
convert to Christianity was cited before the Venetian Inquisition for having said that
the chrism (consecrated oil) would be better used as a dressing for salads than
wasted on ceremonial nonsense. Converts were referred to as a saco
routinely
rivoltato (a pack turned inside out). Roman Jews also made sport of the Church,
since, after all, it was they who were in Rome first. Bitter irony and mocking
laughter, therefore, carried the day, making bearable the preposterous and the
exaggerated, that is, life within the ghetto walls under the conditions imposed by
a gallows -
the Church. It was humor, and, on one occasion in the person of a

condemned prisoner convulsed with hilarity at the attempts of the brothers of the
Society of S. Giovanni Decollato to convert him and save his soul, although not his
life - this humor made its way to the gallows itself.67

Transition Toward Modernity

Papal policy toward the Jews in the sixteenth century is best described as being in a
state of "incomplete transition." The old and medieval was left behind, but the new
and modern remained elusive. Frozen in a state of insecurity and indecision, the
new Jewry policy bogged down inmid-course. The Roman Ghetto that was soon
to become themost enduring manifestation of this policy was originally established
only as a temporary holding area for those Jews who had yet to convert.
Nevertheless, despite its enormous flaws, the Jewry policy of the sixteenth-century
popes was not a refurbished version of the traditional attitude of passive
expectancy, nor, with its partial expulsions, was it a replay of the events of 1492. It
also had no connection to the other expulsions that by themid-sixteenth century had
left central and northern Italy as the only Catholic lands (Poland and parts of
Germany excepted) with a recognizable Jewish population. Itmay be true, as was
so well put by Sir Lewis Namier, that "In the sixteenth century, religion was the
primary conscious bond of communities,"68 and that the need for unity, achieved
through religious conformity, had dictated expulsion from Spain (and elsewhere).
But in its search for unity, papal policy operated on assumptions quite different
from those at work in Spain or in the other states from which Jews had been
expelled. By eschewing total expulsion, and in its place insisting upon large scale
conversion, the popes opted to pursue unity through a means that (for its time) can
-
only be called revolutionary and anticipatory of modernity. The new papal policy
like the policies to be espoused by the states of the post-French Revolutionary
world - unwaveringly insisted that Jews not only be socially integrated, but also
that through conversion they be fully assimilated.

To anticipate modernity, however, is not to achieve it.There is a wide gap between

the policies of the early modern popes and the ideals and programs of John Locke,
Roger Williams and the makers of the American and French Revolutions. That gap
274 Kenneth R. Stow

was created by the religious foundations of papal policy. The transition from
medievality to modernity implicit in the Jewry policy of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries could not possibly have been completed. With its mixed
and confused sense of direction - itsmodern form clothed inmedieval
metaphors
- there was no room for real movement. Rather than advancing toward
garb
modernity, the Jewry policy of the popes was static and rigid; it bred ever greater
frustrations and was condemned to failure.69 At the same time, the papacy's
unrelenting calls to accept Catholicism made the Jews of the Roman Ghetto face the
incisive challenge of "assimilation:" Were they willing to leave behind their Judaism
in order to "enter" modern (western) society? Sooner or later, all Jews had to
confront this challenge. But whereas in the Emancipation period it was subtlely
phrased in terms of the acquisition of "virtue," in the epoch of the Roman Ghetto,
nothing was done gently, and subtlety did not exist. The choice was a definitive
one: either Christianity and integration, or Judaism and thoroughgoing segregation.

Faced with this alternative, Roman Jews fell into a reverse acculturation. The Italian
Jew of the Renaissance period was culturally nearly as Roman, Venetian, or
Tuscan as was his Christian counterpart, irrespective of whether he expressed
himself inHebrew or the Vernacular. By the eighteenth century, this was no longer
true, even though Jews now were writing principally in Italian. The Jews of the
ghetto had significantly retreated from advances in secular learning and severed
their contacts with Christian savants of Hebrew and rabbinic teachings; they had
developed a Judaeo-Roman mode of speech and become outwardly distinct through
the obligation of wearing the biretta gialla or rossa; they had even developed
characteristic food specialties, like melanzane panate (breaded eggplant), carciofi
(artichokes) alia giudia, carne secca (dried meat), and aliciotti con Vendivia
(anchovies baked with endive). These examples are fleeting, but the point is clear.
The invitation to enter Catholic society may have been ever present. At times, itwas
an invitation made by force. Yet, in the Jewish consciousness, the alternative of
thoroughgoing segregation was the preferable one. As the Jews' life style became
increasingly distinct from that of Catholics, the gap between the two cultures
widened. The Jews convinced themselves that itwas both wiser and safer to retreat
into the self and into the institutions of ghetto society. They would confront the
outside world, when necessary, through derisive hilarity and mockery.
The popes, too, retreated into themselves and into the specific problems of their
domain. Constantly preoccupied with the idea of a perfectly coordinated and
reformed Church, existing in the homogeneous environment of the Papal State, the
popes had little time or will left for revising policy toward the Jews. Put otherwise,
although the popes had stood on the edge of modernity vis-?-vis the Jews before
anyone else, the religious priorities of the Church never permitted them to achieve
the flexibility necessary to move beyond that point. For three hundred years, their
attitude toward the Jews remained fixed. As a consequence, the forms of life in the
ghetto never varied from those established by Paul IV in 1555. Even the destruction
 The Papacy and the Jews 275

of the ghetto walls in 1848 made little difference. The revolutionary events of that
year, which affected the lives of so many others inwestern and central Europe, led,
in the case of the Jews of Rome, only to new rules preventing them from moving
outside the old ghetto district, owning private property, or becoming the proprietors
of independent businesses. Moreover, as best exemplified by the 1859 Mortara
case, forced baptism was still a real danger.

Nothing substantial, then, was to change. The Roman Ghetto, whose origins were
so entwined - chronologically, ideologically, and even practically, on the level of
finances - with the founding of the Papal State, was to endure until September 20,
1870, on which day, with the establishment of a unified and modern Italian polity,
the ghetto and the Papal State were simultaneously dissolved.

NOTES
1. See Edward Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (New York, 1965), 68-69, for
Alexander II and 35-50, for Gregory the Great; St. Augustine, "Adversus Judaeos," in Fathers of
the Church, vol. 27, (New York, 1955), 391-416; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica,
trans, by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York, 1947-48), 2a2ae. 10-12.
2. Humbert is cited in Edmond Martene and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 vols.
(Paris, 1717), 4:1706-1708; see too G.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et ampiissima
collectio, 53 vols. (Venice, 1779-1782), 24:109, 115; and see too, surprisingly, Raimundo
Martini, Pugiofidei (Leipzig, 1687), Part 3, chap. 21, par. 22 and chap. 23, par. 1-6.
3. See Renata Segre, "Bernardino da Feltre, iMonti di pieta e i banchi ebraici," Rivista storica italiana
90(1978): 818-33.
4. See Ch.M. Merchavia, "La Pol?mica di Bernardino di Busti contro gli Ebrei ed il Talmud," (in
Hebrew) Michael 1(1972): 223-50 (Hebrew numbering); and Brian Pul?an, Rich and Poor in
Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 462.
5. Gal 4:21-5:15; 1Cor 5:5-6, 9:19-22 and 10:18-24. For the Homilies of John Chrysostom see

especially the translation and introduction in Wayne Meeks and Robert Wilken, Jews and
Christians inAntioch (Missoula, Mont., 1978).
6. See Ariel Toaff, // Vino e la carne (Bologna, 1989), 181 -207, esp. 185.
7. Martin text appears inMoritz Stern, Urkundliche
V's Beitr?ge ?ber die Stellung der P?pste zu den
Juden (Kiel, 1893), 32, no. 21. For Julius II, see Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the
Jews, vol. 3 (Toronto, 1990), no. 1210.
8. K.R. Stow, "Expulsion Italian Style: The Case of Lucio Ferraris," Jewish History 3/1(1988):
51-64.
9. See K.R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, 1555-1593 (New York, 1977),
278-89.
10. Despite the common belief to the contrary, conversion in papal policy was a matter of hopes,
almost never of actions; see Peter Browe, Die Judenmission imMittelalter und die P?pste (Rome,
1942), passim; and see too the remarks in Stow, Catholic Thought, xx-xxiv. The activities of the
thirteenth-century Dominicans have sometimes been construed as primarily missionary. Even if
this were fully demonstrable - and it is not
(compare, Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews
- the were not acting as papal representatives
fIthaca, N.Y., 1982]) Dominicans in this area.
Besides, the large number of converts in thirteenth-century France, an area where the papal

Inquisition was most active, probably resulted from a combination of reasons, including the use of
means only once removed from outright force (see Joseph Shatzmiller, "L'Inquisition et les juifs
276 Kenneth R. Stow

de Provence au xiiie si?cle," Provence historique 23[1973]: 327-38), and also force itself (see
Solomon Grayzel, 'The Confessions of a Medieval Convert," Historia Judaica 17[1958]: 89-120).
Reference is sometimes made to the subject of preaching; but on this see Stow, Catholic Thought,
20-21, n. 59. Finally, there is no way of ignoring the constant stream of converts to Christianity
from the time of the First Crusade and onward, as testified to by the responsa literature. Still, this
is hardly the same thing as real evidence linking the popes with direct and ongoing missionary
efforts.
11. See Giuseppe Alberigo, ed., Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta (Basel, 1962), 459-61, and Max
Simonsohn, Die kirchliche Judengesetzgebung im Zeitalter der Reform-Konzilien von Konstanz
und Basel (Breslau, 1912), 25-50; and on wavering in papal policy, see Solomon Grayzel,
"Popes, Jews, and Inquisition, from 4Sicut' to 'Turbato,'" in Essays on the Occasion of the
Seventieth Anniversary of the Dropsie University (1909-1979), ed. A.I. Katsh, Leon Nemoy

(Philadelphia, 1977), 151-88.

12. On fifteenth-century papal policy, although with an emphasis exclusively on its negative aspects,
see Shlomo Simonsohn, "Prolegomena to a History of the Relations between the Papacy and the
Jews in the Middle Ages," (in Hebrew) Zion 44( 1979) (= Sefer zikkaron le-Yishaq Ber): 66-93,
esp. 90-92.
13. On this ability to live with diversity, see Thomas Aquinas as cited in note 1, above; on the
streamlined, more rigidly defined Reformation Church, see Francis Oakley, "Natural Law, the
Corpus Mysticum and Consent in Conciliar Thought from John of Paris to Matthias Ugonius,"
Speculum 56( 1981 ): 786-810.
14. See Gerhard Ladner, The Idea of Reform (New York, 1967) and, recently, S.H. Hendrix, "In
Quest of the Vera Ecclesia: The Crises of Late Medieval Ecclesiology," Viator 7(1976): 347-78.
15. See K.R. Stow, "Agobard of Lyons and the Origins of the Medieval Conception of the Jew,"
Conservative Judaism 29(1974): 58-65.
16. "Libellus ad Leonem Decem," in Annales camuldulenses ordinis Sancti Benedicti, ed. G.B.
Mittarelli and Anselmo Costadoni, 9 vols. (Venice, 1755-1773), 9:612-719.
17. See Louis Caperan, Le probl?me du salut des infid?les, 2d ed. (Paris, 1932), passim.
- even the
18. On Luther's basically apprehensive attitude toward the Jews young Luther did not truly
expect to convert them, see Martin Luther, "Against the Sabbatarians," trans., M.H. Bertram;
"Concerning the Jews and Their Lies," trans., M.H. Bertram; and "That Jesus Christ was Born a
Jew," trans., W.I. in Luther's
Brandt; Works, 55 vols. (Philadelphia, 1971): 47:59-98,
47:121-306, and 45:195-229.
Compare this with Martin Bucer, "Judenratschlag," in his Deutsche
Schriften, ed. Robert Stupperich, vol. 7 (G?tersloh, 1964), 342-61, 362-76, and 380-82. For the

passivity of John Calvin, see S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2d ed., 18
vols. (Philadelphia, 1952-83), 13:205-96 and esp. 279-91; see too, A.K. Helmio, The Lutheran
Reformation and the Jews (Hancock, Mich., 1949), passim.
19. See Paolo Simoncelli, "Inquisizione romana e riforma in Italia," Rivista storica italiana 100( 1988):
5-125.
20. The letter is found
inMS. Bibliotheca Apost?lica Vaticana, Lat. 10652, fol. 91.
21. This and subsequent quotes from Quirini and Justiniani are taken from Stow, Catholic Thought,
217-20. For a possible direct response on the question of preaching, see the letter of Leo X in
Simonsohn, The Apostolic See, vol. 3, no. 1273.
22. See P.C. Ioly-Zorattini, Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro Ebrei e Giudaizzanti

(1548-1560) (Florence, 1980).

23. See the discussion of the Talmud burning in K.R. Stow, "The Burning of the Talmud in 1553, In
the Light of Sixteenth-Century Catholic Attitudes Toward the Talmud," Biblioth?que d'humanisme
et Renaissance 34( 1972): 435-59.
24. See the discussion of these letters, in K.R. Stow Taxation, Community and State: The Jews and
the Fiscal Foundations of the Early Modern Papal State, P?pste und Papsttum, 19 (Stuttgart,
1982), 53-61.
 The Papacy and the Jews 277

25. See n. 10, above.

26. On these various issues, see, David Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew (Cincinnati,
1981), 51-56 and 95-106; H.H. Ben-Sasson, "The Generation of the Spanish Exiles Considers Its
Fate," translated and adapted by Carol Bosworth Kutscher, in Studies in Jewish History, ed.
Joseph Dan, BINAH, 2 (New York, 1989), 83-98 (originally published as "Dor golei Sefarad 4al
'asmo," Zion 26(1961 ]: 23-64); Ben-Sasson, "The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes,"
Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4(1970): 239-326 (English) and
62-116 (Hebrew); as well as the article by Mark Meyerson in this present volume.
27. See the Ep?stola Ludovici Carreti ad Judaeos (Paris 1554), and the texts of inquisitional trials
published by Ioly-Zorattini as cited in note 22, above.
28. See Stow, "Burning," 435-41.
29. For a thorough discussion of Paul IVs program and its ramifications, see Stow, Catholic Thought,
passim.
30. On the Ancona episode, see Baron, Social and Religious History, 14:39-43; Cecil Roth, The
House ofNasi: Dona Gratia (Philadelphia, 1948), 134-75; Ariel Toaff, "Nuova luce sui Marrani
di Ancona, 1556," Studi sull'ebraismo italiano: inmemoria di Cecil Roth, ed. Elio Toaff (Rome,
1974), 261-80; and esp. Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan, Mi-Pavlo ha-Revi'i 'ad Piyus
ha-fiamishi, ed. Isaiah Sonne(Jerusalem, 1954), 19-100.
31. On Abner, see Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia,
1961-66), 1:331-54; on Benedict XIII's policy, see Stow, Catholic Thought, 279-89; and ibid.,
80-183, for a paraphrase and discussion of de Susannis' work; Alexander of Hales, Summa
theologica, vol. 3 (Quaracchi, 1928), 381. See also n. 53, below.
32. Francisco de Torres, De sola lectione legis, et prophetarum Iudaeis cum Mosaico ritu et, cultu
permitiendo, et de Jesu in synogogis eorum ex lege, ac prophetis ostendendo et annunciando...
(Rome, 1555).
33. See the translations of sections of de Torres' work in Catholic Thought, 212-17.
34. Jewish Theological Seminary Library, microfilm 9486 (amiscellany of various texts).
35. David de' Pomis, De medico hebraeo enarratio apol?gica (Venice, 1588), chaps. 9-12.
36. Stow, Catholic Thought, 20, n. 59 contains a full discussion of this problem and the pertinent
literature; but see, too, n. 21, above.
37. Anna Foa, "II gioco del proselitismo: pol?tica delle conversioni e contrallo della violenza nella
Roma del Cinquecento," Ebrei e Cristiani nell 'Italia m?di?vale e moderna: Conversioni, scambi,
contrasti, ed. Mich?le Luzzati, Mich?le Olivari, Alessandra Veronese (Rome, 1988), 155-70.
38. Clement VIII's critique is found in Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum
pontificum, Taurinensis Editio, 25 vols. (Turin, 1857-1872), 10:22, par. 3. Most recently on
Sixtus and the Jews, see K.R. Stow, "The Consciousness of Closure: The Roman Jews and Their
in Essential on Jewish Culture in Renaissance
Ghet,'" Papers and Baroque Italy, ed. David
Ruderman, Essential Papers in Jewish Studies (New York, 1992), 386-400.
39. See especially de Susannis' discussion inDe Iudaeis, Part I, chap. 7, par. 5, with its reference to
the Udinese expulsion of 1556; on which see also K.R. Stow, "The Jew as Alien and the
Diffusion of Restrictions: An Expulsion Text from Udine, 1556," Jews in Italy, ed. Haim Beinart
(Jerusalem, 1988), 55-72.
40. On these issues, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages
(Oxford, 1969).
41. The 1582 decree is found in the Archivio di Stato, Roma, Camerale II, Ebrei, b.l, fols. 50v-51r
(22.10.1582); on the expansion of the Domus, see Archivio del Vicariato, Roma. Fond. Pia Casa
dei catecumeni e neofiti, filze 121, Copie delle Bolle; and on the records of baptisms, see Attilio
Milano, di Ebrei a Roma dal Cinquecento
"Battesimi all'Ottocento," Scritti in memoria di Enzo
Seren?, ed. Daniel Carpi, Attilio Milano, S.U. Nahon (Jerusalem, 1970), 133-67, esp. 140.
42. See the lengthy discussion of this issue, along with the pertinent literature in Leopold Willaert,
Apr?s le Concile de Trente: La Restauration Catholique, 1563-1648 (Paris, 1960), 434-48; most
278 Kenneth R. Stow

important, too, is J.L. Phelan The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World

(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1956).

43. "Cum superioribus mensibus," in Stern, Urkundliche Beitr?ge [above, n. 7], 164, no. 157.
44. See e.g., ASR (Archivio di Stato, Roma), Camerale I, Diversa Cameralia, b.427, fols. 54v-55r
(five permits, dated 28.11.1601 through 5.5.1602) and b.473, fol. 41r-v (permit dated
21.10.1621 ); and compare similar permits in Shlomo Simonsohn, The Jews in the Duchy of Milan
(Jerusalem, 1982), docs. 28. 30, and 80. See esp. Ermano Loevinson, "La concession de
Banques de Pr?ts aux Juifs par les Papes des seizi?me et dix-septi?me si?cles," Revue des ?tudes
juives 92-95(1932-33), passim, for hundreds of lending permits.
45. See Jean Delumeau, Vie ?conomique et sociale de Rome (Paris, 1959), 834-40.
46. Paolo Prodi, // Sovrano Pont?fice (Bologna, 1982), passim.
47. For an overview of this subject, see K.R. Stow, "Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish

Lending in the Thirteenth Century," AJS Review 6(1981): 161-84, and L?on Poliakov, Les
"banchieri" juifs et le Saint-Si?ge du Xllle au XVIle si?cle (Paris, 1965), esp. for later periods to
1682.
48. See e.g., ASR, Camerale I, Div. Cam., b.406, fols. 61v-62v (14.10.1591), b.407. fol. 11 Ir-v,
(18.11.1592) and b.410, fols. 52v-53r (with multiple "Inhibitions," dated 15.5.1593 to
19.11.1593).
49. E.g., ASR, Camerale I, Div. Cam., b.371, fols. 22r-23v (8.1571), and b.465 (fol. nos. missing)
( 16.7.1620), and b.467 (fol. nos. missing) (24.8.1620).
50. E.g., ASR, Camerale I, Div. Cam., b.477, fol. 33r (12.5.1610), b.448, fol. 122r (7.1.1611),
b.449, fol. 59r (6.3.1613), and b.377, fols. 177v-178r (16.1.1578), for an esp. early example of
this usage.
51. E.g., ASR, Camerale I, Div. Cam., b.385, fol. 41r (22.2.1583), b.433, fol. llr (21.8.1604),
and b.436, fol. 15r (30.4.1607), and ASR, Camerale II, Ebrei, b.l, fol. 50r (21.4.1582)
52. E.g., ASR, Camerale I, Div. Cam., b.435, fols. 127v-128r (28.9.1606), and b.449, fol. 56v
(22.3.1613).
53. This theme appears for example in de Torres, De sola lectione, 108, theMostrador de justicia of
Abner of Burgos, discussed in Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 1:350, and in the
Bull, Etsi doctoris, of Benedict XIII, found in Beitraege zur politischen, kirchlichen, und
Cultur-Geschichte der sechs letzten Jahrhunderte, ed. J.J. Ignaz von D?llinger, 3 vols.

(Regensberg, 1862-82), 2:283-93.

54. See Stow, Taxation, Community and State, passim, for a general discussion of all matters
connected with taxation.
55. See n. 41, above.
56. See Stow, Taxation, Community and State, 31-36, Rene Moulinas, Les juifs du Pape en France
(Toulouse, 1981), 145-64, and Attilio Milano, // Ghetto di Roma (Rome, 1964), 155-74.
57. See Archivio Storico Capitolino, Notaii Ebrei, Sezione III, fasc.l, lib.l, fol. 3v (25.11.1559),
fol. 9v (22.1.1560), fol. I6r-v (19.3.1560), and fol. 18v (28.3.1560), for sample texts from this
dispute. On the question of Jewish autonomy, see Attilio Milano, "I Capitoli di Daniel da Pisa e la
Comunita di Roma," La Rassegna mensile di Israel 10(1935/36): 324-38 and 409-26; Archivio del
Vicariato, Roma, tome 5, fols. 442-566, and Robert Bonfil, "Aspects of the Social and Spiritual
Life of the Jews in Venetian Territories at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century," (in Hebrew)
Zion 41(1976): 93-95.
58. See David Ruderman, "The Founding of a Gemilut Hasadim Society in Ferrara in 1515," AJS
Review 1(1976): 233-67; and Elliott Horowitz, "Jewish Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century
Verona, A Study in the Social History of Piety" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1982).
59. See Milano, // Ghetto, 214-20; see too Robert Bonfil, The Italian Rabbinate in the Period of the
Renaissance (Oxford, 1990).
60. Archivio Storico Capitolino, Sez. Ill, fase. 14, lib. 1, fol. 117v; see K.R. Stow, "Sanctity and the
Construction of Space: The Roman Ghetto as Sacred Space," in Jewish Assimilation,
 The Papacy and the Jews 279

Acculturation, and Accommodation: Past Traditions, Current Issues, and Future Prospects;
Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in
Jewish Civilization, Omaha, October, 1989, ed. Menachem Mor (Lanham, Md., 1992), 54-76.
61. See Peter Marsh, "Identity, An Ethnogenic Perspective," in Persons in Groups, ed. R.C. Trexler

(Binghamton, 1985), 17-30.

62. K.R. Stow, "La storiografia del Ghetto Romano: Problemi metodologici," in La storia degli ebrei
neWItalia m?di?vale: Tra filolog?a e metodolog?a (Bologna, 1990), 43-57.
63. See Gregory Martin, Roma Sancta, ed. G.B. Parks (Rome,-1969), 75-82.
64. Ed. Romano Ameno (Florence, 1955).
65. See the texts and remarks in K.R. Stow, "Conversion, Christian Hebraism and Hebrew Prayer in
the Sixteenth
Century," Hebrew Union College Annual 47( 1976): 217-36.
66. On this case in detail, see ASR, Camerale II, Ebrei b.l, fols. 334r-352r. In general, see Attilio
Milano, "L'impari lotta della Comunit? di Roma contro la Casa dei Catecumeni," La Rassegna
mensile di Israel 16(1950): 355-68, 408-19; and also Cecil Roth, "Forced Baptisms in Italy,"
Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 27( 1936): 117-36. See also the diary published by J.B. Sermoneta,
"Tredici giorni nella Casa dei Conversi - dal diario di una giovane ebrea del 18o sec?lo," Michael
1(1972): 261-315.
67. G. Ademollo, "Le giustizie a Roma dal 1674 a 1739 e dal 1796 al 1840," Archivio romana di
storia patria 4 & 5 (1881/82, 1882), text no. 9, for 1736. And now, La Giustizia degVebrei, ed.
Simone Fo?, (Rome, 1987).
68. Lewis Namier, "History," reprinted in The Varieties of History, ed. F.R. Stern, (New York,
1956), 374.
69. See Stow, "Expulsion Italian Style," [above, n. 8], passim.

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