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Christian excommunication of the Jews in the middle ages: A restatement of the issues

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Notes

  1. Joseph Shatzmiller, “Jews‘Separated from the Communion of the Faithful in Christ’,” inStudies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1979), pp. 307–14.

  2. Roger Aubenas,Recueil de lettres des Officialités de Marseille et d'Aix, I–II (Paris, 1937–1938), 2:133–34; and Shatzmiller,passim.

  3. In this and the preceding paragraph, I have drawn on the work of Shatzmiller (cited above, n.l) and of F. Donald Logan, “Thirteen London Jews and Conversion to Christianity: Problems of Apostasy in the 1280s,”Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 45 (1972). I have also benefitted from and wish to acknowledge the help of the editor of this journal, Kenneth Stow, who drew my attention to some of the issues addressed in these paragraphs. See also, Jeremy Cohen,The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca and London, 1982); Kenneth Stow, “Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century,”AJS Review, 6(1981): 161–84; and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui, “Harvard Theological Review, 63(1970): 317–76.

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  4. The letter is indexed as no. 347(Post miserable Hierosolymitanae) in volume I of August Potthast,Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1874–1875).

  5. Decretal. Gregory IX, Lib. V, Tit. XIX, De Usuris, cap. xii,Post miserabilem. (The edition is the familiar one of Emil Friedberg,Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1879; repr. 1955); but the apparatus referring the reader to Potthast no. 374 is a misprint.)

  6. The decrees are printed side by side in Maureen Purcell,Papal Crusading Policy (Leiden, 1975), Appendix A, p. 192.

  7. Shatzmiller,passim; Logan, pp. 224–25. Shatzmiller also collects some rather more bizarre interpretations of a few twentieth-century scholars. Purcell, pp. 138, 175, 181, on the other hand, consistently interprets the Latin as I do.

  8. Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland,The History of English Law, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898; reprint, 1968), I, 439 and n. 1.

  9. The magisterial work on the Pope's relations with King John is Christopher R. Cheney,Pope Innocent III and England (Stuttgart, 1976).

  10. The standard work on the Jews of England in the Middle Ages is still Cecil Roth,A History of the Jews in England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1964).

  11. John Baldwin,Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1970), 1:297; 2:12–13 nn. 40–41.

  12. Ibid., 1:342–43.

  13. My suggestions in the previous two paragraphs go far beyond Maitland's restrained interpretation. On the other hand, John Johnson, the anti-Catholic early editor and translator of the LangtonConstitutiones, which Maitland cites, was also puzzled by the fact that they permitted ecclesiastical punishments of Jews by excommunication; and with stinging wit, he wrote, “these (punishments) can mean no more, but a Prohibition of mutual Commerce between Christians and Jews; if they mean, that theJews were under their Cognisance, as Pastors of the Church ofChrist, it is certain they only exposed themselves; they might as well claim Authority over theIndian Brachmans. I do not observe, that the Canon Law pretends to lay any Censure upon theJews, but only in some Cases forbidsChristians to deal with them, and this was more than could be justified.” When Johnson worked on Boniface'sConstitutiones, which as we shall see even more explicity assert the need to constrain Jews by excommunication to appear before ecclesiastical courts rather than royal courts, Johnson continued, “Ecclesiastical Authority was certainly confounded by these Prelates going beyond their Line, and assuming to themselves a Powerof judging them that were without.” (A Collection of All the Ecclesiastical Laws, 2 vols. (London, 1720), II, “Langton'sConstitutions,” gloss to canon 51 and “Boniface'sConstitutions,” gloss to canon 7).

  14. Pollock and Maitland, 1:439 and n. 1.

  15. Cf. J. R. Maddicott, “The Mise of Lewes, 1264,”English Historical Review, 98(1983): 599.

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  16. On Boniface, see Leland Wilshire,Boniface of Savoy: Carthusian and Archbishop of Canterbury (Salzburg, 1977), esp. pp. 69–83. He went into voluntary exile on 8 October in 1262 and returned to England on 29 May 1266. He spent some, though by no means all of this time, in Provence. For the Provençal examples of excommunications of Jews, see references in 20–22, 26, 28, 30–31, below.

  17. Shatzmiller, pp. 307–08, 312–13; Logan, p. 225.

  18. Shatzmiller, p. 308.

  19. Ibid., p. 309.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid., p. 311.

  22. Alain Drouard, “Les Juifs à Tarascon au Moyen Age,”Archives juives, 10(1973–1974): 54.

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  23. Shatzmiller, p. 309.

  24. Paris, BN, Collection Doat, tome 173, folios 200–202v. The record is dated 14 Kalends August 1275. The official, B. Hugonis, is identified aspraepositus judex, subdelegatus to his task by a member of the papalcamera. The diphthongae inpraepositus and elsewhere in the Doat transcription is an “improvement” of the copyist. The Jews named in the record (fol. 201) include: Leo de Castrogilos; Abraham and Samuel (his sons); Isaac d'Almas (Abraham's father-in-law); Isaac's son-in-law, also named Isaac; Dyeusaiu da del Chauma; Salamo de Salas Amarana; their wives and families.

  25. Fol. 201 v.

  26. Hostiensis,Decretalium commentaria (Venice, 1581), Lib. V, De Usuris, cap. xii,Post miserabilem.

  27. Ioannes Andreae,Decretalium novella commentaria (Venice, 1581), Lib. V, De Usuris, cap. xii,Post miserabilem.

  28. And see the John Hopkins Dissertation of Walter Pakter,De His Qui Foris Sunt (Baltimore, 1974), p. 33–36, on Hostiensis and direct jurisdiction.

  29. Shatzmiller, pp. 310–12.

  30. Such formulary books may be consulted in C.-V. Langlois, ed.,Formules des lettres (six articles) (Paris, 1890–1897). The changing fashions in French Capetian chancery practices — imitation of Carolingian forms, retreat from Carolingian forms, return to Carolingian forms — are noted by John W. Baldwin, “L'Entourage de Phillipe Auguste et la famille royale,”Colloques internationaux CNRS, no. 602: La France de Phillipe Auguste — Le Temps des mutations, p. 61.

  31. Aubenas, 2: 71–72, for the record of the excommunication; V.-L. Bourilly,Essay sur l'histoire politique de la commune de Marseille (Aix-en-Provence, 1925),pièces justificatives, no. XIV, p. 474, for the “Chapters”.

  32. Aubenas, 2: 40–44, for the record of the excommunication. For the use of the wordguerra for the events of 1261–1262, Bourilly,pièces justificatives, XLVI, p. 477, which is also the record of the treaty. The change in the status of the Jews is mentioned on p. 478. More generally on the period 1261–1264 in Marseille, see Bourilly, pp. 213–40, and theHistoire de Marseille, ed. Edouard Baratier (Toulouse, 1973), pp. 92–93.

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Jordan, W.C. Christian excommunication of the Jews in the middle ages: A restatement of the issues. Jew History 1, 31–38 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01782499

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