FRIARS AND JEWS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND

RENAISSANCE
THE MEDIEVAL
FRANCISCANS

GENERAL EDITOR

Steven J. McMichael
University of St. Thomas

VOLUME 2
 FRIARS AND JEWS
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
AND RENAISSANCE

EDITED BY

STEVEN J. McMICHAEL
and
SUSAN E. MYERS

BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2004
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Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance / edited by Steven J. McMichael and
Susan E. Myers.
p. cm. — (The medieval Franciscans, ISSN 1572-6991 ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-11398-3
1. Antisemitism—Europe, Western—History—To 1500—Congresses. 2. Jews—Europe,
Western—History—To 1500—Congresses. 3. Friars—Europe, Western—History—To
1500—Congresses. 4. Christianity and antisemitism—Europe,
Western—History—Congresses. 5. Europe, Western—Ethnic relations—Congresses. I.
Myers, Susan E. II. McMichael, Steven J. III. Series.

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 CONTENTS

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

E. R D, Abbot Joachim of Fiore and the

Conversion of the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
D B, The Antichrist and the Jews in Four
Thirteenth-Century Apocalypse Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
W C J, Archbishop Eudes Rigaud and the
Jews of Normandy, – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
L J. S, Intimate Enemies: Mendicant-Jewish Interaction
in Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
N L. T, Jews and Judaism in Peter Auriol’s Sentences
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
G T, Franciscan Economics and Jews in the
Middle Ages: From a Theological to an Economic Lexicon. . . . . . 99
C O, Contempt for Friars and Contempt for
Jews in Late Medieval Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
D J. V, The Evolution of Francesc Eiximenis’s Attitudes
Toward Judaism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
M D. M, Samuel of Granada and the Dominican
Inquisitor: Jewish Magic and Jewish Heresy in Post-
Valencia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
T M. I, Leonardo Dati’s Sermon on the
Circumcision of Jesus () . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
S J. MM, OFM C., Alfonso de Espina on the
Mosaic Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
R R, Anti-Jewish Preaching in the Fifteenth
Century and Images of Preachers in Italian Renaissance Art . . . . 225
A T, Jews, Franciscans, and the First Monti di Pietà in
Italy (–) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
K R. S, Papal Mendicants or Mendicant Popes:
Continuity and Change in Papal Policies toward the Jews at the
end of the Fifteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
 

J E, The Friars and the Jews: Messianism in Spain

and Italy Circa  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
A F, Limpieza versus Mission: Church, Religious Orders,
and Conversion in the Sixteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
 INTRODUCTION

On October – of , a conference was held at St. Louis Univer-

sity with the title “The Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renais-
sance.” The idea for a conference originated in a conversation between
Darleen Pryds, Deeana Klepper, and Steven McMichael at the New-
berry Library in Chicago a year prior to the event. They were reflect-
ing on the number of studies that had come out during the previous
two decades on the theme of the friars and Jews, and how important it
would be to gather some of the major scholars in this area of research
in a conference form.
Clearly, gratitude should be extended to Jeremy Cohen, whose book
The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, ) became the foundation and catalyst
for further research into the subject. His book asserts that the friars
took an innovative approach to the question of the role of the Jews in
Christendom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The enclosed articles represent the major areas in which scholars are
working with regard to the friars’ preaching to and writing about the
Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. These articles span the time
between the early years of the mendicant orders (around the turn of the
thirteenth century) to the sixteenth century. They cover a wide range of
topics, including preaching, theology, exegesis, economics, popes and
papal legislation, and literature.
The volume begins with an examination of the career and exegesis
of the late twelfth-century Abbot Joachim of Fiore. E. Randolph Daniel
traces what can be known of the abbot’s life, and addresses the charge
made by Gaufrid of Auxerre, contemporary of Joachim and secretary
to Bernard of Clairvaux, that Joachim had been born a Jew but con-
cealed this fact throughout his life. Daniel rejects the charge, but sug-
gests that Gaufrid’s conclusions were reached in part by his knowledge
of Joachim’s exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures. Although Joachim is
critical of Jews as “carnal” and believes they are blind to the correct,
spiritual understanding of the scriptures, he saves his sharpest criticisms
for “carnal” Christians who are desirous of things of the world. Unlike
others in the late twelfth century, Joachim did not demonize Jews but
held out the hope that Jews would be converted to Christianity at the
end of time, according to God’s plan. Daniel’s essay draws attention to
 

a new trend in Franciscan apocalyptic literature in which the end was

seen as dawning, and hope was held out for the conversion of Jews to
Christianity.
David Burr continues this theme with an essay that examines four
thirteenth-century commentaries on the Book of Revelation, at least
two by Franciscans. Included in these commentaries is a view of the
Jews as providing the ancestry for the antichrist in the coming apoc-
alyptic crisis, a view that had become standard. In addition, however,
these commentaries divide church history into seven periods, the sixth
of which, the age of the antichrist, is present on the horizon. Burr’s
greatest contribution is his examination of the commentary by Peter
John Olivi, who radicalizes the approaches of the earlier three. Like his
predecessors, Olivi is actually more interested in castigating Christians
than condemning Jews, and even assigns the role of the antichrist to
the papal office. Olivi thought that the world was entering a new, more
spiritual era, thanks to the rise of the mendicant orders and the exegesis
of Joachim of Fiore. With Joachim, Olivi believed that the Jewish peo-
ple would eventually find salvation through conversion to Christianity.
Because of his criticisms of the papacy, Olivi’s ideas were rejected and
the idea of the Jews as the antichrist, present in the more popular illus-
trated manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, came to prevail.
William Chester Jordan responds to the recent scholarly assertion
that there are two factors that point to a major negative shift in the rep-
resentation and treatment of Jews in the High Middle Ages, the empha-
sis on the “reasonableness” of Catholic Christianity among scholas-
tic theologians and the rise of the mendicant orders with their vitri-
olic denunciation of usury. Jews, according to this interpretation, came
to be regarded as lacking in reason and therefore “less human” for
their failure to convert, and the predominance of moneylending as an
occupation among them in the thirteenth century undermined tradi-
tional ecclesiastical notions of their proper place in Christian society.
Jordan examines the important scholastic theologian and extremely
influential Franciscan archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud, conclud-
ing that Eudes’ own attitudes do not support this assertion. Eudes dis-
missed the idea that Jews were innately irrational and therefore lack-
ing full humanity, and rejected arbitrary anti-Jewish violence. Instead,
he sought repeatedly to encourage the conversion of Jews to Chris-
tianity.
In an attempt to understand the daily interactions between Jews and
members of mendicant orders, Larry J. Simon examines several docu-
  

ments from thirteenth-century Mediterranean Spain, focusing in par-

ticular on Mallorca. These texts reveal theological confrontations, var-
ious interactions, and a comparative lack of business relations between
Jews and mendicants, living, as they did, in close proximity. Simon
notes the exchange of property between Jewish individuals and men-
dicant orders, as well as disputes ranging from how to recognize the
coming of the Messiah to the problems resulting from the construction
of a new synagogue near a Franciscan church. The evidence indicates
a great deal of interaction between Jews and the mendicant orders, and
the tensions that resulted.
Nancy L. Turner turns to the fourteenth-century French Francis-
can Peter Auriol, who presents a thorough and extensive discussion
of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the course of his Sen-
tences commentary. Auriol discusses at length when and why baptism
came to replace circumcision, as well as whether and how circumci-
sion conferred grace. Along with an explicit and in-depth examina-
tion of the superiority of the new law over the old, Auriol’s commen-
tary also contains an analysis of the first-century Jews’ knowledge of
Christ’s divinity and argues that the Jews were motivated by unmiti-
gated envy and malice when they called for Christ’s crucifixion. As a
result of Auriol’s lack of respect for Judaism and Old Testament law as
a religious system separate from Christianity, Auriol produces an exces-
sively Christian-centric reading of nearly every aspect of Old Testament
Judaism. Turner notes that it is perhaps not surprising, then, that Auriol
refuses to take a clear stance against the forced baptism of Jewish adults
or children by arguing that “interpreted consent” to baptism, regardless
of the circumstances under which the consent is achieved, is sufficient
for baptism to be considered valid.
Jewish moneylending is the focus of the essay by Giacomo Tode-
schini, who examines thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Franciscan
economics and arguments on the socio-economic role of the Jews. In
Franciscan writings from this period, the poverty of the Franciscan
Order is seen as the economic ideal for Christian society. As a result,
the Jews are stereotyped as enemies of Franciscan poverty, as support-
ers of a usury economy, and as dangerous to the Christian economic
order because of their moneylending practices and abilities. There was,
simultaneously, a prohibition of usury and an emphasis on usury as the
only viable Jewish profession, since Jews were prohibited from jobs that
could associate them with Christians. Todeschini concludes that the
fifteenth-century Franciscan Observant preaching campaigns against
 

Jewish lending were the logical outcome of the Franciscan economic

vision articulated earlier.
Christopher Ocker examines the relationships between Jews and
members of the mendicant orders in late medieval Germany, and ar-
gues that the mendicant orders played no particular, unique role in the
spread of anti-Jewish argument and feeling in that region. Rather, a
wide range of popular beliefs and stories enflamed hostility toward the
Jews, whose vulnerability in Germany was especially acute because of
the fragmentation of political power in the Holy Roman Empire. The
friars, for their part, were also on the defensive, trying to protect their
prerogatives as a clerical group from clerical and secular opponents and
reformers.
The work of the fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Spanish
Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis is the subject of David J. Viera’s essay.
Eiximenis defends Christianity over against Judaism by responding to
Jewish criticisms of Jesus’ origins and character. Writing in Catalan for
a lay audience, Eiximenis avoids such subjects as the Trinity and tran-
substantiation, major issues in Jewish-Christian debates, by referring
to their lofty nature. Although Eiximenis raises objections to Judaism,
the most negative having been occasioned by reflection on idolatry,
he rejects anti-Jewish violence, and became more tolerant of Jews and
Judaism in his later years, when his emphasis shifted to apocalyptic con-
cerns.
Mark D. Meyerson turns to the general topic of the Inquisition by
examining the specific topic of charges of magic raised against the Jew-
ish physician Samuel of Granada. Under suspicion in Valencia, Samuel
was, nevertheless, a physician highly regarded by both Old Christians
and New Christians. Accused of sorcery and necromancy, Samuel was
also thought to be a baptized Christian who had relapsed and was now
professing to be Jewish. Meyerson sets these events within the larger
framework of the earlier initiatives of Dominican inquisitors against
Jews and conversos in Valencia. The anti-Jewish measures reached their
climax in the violence and forced conversions of , but anti-Jewish
sentiment then passed to the conversos. Meyerson notes that, despite this
climate, witnesses in the case of Samuel were not antagonistic toward
him, demonstrating a discrepancy between official Christian policy
toward Jews and conversos and the practices of the general Christian
population.
Thomas M. Izbicki examines the sermon of Leonardo Dati, deliv-
ered at the fifteenth-century Council of Constance on the Feast of the
  

Circumcision of Jesus, on the Lukan account of Jesus’ circumcision, as

well as several similar sermons on this topic. Dati addresses the topic
of Jesus’ circumcision, and of circumcision in general, as a sacramental
sign, and builds on the ideas of others before him regarding circum-
cision as once having had validity but, with the coming of Jesus, ren-
dered invalid and even harmful. Dati uses the circumcision of Jesus in
order to make a moral claim: just as Jesus submitted to the divine law
of circumcision, so also does it serve as a symbolic curb of concupis-
cence. In addition, Dati uses the theme of circumcision in order to crit-
icize unworthy ecclesiastical leaders and claimants. Although circum-
cision is both a sign of God’s faithfulness and a promised deliverance
from sin, its lack of contemporary validity, except as a way of point-
ing Jews toward Jesus, suggests to Dati the attendant lack of validity of
Judaism.
Another fifteenth-century author and preacher who attempted to
address the question of the validity of Judaism was the Franciscan
Alfonso de Espina, who gathered and synthesized the anti-Jewish writ-
ings of four centuries into his own polemic. Steven J. McMichael details
the ways in which Alfonso focuses on teachings of the Hebrew Scrip-
tures in order to prove to Jews the truth of Christian claims regarding
Jesus and the superiority of the new covenant over the Mosaic law. In
particular, Alfonso argues that the Mosaic law was no longer valid for
Jews to observe; its purpose was to prepare for the coming of Jesus. Cir-
cumcision was not intended to be an eternal practice and its contempo-
rary practice brought Jews under the wrath of God. The only positive
value for the Mosaic law according to Alfonso was as a prefigurement
of Christian claims.
The article by Roberto Rusconi provides a shift from textual evi-
dence to the representation of Jews in Italian art of the fifteenth cen-
tury. At this time there was a growing trend in religious paintings to
represent preachers and preaching, and the saints of the first century
of the Christian era were depicted in the style of contemporary preach-
ers. The artwork depicts Christians listening with rapt attention to the
preaching, in contrast to the hostile figures of neighboring Jews. Other
artwork shows the rise of the antichrist, attended by obviously Jewish
followers. The anti-Jewish orientation of the mainstream of popular
preaching was reflected in Italian art of the fifteenth century in many,
although often subtle and indirect, ways.
The essay of Ariel Toaff looks at the practice of banking and its rela-
tionship to Franciscan preaching in late fifteenth-century Italy, focusing
 

in particular on the example of Perugia, the site of the first Monte di

Pietà and a city with a large and flourishing Jewish community. Toaff
notes that the numerous Monti di Pietà in Italian cities were estab-
lished after a prestigious Franciscan began preaching against the usuri-
ous activities of the local Jews. Upon threat of excommunication, the
city would cancel their moneylending charters with Jewish bankers,
at the same time establishing a Monte di Pietà to lend money without
interest to the poor of the city. Despite apparent compliance by the
city, the reality, as Toaff points out, was that the Jewish banks con-
tinued alongside the Monti di Pietà; indeed, the wealthy aristocratic
families supported the Jewish bankers, investing in their banks and
providing financial assistance to pay fines. Both Monti di Pietà and
Jewish banks functioned side by side, each lending to a distinctive
clientele.
In an examination of late medieval papal policies, Kenneth R. Stow
asserts that there is no perceptible difference in the policies of mendi-
cant and non-mendicant popes. He argues that the personal sentiment
of popes was one thing, while policy, which was based on a venerable
tradition that required safeguarding Jewish rights, was another mat-
ter. At Trent, in , when the Jews were accused of murdering little
Simonino, it was, indeed, a Franciscan pope and a Dominican cardi-
nal who protested the Jews being denied due judicial process. Mendi-
cant activity vis-à-vis the Jews was neither uniform nor extreme nor,
with rare exceptions, was it innovative. Moreover, at Trent, those who
sought to overturn Jewish rights were humanists and lawyers, as the
contemporary Jewish historian Joseph ha-Kohen affirms—not mendi-
cants. Nonetheless, constantly growing fears of an alleged Jewish social
threat were testing the resolve of even the popes to preserve their tradi-
tional stance.
John Edwards traces, by examining surviving literary works as well
as trial testimony, the rise in messianic fervor in Spain and Italy at the
turn of the sixteenth century. On the political front, the rise to power
of Isabella and Ferdinand in Spain was accompanied by an upsurge in
political prophecy and messianism. Ferdinand was hailed as the future
ruler of the world, who would establish Christianity and drive out non-
Christians. The expulsion order of  inspired Spain’s Jews to mes-
sianic thought and action, while Christians, too, saw their era as part
of the end of the age. The messianic movement seems to have been
especially strong among conversos, who joined in the Jewish expectation
that the Messiah would soon come. Spanish Franciscans also had strong
  

millenarian preoccupation with the New World discovered by Christo-

pher Columbus. In Italy, the association of Rome, to which conversos
from Spain were known to flee, with the Babylon of the Book of Rev-
elation led to apocalyptic expectations. This is evidenced in Francisco
Delicado’s Portrait of the Lozana, which builds on the eschatological anxi-
ety of the region.
The volume concludes with an essay by Anna Foa on the sixteenth-
century practice in the Iberian Peninsula of limpieza de sangre, or the
determination of the purity of blood of the New Christians of the
region. Participation in ecclesiastical careers and entrance into colleges
and religious orders was determined, not on religious faith, but on
purity of blood, thus erecting a wall between Old and New Christians.
The practice called into question the purpose of converting Jews at all,
and was opposed by those who saw it as contrary to the universalist
principles of Christianity. Foa notes that the Spanish and Portuguese
Inquisitions did not originally adopt the policy of purity of blood, but it
was the Jesuits who reconciled the opposed doctrines of conversion and
its impossibility, as upheld by the idea of blood purity. While laws of
purity were applied to membership in the Franciscan, Dominican, and
Jesuit Orders, and the Dominicans were entrusted with the Portuguese
Inquisition, it was, Foa argues, the contradictory policies of Ignatius
and the Jesuits that ultimately dominated. Although Ignatius was per-
sonally opposed to laws of purity and supported conversionary efforts,
he and other Jesuits defended the Inquisition, distinguishing between
true and false conversions of Jews.
We wish to thank all those who made the conference and this book a
possibility, especially those who financially supported the conference:
Mrs. Wilma E. Messing, the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Rabbi
Mark Shook and Temple Israel of Saint Louis, the Conventual Fran-
ciscans of Our Lady of Consolation Province, Aquinas Institute, and
the Archdiocesan Ecumenical/Interfaith Commission of Saint Louis.
We wish to thank the various jurisdictions of Saint Louis University
who were so helpful and generous: The Marchetti Jesuit Endowment
Fund, The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the History
and Theological Studies Departments. Special thanks to certain indi-
viduals of Saint Louis University who supported the conference: Father
Lawrence Biondi, S.J. and Shirley Dowdy, the Dean of College of Arts
and Sciences, Michael Garanzini, S.J., William Shea and J.J. Mueller
of the Department of Theological Studies, and Virginia Viehmann
of Corporate and Foundation Support. Thanks to John Lamb of the
 

Theatre Department for his work on the programs and posters, sec-
retaries Mary Boles and Lori Hunt of the Department of Theological
Studies and Shirley Busch, secretary of the Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies. We wish also to thank participants at the confer-
ence whose papers are not included in this volume: Pamela Beattie,
Jeremy Cohen, Marian J. Hollinger, John Y.B. Hood, Deeana Klepper,
Philip D. Krey, Robert E. Lerner, and Franco Mormando, S.J. A special
thanks goes to Philip Gavitt, who co-organized the conference and did
so much to make the conference the tremendous event that it was.
This is the second volume in the series entitled The Medieval Fran-
ciscans, which was orginally proposed by one of the senior editors of
Brill Academic Publishers several years ago. A deep sense of gratitude
is owed to the publisher who continues to inspire those of us who study
the medieval Franciscan tradition to put down on paper what we are
researching. We believe that this series will prove to be a major contri-
bution to the world of Franciscan scholarship. Gratitude should also be
extended to Marcella Mulder and Boris van Gool of the staff of Brill
who were patient enough with us in the editorial process that we were
finally able to finish this volume!

Steven J. McMichael and Susan E. Myers

Assisi and St. Paul
 CONTRIBUTORS

David Burr is Professor of History at Virginia Technological Univer-

sity. He has published on the sacraments and the Spiritual Franciscans,
including Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: The Origins of the Usus Pauper Contro-
versy () and Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: A Reading of the Apocalypse Com-
mentary ().

E. Randolph Daniel is Professor Emeritus of the University of Kentucky.

His field is medieval history, especially Abbot Joachim of Fiore, the
Franciscan Order, and medieval Apocalypticism.

John Edwards is currently a Faculty Research Fellow in Spanish at the

University of Oxford. He has published extensively on the religious,
social, and political history of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
Spain, and most recently, The Spanish Inquisition (), and The Spain
of the Catholic Monarchs (–) ().

Anna Foa is Professor of Modern History at the University of Rome, “La

Sapienza.” She has published on sixteenth-century cultural history, the
history of witchcraft, and problems of Jewish life and culture in this pe-
riod. Her Ebrei in Europa: dalla peste nera all’emancipazione XIV–XVIII secolo
() appears in English as The Jews of Europe after the Black Death ().

Thomas M. Izbicki is Collection Development Coordinator at the Eisen-

hower Library, Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in medieval
papalism, canon law, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Dominican Order.
His recent publications include Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Intellect
and Spirituality—Essays Dedicated to the Memory of F. Edward Cranz, Thomas
P. McTighe and Charles Trinkaus, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher
M. Bellitto (); Three Tracts on Empire: Engelbert of Admont, Aeneas Silvius
Piccolomini and Juan de Torquemada, trans. Thomas M. Izbicki and Cary
J. Nederman ().

William Chester Jordan is Professor of History and Director of the Pro-

gram in Medieval Studies at Princeton University. Among his publica-
tions are The French Monarchy and the Jews from Philip Augustus to the Last
Capetians (), The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth
 

Century (), which was awarded the Haskins Medal of the Medieval
Academy of America in , Ideology and Royal Power in Medieval France:
Kingship, Crusades and the Jews (), and, most recently, Europe in the High
Middle Ages (, ).

Steven J. McMichael, OFM Conv., is Assistant Professor in the Theology

Department at the University of St. Thomas. He has published on
the theology of Alfonso de Espina, and specializes in the relationship
between Christianity and other religions, especially Judaism and Islam.

Mark D. Meyerson, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, is

author of The Muslims of Valencia in the age of Fernando and Isabel: between
coexistence and crusade (), and, most recently, A Jewish Renaissance in
Fifteenth-Century Spain ().

Christopher Ocker is Professor of Church History at the San Francisco

Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union. He is also
an affiliated member of the History Department at the University of
California at Berkeley and co-director of the Center for the Study
of Religion and Culture. His most recent book, Biblical Poetics before
Humanism and Reformation, was published in , and he is currently
working on a study of friars, parish priests, and towns in Central
Europe in the late Middle Ages and the early Reformation.

Roberto Rusconi is Professor of the History of Christianity at the Univer-

sità di Roma Tre. His publications in English include Women and Religion
in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. D. Bornstein and R. Rusconi (),
and The Book of Prophecies edited by Christopher Columbus (as Historical and
Textual editor; ). He recently published, in Italian, L’ordine dei pec-
cati: la confessione tra medioevo ed età moderna (), and Francesco d’Assisi
nelle fonti e negli scritti ().

Larry J. Simon is Associate Professor of Spanish and Mediterranean His-

tory in the Department of History at Western Michigan University, and
Director of the Michigan State University Italian language and culture
program in Florence. His research focuses on Muslim/Christian/Jew-
ish relations in thirteenth-century Mallorca. He edited Iberia and the
Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages (), just completed a five-year
term as editor of the journal Medieval Encounters, and is editor of Brill’s
book series “Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World.”
  

Kenneth R. Stow is Professor of Jewish history at the University of Haifa

and the editor of the journal Jewish History. He has authored numerous
books and essays on the history of the Jews in Italy and the history
of the Jews and the church, among which are Alienated Minority: The
Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (, ) and Theater of Acculturation: The
Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (). His most recent work is The
Bread, the Children, and the Dogs, Continuities in the Jewish-Catholic Encounter
(forthcoming).

Ariel Toaff teaches Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar-Ilan Uni-

versity and is chairman of the Institute for Research on Mediterranean
Jewish Communities. His books include Gli ebrei a Perugia (), The
Jews in Medieval Assisi (), The Jews in Umbria ( vols., –),
Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria (), Mostri giudei:
L’immaginario ebraico dal Medioevo alla prima età moderna (), Mangiare
alla giudia: La cucina ebraica in Italia dal Rinascimento all’età moderna ().

Giacomo Todeschini is Professor of Medieval History at the University

of Trieste (Italy). He specializes in history of medieval economics and
Christian-Jewish relations. His recent publications include Il prezzo della
salvezza: Lessici medievali del pensiero economico (), I mercanti e il Tempio:
La società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra Medioevo ed Età
Moderna ().

Nancy L. Turner is Associate Professor of History at the University of

Wisconsin at Platteville. Her research focuses on issues dealing with
Jews and Judaism in the writings of Christian theologians of the late
Middle Ages. Her work also examines Christians’ writings on Muslims
during the high and late Middle Ages.

David J. Viera is a Professor of Spanish at Tennessee Technological

University. He specializes in the medieval literature of Iberia. Among
his publications are three books: Bibliografia anotada de la vida i obra de
Francesc Eiximenis (), Eiximenis y la dona (), and Medieval Catalan
Literature (Prose and Drama) ().
This page intentionally left blank
 ABBOT JOACHIM OF FIORE
AND THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

E. R D

Abbot Joachim died on March ,  at S. Martino di Giove (Ca-

nale), one of the most recent Florensian houses.1 An anonymous com-
panion, who had probably joined Joachim while the abbot was at
Petralata in the Sila mountains in  and who became a Floren-
sian, wrote a life shortly after Joachim’s death, based from  onward
on personal knowledge.2 The beginning of the Vita is lost but Grund-
mann has argued convincingly that we can reconstruct its materials
from a series of later lives.3 Luke of Cosenza first became acquainted
with Joachim when the abbot was at Casamari, a Cistercian house near
Frosinone, between  and , where Luke was one of the scribes
to whom Joachim dictated. Luke remained devoted to Joachim dur-
ing the rest of the abbot’s life and dictated a memoir after Joachim’s
death.4 In the sixteenth century, Gioacomo Greco and Cornelio Pelu-
sio, both Florensians, compiled collections of Miracula that have been
recently edited by Antonio Maria Adorisio. The collections contain at
least some materials that go back to Joachim’s lifetime or to the early
years after his death.5

1 Herbert Grundmann, “Zur Biographie Joachims von Fiore und Rainers von

Ponza,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters,  (), –; reprinted in
Ausgewählte Aufsätze, teil , Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Band ,
 (Stuttgart, ), –. (Hereafter cited as Zur Biographie; all references are to the
reprinted version.)
2 The Vita b. Joachimi abbatis has been edited by Grundmann in Zur Biographie, –

. On p. , Grundmann argues that the Vita could not have been written later
than about . Earlier, Cipriano Baraut had edited the same Vita in “La antiguas
biografías de Joaquín de Fiore y sus fuentes,” Analecta sacra tarraconensia,  (), –
. Grundmann discusses the author and the date of this work in Zur Biographie, –
. Stephen E. Wessley has studied and heavily utilized the Vita in Joachim of Fiore and
Monastic Reform (New York, ) –.
3 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –.
4 Luke later became archbishop of Cosenza. Grundmann has edited Luke’s memoir

in Zur Biographie, –.

5 Antonio Maria Adorisio, Le “Legenda” del Santo di Fiore: B. Ioachimi abbatis miracula

(Rome, ).
 .  

Joachim was probably born in the s. Celico, his birthplace, is a

small town located on a hilltop across the river Crati from Cosenza.
His father Maurus was a tabellio, a notary. Joachim was the sixth of
eight children born to Maurus and Gemma but he was the oldest son
to reach adulthood. He studied to be a notary and obtained a position
in the court at Palermo where he was active as late as –.6
Not long after this Joachim made a pilgrimage to Palestine during
which he decided to become a hermit. After his return to Calabria,
he became a monk at Corazzo and by  was abbot. Corazzo had
been founded about  as a Benedictine house, but by  possessed
Cistercian privileges. In  or  Joachim went to Casamari, seek-
ing to find a Cistercian house that would become the motherhouse
of Corazzo and thus fully incorporate it into the Cistercian Order.
During his eighteen-month stay at Casamari, Joachim began writing
three of his chief works, the Liber de concordia, the Expositio in Apoc-
alypsim, and the Psalterium decem chordarum. Joachim also went to the
nearby town of Veroli to meet with Pope Lucius III (–) who
gave Joachim permission to write. About  Joachim began spend-
ing increasing amounts of time at a hermitage named Petralata, located
not far from Corazzo. In  Joachim went to Rome to visit Pope
Clement III (–), who issued a bull urging Joachim to complete
his Liber de concordia and his Expositio in Apocalypsim. According to the
Vita, Clement also approved Joachim’s decision to resign his abbacy at
Corazzo, which at about the same time became a daughterhouse of
Fossanova, thus gaining full incorporation into the Cistercian Order.
The exact sequence of these events remains uncertain.7
Joachim went back from Rome to Petralata but he left there and
moved up deeper into the Sila mountains in May, , where he
subsequently founded S. Giovanni in Fiore, the motherhouse of the
Florensian Order. The new order proved immediately popular and
gained official approval from Pope Celestine III (–) in .
Joachim’s last years were devoted to his writings and to the needs of the
Florensian Order.8

6 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –. For a brief sketch of Joachim’s life, see the

introduction to my edition of Joachim’s Liber de concordia: Abbot Joachim of Fiore, Liber

de concordia noui ac ueteris testamenti: Books –, ed. E. Randolph Daniel (Philadelphia, )
xi–xxii. All subsequent references to Books – of the Liber de concordia are to my edition.
7 Joachim, Liber de concordia, x–xviii. Clement’s bull, Rationis ordo suadet, is edited

there on p. . The bull is dated June , , from the Lateran Palace.
8 Joachim, Liber de concordia, xviii–xx.
           

Why should we concern ourselves with Joachim’s biography in an

article on his attitude toward and thinking concerning the Jews? The
answer is that Gaufrid of Auxerre stated that Joachim was born a Jew,
converted from Judaism, and for the rest of his life concealed this, his
supporters abetting him in hiding this fact.9
Gaufrid had been a pupil of Abelard at Paris. About , he and
twenty others became Cistercians after hearing Bernard of Clairvaux
preach. Gaufrid became one of Bernard’s personal secretaries, collected
Bernard’s letters as well as materials for his biography, and wrote the
last three books of the Vita prima.10 His career was turbulent. In 
he was abbot of Igny and in  was elected abbot of Clairvaux, a
position from which he was forced to resign in –. Pope Alexan-
der III had urged Gaufrid’s resignation and Herbert Grundmann has
suggested that this may have been due to Gaufrid’s friendship with
King Henry II of England.11 By the year  Gaufrid was abbot
of Fossanova from where he went to become abbot of Hautecombe
about . Grundmann thinks that Gaufrid was back at Fossanova
from about  until at least  and that he was the Gaufrid who
was censured by the General Chapter in . If Gaufrid was at Fos-
sanova in –, he would have been there when Corazzo became
a daughterhouse of Fossanova and Joachim resigned his abbacy. More-
over, Rainer of Ponza, who went with Joachim to Petralata in , had
formerly been a monk at Fossanova.12
Gaufrid wrote lives of several early Cistercian saints and commented
both on the Song of Songs and on the Apocalypse. He also wrote a
Libellus contra capitula Gilberti as well as a brief treatise on the same issue

9 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, edited Gaufrid’s sermon (pp. –) and discussed

Gaufrid and the sermon at considerable length (pp. –). Gaufrid’s sermon is
found in Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale cod.  on fol. v, incipit “Viri Galilei,
quid admiramini aspicientes in celum [Acts :]? Ego hodie uobis uereor …” The key
passage reads: “Ex iudeis orta persona est, in iudaismo, quem necdum satis euomuisse
uidetur, annis pluribus educata, que, sicut per eos, qui cercius cognouerunt, tandem
nobis innotuit, licet non solus ipse, sed etiam sui panes suos potissimum a uobis et
suas actenus quam studiose poterant absconderint aquas. Nec mediocrem ei confert
auctoritatem ipsum barbarum nomen; dicitur enim Ioachin. Quod de nullo diebus
nostris meminimus nos audisse, ut in baptismo retinuerit nomen, quod in iudaismo
prius habuerat.” (pp. –).
10 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, ; Adriaan H. Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux: Between

Cult and History (Grand Rapids, ), –. Bredero calls him Geoffrey of Auxerre.
11 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, .
12 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –.
 .  

in the s.13 The sermon which begins Viri Galilei is one of seventy-
two sermons found in a Troyes manuscript. It ends abruptly because
the following folio was cut out before the codex was foliated in the fif-
teenth century.14 Grundmann argues that the sermon must have been
preached between  and .15 Grundmann also thinks that it was
Gaufrid who caused the  General Chapter of the Cistercians to
summon Joachim dudum abbas and Rainer to appear or be labelled
fugitives.16 Finally Gaufrid was probably the Abbot Gaufrid to whom
Joachim addressed his treatise Intelligentia super calathis, a brief commen-
tary on Jeremiah :–, in which Joachim argued against papal plans
to use military force against the emperor. Grundmann thought that this
treatise dated from about .17
Gaufrid quoted one of Juvenal’s Satires to refer to Joachim: “For
behold the fourth Cato to fall from heaven …” Gaufrid had used
the same quotation in his attack on Gilbert of Poitiers, which suggests
that Gaufrid lumped the Parisian schoolman and the Calabrian abbot
together as teachers of dangerous novelties.18 Ironically if Gaufrid’s
motive was to attack a theologian whose doctrines seemed to him to
be too daring, he had chosen another disciple of St. Bernard, the
Abbot Joachim, who in turn was to attack the Parisian schoolman,
Peter Lombard, and then later draw criticism for his attack from the
Fourth Lateran Council.19

13Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –.

14Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –. The manuscript is Troyes, Bibliothèque
muncipale Cod. , fol. v.
15 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, .
16 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, .
17 Grundmann, “Kirchenfreiheit und Kaisermacht um  in der Sicht Joachims

von Fiore,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters,  (), –; reprinted
in Ausgewälte Aufsätze, pp. –. The treatise has been edited by Pietro de Leo in his
Gioacchino da Fiore: Aspetti inediti della vita e delle opere (Soveria Mannelli [Catanzaro], ),
– (hereafter cited as Gioacchino da Fiore).
18 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, , . “Ecce enim quartus e celo cecidit Cato,

nouo genere prophetandi sine certa uel propheticis aliis simili reuelatione, ex habun-
danti scientia uel intelligentia scripturarum, quas sibi inuicem conferunt, de aduentu
regni dei et prima quadam resurrectione his qui pruriunt auribus iam non modo
susurrans, sed blasfemas disseminans nouitates.” Gaufrid referred to Gilbert as the “ter-
tius e celo cecidit Cato.” The line is from Juvenal, Sat. II, . Rolfe Humphries trans-
lated the original line to read, “Rome may be decent again with this Cato descended
from heaven.” See Rolfe Humphries, The Satires of Juvenal (Bloomington, Ind., ), .
All translations are my own unless otherwise credited.
19 On Joachim’s treatise against Peter Lombard and Lateran IV, see Marjorie
           

Grundmann left the question about Joachim’s religious origin sub

iudice although he did not think that Joachim was born Jewish.20 Beat-
rice Hirsch-Reich wrote a lengthy article that cast doubt on Gaufrid’s
charge without rejecting it completely.21 Recent scholarship has unan-
imously accepted that Joachim was born a Christian.22 I myself find it
impossible to believe that anyone as prominent as Joachim could have
so thoroughly concealed his conversion that neither the anonymous
Vita, Luke of Cosenza, the popes with whom Joachim dealt, nor the
rulers of the kingdom ever mentioned it. On the other hand, Gaufrid
could easily have convinced himself that the name had to be Jewish and
that, therefore, in spite of the absence of any other evidence, Joachim
must have been born Jewish and converted. When Joachim used the
phrase nobis gentilibus in his treatise Adversus Iudaeos, he clearly identified
himself as a Gentile of Gentile birth.23
The attitude toward the Jews and toward converts from Judaism
that informed Gaufrid’s sermon both explicitly and implicitly demands
treatment because it sets a background against which to understand
Joachim’s own thinking about Jews and Jewish conversion. Gaufrid
alleged that Joachim’s parents were Jews and that Joachim himself
was Jewish at birth. The only argument that he advanced in favor
of this charge was Joachim’s name, which Gaufrid said that he had
never known as the name of a Christian. Grundmann pointed out that
the name was rare in northern Europe but was used among Greek

Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford,
; reprinted South Bend, Ind., ), –.
20 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –.
21 B. Hirsch-Reich, “Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum,” Miscellanea mediaevalia,

 (), –. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, –, clearly felt that the allegation
was false but stated that Joachim’s original religion could not be proven absolutely.
22 For example, Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot (New York, ), –;

Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore (Bloomington, Ind., ),
–. For my own discussion of the issue, see Joachim, Liber de concordia, xii.
23 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, edited by Arsenio Frugoni, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, no.

 (Rome, ), : “… ut autem sciatis quod et nobis gentilibus, quos in ira futoris
sui expulisse dominus uisus est, cum essemus et nos de semine benedicti Iaphet sicut et
uos de semine benedicti Sem …” Gioacchino da Fiore, Agli Ebrei (Aduersus Iudeos), trans.
by Massimo Iiritano (Soverio Manneli [Catanzaro], ) has an extensive introduction
and a facing Italian translation, but the Latin text has numerous errors. Therefore, all
references in this article will be to Frugoni’s edition (hereafter cited as Joachim, Aduersus
Iudeos).
 .  

Christians, because it was the name of Mary’s father according to the

apocryphal Protoevangelium of James.24
In his support of Pope Innocent II against Pope Anacletus II, Ber-
nard had pointed out that Anacletus’s family, the Pierleoni, had con-
verted from Judaism and the Abbot of Clairvaux apparently believed
that Anacletus II was still “not cleansed of his Jewish heritage.”25 Ber-
nard believed that Jews were avid pursuers of money and material
goods. He was the first writer to use the term iudaizare to refer to
usury. Bernard was speaking in this instance of Christian moneylen-
ders as judaizing and was suggesting that they be called “baptized
Jews.” Bernard was addressing himself to Christians and speaking as a
reformist apocalyptic, but his anti-Jewish attitudes clearly informed his
thinking about Christian usurers.26 Persistent greed for material goods
may or may not have been what Gaufrid meant when he preached
that Joachim had not yet satisfactorily vomited up his Judaism. It is
more likely that Gaufrid had in mind Joachim’s emphasis on exegesis
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Certainly Gaufrid is most likely to have been
deeply soaked in the thinking of Bernard.27 Mary Stroll argued that
common opinion believed that “Jewish character could remain unaf-
fected by conversion.”28 This notion that Jewish converts were likely to
remain Jews at heart and thus to be half-hearted Christians is usually
assumed to have become widespread in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, but Gaufrid and Bernard seemed to have had something of it
even in the twelfth century and Gaufrid thought that his hearers would
accept it as likely to be true of a supposed convert from Judaism.
The use of his Jewish ancestry against Pope Anacletus II and the
notion that Jewish “sinfulness” and “materialism” would persist after
conversion may have been implicit in Gaufrid’s charge that both Jo-
achim and his defenders concealed his ancestry and his conversion. A

24 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, –, . See the Gospel of James or Protevangelium,

trans. by Montague Rhodes James, in The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, ), –
.
25 Mary Stroll, The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of  (Leiden,

), –.
26 Bernard, Epistle , Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C.H. Talbot, and H.M.

Rochais,  vols. (Rome, –) : (hereafter, this edition of Bernard is cited as
Sancti Bernardi Opera). This is the letter that Bernard wrote in response to the monk
Rudolph’s anti-Jewish sermons.
27 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, : “Ex iudeis orta persona est, in iudaismo, quem

necdum satis euomuisse uidetur, annis pluribus educata …”

28 Stroll, The Jewish Pope, .
           

convert would have gone to such pains only if he had truly feared that
revealing his Jewish origins would have been disastrous for a prominent
abbot and the founder of a new monastic order. Similarly if Gaufrid
wanted to bring down a prominent figure such as Joachim who had
explicit and consistent papal and monarchical support, his allegation
that Joachim was born Jewish could easily have been motivated by the
belief that the popes and monarchs would turn against Joachim if they
were convinced that he had been born Jewish.29
Joachim would have called himself a disciple of Bernard of Clair-
vaux. He quoted Bernard’s Liber de consideratione ad Eugenium papam at
length and his views on simony, on clerical reform, on the papacy, and
on papal military ventures were similar to those of Bernard.30 Both
Bernard and Joachim were reformist apocalyptics who derived their
apocalypticism from Augustine of Hippo. Whereas Augustine had con-
ceived of reform strictly in individual terms, effectively individualizing
the apocalypse, Pope Gregory VII had begun to conceive of a total
reform of the clergy that would end simony, abolish clerical marriage
and concubinage, and would result in a holy church on earth. Gregory
applied criteria usually associated with the end of history to this strug-
gle to achieve reform. Hence that which had been individual in Augus-
tine became corporate and historical. Like Augustine, the reformists
postponed the end of history to the relatively distant future, emphasiz-
ing instead the imminent reform.31 Bernard took up the cause both in
his De consideratione and in his Sermones super Cantica.32 Bernard in turn
influenced the views of Gerhoch of Reichersberg. Hildegard of Bin-
gen was thoroughly Augustinian in her Scivias but her reformism came
through strongly in her later Liber divinorum operum.33 All of the reformists

29 On Joachim’s relationships with the popes and on monarchical support for the

Florensians, see Joachim, Liber de concordia, xviii–xx.

30 E.R. Daniel, “Reformist Apocalypticism and the Friars Minor,” in That Others may

Know and Love: Essays in Honor of Zachary Hayes, OFM, ed. Michael F. Cusato, OFM
and F. Edward Coughlin, OFM (St. Bonaventure, ), –; Daniel, “Joachim of
Fiore’s Apocalyptic Scenario,” in Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages,
ed. Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia, ), –; Robert
Lerner, “Joachim of Fiore as a Link Between St. Bernard and Innocent III on the
Figural Significance of Melchisedech,” Mediaeval studies,  (), –.
31 On Augustine and Gregory VII, see my manuscript in progress, entitled “Bound

for the Promised Land.”

32 Bernard, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, no. , Sancti Bernardi Opera, :–,

esp. pp. – (hereafter cited as Sermones).

33 On both Gerhoch and Hildegard, see brief treatments in Daniel, “Reformist
 .  

focused on reforming Christians, beginning with the clergy. Bernard’s

attitudes toward the Jews became explicit in the context of his defense
of Innocent II and in his argument against the persecutor Rudolph.
Bernard alluded to the final conversion of the Jews but he did not see it
as imminent nor was he concerned to achieve it. Gerhoch and Hilde-
gard were focused even more exclusively on clerical reform. As late as
the death of Pope Eugenius III in  and the accession of Hadrian IV
in , the reformists expected the popes to carry out the reforms.
First Hadrian’s pontificate and then the Alexandrian schism that began
in  caused Gerhoch, Hildegard and later Joachim to lose faith in
the popes as executants of reform and to begin searching for another
means to achieve renewal.34
Reformist apocalypticism had competition in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries from royal and imperial messianism. If the reformists
went back to Augustine and supported papal reform programs, the
messianists appealed to the Tiburtine Sibyl and to Pseudo-Methodius’s
Revelations, and expected a royal or imperial messiah.35 Both of the
above-mentioned texts predicted the coming of a Last World Emperor,
a ruler who would defeat all the enemies of Christendom, reign over
the world in peace, and whose reign would end when he surren-
dered his crown to God in Jerusalem, to be followed immediately by
the onslaught of the antichrist. The Tiburtine Sibyl included a predic-
tion that, after the emperor had reigned  years, the Jews would be
converted and the sepulchre of Christ honored by all.36 Adso incorpo-
rated the Last World Emperor into his scenario for the antichrist and
cemented the figures together so that expectation of the final antichrist
required a preceding Last World Emperor. Emicho of Leisingen was
one of the princes who saw himself as an apocalyptic messiah, called to
convert or destroy both Jews and infidels.37

Apocalypticism and the Friars Minor,” –. They will be treated at length in
“Bound for the Promised Land.” On Hildegard and reformist apocalypticism, see
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, ) –
. The most thorough treatment of Hildegard’s apocalypticism, from which both
Prof. Kerby-Fulton and I draw, is Charles Czarski’s unpublished dissertation, “The
Prophecies of St. Hildegard Bingen” (Lexington, Ky., ).
34 Daniel, “Reformist Apocalypticism and the Friars Minor,” –.
35 On both these texts, see Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in

the Middle Ages (New York, ), –, –.

36 McGinn, Visions of the End, p. .
37 Adso of Montier-en-Der, Letter on the Origin and Time of Antichrist, in Bernard

McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality (New York, ), –. On Emich, his crusaders, and
           

Joachim’s main works include the Liber de concordia novi ac veteris tes-
tamenti, which he began writing no later than his stay at Casamari
and which was presented to the papacy either in  or . The
Liber de concordia is in five books, the first four of which are a prole-
gomenon to the rest of Joachim’s works, while the fifth is a commentary
on the Hebrew Scriptures.38 The Expositio in Apocalypsim was also begun
at Casamari and was finished by the time Joachim wrote his Testamen-
tum in .39 The foundation of Joachim’s thinking was the history of
the Hebrews from Abraham to the return from Babylon. The Exposi-
tio continued that history from the coming of Christ in humility to his
second coming in majesty and the ensuing eighth day of eternity. The
Psalterium decem chordarum was begun at Casamari and finished within a
couple of years after Joachim went back to Corazzo.40 The Psalterium is
a commentary on the trinitarian relationships that Joachim believed
were symbolized in the musical instrument known as the ten-string
psaltery. The unfinished Tractatus super quatuor evangelia were meant to
cover the four gospels.41 It has usually been assumed that the Tractatus is
a late work because it is not mentioned in the Testamentum but that may
have been due to its being unfinished. Joachim had a visual mind and
he conceived history in terms of organic and geometric symbols. Such
figure appear in the main works cited above, except in the Tractatus, but
a number of figures are collected in the Liber figurarum. Marjorie Reeves
argued that the figure themselves were by Joachim but that the collection
was put together within a couple of decades after Joachim’s death.42

the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland, see Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millenium
(Oxford, ), –, –.
38 For an introduction to the date, structure, and purpose of the Liber de concordia, see

Joachim, Liber de concordia, xxii–xxvii.

39 For an edition of Joachim’s Testamentum, see Joachim, Liber de concordia, –. Joa-

chim dated the letter . The Expositio in Apocalypsim was published in Venice in
 and that edition was reprinted in Frankfurt a.M. in . Luke of Cosenza says
in his memoir that Joachim “mansit autem in Casa-Marii sedulus quasi anno uno et
dimidio, dictans et emendans simul librum Apocalypsis et librum Concordiae. Vbi in
ipso tempore librum Psalterii decem cordarum incepit” (Grundmann, Zur Biographe,
).
40 Edited in the same volume with the Expositio in Apocalypsim at Venice, , but

reprinted separately at Frankfurt a.M., .

41 Joachim, Tractatus super quatuor euangelia, ed. Ernesto Buonaiuti (Rome, ). Gioa-

cchino da Fiore, Trattati sui quattro Vangeli, trans. Letizia Pellegrini and Gian Luca Potestà
(Rome, ) contains a translation of the Tractatus.
42 Joachim, Liber figurarum, vol.  in Il libro delle figure, nd. rev. ed., ed. Leone Tondelli,

Marjorie Reeves, and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich (Turin, ; reprinted ). Marjorie
 .  

The De prophetia ignota, a brief commentary on a Sibylline text that was

originally done before Pope Lucius III, dates itself to , but the other
shorter treatises, including the Adversus Iudaeos are very difficult to date.43
For Abbot Joachim, history was governed by two paradigms, the
exodus and the exile. In his prima diffinitio, designated by the upper
case Greek letter alpha or by the psaltery and shaped like an equilateral
triangle, the generation of the Son from the Father and the procession
of the Holy Spirit from the Father were represented by the two sides
coming down from the top. The bottom side stood for the procession
of the Holy Spirit from the Son. Thus both the Son and the Holy
Spirit came from the Father, just as the third status of the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the status of the Father and of the Son. Morever the
second status belonged primarily to the Son but secondarily to the
Holy Spirit, while the third status belonged to the Holy Spirit as the
fulfillment of the Son. The three status also represented the three orders,
the married, the clergy, and the monks, the last two of which came from
the first.44
The secunda diffinitio was represented by the lower case Greek omega,
in which, as Joachim wrote, “one rod proceeded from the middle of
two [rods].”45 These two rods that merged into a third rod represented
the Father and the Son, from both of whom the Holy Spirit proceeded.
The two rods that became a third also stood for the first and second
tempora and the Jewish and Gentile peoples from whom came the Spir-
itual men, the viri spirituales, who are the monks from Elijah through

Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford, ) remains
the indispensable study.
43 Bernard McGinn, “Joachim and the Sibyl,” Cîteaux—Commentarii Cistercienses, 

() – was the first edition. Recently Matthias Kaup has published a critical
edition in his De Prophetia ignota: Eine frühe Schrift Joachims von Fiore; MGH (Hannover,
) (hereafter cited as Joachim, De Prophetia ignota). Kurt Victor-Selge, “L’Origine
delle opere di Gioacchino da Fiore,” in L’attesa della fine dei tempi nel Medioevo, ed. Ovidio
Capitani e Jürgen Miethke (Bologna, ) –, is the most comprehensive effort
to date Joachim’s works. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, Appendix A, pp. – is
the standard list of the abbot’s works but it has been updated by Kurt Victor-Selge in
“Elenco delle opere di Gioacchino da Fiore,” Florensia, – (–), –.
44 Daniel, “The Double Procession of the Holy Spirit in Joachim of Fiore’s Under-

standing of History,” Speculum,  (), –; Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore’s Apoca-

lyptic Scenario,” –; Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chaps. , , pp. –,
.
45 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. : “Secunda designatur in ω in

quo una uirgula de medio duarum procedit.”

           

Benedict and Bernard to the coming order that would fulfill the new
exodus, already begun by the Cistercians.46
The goal of the concordia was to equate the history of Judah between
the reign of Josiah (– B.C.E.) and the return from Babylon to
the history of Latin Christendom from the pontificate of Pope Leo IX
(–) to the period that would begin in . Leo, like Josiah, had
initiated sweeping reform, but then had led a military expedition that
ended in disaster, Josiah’s in defeat and death at the hands of Pharoah
Necho, and Leo’s in defeat by Robert Guiscard. Joachim equated the
pontificate of Alexander III (–) to the reigns of Jehoiachin and
Zedekiah, under whom Joachim saw a division of the ancient Judeans,
part of the people being taken with Jehoiachin to Babylon and part
remaining in Jerusalem with Zedekiah. This division paralleled the one
caused by the Alexandrian schism which occured in the thirty-ninth
generation since Christ (–). Joachim was living in the fortieth
generation (–) during which the church was being subjected
to unprecented stresses because Popes Lucius III and Urban III had
gone against the peace that had been made between Alexander III and
Frederick I Barbarossa.
Joachim saw in front of him the culmination of the exile to Babylon
shortly after . In the second tempus, Babylon had a dual mean-
ing for Joachim. The German emperors from Henry II to Henry VI
who represented the “new Babylon” threatened and persecuted the
church as their ancient counterparts had done. Primarily, however,
Babylon comprised all those carnal Christians, especially the simoniac
clergy, whose pursuit of worldly goods was the chief form of corruption.
Soon after , God would send two persecutors, the sixth and sev-
enth heads of the apocalyptic dragon, whose assaults would purify the
church. Then the new exodus, of which Bernard of Clairvaux was the
Moses, Pope Eugenius III Aaron, and Cîteaux and its four daughter-
houses the first five tribes, would culminate in the coming of two new
orders that would be the two witnesses of Rev :, who in turn would
precede the final seven tribes, seen as an unnamed monastic order that
would complete this last exodus.47 This final exodus is the third status of
the prima diffinitio which, therefore, would begin long before the end of
history, and in fact had already begun earlier in the twelfth century. As

46 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , pp. –.

47 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chaps. –, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , pp. –
, –; Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore’s Apocalyptic Scenario,” –, –.
 .  

I have already argued above, Joachim founded his diffinitiones on Augus-

tine and, like Augustine, he relegated the final antichrist and the end of
history to the distant future, focusing instead on the imminent reform
of the clergy and the dramatic spiritual renewal that he saw as the goal
of the last exodus.48
Robert Lerner has argued for a drastically different interpretation,
according to which Joachim’s third status is the abbot’s version of the
post-antichrist final period of rest, originally suggested by Jerome and
gradually developed during the intervening centuries. Thus the status of
the Holy Spirit must follow the final antichrist and immediately pre-
cede the end of history. The seventh head of the dragon must be the
final antichrist and the third status will not last very long. To my knowl-
edge Lerner has not explained how his thesis would affect Joachim’s
expectation of the conversion of the Jews. Lerner’s interpretation and
mine are virtually antithetical, but even if I cannot accept his thesis,
readers should be alerted to it.49
According to my interpretation, Joachim’s attitude toward the Jews
and his hope for their conversion must be understood within the frame-
work of the secunda diffinitio, although Joachim expected the conversion
itself to take place at the end of the second status and the beginning
of the third status of the prima diffinitio, or as part of the end of the
“exile to Babylon” and “exodus from Babylon” that were the culmi-
nation of both diffinitiones.50 Joachim’s thinking went back primarily to

48 See above, p. ; E.R. Daniel, “A New Understanding of Joachim: The Concords,

the Exile, and the Exodus,” Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, ed.
Roberto Rusconi (Rome, ), –. Relegating the end of history and the final,
traditional antichrist to the distant future was characteristic of the reformists. One key
reason may have been that the association was being made between the Last World
Emperor and the final antichrist and, by removing the final antichrist to a time well
beyond the present, the reformists were eliminating the Last World Emperor from a
significant role.
49 The thesis has been developed in a series of articles that include R. Lerner, “The

Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress
in Medieval Thought,” Traditio,  (), –; “Joachim of Fiore’s Breakthrough to
Chiliasm,” in Cristianesimo nella storia,  (), –; and “Antichrist and Antichrists
in Joachim of Fiore,” Speculum,  (), –. All of these articles are collected
together in Italian translations in Robert Lerner, Refrigerio dei santi: Gioacchino da Fiore
e l’escatologia medievale (Rome, ). For a survey of this and several recent editions of
Joachim’s works, see E.R. Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore: New Editions and Studies,” Cris-
tianesimo nella storia,  (), –. Lerner has treated Joachim’s attitudes toward
the Jews in his The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia,
), which appeared too late to be adequately treated in this article.
50 E.R. Daniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington,
           

Paul, expressed in Rom –, where Paul himself confronted the Jew-
ish rejection of the gospel and the Gentile acceptance of it and argued
that the Jewish “blindness” would last until the plenitudo gentium has been
converted and then the whole of Israel would be saved (:–).
According to Paul,
It is not those born in the course of nature who are children of God;
it is the children born through God’s promise who are reckoned as
Abraham’s descendants … But that is not all, for Rebekah’s children
had one and the same father, our ancestor Isaac; and yet, in order that
God’s selective purpose might stand, based not upon men’s deeds but
upon the call of God, she was told, even before they were born, when
they had as yet done nothing, good or ill, “The elder shall be servant to
the younger”; and that accords with text of Scripture, “Jacob I loved and
Esau I hated.” (Rom :–; cf. Gen : and Mal :–; trans. The New
English Bible)

God’s promises to Abraham and their terrestrial or spiritual fulfillment

are the starting point of Joachim’s two diffinitiones. Book Two of the Liber
de concordia began by quoting Paul: ‘“The first man,’ according to the
apostle, ‘was earthly from the earth, the second celestial from heaven”’
( Cor :; my translation).51 Then Joachim put into the mouth of a
Jew the objection: “I do not follow an earthly man, who indeed sinned
in paradise; but I obey Moses, whom I know to be a just and holy
man, thoroughly tested and a friend of God.”52 Joachim, however, went
on to argue that the Jews traced themselves to Abraham as their lineal
ancestor and they understood God’s promises to Abraham in terms of
Canaan, the promised land. Christians, on the contrary, were descen-
dants of Abraham by faith and understood those same promises spiri-
tually to refer to the liberty of the church.53 Hence Jews understood the

Ky., ; reprinted St. Bonaventure, ), focused on the motivation of and theology
behind missions especially from the late twelfth century onward. The Jews are dealt
with at various points. E.R. Daniel, “Apocalyptic Conversion: The Joachite Alternative
to the Crusades,” Traditio,  (), –; reprinted in Delno West, Joachim of Fiore in
Christian Thought,  vols. (New York, ), .–. There I argued that apocalyptic
conversion was motivated partly by disillusionment with the crusades.
51 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. : “Primus homo,” ut ait

apostolus, “de terra terrenus, secundus homo de celo celestis.”

52 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. : “An forte dicturus est

mihi Iudeus: ‘Ego non sequor terrenum hominem, quem peccasse constat in paradiso;
sed obedio Moysi, quem scio esse uirum iustum et sanctum, uirum probatissimum et
amicum dei.”’
53 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , pp. –. This culminates in

the following conclusion: “Multum ergo distat inter utrumque celum, multa inter
 .  

Hebrew Scriptures “literally,” were descendants of Abraham by blood,

and expected the promises to Abraham to be fulfilled in a glorious
and triumphant kingdom under a descendant of David whose capi-
tal would be Jerusalem. Christians, by contrast, understood those same
Scriptures spiritually, descended from Abraham by faith, and expected
the new Jerusalem, envisioned in chapter  of Revelation. Thus, when
Joachim referred to the Jews as carnal, he meant their literalism and
their insistence that they alone were Abraham’s heirs who must some-
day inherit the Land of Promise. Note, however, that Joachim was a
reformist apocalyptic. Most Christians were more carnal than the Jews,
even if the Christians pretended to be otherwise. Morever, carnalitas for
Joachim meant worldliness, being attached to and desiring the things of
this world.
Joachim took up the issue of God’s rejection of the elder son of
Isaac, Esau, and his election of the younger son, Jacob, in his Dialogi
de prescientia dei et predestinatione electorum. The election of Jacob was not
due to his merits but to the mercy of God. Esau was rejected because
God knew that in pride he would reject God’s mercy. The humble
embrace God’s mercy, the proud reject it. Thus Joachim argued that
the Jews had been humble when they were in Egypt, but by the time
of Jesus they had become proud, while the Gentiles were then in
humiliation. By the s, however, the Latin Christians had become
proud and arrogant—effectively, they were “Babylon”—while the Jews
had been humbled and would, therefore, be saved.54 Gian Luca Potestà
has described this type of proceeding as “a spirale.”55 Both Potestà and
Matthias Kaup agree that this same principle functioned in the De
prophetia ignota.56

utrumque testamentum differentia est. Differunt sane utriusque natiuitates; differunt

uite; differunt bella; differunt et uictorie. Illi [Jews] enim ex carne, isti [Christians],
ut iam dixi, ex aqua et spiritu nati sunt. Illi faciebant uxoribus libellum repudii et
simul habebant quot uolebant; isti in typo Christi et ecclesie singuli singulas tenere
iubentur, quas etiam nec dimittere licet nisi ob solam causam fornicationis. Illi pro
terrenis possessionibus pugnauerunt; siue ut optinerent non suas, siue ne in iam suis
cedere hostibus uiderentur; isti non tam pro terra aut qualibet terrena substantia quam
pro sancte libertate ecclesie et salute fratrum suorum preliasse noscuntur …” Joachim’s
Gregorian outlook is clearly indicated in his statement that Christians, or better truly
“spiritual” Christians, struggle for the liberty of the church.
54 Joachim, Dialogi de prescientia dei et predestinatione electorum, ed. Gian Luca Potestà

(Rome, ), –, –. Pietro de Leo, Gioacchino da Fiore, pp. –, had edited
the Dialogi in .
55 Joachim, Dialogi de prescientia dei, .
56 Joachim, De prophetia ignota, –.
           

If we realize that pride is the underlying cause of carnality and pos-

sessiveness and that humility alone enables us truly to desire spiritual
goods, then Joachim’s arguments in the Dialogi were the same as those
in the Liber de concordia. Joachim was both a disciple of Bernard and a
forerunner of Francis of Assisi.
Joachim had two goals when he wrote his Adversus Iudaeos. By refut-
ing Jewish objections against and criticisms of Christianity, the abbot
intended to strengthen “those [Christians] whose weak souls might suf-
fer shipwreck in their faith” if the Jewish arguments were not convinc-
ingly answered. Joachim also addressed the Jews “because he sensed
that the time was near for mercy for them, for their consolation, and
for their conversion.”57 Joachim limited himself to using “authorities”
from the Hebrew Scriptures to refute Jewish denial of the triune nature
of God, of the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus, and of the spir-
itual understanding, “establishing the letter that kills” (cf.  Cor :):58
“You ought not to think that the holy evangelists handed down to us a
new faith which might be alien from that of the prophets and contrary
to the faith of your fathers, but [think that] those things have been spo-
ken to you enigmatically, [while] these [same] things have been handed
down to us more openly.”59
Joachim next quoted the opening of John’s Gospel which describes
the Word (Verbum) as the agent of God. Dabar, Joachim noted, was

57 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, : “Contra uetustam duritiam Iudeorum iccirco nonnulli

agendum extimant auctoritatibus scripturarum quia, si eis aduersantibus fidei nostre

non esset qui resisteret ex aduerso, daretur occasio inimicis crucis Christi insultandi de
simplicitate credentium nomini christiano, et hi, qui imbecilles essent animo, paterentur
naufragium circa fidem. Michi autem non modo propter istud eorum contentioni et
perfidie obuiare pro uiribus uoti est, uerum etiam quia adesse sentio tempus miserendi
eis, tempus concolationis et conuersionis eorum.” Cf. Aduersus Iudeos, p. , where
Joachim wrote: “Sed ne forte fiant uobis in scandalum uerba uite, annuntio uobis
adesse tempus consolationis uestre tantum ut afflicti pro peccatis uestris agnoscatis
et confiteamini iniquitates uestras, scientes et intelligentes quod non absque cause
abstulerit uobis deus sacerdotium et regnum et uentilauerit uos in terras inimicorum
uestrorum.”
58 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, p. . Joachim seeks to prove that God is triune according

to the Hebrew Scriptures on pp. –. On pp. – he argues that the Son of God
appeared in those same Scriptures as an angel or messenger or as a deity and on
pp. – that God is seen in them as Spirit.
59 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, : “Nec putare debetis nouam fidem tradidisse nobis

sanctos euangelistas que sit aliena a prophetis et contraria fidei patrum uestrorum,
sed quod illi in enigmate sunt loquuti, hoc isti nobis manifestius tradiderunt.” One of
Joachim’s favorite texts was  Cor :, “Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate,
tunc autem facie ad faciem …” I believe that he was alluding to that text here.
 .  

the Hebrew equivalent of verbum. Joachim cited John :– on the

sending of the Holy Spirit, whose Hebrew equivalent according to
Joachim was ruah.60 Joachim then equated the Verbum of John with the
Sapientia of Prov :– which speaks of Wisdom as an agent through
whom God founded the earth.61 Wisdom was the offspring of God, and
thus the Hebrew Scriptures, speaking of Wisdom, described the Son
of God.62 Joachim acknowledged that the incarnation of God through
Mary scandalized the Jews.63 Joachim explained that God’s motive was
to exhibit humility and to inspire love in us.64
While Joachim was working his way through the prophetic texts
that witnessed to the incarnation, he came to Daniel , the vision of
the statue. According to the abbot, the golden kingdom was that of
Nebuchadnezzar, the silver that of Alexander, the bronze that of the
Roman Empire, and the iron that of the Saracens “by which many
kingdoms have been and are daily conquered.” The kingdom of Christ
has begun among these, it descends from heaven without hands, and
it will destroy all these kingdoms, “so that it itself alone may be spread
on the earth and thus extended may remain everywhere in eternity.”65
The Jews denied, before Pilate, that Jesus was the Christ and from that
moment ceased to be his people. For the most part they became blind
and are about to receive the antichrist. Joachim meant by this that the
Jews had become subject to the antichristian powers in the world as had
the carnal Christians, not that the Jews were to embrace the traditional
or final antichrist.66

60 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –.

61 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, . On the feminine personification of Wisdom as an
agent of God, see Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine
(Berkeley, ), –.
62 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, : “Audite ergo et intelligite, et primoquidem quod

dicit de se ipsa, ut intelliga is aperte dei prolem esse sapientiam, deinde eruditricem,
omnium et creatricem cum deo omnium creaturarum.”
63 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, .
64 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, .
65 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, .
66 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –. Cf. pp. –, where Joachim argues that anyone

who denies that Jesus was the Christ necessarily embraces the antichrist and compares
the Jews with the Patarenes. Antichrist for Joachim did not necessarily mean the final
antichrist described by Adso and, in fact, we probably understand Joachim better
if we think of antichrist as an antichristian power, similar to the many antichrists
of  John :. For the tradition of many antichrists and its connection to clerical
corruption, see the opening paragraph of Adso’s letter, where he states that any cleric
who violates his rule is an antichrist (McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, ) and Bernard of
Clairvaux’s statement that all the ministers are outwardly Christian but inwardly they
           

Then Joachim sought to prove that the coming savior promised by

the Hebrew Scriptures was Jesus Christ. Joachim argued that the Jews
of his day were still blinded by God and thus unable to understand
passages from the prophets that demanded to be interpreted spiritually.
Among other elements that demanded such understanding were the
Sabbath, the law, and circumcision. Joachim insisted that the prophets
intended neither the promise to David nor the promise to restore
Jerusalem to be understood literally. Moreover, Abraham was promised
that the Gentiles would be saved.67
If, moreover, you say, O Jews, that Jesus, son of Mary, was not the Christ,
because he does not save the sons of Israel according to the promise,
we say: “That which he has not done, he will do yet in the end, when
the years of your captivity will have been finished, [those days that are]
designated in the forty days during which the prophet [Ezekiel] lay on
his right side” [cf. Ezek :]. But nevertheless even then some will be
saved as Isaiah the prophet said: “If the number of Israel will have been
like the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved [Isa :].”68

Paul quoted the same text from Isaiah in Romans :, arguing the
same point, another indication that Joachim’s approach to the Jews was
fundamentally Pauline. Paul argued that Jewish blindness was tempo-
rary and would last only until the salvation of the Gentiles had been
completed (Rom :–). Joachim likewise argued that all Israel would
be saved after the Gentiles have become Christian:69
And indeed we have learned from both the Old and New Testaments
that these things [the completion of Gentile conversions and the conver-
sion of all Israel] will happen in the future about the end of the world.

serve antichrist (Bernard, Sermones no. , Opera :). On Joachim and antichrist see
my forthcoming article, “The Double Antichrist and Antichrists in Abbot Joachim,”
to appear in a volume entitled The Apocalypse in Word and Image, being edited by Dr.
Mildred Budney of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence in Princeton, N.J.
67 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –.
68 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –: “Si autem dicitis, o Iudei, non fuisse Christum

Ihesum filium Marie, quia non saluat filios Israel iuxta promissum, dicimus: Quod
non fecit tunc faciet adhuc in fine, cum consummati fuerint anni captiuitatis uestre,
designati in quadraginta diebus quibus iacuit propheta super latus suum dextrum, sed
tamen et tunc saluabit aliquos sicut dicit Isaias propheta: ‘Si fuerit numerus Israel sicut
harena maris, reliquie salue fient.”’
69 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, : “Quamuis etsi tunc non saluauit generaliter Israel

eo quod non esset eo tempore aptus ad salutem, non ideo tamen minus saluator est,
quia et mox ut ipse uenit salue facte sunt gentes, et ad ultimum per eius euangelium
saluabitur Israel sicut et Apostolus dicit: ‘Cum plenitudo gentium intrauerit, tunc omnis
Israel saluus fiet”’ (Rom :–). See also pp. –.
 .  

But, desiring at the least to snatch some of you from the kingdom of
shadows before that general time on account of the nearness of the light,
we worked in this little book to give you advance notice, O Jewish man,
about the sweet blessings [that are to come], imitating that dog that pre-
ceded the angel [Raphael], the leader of Tobias [who was] approaching
his blind father so that [his parent] might receive the light.70
Joachim concluded the Adversus Iudaeos by interpreting the book of
Tobit as an allegory of the history of the Jews. At the end of this
exposition, Joachim hinted that, just as Tobias had returned home after
celebrating his marriage to Sarah, so after a spiritual marriage between
the remnants of the Jews and the Gentile successors of the apostles, the
rulers of the church would approach the Jews with true love.71
To understand Joachim’s meaning, we must return to the Liber de con-
cordia. Joachim expected that the “exile in Babylon” was about to cul-
minate shortly after . Then two persecutors, the sixth and seventh
heads of the dragon, would attack “Babylon” and liberate the church.72
A new pope would lead the return from “Babylon,” “coming back not
by walking or moving from place to place, but because he will be given
complete freedom to innovate the Christian religion and to preach the
word of God.”73 This will inaugurate a Sabbath that will last until the
distant final end of history.74 This Sabbath is the third status, the cul-
mination of the “exodus” that had begun with Bernard, Pope Euge-
nius III, and the five Cistercian motherhouses.75 The Cistercians, how-
ever, have begun to rejoice in having more and more sheep and plough
oxen, just as the Israelite tribes rejoiced in having larger families. Thus

70 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –: “Sed cupientes aliquos uestrum etiam ante tempus

illud generale saltim pro ipsa uicinitate lucis de regno eripere tenebrarum, dedimus
operam in hoc opusculo preuenire uos, o uiri Iudei, in benedictionibus dulcedinis
imitantes catulum illum qui precedebat angelum ductorem Tobie appropinquantis ceco
patri ut acciperet lumen.”
71 Joachim, Aduersus Iudeos, –. Joachim concludes: “Sane celebratis nuptiis reuer-

titur Tobias, duce angelo, ad cecum patrem, quia peracto spiritali matrimonio inter
reliquas Iudeorum et gentes successores apostolorum, qui usque hodie illorum uice
regunt ecclesiam, ducti a Spiritu sancto, reuertentur animo et predicatione ad popu-
lum Iudeorum, ut ostendens illi affectum compassionis, qui designatur in felle, hec est
enim uera dilectio et probatio caritatis, recipiat lumen quod iam dudum amisit, et con-
fiteatur domino quam bonus, quam in seculum misericordia eius.” See also Joachim,
Liber de concordia noui ac ueteris testamenti, Bk. , chap.  (Venice, ; reprinted Frankfurt
a.M., ) fols. va–va.
72 See above, p. .
73 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. .
74 Joachim, Liber de conocrdia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. –, pp. –.
75 See above, p. .
           

the Cistercians must give way to a “likeness indeed of the apostolic

life, in which no terrestrial possession will be acquired by heredity but
rather will be sold,” just as the Christians in Jerusalem sold their pos-
sessions and deposited the proceedings in a common chest (Acts :–
).76 In this coming “order,” no one will rejoice in having sons, but
they will want to have brothers, just as the pope addresses other bish-
ops as brothers, because for fathers to minister to sons contradicts the
rational order but for brothers to minister to brothers is natural.77
Alongside the many goods that the Jerusalem Christians received
came, however, “that deadly disease which would devour them, namely
the zeal of pharisaical superstition and emulation of the Law.”78 Jo-
achim cited Acts  where Jewish Christians sought to insist that Gen-
tile converts must be circumcised and obey the law just as the Jewish
converts did (cf. Gal ). Those Jewish Christians have a counterpart in
the twelfth century, according to Joachim, in those monks “who put
ancestral traditions ahead of the grace of God,” and who lacking char-
ity, vaunt their own constitutions as holier than those of other orders.79
For just as then Pharisees threw themselves before men on account of
their righteousness, thus now some monks, thinking that the perfection
of justice and eternal salvation [depends on] the religious habit and not
rather on humility and love, justify themselves before men, paying no
attention to what the Lord said about the two men who “went up to the
temple in order to pray” [Luke :].80
But, Joachim added, the faith of the Pharisees was true, while that of
the Sadducees was false, and Paul, Nicodemus, Gamaliel and many
others were Pharisees.
I think, nevertheless, as I have already said, that in those men whom
the world expects to come soon—another one being added about whom
there is no manifest word—that the concord to Zechariah, John the Bap-
tist, and to the man Christ Jesus will be consummated; in which manifes-
tation there will also be, as we believe, manifest concord of the twelve
apostles, especially moreover of John the evangelist and of the seven
churches that were in Asia, or of the seven tribes that afterward received

76 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. . The translated phrase

reads: “Necesse quippe est ut succedat similitudo uero apostolice uite, in qua non
acquirebatur possessio terrene hereditatis, sed uendebatur potius …”
77 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , pp. –.
78 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. : “… non defuit uel ipse

pestis que consumeret eam, zelus scilicet pharisayce superstitionis et emulatio legis …”
79 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. .
80 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. .
 .  

their inheritance. “And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached

throughout the entire world” [Matt :]; and the spiritual understand-
ing will come to the Jews and like a thunderbolt shatter the hardness of
their heart, so that that promise that is written in Malachi will be fulfilled:
“Behold I will send to you Elijah the prophet, before the great and hor-
rible day of the Lord. And he will convert the hearts of the fathers to the
sons and the hearts of the sons to the fathers; lest perhaps I come and I
strike the land with anathema” [Mal :–].81
Who, in Joachim’s thinking, were these three who would be the con-
cords in this final exodus of the seven tribes that had received their
inheritance last, of the apostles, and of the seven churches in Asia, and
who would bring about the full conversion of the Gentiles and the sal-
vation of all Israel? In the Liber de concordia, Joachim introduced a circle
figure in which the three larger circles each contained three smaller
circles. The third larger circle was labeled tertius status and, below this,
“the spiritual men preach in the world so that they may gain some” and
then “these spiritual men cross over to the harsher life lest they perish
with the sons of the world.” Finally, “those who believe the spiritual
men enter into that rest about which the holy prophets spoke.”82 In the
Expositio in Apocalypsim, Joachim argued that the two witnesses of Reve-
lation : would be two orders of spiritual men rather than individuals,
one of which would preach while the other would contemplate.83
Joachim dreamed of a future Christian world in which both the
Jewish and Gentile peoples would flower as never before. He envisioned
this dream in his figure of a vine from the stump of which, labeled as
Noah, arise three shoots. The shoot named Ham soon ends but those
of Shem and Japheth, representing the Jewish and Gentile peoples
respectively, intertwine to form three circles, the last of which must
represent either the tertius status or the Sabbath of the second tempus.
In this circle, below which is written Spiritus sanctus, both shoots flower
abundantly, filling and exceeding the limits of the circle.84

81 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chap. , p. .

82 Joachim, Liber de concordia, Bk. , Pt. , chaps. –, Figure Two, pp. –. I have
translated from the version of the Figure that is found in Vat. Lat. .
83 Joachim, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ad. :, Pt. , fols. ra–vb. See my forth-

coming article, “The Double Antichrist and Antichrists in Joachim” cited in n. 

above.
84 Joachim, Liber figurarum, tav. xxii. See Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of

Joachim of Fiore, –.

           

Joachim’s thinking about the Jews was both Pauline and reformist.
The Jews played a key role in his version of salvation history and
the reform of the church. The Jews were carnal, but this meant only
that they expected God to fulfill his promises in literal, earthly forms,
namely a Davidic ruler and the reconstitution of the kingdom in Pales-
tine. Their blindness to the spiritual understanding had lasted until
Joachim’s time. Such blindness, however, afflicted carnal Christians
also. Joachim could speak of the Jews as belonging to the antichrist but
for him all those who were carnal belonged to the antichristian powers.
Soon the coming spiritual men would liberate not only the church but
also the Jews from carnality.
Joachim’s thinking about the Jews stood in striking contrast to the
prevailing trend in the last decades of the twelfth century. He did not
focus on their role in the crucifixion, he did not demonize them and
make them part of a devilish conspiracy against Christendom, he did
not argue that they ought to be enserfed and treated harshly, and he
certainly would have fought against massacres and forced conversions.
Joachim assumed that the conversion of the Jews would take place
only when the appropriate time came according to God’s plan and
he assumed that time was near. He also had a glimmering of the
instrument of that conversion, an order or orders that would embrace
genuine poverty, that would be characterized by true humility and love,
and that would preach the spiritual understanding. Might the friars,
both the Franciscans and the Dominicans, be just what Joachim had
envisioned? Popes Innocent III, Honorius III and Gregory IX were
all well aware of Joachim and may well have been sympathetic to his
views.85 Joachim created expectations among his followers that they
hoped the friars would fulfill. He also gave both his disciples and the
friars a model for their relations to the Jews.

85 Grundmann, Zur Biographie, pp. –, discussed the career of Rainer of Ponza

and his possible influence on Innocent’s, Honorius’s and Gregory’s attitudes toward
Joachim. Michael Cusato, “Non propheta, sed prophanus apostata”: The Eschatology of Elias
of Cortona and his Deposition as Minister in ,“ in That Others may Know and Love
(see above n. ), pp. –, discusses the question of Joachim and Gregory IX. Sev-
eral papers at the recent o Congresso sponsored by the Centro internazionale di Studi
Gioachimiti dealt with Joachim and Innocent III (see above n. ).
This page intentionally left blank
 THE ANTICHRIST AND THE
JEWS IN FOUR THIRTEENTH-CENTURY
APOCALYPSE COMMENTARIES

D B

The aim of this essay is a relatively limited one: to describe the apoca-
lyptic role assigned to the Jews in four thirteenth-century commentaries
on the book of Revelation. That is, to be sure, a rather small sample,
since we know many more Apocalypse commentaries written in that
period;1 yet it is hard to imagine doing justice to any more in an essay
of this length, and these four are related in some important ways.
We will begin by examining three commentaries together. The rea-
son for considering them in this way is that they share a remarkable
amount of common material, and they do so in a way that suggests
a fourth, still undiscovered commentary that exerted influence on all
three. At least two of them are by Franciscans. One may well be by
Vital du Four, though there are suggestions to the contrary.2 At any
rate, we will call him “Vital.”
A second commentary, also clearly Franciscan, was published in
 under the name of Alexander of Hales, then in  among
Bonaventure’s works.3 Modern scholars have been unwilling to assign it
to either Alexander or Bonaventure,4 and that seems unquestionable in

1 For a more general overview, see my “Mendicant Readings of the Apocalypse,” in

The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, ), –.
2 See Dionisio Pacetti, “L’Èxpositio super Apocalypsim di Mattia di Svezia,” Archi-

vum Franciscanum Historicum,  (), –. It is attributed to Vital by MSS Assisi

 and , and to both Vital and Fratre Petro doctore sacrosante romane ecclesie (by different
hands) in Assisi . A note inside the front cover of  argues for authorship by
“Petrus,” blaming the Vital attribution on confusion caused by the common incipit; yet
the note appeals for support to the Vital attribution in Assisi , which is probably
by Iohannes Gallensis. Most of the work found in Assisi , etc., is published in
Bernardinus Senensis, Commentarii in apocalypsim, in Opera (Paris, ), vol. , but the
edition turns to a completely different work at Rev : and thereafter echoes various
authors, including Guilelmus de Militona and Nicholas de Lyra. In fact, it differs from
the work in Assisi , etc., at specific points throughout. I shall cite from MS Assisi .
3 Alexander Halensis, Commentarii in apocalypsim (Paris, ); Bonaventure, Sancti

Bonaventurae … Operum … Supplementum (Trent, ), vol. , –. I shall cite the
former.
4 For manuscript evidence and comments on style and date see the analysis by the
  

Bonaventure’s case, though somewhat more ambiguous in Alexander’s.

We will call the author “Alexander” here without implying that it was
actually he who wrote it.
The third commentary, which begins with the words Vidit Iacob,
has been assigned to Hugh of St. Cher by Robert Lerner.5 There is
much to be said for the identification, since the commentary shares
common material, not only with Vital and Alexander, but with another
commentary beginning Aser pinguis, and the latter is probably by Hugh,
or at least by a group of scholars working under him. If Vidit Iacob
really is by Hugh, that makes it substantially earlier than the one
presumably by Vital du Four, though not necessarily earlier than the
one we are calling “Alexander.” There is much to be done on these
commentaries. The present essay represents no more than an initial
foray into a complicated matter someone might profitably investigate.
What do we find in the commentaries? First, we find traces of an
exegetical tradition that had been building almost from the beginning
of Christianity, one that assigned the Jews an important though not
particularly laudable role in the coming apocalyptic crisis. In this tra-
dition it was suggested that the antichrist would be born of the Jews.6
In some versions this expectation became more specific: Some said he
would be the son of a Jewish prostitute. Others insisted that he would
born from the tribe of Dan. It was widely believed that once he began
his rise, the antichrist would be recognized by the Jews as the Messiah
and they would flock to him. He would rebuild the temple and rule
from Jerusalem. One could go on, but there is little point in doing so.
The important thing is that by the thirteenth century such ideas had
worked their way into earlier Apocalypse commentaries and exegetical
aids like the Glossa ordinaria and Peter Lombard’s Glossatura magna.7 Thus
they were very hard to ignore, and commentators felt required to work
them in somehow.

Quaracchi editors in their prolegomena to Bonaventure’s Bible commentaries in Opera,

(Quaracchi, –), vol. , ix–xiii.
5 Robert Lerner, “Poverty, Preaching and Eschatology in the Revelation Commen-

taries of ‘Hugh of St. Cher,”’ in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in memory of Beryl
Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford, ), –.
6 The following is covered well in Richard Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages

(Seattle, ).
7 Thus the Glossa and the Lombard both mention that the antichrist will be born of

the tribe of Dan, and the Lombard says that under him the Jews will rebuild the temple
in Jerusalem. Opera omnia Walafridi Strabi in Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina
(Paris, –), vol. , a; Glossatura magna in Migne, Patrologiae, vol. , b.
      

Nevertheless, our three exegetes were also heirs to what seems to

have been the standard approach to the Apocalypse at Paris (and per-
haps elsewhere as well) during the latter half of the thirteenth century,
an approach that had been taking shape at least since Bede.8 According
to this interpretation, the Apocalypse was divided into seven visions,
the first four of which were thought to recapitulate church history as a
whole. Since church history itself was seen as divided into seven peri-
ods, that meant four runs through those historical periods. The last
three visions were seen as dealing with the final times.
The sevenfold division of church history provided a framework in
which the church proceeded through a series of distinct challenges,
each countered by a specific group within the church. The Jews pre-
sented the first threat, and it was the apostles who checked it. Then
came the pagans versus the martyrs; then the heretics were com-
bated by the church fathers; then the hypocrites were countered by
the monks. Thus, in the first four periods, the church was opposed
by Judaism, paganism, heresy, and hypocrisy. By the fifth period, the
devil, recognizing that one temptation at a time had not worked, tried
combining them. The fifth period—which these commentaries saw as
just underway—and sixth period that would follow it, instead of getting
new temptations, would see the old ones intensify until they reached a
climax in the persecution of the antichrist. The fifth period was dom-
inated by the precursors of the antichrist, who prepared the way for
him; and the sixth was the period of the antichrist himself. Then, once
the antichrist was gone, the world would be granted a brief seventh
period of peace before the final judgment.
The important thing for our purposes is that this framework lim-
ited the role Judaism could play in apocalyptic expectation. The Jews
held center stage as adversaries only in the first period, bowing out the
moment the pagan emperors began their persecution. They were, of
course, still around and would play some role in the fifth and sixth peri-
ods, but they would be no more than one of several distractions. On the
whole they shared the bill with the Muslims, heretics, and hypocrites,
and of these groups the Jews were given least attention. Top billing
was actually shared by the heretics and hypocrites. Of the former,
two groups were given particular attention, the Cathars and “worldly
philosophers.” Of these, the former are often mentioned, yet one gets

8 See Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia, ), chap. .

  

the impression they are not the sort of thing these exegetes have in
mind when they draw a close connection between the antichrist and
heresy. In fact, the Cathars seem almost diametrically opposed to the
sort of allure the antichrist will exert. The latter will tempt people away
from Christ with worldly promises.9 He will offer a very material sort of
temptation, one that takes the world and the senses seriously. Given the
medieval Christian tendency to speak of the Jews as seeking a worldly
messiah who would establish a worldly reign, one might expect our
exegetes to speak a great deal about Judaism in this context; yet they
do not. They find it much more congenial to identify the antichrist’s
material temptation with the one offered by philosophy in their own
day, presumably in the form of heterodox Aristotelianism, although the
connection is not explicitly made.10 In the final analysis the references
to heresy in the time of the antichrist are suggestive but not terribly
informative. Typical is Alexander’s complaint that “today falsity and
novelty seem more pleasing than catholic truth, and vain subtlety excit-
ing admiration finds a more willing audience than useful truth leading
to repentance.”11 One can do pretty much what one pleases with such
statements, although they are clearly related to a widespread Franciscan
unease concerning the sort of education disseminated at Paris under the
impact of Aristotelian philosophy.
When we proceed from heresy to hypocrisy we find a great deal
more with which to work. All three of these exegetes reserve their most
withering scorn for the praelati, the corrupt church leaders of their time
who are preparing the way for the antichrist and will presumably serve
him when he arrives. If the antichrist promises material rewards he
cannot fail with this group. It would be hard to overemphasize the
detestation of contemporary ecclesiastics shown by all three exegetes.
Other strata of the church are identified with the age of the antichrist
from time to time, particularly princes;12 but none of them really bears
comparison with the prelates when it comes to putting a human face
on corruption.

9Alexander, .
10 See especially Vital, va–vb, rb–va, ra–vb, rb, rb–va. This interest
is also seen in Vidit Iacob, , and Alexander,  (which reflect the common source)
and in Alexander, .
11 Alexander, . Essentially the same statement is found in Vital, rb and Vidit

Iacob, .
12 E.g., Alexander, –.
      

The question, of course, is how far up the hierarchy they think the
corruption extends or will extend. Does it (or will it) extend to the
pope? This is a crucial question. It is one thing to envisage a hierarchy
that is largely corrupt despite the efforts of the pope, and quite another
to imagine one in which the corruption will be directed from the top by
the pope himself. Our exegetes are understandably unwilling to spend
much time on the latter scenario, but two of the three are willing to
entertain it, or at least seem to hint at it as a possibility.13
The principal effect of this concentration on heresy and ecclesiasti-
cal corruption is to shift attention from the enemies without to those
within. If the antichrist’s precursors have been working within the
church throughout the fifth period to prepare the way for his arrival
in the sixth, then it is hard to imagine how the Jews could play much
of a role in the great upheaval. In fact, the most significant role played
by the Jews in the apocalyptic scenario is not as agents of the antichrist
but as converts to Christianity after the antichrist’s demise.14
Having said so much, we must remind ourselves that a few other
elements, the flotsam and jetsam of previous exegesis, occasionally
bob to the surface. For example in dealing with Revelation :, the
beast rising from the sea, two of our three exegetes, Alexander and
Hugh, interpret the sea as a reference to the Jews and cite the claim
that the antichrist will be born of the tribe of Dan.15 Nevertheless,
Alexander offers it as one of several possibilities and makes it clear that
he personally prefers to interpret the sea as the Christian laity.
Again, in reporting a series of views concerning the identity of Gog
and Magog (Rev :), Alexander and Hugh say that, according to the
Jews, they are people in the east who will come at the end to attack
Jerusalem. They add that the Jews expect Jerusalem to be rebuilt at
that time by their Messiah and look forward to living in glory for one
thousand years, then being transferred into heaven.16
Another, more important anomaly occurs in the process of dealing
with Revelation :, in which the first of seven angels empties his
vial, smiting those who bear the mark of the beast. Two of the three
exegetes—again Alexander and Hugh—make this the only passage in

13 See my Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, f.

14 Alexander, ; Vidit Iacob, .
15 Alexander, ; Vidit Iacob, .
16 Alexander, ; Vidit Iacob, . Vital, r, offers as one current interpretation

that they are a people heretofore imprisoned within the Caspian Mountains who will
go to Jerusalem in the time of the antichrist, but he does not mention the Jews.
  

the entire Apocalypse in which the Jews as a group are directly related
to the antichrist, not merely during the sixth period but throughout
history.17 Both apply the passage to the punishment of the Jews in the
first century and argue that, even though the antichrist did not even
exist at the time, the Jews nonetheless showed themselves to be his
followers by rejecting Christ.
So far the connection seems nothing more than the exegetes’ effort
to respect the logic of their own exegetical assumptions. The mark
of the beast is a sign of the antichrist, yet the first angel must refer
to the first period and thus to punishment of the Jews in the first
period. Therefore the Jews in the first period must in some sense have
been followers of the antichrist before he himself appeared. One might
imagine these scholars saying the same thing of the Romans if those
with the mark of the beast had been exterminated by the second angel
rather than the first. Perhaps they would have, but the fact remains that
Alexander and Hugh both go on to extend the exegesis in a dangerous
direction. Both note that the Jews not only were but will in fact bear
the mark of the beast, because they still await a messiah and when the
antichrist comes they will think their expectations fulfilled. Thus they
will become the antichrist’s followers.
These passages demonstrate the peculiarly opportunistic nature of
the exegesis carried out by our three commentators. They are willing to
use bits of tradition as they come to hand, so their interpretation moves
in several directions, often without much sense that it is doing so. The
result is an apocalyptic scenario that contains a number of elements.
These elements are not inconsistent, but neither are they all equally
significant. The Jews are included in the general scenario, but in the
final analysis their role is a minor one. The general tendency here is to
see the apocalyptic tribulation as a result, not of outside threats, but of
trouble within the Christian community.
When we turn from these three exegetes to our fourth commentator,
Peter John Olivi, whose commentary was produced at the very end of
the thirteenth century, what we find is in many ways not so much a
departure from their reading as a systematization and radicalization of
it. Like the other three, Olivi, while he mentions the Jews from time to

17 Alexander, ; Vidit Iacob, f. Vital, r, is less clear. He says they “habent

caracterem bestie, idest nomen antichristi profitendo, et in eos quod adoraverunt

ymaginem eius, statuam edificando, ac per hoc idolatrando.”
      

time, is more interested in the heresy and ecclesiastical corruption he

sees within the church. Like the other three, he mentions the Cathars
but does not portray them as a major factor in the temptation of
the antichrist. Like them, he is more interested in the possibilities
of heterodox Aristotelianism. Like them, he lays heavy stress on the
decline of the church in the fifth period as a preparation for the
antichrist in the sixth; and, like them, he gives a lion’s share of his
attention to the praelati.
Nevertheless, all of this fits together much more neatly in Olivi’s
commentary. The basic opposition leading to the persecution of the
antichrist, one between carnality and spirituality, is defined by Olivi
in such a way as to make it clear what the Jews, Muslims, Cathars,
heterodox Aristotelians, and corrupt churchmen all have in common.
All are characterized by an excessive evaluation of and reliance on the
senses and the material world. His explanation certainly walks on all
fours in the case of the Cathars, but at least he tries to work them into
a consistent argument.
Moreover, he is much clearer than the others as to what will happen.
The others speak of ecclesiastical corruption but cannot bring them-
selves to consider the possibility that the pope himself may become its
chief proponent. Olivi is perfectly willing to consider that scenario. In
fact his notion of the two antichrists, the mystical and the great one,
allows him to suggest that not one but two popes may play the role of
antichrist in the near future. He always states the matter tentatively—
indeed he states most matters tentatively when he moves beyond his
own time into the future—but the idea of a pope as antichrist seems
very plausible to him.
Olivi’s systematizing tendencies are aided by his devotion to a slightly
different conception of the sixth period than that found in the prior
three exegetes. They see it as the culmination under the antichrist of
the corruption already increasing in the fifth period. Olivi sees it as
that, but he also sees it as a time of positive change as well. From the
days of Francis of Assisi and Joachim of Fiore, something radically new
has been happening in the church. Olivi sees in the Franciscan rule
and in Joachite exegesis two indications that the world is entering a
new age with greater spiritual possibilities. It is entering the third age
of history, that of the Holy Spirit. This third age will not replace Christ
and the Bible, but it will see Christ’s work in a slightly different way and
the Bible read in a slightly different way. Olivi speaks of Christ’s three
advents: in the flesh, in the spirit, and in judgment. Christ comes in the
  

flesh at the end of the first age of history to usher in the second, and in
the spirit at the end of the second age to usher in the third.
This sense of a clash between two tendencies in the sixth period
helps Olivi to make sense of ecclesiastical behavior in his time. His own
age is much like the first century, when Christ’s advent in the flesh
brought in the second age. At such key moments of historical change
the old order, the religious establishment, is apt to prove itself inflexible.
Hardened into the corrupt, carnal ways of the declining old era, it fails
to recognize novelty as God’s work and thus persecutes it. Thus Christ
was persecuted by the priests and Pharisees, and thus adherents of the
Franciscan rule will be persecuted by the new priests and Pharisees, the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The result will be similar yet different. In the first century the apos-
tles, rejected by Jewish leaders, turned to the Gentiles. In the near
future the tide will be reversed. Adherents of the new age, persecuted
by the Catholic hierarchy and the purported religious experts, will seek
refuge outside the Latin church and will find the Greeks, Muslims,
Mongols, and Jews more receptive to their message than the Catholic
hierarchy was. The order is significant, since at one point Olivi seems
to suggest that it represents the general sequence of conversion in the
future;18 yet he also thinks the conversion is already underway, having
begun symbolically with Francis’s mission among the Muslims; and he
expects to see substantial success, not only after the antichrist’s death,
but before it as well.
All of this gives Olivi’s treatment of the Jews a particularly noncon-
frontational quality. They represent, to be sure, one variety of carnality
with their expectation of a messiah who will be an earthly ruler. They
must, to be sure, become Christians if they are to be saved. Neverthe-
less, they will play a negligible role in the temptation of the antichrist
and a very big one in the progress of the new age outside the bounds
of Latin Catholicism. In other words, the Jews may be carnal, but they
will prove no more so than the ecclesiastical hierarchy and a whole lot
easier to convert.
Olivi does in fact allow a substantially greater role to external forces
in the temptation of the antichrist than do the other three exegetes, but
it is on the Muslims rather than the Jews that he lavishes his attention.
However tentative and ambiguous his predictions may be, they seem to

18 Lectura super apocalypsim, in Warren Lewis, “Peter John Olivi: Prophet of the Year

” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tübingen,  [hereafter LSA]), .

      

suggest that he anticipates first the temptation of the mystical antichrist,

a persecution of the dawning new age by a pseudo-pope supported
by a secular authority within Christendom; then destruction of these
carnal leaders by a non-Christian army; then the temptation of the
great antichrist, which will involve persecution by a non-Christian ruler
who will be supported by a renegade Christian pseudo-pope. While he
does not assert definitively that the non-Christians will be Muslim, he
clearly favors that identification.19 Olivi’s interest is symptomatic of the
growing attention given to Islam by exegetes from the s through
the early fourteenth century.20
Thus it is not surprising to find Olivi impatient with the idea that
the antichrist will spring from the tribe of Dan. Earlier in his Genesis
commentary he had seemed to accept it as one possibility,21 but in
the Apocalypse commentary he asks rhetorically where Richard of St.
Victor found any authority supporting that theory.22 In the process of
examining the matter he does accept the notion that some Jews will
adhere to the antichrist, but that hardly makes them unique. He will
have a very big following.
Olivi’s somewhat different attitude is seen in his handling of the
angel of Revelation :, who pours the first vial on the earth, wound-
ing those who bear the mark of the beast. He too accepts the seven
angels as punishing God’s enemies in seven periods of church history,
and so he too identifies this vial with punishment of Jews in the first
century. Then he too faces the question of why they are described as
having the mark of the beast. His answer is that “all the reprobate have
some false estimation of him whom they depravedly follow and love
and in whom they think their beatitude lies. Thus what they adore is a
false image rather than the real truth of God. It is, however, really and
truly bestial.”23 Interpreted in this way, the passage has nothing to do
with the Jews in particular and everything to do with sinners in general.
When Olivi does speak of the Jews in particular it is almost always in
connection with conversion. The peculiar flavor of his thought on this
subject is seen in his exegesis of Revelation :, in which the ,

19 See my Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, chap. .

20 See my “Antichrist and Islam in Medieval Franciscan Exegesis,” in Medieval Chris-
tian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays, ed. John Victor Tolan (New York, ), –.
It is recognizable in milder form in Vital’s commentary, also perhaps from the s.
21 MS Florence Bibl. Naz. Conv. sopp. G ., vb–ra.
22 LSA, –.
23 LSA, .
  

are said to be “from each tribe of the sons of Israel.”24 Olivi notes that
in an allegorical sense
Israel stands for all the elect, be they from the Gentiles or Jews, who …
see God through faith, as the Apostle says in his letter to the Romans,
where he distinguishes the Jew according to the spirit from the Jew
according to the flesh and circumcision of the heart in the spirit from lit-
eral circumcision of the flesh. Nevertheless, in the same letter he asserts
that speaking of the Jews in a literal sense—that is, as a people distin-
guished from other people by lineage—all of Israel will be converted to
Christ, and he proves this by citing the prophets. Thus even though some
sealing of a spiritual Israel may occur among the Gentiles along the way,
this scripture will not be fulfilled completely until the sealing described
here takes place among the people lineally descended from Israel or from
Jacob.
The juxtaposition of “allegorical” and “literal” should not lead one to
believe that Olivi is more interested in the first meaning than in the
second. On the contrary, he goes on to argue that when the literal
sense points to some final benefit or event it is actually more spiritual
than the allegorical fulfillment that precedes it. So the salvation of the
Jews is not a divine afterthought. It is a major goal, an important end
toward which history is tending.
Immediately thereafter, Olivi reveals the extent to which this notion
is rooted in his acceptance of the Joachite three ages. He notes that
“according to Joachim, just as the synagogue was propagated from
twelve patriarchs and the Gentile church from twelve apostles, so the
final church of the remaining Jews and Gentiles will be propagated by
twelve evangelical men.” Olivi, of course, knows precisely what to do
with this latter element. “Thus,” he says, “Francis had twelve sons and
associates through which the evangelical order was founded and begun;
and thus too Saint Benedict instituted twelve abbots of the first twelve
monasteries in his order.”
In such passages we see the full significance of Olivi’s insistence
that the dawning third age will witness a reversal of the first-century
movement from Jews to Gentiles. His interest in this phenomenon is
closely connected with his Joachite sense of the first age as that of the
Old Testament, the second as that of the New Testament, and the third
as that of the spiritual concordance of both testaments. Here the idea
is of the first age as that of the Jews, the second as that of the Gentiles,
and the third as that of the final church composed of both.

24 LSA, –.
      

This sense of a third age, an age of substantial length (Olivi antic-

ipates something on the order of  or  years), an age different
from the first age of the Old Testament fathers but also in some ways
different from the second age as well, narrows the gap between his own
conceptual framework and that of the Jews in his day. In his book on
Jewish-Christian disputations, Hyam Maccoby makes an important dis-
tinction. He says,
The Christians contending that the Messiah had come, and the Jews
insisting that he had not yet come, were thus arguing about an essential
point of difference between the two faiths: the nature of salvation. To
Jews, salvation was a social, political concept, involving the radical bet-
terment of the whole of human society … To Christians, salvation was
a matter of the rescue of the individual soul from damnation. Human
history did not enter into their concept of salvation. The function of the
Messiah was to rescue humanity from history.25

While Maccoby’s distinction is generally true, it seems somewhat less

so when applied to Olivi. His belief in Christ’s second coming in the
spirit in his own time to bring in a third age of history, an age of
peace, justice, and illumination, an age that would endure around seven
hundred years into the future, brought him closer than most of his
Christian contemporaries to the Jewish notion of the Messiah. Thus
it is no accident that he is the only one of these exegetes to cite Jewish
thought, not as a foil to Christian thought, but as an authority backing
his own position. He comments that his notion of a long third age
extending to roughly the year  is in harmony with the opinion of
certain ancient masters of the synagogue who said that two thousand
years before the law (that is, to Abraham), two thousand under the
law, and two thousand under the Messiah would form three pairs of
millennia according to a threefold pattern of nature, Scripture, and
grace.26
While it is impossible to say what Olivi thought he was citing here,
something similar is found in the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, and
in certain mystical writings as well.27 That is not to say that Olivi
had been reading the Talmud. The reference had a life of its own in

25 Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial (Rutherford, ), .

26 LSA, ff.
27 The Talmud of Babylonia: An American Translation. XXIIIC: Tractate Sanhedrin, Chapters

–, trans. Jacob Neusner (Chico, ), . For the references both to the Talmud
and to the mystical writings (the latter being the Shiur Komah and the Zohar), I thank
Chaim Haims at Ben Gurion University.
  

Christian anti-Jewish polemic, going back at least to Alan of Lille.28 The

significant thing here is how Olivi employs it. Earlier in a quodlibetal
question he had used it in much the same way Alan of Lille had, as
a way of citing Judaism against itself.29 Here it is simply one more
authority for Olivi’s own position.
Olivi’s Apocalypse commentary was subjected to investigation and
finally condemnation. His thoughts on the Jews were included in the
process, but in an odd way. The objection to this part of Olivi’s mes-
sage is seen most clearly in the report of the first theologian asked to
comment on his commentary, an anonymous scholar whose opinion
is extant in a manuscript now at Paris.30 His criticism on this score is
directed at two aspects of Olivi’s scenario: first, that the widespread
conversions will begin before the death of the antichrist; and second,
that the period after the antichrist will be long enough for the whole
world to be converted to Christ. As for the first, the anonymous critic’s
objection hinges on the fact that he sees Enoch and Elijah as the key
players in Jewish conversion. The antichrist will come, then Enoch and
Elijah. The latter will be killed by the antichrist but will then be res-
urrected. Up to that point the Jews will accept the antichrist as their
Messiah, but once they witness the resurrection of Enoch and Elijah,
they will see they have been deceived and will desert the antichrist for
Christianity. The assumption here is that up to that moment the Jews
will support the antichrist more or less as a group, although the anony-
mous critic never explicitly says as much.31
But now we come to the second part of the objection, his rejection of
Olivi’s long third age of peace and enlightenment after the antichrist.
The anonymous critic follows the traditional notion that the period will
be forty or forty-five days long. By the end of the thirteenth century,
there was ample precedent for accepting those forty or forty-five days
as a minimum figure with the possibility that God would extend it con-
siderably, and one of the commentators discussed earlier, “Alexander,”
seems to be preparing himself for a rather long extension.32 The anony-
mous critic will have none of it. He sees forty-five days as the scheduled

28 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, ), ff.
29 Quodlibeta (Venice, ), quodl. , q. , v, where he is asking whether the time
of the Messiah’s coming can be proved from the Old Testament.
30 Paris Bib. Nat. lat. A.
31 His strongest statement is at fol. r–v, but see also r.
32 See my Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, .
      

duration of the time between the antichrist’s death and the final judg-
ment.33 Thus, he says, there will be insufficient time for the whole world
to be converted.34
The anonymous critic then pushes the argument to its logical con-
clusion: The total number of Gentiles converted to Christianity will be
no other than the number converted before the time of the antichrist,
and most of them will fall away during his temptation.35 Moreover they
will remain backsliders, so when Christ comes in judgment he will find
all Israel saved and very few faithful Gentiles. In other words, however
much the anonymous critic disagrees with Olivi’s apocalyptic scenario,
he agrees completely on the key point that the rhythm of conversion in
the final period will reverse the flow from Jew to Gentile that charac-
terized the early church. In fact, he accepts that idea in an even starker
form. The composition of the church Christ finds when he comes in
judgment will be the reverse of what existed a century after his death
and resurrection.36
In short, both Olivi and his anonymous critic take Paul seriously on
God’s ultimate conversion of the Jews, but Olivi interprets Paul in a
more inclusive sense. He expects the Jews to be converted in the new
age along with everyone else. Thus the church of the final time will be,
in good Joachite form, a concordia of Jew and Gentile. The anonymous
critic interprets Paul in a more exclusive sense. The church of the final
time will be composed of converted Jews and only a small righteous
remnant of Gentiles who remained immune to the antichrist’s charms.
Heaven, of course, will be a different story, since it will have been filling
up with Gentile Christians for over two millennia.
One cannot help wondering if the anonymous critic, who was un-
doubtedly a man of some importance in the church, ever stopped to
consider the implications of this scenario for western Europe where,
slightly over a decade before he wrote, the Jews had once again been
expelled from France and had already been banished from England
for over two decades. This situation would have had little importance
for Olivi’s scenario, since he envisaged a final age in which universal
conversion would be accompanied by a possible shift of the Christian

33 See v–r, v

34 See especially v–a.
35 See v, v, r.
36 See r for precisely that observation, backed by a stunning array of biblical and

patristic citations.
  

capital from Rome to Jerusalem. This change might appear to be

punitive in nature, divine retaliation against a papacy that not only
supported the antichrist but in fact was the antichrist; yet Olivi saw
it as more than that. In a world brought together by conversion to a
single faith, the capital of that faith ought to be placed in the center of
that world, and Olivi knew from his mappa mundi that the center was
Jerusalem.
The anonymous critic offered a different scenario with radically
different implications. He saw the church of the final time as largely
composed of Jewish converts yet insisted against Olivi that in the time
of the antichrist and thereafter the pope would remain faithful, remain
in charge, and remain in Rome. Thus, if he took his own exegesis to its
logical conclusion, that would mean that England and France would be
practically devoid of Christians in the final period. The church of that
time would be governed from Rome, yet most of its members would
be wherever those exiled Jews had gone. Of course we can probably
assume that he did not take his exegesis that seriously. Gordon Leff
suggested years ago that it is dangerous for a historian to expect too
much consistency from his or her subject matter, and in this case Dr.
Leff was probably correct.
Where does all of this leave us? If the scholars considered here can
be considered at all representative of their time, then that time was one
in which those concerned with searching the Apocalypse for evidence
of the antichrist tended to think the danger lay not outside the church
but within it, that the antichrist would receive less help from Jews
than from bishops. The Jews might join his movement, but they would
hardly dominate it. Thus what mainly interested these exegetes was not
the Jewish role in supporting the antichrist but Jewish conversions to
Christianity in a peaceful post-antichrist world.
Those are the facts. The real question is: What do they mean?
What, for example, should we make of the difference between the
role played by the Jews in these commentaries and the one played by
them in illuminated Apocalypses during the same period? And should
hesitation to assign the Jews a major role in the temptation of the
antichrist be taken as denoting a kinder, gentler attitude toward them
on the part of our exegetes? Neither of these questions can be answered
fully here, but some general suggestions are in order.
As for the first question, the close identification of Jews and the
antichrist in illuminated Apocalypses might be explained by suggest-
ing that the latter were produced with polemical intent, aimed by anti-
      

Jewish clergy at a segment of the laity that could do the Jews substantial
damage. Beyond this it is worth noting that, unlike illuminated Apoc-
alypses, commentaries were very academically entre nous, a genre writ-
ten by clerics for clerical consumption. It would have been one thing
for a cleric to criticize the praelati in a commentary and quite another
for an illustrator to decide that the laity should see the minions of the
antichrist wearing, not Jews’ caps, but mitres; just as scholars today
might agree among themselves that their university administrators are
knaves and fools but would think twice about sharing that sentiment
in a letter to the New York Times. In both cases the instinct for self-
preservation is combined with an air of pas devant les servents, a feeling
that the simpler folk must not lose their faith in the institution. Thus
any work aimed at a lay audience might have some reason to stress
external rather than internal enemies.
As for the other question, these commentaries could suggest a less-
ening, not of hostility toward the Jews, but merely of the sense that they
were an important threat. One is reminded of a comment Olivi makes
about the Cathars, whom Joachim had seen as an important factor in
the apocalyptic scenario. Olivi rejects this notion, observing that, far
from endangering Christendom, the Cathars are now quasi sepulta, just
about buried.37 He was, of course, wrong. If they were buried when
Olivi wrote, in the years following his death they would rise like Drac-
ula from the grave and terrify Catholics one last time, but that is not the
point. The point is that a sense of the Jews as no great threat and thus
not important in the apocalyptic scenario was perhaps more under-
standable at a moment when they were being harried out of England
and France and their sacred books were being destroyed. Of course,
whatever might have been happening in England and northern France,
the Jewish community in Narbonne, where Olivi wrote the Apocalypse
commentary, was still healthy in Olivi’s time; yet it is dangerous to
assume that his sense of history was formed by looking at that small
a stage.
One might also argue that, in the final analysis, Olivi’s neat distinc-
tion between a carnal Judaism/heresy/Islam and a spiritual Christian-
ity trapped him in the same conceptual net that imprisoned his contem-
poraries, and the fact that he added carnal churchmen alongside these
other groups does little to change that fact. Rosemary Radford Ruether,

37 LSA, . See also –.

  

lamenting the medieval Jewish-Christian dialogue that never occurred,

notes that the differing ways in which Christianity and Judaism devel-
oped before the thirteenth century gave the latter strengths that were
remarkable in their ability to complement those aspects where Chris-
tianity was becoming gnostic in spirituality and blunted in its sense of
community. Yet the very possibility that Christianity could have learned
some of these things through a continued interaction with Judaism
was entirely ruled out and is still ruled out for most Christians today
through the dogmatic insistence that Judaism was an obsolete and ret-
rograde religion that had been superseded by the Christian gospel “of
love.”38
In short, medieval Christian theologians rejected the opportunity
to learn from Judaism because they assumed that the only contribu-
tion Jews—or Muslims or heretics—could possibly make was to listen
docilely while the (Christian) truth was explained. In Olivi’s case this
assumption would have been especially ironic, since the church would
soon place him among the heretics; yet we might ask whether Olivi
actually shared it, or at least whether he shared it in as strong a form as
most other theologians of his time.
If Olivi’s scenario was anti-Jewish, it was at least the mildest form
anti-Jewish rhetoric might be expected to take in the thirteenth century.
Certainly he thought the Jews were wrong and the Christians right,
but presumably the Jews held the same view in reverse. Agnosticism
or religious relativism were hardly popular medieval stances, and one
might ask how easy either is to attain in the twenty-first century. In the
final analysis it is tempting to judge Olivi, not on the basis of whether
he thought he was right, but on the basis of what he thought would
happen to those who were wrong and what he felt should be done
to them in the meantime. Here the evidence is unambiguous. In an
age when secular and ecclesiastical institutions were prone to coercive
behavior in dealing with the Jews, Olivi displayed greater distrust of
those institutions than of the Jews and envisaged a universal conversion
which depended, not on the power of church and state, but on a
handful of poor preachers who would speak only to those who freely
consented to listen.

38 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Liberation Theology: Human Hope Confronts Christian

History and American Power (New York, ), . Whether, in view of recent Vatican
statements, Ruether is entirely correct in saying the possibility “still is ruled out”
remains unclear.
 ARCHBISHOP EUDES RIGAUD
AND THE JEWS OF NORMANDY, 1248–1275

W C J

Eudes Rigaud, the first Franciscan archbishop of Rouen, was one of

the more remarkable men of the thirteenth century.1 He was born
sometime between  and  in northern France, on the outskirts of
Brie-Comte-Robert,2 a castle town that had been the scene of a terrible
slaughter a decade or so before Eudes’ birth.3 There in March 
King Philip II Augustus, recently returned from crusade, led an army
and surrounded the town, which was not part of his demesne property,
and in contempt of the jurisdiction of the local countess dowager seized
as many as eighty adult Jews and summarily executed them. Only the
Jewish children who fled were spared. The slaughter was carried out
because Philip believed that the local comitial authorities had unjustly
executed a Christian servitor of his for murdering a Jew. The carnage
at Brie made such an impression that it is described in both Jewish
and Christian sources. The Jewish source laments the martyrs; the
Christian source, the usually admiring contemporary biography of the

1 For a very brief overview of Eudes Rigaud’s life, see William Jordan, “Eudes

Rigaud,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages,  vols., ed. Joseph Strayer (New York, –
), .. This overview is followed closely, a trifle too closely, by that of Mark Zier,
“Eudes Rigaud,” in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William Kibler and Grover Zinn
(New York, ), –. A word of caution: This essay was prepared as a conference
paper several years ago and is substantially unchanged. Since that conference (),
my former student, now Professor Adam Davis of Denison University, has undertaken
a full study of Eudes Rigaud in his dissertation, which awaits publication. His work and
other works would be relevant to a more comprehensive evaluation of Eudes’ attitudes
and policies towards Norman Jews. I have not tried to integrate the results of these
works here, but doing so would not undermine the overall conclusion of the essay.
2 Pierre Andrieu-Guitrancourt, L’Archevêque Eudes Rigaud et la vie de l’église au XIIIe

siècle d’après le “Regestrum visitationum” (Paris, ), –. See also The Register of Eudes of
Rouen, trans. Sydney Brown (New York, ), xv.
3 On this incident, now to be narrated, see William Jordan, The French Monarchy

and the Jews from Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, ), – (and the
accompanying notes). See also Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, . The
allegation that this incident occurred elsewhere than at Brie has been withdrawn by its
once most ardent defender; see Robert Chazan, “Ephraim Ben Jacob’s Compilation
of Twelfth-Century Persecutions,” Jewish Quarterly Review,  (),  n. , and
Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, ), – n. .
   

king by Rigord, himself no particular friend of the Jews, censures the

king’s rashness. It would scarcely be surprising if stories of the episode,
endlessly retold, became part of the young Eudes’ stock of tales.
At the very least, Eudes’ family would have been concerned over the
breach of jurisdiction, for the family was of knightly status and pre-
sumably served the countess in various capacities.4 It is speculation, of
course, but Eudes’ own meticulous attention to his jurisdictional pre-
rogatives as archbishop of Rouen later in his life may be informed by
the bitter legacy, for those in his circle, of Philip Augustus’s infamous
infringement on local rights in Brie. This is not to say that the region of
Eudes’ birth, in the “heart” of the Ile de France, using Oscar Darling-
ton’s expression, was determinedly hostile to the monarchy, merely that
particular events may have made some inhabitants more or less sensi-
tive to royal pretensions.5 It may be significant in this regard that none
of Eudes’ many relatives seems to have made a career in royal service.
Many members of the Rigaud family, in addition to Eudes, how-
ever, would later gain reputations for their devotion and labor for the
church.6 The future archbishop’s brother, Adam, became a Franciscan
and served in the entourage of Eudes in the ecclesiastical province of
Rouen for more than a quarter of a century. A sister, Marie, became
a nun and the fifth prioress of the famed Convent of the Paraclete,
founded by Abelard and once headed by Heloise. A nephew, also
named Adam, was a canon, later dean, of the cathedral chapter of
Rouen and served in full more than thirty years there. He first received
the canonry from the hands of Eudes in .
It has been supposed that by  Eudes joined the Franciscan order,
at the time, that is, of the order’s early and very rapid expansion in
northern France.7 It is also supposed that Eudes’ devotion was highly
marked because attraction to the order in the first generation of its
expansion in the north promised no material benefits, merely poverty
and overwork. It was only later that university chairs, let alone lofty

4 On the status of the family, see Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, ,

–.
5 Oscar Darlington, The Travels of Odo Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen (–) (Phila-

delphia, ), , stresses the region’s “devotion” to the crown.

6 For the references, see Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, –. All

subsequent authors follow Andrieu-Guitrancourt without adding materially to his

findings.
7 Cf. the tables on Franciscan and Dominican expansion in William Jordan, Louis IX

and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton, ), .
        

positions in the church hierarchy, became commonplace for Francis-

cans, a development that would profoundly upset the self-appointed
keepers of the true spirit of the mendicant movement.8 That Eudes
would benefit from this development, insofar as the heavy duties of
the archbishopric of Rouen constituted a benefit, could not have been
within his expectations in .
Franciscans, however, were already penetrating the walls of the
schools by the time Eudes joined the order. And the ugly young man
of God (to use Salimbene de Adam’s description) would prove him-
self to be an exceptionally gifted scholar.9 He is known to have been
studying theology with Alexander of Hales at the University of Paris by
.10 He was lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard a few years
later, in the academic terms during the years –. His three-
book (unfinished) Commentary on the Sentences written about this time
evinces thoughts, it has been said, at once “well-developed and doc-
trinally mature.”11 His discussion, which seems original, of the “role”
of the Holy Spirit in the mutual love of God the Father and God the
Son—which turns on the technical point of the meaning of the ablative
in a descriptive formula of the love—is believed to have deeply influ-
enced his greatest student, Bonaventure.12 But Eudes’ extraordinarily
promising career as a scholar and teacher wound down after . In
 he was sent to govern the young Franciscan Convent of Saint-
Marc de Rouen which may have been founded only in that year; in
late  or early , he was elected archbishop of Rouen and was
consecrated in March of the latter year.13

8 The best study of the development is Williel Thomson’s Friars in the Cathedral: The

First Franciscan Bishops, – (Toronto, ).

9 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica,  vols., ed. G. de Scalia (Bari, ), . (Latin);

The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, trans. Joseph Baird et al. (Binghamton, N.Y., ),
 (English translation).
10 For what follows on Eudes’ academic career, see Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque

Eudes Rigaud, –, and Walter Principe, “Odo Rigaldus, A Precursor of St. Bonaven-
ture on the Holy Spirit as effectus formalis in the Mutual Love of the Father and the Son,”
Mediaeval Studies,  (), – n. .
11 Kilian Lynch, “The Alleged Fourth Book on the Sentences of Odo Rigaud and

Related Documents,” Franciscan Studies,  (), .

12 Principe, “Odo Rigaldus,” –.
13 For these details, see Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, –. The

date of the foundation of Saint-Marc is taken from Andrieu-Guitrancourt, although

he acknowledges that Franciscans “were established” in Rouen from an earlier date,
. Richard Emery’s catalog of mendicant convents gives the date as before  to
   

Could a man of Eudes Rigaud’s stature, of noble stock, a Francis-

can friar, a teacher at the University of Paris, and a major author, have
been unfamiliar to the court of Louis IX? Would Louis IX have coun-
tenanced the election of an unknown to the head of the church in Nor-
mandy, a province still technically claimed by the man who was wear-
ing the English crown and was willing, it had recently been learned,
to field an army to try to make good that claim?14 All scholars who
have raised these questions have answered in the negative, although lit-
tle evidence has yet come to light that Louis knew Eudes face to face.15
The Italian Franciscan chronicler, Salimbene de Adam, says explicitly
that “the king worked hard to see that he [Eudes] was made the arch-
bishop of Rouen,”16 but Salimbene, even though he knew Eudes and
the king in the years of the former’s archiepiscopate, refers to Louis as
Saint Louis, proof that his testimony was written down no earlier than
the s, that is, at a time when Louis was first being referred to as a
saint.17 This was more than a quarter of a century after Eudes’ election.
Even so, the testimony may be accurate.
If the king did recommend Eudes, his wishes would have been made
known to the cathedral chapter in whose hands the election lay either
directly, when the official delegation begged the king’s permission to
choose a new archbishop, or through the good offices of his local rep-
resentative, the bailli of Rouen, Etienne de la Porte.18 If it is conceiv-
able that the king recommended somebody other than Eudes, we might
imagine a different scenario. Since Eudes’ election revealed some fac-
tionalism in the cathedral chapter, it is possible that the king’s wishes for

the Franciscan house of Rouen; see The Friars in Medieval France: A Catalogue of French
Mendicant Convents, – (New York, ), .
14 On the last English invasion of France () to try to recapture the western

provinces, see Jean Richard, Saint Louis: Roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la Terre sainte
(Paris, ), –.
15 See, for example, Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud,  (although he

is wrong in accepting the truth of the legend that Louis IX was a Franciscan tertiary);
Darlington, Travels, –; etc.
16 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, . (Latin); The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 

(English translation).
17 Darlington, Travels, ; Jordan, Louis IX, .
18 On “permission to elect” (licentia eligendi), see Jordan, Louis IX, –, and below

(text to n. ) for the application of the procedure following Eudes’ own death. On
the bailli Etienne de la Porte, see Léopold Delisle, “Chronologie des baillis et des
sénéchaux,” in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France,  vols., ed. Martin Bouquet
et al. (Paris, –) .*.
        

a different candidate became a dead letter in the heat of the moment.19

In any case, Eudes was elected.
Most scholars who adhere to the surmise that Eudes and Louis
were acquainted go even further and suggest that the king employed
him as an enquêteur in Normandy in . These enquêteurs, largely
Dominican and Franciscan friars, were special investigators assigned
to the provinces on the eve of Louis’s first crusade to inquire into
possible injustices perpetrated against the populace by the king’s men.20
In identifying Eudes as an enquêteur, recent scholars are following the
views of Charles Petit-Dutaillis who, even if he was not the first to
make the suggestion, certainly gave it classic formulation with that very
French use of the rhetorical question: “Est-il téméraire de supposer que
le Franciscain Eude Rigaud, qui devait être élu archevêque de Rouen
l’année suivante, figure parmi les enquêteurs?”21 Several hundred of the
complaints they received in Normandy in  have survived.22
Again, however, no single piece of documentary evidence has yet
come to light to confirm Petit-Dutaillis’s suggestion as to Eudes’ pres-
ence among the investigators. This is doubly unfortunate in that the
panel or panels of enquêteurs in Normandy received a small number of
complaints involving Jews, especially those who were holding Christian
estates in pledge.23 Presumably this information, if Eudes had access
to it, helped shape his own understanding of the place—proper or
improper—of Jews in Norman society.
Their place, as Eudes would have found it at his enthronement
in , was already precarious and was becoming more so. Since
the French conquest in , Norman Jews had been subjected to
the intermittent but ruthless wholesale confiscatory taxation which the
French kings practiced: this occurred most generally in , –
 and . But after legislation in the s forbidding usury (any
charging of interest), confiscation became somewhat more restricted or
selective. A few Jews (the royal government was somewhat too confident

19 On the election, see Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, –, fol-

lowed, as usual, by all other scholars (see, e.g., Darlington, Travels, ).
20 On the institution and results of the investigation, see Jordan, Louis IX, –.
21 Charles Petit-Dutaillis, “Queremoniae Normannorum,” in Essays in Medieval His-

tory Presented to Thomas Frederick Tout, ed. A. Little and F. Powicke (Manchester, ),
.
22 Published in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, .–; analyzed in Petit-

Dutaillis, “Queremoniae Normannorum,” –.

23 Petit-Dutaillis, “Queremoniae Normannorum,” ; and Jordan, French Monarchy

and the Jews, index, under “Normandy.”

   

that it was only a few) violated the law against usury or ineptly bribed
local officials to enforce or turn a blind eye to usurious loans. They
felt the sting of punishment. Enforcement was sufficiently rigorous that
Jewish communities all through northern France, including Normandy,
went into a steep economic decline.24 Jewish intellectual life, too, was in
danger of being extinguished in northern France after the crown moved
to burn copies of the Talmud in Paris in , as a book inimical to the
Christian faith and a perversion of biblical Judaism.25 (Eudes, recall,
was in Paris when this event occurred.) Normandy may have suffered
less from the assault on the Talmud than the region around Paris, but it
could not have been unaffected.26
Eudes became archbishop just as Louis IX’s preparations for cru-
sade were reaching a climax. Their effect on French Jews was also
significant.27 We have already seen that the enquêteurs were travelling
through Normandy in , as part of the king’s preparations, in order
to rectify wrongs and indemnify the victims of official misconduct in
the province. The evidence turned out to be depressingly strong that
many Christians, due to uneven enforcement of the anti-usury laws,
were still being charged interest on loans, and that many local officials,
having been bribed, were continuing to distrain Christians and their
property to enforce repayment to Jewish moneylenders. The king in
response prohibited these kinds of distraint and also authorized a tak-
ing of Jewish debts, that is to say, he directed that any Christians who
owed or had repaid loans in whole or in part made by Jews were to
be forgiven all interest payments (since these had been illegally exacted
anyway since the s). Jewish moneylenders who were identified were
forced to remit this profit to the borrowers on all debts contracted since
. But the principal of still unpaid debts was to be paid directly to
the crown and would be used to help it in its efforts to finance the Holy
War.

24 All these matters are comprehensively treated in Jordan, French Monarchy and the

Jews, –, –.

25 Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, –.
26 In conversation, Professor Haym Solveitchik of Yeshiva University, on the basis

of his research into Hebrew sources, has suggested that Jewish intellectual life in Paris
essentially ceased in the aftermath of the burning of the Talmud, but here and there in
Normandy sophisticated study (even study of the Talmud) persisted.
27 The material summarized in the next several paragraphs is treated at greater

length and with full documentation in Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, –.
        

It was, of course, difficult to determine precisely how much interest

was hidden by a bond. A Christian’s promise in a bond to pay a Jew
nine shillings, for example, said nothing about interest. Presumably,
however, in order to disguise the interest the moneylender had only
given the debtor part of the nine shillings. The crown decided (the
evidence is from Normandy on this point) that all such bonds should
be discounted by one-third. It presumed, in other words, taking up the
nine shilling example again, that the moneylender gave the borrower
six shillings on condition he repay nine. The absence of the language
of interest was allegedly intended to protect the lender from charges of
practicing usury, but the ruse, if it was a ruse, in fact failed.
The Jewish moneylenders, now under order to remit imputed inter-
est paid by their debtors since , suffered an immediate “cash flow”
problem. Further directives from the crown authorized local officials to
distrain Jewish property and auction it off if necessary to make these
payments. Royal fiscal records touching Normandy show the process at
work over the next several years.
What can we know about Eudes Rigaud’s familiarity with these
measures? If he served as an enquêteur before he became archbishop,
he would have been completely familiar with the directives from the
moment they began to be articulated by the government. Even if he
had not occupied that office, he would have become familiar very
quickly, and we can infer something of the process of this development
from the record he has left us of his archiepiscopacy in Rouen. This
is the famous Register of the archbishop’s travels in which he records
his official visitations of ecclesiastical institutions under his jurisdiction,
his examinations of local clergy for competence, and myriad other
undertakings.28 The Register covers the period—day by day— July
 until  December . “Of the , days covered by the
twenty-one year period,” according to Darlington’s calculations, “only
 days are omitted.”29 It is an amazing, and amazingly underutilized,
source.30 Penelope Johnson’s recent book on French convents is one of

28 First edited by Th[eodose] Bonnin under the title, Regestrum visitationum archiepiscopi

rotomagensis / Journal des visites pastorales d’Eude Rigaud, archevêque de Rouen, MCCXLVIII–
MCCLXIX (Rouen, ). The English translation (somewhat truncated, only the chro-
nological parts and the reform statutes of Gregory IX being rendered into English) is
that by Sydney Brown, referred to above in note . In future notes, reference is made
to both, since the original edition is rare.
29 Darlington, Travels, .
30 It was as understudied as Eudes himself was at the time this conference paper was
   

the few to exploit its wealth of material; and, given her focus, she culls
only a tiny bit of its voluminous information.31
The Register provides us with information, for example, of the erup-
tion of the Pastoureaux in Rouen in mid-June . The Pastoureaux,
as is well known, were bands of people who decided to go on cru-
sade after news reached France of the king’s capture in Egypt. Their
professed intention was to join the ransomed ruler who had gone to
the Holy Land after his release. The bands were somewhat disorga-
nized and did considerable damage in the towns through which they
passed. Their targets of choice included Jews, which is not surprising,
given the king’s pre-crusade campaign against the alleged exploitation
of poor Christians by usurious Jewish moneylenders, the seizures of
their bonds and other property, and the (unofficial) anti-Jewish atmo-
sphere associated with crusading. In Rouen they disrupted a provincial
synod at which Eudes was presiding; and although they were dispersed,
the mayor and aldermen of Rouen rendered a formal apology to the
archbishop for not having acted effectively from the beginning. The
archbishop graciously feasted the municipal officials as a gesture of rec-
onciliation.32
Eudes clearly detested the actions of the Pastoureaux in disrupting
the synod, and as a well-trained churchman he could not have legit-
imately endorsed their violence against Jews. (To be sure, this kind
of violence was probably not manifested in Rouen, although precisely
contemporary outrages by bands of Pastoureaux against Jews are re-
corded at Bourges and Orléans and mention of them is made in the
Norman chronicle record.)33 Unlike at many other times in his archi-
episcopacy, Eudes did not have the decisions of this synod set down
verbatim in the Register, possibly because the situation was too hectic
and confused at the time. But if the decisions were anything like those
recorded elsewhere in the Register, Eudes himself contributed to the

prepared. A survey of the International Medieval Bibliography at that time () found less
than a half-dozen articles on Eudes in the previous thirty years.
31 Penelope Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France

(Chicago, ).
32 The Register entry (–; Regestrum, ) is laconic, but the fuller story can be

pieced together from a number of sources; see the discussion and references in Jordan,
Louis IX, –.
33 Jordan, Louis IX, –, especially n.  on Norman awareness of the anti-Jewish

incidents. That a Norman, indeed a Rouennais, chronicler would note anti-Jewish

violence in Bourges and not in Rouen is reasonably good evidence that the Pastoureaux
in Rouen, whatever they might have said, did not attack Jews.
        

anti-Jewish atmosphere by including a provision (adopted from stan-

dard ecclesiastical conciliar legislation) “forbid[ding] any Christians,
male or female, to work for Jews in their homes, or presume to dwell
with them” and “order[ing] that Jews be compelled to wear visible signs
by which they may be distinguished from Catholics.” This language
(with only the slightest variants) is found in the decrees of the provincial
synods held under Eudes’ presidency at Pont-Audemer ( September
,  January ,  January ) and at Vernon ( January
).34
In fact, Eudes’ concern with the Jews went far beyond his issuance
of by then stale conciliar decrees. It is hard, however, to get at the
attitudes that underlay his concern, for although reputed to be a great
preacher, the archbishop may or may not have been the author of
several sermons that have been attributed to him.35 Nonetheless the
problems that Eudes faced in the archdiocese suggest at least the scope
of his concerns. The indebtedness of ecclesiastical institutions that he
visited, for instance, was clearly a troubling matter for Eudes and was
never far from his thoughts. He was constantly chiding monasteries
and convents to improve or just start keeping fiscal records.36 When he
made a visitation of the Monastery of Saint-Pierre-des-Préaux in the
diocese of Lisieux on  January , he discovered or was told that
the monks who had an income of about eleven hundred pounds and
regularly scheduled expenditures of at least three hundred also owed
“four hundred pounds without interest [de usura pura]37 to a certain Jew.”
Would they have to repay this sum? The continuation of the Register
entry provides some tantalizing evidence. Let us recall that the king’s
campaign against Jewish usurious moneylending was in full gear and
the principal of debts had been assigned for repayment to the crown.
The monks, Eudes reports, were unsure at that time “whether they will
be cleared of this debt or whether they will have to pay it,” that is to
say, whether the crown would take pity on the monastery and acquit it
or not.

34 Register, , , , ; Regestrum, , , , . All dates, here and

elsewhere, have been converted to new style.

35 See the excellent critical discussion of alleged collections of his sermons in An-

drieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, –.

36 Register, , , –, , –, , , , , , –, , , ,

, , ; Regestrum, , , –, , , –, –, , , , –, ,
, , , , .
37 Register, ; Regestrum, ; alternatively, “of interest alone.”
   

Even years later when an extraordinarily vigilant local officialdom

was effectively eliminating usurious Jewish moneylending, a startling
reminder of the uneven administration of the medieval state came to
light. On  March , Eudes made a visitation of the Benedic-
tine Priory of Villarceaux in the diocese of Rouen itself. The arch-
bishop must have been flabbergasted to learn that the nuns there,
of whom there were twenty, “owed one hundred pounds, and twenty
pounds of this was owed at interest to the Jews and Cahorsins [Chris-
tian usurers] of Mantes.” He noted that if they were economical and
expelled some young girls whose parents seem to have left them there
for their upbringing (a thing that “displeased [Eudes] exceedingly”),
they might have “enough wheat and oats to last out the year,” although
he predicted gloomily that even with economic measures they would
run out of wine.38
The question of the conversion of the Jews was another of the
archbishop’s concerns. It certainly loomed large in the kingdom, and
as Eudes and Louis IX became close friends after the crusade, this
question must have frequently come up in conversation, for Louis IX
was supporting considerable efforts to induce Jews to convert, and
he was doing so with modest success.39 The continuing concern, of
course, was not simply over the still rather limited extent of conversion,
but also over the sincerity of conversion when it came about through
inordinate pressure, even if the nature or intensity of the pressure
did not necessarily meet the church’s standard of illicit force.40 On 
April  the issue was joined in Eudes’ presence. On that day the
archbishop handed over to the secular arm, in the person of Julien
de Peronne, the royal bailli, a lapsed convert to be burnt. The Register
makes clear that the sentence was carried out.41
The Register, in the same entry, also rehearses the chain of events that
led to the execution of the “apostate and heretic” (apostatam et hereticum),
as the entry calls him. He had been “converted from Judaism to the
Catholic faith,” but “had again reverted from the Catholic faith to
Judaic depravity” (ad fidem catholicam conversum, et iterum de fide catholica

38 Register, ; Regestrum, .

39 Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, –.
40 Two valuable treatments of Christian understandings of forced conversion may

be found in Gilbert Dahan, Les Intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Paris, ),
–, and Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: History (Toronto, ),
–.
41 Register, ; Regestrum, .
        

ad iudaicam pravitatem reversum). Yet, efforts otherwise unspecified brought

him back to Christianity, and he was “once again baptized” (iterum
rebaptizatum). This is a crux. Baptism was normally indelible and not
repeatable, save under the very exceptional circumstances of so-called
conditional baptism. But perhaps Eudes shared the view that the effi-
cacy of this Jew’s first baptism was in doubt if it had been forced (using
a lower threshold definition of force than that which marked majority
opinion in the church). “If a Jew,” as one canonist with this view put
it later, “had been baptized despite complete opposition (omnino inuitus),
namely by absolutely objecting and expressly refusing, he ought not to
be considered as baptized.”42 Unfortunately Eudes’ views of baptism
are irrecoverable. They should be found in his Commentary on the Sen-
tences of Peter Lombard, but he never completed the fourth book of that
work where he would have discussed the sacrament.43
In any case, the now reconverted Jew “once more reverted to Ju-
daism” (iterumque ad iudaisium [sic] reversum), the Register informs us, and
remained “unwilling afterwards to be restored to the Catholic faith,
although several times admonished to do so” (nolentem postmodum ad fidem
catholicam reverti, licet pluries moneretur). For Eudes, as he saw it, therefore,
there was no alternative but to turn the apostate over to the bailli for
burning.
Some months later, on the Feast of the Annunciation, , Eudes
was in Paris at a solemn meeting of the royal court where Louis IX,
now one of Eudes’ closest friends, and three of the king’s sons took the
cross.44 A few weeks later Eudes himself would also take the crusader’s
vow.45 But the atmosphere created by the preaching that produced
crusade enthusiasm was as dangerous to Jews in the late s as it
was in the s. Eudes came face to face with the consequences a
few months later when he had to order the punishment of a group of
clerics who had despoiled the Jews of Gournay as well as committed
other crimes (assault of burghers and poaching).46
That the robbery of the Jews of Gournay was directly related to
the atmosphere created by preparations for crusade may be doubted.
After all, to judge from the career of one assailant, the perpetrators

42 The text is cited and discussed in Dahan, Intellectuels et les juifs, .
43 Lynch, “Alleged Fourth Book,” –.
44 Register, ; Regestrum, .
45 Register, ; Regestrum, .
46 Register, ; Regestrum, .
   

were ne’er-do-wells who hardly needed an excuse to behave badly.47

Nonetheless, preaching was whipping up popular enthusiasm for the
coming war, and Eudes himself would preach the Holy War explicitly,
as the Register reveals.48 Of course, it is highly dubious that he would
have directly or even implicitly encouraged violence against Jews. Some
years before, in , at a session of the Parlement of Paris held in
the days following the feast of Saint-Martin in the winter (), Eudes
had sat in judgment with the other masters of the king’s court over
a jurisdictional dispute concerning Haym, a Jew of Mâcon.49 Rights
over the Jew were remitted to the knight, Philippe de Chauvery, who
claimed them (the Jew seems to have fled earlier to escape the knight’s
jurisdiction). But the court also exacted a promise from Philippe that he
would not mistreat the errant Jew (quod non tractaret turpiter ipsum judeum).
Whether Lord Philippe kept his word is unknown, but the intent of
the judges seems clear enough. Violence against Jews—except judicially
authorized—was absolutely forbidden.
Eudes went on crusade with the king in .50 He was at his side
when the monarch died on  August outside of Tunis. Unlike so many
of the crusaders (the king, one of his sons, the papal legate, and others),
Eudes survived the difficult conditions. The archbishop accompanied
the new king, Philip III, home in , and resumed his archiepisco-
pacy. But the Register as we have it was not continued, and it is no
longer possible to get as intimate a picture of the archbishop’s activities,
although we know something thanks to charters and to a few descrip-
tions of the Second Council of Lyons which Eudes attended in . At
the council with his old pupil, now cardinal, Bonaventure, he worked
on the problem of the reunion of eastern and western Christendom,
which at that moment seemed to have a propitious future. Soon after
he returned to Rouen where, probably in his mid-seventies, the aged

47 This was Reginaldus matricularius (“Reginald, the sacristan’s helper”) who was

known for his illicit nighttime jaunts (Register, , ; Regestrum, , ).
48 Register, , ; Regestrum, , .
49 The case is reported in Les Olim ou Registres des arrêts rendus par la cour du roi, ed.

Arthur Beugnot (Paris, ), .– no. xiii. Beugnot transcribed the Jew’s name as
vivens in lower case, which suggests that he did not know it was a name. But it was a
common translation of the Hebrew Haym. Eudes was in Paris presumably to attend
Parlement as was typical for him, for several days after the feast of Saint Martin, 
November (Register, ; Regestrum, –).
50 The narrative skeleton of what follows, to the end of the essay, is drawn from

Andrieu-Guitrancourt, Archevêque Eudes Rigaud, –.

        

prelate died, “a holy man,” in Salimbene’s words, “devoted to God,

and he came honorably to the end of his life.”51
Philip III received word of the death in a missive dated  July 
(five days later).52 The letter also introduced the delegation that would
seek formal permission from the crown to elect a new archbishop, a
task which, a subsequent letter informs us, was accomplished by 
January .53
It would be good to know more about Archbishop Eudes’ attitudes
towards and treatment of Jews and Jewish converts to Christianity.
What we have learned places him at the middle of the spectrum of atti-
tudes, a position that was not unusual for the incumbents of northern
French sees of this period judging from the careers of Gautier Cornut
(archbishop of Sens, –) and Guillaume d’Auvergne (bishop of
Paris, –).54 Eudes believed in the possibility of Jewish redemp-
tion by conversion. He saw nothing so innately irrational about being
a Jew that it could make him or her subhuman. Certainly neither his
Franciscan profession nor his adherence to scholastic philosophy pro-
duced such a radical departure from the traditional teachings of the
Catholic faith. (Neither did the scholastic training of the former pro-
fessor turned bishop of Paris, Guillaume d’Auvergne.55) Indeed, Eudes
was willing to try over and over again to bring Jews to the Catholic
faith even when they lapsed after initial conversion. There was nothing
about Jews or Judaism in themselves that justified extra-judicial vio-
lence. And one could go on.
Eudes preached the crusades; he knew first hand that the atmo-
sphere created by this preaching could inspire unsavory elements within
the Christian community to carry out violent acts of retribution against
Christian clergy, nobles, and Jews. He denounced and punished the
acts, insofar as it was in his authority and power to do so, but he did not

51 Salimbene, Cronica, .; Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam,  (alternative English

rendering).
52 Cartulaire normand de Philippe-Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint-Louis, et Philippe le Hardi, ed.

Léopold Delisle (Caen, ),  no. .

53 Cartulaire normand de Philippe-Auguste, – no. . In fact, the pope would soon

quash this election.

54 Lesley Smith, “William of Auvergne and the Jews,” in Christianity and Judaism, ed.

Diana Wood (Oxford, ), –.

55 Lesley Smith, “William of Auvergne and the Jews.” For an excursus, in English,

on Guillaume’s training, his career as a professor, and his philosophical writings, see
Steven Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas in the Early Thirteenth
Century (Princeton, ), –.
   

regard these acts as sufficient reason to reduce the intensity of his com-
mitment to the “real” Holy War, any more than he thought that the
susceptibility of royal administrators to bribery or abuse of the king’s
subjects argued against the legitimate existence of a royal administra-
tion.
Eudes Rigaud was one of the most influential Franciscans in the
order by the time of his death. He had been a great theologian and
spectacular teacher. He was a good preacher, so far as testimony goes,
and as archbishop he was a superb, if stern, supervisor of the religious
life of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. He was a first-class mem-
ber of the king’s judicial councils, and the devoted spiritual guide of
one of the greatest French saints. By the end of his life he had been
a crusader and a principal counselor at a great ecumenical council. If
anywhere, it is to a career like his—a career of wide authority, enor-
mous power, and uncommon prestige—that we should turn to assess
the genuine influence of scholastic thinking and the Franciscan mission
on Jewish-Christian relations. Doing so does not suggest that that mode
of thought or that mission inevitably (or, rather, consequentially) had
the corrupting effects on Jewish-Christian relations in the thirteenth
century that has sometimes been imputed to them.
 INTIMATE ENEMIES:
MENDICANT-JEWISH INTERACTION IN
THIRTEENTH-CENTURY MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN

L J. S

On September , , in the Dominican House of Barcelona, events

transpired to bring together Jaume I of Aragon, the Dominicans Arnau
de Sagarra and Ramon de Penyafort, and Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret
(RaShBa), head of the Barcelona Jewish community and one of the
foremost authorities of his day, evidenced by the almost one thousand
responsa extant today. The occasion was not, however, a revisiting of
the so-called Disputation of Barcelona, not a new royal command
performance featuring some of the same luminaries present five years
earlier—figures such as Pau Cristià (occasionally simply Crestià, also
known as Pablo Christiani or Paul the Christian) and Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman, Nahmanides (often known by the acronym RaMBan),
the famed kabbalist, exegete, halakhist, and physician of Girona—to
dispute mendicant interpretations of select talmudic passages within
the strictest of confines. The occasion was that of a lawsuit brought
by Solomon ibn Adret on behalf of his ward Belshom, son of the
deceased Bonanat de Besalu. The suit was against the executors of
the deceased Benvenist de Porta of Villafranca, namely Mosse Sullam,
Samuel Sullam, Ismael of Tudela, and Perfet de Sa Real. Bonanat
had died intestate, Ibn Adret charges, with half his goods going to
his daughter Sara and half to Benvenist de Porta. The Crown had
seized the property of Bonanat, releasing the legacy to Benvenist (then
bailiff of Barcelona and Girona). With Benvenist also now dead, Ibn
Adret argued, the legacy of Bonanat should go to Belshom. The trial
went through numerous “maneuvers, objections, and responses,” and
after having examined Crown documents and the will of Bonanat, the
king concluded that Bonanat was not intestate—possessing a written
document and being on the side of a former royal official makes for a
persuasive combination—and Jaume dismissed Ibn Adret’s lawsuit.1

1 The document is published in its entirety by Robert I. Burns, S.J. in Jews in the

Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, – (Berkeley, ), –.
  . 

The nature of thirteenth-century mendicant polemic and disputa-

tion may or may not be fully understood, though I think we may be
approaching closure on certain events and texts, but the specific nature
of linkages between the mendicant missionizing program and the catas-
trophic expulsions, pogroms, popular libels, and increasingly restrictive
legislation are far from being understood. Robert Burns, who edited
the four documents detailing the testamentary trial of  in his most
recent volume, has pointed out on other occasions that the very Cata-
lan society that produced Ramon de Penyafort, Pau Cristià, Ramon
Martí, and Ramon Llull was a society that valued and protected its
Jewish communities far more than contemporary northern Christian
and southern Islamic, i.e., Berber, societies.2 Rather than affirm or
deny such various linkages, however, the purpose of this paper is per-
haps a little less vital, a little more mundane, yet more than a catalog
of curiosities found in summers in the archives. I wish to explore the
nature of specific contacts and specific interactions between individual
mendicant friars and individual Jews, whenever possible, or between
individual communities and collectives, and to offer, perhaps, at a time
when we are reminded of the converging interests and mutual influ-
ences of the personal and public, some new if modest insights into
mendicant-Jewish relations.
On June , , according to a registered document in the Ara-
gonese royal archives, Jaume I donated to the Dominicans of Calatayud
a garden that he had acquired, in Calatayud, from the widow Dueina
Avincabra; the property is bounded by a public byway, a communal
mill, property of the said Dueina, and the Dominicans themselves.3

2 See Burns’s article, reviewing Jeremy Cohen’s The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, N.Y.,

), “Anti-Semitism in Christian History: A Revisionist Thesis,” Catholic Historical

Review,  (), –. On the Disputation of Barcelona see, inter alia, Cohen;
Robert Chazan, “The Barcelona ‘Disputation’ of : Christian Missionizing and
Jewish Response,” Speculum,  (), –; Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-
Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, ), esp. – and –;
and most especially Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of  and its Aftermath
(Berkeley, ), with extensive bibliography. The general consensus of Catalan, Israeli,
indeed almost all scholars who have studied Jews in the Crown of Aragon is captured
well in the title of Yom Tov Assis’s magisterial synthesis, The Golden Age of Aragonese
Jewry: Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, – (London, ). See also
Assis’s Jewish Economy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, –: Money and Power (Leiden,
); and my review essay, “Jews, Jean Régné, and the Medieval Crown of Aragon,”
Medieval Encounters,  (), –.
3 Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó [hereafter ACA], Canc. Real, reg. ,

fol. v and v–r; these are indexed in Jean Régné, History of the Jews in Aragon,
 -     

Jews and Dominicans in Calatayud, as Jews and Dominicans else-

where, shared property lines. The size of medieval cities prescribed
that Jews and mendicants, even when not engaging in forced dispu-
tations or listening to mandatory sermons, knew each other, passed
daily on city streets, and lived in close proximity. On December , ,
Alfonso III mandated that the bailiff of Barcelona suspend, temporar-
ily, until receiving a further order, proceedings which he had initiated
against certain Jews on the subject of the wall of the Dominican con-
vent which is located contiguous to the Jewish quarter.4 Today, as a
remnant of this proximity, one can stay at the Hotel del Call, located
on the street Saint Dominic of the Call, and fall asleep while listening
to the bells of the Barcelona cathedral wherein is buried Ramon de
Penyafort.5
On November , , Alfonso III of Aragon, conqueror of Mi-
norca from the Muslims and Mallorca from his uncle (Jaume II of
Mallorca, the second eldest surviving son of Jaume I), wrote to the
royal bailiff of Mallorca, mandating that Maymon Bennuno, Çulema
Bondia, and Isaac Braanam take charge of the assignment made on
the question of the Jewish quarter by the aforesaid bailiff; this concerns
a new or second quarter given to the Jews of Mallorca City, and it
is described as “situated between the convents of the Franciscans to
the north, and the sisters of Santa Clara to the south.”6 Earlier, in

Regesta and Documents, –, ed. Yom Tov Assis in association with Adam Gruzman
(Jerusalem, ), nos. –. Régné apparently worked as much from archival
indices as from originals and summarized some , documents in fifteen years of
installments between  and  in the Revue des Études Juives. Even his harshest
critics—see David Romano, “Análisis a los repertorios de Jacobs y Régné,” Sefarad, 
(), –—have, in their own work, relied extensively on his abstracts. Although
I have systematically gone through all registers prior to  searching for material
on Mallorca, I have relied here on Régné to help locate non-Mallorcan material in
these early pages. Unless I also looked at the original, however, I cite only Régné or at
least cite him first. My personal concern with Régné and those who rely on him is his
incompleteness for the reign of Jaume II of Aragon, an issue of importance later in this
article. I have estimated (“Jews, Jean Régné, and the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” )
that, rather than a little over , documents for the reign of Jaume II pertaining to
Jews, there are likely somewhere between  and ,.
4 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v; Régné, no. .
5 In Catalonia, Roussillon, and Mallorca a Jewish quarter was called a call; in

Aragon and Castile it was called a judería; in Valencia both terms were used, while
in Lleida it was called uniquely a cuyraça; some scholars attribute the origin of the
term to the Latin callum, while others prefer the Hebrew qahal or community; see
J.R. Magdalena Nom de Déu, “Etimología no semítica de ‘call,”’ Calls,  (), –.
6 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. 
  . 

January  or , Alfonso had conceded to all good men and the
community of Mallorca City that all Jews of the said city must live in
the same quarter, and he orders the Jews to group themselves within
a determined place within a period of five years.7 This contravenes
earlier legislation of Jaume I, confirmed by Alfonso himself, granting
the Jews the right to buy and rent freely any urban or rural property.
On December , , Alfonso, when asked to confirm the site of the
call fixed by Pere de Libian for Mallorca’s Jews, lets the consuls, good
men, and community of Mallorca City and Kingdom know that he is
too busy with various affairs and that, because of this, the deputy of
the community would have to delay his return to Mallorca too long
and he permits him to return home, though the Jew Jacob Benonon,
who has presented himself at court, may remain to help arrange this
matter.8
Alfonso finally, on December , confirms the decree of his chief
bailiff for the kingdom, assigning the site known as Temple and Cala-
trava, and authorizing the Jews to construct a synagogue and oven
in the call.9 Four subsequent charters order Mallorcans and Mallorcan
officials to cooperate with Alfonso’s bailiff in the construction of a Jew-
ish quarter, ordering the Jewish aljama and its secretaries to pay ,
sous for the privilege of its quarter, authorizing his bailiff to utilize force
to collect this amount, and, lastly, urging all Jews to build their houses
within the fixed site, as well as all that would be necessary to protect this
single street and create a safe enclosure.10 I belabor this point because I
will return to Mallorca and this particular Jewish quarter later. What is
worth noting is that Mallorca’s Jews, substantial at the island’s conquest
in –, increased through immigration from both Christian and
Muslim lands, enjoyed considerable favor and royal protection in the
thirteenth century, profited by their skills in artisanry and moneylend-
ing, medicine and trade, and lived in both urban and rural areas.11 In

7ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. .
8ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. 
9 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fols. v–; Régné, no. .
10 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no ; ACA, Canc. Real, reg. ,

fol. ; Régné, no. ; ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fols. r–v; Régné, no. ;
ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v; Régné, no. .
11 For general works on Mallorca’s Jews, especially utilizing royal charters, see David

Abulafia, “From Privilege to Persecution: Crown, Church, and Synagogue in the City
of Majorca, –,” in Church, and City, –: Essays in Honour of Christopher
Brooke, ed. David Abulafia, Michael J. Franklin, and Miri Rubin (Cambridge, ),
 -     

Mallorca City, Jews lived from the first days of Christian rule in or near
the Almudayna region, close to the Cathedral of Santa Maria and the
Royal Palace of Almudayna, but closer still to the Dominican church
and convent. One of the five gates of Mallorca City’s first walls, the
one closest to the Dominicans, was known as the gate of the jueus. The
new Jewish quarter moved them only a short distance, to the southeast
corner of the upper part of the old city, well within Mallorca City’s
second walls, not even to the newer developments in the northern part
and the eastern, lower part of the city enclosed by the third and final
medieval walls. The Jewish call was close to the Templars along the
eastern wall, the Poor Clares cloistered along the sea wall to the south,
and, as we shall see later, apparently too close to the Franciscans just
north and slightly to the west.
The proximity of Jews and Jewish quarters to cathedrals, Francis-
cans, and Dominicans could be documented for almost all Catalan
cities. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were not of course the only
mendicant friars who flourished in the thirteenth century, and another
charter of Alfonso III reminds the justiciar of Calatayud that the recently
deceased Pere III of Aragon had mandated that the justiciar return to
the Jew Isaac el Calvo lands which had formerly belonged to the Fri-
ars of the Sack, suppressed in  at the Council of Lyons.12 Property
also moved the other direction, from Jewish to mendicant hands. On
August , , the abbess and the Poor Clare nuns of Santa Maria
de la Serra, since the synagogue constructed illegally by the Jews of
Montblanch had been demolished, petitioned the king for permission
to acquire the demolished materials and utilize them in construction of

–; Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge,

), –; Fidel Fita and Gabriel Llabrés, “Privilegios de los Hebreos Mallorquines
en el Códice Pueyo,” Boletín de la Real academia de la historia,  (), –, –
, –, –, –, and – (only  of the  documents predate
); and A. Lionel Isaacs, The Jews of Majorca (London, ). See also J.N. Hillgarth,
“Sources for the History of the Jews of Majorca,” Traditio,  (), –; the initial
exploratory studies by Ricardo Soto i Company, “La Aljama Judaica de Ciutat en
el siglo XIII,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica lul.liana,  (), –; and Larry
J. Simon, “Muslim-Jewish Relations in Crusader Majorca in the Thirteenth Century:
An Inquiry Based on Patrimony Register ,” in Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval
and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change, ed. Mark D. Meyerson and Edward
D. English (Notre Dame, Ind., ), –.
12 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. . For background on this

mysterious, then popular, order, see the early pages and notes, especially the citations of
Richard Emery and Robert I. Burns, in my “The Friars of the Sack and the Kingdom
of Majorca,” Journal of Medieval History,  (), –.
  . 

their own monastery; Jaume II makes it known to the bailiff of Mont-

blanch that he grants this petition.13
Some royal charters are fairly ambiguous, without further informa-
tion beyond what is contained in the singular registered entry. Jaume I
in  granted pardon to Berenguer Durand, a merchant of Girona,
who committed perjury by entering a Jewish house after swearing to
the Dominicans that he would no longer frequent the house of any Jew,
and also by claiming that a certain Jew of the town had paid cash to
a royal porter.14 The king, furthermore, exempted the said merchant
from the obligation to sculpt a wooden statue for the church of Santa
Maria; connections between the two and explanations for either are
unfortunately missing.
At least one document indicates warm, albeit business, relations
between at least one Jew and some mendicants. While in Valencia on
March , , Jaume II, in consideration of the fact that Homer,
a Jewish doctor of the city, had practiced faithfully his art for the
benefit of the Franciscans of Valencia, conceded to him, at the specific
request of the Franciscans, a letter stating that he was not liable for his
insolvent co-religionists.15 A document concerning another individual
who got on well with mendicants is interesting but open to conflicting
interpretations. At the request of the Dominicans of Játiva, Jaume II
freed Yom Tov, a Jew of Játiva, and all his property from the obligation
to pay royal taxes for so long as he continued to function as Master of
Hebrew for the Dominican House.16 Whether Yom Tov’s co-religionists
were happy for him or thought this was a decent arrangement is not
recorded and highly dubious in any case.
The majority of the registered royal charters documenting men-
dicant-Jewish interaction relate to compulsory sermons, treatment of
converts, and the investigation of Hebrew writings for blasphemy. The
Aragonese monarchy clearly sought to curb the excesses of the mob
and limit the likelihood of violence on occasions of compulsory evan-
gelization—Jews were not required to listen to sermons except while
in the Jewish quarter itself, and preachers were not to be accompanied
by more than ten trustworthy Christians—yet the monarchy through-
out the thirteenth century, not merely Jaume I but his three thirteenth-

13 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v; Régné, no. .
14 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v; Régné, no. .
15 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. .
16 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. ; Régné, no. .
 -     

century successors as well, supported mendicant missionizing and con-

versionary efforts. In the aftermath of the Disputation of Barcelona, as
Robert Chazan and Mark Johnston have pointed out, Jaume I sought
in several of his decrees to reaffirm earlier rules and regulations.17
Mendicant-Jewish interaction was thus by no means limited to theo-
logical confrontation, but from the vantage point of the registered royal
documentation, however, that remained the dominant theme.
It seems reasonable to ask if perhaps, at an even more prosaic level, a
different picture of this interaction might emerge. Notarial registers for
most Mediterranean Spanish cities are not extant, and, where extant,
are not abundant until after the year , and most Franciscan and
Dominican archives have not survived.18 The Dominican Library of
Barcelona survives as the core of the University of Barcelona’s medieval
manuscript collection, but all archival documentation was destroyed.
In Mallorca, the Dominican Library was destroyed, but close to one
thousand total charters, three hundred for the thirteenth century, are
extant and were shipped to Madrid after confiscation by the Spanish
state in .19 A full range of Dominican activities, including their
sale and purchase of Muslim slaves, is to be found in these materi-
als. On July , , for example, Pere Scuder, prior of the Domini-
can House, purchased from Ponç Feliç, a white baptized slave named
Guillem for twelve Valencian pounds.20 Later, on April , , the
Dominicans purchased another baptized slave, this one a mulatto or
olive-skinned slave named Bertran, from Mateu de Truiars, a cleric of

17 See Chazan, as cited above in n. ; Mark D. Johnston, “Ramon Llull and the

Compulsory Evangelization of Jews and Muslims,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of
the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J., vol. I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo, ed.
Larry J. Simon (Leiden, ), –; see also Jaume Riera i Sans, “Les llicències reials
per predicar als jueus I als sarrains (segles xiii–xiv),” Calls,  (), –.
18 Jill Webster’s Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon from St. Francis to

the Black Death () (Toronto, ) can be read as an attempt to reconstruct, from
royal registers (and to a lesser extent notarial records), Franciscan history in the lands
of the Crown of Aragon. The extant documentation, richer for the Dominicans, has
yet to be systematically explored. On the ecclesiastical and notarial archival riches
of Mediterranean Spain, see Simon, “Jews, Jean Régné, and the Medieval Crown of
Aragon,” –.
19 See Luís Sanchez Belda, Guía del Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid, ); these are

in carpetas of twenty or so per carpeta in the Clero section.

20 Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional [hereafter AHN], Clero, pergs., carp. , no.

: “Sit omnibus notum quod ego Poncius felicis vendo tibi fratri petro scuderi priori
conuentus fratrum predicatorum maiorice et eidem conuenti unum babtizatum album
nomine G. en talla precio duodecim librarum quias a uobis habui et recepi.”
  . 

Barcelona, for fourteen Mallorcan pounds.21 These documents record a

number of other sales of especially Muslim slaves, though usually not
involving Dominicans; indeed, the majority of documents are relatively
random notarized parchments whose ownership by the Dominicans is
not immediately obvious.22 Interestingly enough, numerous documents
concern Jews. A half-dozen documents record loans, and another half-
dozen record Jewish property transactions in the Almudayna region
of Mallorca City, next to the Dominicans, where most Jews congre-
gated until a specific quarter was built in the s. Two of the largest
and lengthiest of these parchments concern Jews. As early as  July
, when the conquest of Mallorca was not yet complete, various Jews
received properties not only in and around Mallorca City, but in sev-
eral locations, including Inca, in the island’s interior. On  July ,
the Mallorcan Jew Salima (or Salema, perhaps Zalema) ben Aaron ben
Aarde drafted his will, now edited by Burns, which shows his fam-
ily in detail, his wife and executor Maymona, his married daughter
Maazuga, his widowed daughter Axera, his brother Marçoch, his eldest
son and partner Maymon, two minor children Abrafim and Carima,
and numerous friends and witnesses.23 Salima owned a black female
slave, two hospices, and a set of buildings “fairly close to the build-
ings of the synagogue,” and showed substantial signs of affluence: the
minor children are each to get , Valencian pounds from Maymon
within three years of Salima’s death. Burns notes that the “names have
a Judeo-Arabic flavor as a whole and suggest a family from the mas-
sive migration northward under the Almohad rule or a family assim-
ilated after the large Christian conquests over Spanish Islamic lands.”
It is not readily apparent why a formal copy of this will is drawn up
by the Mallorcan notary Arnau Sanmartí four years later, or why the
Dominican archives should have preserved a copy; but since the minor
children alone are to inherit sizeable fortunes and much of Salima’s
property presumably was located near the Dominican house, there may

21 AHN, Clero, pergs., carp. , no. : “Ego Matheus de truiars clericus de barchi-

nona vendo vobis fratri petro bennacor prior conuentus fratrum predicatorum maiori-
censis ementi nomine proprio et nomine dicti conuentus unum baptitzatum laurum
nomine Bertrandum precio quattordecim librarum regalium maioricarum minutorum
monete perpetue quas numerando a uobis habui et recepi.”
22 For further reference to some of the slave documents see my “The Church and

Slavery in Ramon Llull’s Majorca,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages,
– (esp. –).
23 AHN, Clero, pergs., carp. , no. . The document is edited by Burns, Jews in the

Notarial Culture, –, and analyzed in detail on pp. –.

 -     

have been an interlocking web of urban real estate interests. The wills
the Dominicans were most likely to have preserved were usually those
where they were beneficiaries.
What is missing in this documentation, however, is any example of
Dominican-Jewish interaction. The Dominicans and the Jews of Mal-
lorca lived at incredibly close quarters, conducted business with many
of the same individuals, knew each other and each others’ business
well, but cooperated on apparently nothing, and conducted little busi-
ness with each other, or at least not any that has left notable archival
traces. The only documents that mention the Dominicans and the Jews
together are several generic preaching licenses, beginning as early as
the s, for the Dominicans to evangelize Mallorca’s Jewish and Mus-
lim populations.
If the Dominican archival documentation yields two ships passing,
not in the night but in broad daylight, barely acknowledging each other
except for the occasions when they collide theologically and socially
during compulsory sermons, one might ask if this fact finds expres-
sion in any sources indicating Jewish attitudes toward the mendicants.24
Although Hebrew sources from thirteenth-century Mallorca are next to
nonexistent, I think an accurate expression is found in a Latin, Chris-
tian source. In  on Mallorca there apparently took place a disputa-
tion between Mallorcan Jews and a lay Christian merchant from Genoa
by name of Inghetto Contardo. Inghetto’s account, drafted after the
fact, survives in seventeen manuscripts, was twice printed in sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century Venice, and has just recently been edited and
published in Paris by Gilbert Dahan, and edited and published for the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica by Ora Limor.25 This disputation,
whose veracity is not doubted by any of the editors, though, unlike
Barcelona’s disputation, was not documented in other sources, appar-
ently took place in Catalan, though all manuscripts survive in gram-
matical and straightforward Latin. One editor believes the text was
orignally written in Ligurian Italian but cannot point to any textual
specifics, aside from a number of Italian proverbs which may have

24 Studies of the Friars and the Jews are invariably the writings and preachings of

the Friars on the Jews, rather than Jews on the Friars; or the story of their interactions.
25 For the texts, see Inghetto Contardo, Disputatio Contra Iudeos: Controverse avec les juifs,

ed. Gilbert Dahan (Paris, ), and Die Disputationen zu Ceuta () und Mallorca ():
Zwei antijüdische Schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua, ed. Ora Limor (Munich, ). In
addition to the editors’ introductions, see also Limor’s “Missionary Merchants: Three
Medieval Anti-Jewish Works from Genoa,” Journal of Medieval History,  (), –.
  . 

influenced or at least lay behind the Latin text. The six major discus-
sions of this ,-word disputation take place at the Genoese loggia
on Mallorca, at the house of the “magister Judeorum,” and the final
one, briefly, at Inghetto’s own house. If the disputation contains noth-
ing polemically innovative—the word Talmud, for example, is not once
mentioned in the text, though the Disputation at Barcelona is—and is,
according to the classificatory typology suggested by my former teacher,
the late Amos Funkenstein, a “traditional” work based mainly on the
Bible, it is a text rich in historical particulars and spirited exchanges,
enlivened by the personalities of the protagonists.
Unless one were to assume that the Latin text is a reworking by a
secular clergyman whose disdain for the mendicants evidences clerical
anti-mendicantism, and who cleverly inserts a few, choice anticlerical—
that is, antisecular-clerical—comments to help conceal his identity, the
hostility of the Jewish disputants toward the friars is genuine and cer-
tainly palpable. In the second discussion, held at the house of a magis-
ter Judeorum, the mendicants appear in the third of eight subsections.
The text reports that the two Jewish disputants said, “When Zacharias
said: I am not a prophet at all, I am a man who works the land, and
he who will have prophesied, his parents will curse him, it has to do
with your Friars Minor, Preachers, and others of the same character
[isti sunt uestri fratres minores et predicatores et alii huiusmodi], who preach
and seduce the crowds, saying: the Lord has said this and that, but,
on the side, they live evilly, fornicate, and steal as much as they are
able.”26 Inghetto replies that the Franciscans and Dominicans and alii
boni viri who preach God’s word do not call themselves prophets, but
generally count themselves among the sinners. The Jews ask how this

26 Contardo, Disputatio, –: “Dixerunt Iudei: De hoc quod dicit: Non sum propheta,

homo agricola sum ego, et maledicent ei parentes eius, si quis prophetauerit, isti sunt uestri
fratres minores et predicatores e alii huiusmodi, qui predicant et seducunt gentes et
dicunt: Dominus dixit hec et hec, et quando fornicantur, malitiose uiuunt et rapiunt
que possunt. Vbi hoc inuenitur quod pro maleficiis homo saluetur?
Ingetus respondit: Vos debetis scire et scitis, o Iudei, quod fratres minores et predi-
catores et alii boni uiri qui predicant uerbum Dei non dicunt se esse prophetas; ymmo
comuniter se ponunt cum peccatoribus et peccatores se uocant et non prophetas, et
ideo omnes dicunt Deo: Peccatores te rogamus, audi nos. Et uere uobis dico quod si
quis diceret: Dominus locutus fuit michi, teneretur a sapientibus et fidelibus malus et
stultus et in dementia sensus et non crederetur de uerbo de quo loqueretur.
Dixerunt Iudei: Quomodo hoc dicere potes? Nonne uos, Christiani, dicitis: Frater
talis et frater talis sancti sunt et boni uiri; eamus ad sermonem, quia talis sanctus uir
debet predicare? Et uide si bene dicis contra teipsum, qui dicis quod peccatores sunt et
ab aliis tenentur sancti.”
 -     

can be so: “Do you not say, to other Christians, ‘Such and such broth-
ers are saints and good men, let’s go to the sermon for the holy man
will be speaking.”’ The ensuing discussion mentions Jews as the killers
of Christ, and Christians as abolishers of idols; although comparatively
little space records the reactions of the Jews, they are certainly not, at
this juncture, brought to a more favorable opinion of the mendicants.
One subsection of the fourth discussion concerns announcements of
the coming of the Messiah. A unique argument is advanced by the
Jews concerning why the prophets were not able to foretell that Christ,
son of Mary, would arrive at a particular time. Inghetto eventually
responds that “anger impedes the soul and sin suppresses the mind
and intelligence” and until Jews remove anger from their hearts and
repent of their sins they will not know the day of salvation heralded by
the Messiah. The Jews reply, “We ardently desire to know it! But, if all
the clerks, and the Friars Minor and Friars Preachers, the doctors and
wise Christians got together, they could not do it, and you, who are a
merchant, you believe yourself capable of doing it! You are blundering.
You ramble on better and more audaciously than the Friars Preachers
and Friars Minor whose business it is to discuss and deliberate on such
matters. We want to tell you and affirm to you that, under the reign
of Jaume, the good king of Aragon, who was the father of Peter and
the grandfather of Alfonso, who is now reigning, the Friars Preachers
and Friars Minor came to Girona, as well as brothers Pau, the former
Jew, and many other very able Christians, some of them doctors in
law, in great numbers and they disputed with my brother Jews. How
this turned out, ask those who were present and you will know if the
outcome was to the advantage of the Christians or not.”27 Inghetto

27 Contardo, Disputatio, –: “Dixit Ingetus: Ira impedit animum et peccatum

tollit mentem et intellectum. Vnde ad cognoscendum et ad intelligendum diem aduen-

tus Messie, remoueatur ira a cordibus uestris et de peccatis peniteamini et, hoc facto,
intelligetis et cognoscetis diem salutis et aduentus Messie.
Dixerunt Iudei: Hoc nos scire multum desideramus! Sed si omnes clerici et fratres
minores et predicatores, doctores et sapientes Christianorum insimul essent, hoc facere
non possent, et tu, qui mercator es, credis hoc facere! Teipsum decipis. Sed melius et
audacius decet te fabulari quam fratres minores et predicatores, quorum interest de
istis disputare et consulere. Et uolumus dicere tibi et affirmare quod in tempore domini
Iacabi boni regis Aragonum, qui fuit pater domini Petri et auus istius domini Alfonsi,
qui nunc regnat, fuerunt apud Gironam fratres predicatoes et fratres minores et frater
Paulus, qui fuit iudeus, et multi alii peritissimi Christiani et etiam quam plures legum
doctores, et disputauerunt cum meis Iudeis. Finis qualis fuit, interroga eos qui fuerunt,
et scies si finis fuit bonus pro Christianis an non.
Respondit Ingetus: De hoc numquam uerbum audiui. Tamen multum rogo uos
  . 

replies that he has not heard a “single word,” of that disputation but
that he desired to have a copy of it, to which the Jews reply that,
yes, they have it, and have sent it throughout the world. Inghetto
asks: “Why don’t you help yourselves and use the arguments which,
according to you, were presented to the Christians, and by which it
seems that they found themselves beaten, according to what you say,
but which I do not believe at all, because brother Pau was there?”
The Jews respond that “it would not be decent to present such difficult
concepts” as “you would understand nothing of it.”
It is Inghetto who tells the story, and although he speaks far more
than the Jews, the give and take in the extant dialogue is remarkable.
Inghetto obviously takes considerable pride in his intellectual prowess,
and makes a special point of the fact that the Jews have been defeated
by a simple merchant. Substantially later in the work Inghetto indulges
his pride further and has the Jews express their doubts about whether
Inghetto was secretly a cleric or mendicant. Inghetto again vigorously
denies this assertion and claims to have learned all he knows from dis-
puting with Jews in various parts of the Mediterranean; although he
mentions a number of Jews by name he identifies nobody in particu-
lar. It is the process, not any particular teaching, that made Inghetto
what he is, since with Jews “what one says, the other denies.” The Jews
respond that such syllogistic fickleness sounds precisely like the Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans: “If someone proposes an argument to them,
they answer with different words and each one speaks according to his
own ideas.”28

quod, si in scriptis habetis disputationem illam, quod michi in exemplo tradatis, quia
desiderio magno desidero ut habeam translatum ipsius.
Dixerunt Iudei: Bene habemus, et per uniuersum mundum eam misimus nostris
iudeis.
Dixit Ingetus: Quare de ipsa non uos adiuuatis et cur non opponitis ea que opposita
fuerunt Christianis, prout dicitis, et de quibus, ut apparet, quod Christiani remanserunt
superati, a dicto uestro, quod non credo, postquam frater Paulus illic erat?
Dixerunt Iudei: Non decet nos de tam obscuris uerbis tecum loqui, quia non
intelligeres.
Respondit Ingetus: Ego usque nunc responsionem a uobis haver non potui de
aliquibus de quibus uobis opposuerim. Vnde, si ita esset ut asseritis, bene fecissetis
responsionem. Sed, quia superati estis et contradicere non potestis, si ueritati consentire
uelletis, ideo-nichil credo de toto hoc quod dixistis. Ne pro malo hebeatis! Vobis
dedecus est quod ab homine simplici et mercatore superamini et uincamini. Videte
quid faceretis si hic esset aliquis sapiens scripturam!”
28 Contardo, Disputatio, : “Dixerunt Iudei: Bonus predicator esses, quia bene
 -     

The interests of space and theme limit me to these summary reca-

pitulations,29 but there is at least one other reference that must be men-
tioned briefly. Between the fourth and fifth discussions a Jew by the
name of Astruc Israel arrives and elects to be baptized; Inghetto is
cautious and counsels that a “false Jew will be punished less than a
false Christian.”30 The persistent apostate is baptized at the cathedral,
offered plenty of typical advice, and then taken to the Franciscans for
catechism. This, interestingly enough, accords well with historical prac-
tice on the island. According to a constitution of Jaume II of Aragon,
preserved in a manuscript extant in archives in Palma, all Muslims and
Jews who converted to Christianity were to retain their property freely,
they were to enjoy the same status and liberty of other Christians, no
one was to criticize their conversions or refer to them as renegades,

scires ponere uerba et deauare ea, sed per Deum, dic nobis si fuisti frater minor uel
predicator, uel si cericus es, et unde habes hec que nobis dixisti et dicis.
Ingetus respondit: Nec clericus sum neque fui nec alicuius religionis unquam gui,
ymmo mercator sum. Sed hec que scio didici a iudeis et per gratiam Dei et Messie
domini nostri Ihesu Christi. Et bene dico buobis quod in tempore meo, cum multis
Iudesi conflictum habui, et specialiter in Prouincia et in Alexandria Egipti, cum illo
Angelo, quem Iudei de Syria uocabant regem Iherusalem. Similter cum illo Balaafeç
de Babilonia, qui est, si uiuit, maximus doctor inter Iudeos.
Dixerunt Iudei: Si cum illo tu unquam Iocutus fuisti, quid dixit tibi? Dic nobis, si
Deus adiuuet te.
Ingetus respondit: Tantum dixit michi quod si essem incredulus seu hereticus in fide
Christi, uerba sua et aliorum iudeorum cum quibus unquam locutus fuerim facerent
me credulum et fidelem, quia quod unus dicit, alter negat, sicut inter uos hodie fecistis.
Dixerunt Iudei: Ita faciunt uestri fratres minores et predicatores, quia, si aliquis eis
dixerit aliquam rationem, respondebunt ei uariis sermonibus, et unusquisque loquitur
ad suam opinionem, et id simile faciunt omnes sapientes, quoniam graue esset quod
omnes doctores essent unius opinionis.”
29 I have taught this work in a seminar, finished an English translation of the

complete text, unfortunately of the Dahan text which we utilized for a variety of
reasons, but with Ora Limor’s approval (and perhaps, I hope, her assistance on points
of polemic rather than history), I will revise this translation from her superior edition,
and publish it for student use.
30 Contardo, Disputatio, : “O Iudee, uos nescitis quid dicatis, quoniam, si bap-

tismum accipietis, uocabimini ‘canis filius canis’ tam a Chstianis quam a Iudeis, et in
paupertate eritis, et qui hodie uobis dabit oboum, in toto uno anno non dabit alium,
et sic multam necessitatem habebitis et forsitan in desperationem cito cadere possetis.
Et ideo uobis consulo quod stetis sicut iam steistis, quia ut apparet, bene estis quinqua-
genarius, et notum facio uobis quod minus pene passus erit falsus iudeus quam falsus
Christianus.”
And later, at : “Et, hiis dictis, duxit eum ad locum Fratrum Minorum et tradidit
eum guardiano et fratribus suis, decens eis: Docete eum in Testamento Nouo et in
fide catholica, et unanimiter omnes in Christo pacem habeamus, quam ipse prestare
dignetur, qui est benedictus in secula seculorum, amen.”
  . 

though the neophytes were obliged to listen to and observe the dictates
of the friars.31
One final, fascinating tale of Mallorcan mendicant-Jewish interac-
tion has come to light from the archives. Several summers ago I found
four intriguing charters among the Aragonese royal registers. None
of the four, interestingly enough, is found in Jean Régné’s catalog of
Aragonese royal charters concerning the Jews in the lands of the Crown
of Aragon between  and . It is often assumed, quite erro-
neously, that Régné contains all royal material from the Crown reg-
isters; this should not, however, be attributed to Régné himself, who
acknowledges in a footnote his incompleteness.32 In the last few years,
the Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó has continued the process of cataloging
and making available various procesos it possesses on sundry topics, sur-
viving in various sizes, shapes, lengths, on both paper and parchment,
and in wildly variant states of preservation. One of these, in eight,
small, worm-eaten, now almost confetti-like folios, the writing radically
abbreviated, the ink oxidizing, concerns the subject of these four reg-
istered documents—a dispute between the Franciscans of the City of
Mallorca, present-day Palma, themselves in the process of constructing
a new church, and the Jews of Mallorca City, building a new synagogue
in their recently constructed call. The conflict came to involve royal offi-
cials, leading citizenry of the city, the Cistercian abbot of Santa Maria
de la Real, cathedral canons, and the Dominicans as well.33
On December , , Jaume II writes from Valencia to Pere Bou,
bailiff of Mallorca, communicating that the aljama of the Mallorcan

31 Régné, no. , citing “Archives de Palma [today Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca],

Libre d’en Sant-Pere, fol. .”

32 See above n. ; and Régné’s own footnote, History of the Jews, p. , at the

beginning of his Jaume II abstracts.

33 The document is catalogued simply ACA, Canc. Real, Procesos en cuarto, año

, Sinagoga de Mallorca. My senior colleague and dear friend, the great Mallor-
can scholar Gabriel Llompart, C.R., spoke about this document at the XVI Jornades
d’Estudis Històrics Locals of the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics devoted to the topic “El
Regne de Mallorca a l’època de la dinastia privativa,” December –, . I have
endeavored to edit the document in full as an appendix; the sorry state of the docu-
ment’s preservation calls for multiple sets of eyes, I hope not resulting in the embar-
rassing exposure of too many of my own errors. Padre Llompart has an unrivalled
knowledge of the local context and particulars surrounding this document and indeed
almost all medieval Mallorcan history, but he has indicated to me that he considers the
dispute of mainly local interest. I think it belongs to a universal genre of dispute among
ethno-religious groups, and it and other documents like it need to be brought to the
widest scholarly community possible, so their common particulars may be studied.
 -     

Jews has complained to him concerning the opposition raised against

the building of the new synagogue in the new Jewish quarter, which the
Jews had reminded the king was organized and granted by his brother
Alfonso when he was king.34 On December , Jaume writes again to
Pere that the Franciscans are protesting against the construction of the
new synagogue, alleging that the voices of synagogue officials are dis-
turbing their liturgical celebrations in the church of San Francisco, and
the king orders an investigation by Guillem de Gallifa and Guillem de
Ultzina.35 The Franciscans themselves had in just the previous decade
initiated the building of a new church, and it is this edifice that survives
today, a statue of Juniperro Serra adorning the front of the church, and

34 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v: “Petro bovis baiulo Maioricarum uel eius

locum tenenti et seu alii [cuilibet] baiulo ciuitatis predicte qui pro tempore fuerit etc.
Ex parte aliame iudeorum ciuitatis Maioricarum fuit conquerendo propositum coram
nobis quod vos ad aliquorum instanciam contra concessiones factas aliame predicte
per illustrem Dominum Regem Alfonsum fratrem nostrum felicis recordationis et per
nos ac etiam per Episcopum Maioricarum impeditis et prohibetis iudeos ipsos ne
possint construhere Sinagogam in nouo callo judayco eorumdem, unde mirantes de
uobis quia concessiones dicti domini Regis Alfonsi et nostras ac prefati Episcopi ac
mandata super hiis facta vidimus deducere in contemptum, vobis expresse [dicimus]
et mandamus quatenus dictos iudeos Sinagogam predictam in callo predicto iuxta
concessiones predictas construhere libere permitentes nullum ad aliquorum instanciam
super construccione ipsa prefatis iudeis impedimentum uel contrarium faciatis uel ab
aliquibus fieri permitatis, immo deffendatis iudeos ipsos contra quoscumque uolentes
eisdem in construccione ipsa contra concessiones predictas injuriam uel grauamen quia
aliter vos habentes ne uideamus dictos iudeos racione predicta coram nobis ulterius
querelantes. Datum valencie, ix kalendas ianuarii, anno quo supra.”
35 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fols. v–r: “Baiulo Ciuitatis Maioricarum uel ius

locum tenenti etc. Licet nuper ad insta[nciam et suplicacionem] nobis pro parte aliame
iudeorum Maioricarum factam scripserimus uobis [et dederimus nostris literis in man-
datis] quod iudeos predictos Sinagogam construhere permiteretis in nouo callo judayco
eorumdem iuxta concessiones factas dicte aliame per illustrissimum Dominum Regem
Alfonsum clare memorie fratrem nostrum et per nos ac etiam per Episcopum Maiori-
carum nec permitteretis eisdem iudeis per aliquos super construccione dicte Sinagoge
impedimentum aliquod fieri seu prestari quia tamen postmodum per Guardianum et
conuentum fratrum minorum Maioricarum nobis extitit demonstratum quod locus in
quo dicta Sinagoga construitur est adeo propinquus ecclesie dictorum fratrum mino-
rum quod quando iudei in Sinagoga ipsa iuxta ritum suum celebrant [] horas
suas, officium divinum in ecclesia dictorum fratrum propterea perturbatur necnon et
fratribus ipsis alia tedia et gravamina inferuntur et nos super hiis per dilectum [nos-
trum] G. de gallifa et G. de ultzina mandemus certitudinem indagari et nos certifi-
cari per eos ut certificati possimus quod decencio fuerit ordinare, idcirco mandamus et
dicimus uobis quatenus donec dicti G. de gallifa et G. de ultzina super predictis inda-
gauerint certitudinem et nos inde informauerint nosque ordinauerimus quid in premis-
sis fuerit faciendum et a nobis aliud receperitis in mandatis prohibeatis iudeis predictis
ne ad construccionem dicte sinagoge procedant. Datum valencie, ii kalendas ianuarii
anno quo supra.”
  . 

the earthly remains of one Ramon Llull, occupying one of the small
chapels behind the main altar, constituting the church’s prize posses-
sion.36
In the Franciscan house, on January , , Friar Ramon de
Moraria, guardian of the Franciscan convent, with certain brothers of
the convent, and Solomon Bennuno, Bolax Maymo, and Saydo ben
Deuy, secretaries of the Mallorcan Jewish aljama, presented to Guillem
de Galifa and Guillem de Ultzina a document of the illustrious king
of Aragon. This document is copied into the proceso. A long list of offi-
cials was present: the lieutenant of the royal procurator Guillem de
Belloch, episcopal official Pere Torrella, veguer or vicar Francesc de Car-
dona, bailiff Arnau de Cassa, six municipal consuls, Pere de Cardona,
Bernat Guillem de Soriu, Bernat Sultzina, Francesc Cerdanus, Guillem
Tuyr, and Arnau Garriga, the knight Fernan Rodriguez, the citizens
of Mallorca Bernat de Verí, Guillem Robert, Guillem Ebrini, F. Picany,
Jaume de Valespir, and many others called especially for this task, in the
presence of the venerable knight Guillem de Galifa and the Tarragona
judge Guillem de Ultzina.
Jaume of Aragon writes on December ,  that, since the Mal-
lorcan Jewish aljama, with the permission of King Alfonso and indeed
the bishop of Mallorca, built a synagogue in the call, the guardian and
convent of the Franciscans claim that it was constructed so close to the
church that when the Jews in the nearby synagogue “celebrate their rite
and their hours” the voices of the Jews are audible in the Franciscan
church and cause the brothers “other kinds of weariness and inconve-
nience.” Jaume desires to have a fuller understanding or certainty of
the matter, and orders that the church and synagogue be approached
and inspected regarding how far the two stand apart from each other,
if indeed the voices of the Jews singing their rite in the synagogue have
enough volume to be heard during the prayers of the Franciscans or
exhibit any other hindrance to the friars. Jaume asks to be notified in
writing so that a reasonable and honest solution can be arranged.
The two Guillems, with the document having been presented and
read, wishing humbly to obey the royal order, proceed immediately
in the presence of all of the aforesaid deemed worthy of the task,

36 For the Convent of San Francisco, see now the stunningly beautiful photographs

by Donald G. Murray, text by Aina Pascual and Jaume Llabrés, Conventos y Monasterios de
Mallorca: Historia, Arte y Cultura, “Introducción y Apéndices” by Gabriel Llompart, C.R.
(Palma de Mallorca, ), –.
 -     

and also in the presence of the venerable abbot of the Cistercian

Monastery of Santa Maria de la Real. The Guillems measure per aerem
the distance from the synagogue to the old Franciscan church at sixty
canes and one palm while the distance to the new Franciscan church
under construction at sixty-eight canes, two palms. And on the same
day, the two Guillems, with the aforesaid abbot and a number of the
aforesaid dignitaries and citizens approached the unfinished synagogue
and dischoperta and also found it to reach a height of four tapias. They
visited during vespers to determine if any murmur could be heard from
the Franciscan church, and ordered at the end of the hour for the Salve
Regina to be sung in the loudest tone possible. The voices were able
to be heard, but none of the words could be understood; only the
Cistercian abbot claimed that he could understand “ad te clamamus exules
fili Eve” until the end of the antiphony. One official claimed he could
understand only the words “O clemens, O pia,” and Bernat de Ultzina
claims he could hear one or the other. But the majority declared that
they did not understand the words, although they knew how to read
and write, and said they could discern nothing more than the voices
themselves.
After this, on Wednesday, January , the two Guillems, with a
number of the officials, including the Franciscan lector Bernat Terroç,
with his associate, Brother Bernat de Muntdey, present, along with the
secretaries of the aljama, measure the length and width of the street
in the direction of the old church, as well as the length and width of
a number of other streets between the synagogue and the Franciscan
complex, mentioning in passing some of the Jewish houses. There were
clearly more streets in  between the two houses of worship than
exist today between the churches of San Francisco and the Jesuit church
of Montesión, which was built on the site of the synagogue in question,
long after the Jews of Mallorca had been converted and moved, yet
again, this time to the street of the silversmiths north of Santa Eulàlia.
And it may yet be possible to unravel this part of the text and identify
all the streets in question.
On Thursday the rd, the two Guillems and their entourage vis-
ited the oldest part of the city, and arrived at the Dominican com-
plex, which did not survive the events of . The old synagogue in
the Almudayna region of the city was close to the Dominicans; they
measure and find that it stands apart a greater distance of eight canes
than the new synagogue and the Franciscans, and observe that the old
synagogue is near enough to one of the Almudayna palace walls as
  . 

to deflect noise between it and the Dominicans. They enquire if syn-

agogue services ever interfered with Dominican activities. The prior
answers, emphatically, that in the forty years during which he had lived
in the Dominican community never had he heard the voices of the
Jews in their synagogue, and other friars agreed that there had been
absolutely no hindrance. The Dominican prior and friars also said that
they had never heard the voices of the Jews even from a certain chapel
almost half the distance between the church and synagogue. The mag-
istrates and citizens present in this inspection pointed out, however, that
there was not merely one Jewish synagogue near the Dominicans, as
there would be near the Franciscans after the new quarter is built, and
that Jews lived scattered throughout the city and congregated especially
in the Almudayna and also on the street of en Nunyo Sanç (the count
of Roussillon and royal official who played a major role in the resettle-
ment of Mallorca), where they had another synagogue near the chapel
of San Bartomeu.
On Friday, January , the two Guillems and their entourage visited
the synagogue of the Almudayna to sample the pulse of activity near it,
and also to determine relations between its patrons and those visiting
the Cathedral of Santa Maria. They noted that the distance between
the synagogue and the cathedral was half of that between the new syn-
agogue and the Franciscans, and interviewed the cathedral canons and
clergy, enquiring if ever the voices of the Jews disturbed or molested
cathedral functions. They were told that they did not. Only when the
canons were outside in the cathedral’s cemetery were they ever able to
hear the voices of the Jews.
On the same day and in a like manner, the last activity was to visit
the church of San Andreu and assemble eleven worthy men whose
names were not specifically written down, fearing displeasure of the
disputants, and who were asked while under oath if, once the new
synagogue was completed and roofed, they believed that the faithful
gathered in San Francisco church would be able to hear songs from
the synagogue. All but two of the aforesaid declared no. Three of the
eleven, however, believed that, at the height of a stiff sea breeze, some
murmur would be able to be discerned, but not to such a degree “that
it would cause any hindrance to the said friars.”
Guillem de Belloch, Guillem de Ultzina, and Guillem de Gallifa
certified and submitted their report and attested to the truth of its
contents. Jaume II of Aragon, apparently, if the reality was not a further
financial shakedown of the Jewish community, embraced diplomacy
 -     

over the straight implication of the investigation. On the one hand,

he wrote to both ecclesiastical and civil officials, with copies sent to
the Jewish aljama and to Franciscans, that, based on the information in
the report, the synagogue was too close to the church and he did not
approve of continued construction; moreover, the Jews were not to hold
services without his authority except at a site so remote from the church
that the voices of the Franciscans and the Jews could not be heard by
one other.37 Jaume II also wrote separately to the Franciscans, however,
indicating that no other site was readily available in the new call, and
he asked that they therefore permit the building of the synagogue in
the place where it was already being built.38 The Mallorcan Franciscan

37 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fols. r–v: “Ferrario abbati de Regali, Bernardo

Guamir baiulo Maioricarum nec non vicario Maioricarum et oficiali venerabilis maio-
ricensis Episcopi etc. Nuper quia iudei aljame ciuitatis Maioricarum ex concessione
domini Regis Alfonsi clare memorie fratris nostri atque nostra et prefati maioricensis
Episcopi Sinagogam in novo calle judaico construebant. Ex parte guardiani et conu-
entus fratrum minorum Ciuitatis predicte fuit expositum coram nobis quod locus in
quo dicta Sinagoga construitur erat prop[inqua] ecclesie dictorum fratrum adeo quod
uoces eorum et iudeorum celebrantium horas susa audiri poterant hinc et inde et alia
tedia et grauamina inferri fratribus supradictis. Nos uero uolentes habere de predic-
tis certitudinem pleniorem, mandauimus dilectis nostris Guillelmo de gallifa et Guil-
lelmo de ultzina ut ad dictam ecclesiam dictorum fratrum et ad locum ipsius sina-
goge personaliter accedentes de omnibus predictis et aliis circumstanciis indagarent
sollicite ueritatem et nos inde curarent per suas literas informare qui super predictis
tam per literas quam per mensuram spacii intermedii nobis tr[an]smissas nos certifi-
care curarunt. Nos igitur iuxta mensuram et lieras supradictas sufficienter super dicto
neg[oc]io informari cognovimus sinagoagam predictam fore nimis propinquam eccle-
sie supradicte et non debere in opere ipsius procedi nec permiti per dictos iudeos horas
in sinagoga ipsa ulterius celebrari qua propter [uobis] dicimus et mandamus quatenus
ad loca predicta personaliter accedentes ex parte nostra inhibeatis et iniungatis iudeis
predictis ne in opere dicte sinagoge procedant nec presumant horas ibidem ulterius ce-
lebrari sed auctoritate nostra assignetis alibi iudeis ipsis locum idoneum adeo ab eccle-
sia fratrum ipsorum remotum quod voces fratrum canencium et iudeorum audiri non
valeant hinc et inde nec tedia seu gravamina aliqua fieri seu inferri fratribus supra-
dictis. Nos enim arbitrio et ordinacioni uestre hec omnia duximus comitenda […] hiis
comitentes [p]lenarie vices nostras habituri ratum et firmum perpetuo quicquid per
uos super assignacione loci … et aliis negocium ipsum [concernen]tibus actum fuerit
seu etiam ordinatum mandantes [r] presentes p[rocura]tori nostro baiulo vicario et
aliis of[ficialibus] et subditis nostris ciuitatis et Regni Maioricarum quod super omnibus
predictis ordinandis et exequendis dent uobis auxilium consilium et iuvamen quan-
documque inde fuerint requisiti. Datum valencie, ii idus marcii anno Domini ut supra.
R. Caprarii. Similis litera fuit facta et tradita nunciis aliame iudeorum Maioricarum
cum prior litera fratribus minoribus tradita fuisset.”
38 ACA, Canc. Real, reg. , fol. v: “Guardiano et conuentui fratrum minorum

Maioricarum etc. Cum nos ad instanciam uestram per alias literas nostras desisti et
cessari mandemus a construccione operis Sinagoge judeorum que in callo judayco
Majoricarum de novo construebatur, et pro parte aliame iudeorum ipsius Ciuitatis
  . 

convent was of royal foundation, prospered under royal patronage,

and clearly could do nothing other than acquiesce. When Jaume II
of Mallorca, an enthusiastic patron of the Franciscans both in Mallorca
City and at Miramar, regained Mallorca itself from Jaume II of Aragon
as part of the international negotiations bringing the Sicilian vespers to
a close and returned from year-round exile in Perpignan, his approval
of the new Jewish quarter and its synagogues was decidedly not, as
some historians may have assumed, a mere formulaic ratification of
standard privileges and past custom. For the Jews of Mallorca, as for
the Jews everywhere, there was no such thing as standard ratification of
long-standing rights; each and every privilege was hard-won and often-
times difficult to preserve. Jaume II was explicit that, whereas many
Jews had transferred their homes from Almudayna and other parts of
the city to a new neighborhood called the Temple and Calatrava and
established their call there, it would cause them grave harm to compel
them to leave, and he therefore conceded to them in perpetuity the site
where it was then situated and the synagogues (note the plural) which,
with the approbation of the bishop of Mallorca, they had commenced
to build. He mandates further that, should it prove necessary to enlarge
the quarter, it can extend to adjoining sites to the southeast, on the side
of the Temple (closer to the city walls and sea, and thus away from the
Franciscan complex and the parish church of Santa Eulàlia).39

fuerit coram nobis expositum quod in calle predicta non est locus alius in quo dicti
iudei sinagogam predictam comode construere valeant pro eo quia locus ipse tenetur
pro nobis et loca alia que sunt in dicta calle ad censum pro aliis dominis tenentur
et nobis humiliter suplicatum ut uobis super hiis nostras miti deprecatorias literas
dignaremur suplicacione ipsa benigne admissa vos rogamus quatenus si comode et
absque srauamine uestro sustinere potestis quod dicta sinagoga construatur in loco ubi
ipsam iudei predicti iam construere inceperunt sinagogam eandem per dictos iudeos in
loco predicto construhi permitatis. Datum valencie, ut supra.”
39 See the document no. , reprinted from Villanueva, Viaje literario, vol. XXII, ,

in Antonio Pons, Los Judíos del Reino de Mallorca durante los siglos XIII y XIV,  vols. (reprint
Palma de Mallorca, ; originally published in Hispania, , nos. , ,  [],
–, –, –, and , nos. , .  [], –, –, –;
and printed as volumes in Madrid, undated though  or  and ), :–:
“Noverint universi, quod nos Jacobus Dei gratia rex Majoricarum, comes Rossiionis
et Ceritanie et dominus Montispesulani, attendentes quod judei civitatis Majoricarum,
qui consueverunt morari et suas domos et habitationes havere intus Almudainam et in
aliis locis civitatis Majoricarum transtulerunt se et sua domicilia in certo loco dicte
civitatis Majoricarum transtulerunt se et sua domicilia in certo loco dicte civitatis,
scilicet in quosdam vicos vocatos ‘partita Templi et Calatrave’ extendentes se versus
domum seu castrum Templi civitatis Majoricarum, in quibus vicis dicti judei suum
callum et domos edificaverunt et construxerunt. Attendentes etiam quod, si dicti judei
 -     

The mendicant-Jewish interactions in Mediterranean Spain which

leave notarial traces are not easily subjected to psychodynamic analy-
sis to reveal attitudes and how they may have shaped various behav-
iors. Still, I think that one need not be a clinician to acknowledge that
warped evaluations, misassessments of fact, and vituperation often have
their foundations in the emotions of the individual, in daily experiences,
and reveal themselves most when one is in close company. Group atti-
tudes and actions—whether base or inexplicably noble—are likewise
often prompted and influenced as much by the mundane or the irra-
tional as by the conscious and deliberative; similarly, mundane, pro-
saic actions may be revealing of the most deeply seated attitudes. If,
as has been argued, the absence of contact with real Jews is a pre-
condition for the most vicious and absurd of stereotypes, then Catalan
mendicants knew better when they repeated, although rarely, false and
inaccurate sterotypes; and they knew better when they perpetuated or
permitted, very rarely, the spread of anti-Judaic libels so common to
northern Europe and later centuries.
It was the Catalan mendicants who were forced to search for new
arguments in their real missionary efforts. It is thus not at all surpris-
ing that it was the Catalans who, more than anyone else, focused on
the rabbinical writings of contemporary Judaism. This is not to imply
that all or even most Catalans necessarily followed this programmatic

compellentur ad alium locum dicte civitatis se et sua domicilia transferre, esset eis
dampnosum, aboriosum et nimium sumptuosum et nobis habita deliberatione videatur,
quod in aliquo loco dicte civitatis non possent dicti judei ita comode situari et callum
suum habere, sicut in loco in quo dictum callum nunc edificatum est et constructo.
Ideo per nos et nostros laudamus, concedimus et confirmamus dictis judeis et aljame
eorumdem, presentibus et futuris, dictum callum et locum in quo dictum callum
edificatum est, cum domibus, edifitiis et aliis pertinentiis omnibus loci dicti callie et
cum sinagoga in dicto callo auctoritate venerabilis Majoricarum episcopi assignata et
incepta edificari ibidem construenda. Ita quod dicti judei nunquam compellanture seu
compelli possint ad transferednum se et sua domitilia nec habendum callum in alodio
loco dicte civitatis, preter in loco in quo nunc est. Quoniam habitationem dictorum
judeorum et sinagogam eorum in dicto loco esse volumus et statuimus ex certa scientia
nunc et in perpetuum cum hoc nostro instrumento perpetuo valituro.”
Mallorca’s Jewish community would, of course, suffer a tempestuous and extortion-
ate relationship with King Sanç a mere fifteen years later, recover and prosper to an
astonishing extent, only to fall victim to the anti-Jewish pogroms of , undergo a
very little studied period of transition, currently the subject of a doctoral dissertation in
progress by Natalie Oeltjen of the University of Toronto, before being destroyed alto-
gether in , several generations before the events of . The xuetes or conversos of
Mallorca have not only an early and long, but also a relatively recent, history, and have
been chronicled in a number of monographs.
  . 

line of anti-Judaism. A layman such as Inghetto Contardo may or may

not have been conversant with the new missionizing, but a layman
such as Ramon Llull certainly was; Llull, however, criticized methods
of Ramon Martí in regard to the Muslims, and remained devoted to
his universal art as the missionary key, seeking the moral reform of
Christians and non-Christians alike. Rather than partake of a specific
missionary program for the Jews, Llull’s conversionary zeal was part of
his own idiosyncratic program, itself grounded in a traditional salvation
history. The Franciscans of Mallorca City may have been more exer-
cised by the Hebrew prayers they imagined they were hearing, which
perhaps they could hear if they strained hard enough, than by rabbini-
cal teachings they found repugnant. The Dominican prior in Mallorca
City, whatever his evangelical designs on the Jews may have been, felt
no compulsion to perjury, and the entire enquiry in this Franciscan-
Jewish spat seems to have been conducted in a spirit of matter-of-fact
sobriety. The recovery of the more prosaic historical record of inter-
action is a task that ought to be, where possible, undertaken. Only
by studying the daily and the millennial, the mundane as well as the
profound, I would argue, will we more fully understand the relations
between, to borrow a phrase from the title of a book about parties to a
modern conflict, these intimate enemies.
 -     



[fol. r] Excellentissimo ac magnifico domino Jacobo dei gracia regi

Aragonum.
[r] Anno domini m[c]cx[c] septimo, xii[ii] kalendas februarii. In
presencia ven[erabilium] G. de belloch ten[entis locum] procuratoris
maioricarum, P. de turricella, officialis domini maioricensis episcopi,
Fr[an]cisci de cardona vicarii, A. de Cassano baiuli, P. de Cardona,
Bernardi G. soriu, Bernardi sultzina, Francisci cerdani, G. tuyr et A.
garriga consulum, Ferrandi rudrigis militis, Bernardi de uerino, G.
Robert, G. [.]brini, F. picany, Jacobi de ualespir, ciuium maioricarum,
et plurium aliorum ad hoc specialiter uocatorum, Coram venerabili G.
de galifa, milite, et (G.) de ultzina iurisperito Terrachone comparuerunt
frater R. de moraria Guardianus conuentus fratrum minorum maio-
ricarum cum quibusdam fratribus ipsius conue[ntus] ex una parte et
Salamo bennuno, Bolax maymo, Saydo ben Deuy[.] secretarii aliame
iudeorum maioricarum, in domo dictorum fratrum ex altera, et dictus
Guardianus presentauit eisdem [G. de] galifa et G. de ultzina quandam
patentem literam in d[or]so sigillatam sigillo illustrissimi domini Jacobi
regis aragonum. [v] Cuius quidem litere tenor talis est:
Jacobus dei gracia Rex aragonum maioricarum [valencie] et murcie
Comesque barchinone ac Sancte Romane Ecclesie [vexilla]rius ammi-
ratus et capitaneus generalis, Dilectis suis G. de galifa et Guillelmo de
ultzina, salutem et dileccionem. Cum aliama iudeorum maioricarum
ex concessione illustrissimi domini R[egis] Alfonsi clare memorie fra-
tris nostri atque nostra [ac] etiam Episcopi maioricarum in nouo calle
judaico eorum construhent [si]nagogam et nunc ex parte Guardiani et
conuentus fratrum minorum maioricarum sit expositum coram nobis
quod locus in quo dicta sinagoga construhitur est adeo propinqus eccle-
sie dictorum fratrum quod quando iudei [in] sinagoga ipsa iuxta ritum
suum celebrant horas suas uoces iudeorum ipsorum in ecclesia fratrum
minorum audi[untur] necnon et fratribus ipsis alia tedia et gravamina
infer[untur] et nos de predictis velimus habere certitudinem pleniorem.
Idcirco mandamus et dicimus uobis quatenus adhibitis uobis cum ali-
quibus [r] fidedignis a[ccedatis p]ersonal[iter] ad domum seu eccle-
siam dictorum fratrum minorum et ad locum in quo sinagoga dicto-
rum judeorum construhitur, et inspiciatis occulo ad occulum in quan-
tum locus in quo dicta sinagoga construhitur distat a domo seu ecclesia
dictorum fratrum minorum et si uoces iudeorum in sinagoga predicta
  . 

iuxta suum ritum dicentium horas suas [in] ecclesia dictorum fratrum
audiri ualeant uel aliud impedi[mentum] predictis fratribus prestetur
necnon et aliis omnibus circumstanciis in dagetis modis omnibus qui-
bus poteritis certitudinem pleniorem de quibus omnibus curetis nos per
uestras literas informare ut informati possimus super eo quod racio-
nabile [et hone]stum fuerit ordinare. Datum valencie pridie kalendas
januarii anno domini m.cc.xc septimo [--]
Quiquidem litera presentata et lecta dicti G. de Galifa et G. de Ult-
zina uolentes mandatis domini Regis humiliter obedire proces[serunt]
[v] in continenti in presencia predictorum ad h[oc uo]catorum et fide-
dignorum et etiam in presencia venerabilis et [...]s viri abbatis de Regali
ad contenta in [pre]fata litera [domini] Regis ut sequitur.
Et mensurarunt per aerem predicti G. de Galifa et G. Ultzina in
presencia predictorum in quantum locus in quo dicta sinagoga [con-
struh]itur distat a domo seu ecclesia dictorum fratrum minorum anti-
cha in qua nunc celebrant et ecclesia nouiter incepta in monasterio
eorumdem, cum quadam corda seu fune canipis in capite cuius corda
est aliquantulum de corda despart. [Et] fuit inuentum quod dicta sina-
goga distat ab ecclesia a[ntica] fratrum minorum per .lx. canes et .i.
palm de montispessulani et quod dicta ecclesia cepta minorum distabat
a dicta sinagoga cepta iudeorum plus quam dicta ecclesia antica [...]
canes et i palm montispesulani, et sic distat dicta ecclesia cepta a loco
ubi dicta sinagoga construhitur per lx.viii. canes et duos palmos.
[r] Item eadem die dicti G. de galifa et G. de ultzina una cum
[venera]bilibus abbate de [Regali] predicto, G. de pulcro loco et offi-
ciali predicto A. de cassano bajulo, Ferrando rudrigis milite, P. de car-
dona, Bernardo de Ultzina consulibus, Bernardo gomir, P. de Matis,
Bernardo de uerino et pluribus aliis ciuibus maioricarum accesserunt
ad sinagogam predictam iudeorum ceptam in nouo callo que sinagoga
imperfecta est et dischoperta, et uersus ecclesiam fratrum minorum est
tantum alta per iiii.or tapias, si posse[nt audire] voces dictorum fra-
trum minorum uesperas in sua ecclesia anticha celebrancium, et cum
ipsos uesperos celebrant predicti q[ui erant] in dicta sinagoga congre-
gati non potuerunt audire uoces dictorum fratrum a dicta sinagoga,
et mis[erun]t nuncium ad dictos fratres quod cantarent altis uocibus
in dicta ecclesia S[alve] Regina qui fratres exaltantes uoces suas [in]
dicta ecclesia et [...] ut altius poterant inceperunt cantare et diceba-
tur [quod in]ceperant [v] cantare Salve Regina, et audieba[ntur in]
dicta sinagoga voces eorum et poterant di[s-- u]oces puerorum qui
cantabant in dicta ecclesia ut dictum est a uocibus maiorum non tamen
 -     

quod alias possent intelligi uerba que cantabant. Set dominus abbas
de Regali dixit quod audiuit in predicto cantu a dicta sinagoga ad te
clamamus exules fili eve usque ad finem dicte antiphene et officialis
predictus dixit quod audiuit in dicto cantu hec uerba o clemens, opia.
Set Bernardus de ultzina consul qui supra dixit quod intellexit tantum
in dicto cantu unum de istis uerbis: uel o clemens uel opia. [Ali]i autem
dixerunt quod non intellexerant uerba que [can]ta[bant] licet aliqui
eorum scirent literas, set [tantum] audiuerunt dictas uoces, ut supra
dictum est.
Post hec die mercurii que fuit .xi. kalendas februarii, dicti G. de
galifa [r] et G. de ultzina [una c]um Bernardo de ultzina A. garriga
G. tuyr consulibus maioricarum, et [venerabili]bus Ferrando rodrigis
milite Bernardo de uerino P. de Matis ciuibus maioricarum accesse-
runt ad dictum callem iudeorum, et presentibus fratre Bernardo ter-
roc lectore fratrum minorum et fratre Bernardo de muntdey eius socio
qui ibi erant ex parte dicti monasterii et presentibus dictis secreta-
riis qui ibi erant nomine dicte aliame mensurarunt quendam uicum
qui est in directo dicte ecclesie antique, set non noue fratrum mino-
rum et dicte sinagoge, qui uicus est infra callum iudeorum, quiqui-
dem uicus habebat in longum xxx.vii canes et mediam Montispesul-
lani, et in amplum ia cana et ii palms montispesullani. Item inuenerunt
quod inter [murum?] dicti monasterii fratrum minorum magis propin-
quum muro dicti calli uersus [dictum] monasterium [...] murum calli
est extra ipsum callum quidam uicus p[ublicus in transver]so et habet
in amplum duas canas et [ ] palmos [montis]pesulani.
[v] Item infra callum sunt inter dictam [ecclesiam ueterem et] sina-
gogam duo vici intransuverso, quorum [vicorum] intransuerso primus
qui est intra callum uersus murum ipsius calli habet in amplum duas
canas et mediam montispesulani, et alius [u]icus qui est in transuerso
iuxta locum dicte sinagoge habet in amplum duas canas et i palm mon-
tispesulani, et inter dictam ecclesiam minorum et dictam sinagogam a
dicto pariete muri dicti calli usque ad dictam sinagogam sunt hospi-
cia iudeorum satis alta [cum] solariis et aliqua eorum [cum] tegulatis
bene altis continue ab ipso pariete muri usque ad dictam sinagogam,
except[a ... alt]itudine dictorum vicorum intransverso et dicto al[...]
in longum ut dictum est, et predicta presenti die [ ] facta sunt infra
spacium predictum quo distat dicta sinagoga ab ecclesia minorum pre-
dicta.
[r] Item die jo[uis que] fuit x kalendas februarii, dicti G. de galifa
et G. de ultzina accesserunt [absen]tibus dictis partibus ad ecclesiam
  . 

seu monasterium fratrum predicatorum maioricarum, [una] cum Ber-

nardo de ultzina Bernardo G. consulibus et Ferrando rud[rig]is et Ber-
nardo de uerino et P. de matis ciuibus maioricarum ad hoc uocatis pro
uidendo quantum distat sinagoga antiqua iudeorum que est in almu-
dayna ab ecclesia fratrum predicatorum, et si uoces dictorum iudeo-
rum in dicta sinagoga anticha dicentium oras suas poterant audiri
ab ecclesia predicatorum uel impedimentum aliquod prestare in horis
celebrandis in dicta ecclesia uel in studendo aut in aliis, ut posset per
consequens haberi coniectura an uoces iudeorum oras suas dicentium
in sinagoga nouiter cepta in nouo callo possent audiri ab ecclesia fra-
trum minorum, et fuit inuentum quod dicta sinagoga an[ticha] almu-
dayune distabat plus per spacium viii canarum ab ecclesia predicato-
rum quam dicta sinagoga nouiter cepta ab ecclesia minorum, et est cer-
tum quod [dicta] sinagoga antica est intra murum castri maioricarum
qui murus est satis grossus et [...] dictam sinagogam et ipsa sinagoga
anticha est satis [in] loco infimo iuxta dictum murum per iii graons,
et inter dictam sinagogam anticham [v] et parietem ecclesie predi-
catorum non est aliqua domus uel hospicium in medio nisi tantum
dictus murus et uia publica et ortus et monasterium ipsorum predi-
catorum. Item in presencia [predictorum] dicti G. de galifa et G. de
ultzina interrogauerunt priorem et fratres predicatores quos [ibi] con-
gragegarunt, quos dicerent ueritatem in fide sua an uoces dictorum
iudeorum dicentium oras suas iuxta ritum suum \\in dicta sinagoga
antica// possent audiri ab ecclesia dictorum fratrum predicatorum uel
eis aliquod [impedi]mentum prestare in celebrando diuino officio uel
alias, et dictus prior respondit in periculo anime sue quod ipse erat in
ordine bene sunt .xl. anni, et pro maiori parte ipsius temporis stetit in
dicto monasterio, et numquam audiuit dictas uoces iudeorum in dicta
sinagoga anticha dicentium oras suas ab ecclesia seu monasterio, nec
aliquod impedimentum fuit factum dictis fratribus propter dictas uoces,
et idem dixerunt [alii] fratres [quan]tum ad dictum impedimentum.
Dixerunt etiam dicti prior et [fratr]es quod etiam numquam audiue-
runt uoces judeorum a quadam capella que est infra dictum spacium
qui est satis in medio vel quasi dicti spacii et si dicta capella esset per
viii canas magis prope dictam [sinago]gam, esset satis in medio spacii
distancie quod est inter ecclesiam predicatorum et sinagogam anticam
predictam, dicti tamen consules et probi homines dixerunt quod omnes
judei non ueniebant ad dictam sinagogam, [r] set aliqui eorum ibant
ad quandam aliam sinagogam que est in callo d’en Nuno, iuxta capel-
lam sancti Bartholomei, set credunt quod perfecta dicta sinagoga noui-
 -     

ter cepta in nouo callo omnes judei maioricarum dicent oras suas in
\\ipsa// sinagoga.
Item die veneris que fuit ix kalendas februarii prefati G. de gallifa et
G. de ultzina, una cum G. tuyr et A. de garriga consulibus F[errando
rodrigis Bernardo] de uerino G. Roberti et Jacobi company ciuibus
maioricarum, pro habenda [coniectura de predictis accesserunt] ad
dictam sinagogam almudayne et extimarunt [occulo ad occulum quod
ecclesia] minorum distabat per medietatem magis a loco ubi sinagog[a
nouiter construhitur in] callo iudeorum quam ecclesia Sancte Marie
sedis maioricarum [a dicta sinagoga almuday]ne. Et postmodum in
continenti predicti omnes accesserunt [ad dictam ecclesiam] Sancte
Marie et ibi interrogarunt communiter clericos qui exibant de [cele-
brandis uesperis si unquam au]diuerunt in dicta ecclesia dum celebrant
diuinum officium voces iudeorum oras suas secundum ritum suum
dicentium in s[in]agoga [almudayne predicte] et si prestabant eis per
suas uoces aliquod impedimentum.
Et prefati clerici dixerunt quod numquam a dicta ecclesia Sancte
Marie \\dum celebrant diuinum officum// audiuerunt uoces iudeo-
rum oras suas in dicta [sinagoga dicentium] et etiam \\quod// cre-
dunt ipsi clerici quod si non celebrabant oras in dicta [ecclesia set
escul]tarent uoces dictorum iudeorum dum dicunt oras suas [secun-
dum ritum suum in] dicta sinagoga almudayne quod non posset eos
audire. [… tamen dicti clerici] quod a cimiterio quod est extra eccle-
siam ante ipsam [ecclesiam] audiuerunt multocies uoces [v] dictorum
iudeorum in dicta sinagoga \\almudayna// dicentium oras suas iuxta
ritum suum.
Item dicti G. de galifa et G. de ultzina eadem die cum predictis
et cum venerabile G. de pulcro loco accesserunt ad ecclesiam beati An-
dree ciuitatis maioricarum et congregarunt ibi xi probos homines \\fi-
dedignos// qui iam subposuerant occulis dictam ecclesiam fratrum
minorum tam anticam quam nouam et locum in quo sinagoga in dicto
nouo callo nouiter construhitur quorum proborum hominum nomina
ad rogatum ipsorum proborum hominum hic specialiter scripta non
fuerunt, timentes ingratitudinem alterius partis qui probi homines cum
iura[ment]o interrogati fuerunt si uidebatur eis quod cum sinagoga
iudeorum nouiter constructa erit cohoperta et perfecta an voces dic-
torum iudeorum \\dum dicent oras suas secundum ritum suum// pos-
sint audiri ab ecclesia seu monasterio fratrum minorum seu aliquod
impedimentum eis prestare in diuinis officiis celebrandis seu etiam
alias, et omnes predicti duobus exceptis dixerunt quod non, dixerunt
  . 

tamen iii eorum quod cum uentus esset alembat quod uoces dictorum
iudeorum in dicta nova sinagoga \\oras suas// dicentium audirentur a
dicta ecclesia ut credebant non tamen in tantum quod prestaret dictis
fratribus aliquod impedimentum.
Est tamen certum quod dicta die mercurii pars dictorum iudeorum
presentarunt dictis G. de galifa et G. de ultzina, in presencia dicti
lectoris et socii sui et aliorum proborum hominum, quandam cedulam
que nondum hic posita est, cuius tenor talis est: [r] A vos, honrat
senyor en G. de belloch, tenent loc de procurador del senyor Rey
d’arago en lo Regne de malorches, e en G. de galifa e en G. sultzina,
soplegen e requeren los secretaris delaljama dels jueus de malorches per
nom de tota la dita aljama e de part de deu e del senyor Rey damunt
dit, que dejatz certificar per veritat lo dit senyor Rey, aquela sinagoga
que ara an en l’almudayna quant es pus prop de la seu e dels preycados
e del castel e de la capela del senyor Rey que no es dels frares menors
la sinagoga la qual es comensada de construy in lo cal juyc nou ab
volentat del noble senyor D’amfos sanrere rey d’arago e del molt alt e
noble senyor en Jacme ara rey d’Arago e ab volentat e ab licencia del
senyor bisbe de malorches e de tot lo cominal de la ciutat e de la illa
de malorches encara certifiquets uos ab los clerges de la seu e ab los
preycados con los jueus dien lurs ores si destorben a els les lurs ores.
E de totes aquestes coses uos certificants que.n dejatz certificar lo dit
senyor Rey.
 JEWS AND JUDAISM IN PETER
AURIOL’S SENTENCES COMMENTARY

N L. T

Although Peter Auriol is widely acknowledged to have been influenced

by the thought and theology of John Duns Scotus—indeed, many
scholars have argued that he was a student of Scotus’s in Paris1—
Auriol’s treatment of issues concerning Jews and Judaism shows much
independence from Scotus’s approach. Auriol’s discussion of Old Testa-
ment law and circumcision is easily as engaged and intense as Scotus’s,
yet Auriol’s general attitude towards the Old Law and Judaism is strik-
ingly more Christian-centric, and less positive, than the Scottish the-
ologian’s. While Auriol does not finally support Scotus’s harsh stance
on the specific issue of the forced baptism of Jewish children, Auriol’s
overall attitude towards Jews and Judaism is in many ways even harsher
and less tolerant than the Subtle Doctor’s.2
Our knowledge of Peter Auriol’s biography remains sketchy. Scholars
know Auriol was born around  in a small town named Gourdon
in extreme southern Aquitaine. There is strong evidence indicating
that Auriol entered the Franciscan Order sometime before , and
scholars generally agree that it is likely Auriol was a student at Paris
at some point before .3 The next clear evidence of his activities
tells us he was a lecturer in Bologna during the academic year –
 and was teaching in Toulouse beginning in .4 We know Auriol

1 See the discussion on this issue in A. Teetaert, “Pierre Auriol,” Dictionnaire de

Theologie catholique XII,  (Paris, ), col. .

2 For a recent analysis of John Duns Scotus’s writings on Jews, see Nancy Turner,

‘“An Attack on the Acknowledged Truth’: Fourteenth-Century French, English, and

German Christian Theologians on the Jews” (Ph.D diss., University of Iowa, ),
–.
3 Although scholars agree that Auriol was a student at Paris in the first decade

of the fourteenth century, exactly when he was there is still contested. A. Teetaert
argues that he was there during the period from – when Scotus was teaching.
Katherine Tachau insists that the evidence available allows us to conclude only that he
was in Paris sometime before ; Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age
of Ockham (Leiden, ),  n. ; A. Teetaert, “Pierre Auriol,” cols. –; see also
Werner Dettloff, Die Entwicklung der Akzeptations und Verdienst Lehre von Duns Scotus bis Luther
(Werl, ), .
4 Tachau, Vision and Certitude,  n. .
  . 

was in Paris by  where he delivered his Sentences lectures. He was

then presented for the licenciate in Theology in the summer of 
by the recently appointed Pope John XXII,5 and remained in Paris
to present his Bible commentary for two years beginning in .
In  he was named provincial of the Aquitaine province of the
Franciscan Order. By February  we know he had been promoted
to archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and was consecrated in the position
by Pope John XXII. Peter Auriol’s career as an ecclesiastic was short-
lived, however, for he died in January,  in either Aix or Avignon,6
less than one year after taking up the position of archbishop.
Peter Auriol’s name and works are less well known to modern schol-
ars than those of other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians
such as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus or William of Ockham.
Yet Auriol was known and respected both by his contemporaries and
by thinkers throughout the Late Middle Ages. Indeed, his skill with
language and the thoroughness of his analysis earned him the names
Doctor facundus (eloquent doctor) and Doctor ingeniosus (ingenious doctor)
from his late medieval contemporaries.7 Katherine Tachau tells us that
“Auriol’s Sentences commentary was widely read and discussed in Paris
from the moment of its composition; it was remarkably soon thereafter
known in England.”8 His fame and reputation was still considerable
into the sixteenth century, inspiring the publication of an edition of his
Sentences commentary in Rome as late as .9

5Tachau, Vision and Certitude,  n. .

6Hugues Dedieu, “Les Ministres Provinciaux d’Aquitaine,” Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum,  (), –; Dettloff, Die Entwicklung der Akzeptations, .
7 J.J. Przezdziecki, “Peter Aureoli,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, nd ed. (), :–

.
8 Katherine Tachau, “The Response to Ockham’s and Aureol’s Epistemology

(–),” in English Logic in Italy in the th and th Centuries, ed. Alfonso Maieru
(Naples, ), .
9 For a quick summary of the evidence of Auriol’s fame among late medieval

thinkers, see Katherine H. Tachau, “The Preparation of a Critical Edition of Pierre

Auriol’s Sentences Lectures,” in Editori Di Quaracchi  Anni Dopo Bilancio E Prospettive,
ed. Alvaro Cacciotti and Barbara Faes de Mottoni (Rome, ), –. See also
William Duba, “The Immaculate Conception in the Works of Peter Auriol,” Vivarium,
 (), –; Chris Schabel, “Place, Space, and the Physics of Grace in Auriol’s
Sentences Commentary,” Vivarium,  (), ; Russell L. Friedman, “Peter Auriol on
Intentions and Essential Predication,” in Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition, ed.
S. Ebbesen and R.L. Friedman (Copenhagen, ), –; Chris Schabel, Theology
at Paris –: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents
(Ashgate, ); James L. Halverson, Peter Aureol on Predestination: A Challenge to Late
Medieval Thought, (Leiden, ), –.
     ’   

The modern scholar can glean much information about the atti-
tudes, training, and milieu of a theologian from a close study of that
theologian’s Sentences commentary. A Sentences commentary was a stan-
dardized genre of theological work which all prospective theologians
were required to produce in the High and Late Middle Ages in order
to obtain their baccalaureate in theology. This work was a type of the-
ological exercise that was based upon the template developed by a the-
ologian at Paris, Peter Lombard (ca. –). Around the year 
Lombard wrote a theological text which he called the Book of Sentences or
(Opinions).10 In this work, Lombard collected the opinions of the major
religious thinkers up to his own generation on a large number of ques-
tions concerning Christian doctrine. Lombard then categorized these
questions and divided them into four “books.” The first of these books
deals with issues concerning the nature of God and the Trinity. Book
Two discusses doctrines concerning angels, creation, sin, and the fall
from grace. The third book presents issues dealing with the nature of
Christ and doctrines concerning virtues. Finally, Book Four examines
and discusses issues concerning the Christian sacraments. Immediately
upon its publication, Lombard’s Sentences was, with a few exceptions,
well received, quickly becoming and remaining a fundamental text in
theology faculties for the next several centuries.11
Lombard’s collection and summary of opinions on Christian doc-
trine made his work a useful and valuable textbook and reference
work for the generations of scholars who followed him. But the most
influential aspect of his textbook, and the most wide-reaching legacy
he would pass on to the scholars who followed, was the format he
provided for presenting and examining these basic issues of Christian
doctrine. Lombard presented the issues using the new sic et non debat-
ing method developed by Peter Abelard earlier in the twelfth century.
According to this method, which became the standard form for all Sen-
tences commentaries, the writer first stated a question of Christian the-
ology for the reader. He followed this statement with several different
and often opposing opinions on the issue, which he discussed in vary-
ing degrees of depth. These opinions were then generally followed by

10 Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae,  vols. (Grottaferrata, –).

11 For a good general background on Sentences commentaries as well as theology
programs at Paris and Oxford in the fourteenth century, see William J. Courtenay,
Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, ), –; G.R. Evans, ed.,
Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Leiden, ), passim.
  . 

that theologian’s own arguments and conclusions on the question. From

Lombard’s generation on, all budding theologians at the advanced bac-
calaureate stage of their theology education were required to produce
their own commentaries on the questions Lombard had collected, using
Lombard’s system for discussing and analyzing them. The commentary
of each individual theologian was supposed to display his understand-
ing of important theological issues, his knowledge of the opinions of
previous thinkers, and his own ingenuity in coming up with intelligent
and sophisticated answers to the issues under question.
Although the completion of a Sentences commentary was required of
each theology student before he was allowed to proceed on to his mas-
ter’s degree in theology, a scholar’s Sentences commentary was intended
to be much more than simply an academic exercise or test. It was
common for a theologian’s Sentences commentary to be published and
widely disseminated among universities throughout Europe soon after
the author had finished lecturing on it at his own institution. In writ-
ing their commentaries, scholars in a given generation usually adhered
to the same basic format and questions, but each theologian presented
his own opinions and conclusions on the issues he was required by tra-
dition to discuss. Thus, the issues a particular thinker chose to focus
on, and the conclusions, solutions, or new problems he developed in
his commentary were often quite idiosyncratic and came to be associ-
ated with that particular theologian by thinkers in the generations that
followed.
Peter Auriol’s treatment of issues concerning Jews and Judaism in
his Sentences commentary is extensive and quite thorough. As is com-
mon in Sentences commentaries of the twelfth through the early four-
teenth centuries,12 Auriol discusses at length when and why baptism
came to replace circumcision, as well as whether and how circumcision
conferred grace. Auriol’s commentary also contains an explicit and in-
depth examination of the superiority of the new law over the old, an
analysis of the first-century Jews’ knowledge of Christ’s divinity, and
a discussion of the validity of the baptism of Jewish children against
the will of their parents. The attitude that Auriol presents towards
Judaism and the old law in his Sentences commentary is not markedly

12 For an analysis of the teachings on Jews presented by various twelfth-, thirteenth-,

and fourteenth-century theologians in their Sentences commentaries, see Turner, “‘An

Attack on the Acknowledged Truth.”’
     ’   

more or less hostile than the attitudes exhibited by Auriol’s contempo-

raries at Paris or Oxford, yet Auriol’s presentation is certainly different
in tone. Auriol clearly has little respect for Judaism and Old Testa-
ment law as a religious system separate from Christianity. What is strik-
ing about Auriol’s treatment of circumcision and the Old Testament is
his excessively Christian-centric reading of almost every aspect of Old
Testament Judaism. Auriol goes further than even Peter Lombard or
Thomas Aquinas13 in stripping Old Testament rites and history of all
Jewish meaning and in portraying the sacraments of the Old Testa-
ment solely as prefigurations of Christianity. In doing so, Auriol ulti-
mately denies any independent meaning or purpose to Old Testament
law and belief.
Auriol’s insistence on imposing a Christian meaning upon the pre-
cepts of Judaism is especially evident in his treatment of circumci-
sion. He follows Aquinas’s lead by beginning his discussion of the
issue with the question “whether circumcision was appropriately insti-
tuted.”14 Auriol adheres to standard Christian doctrine and immedi-
ately pronounces in the affirmative. He then supports this argument by
presenting ten reasons why circumcision was an appropriate religious
rite for the Old Testament Jews. In the course of this enumeration, he
provides an explanation for even the minutest detail of the rite, from
why it is performed on the male sex organ to why a circular cut was
chosen. What is striking about the reasons Auriol gives in support of the
appropriateness of the rite is that, in each case, he concludes that the
detail of circumcision under discussion was rightly instituted because of
the way in which it prefigured the coming of Christ. In so doing, he
ends up emphasizing, almost in the extreme, his view of circumcision
as a rite whose sole purpose was to symbolize and prepare the way for
the arrival of Christ.
Auriol begins by explaining that the act of circumcision entailed “the
removal of the superfluous” and was appropriate because “by this it
was known that he was to come who was to remove all superfluity of
sin.”15 Continuing along these lines, Auriol declares that the circular

13 For an excellent analysis of Thomas Aquinas’s teachings on Jews and Judaism,

see John Y.B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia, ). For an examination of
Lombard’s writings on Jews, see Turner, ‘“An Attack on the Acknowledged Truth,”’
–.
14 Peter Auriol, Commentarium in librum primum Sententiarum (Rome, ), Bk. , d. ,

q. , a. , fol. a: “Utrum circumcisio fuerit convenienter instituta.”

15 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Et primo qui-
  . 

cut of circumcision symbolized the fact that the removal of sin would
be accomplished by a “circular person,” one who was “truly God,
the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, just as the same
point in a circle is the beginning and the end.”16 Auriol then presents
several explanations for how the selection of the male sex organ for the
rite of circumcision foreshadowed both the coming of Christ and the
concomitant removal of original sin. Auriol declares that the penis was
chosen because “original sin is passed down to posterity through the
act of generation.” Thus, circumcision is performed on “that member
in which occurs the greatest rebellion, which is present [in that organ]
due to original sin.” Having drawn the connection between the penis
and original sin, Auriol then states that circumcision is performed on
the male sex organ “because Christ, who would bring a remedy against
original sin, was to be born from [the Jews].”17
Auriol continues to depict circumcision as a prefiguation of Christ
with a rather convoluted explanation for the type of instrument used
to perform the ceremony of circumcision. He explains that the Old
Testament Jews used a stone knife because it “prefigured the stone
which was to be broken from the mountain without hands [i.e., the
stone that was rolled back from Christ’s tomb].”18 He concludes his
discussion with the argument that circumcision paved the way for
baptism by marking and obligating those who were circumcised to
follow the faith in the same way that baptism marked and obligated

dem fuit congrue assignata quantum ad actum, qui erat amputatio superfluitatis, per
quod notabatur, quod venire debebat, qui amputaturus erat omnem superfluitatem
peccati.”
16 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Secundo fuit congrue

instituta quantum ad modum actus: fiebat enim incisio circularis, per quod notabatur,
quod amputatio culpae futura erat per unam personam circularem, quae esset vere
Deus, qui est α et ω id est, principium, et finis, sicut idem punctus in circulo est
principium, et finis.”
17 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Tertio fuit congrue

instituta quantum ad membrum: fuit enim instituta in remedium peccati originalis, et

ideo propter tria fuit quoad membrum congrue instituta. Primo, quia peccatum origi-
nale per actum generationis ad posteros transfundebatur. Secundo, quia in membro illo
apparet maior rebellio, quae inest propter peccatum originale. Tertio, quia protesta-
bantur, quod Christus, quia afferebat remedium contra peccatum originale, nasciturus
erat ex eis.”
18 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Quarto fuit congrue

instituta quoad instrumentum: fiebat enim cultro lapideo, qui figurabat lapidem illum
abscindendum de monte sine manibus.”
     ’   

Christians.19 Yet, according to Auriol, circumcision is not the only rite

of the Old Testament that served as a prefiguration of Christ. In his
discussion of how original sin was deleted before the coming of Christ,
Auriol states that there were many rites and ceremonies practiced in
the period of the Old Testament, among which “some were called
sacrifices.” According to Auriol, these sacrifices “were done using live
animals, and were performed to testify that through death would come
our redemption.”20
Auriol’s sentiment that the purpose of the old law was simply to pave
the way for the new law is especially strong in Auriol’s pronouncements
on the question of whether and why baptism annulled circumcision.
With very little discussion, Auriol pronounces that baptism did annul
circumcision and was a right and proper replacement.21 According to
Auriol, this is obvious; since circumcision’s purpose was to prefigure the
coming of Christ, the Old Testament rite was no longer necessary once
Jesus arrived. He explains, “circumcision (as was said above) signified
that Christ was to be born from a woman of the cirumcised, and had
as its signified, Christ—that he would be; that is, that he would be
born, that he would suffer, and that by virtue of the passion, sin was
to be deleted.”22 He argues that, as a result, “from the instant of the
demonstration of the passion of Christ, circumcision was a false sign.”23
Circumcision is by no means the only rite of the Old Testament
which Auriol compares to the precepts of the New Testament. Indeed,
Auriol is quite explicit and unequivocal in arguing that the sacraments
of the new law are superior to the Old Testament sacraments, and, like
Thomas Aquinas and Scotus, devotes several folios to a comparison
of the two laws.24 He repeats and supports the argument found in

19 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “obligabat enim

circumcisio quemlibet de populo illo tunc temporis, sicut hodie obligat baptismus.”
20 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , q. , a. , fol. b: “Ex his apparet differentia

aliquorum sacrificiorum veteris legis. Quaedam enim dicebantur sacrificia, quaedam

oblationies, quaedam decimae. Fiebant autem ista ex speciali causa et sacrificatione.
Nam sacrifica, quae fiebant de animalibus vivis, fiebant ad protestandum, quod ipse
erat per mortem nos redempturus.”
21 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b.
22 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “Circumcisio (ut dictum

est supra) significabat Christum nasciturum ex femine circumcisorum et habebat pro

sognificato Christum, ut futurum, puta, ut nasciturum, passurum, in virtute passionis
peccata deleturum.”
23 Peter Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “pro instanti passionis

Christi exhibitae circumcisio fuit falsum signum.”

24 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae a..–, Blackfriars v. , pp. –; Scotus, In
  . 

Aquinas and Scotus25 that the sacraments of the new law are lighter
and easier to bear than those of the old, as well as being fewer in
number. He echoes Scotus with the statement that there are only
seven sacraments of the new law which the faithful are asked to follow,
“of which only one is actually necessary, namely, baptism.”26 In Book
Four of his Sentences commentary, in his discussion of whether baptism
annulled circumcision, Auriol again states that the sacraments of the
New Testament “were fated to be easy to use.” He also argues that
baptism is an improvement upon circumcision because baptism “is
general to the entire population,” and “is common to both sexes.”27
Auriol complicates his pronouncement that the New Testament sac-
raments are easier and less burdensome when he presents the argument
found in Scotus,28 which concedes that there is no requirement found in
the old law that is comparable to confession in difficulty.29 Auriol like-
wise concedes that the command to love one’s enemy found in the new
law is also very hard to carry out.30 The difficulties of confession and
the command to love one’s enemy are ameliorated, however, according
to Auriol, through the “special aid” of divine grace that is conferred
only in the new sacraments.31
In continuing his assertion that the new law is superior to the old
law, Auriol presents the argument that the “old law was given in fear
and therefore was a law of fear, while the new law was given in

Sententias , d. , q. –, in Joannis Duns Scotus opera omnia, ed. Luke Wadding (;
repr. Paris, –), Vives XVI.
25 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae aae..; Scotus, In Sententias , d. , q. , Vives XV,

–.
26 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Puta septem sacramenta

facilia, quorum etiam unum est simpliciter necessitatis, scilicet baptismus, qui est satis
facilis.”
27 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. b: “Primo propter libertatem

Legis Novae, cuius Sacramenta debent esse usu facillima. … tum secundo propter
generalitatem, quia sacramentum Baptismi debuit esse generale ad omnem populum,
tum tertio propter sexum. Sacramentum enim Baptismi propter eius perfectionem
debuit esse commune utrique sexui.”
28 Scotus, In Sententias, , d. , q. , Vives XV b.
29 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. a: “Sed de confessione videtur,

quod sit magis difficile, quam aliquod ceremoniale legis antiquae.”

30 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “Et si dicatur, quod additum

est in Nova lege de diligendis inimicis, quod est valde difficile.”

31 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “haec quae sunt necessi-

tatis, tamen leves sunt cum adiutorio gratiae, et ideo signanter dicit Christus: Iugum
meum leve. Iugum enim est propter difficultatem, sed leve propter auxilium gratiae
abundantis.”
     ’   

love.”32 In the same vein, he declares that the old law was a “law
of slavery,” while the new law is one of freedom.33 He follows these
statements with two arguments that again emphasize the old law’s
purpose as a prefiguration of the new law. He first declares “the law
was given by Moses. Grace and truth were given by Christ.” Auriol
then echoes Scotus’s references to Hebrews : and Colossians :34
when Auriol declares that the old law was “a shadow of the good things
to come.”35 Finally he states, “just as certain areas of knowledge are
called introductions because they arrange and order those things which
contain the conception of the truth, so was the old law in this way a
preparatory introduction for the new law.”36
Given his attitude toward the prefigurative meaning of the old law,
it is not surprising to discover that Auriol insists that the Jews were
not ignorant of Christ’s divinity. In the course of his discussion of
whether Christ’s divine character was recognizable to human beings,
Auriol makes it clear that he believes the first-century Jews easily could
have and should have recognized Christ’s divine nature. Auriol explains
that people in Christ’s time saw Christ perform many works that could
only be considered to have been divine in origin. He states that people
saw Jesus “raise the dead, open the eyes of the blind, and cure the
sick.”37 Many people at that time, according to Auriol, pronounced
that these acts could only have been performed by someone “who
was with God.” Auriol acknowledges that there were two ways to
explain Christ’s ability to perform these miracles: either Christ received
his power from the grace of God dwelling in him, or from a direct
union with God.38 Although, according to Auriol, both conclusions

32 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “quia lex antiqua fuit data

in timore, et ideo data est lex timoris; nova autem in amore.”

33 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “quia antiqua fuit servitutis.

Nova dicitur lex libertatis.”

34 For a discussion of Scotus’s use of this New Testament imagery, see Turner, ‘“An

Attack on the Acknowledged Truth,”’ –.

35 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “Lex per Moysen data est;

gratia et veritas per Iesum Christum facta est; umbram enim habebat lex futurorum
bonorum, ut dicit Apostolus.”
36 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a.  fol. b: “unde sicut quaedam

scientiae dicuntur introductoriae, quia disponunt ad illas in quibus est notitia veritatis
ita antiqua lex ad modum pedagogi introducta fuit ad Novam legem.”
37 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. b: “sed homines viderunt

a Christo homine operationes mere divinas. … sic suscitare mortuos, aperire oculos
caecorum, infirmitates curare.”
38 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. b: “sed esse a Deo est dupliciter
  . 

are possible and reasonable, all eyewitnesses, nevertheless, should have

realized that Christ’s miraculous activities were the result of his union
with God, because Christ himself announced, “I and the father are
one, and the father is in me.”39 According to Auriol, then, all of Christ’s
contemporaries should have deduced Christ’s divine character from his
works. Auriol then adds a comment in the very next sentence that is
clearly intended to refer to the Jews; he states that one last reason
to believe in the divine nature of Christ’s works is that “his divinity
was predicted going back a long time.”40 Based upon these arguments,
Auriol pronounces, “it is clear to me that these arguments conclude
very well that the Jews had no excuse, who did not believe those things
demonstrated and proved by [Christ’s] works.”41
Later thinkers, such as Pierre d’Ailly, argue that the Jews did not
recognize Christ’s divinity because it was simply God’s will that they
not believe.42 Auriol, however, is not nearly so benevolent in assigning
a cause for the Jews’ refusal to acknowledge Christ or for their motiva-
tions in calling for his crucifixion. Auriol follows Peter Lombard’s lead
and makes direct reference to the Jews’ involvement in the death of
Christ in his discussion of whether human will is good only when it
corresponds to divine will.43 In the course of this summary, Auriol uses
the dilemma that appears in Lombard’s Sentences of “the good son who
wants his father to live whom God, with good will, wants to die.”44
Auriol then imitates Lombard and uses as a second illustration the

vel a Deo per gratiam inexistentem, vel per unionem, et utroque modo potest quis
elicere operationes Deo mediante.”
39 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. a: “Sic enim argumentando

poterunt devenire in cognitionem divinitatis, quod patet. Christus dicebat, ego et Pater
unum sumus, et Pater in me est, et ego in Patre, et ad hoc opera adducebat.”
40 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. a: “autem de Christo, cuius

divinitas fuit praedicta multo tempore ante.”

41 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. . fol. a: “Hoc viso apparet, quod

rationes concludunt optime nec habent Iudaei excusationem, qui dictis non crediderunt
probatis et approbatis per opera.”
42 Pierre d’Ailly, Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjunctus,

(Strassbourg, ; repr. Frankfurt, ), I, q. , E: “Tum quia habebant legem et
prophetas in quibus potereant sectari testimonia de deo. Tum quia coram eis multa
mirabilia faciebat. … Et tamen certum est quod eis non erat datum ut crederent. Et ita
licet deus non vellet efficaciter quod crederent, tamen illa erant eis adiutoria ad fidem
ad quam tenebantur.” For more on d’Ailly’s teachings on the Jews, see Turner, ‘“An
Attack on the Acknowledged Truth,”’ –.
43 Lombard, Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, Bk. , d. , c. .
44 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk., d. . fol. b.
     ’   

Jews’ crucifixion of Christ and the argument that it was a good action
because God willed it to happen. The rhetoric and conclusions which
Auriol uses in his commentary on this point, however, betray Auriol’s
views on the Jews’ character and their motivations. Auriol begins by
stating, “the Jews, indeed, wished the death of Christ with a wicked
will, and they crucified him. Therefore, God wanted the passion of
Christ, not, however, his active crucifixion by the Jews.” At this point in
his summary, however, Auriol appends his own telling comment: “this
[the crucifixion] was done from envy, and with the greatest blame.”45
In Book Two of his commentary, Auriol repeats with great vehe-
mence and condemnation his charge that the Jews killed Christ out of
envy and then expands upon their crimes by attributing an additional
sin to them. Near the end of Book Two, Auriol devotes an article to
a discussion of sins against the Holy Spirit. He begins by discussing
whether and in what way a sin against the Holy Spirit differs from a sin
against the Father or the Son. He states that the sins against the Holy
Spirit are presumption, desperation, obstinancy, final impenitence, envy
of a brother’s grace, and an attack on the known truth.46 Auriol explains
that the sins of desperation and presumption involve the underestima-
tion and overestimation of God’s mercy, respectively. He then explains
that obstinancy and final impenitence can be considered to be sins in
the disposition that an individual takes toward God. Final impenitence,
Auriol states succinctly, is the refusal to repent one’s sins. In discussing
obstinancy he explains that to receive God’s grace, one must express
the disposition of turning one’s heart toward God. The sin against
this disposition, he states, is “the hardening of one’s heart and obsti-
nancy.” It was not uncommon at this time to use words like obstinant
and obdurate when describing the Jews in their attitude toward Christ.
Yet, although Auriol does attribute these characteristics to specific indi-
viduals in order to illustrate his meaning, these are not the sins with
which Auriol is most interested in associating the Jews; instead Auriol
simply lists “Judas and Pharaoh” as so sinning.47

45 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk., d. . fol. b: “Iudaei etiam, impia voluntate volue-

runt Christi mortem, et eum crucifixerunt; voluit ergo Deus passionem Christi, non
tamen Iudaeorum crucifixionem activam, quae fuit ex invidia, et cum maxima culpa.”
46 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , fol. a.
47 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , fol. a: “et peccatum contra illam

dispositionem dicitur Obduratio cordis, et obstinatio, quae fuit pecccatum Iudae et

Pharaonis.”
  . 

The sin with which Auriol most strongly wants to associate the Jews
is that of blasphemy in refusing to acknowledge Christ’s divinity; it is for
this sin that he reserves his most damning denunciation of the Jews. For
Auriol goes on to explain that one manifestation of a sin against God’s
grace is with respect to it existing in one’s neighbor. Auriol explains
that one method of sinning against a neighbor’s grace is called envy of
a brother’s grace (invidentia fraternae gratiae). Aquinas and Lombard also
list this type of envy as a sin against God’s grace;48 Auriol, however,
unlike either of these two thinkers, supplies a motivation for such a sin.
Auriol states that an individual feels envy of another’s grace “because it
diminishes [the envier’s] excellence.”
Auriol explains that the sin of envy at grace given to a neighbor
produces a purely interior effect upon the sinner only (conatu effectus
ad intra). He juxtaposes this sin with a different but similar sin which
results in an external effect (conatu effectus ad extra), that is, in which
the sinner takes actual action against the neighbor in a state of grace.
Auriol labels this sin “an attack on the acknowledged truth.”49 What is
especially telling and significant about Auriol’s discussion of this sin is
that Auriol explicitly attributes the sin of attacking the acknowledged
truth to the Jews. The specific act of the Jews that he uses to illustrate
this sin, however, is not the Jews’ involvement in the crucifixion of
Christ. Rather, he refers to an incident narrated in Mark : in which
Christ is described as ejecting a demon from the body of a man. The
Jews who witness this act are described in the gospel as refusing to be
persuaded of Christ’s divinity through this act; instead of attributing
this extraordinary act to God and his power, they choose to attribute
it to the power of Beelzebub, prince of the demons. Auriol explains
that the Jews reacted in this way to the display of Christ’s power out
of pure malice. He declares that they were moved, “not from habit,

48 Summa Theologiae aae..; Lombard, Sententiae, Bk. , d. , c. .

49 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Secundo modo con-
siderando gratiam Dei in proximo, sic oritur duplex peccatum contra gratiam, scilicet
in proximo exisentem. Potest tamen quis contra talem gratiam venire duobus modis,
uno modo conatu effectus ad intra, alio modo conatu effectus ad extra. Primo modo
oritur peccatum, quod dicitur Invidentia fraternae gratiae, nec invidere fraternae gra-
tiae, quia diminuit suam excellentiam est peccatum in Spritirum sanctum; hoc enim
est actus Invidiae, sed tristari de gratia proximo data a Deo absolute, hoc est peccatum
in Spiritum sanctum. Si autem veniat contra gratiam, qua Spiritus sanctificat proxi-
mum conatu effectus extra, sic oritur peccatum aliud, quod dicitur Impugnatio veritatis
agnitae.”
     ’   

nor from passion, nor from ignorance, but from pure freedom of the
will.” Auriol’s outrage at this attitude becomes especially evident in the
comment he appends concerning this sin. Auriol states at this point,
“such a sin is very rare and difficult to find. It was, nevertheless, the sin
of those very Jews.”50
Auriol’s negative image of the Jews’ character becomes even more
apparent in the paragraph which follows in which he presents his expla-
nation for the Jews’ motivations in refusing to acknowledge Christ’s
divinity. He concedes that some Christian thinkers argue that the envy
the Jews felt toward Christ was motivated by the passion they felt when
they saw that the glory of Christ diminished their glory. This argument,
Auriol points out, works in the Jews’ favor, however, for according to
Christian tradition, attributing the cause of a sin to passion or envy
lessens the severity of the sin.51 Furthermore, as Auriol points out, envy,
in itself, is not a sin against God’s grace.52 Auriol clearly states that
he does not agree with those who would explain the Jews’ crucifixion
of Christ as having arisen from the simple emotion [passio] of the envy
they felt upon seeing that the glory of Christ reduced their status. Auriol
contends that the Jews did not feel jealousy solely because Christ and
his new message affected their own status, but rather that they were
driven by pure and unmitigated envy that Christ had been bestowed
with the gift of God. As he states: “I concede that in the beginning
their sin was moved by envy, nevertheless, I think that in the end they
came so far that they killed out of envy of the gift of God absolutely and
as an attack on the acknowledged truth [impugnatio veritatis agnitae].”53

50 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Vocatur ergo peccatum ex

malitia proprie, quando movetur quis non ex habitu, nec passione, nec ex ignorantia,
sed ex mera libertate voluntatis, scilicet, quia sic placet; et hoc modo dicitur peccatum
in Spiritum sanctum; sic tamen quod cadat circa materias praedictas, puta dolere,
quod proximus habet agnitionem veritatis, quale fuit peccatum Iudaeorum contra
Christum. Vel impugnando in effectu extra, sicut quando dixerunt: In Beelzebub
principe daemoniorum eiicit daemonia; tale autem peccatum valde raro, et de difficili
invenitur; fuit tamen peccatum ipsorum Judaeorum.”
51 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae aae...
52 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Puta si quis invideat

proximo, quia bonum suum datum sibi a Deo diminuit excellentiam illius, nec sic
loquimur in proposito [de peccato in spiritu sancto].”
53 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Dices: Non sic est, nam

Iudaei noti fuerunt ex passione, videlicet, quod fama Christi diminuebat famam eorum.
Respondeo, concedo, quod initium unde motus peccati eorum fuit invidia, tamen puto,
quod ultimo ad tantum venerunt, quod ceciderunt in invidentiam doni Dei absolute, et
impugnationem agnitae veritatis.”
  . 

What is also quite telling is the fact that, although Auriol is not the
only Christian theologian to enumerate the sins against the Holy Spirit
as he does, he is unique in associating the sins of “envy of a brother’s
grace” and the “attack on the acknowledged truth” directly with the
Jews. While other Christian thinkers such as Aquinas and Lombard
speak in some depth about these two sins, neither explicitly accuses
the Jews of having committed them. Auriol, however, is obviously com-
pelled to associate these sins with the Jews because of his obsession with
finding Christian meaning and purpose in the old law and its sacra-
ments. It is because of Auriol’s constant emphasis on the Jews’ prefig-
uring and foreshadowing of Christ’s coming that his exasperation and
outrage at their refusal to acknowledge and accept the rites and beliefs
of Christ’s new message is especially strong.
What seems to infuriate Auriol the most about the Jews’ stance with
respect to Christ is not their role in his crucifixion per se, but rather
the Jews’ refusal to acknowledge the truth of the arrival of the Mes-
siah in the form of Jesus—an event which, in Auriol’s mind, the Jews
themselves had heralded in every aspect of their own religion and belief
system for hundreds of years. Furthermore, by explicitly accusing the
Jews of envying Christ’s divine gift, Auriol also supplies a motivation for
their refusal to acknowledge his divine powers. Auriol sees the Jews as
spiteful, envious people who refuse to acknowledge what they know to
be the truth about Christ’s divinity because such an acknowledgement
would lead to a reduction in their special status in relation to God.
Given Auriol’s image of the Jews as a stubborn and selfish people, it
is not surprising to discover that he does not take a strong stand against
the forced baptism of Jews, either as adults or children. Auriol devotes
many folios to a discussion of who should receive baptism and how a
valid baptism is to be performed. He poses the question of whether
full consent is required on the part of an adult being baptized, or
whether “interpreted consent suffices.” Auriol begins his discussion by
presenting the argument concerning individuals who falsely consent,
that is, “those who have no inward consent, but would pretend out-
wardly because of punishment, or would simply not protest.” Auriol
acknowledges that there are those who argue that “such a one, would
not be truly baptized, nor would he receive the character [of baptism],
and by withdrawing from the falsehood, is to be rebaptized.”54

54 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d.  q. , a. , fol. a: “Si vero aliquis esset fic-

tus quoad consensum, puta quod nullum haberet consensum interius, tamen fingeret
     ’   

Auriol makes it quite clear, however, that he disagrees with this

stance—he states, “this I do not think is well said.” To support his
stance, Auriol argues that if someone has been baptized, even against
his will, “the Church supposes that he received the effect of baptism.”
As a result, such an individual should not be rebaptized if he should
later sincerely decide to accept Christianity. Indeed, according to this
argument, as Auriol notes, if such an individual returns to his previous
faith after having received baptism, “he would be called a heretic.”55
Auriol further argues that a person must be held to practice Chris-
tianity after a baptism under any conditions because otherwise, “fraud
could happen frequently in the Church. Anyone, when forced to agree
to observe the faith, could say ‘I have not consented.”’56
Auriol then concludes his discussion on the validity of forced baptism
by declaring, “I think it should be said that so great is the special law
of baptism that if an individual exhibited at least interpreted consent,
that is, that he consented outwardly or did not protest, however much
he would dissent inwardly, he would receive the perfect character [of
baptism].” Auriol addresses the effect of such a baptism with the state-
ment, “granted such an individual would not receive grace, nor virtues.
He receives these, nevertheless, by withdrawing the falsehood.” Auriol’s
final pronouncement on the issue is, “I say that, as far as receiving
the character of baptism, at least interpreted consent is sufficient in
adults.”57
Despite this stance on the forced baptism of adults, Auriol does not
ultimately advocate the forced baptism of Jewish children; yet he by

exterius propter poenas, vel non reclamando talis, inquiunt, non esset vere baptizatus,
nec reciperet characterem, et recedente fictione esset rebaptizandus.”
55 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d.  q. , a. , fol. a: “Sed istud non puto esse

bene dictum, conformiter determinatione Ecclesiae, nam Extra
vagantes ‘de Baptismo,

et eius effectus’ capitulo ‘Maiores’, dicitur, quod talis compellendus esset ad fidem,
et si reinclinaret, ac relaberatur, haereticus diceretur, nec esset unquam talis postea
rebaptizandus; ergo Ecclesia supponit, quod receperit effectum Baptismi.” Here Auriol
is citing canon law.
56 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d.  q. , a. , fol. a: “Et praeterea posset fraus fieri

in Ecclesia frequenter; posset enim quilibet, dum cogeretur ad fidem servandam dicere,
non consensi.”
57 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d.  q. , a. , fol. a: “Ideo puto dicendum esse,

quod tantum est privilegium baptismi, quod habens consensum saltem interpretativum,
hoc est quod consentit exterius, vel non reclamat, quantumcumque intra se dissentiat,
recipiat perfecte charactereum, licet non recipiat gratiam, nec virtutes, quas tamen
recipit recedente fictione. Pro conclusione ista ergo, dico quod ad recipiendum charac-
terem, sufficit in adultis consensus saltem interpretivus.”
  . 

no means condemns such an action, either. Auriol, like Aquinas and

Scotus, devotes many pages to the specific question, “whether children
of Jews are to be baptized against the will of their parents.”58 It is
clear from Auriol’s discussion of this question that, within two decades
of Scotus’s death, discussions of this issue had come to be essentially
nothing more than a comparison of Scotus’s and Aquinas’s stances
on the question. Auriol starts his discussion on the baptism of Jewish
children by stating that there are two opinions. The first, he explains, is
supported by “the severity of justice” and holds that Jewish children
are in no way to be baptized against the will of their parents, an
argument developed and supported by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa
Theologiae.59 Auriol summarizes Aquinas’s argument by explaining that
children should not be baptized against the will of the parents because,
if the children are then returned to the parents, they will afterwards be
raised by the parents in the error of the parents, which would make the
children heretics. Auriol continues by presenting Aquinas’s complaint
that, if such children are not returned to the parents, this would be
a wrong against the parents, since children are the possession of the
parents.60
Auriol follows this with “another opinion” which he directly attri-
butes to John Scotus. This second opinion, according to Auriol, is
supported by “the piety of faith.” In Auriol’s summary of Scotus’s
argument, he presents Scotus’s contention that private persons cannot
baptize Jewish children against the will of their parents, but that public
persons can. Auriol then presents Scotus’s argument that Jewish adults
should also be baptized forcibly. Auriol explains that Scotus contends
that even if the Jewish parents revert to their old faith after being
baptized forcibly, a greater good still follows for the church and the
children. This is because, according to Scotus, less evil results from

58 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae a..; Scotus, In Sententias , d., q. , Vives XVI

; Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a.

59 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae aae... Although Auriol quotes Aquinas nearly

verbatim here, he does not cite Aquinas by name anywhere during this discussion.
60 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Una opinio dicit, quod

parvuli Iudaeorum nullo modo sunt invitis parentibus baptizandi; ratio eorum est, quia
vel rederentur parentibus, et tunc baptismus eorum esset in contumeliam fidei Chris-
tianae, quia post nutrirentur a parentibus in errore parentum, vel non redderentur, et
tunc parentibus fieret iniuria, quia quamdiu sunt parvuli, sunt possessio parentum.”
See also Solomon Grayzel, “Popes, Jews, and Inquisition,” in Essays in Honor of Solomon
B. Freehof, ed. A.I. Katsh (Philadelphia, ), .
     ’   

preventing the Jews from observing their law than from allowing them
to practice their religion with impunity.61
Here Auriol presents the objection to this stance found in the pro-
nouncement of St. Paul that “the remnant of Israel shall be saved”
(Rom :). In response, Auriol does not comment on this objection
with his own argument, but rather recounts Scotus’s argument that the
reward for the church from the existence of Jews at the end of time will
be too slight to justify permitting large numbers of Jews to continue to
serve their faith.62 Auriol, interestingly, does not present or comment
upon the Subtle Doctor’s suggestion that, to ensure a remnant of Israel
in the final days, a handful of Jews should be placed on an island and
there be allowed to practice their faith.63
Auriol’s own pronouncement on this question, which follows directly
after his presentation of Scotus’s argument, is far from unequivocal.
He ultimately states that he is most persuaded by Aquinas’s argument
supported by the “severity of justice” which says that children are
legally the possession of their parents and thus cannot be baptized
against the will of the parents.64 Auriol also expresses agreement with
Aquinas’s insistence that, since the church has never encouraged the

61 Scotus, In Sententias , d. , q. , Vives XVI –; Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. ,

d. , q. , a. , fol. a: “Alia opinio est Doctoris Moderni Subtilis, quod licet per-
sonae privatae non possint parvulos Iudaeorum invitis parentibus baptizare, tamen hoc
possunt personae communes, scilicet principes terrarum, quorum dominio subdite sunt
parentes; immo hoc non tantum licet eis, sed si fieret, esset eis utique meritorium. Haec
autem opinio habet pro se auctoritatem et rationem. Ratio est, quia in potestatibus
ordinatis potestas inferior non obligat in eis, quae sunt contra superiorem, secundum
Augustinum De verbis Domini homil. . Si illud iubet potestas, quod non debet facere,
licet sane contemnere potestatem, timendo Potestatem maiorem. Similiter si essent sub
eodem dominio ordinata, scilicet quod aliquis esset servus Titii, et Titus Petri, deberet
Imperator magis cogere servum servire Petro, quam Titio: ergo a simili non solum
potest princeps cogere filios servire Deo dimissum parentibus: sed debet, et tenetur eos
auferre a dominio parentum volentium eos educare contra cultum Dei, qui est superior
dominus, et secundum hoc quando posset cum bona cautela agere, ne parentes cogi-
tantes hoc futurum, occiderent pueros suos.” See John Duns Scotus, In Sententias , d. ,
q. , Vives XVI –.
62 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. a–b: “Se obiiciatur contra eos

illud Apostoli ad Rom. quod reliquiae Israel salvae fient, ideo non oportet cogi Iudaeos
ad relinquendum legem suam totaliter. Respondet, quod pro tam paucis convertendis,
non oporteret Iudaeos in tanto numero, ac tot terris permittere servare illicite legem
suam, quia finalis fructus eorum erit Ecclesiae parvus valde.”
63 See Scotus, In Sententias , d. , q. , Vives XVI, p. a.
64 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae aae..; Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. ,

fol. b: “propter quod magis declino ad rigorem iustitiae, quia parvuli possessio sunt
parentum.”
  . 

forced baptism of minors under the direction of a powerful prince, it is

unlikely that such an act is to be allowed.65 Auriol ends his discussion,
however, by refusing to condemn princes who do remove children from
Jews and baptize them. Auriol ultimately states, “I think, nevertheless,
that whoever would, inspired by the piety of faith, make a motion
opposite [to the severity of justice], would not sin very severely.”66 Thus,
Auriol, unlike Scotus, in the end, stops short of actively condoning the
forced baptism of Jewish children or adults.
Yet on the whole, Auriol’s attitude towards and depiction of Jews
is not by any means more tolerant than Scotus’s. Indeed, although
Auriol acknowledges that circumcision had spiritual benefits for the
Jews before the coming of Christ, Auriol expresses little respect for
the precepts and practices of the Old Testament and instead presents
Judaism as a belief system whose tenets and sacraments served only to
foreshadow and prepare the way for the coming of Christ and the new
sacraments of Christianity. Furthermore, according to Auriol, the first-
century Jews recognized the messianic character of Jesus, but refused to
acknowledge it out of jealousy and malice. Based upon these views, it
is not surprising that Auriol takes a positive approach to the concept
of forcibly baptizing Jews and thus simply compelling them to accept
the belief system which, in his opinion, they should have acknowledged
long ago but did not because they were simply too selfish and stubborn
to do so.

65 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae aae..; Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. ,

fol. b: “praecipue autem movet me ratio illa de ecclesia, quomodo tantam salutem
neglexisset, propter quod magis declino ad rigorem iustitiae, quia parvuli possessio sunt
parentum.”
66 Auriol, Commentarium, Bk. , d. , q. , a. , fol. b: “Puto tamen quod qui pietate

fidei motus oppositum faceret, non multum graviter peccaret.”

 FRANCISCAN ECONOMICS AND JEWS
IN THE MIDDLE AGES: FROM A THEOLOGICAL
TO AN ECONOMIC LEXICON

G T

“To the man who has trust all the world is full of wealth, to the man
who has no trust all the wealth of the world is never enough,” or, to
say it in other words, “for the man infidelis the wealth has no real
worth or usefulness.” This quotation from Proverbs (LXX :b), as
well as the related passages in Paul ( Cor :; Phil :–), Augustine
(ad Macedonium), and the Fathers, through the Decretum Gratiani (XIV
, ), Rufinus of Bologna, Bernard of Clairvaux and the thirteenth-
century scholastics,1 is an apt beginning for understanding Franciscan

1 Augustine, Epistola  ad Macedonium, PL , ; Augustine, In ps.  enarratio,

, in Opere  (Rome, ), –: “Quod ait dives, ad terrigenas pertinet; quod
ait, pauper, ad filios hominum. Divites intellige superbos, pauperes humiles. Habeat
multas facultates pecuniarum; si in eis non extollitur, pauper est: non habeat aliquid,
et cupiat et infletur; inter divites et reprobos eum deputat Deus. Et divites et pauperes
in corde interrogat Deus, non in arca et domo. Nonne pauperes sunt qui accipiunt
mandatum Apostoli dicentis Timotheo: Praecipe divitibus hujus saeculi non superbe
sapere? Quomodo eos qui divites erant fecit pauperes? Tulit illis quare quaeruntur
divitiae. Nemo enim vult esse dives, nisi ut infletur inter eos inter quos vivit, et
superior illis videatur. Cum autem dixit, non superbe sapere, aequales eos fecit non
habentibus; ut fortassis pauculis nummis mendicus plus extollatur, quam ille dives qui
audit Apostolum dicentem: Praecipe divititibus hujus saeculi non superbe sapere. Unde
non superbe sapere? Si faciant quod sequitur, Neque sperare in incerto divitiarum, sed
in Deo vivo, qui praestat nobis omnia abundanter ad fruendum [ Tim :]. Non
dixit, qui praestat illis; sed, qui praestat nobis. Numquid ipse Paulus non habebat
divitias? Habebat plane. Quas divitias? De quibus dicit alio loco Scriptura: Fideli
homini mundus totus divitiarum est [Prov :, following the LXX]. Audi et ipsum
confitentem: Quasi nihil habentes, et omnia possidentes [ Cor :]. Qui vult ergo esse
dives, non haereat parti, et totum possidebit: illi inhaereat qui totum creavit. Simul in
unum dives et pauper. Dicit in alio psalmo; Edent pauperes, et saturabuntur. Quomodo
commendavit pauperes? Edent pauperes, et saturabuntur. Quid edunt? Quod sciunt
fideles. Quomodo saturabuntur? Imitando passionem Domini sui, et non sine causa
accipiendo pretium suum.” Catalogus verborum sancti Augustini: II Enarrationes in Psalmos
(Eindhoven, –); Rufinus Bononiensis, Summa decretorum (ca. –), chap.
XIV q. IV, ed. Singer (Paderborn, ), : “… Fideli homini totus mundus divitiarum
est, i.e. etiamsi modicum possideat, ita reputat sibi sufficere, ac si totum mundum
possideret; infideli autem, i.e. avaro, nec obolus, i.e. si totum mundum haberet, pro obolo
computaret: adeo insatiabili cupiditate vexatur. Avaro enim tam deest quod habet
quam quod non habet.” Bernard of Clairvaux, Vita sancti Malachiae (?), Opere ,
  

economics and Franciscan arguments, from Bonaventure to Bernardino

of Siena, on the socio-economic role of the Jews. In fact, the semantic
history of this quotation seems to make more understandable the deep
connection established by the Franciscan movement between the con-
cepts of fides/fidelis, infidelitas/infideles, divitiae/divites, and paupertas/pauperes
(Christi).

We can interpret the early Franciscan writings on the rule of Fran-

cis and on the poverty of the Order as a first step of Franciscan eco-
nomics,2 only if we see in these texts written between  and 
a strong effort to make the poverty of the Order an economic ideal
for Christian society as a whole. This attempt, in fact, is intelligible to
us as a logical consequence of the complexity of the Gregorian and
post-Gregorian Reform movement which, in its premises, had stated
that collective or institutional property was the key to the separation
between clerical and secular states of life.3 The individual poverty of
monks and bishops for the Gregorian and post-Gregorian Reform lead-
ers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from Peter Damian to Bernard
of Clairvaux, was a fundamental attribute of the libertas ecclesiae from

–: “Dominus vero providit ut, etsi non speranti in pecuniae thesauris, pecunia
non deesset. Quis enim alius fecit, ut thesaurus eo loci reponeretur, repositus non
reperiretur usque ad tempus et opus Malachiae? Invenit Dei famulus in Dei marsupio,
quod defuit suo. Merito quidem. Quid enim iustius, ut cui pro Deo non erat proprium,
cum Deo iniret consortium, et marsupium unum esset amborum? Fideli denique
homini totus mundus divitiarum est. Et quid ille, nisi quoddam marsupium Dei?
Denique ait: ‘Meus est orbis terrae et plenitudo eius.’ Inde est quod Malachias repertos
argenteos multos non reposuit, sed exposuit. Nam totum munus Dei in Dei opus iubet
expendi. Non suas, non suorum considerat necessitates; sed iactat cogitatum suum
in Domino, ad quem utique recurrendum non dubitat, quoties necessitas postularit
…” On the patristic use of the text, see V.R. Vasey, “Proverbs .b (LXX) and St.
Ambrose’s Man of Faith,” Augustinianum,  (), –.
2 First of all: Expositio quatuor magistrorum super regulam fratrum minorum (), ed.

L. Oliger (Rome, ).

3 La vita comune del clero nei secoli XI e XII (Milan, ); L’Eremitismo in Occidente nei

secoli XI–XII (Milan, ); Povertà e ricchezza nella Spiritualità dei secoli XI e XII (Todi,
); L.K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, );
M.C. De Matteis, “Tematica della povertà e problema delle ‘res ecclesiae’: notazioni
ed esemplificazioni campione su alcune collezioni canoniche del periodo della riforma
ecclesiastica del sec. XI,” Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo,  (–
), –; La conversione alla povertà nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XV (Spoleto, ).
         

secular intervention and the ground of the church’s right to possess

goods and revenues. The res ecclesiarum, the ecclesiasticae facultates, the
pecunia ecclesiastica as wealth of the church (meta-personal corpus mys-
ticum) was justified by the individual and personal poverty of monks
and priests.4 This poverty was a sign also of the non-simoniac nature
of their religious identity. Individual poverty, in the age of Gregorian
and post-Gregorian Reform, was presented, finally, as the most inti-
mate character of a perfectio evangelica that only the legitime consecrati could
own.5
From this point of view, the early Franciscan reflection on pecunia,
denarii, proprietas, and usus rerum venalium, from the Expositio quatuor mag-
istrorum to the Apologia pauperum of Bonaventure (),6 or, in general,

4 Fundamental texts in Peter Damian’s works: Epistola  (: “contra canonicos

regulares proprietarios”), in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. K. Reindel (MGH Epis-
tolae , Die Briefe des deutschen Kaiserzeit ), vol. III (Munich, ), : “… cuius sunt
facultates, ex quibus tibi licet habere peculium? Tuae videlicet sunt, an aecclesiae?”
“Proiciam ergo Christum de arca pectoris mei, et loco eius pecuniam constipabo?
Certe tam nobilis pecunia Christus est, ut consortium aspernetur omnino peculii, nec
cum sorde pecuniae se patiatur includi. Ut ergo Christus pectoris tui loculum impleat,
aereus ab eo nummus abscedat, ut Christus animae tuae suum caracterem inprimat,
vile didragma Cesaris imaginem praeferens evanescat.” Epistola  (: “cardinal-
ibus episcopis apostolicae sedis”), Die Briefe, : “Nulla sane putredo vulneris in Dei
naribus intolerabilius foetet, quam stercus avariciae. Et cupidus quisque dum sordentis
pecuniae questus accumulat, vertens exedram in latrinam quasi molem stercoris coac-
ervat”; : “Si enim nichil est avaro scelestius [Eccles], nichil iniquius, non ergo melior
parricidis, non prefertur incestis, aequatur hereticis, assimilatur idololatris … Sit ergo
quilibet castus, sit sobrius, sit indigentibus alendis intentus, hospitalitati deditus, ieiunet,
vigilet, diem nocti psallendo continuet: si tamen avarus est, totum perdit, ita ut inter
omnium criminum reos nequiorem se invenire non posit.”
5 Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem (), in Opere (Milan, ),

.–: “Omitto oratoriorum immensas altitudines, immoderatas longitudines, su-

pervacuas latitudines, sumptuosas depolitiones, curiosas depictiones, qua dum in se
orantium retorquent aspectum, impediunt et affectum, et mihi quodammodo reprae-
sentant antiquum ritum Iudaeorum. Sed esto, fiant haec ad honorem Dei. Illud autem
interrogo monachus monachos, quod in gentilibus gentilis arguebat: ‘Dicite, ait ille,
pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum’ (Persius, Saturae .). Ego autem dico: ‘Dicite
paupers—non enim attendo versum, sed sensum—dicite, inquam, pauperes, si tamen
pauperes, in sancto quid facit aurum? Et quidem alia causa est episcoporum, alia
monachorum. Scimus namque quod illi, saapientibus et insipientibus debitores cum
sint, carnalis populi devotionem, quia spiritualibus non possunt, corporalibus excitant
ornamentis. Nos vero qui iam de populo exivimus, qui mundi quaeque pretiosa ac
speciosa pro Christo reliquimus, qui omnia pulchre lucentia, canore mulcentia, suave
olentia, dulce sapientia, tactu placentia, cuncta denique oblectamenta corporea arbi-
trati sumus ut stercora, ut Christum lucrifaciamus, quorum, quaeso, in his devotionem
excitare intendimus?”’
6 In Bonaventure, Opera omnia (Firenze Quaracchi, ), vol. .
  

up to the fight on the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles,7 is

at the same time a logical development of the post-Gregorian perfec-
tion model in light of the conversion policy promulgated by the Fourth
Lateran Council ().8 It also provides the beginning of a vocabulary
of economic theory within moral and theological contexts.9 Actually,
“Franciscan Economics” (as Odd Langholm recently called it)10 can
assume all its deep significance only when we restate it in its moral-
theological language system. We must understand, also, that the atten-
tion to contracts, possession, property, and use which characterize the
Franciscan School is the expression of the inflexible will of pauperes evan-
gelici as charismatic Christian leaders to convert the societas christiana into
a societas fidelium. In this sense the Franciscan writings on the poverty of
the Order as a technique of the perfect use of goods (usus pauper) and
the Franciscan writings on contracts, lending on interest, buying and
selling, and usury are two faces of the same linguistic and conceptual
making of an economic Christian lexicon.
From  to  we meet references to the Jews in Franciscan
economic writings on three different semantic levels:
) Jews as a stereotype of the enemies of Franciscan poverty;
) Jews as a stereotype of supporters of usury economy in connection
with the interpretation of Deuteronomy  and the related debate
among canonists;
) Jews as effective lenders and usurers, dangerous for the Christian
moral and economic order.
) The first aspect of this image of Jews, that of the Jew as a stereotyped
enemy of Franciscan poverty, is rarely, if ever, noted by historians. We
find it in apologetic Franciscan writings of the thirteenth century, first

7 R. Lambertini, Apologia e crescita dell’identità francescana (–) (Rome, );

A. Tabarroni, Paupertas Christi et Apostolorum: L’ideale francescano in discussione (–)

(Rome, ).
8 Constitutiones Concilii Quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis Glossatorum, ed. Garcia

y Garcia (Vatican City, ); V. Pfaff, “Die sociale Stellung des Judentums in der
Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kaiser und Kirche vom . bis zum . Laterankonzil
(–),” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,  (), –.
9 G. Todeschini, Il prezzo della salvezza: Lessici medievali del pensiero economico (Rome,

); Todeschini, I mercanti e il Tempio: La società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza
fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Bologna, ).
10 O. Langholm, Economics in Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury

According to the Paris Theological Tradition, – (Leiden, ); G. Todeschini, “Oeco-
nomica Franciscana” and “Oeconomica Franciscana II,” in Rivista di Storia e Letteratura
Religiosa,  (), –;  (), –.
         

of all Bonaventure’s Apologia pauperum, as a logical semantic achieve-

ment of the anti-Jewish polemic contained in anti-simoniac writings of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Libelli de Lite).11 As in some early
Franciscan opuscula such as the Francisci epistola toti ordini missa, the image
of Judas as avarus and therefore traditor is opposed to the perfection
of the Friars pauperes Christi and sacerdotes celebrating the Mass non pro
ulla terrena re.12 In Bonaventure’s Apologia the Parisian doctors who are
fighting against the Order’s paupertas are the equivalent of Judas as
administrator fur et avarus of the goods given by fideles to Christ and
the apostles.13 This double equation assumes a deeper meaning when

11 Peter Damian, Epistola , in Die Briefe, : “Quisquis ergo clericus proprietati

conatur habere peculium, non valet apostolorum tenere vestigia, quia non erit illi cum
fratribus cor unum et anima una. Cum Juda siquidem loculos atque pecuniam habere
potest, unanimitatem vero puramque concordiam cum apostolis hebere non potest”;
Gaufridus Vindocinensis, Libellus VI: Quae tria aecclesia specialiter habere debet (Ad Calixtum
papam) in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Libelli de Lite, vol. III, : “… Quando
enim aecclesia venditur vel emitur, evacuatur fides, quia quod incomparabile factum
est a Deo ab homine comparari posse estimatur. Praeterea qui vendit aecclesiam
cupidum Iudam imitatur; qui autem emit illam Iudaicam avaritiam sectatur. Iudas
utique cupiditati vendidit Christum, qui est caput aecclesiae, et Iudei avaritia emerunt
illum.” More specific references in G. Todeschini, “Judas mercator pessimus: Ebrei e
simoniaci dall’XI al XIII secolo,” Zakhor: Rivista di storia degli ebrei d’Italia,  (), –
; L. Dasberg, Untersuchungen über die Entwertung des Judenstatus im . Jh. (Paris, ).
On the complex cultural atmosphere of the anti-Jewish polemic between the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, see now G. Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen Age
(Paris, ); B.M. Bedos-Rezak, “Les Juifs et l’écrit dans la mentalité eschatologique
du Moyen Age chrétien occidental (France –),” Annales,  (), –.
12 Francis of Assisi, Epistola toti ordini missa –, in K. Esser, ed., Gli scritti di s.

Francesco d’Assisi (Padua, ), : “Rogo etiam in Domino omnes fratres meos sacer-
dotes, qui sunt et erunt et esse cupiunt sacerdotes Altissimi, quod quandocumque mis-
sam celebrare voluerint, puri pure faciant cum reverentia verum sacrificium sanctissimi
corporis et sanguinis Domini nostri Jesu Christi sancta intentione et munda non pro
ulla terrena re neque timore vel amore alicuius hominis, quasi placentes hominibus; sed
omnis voluntas, quantum adiuvat gratia ad Deum dirigatur soli ipso summo Domino
inde placere desiderans quia ipse ibi solus operatur sicut sibi placet; quoniam sicut
ipse dicit: ‘Hoc facite in meam commemorationem’, si quis aliter fecerit, Judas traditor
efficitur et ‘reus fit corporis et sanguinis Domini.’”
13 Bonaventure, Apologia pauperum, in Opera omnia .: “Omnium malorum radicalis

origo, cupiditas, cum humanae mentis arcem invaserit, tam dura tyrannide premit, ut
ad idolorum redigat servitutem et in bestialem transformet crudelitatem. Huius testi-
monium evidens esse constat Iudae proditoris nequitiam, qui, cum loculos haberet, de
quibus cupiditatis suae voracitatem famelicam mitigare valebat; modicae tamen sibi
repromissae pecuniae tanto est illectus amore, ut sitiret Salvatoris omnium sanguinem
et auctorem vitae venaretur ad mortem. Hac peste laborans et hic pauperum calumni-
ator tamquam Iudae discipulus primo eis pacis osculum tribuit, ipsorum simulatorie com-
mendando pauperiem; dehinc letaliter percutit, dum loculis carentium pauperum pro-
fessionem conatur arguere, non solum ut imperfectam, verum etiam ut erroneam, sim-
  

we reflect on the traditional Augustinian interpretation of Psalm 14

and on its development between the eleventh and twelfth centuries dur-
ing the hard clash between Gregorian Reformers and their adversaries
who had given a new political and rhetorical objectivity to the connec-
tion between Jewish difference and dangers for the sacred goods and
the charisma of the Roman church. In the writings of Hubertus de
Silvacandida, Honorius Augustodunensis, Placidus Nonantulanus and
others, as well as in the writings of Peter the Venerable and Peter Can-
tor and in Canon  of the Fourth Lateran Council, the Jews (regularly
identified with the character of Judas) are described as typical enemies
of the church and of her facultates.15 This Augustinian tradition does
find a new actuality in the Franciscan School as the great thirteenth-
century heir of a Reform which, during the pontificate of Innocent III,
“waged campaigns against its various enemies, endeavors that evinced
and promoted great feelings of hostility toward all who might be con-

ulatoriam et iniquam.” And some lines later: “Insuper, si quicumque membrum Christi
est, cum Christo loculos habet, ut asserit; a destructione consequentis qui loculos non habet
non est membrum Christi. Ex quo etiam sequitur, quod omnes pauperes nihil hebentes
et prorsus omnia relinquentes alieni sunt ab unitate corporis mystici, tanquam si is qui
habere pecuniam noluerit, gratiam Christi habere non possit, ac per hoc beatior fuerit
Iudas, qui loculos habuit, quam Petrus, quam Petrus, qui dixit: Argentum et aurum non
est mihi.” See, too, Bonaventure, De perfectione vitae ad sorores , in Opera omnia .: “Si
igitur inter Iudaeos duros et incredulos pascebat Dominus discipulos suos sine omni
sollicitudine; quid mirum, si pascat Fratres Minores eiusdem perfectionis professores,
quid mirum, si pascat pauperes Sorores, paupertatis evangelicae imitatrices, inter pop-
ulos christianos et fideles?” See, in another perspective, G. Dahan, “S. Bonaventure et
les juifs,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,  (), –.
14 Augustine, In psalmum  enarratio, in Opere  (Roma, ), : “… Sicut enim

quaedam dicuntur quae ad apostolum Petrum proprie pertinere videantur, nec tamen
habent illustrem intellectum nisi cum referuntur ad Ecclesiam, cuius ille agnoscitur in
figura gestasse personam, propter primatum quem in discipulis habuit … ita Iudas
personam quodammodo sustinet inimicorum Christi Iudaeorum, qui et tunc oderant
Christum, et nunc per successionem perseverante genere ipsius impietatis oderunt. De
quibus hominibus et de quo populo possunt non inconvenienter intellegi, non solum
ea quae apertius de ipsis in hoc psalmo legimus, verum etiam illa quae proprie de ipso
Iuda dicuntur expressius …”; B. Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der jüdisch-christlichen Beziehungen in den ersten Jahrhunderten (Basel, ).
15 Concilium lateranum IV, c. : “… Iudaeos decernimus compellendos ad satisfaciendum

ecclesiis pro decimis et oblationibus debitis, quas a christianis de domibus et possessionibus aliis
percipere consueverant, antequam ad Iudaeos quocumque titulo devenissent, ut sic ecclesiae conserventur
indemnes,” in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Alberigo et al. (Bologna, ), .
More quotations in G. Todeschini, “Judas mercator pessimus”; Todeschini, ‘“Usura’
ebraica e identità economica cristiana: la discussione medievale,” in Ebrei in Italia, ed.
C. Vivanti, vol.  (Torino, ), –.
         

sidered threatening to Christendom.”16 But now, in the struggle about

usus pauper, the poverty of the Order is suggested by the Franciscan
intelligentsia to Christian society as the conceptual and political syn-
thesis of Christian perfection and becomes even more defined as an
economic tactic: its enemies, with their carnalitas (their avarice), are the
postulate of an imperfection whose real name is infidelitas.
The Jews, in Bonaventure or in John Peckham, as we will see, are the
typical and menacing leaders of this division within Christian society.
First of all, they appear to the Franciscan ratio as symbol or metaphor
of the enemies of Franciscan poverty. The struggle for usus pauper does
appear as an appropriate language receptacle for beginning definitions
of Jews as infideles from an economic point of view, or of economic anal-
ysis as a rational technique to discern infideles from fideles. The emphasis
on poverty as a sign of perfect fidelitas in writings from Bernard of Clair-
vaux’s Apologia to Peter John Olivi’s Tractatus de usu paupere (which makes
explicit quotations from Bernard’s work)17 is to our historical vision the
most evident religious aspect of the entire vocabulary of Christian per-
fection, in which the economic sections are inseparable from the whole.
The mission for the conversion of the Jews with its apocalyptic impli-
cations, promoted at the end of the thirteenth century by the writings
of Peter John Olivi, Ramon Llull or Roger Bacon, was in this perspec-
tive a consequence of the ideal of poverty or, in other words, of the
imitation (mimesis) of Christ as a social model. The exaltation of the
perfect Christian merchant in the writings, between  and , of
the Franciscans Olivi, Llull, Alexander of Alexandria, and John Duns
Scotus is therefore a civic implication of this general model:18 Judas and

16 J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, ),
.
17 D. Burr and D. Flood, “Peter John Olivi: On Poverty and Revenue,” Franciscan

Studies,  (), –, with edition of the Olivi’s quaestio XVI “de perfectione evangel-
ica”; D. Burr, Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: The Origins of “Usus Pauper” Controversy (Philadel-
phia, ); J. Schlageter, Das Heil der Armen und das Verderben der Reichen (Werl/W., ),
with edition of the Olivi’s quaestio VIII “de perfectione evangelica”; D. Burr, ed., Petri
Johannis Olivi de usu paupere: The Quaestio and the Tractatus (Florence and Perth, );
D. Flood, “Peter Olivi quaestio de mendicitate: Critical edition,” Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum,  (), –.
18 On the general problem, P. Browe, Die Judenmission und die Päpste (Rome, );

on the Franciscan exaltation of the merchant’s civic value, see Langholm, Economics;
Todeschini, Il prezzo della salvezza; see now O. Limor, “Missionary merchants: Three
medieval anti-Jewish works from Genoa,” Journal of Mediaeval History,  (), –
; G. Dahan, Ingetus Contardus, Disputatio contra Judeos (Paris, ). The fundamental
primary source on the problem of the “missionary merchants” is Ramon Llull’s Liber
  

the Jews are, in contrast, presented as perfidi and avari, as archetypes of

actual businessmen accustomed to money and its accumulation, or as
metaphorical archetypes of blindness and unbelief. (In patristic thought,
avaritia and tenacia or duritia are synonyms and key words from Ambrose
to Gregory the Great.) They are, in this representation, an obvious con-
tradiction to mystical poverty and to the Christian ideal of wealth.19

) Benjamin Nelson, Siegmund Stein, Robert Chazan, and, more re-

cently, William Chester Jordan have all underlined the importance of
the Christian-Jewish debate on Deuteronomy  and the prohibition to
lend on interest to brothers and permission to lend on interest to
strangers.20 In the Franciscan economic writings between the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, it is possible to find allusions to stereotyped or
actual Jews as supporters of an interpretation of Deuteronomy  as war-
ranty of Jewish lending on interest to Christians. Especially in Olivi’s De
usuris and in the Summa astesana, which largely adheres to Olivi, the non-
specific canonistic argumentation of Ramon de Penyafort, Innocent IV,
and Hostiensis makes a meaningful change, as it explains Deuteron-
omy’s passage in terms of divine tactics ad maiorem malum vitandum (given
as obvious the Judeorum duritia or aviditas).21 In Olivi and Astesanus the

per quem poterit cognosci quae lex sit magis bona (Turnhout, ). On Scotus’s economics, see
A.B. Wolter, Duns Scotus Political and Economic Philosophy (Santa Barbara, Calif., ).
19 P.J. Olivi, Quaestio de usu paupere (quaestio IX “de perfectione evangelica,” –

), in Petri Johannis Olivi de usu paupere, ed. D. Burr, –: “Credo tamen quod,
etiam posito quod [Apostoli] essent simpliciter professores evangelii, quod collecte pro
eis fieri potuerunt in casu tante necessitatis et utilitatis in quali tunc erant. Erant enim
inter Iudeos, fidei et fidelium precipuos adversarios, et erant ibi pro communi utilitate
totius fidei. Unde non poterant bono modo sustentari nisi a solis fidelibus qui ubique
terrarum inter gentes erant dispersi … Quod autem dicitur quod ipse [Paulus] sciebat
habundare non est contra pauperem usum, immo summe spectat ad professores eius.
Scire enim habundare non est aliud quam habere virtutem et discretionem bene et
perfecte se regendi in habundantia sibi oblata.”
20 B. Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (Philadel-

phia, ); S. Stein, “A Disputation on Moneylending between Jews and Gentiles in

Meir ben Simeon’s ‘Milhemet . Miswah,”’ Journal of Jewish Studies,  (); Stein, Jewish-
Christian Disputations in Thirteenth Century Narbonne (London, ); R. Chazan, “A Jew-
ish Plaint to Saint Louis,” Hebrew Union College Annual,  (), –; Chazan, “A
Medieval Hebrew Polemical Mélange,” Hebrew Union College Annual,  (), –;
W.C. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians
(Philadelphia, ).
21 The typical text is Ramon de Penyafort, Summa de poenitentia II , –, ed. Ochoa

Diez (Rome, ), –; Decretales (ed. Friedberg) X , , ; X , , ; X , , ;
X , , ; X , , .
         

historical Jews are to search for justifications for their lending activity,
so the explanation of the Torah’s quotation does imply a direct confu-
tation of a Jewish economic interpretation. Stein’s and Chazan’s studies
clearly show that in thirteenth-century France, and principally in Nar-
bonne, the location of the Franciscan studium in which Olivi was lector
around  and at the end of his life, there really was an explicit Jew-
ish polemic against the usury policy of King Louis IX and, generally,
against church usury doctrine. Its main characters appear in Meir ben
Simeon’s Milh. emet Mitzvah. In the same years, from the fifties to the sev-
enties, the “evolution of Capetian policy” regarding Jews (as William
Chester Jordan called it) involved a transmission to Franciscan and
Dominican investigators of an analysis of credit situations in which they
argued for the ban of Jewish lending on interest or the ratification of
non-restitution of interests by borrowers, especially when the borrowers
were Crusaders. “Canon  of the First Council of Lyons, , could
be read to give some sort of license to the king to attach the profit
of Jewish usury from crusaders.”22 It is fundamental for the study of
Franciscan economics to understand that explicit references to Jews as
theoreticians of a credit economy first appear in the textual chain origi-
nated by Olivi’s De usuris, a work whose author could not ignore the
relations between Franciscans, Jews, and the monarch in Picardy and
in the French Midi, nor the Narbonne Jewish polemic against usury in
Christian legislation.23

22 W.C. Jordan, The French Monarchy, .

23 Peter John Olivi, De emptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus, in G. Tode-
schini, Un trattato di economia politica francescana (Rome, ), : “Sed forte dicetur sicut
a quibusdam iudeis dicitur, quod accipere usuram non prohibetur in lege, nisi solum a
fratribus suis idest a iudeis, ymo de aliis conceditur, Deuteronomii , sicut superius in
argumentum est tactum … Si autem [usure] sunt per se male, tunc semper et ubique
sunt male … quia naturalis proximitas et fraternitas est ad omnes homines, tam iure
communis creationis et divine ymaginis et univoce speciei hominum, quam iure propa-
gationis ex eodem primo patre … quia aut usurarius contractus continet in se absolute
iniquitatem aut equitatem: si iniquitatem ergo est per se et ubique apud omnes malum,
si equitatem ergo non deberet a fratre prohiberi.” The whole Olivian argumentation
is more complex and articulated than the discussion from Ramon de Penyafort to
Hostiensis: the ius naturae and not the unfruitfulness of money is the central point of
Olivi’s condemnation of usury. If, as now Sylvain Piron proves in his doctoral thesis
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, ) the economic treatise of Olivi was
written in the nineties of the thirteenth century in Narbonne, it is easy to interpret
the quidam iudei as a reference to the polemic on usury between Jews and Christians in
Narbonne and Midi, well studied by Robert Chazan.
  

From this point of view, it is not surprising that, in the Summa of

Astesanus, the Jews are presented as authors of a falsification in the
Deuteronomy text on usury. Astesanus, in fact, writes explicitly that
usury is absolutely forbidden in consequence of ius naturae and not prin-
cipally (in the same terms of Olivi and Scotus) because money would
not be fruitful. Usury is forbidden also in consequence of its unchar-
itable social sense. The argument concludes with the declaration that
Deuteronomy’s original and authentic text contained no references that
allowed lending to strangers but that this reference was a Jewish inter-
polation as a justification of Jewish credit economy.24 The Jewish infideli-
tas in Astesanus’s text is directly connected to Jewish avaritia and there-
fore to Jewish falsehood in a circumscribed economic sense. Bernardino
of Siena, around , makes a textual quotation from Olivi’s de usuris
on this point in his Sermo de usuraria pravitate (the thirty-eighth sermon
of his De evangelio aeterno and seventh sermon of his De contractibus et
usuris).25 So Bernardino will newly emphasize the role of Jews as sup-
porters of usury in the urban business context of the fifteenth century
and transmit the terms of this specific Franciscan charge to future eco-
nomic debates.

) In the Franciscan writings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,

we can also find implicit and explicit hostile allusions to the actual
Jewish role in credit and trade economy. It is, however, very difficult
to penetrate the complex significance of this theoretical and political
antagonism if any aspect of an integral Franciscan economic project or
of Franciscan economics would be denied. As I outlined in my earlier
studies, and as was recently verified by Odd Langholm, it is possible to

24 Astesanus, Summa de casibus (Venice, ) III : “… usura est prohibita quia est

peccatum et secundum se est malum et contra dictamen iuris naturalis, ita quod nullo
modo et nullo casu potest bene fieri et in ea non potest dispensary … [Ad secundum]
Iudeis prohibitum fuit usuram recipere fratribus suis scilicet iudeis. Per quod datur
intelligi quod usuram accipere a quocumque homine est simpliciter prohibitum, quia
quilibet homo debet haberi quasi proximus et frater, potissime in statu evangelii ad
quem homines vocantur … Quod autem ab extraneis usuram acciperent non fuit eis
concessum quasi licitum sed permissum ad maius malum vitandum scilicet ne a Iudeis
deum colentibus usuram acciperent propter avariciam cui dediti erant, ut habetur Isaia
. Dicitur autem quod in vera littera non fuit illa additio scilicet ‘alieno,’ sed fuit
per Iudeos apposita in sui excusationem talem qualem.” On Olivi’s and Astesanus’s
economics, see O. Langholm, Economics, –, and passim.
25 Bernardino of Siena, Opera omnia IV (Firenze Quaracchi, ), ; G. Todes-

chini, “Teorie economiche francescane e presenza ebraica in Italia (– c.),” in

Il rinnovamento del Francescanesimo: L’Osservanza (Assisi, ), –.
         

establish a strong correlation between the Franciscan doctrine on the

absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles and Franciscan economic
analysis. The struggle on poverty in the sixties through the eighties of
the thirteenth century is readable in this sense as an actual Francis-
can linguistic construction of an economic vocabulary for Christianity
and, more than this, of an intellectual project that envisions an ethical
and economic reform of the life of Christian entrepreneurs. Francis-
can attention to the economic difference between use, property, posses-
sion, and usufruct of things and on the social significance of money is
clearly observable in Franciscan writings, written before and after the
bulla decretalis, Exiit qui seminat (), on the role of poverty in the Order,
from the Expositio quator magistrorum () to Bonaventure’s Apologia and
Olivi’s Quaestiones de perfectione evangelica. This Franciscan characteristic
attention to a particular economic sense of the act of human domina-
tion (dominium, ius dominii) is especially helpful in making the derivation
of Franciscan economic analysis from Franciscan pauperistic conscious-
ness understandable.26 The total privation of wealth, the contraction
of human needs to simple use (simplex usus facti) of things necessary to
daily life as an imitatio Christi et apostolorum, is founded in an inquiry of
the social habits concerning ownership, which are presented but not
systematically defined by canonistic and romanistic tradition. This eco-
nomic categorization of the relative utility of things, this criticism of
their effectual value or of their superfluousness, evident for example in
Olivi’s question nine “de perfectione evangelica” and in Olivi’s De usuris,27 is
furthermore the logical postulate of the Franciscan evaluation of secu-
lar economy. It makes possible an accurate distinction between ethical,
socially profitable contracts whose prototype is commerce, and deceiv-
ing, socially deleterious contracts whose prototype is usury. In this per-
spective, the lucrum and Christian wealth in general can be the product
of a correct Christian lifestyle inasmuch as this wealth is assembled by
fideles whose objective is the affluence of the city (patria) under the guide
of Christian charismatic leaders. In the writings of Olivi, Alexander

26 G. Tarello, “Profili giuridici della questione della povertà nel francescanesimo

prima di Ockham,” in Studi in memoria di Antonio Falchi (Milan, ); P. Grossi, “Usus
facti: La nozione di proprietà nella inaugurazione dell’età nuova,” () in Il dominio
e le cose: Percezioni medievali e moderne dei diritti reali, ed. P. Grossi (Milan, ), –
; G. Todeschini, “Oeconomica Franciscana”; Todeschini, Il prezzo; O. Langholm,
Economics; R. Lambertini, Apologia; A. Tabarroni, Paupertas. See, too, L.K. Little, Religious
Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, ).
27 D. Burr, ed., Petri Johannis Olivi, –; G. Todeschini, Un trattato.
  

Lombardus, John Duns Scotus, Astesanus, Giraldus Odo, and others,

the moneyed and dynamic merchant (pecuniosus et industrius, in Olivi’s
De emptionibus et venditionibus) is, from this point of view, fidelis when the
goal of his business activity is to benefit the fidelium communitas and
only indirectly to increase his personal and family wealth. Franciscan
economists proposed to Christian merchants that the legitimate way
to be rich involved a detachment from avarice (possidere immobiliter in
Olivi’s question eight de perfectione evangelica)28 as, i.e., from the accumu-
lation of things, of objects, and of money as well as a consideration
of the use of such wealth for the good of the broader community.29
The flow of money and wares and the public utility of this circulation,
together with a rejection of amassing property (thesaurizare, thesaurizatio),
appear to provide the closest secular analogy to religious poverty. In
this model as in religious poverty, the simple use (usus) of things is the
actual, legal, and historical shape of Christ’s paupertas. The ethical supe-
riority of honest commerce and the justification of a merchant’s wealth
proceeding from good knowledge of city needs and prices for wares are
recurrent elements in Franciscan economics, which was expressed in
their argument against the Aristotelian-Thomistic thesis on the steril-
ity of money. Religious poverty in its expression as “simple use” from
Bonaventure to Scotus was founded on the idea of a possible separa-
tion of use and property in objects and also in money. This conception
of money as an object, ethically dangerous when accumulated but use-
ful when indirectly used and not owned, is clearly connected with the
Franciscan legitimization of the Christian entrepreneur as a tradesman
and money changer making use of money not to accumulate it, but
to utilize it as a means of exchange. A mere consequence of this eth-
ical and economic Franciscan conception of Christian merchant on a
religious and civic level is the role assigned to Christian merchants in
the writings of Ramon Llull, Roger Bacon and, a century later nearby,
Francesc Eiximenis. In their writings, the perfect Christian merchants
are the champions of infideles, namely Jews and Saracens, and the best
representatives of civic virtues. Their task is to be, because of their lin-
guistic and geographic knowledge and their religious education, a sort

28 J. Schlageter, Das Heil; D. Burr and D. Flood, “Peter John Olivi: On Poverty and

Revenue.”
29 The Franciscans also raised, in their consideration of the proper use of wealth,

issues regarding the use of money as a means of exchange in the import and export of
commodities and as a measure for the definition of prices.
         

of lay missionary among the infideles, and at the same time, because of
their economic science, the major supporters of the affluence and good
order of Christian towns.30 Olivi’s approval of an interest taken by mer-
chants on their lending derives from his conception of the merchant’s
wealth and money. This wealth and this money, because they pertain to
a subject fidelis whose economic custom is commercial investment, can
produce immediately other money. It is not sterile as the money and
the wealth of the Jewish usurer whose unfruitfulness derives not from
the nature of money, but from its economic immobility, that is, from its
wrong and depraved use.
So we can easily understand that, although we can find only a few,
though remarkable, references to Jews as usurers in thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century Franciscan economic writings, the whole Francis-
can economics is understandable as the beginning of Christian eco-
nomics, and has among its strong implications a definition of the econ-
omy practiced by businessmen infideles, particularly by Jews in terms of
unfruitfulness and danger. This development is explicit, during the thir-
teenth century, in John Peckham’s response to the Duchess of Brabant,
De regimine Judeorum. This text31 is analogous to the concise but more
famous opusculum by Thomas Aquinas. But if the writing of Aquinas
does not reveal a great attention to the problem of a ruler’s govern-
ment over Jews living in his land, Peckham’s brief treatise is a very
interesting segment of the complex Franciscan ethical-economic struc-
ture. The text is explicit about the connection existing for the Fran-
ciscan writer between Jews and usury: the Jews are generally usurarii
manifesti and it can be presumed that all their wealth would have
originated from lending on interest. This statement, a heritage of the
twelfth-century polemic, is now becoming a paradox: Jews must be
compelled to do honest labor, but all the jobs that could associate

30 Ramon Llull, Quae lex sit magis bona (op. ) uersio latina I (Turnhout, ),

: “Cum multi christiani laici sint mercatores et hac occasione uadant ad terras
Saracenorum, et Saraceni interrogent eos de lege eorum et cum eis uelint disputare, et
christiani eis nesciant respondere, quia de lege christianorum notitiam non habent, sed
credulitatem, quia dubitant in lege Mahometi, idcirco nos facimus istum librum ad hoc,
ut sciant cognoscere quod lex christianorum est magis bona, magis magna et magis
uera, quam quaecumque alia lex; et hoc idem dicimus, quod scient disputare cum
Iudaeis”; Llull, Ars generalis ultima : De mercatura (op. ), (), : “Mercatura in
homine fideli et virtuoso est habitus perfectus; in homine autem deceptore et peccatore
est habitus imperfectus.”
31 The text is found in a manuscript of the Bibliothèque Mazarine and cited by

Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels, .

  

them with Christians—surgery, commerce, domestic service—are pro-

hibited.32 The result is that the degenerate business, usury, is proscribed
but remains the only practicable one for Jews. The prince can further
reclaim his fiscal revenues from this vicious wealth because, first of all,
he has a general right to impose taxes ex pia causa et meritoria vel reipub-
lice defensande. Secondly, it is his privilege to obtain, as a sort of profit,
part of the Jewish corrupted wealth precisely since he is formally the
authority who compels Jews to return usurious money as a procurator of
the Christian citizens. He consequently has a legal right to a portion of
the sums to be reimbursed.33
In Peckham’s writing and later in the writings on usury and com-
merce by Olivi, Alexander Lombardus, Astesanus and other Franciscan
economic authors, the Jews are the origin of a contagium, a contamina-
tion of the social life of Christians, insofar as their economic activity can
only be a degeneration of the real useful business activity whose hero
is the merchant fidelis. It is very important to understand that in John
Peckham’s response to the Duchess of Brabant, just as in the Summa
astesana, usury becomes, more than a standard vicious economic con-
tract, the sign of the economic activity of Jews as infideles and at the
same time their unique, as well as forbidden, possibility of earning and
living. The growth of Christian discussion on credit in the fourteenth
century, and the great Franciscan participation in it, especially on the
problem of public debt (as results from, among others, Santarelli’s and
Kirshner’s studies),34 clearly proves that the usury problem, in the four-

32 “Cogendi sunt iudei de proprio labore vivere vel exercitio mercature ita tamen

quod preesse christianis in aliquo genere officii minime permittantur.” See Alia epistola
cuiusdam ordinis minorum ad quamdam dominam super regimine Judeorum et quibusdam aliis (Paris
ms., ), ff. r–v; f. v.
33 Alia epistola, f. v. G. Todeschini, “Usura ebraica,” –. The epistola makes

explicit reference to the anti-Jewish policies of King Louis IX and assumes that they
provide a Christian political model regarding the Jewish question. G.I. Langmuir,
“Judei nostri and the beginning of Capetian legislation,” Traditio,  (), –;
W.C. Jordan, The French Monarchy.
34 U. Santarelli, La categoria dei contratti irregolari: Lezioni di storia del diritto (Torino,

); J. Kirshner, “The moral theology of public finance: A study and edition of
Nicholas de Anglia’s Quaestio disputata on the public debt of Venice,” Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum,  (), –; Kirshner, “A Note on the Authorship of Domenico
Pantaleoni’s Tract on the Monte Comune of Florence,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum,
 (), –; Kirshner, “Reading Bernardino’s sermon on the public debt,” in Atti
del simposio internazionale cateriniano-bernardiniano (Siena, ), –; Kirshner, “Storm
over Monte Comune: Genesis of the Moral Controversy over the Public Debt of
Florence,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum,  (), –; Kirshner, “Encumbering
Private Claims to Public Debt in Renaissance Florence,” in The Growth of the Bank as
         

teenth and fifteenth centuries, is not a generic moral problem, but a

special problem concerning the economic attitude of non-Christians in
a Christian market context. The prohibition of usury and the empha-
sizing of usury as a Jewish profession coincide in this period with the
even more lucid assertion, especially in Franciscan economics from
Olivi to Eiximenis,35 of the legitimacy of credit activity by Christian
merchants. The dawn of banking investigated by Raymond De Roover
is, from this point of view, in the writings of jurists and Franciscan eco-
nomic theorists, the dawn of Christian banking.36 It corresponds, in the
end, to the condemnation of usury as Jewish practice.

II

After having argued this, we can ask our sources if there is evidence
of a connection between the fifteenth-century Franciscan Observant
preaching campaigns against Jewish lending on interest and the pre-
ceding Franciscan economics with its implications seen above of the
aforementioned condemnation of Jewish involvement in economics.
This Jewish involvement was viewed as an archetype of an economy
of heretics, synthesized by usury contracts.37

Institution and the Development of Money-Business Law, ed. V. Piergiovanni (Berlin, ),
–.
35 Francesc Eiximenis, Regiment de la cosa publica, –, ed. D. De Molins De Rei

(Barcelona, ), ff.; J.A. Maravall, “Franciscanismo, burguesia y mentalidad

precapitalista: la obra de Eximenis,” in VIII Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon,
vol. II: La Corona de Aragon en el siglo XIV (Valencia, ), –.
36 Raymond De Roover, Money, Banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges: Italian Merchant

Bankers, Lombards and Money Changers (Cambridge, Mass., ); De Roover, La pensée
économique des Scolastiques (Montréal and Paris, ); De Roover, Business, Banking and
Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Selected Studies of Raymond De
Roover, ed. J. Kirshner (Chicago, ); The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven, Conn.,
); see now, E.S. Hunt, The Medieval Super-Companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company of
Florence (Cambridge, ).
37 A. Ghinato, “I Monti di pietà istituzione francescana,” Picenum Seraphicum,  (),

–; M.G. Muzzarelli, “Un bilancio storiografico sui Monti di pietà: –,”
Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia,  (), –; V. Meneghin, Bernardino da Feltre
e i Monti di Pietà (Vicenza, ); M.G. Muzzarelli, “Luoghi e tendenze dell’attuale
storiografia italiana sulla presenza ebraica fra XIV e XVI secolo,” Società e Storia, 
(), –; A. Vauchez, Ordini mendicanti e società italiana: XIII–XV secolo (Milan,
); Il rinnovamento del Francescanesimo; La conversione alla povertà; I frati minori fra ’ e
’ (Assisi, ); F. Lomastro Tognato, Legge di Dio e Monti di Pietà: Marco da Montegallo,
– (Vicenza, ).
  

We can answer in the affirmative when we reflect not only on the

well-known textual connection of Bernardino’s Tractatus de contractibus et
usuris to foregoing Franciscan economics, particularly to Olivi’s De emp-
tionibus et venditionibus, De usuris, and De restitutionibus, but even on the
widespread consistent heritage of a Franciscan ethical-economic lexi-
con in the Franciscan Observant sermons and treatises concerning Jew-
ish lending, from John Capistrano to Bernardino da Feltre and Marco
da Montegallo.38 The patrons and founders of the first Monti di Pietà
placed within their doctrinal and linguistic pattern the whole tradition
which, from Bonaventure to Olivi, Scotus, Francesco da Empoli and
Eiximenis, had ingeniously constructed a School system and a policy
regarding the Christian economic technique of perfection as a religious
but also as a lay economic lifestyle. It is inside this lexical and theoreti-
cal tradition, founded on a distinction between fruitful use and unfruit-
ful motionless possession of wealth and money, that Franciscan Obser-
vants can find the proofs and the technical language for their attack
against the Italian Jewish communities.
One of the most important Observant arguments against Jewish
lending on interest in the period from  to , the danger delin-
eated for city economies from Jewish commerce of pledges, is evidently
based on a development of the traditional Franciscan conception of the
Christian market economy as an ethically allowed economy, insofar as
it is a partnership between fideles, between brothers allied by the com-
mon will to increase the power and wealth of the Christian community.
From this perspective the Jewish purchase and commerce of goods by
way of acquisition of non-redeemed pledges is perceived by Franciscan
economics as an extension of the usury technique, that is, as an artifice
of infideles outsiders having as a goal the weakening of the inner religious
and economic unity of the Christian city.39
Consequently, the fifteenth-century Observant sequence of cam-
paigns, sermons, and treatises against Jews and against usury as a

38 G. Todeschini, “Usus raptus: Denaro e merci in Giovanni da Capistrano,” in A

Ovidio Capitani: Scritti degli allievi bolognesi, ed. M.C. De Matteis (Bologna, ), –
; Todeschini, “Osservanza francescana e politica economica delle città nel Quat-
trocento,” Quaderni Medievali,  (), –; on the Franciscan and Observant politi-
cal theories, now see P. Evangelisti, “Per uno studio della testualità politica francescana
fra XIII e XV secolo: Autori e tipologia delle fonti,” Studi Medievali,  (), –.
39 The argument is common in the Observant anti-Jewish preaching and treatises,

from John Capistrano to Marco da Montegallo and Bernardino da Feltre: see the works
cited in the preceding footnote.
         

Jewish economic practice seems the most logical public outcome of

the Franciscan economic vision which fixed the limits of authorized
profit strictly inside the Christian community. It connected thereafter
the legitimacy of economic practices with membership in the Chris-
tian community, firmly differentiating the economic identity of the Jew-
ish entrepreneur from the economic identity of the Christian merchant
and banker.
The Franciscan authorization of insurance contracts and of receiv-
ing (if not of bargaining) of interests determined by public debt proce-
dures in the fifteenth century, for example in the Summa of Angelo da
Chivasso, and the subsequent legitimization of investments and prof-
its connected to a policy of credit, clearly prove that the contempo-
rary condemnation of Jewish economic presence does not have the
sense of a condemnation of banking and finance. It is, on the con-
trary, the explicit foundation of a distinction between a Christian and
an alien (alienigena)40 economy and the principle of the approbation of a
profit economy as a method to use things and to manage the Christian
world.41

40 Concilium lugdunense II, canon , Usurarum voraginem, in Decretales, liber sextus V  =

Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici II, .

41 Angelus Carletti de Clavasio, Summa angelica de casibus conscientiae (Venice, ),

f. v: “… precium debet attendi secundum communem extimationem … Quanto

autem ista extimatio debet fieri quando non est communitas talis commertii, dico quod
pensatis raritate laboribus et periculis iudicio boni mercatoris determinabitur quia alia
regula non potest dari et hoc in re mobili. In immobili vero extimatur secundum fruc-
tus …”; f. r: “… Quid de illo qui non solvit de culpa sua creditori solito mer-
cari in termino debito. Respondeo quod tenetur ei ad lucrum cessans iuditio bono-
rum mercatorum. Et ideo talis creditor licite recipit ultra sortem. Idem dic de illo
qui volebat negociari vel possessionem emere, quod licite recipit ultra sortem tan-
tum quantum lucratus fuisset verisimiliter vel habuisset de fructibus possessionis aut
alterius rei dummodo videlicet concurrant …”; f. r: “… . Utrum tradere cen-
tum ducatos in societate cum pacto quod vult ipsum capitale salvum nec vult sentire
aliquod damnum sed de lucro vult secundum discretionem socii quantum sibi placuerit
dare licite faciat. Respondeo quod non sed est usurarius, c. consuluit … Et propterea
secundum Baldum in l. I q. V, IIII, ff. pro socio, talis quicquid accipit de lucro exten-
uat sortem quia tenetur compensare, vel si utrumque habuit tenetur restituere lucrum.
Adverte tamen quod si quis nollet periculo capitalis se exponere et inveniret aliquem
qui eum vellet assecurare pro aliquo sibi dato non esset usura se liberare a periculo
per talem assecurationem licet pro lucro accipiat de capitali sic assecurato quod qui-
dem lucrum parit negociatio talis capitalis dati in societatem. Et idem dicerem quando
socius accipiens ipsum capitale conveniret libere cum socio dante capitale de dando
sibi tale modicum de lucro quod verisimiliter quilibet alius sic faceret si dans capi-
tale retineret totum lucrum aliud quod deberet habere ex tali societate eo quod eum
  

It is not surprising if the pauperes Christi, the Franciscans, as religious

masters and experts on use and possession techniques and on related
lexical subtleties, appear to the urban, economically developed society
of the fifteenth century (and today to the historians of the medieval
economic thought) as perfect economists and ideal directors of Chris-
tian local economies.42 At the same time, it is quite understandable that
their approach to the Jewish economic presence in Italian commer-
cial cities at the end of the Middle Ages raises conflicts. This approach
is deeply connected to an entire economic system based on two fun-
damental ideas: the notion of the flux of wealth or incessant use as

assecuret pro principali immo si nihil esset lucri solveret nihilominus assecurationem,
utpote quando negociatio est talis qualitatis quod assecurationem inveniret solvendo
tria vel quatuor pro centenario et tamen communiter pro lucro societatis esset recep-
turus VI vel VIII et aliquando plus, et sic conveniret cum socio quod solum daret
sibi III vel quatuor pro lucro et eum de capitali assecuraret, et sic intelligo illud quod
tam Ioh. Andreae in c. per vestras, de donatione inter vivos, et Uxoris de dote data merca-
tori … quia in isto casu pecunia posita in societate bene stat periculo ponentis licet
illud periculum redimatur precio, quod licet. Et ideo non est privilegium dotis quia
licite potest fieri in quocumque capitali sic dato, dummodo concurrant duo. Primum
quod socius accipiens libere hoc velit facere non solum accipiendo tale capitale sed
etiam si non acciperet pro tali modo assecuraret. Secundum quod tantum plus possit
verisimiliter lucrari de tali societate ultra partem suam quantum est illud quod
f. v
solveret pro tali assecuratione cuicumque communiter. Tutius tamen esset si conveniret
cum socio de solvendo sibi tantum pro assecuratione capitalis quantum quilibet alius
acciperet si vellet assecurare et in dividendo lucro prius solveret conventum pro asse-
curatione et quod superesset de lucro contingente illud retineret. Nec obstat capitulum
Naviganti quia ibi aliter non mutuaret nisi periculum et lucrum pro periculo reciperet”;
f. v: “an … civis a quo communitas eius indigens pecunie accipit centum contra
eius voluntatem, licite sine usura possit recipere certum quod puta VIII libras pro cen-
tenario quando sibi annuatim ipsa communitas constituit. Respondeo, diversi diversa
scripserunt sed salvo meliori iudicio mihi videtur distinguendum quod aut communitas
ipsa habet annuos redditus, aut non. Si habet sicut est civitas Ianue et de ipsis redditibus
assignat certam partem tali a quo pecuniam habuit secundum proportionem pecunie
habite, item quod tantum habeat omni anno de tali redditu ipse bene vel male respon-
det, sic licite talis accipit, quia talis communitas talem pecuniam accipit non nomine
mutui, cum numquam velit eam reddere, sed pro precio talis partis suorum reddituum
quos pro solutione pecunie habite vendit tali civi et sic est emptio reddituum civitatis
que fieri potest sine usura … Et secundum hoc loca Ianue, mons Florentie et imprestita
Venetiarum sunt licita et sine usura …” G. Ceccarelli, Il gioco e il peccato: Economia e
rischio nel tardo Medioevo (Bologna, ); Ceccarelli, “Risky Business: Theological and
Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century,”
The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,  (), –.
42 Raymond De Roover, “Il trattato di fra sante Rucellai sul cambio, il monte

comune e il monte delle doti,” Archivio Storico Italiano,  (), –; De Roover,
S. Bernardino of Siena and S. Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the
Middle Ages (Boston, ).
         

a key to perfect Christian spirituality (pecunia lucrosa) for the Christian

fideles, and the notion of motionless wealth (pecunia mortua), as a typical
attribute of the carnality and avarice of the infideles.43

43 Bernardino of Siena, Quadragesimale de christiana religione, Sermo  “De peccatis van-

itatum,” III “Quod divitiae temporales in patriis ex superfluis vanitatibus multipliciter

minuuntur” in Opera omnia vol. II (Firenze Quaracchi, ), –: “… pecunia quae
expenditur in superfluis indumentis, in iocalibus, in anulis, in coronis, in lapidibus pre-
tiosis atque in aliis superfluis ornamentis, mortua perseverat; quae quidem posset esse
lucrosa in mercantiis, in possessionibus, in animalibus, in artibus et in aliis quibus-
cumque lucrosis, et sic per consequens ad temporalem utilitatem civitatis et totius
patriae redundaret … Nam pretium quod in talibus vanitatibus possidetur commu-
niter semper diminuitur, sive per talium vanitatum usus seu abusum, aut non usum.
Nam saepe vanitatum mutatione, rerum talium pretium minoratur; immo indumen-
tum quod hodie fit, cras sine minoratione pretii non poterit vendi et sic de singulis …
Nam postquam homo praedicta emerit, unde cessant lucra et crescunt damna, non tan-
tum vendit vel derelinquit illa, verum etiam ad consimilia et correspondentia coartatur.
Inde saepe oriuntur usurae, rapinae ac cetera turpia et iniusta lucra.”
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTEMPT FOR FRIARS
AND CONTEMPT FOR JEWS IN LATE
MEDIEVAL GERMANY

C O

On the Wednesday before Easter in the year , two Magdeburg

Jews left town on horseback for Nürnberg pursuing unknown business.
As they crossed a field they came upon two Franciscans. One was
a priest, and one was a lay brother.1 Riding up behind the priest,
the first Jew put his hand on his sheath, talked proudly, and, tugging
on his sword, asked his comrade if he thought he should kill the
Franciscan. The lay brother approached, and so did the other Jew.
“Du narr sich das du unsz beyde ze schaden bringst”: “you’re making an
idiot of yourself that you bring us both into danger,” said the Jewish
companion. And so chastened, they both rode off, having caused no
injury.2 The Franciscans continued to town and immediately brought

1 Surely the priest’s socius, such as a teacher in the convent school or a friar licensed

to preach and administer penance in the cloister’s Terminierhäuser would enjoy: the priest
was not, therefore, a mere conventual of Magdeburg but, given his later activity, likely
a convent preacher, so licensed by the bishop to give public sermons. Were he a master
of theology one would expect the title to have been used.
2 There are three accounts of this incident. One is from two presidents of the

Jewish community, probably to be dated  May : Urkundenbuch der Stadt Magdeburg,
ed. Gustav Hertel,  vols. (Halle, –), .– no.  (hereafter cited as
UB Magdeburg). Another is a report of the archbishop of Magdeburg’s bailiff in
the city, the so-called Mollvogt (or “minor bailiff”), Hans Reynhart, to an unknown
party identified only as Achtbar und hochgelarter gunstiger herr und furderer, probably some
kind of counsel of the archbishop or the city council, and dated  May . This
account stresses his attempt to pursue the investigation for the sake of providing
the Jews justice: UB Magdeburg, .– no. . The third is a report by the
same bailiff to the archbishop of his investigation of the Franciscans, dated  June
: UB Magdeburg, .– no. . This last reference provides the details
of the original assault. The earlier Jewish appeal to the archbishop, however, also
indicates that the allegation against the Jews involves two traveling Jews and two
Franciscans, one Jew threatening one of the Franciscans. The case is treated very
briefly by Gudrun Wittek, “Franziskanische Friedensvorstellungen und Stadtfrieden.
Möglichkeiten und Grenzen franziskanischen Friedewirkens in mitteldeutschen Städten
  

a complaint against the Jew to the archbishop’s bailiff in the city, the
so-called Mollvogt, Hans Reynhart.3 Reynhart later claimed that he
learned of the event within an hour and a half and immediately rode
out with his servant (knecht) to chase down the offenders and to bring
them back to town. He came upon them not far from the city and
chased them two miles into a village, where they hid and remained
undiscovered.4 Back in Magdeburg, the archbishop instructed the bailiff
to investigate secretly and to ask the two presidents of the Jewish
community privately to give an account.5 But Reynhart soon learned
the limits of discretion. The very next day a count complained of the
threat against the Franciscan, the first indication that the Franciscans
might use their patrons and public to manipulate the case. Reynhart
asked him to keep the matter quiet, lest the guilty be forewarned and
fail to return to Magdeburg, where, he assured the count, he was
waiting to haul them into court to determine the truth.6 On Jubilate
Sunday, three impatient weeks after Easter, the Franciscan revealed
the affair from his pulpit and called upon his “brother” blacksmith
and shoemaker journeymen, that is, members of confraternities at the
cloister, to take vengeance.7 The obliging journeymen waited until the
next Sunday, when fifty or sixty of them gathered in the hour after
mealtime in the new market before the cathedral. There they attacked
an innocent Jew, mortally wounding him and forcing the other Jews in
the market to flee.
The two presidents of the Jewish community then made their own
complaint, first to the city council, who referred them to the bailiff,
and then to Reynhart, who now surely found himself in the poten-
tially uncontrollable situation he had hoped to avoid by keeping mat-

im Spätmittelalter,” in Bettelorden und Stadt, ed. by Dieter Berg (Werl, ), –.
3 According to all three accounts.
4 UB Magdeburg, .– no. . The Mollvogt claims that he came upon the

two Jews a mere mile from the town, this one and a half hours after the event, which
makes little sense as fact or distortion.
5 According to their appeal and Reynhart’s report to an anonymous counsel. UB

Magdeburg, .– no. , .– no. .

6 UB Magdeburg, .– no. .
7 According to all three accounts, the bailiff’s first account to an anonymous counsel

being the most informative. UB Magdeburg, .– no. . Easter was  April in
. Jubilate Sunday was  May. For journeymen and their increasing participation
in urban communities in the fifteenth century, see the summary treatment by Eberhard
Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, ), –. The professions
of baker, tailor, shoemaker, and smith were especially dependent upon relatively large
numbers of journeyman laborers. Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt, .
          

ters secret.8 He went to the blacksmith journeymen: “Why have you

brought down the Jews who enjoy my lord’s freedom?” Confidently,
the youth told him about the sermon, “about which I formerly knew
nothing,” and they “pressed forward and said if I wanted to protect
the Jews, I should give them ten Gulden, and I would be left alone.”
Reynhart “noticed their unreasonableness” and, by his account, gen-
tly reminded them of his duty: “dear young men, I think the Jews had
scarcely anything to do with that [incident], but nevertheless I must
determine this” and decide the case before the house of the mint or the
Red Door (of the cathedral?) in conformity with the freedom of the new
market and the rights of the archbishop.9 He withdrew to his court, the
Molhof, and sent for forty armed men. The journeymen meanwhile
figured they were in trouble and quickly sent an embassy to the Mol-
hof asking that they not be expelled from the archbishop’s territory but
retain the right of free movement during the investigation, which Reyn-
hart granted after gaining their promise to cease violence in the new
market, promising in turn to bring the case to a close within fourteen
days.
The city council came to Reynhart, after, we may safely assume, the
blacksmith journeymen, having bought time, went to the Rathaus. The
day after Jubilate Sunday, Reynhart left town on business. While he was
gone, the council closed the Old City to the Jews, which cut the Jews
off from the market located in the Old City next to the still incomplete,
massive cathedral.10 When the bailiff returned on Thursday, he found
a summons awaiting him to appear before three council members
(rethe) and the city’s prestigious and influential judges, the Magdeburg
Schöppen. At the Rathaus they gave him a long harangue about his
violation of the freedom of the new market when he took the case of the
blacksmith journeymen. The tirade regressed into a four-hour debate
about urban and archiepiscopal jurisdictions, at which neither bailiff
nor council would compromise their authority.11 The next morning, a

8 UB Magdeburg, .– no. . The sole jurisdiction of the archbishop’s court

over the Jews was affirmed in conclusion to a conflict with the city in . Germania
Judaica, /. and n. .
9 This and the following is from Reynhart’s report to an anonymous counsel, UB

Magdeburg, .– no. .

10 Germania Judaica, /. for Jewish settlement in the city.
11 UB Magdeburg, .– no. . This implies that Reynhart agreed with the

presidents of the Jewish community that the council could have acted to protect the
Jews. UB Magdeburg, .– no. .
  

number of Jews tried to pass through town on their way to the nearby
cloister of Berge, and they were attacked and chased. Again, Reynhart
complained to the council. When the council answered with a lame
apology and disclaimer of responsibility, the bailiff wrote to his lord the
archbishop, assuring him that he did not cease to insist that the council
respect the archiepiscopal jurisdiction.
It was only then, when the matter seemed hopelessly deadlocked,
both to the peril of the Magdeburg Jews and to the peril of the fragile
peace between city and prince, that Reynhart went to the Franciscans.
There he received his fullest account of events and was confirmed in his
belief that the Jubilate sermon “made the matter bigger than it really
is” (die ding grosser dan an sich selbsz ist gemacht) or, he should have said,
bigger than it really was.12 He came to the guardian and other promi-
nent men of the cloister, including the preacher, and told them he was
astounded how such a thoughtless sermon could bring about a murder
in the new market and all manner of evil. The guardian pardoned him-
self with a torrent of words (mit etlichen worten taliter qualiter) and told how
the Jew threatened the Franciscan. Reynhart responded by impounding
the cloister’s property, to which the guardian responded, “like a pris-
oner’s mother” (wie wol des gefangnen mutter spricht), that he had nothing
of his own and would appeal immediately to the archbishop’s chancery
regarding both the cloister and the confraternity of blacksmith journey-
men.
This was a well-practiced procedure. The guardian would appeal to
the archbishop as “conservator” of the rights and privileges received
from the apostolic see and carefully preserved in various Franciscan
archives in Germany. His appeal, which, together with the archbishop’s
response, is not extant, may well have included a request to republish
notarized copies of documents stating juridical immunities.13 Thus his
response to the bailiff amounted to an assertion of the propriety of all
Franciscan actions and an acceptance of their popular effects. In other
words, the conflict was now deadlocked, and the archbishop bided his
time.

12 UB Magdeburg, .– no. , the last account to the archbishop, dated 

June .
13 Two surviving registers from the administration of Ernst of Brandenburg con-

tain no additional documentation pertaining to this conflict. Magdeburg Staatsarchiv,

Copiale  and Copiale , Litterarium des Administrators Ernsts,  vols., –,
–.
          

Within months it seemed that new allegations confirmed Franciscan

and popular fears of Jewish violence, namely the alleged host desecra-
tions at Sternberg, a city several days’ journey to the north of Magde-
burg, where five hosts were believed to have been desecrated at a Jew-
ish wedding in July of that same year. The archbishop now followed
popular opinion and, in , on the grounds of “unseemly activity
against the church and its law,” expelled the Jews from his territo-
ries. The synagogue meanwhile was converted into a chapel of the
Blessed Virgin and the cemetery into a field.14 Events at Magdeburg
lacked the power of legend; they were, as the bailiff noted, grossly exag-
gerated. But distant stories amplified the perceptions of local events.
An account of the Sternberg allegation and the ensuing investigation
by the two dukes of Mecklenburg between August and October of
 was published at Magdeburg along with a pamphlet more gen-
erally attacking the Jews.15 These stories conveniently suggested atroci-
ties of great magnitude. Together with accounts of the alleged martyr-
dom of Simon of Trent, they constituted the first wave of a swelling
cheap literature that would publish and republish the expansive reper-
toire of anti-Semitic themes in Germany.16 The Sternberg and Simon
of Trent pamphlets publicized host desecration and ritual murder. A
decade later there followed Johannes Pfefferkorn’s popular accounts of
the blasphemies of the Talmud and the dangers of Jewish books gener-
ally, which included his own aggressive, if not gleeful, “Open Letter on
the Order of Emperor Maximiliar to Confiscate the Books of the Jews,”
concluding with a threat against Jews written in German with Roman
and Hebrew characters: “long ago was Messiah born, which you Jews
won’t believe, ridicule in consequence you must receive.”17 By the s,
previously obscure legends were also published, telling of a race of Jews
rising east of the Carpathian mountains under the leadership of the
antichrist, whom they welcomed as Messiah, now moving west by way

14 The archbishop also ordered the city council of the Sudenburg to purchase the

Jewish properties, which was never accomplished. Germania Judaica, /..

15 Germania Judaica, /.–: in Schwerin, upon the complaint of a priest

of Sternberg, the dukes imprisoned “all” the Jews of Mecklenberg and extracted
confessions from sixty-five of them. As a result, twenty-five Jewish men and two women
were burnt to death before the Luckower Gate of Schwerin.
16 For Simon of Trent, Wolfgang Treue, Der Trienter Judenprozess (Hannover: Hahn,

), –.
17 “Sendschreiben über das Mandat Kaiser Maximilians die Judenbücher zu kon-

fiszieren,” in Ulrichi Hutteni Operum Supplementum, ed. Edward Böcking,  vols. (Leipzig,
), .–.
  

of the Ottoman Empire to terrorize Christians already fretting over the

Muslim threat.18 It was stories such as these that exaggerated misde-
meanors and created consensus between parties whose allegiance could
by no means be taken for granted: an urban ruling class, rebellious
journeymen, an archbishop, and a particular clerical community.

II

The factors that made life difficult for Jews in late medieval Germany
went well beyond the evil genius of mendicant theologians. It was a
haphazard polemical environment, first because there had been no
consistent propaganda effort in central Europe. There seem to have
been no preaching campaigns against Jews in Germany until the mid-
dle of the fifteenth century, with only one exception, and sermons were
seldom compulsory in the same sense that they were in late medieval
Italy and Spain, in spite of the Council of Basel’s call for obligatory
Jewish attendance at annual sermons.19 There were no formally staged

18 The notion that the antichrist is a person who poses as a messiah and is received

as such by the Jews can be found in a fourth-century Sibylline text, translated and
expanded in an eleventh-century Latin version from northern Italy, also in a tenth-
century letter of Adso of Montier-en-Der, and in a variety of popular and theological
texts (Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica playing a decisive role in distribution) since
the twelfth century. Scholars have noted a particular florescence of imagery connecting
Jews and the antichrist in the fifteenth century, including the belief that the antichrist
will emerge from a region east of the Carpathian mountains after being acclaimed
Messiah by a hideous race of Jews descended from the ten Jewish tribes that Alexander
the Great was believed to have exiled there (identified with Gog and Magog in the Book
of Revelation in the New Testament): Klaus Geissler, “Die Juden in mittelalterlichen
Texten Deutschlands,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte,  (), –. See also
Trachtenberg, Devil and the Jews, ; Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in
an Apocalyptic Age, – (Leiden, ), –. For the belligerent descendants
of the ten tribes in Central Asia in pamphlets: Von ainer grossen mennge und gewallt der
juden, die lannge zeyt mit unwonnhafftigen graussamen Westen beschlossenn unnd verporgen gewesen,
yetzunder ausgeprochen und an tag kommen sein (published in two versions and warning of
a Jewish-Turkish alliance without place or publisher in ); Flugschriften des frühen .
Jahrhunderts, Fiche  No.  (with a woodcut title page showing the Jewish army
under a banner marked with a Judenhut hiding in the mountains); Fiche  No.
 (with a woodcut copying the previous item with very slight variation); Fiche 
No. . The history of the legend is treated by Gow, The Red Jews. The Dominican
Johannes Pfefferkorn was responsible for putting the traditional accusations against the
Talmud, together with warnings against all Jewish literature, into the accessible form of
pamphlets from  to . Ulrichi Hutteni Operum Supplementum, .–.
19 The Council of Basel, – September , considered together and approved
          

disputations between theologians and rabbis.20 There were no public

proceedings against the Talmud, in spite of the Council of Constance’s
order that dangerous books be confiscated and burned.21 Pope Martin

decrees on the union of Byzantine and Roman churches and on the canonical restric-
tions of Jews. The council stipulated—along with distinct clothing, a prohibition of
sale or pawn of church property, and prohibitions of Jews having Christian servants,
of Christian participation in Jewish celebrations, and of Jewish possession of public of-
fices—annual sermons to Jews at which attendance was compulsory; the preaching was
to be reinforced by alia humana officia offered by preachers and bishops. Heinz Schreck-
enberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (.-
Jh.), v.  of Europäische Hochschulschriften (New York, ), –. J. Alberigo, Con-
ciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (Bologna, ), –. Concilium Basiliense,  vols. (Basel,
–), .–.
20 Peter Browe, Die Judenmission in Mittelalter und die Päpste, v.  of Miscellanea Historiae

Pontificiae (Rome, ), –, noted that, in contrast with Spain, there was very little
compulsory preaching to Jews in Germany. Nicolaus III in  ordered the OFM
provincial in Austria and the magister generalis OP to select appropriate men to preach
to the Jews, and to take recourse to the secular arm in order to accomplish this,
which order Browe assumes must have circulated, e.g., it can be found noted in the
Annales Colmarienses of the OP convent of Colmar under the year . But there
is no evidence that the order was followed to any notable extent. The only fourteenth-
century example of such a sermon to Jews is from Prague, where the Augustinian canon
Konrad Waldhäuser in  is said to have attracted many Jewish men and women to
his sermons.
21 The Council of Constance ordered the burning of dangerous books, meaning,

most likely, the Talmud. See Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, . The order was
followed outside of Germany. One Franciscan inquisitor, Pons Feugeyron, was thrice
commissioned to censure those who used the errors of the Talmud to dislodge converts
from Judaism from their new faith in France. See Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. –
 no. – ( August ); pp. – no.  ( February ); pp. –
no.  ( July ); pp. – no.  ( February ). At the time of the
Disputation of Tortosa (..–..), in , the pope summoned Jews who had
left, against papal instructions, to appear and to answer for the points at which the
Talmud contradicts Mosaic law (Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no. ); soon
after (), the pope, in Valencia, ordered the collection of copies of the Talmud on
the authority of decrees of Gregory IX and Innocent IV (Simonsohn, Apostolic See,
pp. – no. ). Later in the century, Sixtus IV admonished King Ferdinand I
of Naples to aid a Dominican inquisitor there to inquire into and suppress the Talmud
and Jewish challenges to Christianity, to act against Judaizing Christians and converts,
and to require the support of Italian bishops (Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. –
no. ); the pope nevertheless granted permission for the publication of the Talmud at
Venice in . Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no. , (Bavaria,): Duke
Albrecht IV donated forty-two Hebrew manuscripts to the Dominican cloister (where
Peter Schwartz was prior); one would presume that the books had been confiscated by
the duke when Jews were imprisoned in Regensburg in connection with the Simon of
Trent affair (see also note , below), but this seems to have been an isolated incident.
B. Walde, Christliche Hebraisten Deutschlands am Ausgang des Mittelalters (Münster, ), –
, with a list of the titles.
  

V reissued the papal bull Sicut judeis in , with his famous prohibi-
tion of the excesses of mendicant and “other” preachers. The preachers
were prohibiting all social intercourse between Christians and Jews and
thus gave encouragement to “very many Christians” to accuse Jews
of causing epidemics by poisoning wells and of mixing human blood
into their Passover matzos. The document gives the impression that
such preaching could be found everywhere. When Martin revoked his
rescript just one year later, perhaps under the influence of the Obser-
vant Franciscan, John of Capistrano (he was a public preacher in Rome
for the jubilee of ), the revocation was sent to the pope’s cardinal
legate in Bohemia and parts of Germany. The dispatch implies at least
an interest in minimizing obstructions of preaching aimed at Jews in
one part of the Holy Roman Empire.22 Indeed, Rabbi Yom Tov Lip-
mann of Mühlhausen boasted that he debated Christians in Prague
and various places of south- and east-central Europe. A disputant of
 was the Jewish convert known as Pesach Peter; the debate was
conducted in German at an uncertain location. This debate, which has
probably wrongly been assumed to eventuate a pogrom that took eighty
Jewish lives at Prague, prompted Lipmann to write his Sepher Nizzachon
Yašan soon after, probably in Cracow, rebutting Christian arguments, if
not to serve as an example to erstwhile debaters, at least to spread con-
fidence in the theological grounds for Jewish resistance.23 But Lipmann
nevertheless does not give evidence of an organized Christian polemical
campaign.
An interest of the early s in organized preaching against Jews
was very new in central Europe and not immediately consequential.
It had most to do with fears of Hussites whose armies were at that
very moment devastating churches throughout Bohemia and Moravia,
where, as Israel Jacob Yuval has recently pointed out, there was wide-

22 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  for Martin V’s Sicut judeis, dated

 February ; pp. – no.  for the revocation. The revocation is cited as
Rome,  February , and is addressed to all prelates and sent to cardinal Branda,
papal legate to Bohemia and parts of Germany. The reason: “Nos igitur, accendentes,
quod in concessione prefatarum litterarum, si forsan a nobis emanasse reperiantur,
ut prefertur, fuimus circumventi, et propterea eas, tamquam a nobis per huiusmodi
circumvencionem et importunitatem extortas, merito inefficaces et invalidas reputantes
…” For Capistrano’s influence, see Johannes Hofer, Johannes Kapistrano: Ein Leben im
Kampf um die Reform der Kirche,  vols., nd ed. (Heidelberg, ), ..
23 Browe, Judenmission, –. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. For the

location of the disputation and the lack of evidence for its connection with the pogrom,
Germania Judaica, /. n. .
          

spread fear that Jews were allying themselves with heretical armies.24
In this defensive atmosphere, a compulsory sermon took place before
the Jews of Vienna at the Habsburg capitol in  at the invitation
of Duke Albrecht V, and a new allegation of host desecration in Enns
provided the convenient pretext for a very ineffective expulsion that
was otherwise known to be provoked purely by the fear of Bohemian
heretics.25 Judging by subsequent papal rescripts, the original Sicut judeis

24 This may have been a distortion of the Jewish reaction to the threat they felt

by crusaders passing through Germany from Brabant; Jews thus applauded Hussite
victories as evidence of divine protection of themselves, as vividly reported by Salman
of St. Goar’s Gilgul bne Chuschim (History of the Hussites): “they laid waste the churches
of the entire land, burned the images with fire, and struck down with the sword the
clergy who held fast the faith in a mere man. They sliced their tonsures with knives
and poured pitch on the wounds. And they tortured them more, in the following
manner: they took a big cask and loosened the rings, placed a group of clergy around
it facing one another, naked, clamped their genitals between the boards of the cask and
tightened the rings again; so did they remain clamped until they died. Such and sundry
tortures were inflicted upon those who held fast to the faith in a mere man.” Israel
Jacob Yuval, “Juden, Hussiten und Deutsche nach einer hebräischen Chronik,” Juden
in der christlichen Umwelt während des späten Mittelalters, Beiheft  of Zeitschrift für historische
Forschung (Berlin, ), –, esp. –, –, –.
25 Yuval notes that this defensive posture accounts better for a shift in polemics from

rational persuasion to compulsion at the Council of Constance that had been earlier
observed by M.H. Shank, “Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand”: Logic, University,
and Society in Late Medieval Vienna (Princeton, ), –. See Yuval, “Juden,” –
n. . Shank dated Langenstein’s loss of confidence in rational argument to the early
s. There is evidence for the shift in views of biblical language that Langenstein
develops in lectures begun in . See Christopher Ocker, Biblical Poetics Before Human-
ism and Reformation (Cambridge, ), . The preacher of  was the university
professor Nicolaus Prunczlein of Dinkelsbühl. On  April , some Jews were burnt
in Vienna, but the exact connection with Nicolaus’s preaching is not clear. We also
know that Nicolaus pleaded with the duke for the confiscation of Jewish books. Alois
Madre, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl: Leben und Schriften (Münster, ),  n. , –.
Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, . The danger of Hussitism as ground of expul-
sion was clearly indicated in a bull of Martin V granting license to convert the now
vacant synagogue of Iglau into a parish church. The pope would have learned of this
rationale from the city council’s petition. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no. 
( February , Rome): Martin V writes to the provost of the church of Mount St.
Peter in Brno to allow the people of Iglau (Ihlava) to convert the local synagogue into a
church. The Jews were expelled by Albert V, duke of Austria and marquis of Moravia,
because of the risk of importing heresies from Bohemia. The petition was sent from the
burgomaster, council, and city of Iglau. Duke Albert expelled the Jews from Iglau and
gave their houses to the Christians of the town. The reason for the expulsion is that
the Jews entertained in their houses people from nearby Bohemia, where heresy was
rampant (“quod per Iudeos, qui in suis domibus in dicto opido, etiam inibi synagogam
habentes, inter Christifideles moram tunc trahebant, communitati huiusmodi ac ipsius
opidi habitatoribus et incolis, a regno Boemie, quo plerique perfidi et heresum erroribus
implicati Christianique nominis inimici versantur, non longe distantibus, gravia possent
  

of Martin V could only obstruct anti-Jewish preachers in Italy, southern

France, and parts of Spain.26 Germany was of little consequence.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, there is scattered evidence
that preaching against and debate with Jews increased. But we know

damna animarumque periculu detestabiliter instaurari”). Since the expulsion, the bur-
gomaster, council, and people, who are many, converted the sumptuous synagogue into
a chapel to the Body of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin, the ten thousand martyrs, and
other saints, richly endowing it with benefices for the celebration of masses and divine
offices for feast days, retaining the patronage rights; the burgomaster, council, and peo-
ple also noted that many churches around the town were destroyed by the heretics and
one parish church in the town was almost destroyed. The pope grants this. See Joseph
Wertheimer, Die Juden in Oesterreich (Leipzig, ), –,  n. a for the text of the
condemnation of  March , which notes that Duke Albrecht ordered that “Alle
Jůdischaitt in seinem Lanndt oberhalb und nyderhalb der Enns zu seinen Handen zu
nenen, der die untz Her in vankchnus gehalten Hatt vor der hanndlung wegen, die
sich laider an dem Heiligen Sacrament vor ettlaichen Jarn datz Enns vergangen hatt.”
It was, according to the document, the Messnerin’s testimony, after she was brought to
Vienna, that fingered a Jewish man and woman as purchasers of her hosts. She claimed
they then distributed them to other Jews “Inner Landes und Ausser Lanndes”; the Jew-
ish man and woman are also said to have confessed. “Und wann manigkleich woll
verstett, das einem zugleichen Christen Menschen Můgleichen sol zu hetzen gen, das
die unere und Schmachhaitt, die got und Christenleichem glauben von den Juden, die
da sind veint gots, ernstlichen und Strengigkleichen gepesset werden, Al der obgenant
Unser genadiger Herr alle Judischaitt allenthalben in seinem Landt auf hewtigem tag
geschechen zu Richten mit dem prannt Actum in die Gregorii, Anno etc. MCCC-
CXXI.” Wertheimer already pointed out that the expulsion affected only Jews in ducal
cities. Those subject to the country nobility were unaffected. In , the Landfriede of
Tuln stipulated the removal of Jews from the countryside. In the other Austrian lands—
Steiermark, Kärnten, Krain—the conflict lasted until the year . Wertheimer, Die
Juden in Oesterreich, . And although the  decree did not bring an end to Jews in
the cities, not even in Vienna, it did mark a turn from the traditional privileges and
freedoms they could previously and confidently claim. Wertheimer, Die Juden in Oester-
reich, . In , the lands of Steiermark, Kärnten, and Krain asked Kaiser Maximil-
lian to expel all the Jews, which he did upon receipt of the sum of , Gulden from
those lands. The Jews left Neustadt, Neunkirchen and all of Steiermark almost imme-
diately. Jewish properties in Neustadt, Grätz, Judenburg, Marburg, Kärnten, and Krain
were given by the king to the cities. Wertheimer, Die Juden in Oesterreich, –.
26 This includes a more cautious restatement of restrictions of abusive preachers

in , Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  ( February ): Martin V
prohibits preachers in Italy, including friars, from arousing the people against the Jews;
privileges of Jews are confirmed; excommunication is threatened against transgressors.
This document is clearly modeled on the Sicut judeis of  (no. ), repeating several
of the complaints but omitting references to well poisoning and blood libel, adding
allegations of compulsory sermons and baptism of Jewish children under the age of 
without parental consent, compelling labor on the Sabbath, affirming the rights of Jews
to have schools and cemeteries, as well as their right to purchase Christian property
and interact with Christians (“preterquam in casis a iure prohibitis, in quibus familiaritatem
huiusmodi prohibemus”—there is no reference to wet-nursing, so presumably the author
is now better informed as to canon law). A similar rescript was issued by Pius II, 
          

only two Christian preachers by name who programatically attempted

to address Jews in the Holy Roman Empire, and that with limited suc-
cess. One was John of Capistrano, who passed through Germany and
Poland when he was sent north in  as papal legate and inquisi-

July  (Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no. ) to the bishop of Spoleto
and the vicars of the bishops of Bologna and Ferrara. It addresses a petition by
certain named Jews of Bologna, Mutina, Ferrara, Urbino, Toschanela, complaining
that mendicant and other friars are preaching in those cities that Christians should
have no social contact with Jews, not bake them bread, not provide them fire, nor offer
them service (as in the Martin V bull) under the threat of ecclesiastical penalties, thus
inciting people to rob and persecute Jews. The bull alleges that the rights of Jews are
to be respected on threat of excommunication. The bishop of Spoleto published this
bull from Mantua,  July , addressing all Italian clergy. Most rescripts, however,
contradict the  document. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, p.  no.  ( August
): Martin V ordered the archbishop of Narbonne, the papal chamberlain and
vicar general in Avignon, and the Comtat Venaissin, to confiscate bulls given to the
Jews and to prohibit Jews from using them. On  September , the archbishop
published the document. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  (on  August
): Eugenius IV published restrictions to be imposed upon Jews and Muslims in
Castile and Leon. It abolished earlier charters in their favor and imposed all previous
restrictions; it also included new prohibitions on social interaction, talking at some
length about eating and drinking together, seeking medical care, employment of Jews
and Saracens in various business arrangements, etc. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, p. 
no.  ( June , Siena [and presumably aimed at Italy]): Eugenius IV revoked
Martin V’s privileges to the Jews because they were excessive, as, he said, Martin
himself had revoked them (see note  above). Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. –
 no.  ( June , Rome): Nicholas V republished no.  with reference
to Martin V and Eugenius IV’s restrictions of Jews and Saracens in Italy; it adds
a strongly worded revocation of contrary bulls by Martin V and Eugenius IV and
orders “et per aspersionem sanguinis Domini nostri Ihesu Christi exhortamur,” that archbishops,
bishops, princes, temporal lords, capitaneos, barons, knights, nobles, communes, and all
other Christian persons, ecclesiastical and lay, observe the aforementioned bulls (i.e., of
Martin and Eugenius, restricting contact). Significantly, John of Capistrano is appointed
the executor of this bull, being granted plenary power to himself and to any deputies
he may appoint from his or another order to inquire, admonish, exhort, and solicit
princes, prelates, and lords, ecclesiastical and secular, that the terms of the restrictions
be followed strictly, and that they may proceed against those who fail so to do and
demand observance effectually, imposing ecclesiastical penalties on those who resist
with the help of both the ecclesiastical and secular branches. This and the following
bulls were likely used to reinforce the activities of preachers who would carry copies of
them. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  (Rome,  December ): Nicholas
V confirmed Eugenius IV’s revocation of Martin V’s Sicut judeis, at the petition of
Franciscus de Eugubio, OFM. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  ( May
): Calixtus III confirmed annulments of Eugenius IV and Nicholas V and repeats
restrictions of no. . The document refers to Jews and Muslims in Italy and other
places. There is no indication of what prompted this document, in connection with the
call of a crusade against the Turks. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  (
May ): to Petrus de Carchano OFM, sacre theologie professor, empowered with those
appropriate people whom he might appoint to act against those who fail to comply
  

tor against the Hussites for Kärnten, Steiermark, and Austria. He

addressed Jews in sermons at Vienna and Nürnberg, where they are
said to have been compelled to attend, offering proof that Christ ful-
filled prophecy.27 Throughout his tour, Capistrano repeated the same
themes he had put to good effect in Italy, stressing above all the dan-
gers of any social contact between Christians and Jews and the evils of
usury. He was also called upon to join an investigation of an accusation
of host desecration that broke out during his tour of Breslau, but he
joined the commission after the first executions had taken place and his
subsequent role is not altogether clear.28
The other preacher was a Dominican named Peter Schwartz. As
a student at Salamanca, Schwartz was said to have studied Hebrew
alongside Jewish children; he later studied theology and taught at sev-
eral universities (Freiburg, Ingolstadt, and Buda, where he died as rec-
tor). While a professor of Ingolstadt in  he was invited by the
duke of Bavaria-Landshut to preach to the Jews in German in the
open court of the residence of the bishop of Regensburg, which he did
about a month after Easter over the course of a week ( to  April),
one month after the murder of Simon of Trent.29 He also preached

with the previous bull. Johannes Antonio de Imola OESA sacre pagine professor was then
empowered in the same way. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, p.  no.  (circa  August
): Calixtus III wrote to all friars of religious orders that Christians should have
no social intercourse with Jews and Saracens. Ludovicus de Fonolleto, scrutiferus honoris
and papal familiar, would show the letters of restriction (i.e., the previous documents)
to them. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  ( March ): Pius II to
Michael de Morello OP and then to Johannes de Cernosa OFM to proceed against
those selling forged indulgences, heretics, and Jews and Muslims who act against
Christianity in Spain and France with extension of powers over converts, Christians,
clergy, Jews, and Muslims.
27 Browe, Judenmission, –.
28 Hofer, Capistran, . (for Capistrano’s attempts to isolate Jews from Christians

in various places, consider also ., ., .; for his role in the prosecution and
persecution of Jews in Breslau in conjunction with an accusation of host desecration in
, see .–, –, which offers a useful presentation of sources, although
it is glaringly apologetic). Capistrano joined the panel of judges on  July , after
 Silesian Jews were taken prisoner and two days after the first death sentence was
carried out. Hofer, Capistran, .. Wojciech Ketrzyski, “De persecutione iudaeorum
Vratislaviensium,” Monumenta Poloniae Historica,  (), –.
29 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. B. Walde, Christliche Hebraisten, –

. Easter was  March in . I know of no direct connection between these
sermons and the accusations instigated by Bishop Heinrich IV of Abensberg against
Regensburg Jews in the murder of Simon of Trent, although Schwartz would soon
participate in the Trent delegation sent to Rome to represent the bishop of Trent’s
position in the conflict over the investigation between the bishop and the pope. See
          

in Frankfurt, Bamberg, Worms, and Nürnberg. A Nürnberg chroni-

cle tells how this Dominican came to town, knew good Hebrew, spoke
“jüdisch,” and could read the Jews’ books, which ability he flaunted
from the high pulpit built just for him on the wall of the collegial church
in a square called “unter den Linden.” The first sermon was held on
Trinity Sunday ( May), at which there was such a throng of listeners
that a dyer’s journeyman was accidentally killed, preventing the ser-
mon from taking place. Seventeen sermons followed, each delivered on
a weekday: Sunday meetings were cancelled because of the crowd, and
Saturdays because the Jews refused to come. So confident was he in his
preaching, quoting Hebrew from Jewish books and explaining in Ger-
man, that he was desperate every day after mealtime to dispute with
the Jews. But the Jews did not want to dispute; instead they said, we are
plausibly told, “he preached well; he says what he wants; no one con-
tradicts him; we can find rabbis who interpret it differently.” They sent
to Erlangen for the Rabbi Vogelein, who came but avoided a disputa-
tion. Then they brought the most learned rabbi from Bohemia, who
came and said it would be nice to meet the monk, and he would love
with all his heart to dispute with him, but this, too, came to naught.
The monk was, as the chronicle reports, a clever doctor who, when he

Germania Judaica, /. and Treue, Trienter Judenprozess, . The sermons as such
and Schwartz’s other writings do not give evidence of a special role of friars as a group
in anti-Jewish polemic in fifteenth-century Germany. In fact, the refusal of rabbis to
accept Schwartz’s challenge to disputation frustrated his efforts both at Regensburg in
 and at Nürnberg in . The refusal of Jews to dispute, however, did not prevent
Schwartz from representing such disputations fictitiously in his writings, by publishing
his theses and arguments in the Tractatus contra perfidos Judeos, , and by having a
woodcut image printed facing the title page of Der Stern Meschiah, , in which he
is portrayed as a doctor, with two other doctors, disputing three Jews, presumably
rabbis. Ernst Weil, “Zu Petrus Negris Judendisputation,” Soncino-Blätter,  (), –
. Contrast R. Hsia, “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Jews in Late Medieval and Early
Modern Germany,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian
Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden, ), –, who points to the role of the
Dominican Heinrich of Schlettstett, the famous author of the Malleus maleficarum, in
assembling ritual murder verdicts from several German cities for the prosecution of
Jews at Trent. It is not actually known whether Schlettstett actively preached to Jews.
Hsia also noted that the preaching of the Observant Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre at
Trent during Lent, , aggravated anti-Semitic feelings there, but this is evidence of
Italian influence, not a German mendicant campaign against Jews and Judaism. R. Po-
Chia Hsia, Trent : Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, ), , . Treue
also noted the pronounced role of Observant Franciscans of the Venetian province
in spreading Simon of Trent propoganda. Of German friars, he noted only three
Dominicans: Heinrich of Schlettstadt, Peter Schwarz, and a certain friar Erhardus.
Treue, Trienter Judenprozess, –.
  

found no challenger, drew up and published a letter stating how no Jew

would stand up to him.30 Such a spectacle as Schwartz’s bilingual ser-
mons did not bear repeating in Germany, where in the s his were
very rare gifts indeed.31
Only three preachers’ handbooks composed in Germany in the fif-
teenth century reveal an explicit intent to aid the preacher who would
convert Jews. One was by a Palatine court theologian, Johannes of
Frankfurt, who produced, around the anxious year , a Concordan-
tiae contra Judeos with proofs of the agreement of the Old and New Tes-
taments. A second was written by Stephan Bodecker, Premonstraten-
sian and bishop of Brandenburg, which offered rebuttal to Yom Tov
Lipmann’s Sefer Nizzachon. The third was by the Nürnberg Dominican
Johannes Herolt, who presented arguments at mid-century against the
Talmud and who advocated a tolerance that exceeded that shown to
heretics, for whom there could be no tolerance but only extermina-
tion.32 None of this suggests anything like a concerted, native clerical
effort against Judaism, much less a particular role of friars.
The decisive thing was southern influence. Capistrano brought pop-
ular Italian preaching to Germany, and took it with him when he left.
Schwartz learned polemics in Castile and hoped to exploit a monopoly
of skills by finding Jews for disputations, but to no avail, so he carried
on alone. Nicolaus of Cusa passed through Germany as papal legate
in  and , supporting and expanding John of Capistrano’s cam-
paign to reform mendicant cloisters wherever he went, presiding over
ecclesiastical synods, and pushing through restrictions against local Jews
that copied what he had seen and admired in Italian cities, including
prohibitions of the practice of usury. This happened in the provinces of
Cologne and Salzburg and in the dioceses of Bamberg and Würzburg.
When Cusa left, emperor, bishops, and the two margraves of Branden-
burg quickly appealed to Rome for revocation of the synodal decrees

30 Chroniken der deutschen Städte,  (), –; Browe, Judenmission, –.

31 Peter Schwartz’s Tractatus contra perfidos Iudeos de condicionibus veri messie … ex textibus
hebraicis, Esslingen , claims to be a Latin version of the Regensburg sermons. It is
presented in the form of a disputation, which, if a reflection of the sermons, would
have presented quite a show. There was also an extended German version published in
Esslingen in , Der Stern Meschiah, which draws heavily from the Pugio fidei of Ramon
Martí and also cites Paul of Burgos and various rabbis. The Stern adds a brief Hebrew
grammar in  pages which served as an introduction to Hebrew until Reuchlin’s De
rudimentis hebraicis. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –.
32 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –, . Browe, Judenmission, , ,

.
          

and restitution of the common law, which Rome happily granted.33 In

this haphazard polemical environment, people learned that more con-
sistent social policies could be found elsewhere, together with profes-
sional, specialized confrontations between Christian theology and Jew-
ish error. Two friars, Capistrano and Schwartz, represented the more
sophisticated apologetics of the south, but these two individuals marked
no significant shift in Jewish-Christian relations.
Germans did not wait for friars to teach them how to disagree with
Jews; they relied instead on a variegated transmission of anti-Jewish
ideas and lore. This included a small number of mendicant classics,
if you will: the Epistola ad Rabbi Isaacum by the Dominican Alphonsus
Bonihominis, which was found in many mendicant and other libraries;
Nicolaus of Lyra’s Questio de adventu Christi and his Responsio ad quen-
dam Iudeum; and the anonymous Pharetra fidei contra Judeos super Talmuth,
which circulated widely.34 It included an equally small number of orig-

33 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  ( May ): a petition of Emperor

Friedrich III on behalf of the Jews of Nürnberg, who were placed under ecclesiastical
ban when they failed to conform to Cusa’s decrees from the Synod of Bamberg on 
April . Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no.  ( March ): a petition of
Anthony of Rotenhan, bishop of Bamberg, who regretted that he published the decrees
in the territories of the margraves of Brandenburg, since he believed that he could not
enforce the decrees, as he says, without censure. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. –
 no.  ( October ): the bishop of Salzburg asked for papal confirmation of
customary rights of the Jews in his territories. Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. –
no.  ( April ): Calixtus III confirmed Nicholas V’s annulment of the Cusa
constitutions in Brandenburg, in answer to a petition of Godfrey of Limburg, bishop of
Würzburg. For Cologne, Simonsohn, Apostolic See, p. .
34 Hans Butzmann, Die mittelalterlichen handschriften der Gruppen Extravagantes: Novi und

Novissimi, v.  of Kataloge der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (Frankfurt am Main,

), –, for a codex of the middle of the fifteenth century with Lyra in frag-
ment and the Pharetra, from a Carthusian monastery of the middle Rhine. See Powitz,
for examples from the Dominican and Carmelite cloisters of Frankfurt; G. Powitz, Die
Handschriften des Dominikanerklosters und des Leonhardstifts in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt,
), ,  (the Pharetra and Lyra were once in the library of the Dominicans in
Frankfurt). G. Powitz, H. Buck, Die Handschriften des Bartholomaeusstifts und des Karmeliterk-
losters im Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, ), , , ,  (Alphonsus and Lyra were
once in the libraries of Carmelites and a collegial church in Frankfurt). Schreckenberg,
Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen
âge (Paris, ), . Lyra’s quodlibetals on Judaism circulated under various titles:
Contra judeos, Disputatio, Tractatus de Messia. Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens, . Dahan is
currently preparing a repertory of Christian polemical texts from the eleventh to the
fifteenth centuries, which will permit conclusions more definite than mine. Dahan, Les
intellectuels chrétiens,  n. . Of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts of
Lyra’s Questio with a German provenance studied by Deeana Klepper, only four defi-
nitely originated with mendicant theologians. Deeana Copeland Klepper, “Nicholas of
  

inal works by friars: a treatise Contra judeos said to have been written
by the Carmelite Johannes of Hildesheim in the mid-fourteenth cen-
tury; the preaching handbooks of the Dominican Johannes Herolt,
written a century later; and the Tractatus contra perfidos Iudeos and the
Stern Meschiah of the Dominican Peter Schwartz.35 Secular theologians
added much more to the polemical ballast, repeating biblical argu-
ments and anti-Talmudic themes that had become common since the
twelfth century: an anonymous Disputacio wider die juden of the four-
teenth century that defends Christianity from the charge of idolatry;
the sermons preached by Nicolaus Prunczlein of Dinkelsbühl to the
Jews of Vienna in , which were published at Strasbourg in ;
the Concordance of Johannes of Frankfurt; the bishop of Brandenburg,
Stephan Bodecker’s rebuttal of Yom Tov Lipmann’s Sefer Nizzachon; an
anonymous Tractatus de Antichristo composed between  and  in
Austria, which included offensive excerpts from the Talmud and a ren-
dition of the eighteenth benediction against minim, a typical rabbinical
term for Christians; an anonymous south German Bewährung dass die
Juden irren from , which draws on Jerome, Nicolaus of Lyra, and
Nicolaus of Dinkelsbühl to rebut thirteen Jewish arguments; a section
of Dionysius the Carthusian’s Dialogion de fide catholica; the ninth, tenth,
twelfth through nineteenth, and twenty-fifth chapters of an anonymous
Seelenwurzgarten published  at Ulm, which rebut Jewish beliefs and
arguments, taking material from Nicolaus of Lyra, Nicolaus of Dinkels-
bühl, Jerome, and probably Peter Schwartz (the treatise also includes
a woodcut image depicting a Christian-Jewish disputation modeled on
the fictional representation included in Schwartz’s Der Stern Meschiah);
and the Liber de confutatione hebrayce secte by the Jewish convert, Johannes
Batista Gratia Dei, published in Strasbourg in .36 From this alone it
is clear that German friars could not stand out as special opponents

Lyra’s Questio de adventu Christi and the Franciscan Encounter with Jewish Tradition in
the Middle Ages” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, ), chapter .
35 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, , –, –.
36 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, , , , –, –, –,

–, –. Oberrheinische Chronik, ed. F.K. Grieshaber (Rastatt, ), pp. v–vi,
for the fourteenth-century disputation. Walde, Christliche Hebraisten, –, esp.  n. 
for Stephan Bodecker. Dionysius Cartusianus, Dialogon de fide catholica, vii, Opera omnia,
 vols. (Tournai, –), .–, esp. –. Weil, “Petrus Nigris Judendis-
putation,” – for the Seelenwurzgarten. Browe, Judenmission, , , for the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. For the traditional themes (interpretation of prophecies, Trin-
ity, advent of the Messiah, Christian cult and Eucharist, and the chronological limits of
Judaism), see Dahan, Les intellectuels, –.
          

of the Jews, nor did German polemicists contribute substantially to

anti-Jewish apologetics; of this literature, only the works of Schwartz
and Gratia Dei approached their task in any original way, making new
arguments from the interpretation of prophecy in both the Talmud and
Kabbalah.37
A variety of other texts propagated a mixture of traditional polemic
and anti-Semitic caricature, and these attest to the variety of media
in Germany that communicated Christian hostility to Jews. Moral and
lyrical poems, plays, and verse-legends established the theological supe-
riority of Christian beliefs by repeating traditional apologetic themes,
and they cultivated an image of the Jew as enemy of Christian society,
giving popular momentum to the idea that they were a social problem,
a question. Vernacular writers often pointed to usury as evidence of a
Jewish role in the decay of human welfare, even in relatively nonpolem-
ical works, like the long moral poem of Hugo of Trimberg, rector of the
cathedral school in Bamberg at the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth
centuries. Satirical poems made their point less reluctantly, such as the
anonymous Des Teufels Netz, a dialogue composed in the region of Lake
Constance in the first half of the fifteenth century, in which a devil and
a hermit attack the vices of all social groups in their turn, who are then
systematically hauled off by the devil to hell in a net.38
The dangers of usury were vividly depicted in a legend composed in
the second half of the fifteenth century and first published at Bamberg
in . In an unnamed city of the northwest, a wealthy merchant,
after foolishly wasting his rich inheritance, pawns a pound of fat from
his side to a Jew, the first of several mistakes. He tries to repay when the
term comes to its end, but the lender is suddenly nowhere to be found.
Three days later, the Jew refuses to take the money, insisting instead on
the fulfillment of the contract. The case goes to King Karl, known for
his justice. The plot thickens. On the way to the castle, a child walks
under the merchant’s horse and gets killed. The father, who blames the

37 But this form of argumentation was first developed in the twelfth century, as

Amos Funkenstein first pointed out. Amos Funkenstein, “Basic Types of Christian Anti-
Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator,  (), – (in Hebrew, Zion,
 [], –).
38 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –, . For Trimberg, cf. E.G. Gud-

de, Social Conflicts in Medieval German Poetry (Berkeley, ), , who believed he had a
“comparatively tolerant attitude toward the Jews.” See especially Hugo von Trimberg,
Der Renner, ed. G. Ehrismann,  vols., (Tübingen, , ), .–, lines –
.
  

merchant, brings this crime also to the king, at the suggestion of the
Jews. At the castle, waiting for the king, the merchant experiences a
third misfortune: in his well-earned anxiety he falls asleep and plunges
from a window onto a knight, whom he also kills. When the son of
the knight seeks vengeance, the son is opposed by the Jew who is still
waiting for his pound of fat. So the case comes to the wise king, who
could scarcely deny the first creditor to have a claim to the knight’s
flesh. But Karl traps the Jew by decreeing his execution if he would cut
out any more or any less than exactly one pound from the merchant’s
side.39
Popular literature often associated the problem of usury with the
nobility, who also stood to profit from the exploitation of simple Chris-
tians. In the story of the rich merchant, a Jewish attempt to take advan-
tage of direct access to the king is turned on its head, but popular liter-
ature more commonly assumed a collusion of high nobility and Jewish
moneylenders. Moral poems instruct the nobility to stop giving support
to Jewish usurers, even though it is against their own interest to exploit
so enriched Jews.40 To this is added an insistence on the strict separation
of Jews and Christians and demonstrations of the superiority of Chris-
tian doctrine over Jewish unbelief.41 The superiority of Christian faith

39 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Iudaeos-Texte, .

40 The Evangelium Nicodemi of the knight Heinrich von Hesler, writing in the first
quarter of the fourteenth century. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –.
Gudde, Social Conflicts, –. The Ritterspiegel of Johannes Rothe, city scribe at Eise-
nach, head of the school connected with the cathedral school and later canon there
and chaplain of the countess Anna, warned knights against Jews and Christian usurers,
referring to both as Blutsauger. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. Gudde,
Social Conflicts, –. The lyrical poet, Muskatblut, who was active in upper Franconia
in the first half of the fifteenth century (he died sometime after ), addresses princes
with an allegation that Jewish faith ruins Christendom and argues that every usurer
should be required to wear a Judenhut. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, . A
passion play from the middle Rhine, composed between  and , alludes to the
same theme when it depicts the high priests of the gospel opposing Christ ostensibly on
religious pretexts but truly out of the desire for political power. Schreckenberg, Adversus-
Judaeos-Texte, –.
41 Heinrich of Hesler repeats traditional allegations of deicide and alleges self-

cultivated resistance to belief in Christ’s divinity. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte,

–. The Disputatz eines Freihet mit einem Juden, “A Disputation of a Vagabond
and a Jew,” attributed to the Nürnberg artisan and poet Hans Rosenplüt (active in
the middle of the fifteenth century), seems surprisingly inconclusive and may be a
parody of Jewish-Christian disputation. Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –.
For questions regarding Rosenplüt’s authorship, see Jörn Reichel, Der Spruchdichter Hans
Rosenplüt (Stuttgart, ), , . For calls for separation, consider Des Teufels Netz (note
          

was dramatically portrayed in fictional disputations, both in poems and

in Passion and Corpus Christi plays. Barthel of Regenbogen, a Meis-
tersinger active from the Tirol to northern Germany in the early four-
teenth century, who, with Seifried Helbling, carries the ignoble distinc-
tion of being one of the most anti-Semitic poets of medieval Germany,
wrote a lyrical disputation called Die blinden juden. In this work, a Jew is
called out to a tournament, a debate, by which medium the poet offers
up standard proof-texts for the messianic identity of Christ and the vir-
gin birth, interspersed with aggressive epithets: Ich hazze iuch Juden sunder
maze (“I hate you Jews more than anything”), ach Jud, wie bistu so versteinet
(“egads, Jews, how are you so hardened”), Jud, du rehtes lastervaz, du rehter
lasterbalk (“Jew, you true fountain of vice, you vice-trestle”).42 The Frank-
furt Dirigierrolle, a scroll providing the rudiments of a Passion play per-
formed over two days on the eastern side of the Frankfurt Römerberg,
near the cathedral and close to the market, was produced sometime
before . It includes an introductory prophet play, hosted by Saint
Augustine, which presents seven Old Testament prophets who offer
standard messianic interpretations of scripture, while a chorus of Jews
bearing contemporary names (such as Liebermann, Syzekint, Kalman,
and Selegmann) jeer at them. In answer to the mockery, Augustine
offers the play as evidence to support the prophets. The play is followed
by a disputation between Ecclesia and Synagoga: the disputation pro-
duces converts when, at the end of it, a few members of the Jewish cho-
rus accept baptism. The Dirigierrolle served as the basis of a Frankfurt
Passion play in . That play further exaggerated the original cari-
catures of Jews and their opposition to Christian teaching.43 Likewise, a
Corpus Christi play written in  in the east Franconian dialect sur-
vives only in production notes. The performance would go over several
days, covering all salvation history from the creation of the angels to
the final judgment. The third part (from John the Baptist to the end of
time) includes a disputation between Ecclesia and Synagoga, witnessed

, above); the Disputatz of Rosenplüt (Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –);

various songs of the Meistersinger Michel Beheim (d.  or ), active at various
courts in southern Germany (Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –); and the
allegorical poem based on the pieces of a chess board, the Schachzabelbuch, composed in
 by Konrad of Ammenhausen, a monk who later became pastor in the canton of
Schaffhausen (Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –).
42 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. Gudde, Social Conflicts, .
43 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Iudaeos-Texte, –. R. Steinbach, Die deutschen Oster-

und Passionsspiele des Mittelalters (Vienna, ), –.

  

by a chorus of children from the Jewish school. One of the Jewish boys
addresses, to the public, his doubts about the virgin birth and the divin-
ity of Jesus, and another boy mocks the Christians for their confidence
in the clergy. The church is represented by a rector processionis (in later
versions, a rector ludi), who argues that Jesus’ identity as Messiah can
be known from Jewish books. Synagoga, apparently played by a man
(there is a reference to circumcision) attacks the virginity of Mary. The
rector answers with Isaiah : and an allegory of the burning bush
(burning but not consumed, often taken to refer to Mary’s perpetual
virginity; cf. Exod :–). The disputation then treats typical apologetic
themes, such as transubstantiation (allegory of Exod :, manna), the
Trinity (Gen :ff., Abraham and the three men), and the expulsion
of the Jews on account of five particular misdeeds: the sale of Joseph,
the worship of the golden calf at Horeb, the murder of Jeremiah and
Zachariah (with the penalty of seventy years of Babylonian captivity),
and the killing of Jesus (destruction of the temple as penalty, leaving
the Jews a subject people to this day, we are told). Synagoga remains
steadfastly opposed to Christianity and declares that he would rather
be burned than convert.44 An Alsatian play from the end of the fifteenth
century caricatures Jews as a synagogue that sings nonsensically, as the
gruesome executors of the passion, and as participants in a disputation
that takes place between the passion and the resurrection. In the dis-
putation, Christiana calls for vengeance on the Jews for the death of
Christ, and when her opponent, Judea, fails to be moved by the threat,
she ties a blindfold over Judea’s eyes and tears her flag, a black demon
on a field of yellow.45
It would be impossible to say that the clergy alone bore the responsi-
bility for the production of anti-Jewish ideas and stories, much less any
particular group within the clergy. Even legends and shrines associated
with ritual murder and host desecration stories need not be associated
with any particular clerical group, except perhaps the secular priests

44 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –. Künzelsauer Fronleichnamsspiel, a

“Regiebuch” with additions from future performances with more than  text pieces.
The play was composed shortly after attempts to restrict Jewish settlement in Künzel-
sau (, , perhaps prompted by the proceedings around the death of Simon of
Trent). E. Wainwright, Studien zum deutschen Prozessionsspiel (Munich, ),  n. .
45 The Donaueschinger Passionsspiel, a play with extensive production notes and proba-

bly originating in Villingen between  and . It was based upon a Luzern play no
longer extant. Written in the Alsatian dialect, it treats only New Testament events (that
is, it omits the destruction of Jerusalem). Steinbach, Oster- und Passionsspiele, –.
Schreckenberg, Adversus-Iudaeos-Texte, –.
          

who usually served altars in the shrines: they would be the ones to
meet pilgrims and tell the local legend. I know of only one instance in
which friars actually gained ownership of such a shrine, and that was
the church associated with the host desecrations of Sternberg, which
came into the possession of the Augustinian Hermits over ten years
after the trial.46 After all, the advantage of stories of Jewish atrocities
against Christian children and consecrated hosts was the ability of new
shrines to bring new life to flagging churches.

III

The forces that made life difficult for Jews in late medieval Germany
were encouraged by an extremely fluid and variegated political envi-
ronment. The vulnerabilities born of Jewish reliance on liberties
granted by a foreigner, someone acknowledged by townspeople reluc-
tantly, when at all, as lord of the city, has been emphasized over and
again as the reason for widespread persecution in Germany. The em-
peror, prince bishops, and dukes were particularly ineffective protectors
of Jews in the fourteenth century, as the massive persecutions following
the Black Death in  and  attest.47 Only in the fifteenth century
did rulers experiment with more efficient control of Jewish populations.

46 Volker Honemann, “Die Sternberger Hostienschändung und ihre Quellen,” Kirche

und Gesellschaft im Heiligen Römischen Reich des . und . Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, ), –
. Likewise, the earlier foundation of an Observant Franciscan cloister at the site of
a destroyed synagogue in Munich, for which license was granted on  October ,
implies no direct involvement of Franciscans with its destruction; it has rather to do
with the disposition of remaining property. Repertorium Germanicum (Berlin, ), /.
no. .
47 František Graus, Pest-Geissler-Judenmorde, (Göttingen, ), –. Fritz Back-

haus, “Judenfeindschaft und Judenvertreibungen im Mittelalter: Zur Ausweisung der

Juden aus dem Mittelelberaum im . Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel-
und Ostdeutschlands,  (), –; Ernst Voltmer, “Zur Geschichte der Juden im
spätmittelalterlichen Speyer: Die Judengemeinde im Spannungsfeld zwischen König,
Bischof und Stadt,” in Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, v. , ed. A. Haverkamp
(Stuttgart, ), –. Consider also Langmuir’s discussion of Capetian legislation, in
Definition, chapters  and , and William C. Jordan’s account of political vulnerabilities
exacerbated by changing patterns of social interaction between Christians and Jews,
French Monarchy, –. It was the first persecution in Germany that entirely wiped
out many Jewish communities and altered earlier patterns of settlement, as Michael
Toch has pointed out. Michael Toch, “Siedlungsstruktur der Juden Mitteleuropas im
Wandel vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit,” Juden in der christlichen Umwelt während des späten
Mittelalters, ed. Alfred Haverkamp, Franz-Josef Ziwes (Berlin, ), –.
  

This was partly inspired by the Council of Constance, near the conclu-
sion of which Pope Martin V, at the request of King Sigismund, reaf-
firmed previous Jewish privileges. The papal vice-chamberlain added
more specific stipulations regarding distinct clothing, freedom of wor-
ship, and a prohibition of forced baptism of Jewish children. The stip-
ulations also ordered that no Jewish man or woman be compelled to
appear before a spiritual judge of any kind (i.e., regular ecclesiastical
judges or deputies), except in cases concerning the Catholic faith, the
holy apostolic see, its laws, the king of Germany, the duke of Savoy, the
cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other superior spiritual lords (alios
dominos superiores spirituales) of that region of the Holy Roman church.
If, however, a Jewish man or woman wanted to bring a case against
any of those people, it would go to the ordinary judge with compe-
tence over him or her.48 This amounted to a circuitous reaffirmation
of the traditional claims of the emperor, ecclesiastical princes, and one
of many other secular high nobility to exercise lordship over Jews in
non-religious cases, and it vaguely affirmed that Jews themselves would
bring cases according to local customs, either to judges of a city council
or to officers of various other courts, precisely those courts that had no
power over the ecclesiastical princes just mentioned; the relevant courts
would vary from city to city and, within cities, it changed over time. In
the fifteenth century, as prince-bishops and dukes concentrated power
and deprived towns and lower nobility of many liberties, they became
no better protectors of Jews. Rather they discovered, however late, the
usefulness of expulsion as a form of social tidiness (they already used the
Jews as a source of revenue), a practice first explored by the Habsburg
dukes and the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne in the s, during
the Hussite crusade, and perfected at the end of the fifteenth century
and in the early sixteenth century by the archbishops of Mainz and
Magdeburg, dukes of Austria and Steiermark, Mecklenburg, Bavaria,
and Burgundy, not to mention south German towns and less exalted
nobility that managed to retain or even to expand independence at
a time when power was flowing up the ladder of estates.49 Territorial
princes came to exploit anti-Jewish feelings but they had little to do

48 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, pp. – no. ; the papal document is dated 

February  and the vice-chamberlain’s clarifications are dated  February.

49 Encyclopedia Judaica; see under “Germany,” “Magdeburg.” Wertheimer, Die Juden in

Oesterreich.
          

with cultivating them.50 And Jews were left to try to manipulate com-
peting courts to their best advantage: their political circumstances did
not change very much through the course of the fifteenth century, even
as they suffered more frequent, if sporadic, expulsions.
The fate of the Jews had more to do with group conflicts on a popu-
lar level, where the gamut of anti-Jewish ideas and stories helped moti-
vate and justify violence against them.51 The Franciscans of Magde-
burg exploited these conflicts by taking recourse to their own black-
smith journeymen in the young segment of society from which urban
rebellions frequently arose, at a time when the archbishop was complet-
ing his suppression of urban independence.52 The council was not likely
to cooperate with the archbishop’s bailiff, and the archbishop was not
likely to compromise his own ambitions by insisting on his jurisdiction
over the journeymen in a matter pertaining to Jews. On the strength of
a century’s popular insistence that Jews were a social problem, the arch-
bishop chose expulsion. It was often easier for secular lords to answer
a pogrom by believing the stories that justified it. An example of this
occurred at Deggendorf in , when, after the destruction of the Jew-
ish community, the duke of Bavaria granted the property left behind to
the town. Again, in Iglau in , the duke of Austria granted to the
town the Jewish houses that had been left empty after the expulsion of
.53 An accusation of ritual murder at Diessenhofen instigated the
burning of Jews in Schaffhausen and persecution in Winterthur and
Nördlingen at the end of the fourteenth century. Wary of the migrating

50 Graus has emphasized how the impetus came from towns. Pest-Geissler-Judenmord,

–.
51 Christopher Ocker, “Ritual Murder and the Subjectivity of Christ,” Harvard Theo-

logical Review,  (), –.

52 For the general tendency of guilds to rebel after sufficient increase of their power

within a city, see Hans Planitz, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter (Graz, ), ff. For the
matter of youth rebellion, consider also the precautions of James A. Schultz, “Medieval
Adolescence: The Claims of History and the Silence of German Narrative,” Speculum,
 (), –.
53 For Deggendorf, see G. Krotzer, “Der Judenmord von Deggendorf und die Deg-

gendorfer ‘Gnad,”’ Judenhass—Schuld der Christen?: Versuch eines Gesprächs (Essen, ),
–. The accusation was made in . The pogrom occurred on  September
. The relic was used in annual procession into the nineteenth century. Germania
Judaica, /.. The city quickly appealed to the duke of Bavaria to forgive the mas-
sacre, and he responded by granting Deggendorf and Straubing the Jewish property
and a tax exemption for the quarters of Straubing that had been burned down, on 
October , a mere two weeks after the massacre. Germania Judaica, /.. Rubin,
“Imagining,” . For Iglau, Germania Judaica, /.; Yuval, “Juden, Hussiten, und
Deutsche,” – n. .
  

conflict, the city council of Freiburg avoided it by expelling Jews in ,

but only after they assembled information from the cities of Winterthur,
Schaffhausen, and Diessenhofen and submitted a report to the city’s
lord, Duke Leopold of Freiburg, who then approved of the proposed
action.54 Ecclesiastical lords before the end of the fifteenth century may
have been more reluctant to accept local pogroms; they did, however,
harass subjects, who were an easy source of tax revenue. So, for exam-
ple, when youth rioted against the Jews of Erfurt in , at a time
when the city council was warily trying to negotiate a neutral course
between two rival contenders for the archbishopric of Mainz, the even-
tual winner of that contest required compensation for his Jews.55
The dependence of Jews on ecclesiastical lords confirmed the im-
pression that Jews and clergy were, in a way, alike. Both tried to claim
immunity from urban jurisdiction, both were supposed to be unarmed;
when either performed violence, according to the Sachsenspiegel and
subsequent codes, they forfeited their immunity and would be treated
as any lay person.56 The principle of the equality of Jews and clergy
before the law, once emphasized by Guido Kisch, could not have been
easy for clergy to accept. They would feel like the canons of collegial
churches in the city and diocese of Cologne, who united themselves
for mutual protection and resistance against the violations of their
immunity and complained that if the audacity of evil people should
continue unchallenged, they, clergy, would find themselves in a worse
position than serfs and Jews.57 There was a likeness. Riots against

54 Stobbe, Juden in Deutschland, –.

55 Ocker, “Ritual Murder,” –.
56 Sachsenspiegel Landrecht, III., ed. Karl August Eckhardt (Göttingen, ), .:

“Papen und joden de wapen vuret unde nicht gescoren ne sint na erme rechte, dut
men ene gewalt, men scal ene beteren als enen leien; went se ne scolen nene wapene
vuren, de mit des koninges dagelekes vrede begrepen sin.” Sachsenspiegel Landrecht, III.,
. n. ; in the Görlitzer Rechtsbuch, ., this is said only of clergy: “Ob ein phafe
odir ein geistlich man wirt gesen mit wertlicheme hare unde mit wertlichin cleiderin,
den sal man haldin vor einen leien.” Guido Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany (New
York,  reprint of the  edition), –, argues that Jewish armament became
problematic only after the first crusade; he also shows how the principle of forfeiture of
rights by Jews and priests arming themselves is depicted in manuscript images of the
Sachsenspiegel and the Schwabenspiegel.
57 “Malitia et audacia pravorum hominum in tantum excrevit, quod si hoc tempore

restitutum non fuerit, nos qui sumus clerici et religiose persone, peioris erimus condi-
tionis quam servi vel Iudaei.” Julius Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im frankischen
und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre  (Berlin, ),  no.  (from the year ),
where the Stift of Xanten and various collegial churches of the city and diocese of
Cologne unite for mutual protection and resistance to the violations they suffer. Taken
          

clergy could spill over onto Jews, as they did during the urban revolt
of Würzburg at the end of the fourteenth century that concluded a
long regression of urban rights. The city responded to new taxes and
its intractible episcopal lord by looting churches, first in  and
then again in .58 According to a contemporary epic poem (it is
sympathetic to the bishop’s side), the revolutionaries of  decided

from Anton Binterim and Joseph Mooren, Die alte und neue Erzdiözese Köln in dekanate
eingetheilt (Mainz, –), . no. .
58 For the first attack, see King Wenzel’s judgment of  January  at the request

of the warring parties: on the one side Bishop Gerhard of Würzburg, royal counselor,
the provosts, deacons, chapters, and clergy of the cathedral and city together with the
bishop’s counts, lords, knights, and serfs, and on the other side the Bürgermeister, coun-
cils, and citizens of Würzburg together with other cities of the cathedral’s territory.
Wenzel determines evenhandedly and unsurprisingly that the bishop should retain his
rights, courts, and slopes (presumably his vineyards), and the cities should retain their
rights and freedoms. The king establishes a general Ungelt for the removal of the debts
of the cathedral. Because Würzburg, with Mainz, is in an eternal alliance with the
king of Bohemia, he puts in place a Hauptman over the city and territory for the next six
years, without violence to the bishop’s rights. All previous damages are declared invalid.
All prisoners are to be set free, but in accordance with a decision (Schied) of Nürnberg,
the fine and imprisonment appraisals not yet paid are to be considered as fulfilled. A
decision about the kleynot robbed from the bishop and other implements (geret) remains
open. The ban is lifted. W. Engel, Urkundenregesten zur Geschichte der Stadt Würzburg (–
) (Würzburg, ),  no. . Wenzel issued this decision shortly after passing
from Nürnberg through Würzburg to Frankfurt am Main. For Wenzel in Nürnberg,
 November  and Würzburg,  December , see Wilhelm Engel, Urkunden-
regesten zur Geschichte der Städte des Hochstifts Würzburg (–) (Würzburg, ), –
 nos. –. Apparently the Hauptman was not able to keep the peace and ensure
satisfactory observance of these terms, for war broke out a year later. The details are
recalled in a letter of  March  by Pope Boniface IX, pope of the Roman obedi-
ence, to the new bishop-elect Johann von Egloffstein, repeating details that came with
Egloffstein’s supplication: In war with Gerhard of Würzburg and the cathedral chap-
ter, the burgomasters, councils, and citizens of Würzburg, together with some other
cities of the bishop’s territory, seized church property, laid siege to the bishop’s fortress
looming above the city from across the Main river, the Marienberg, for several days,
broke a year’s ceasefire, burnt down the collegial church of St. Johann at the Haug and
the cloister of St. Burkhard outside the city wall, for which they were penalized with
ban and interdict. On  January ,  armed men marched out of Würzburg in
order to destroy the parish church of Bergtheim; they burned down and vandalized the
church and cemetery, and in the battle, “quasi mirabiliter,” the army of the nobility, vas-
sals of the cathedral, and cathedral canons prevailed. Many citizens fell in battle, others
were imprisoned, a few fled. Three days later, Bishop Gerhard reentered the city with
some of his canons, but apparently never received full satisfaction from the town, over
whom he left the ban and interdict. On  November of that year he died. Johann was
elected, and wanted to remove the ban and interdict. The pope empowered him to do
this, but ordered that cities and individuals who were found guilty should be required to
make compensation by a court consisting of Johann and two or four trustworthy men
chosen from his side and the side of the cities. Engel, Urkundenregesten, – no. .
  

to kill and plunder Jews soon after their decision to plunder first the
clerical properties that they associated with the bishop of Würzburg.59
Where were the friars? They could not be presumed to stand on the
side of the town. At an earlier stage of the Würzburg affair, only some
Dominicans and Augustinians and one Carmelite opposed the bishop;
the Carmelites and the Franciscans as a body opposed the town.60
The ambivalence of mendicant allegiances arose time and again, first
during the years of Ludwig of Bavaria, when many cities expelled
friars who remained firm in their observance of the papal interdict,
and in other cities periodically thereafter.61 Rather than being identified

59 Bernhard von Utzingen, “Vom Würzburger Städtekrieg,” Rochus von Liliencron,

Die historischen Volkslieder der deutschen vom . bis . Jht.,  vols. (Leipzig, –),
.–, lines –. This may be the only record of the event; it is not mentioned
in the compendious Germania Judaica, /.–.
60 On  March , twelve canons of Neumünster, some Dominicans and Augus-

tinians, and one Carmelite, were thrown out of the city for opposing a new wine tax
of the bishop (who was also protector of the Carmelites, and perhaps of other orders).
The Carmelites and Franciscans did not oppose the tax and were not penalized. It
seems that the citizenry took sides with the Avignonese pope in opposition to Gerhard
in pursuit of an anti-bishop. The position of the city worsened in the settlement of the
Egerer Reichslandfrieden of  May ; the city turned to the Roman pope in search
of confirmation of a thirteenth-century privilege of protection (Alexander IV, ).
Gerhard held back the Roman confirmation, and the town then went to Avignon. On
 January , Gerhard published both confirmations, ordering all parties, includ-
ing the Johanniterorden and the Teutonic Order, the four mendicant orders, and the
parish clergy to observe the documents strictly, under threat of severe penalties. Finally,
on  March , the privilege of the city was confirmed by the bishop for a period
of one year. Meinrad Sehi, Die Bettelorden in der Seelsorgsgeschichte der Stadt und des Bistums
Würzburg bis zum Konzil von Trient (Würzburg, ), –. H.Haupt, “Zur Geschichte
der revolutionären Bewegungen in Würzburg unter Bischof Gerhard von Schwarz-
burg,” Archiv des historischen Vereins von Unterfranken und Aschaffenburg,  (), –, em-
phasizes the role of the conflict between Roman and Avignonese obediences, the appeal
of the urban party to Clement VII. There is nothing on the role of friars or on Jews.
61 E.g., the expulsion of the Dominicans from Frankfurt and Speyer in , for their

opposition to Ludwig, and tensions between the friars of Trier and Archbishop Baldwin
of Luxemburg, also related to the latter’s support of Ludwig. Beck, Dominikanerkloster,
–. Schmidt, Bettelorden, –, , –. Die Chronik Johanns von Winterthur, ed.
F. Baethgen (Munich, ), anno , pp. –. According to a  letter from
Dauphin Humbert to Ludwig, Dominicans had been expelled from eighteen cloisters.
G.M. Lohr, “Die Mendikantenarmut in Dominikanerorden im . Jahrhundert,” Divus
Thomas,  (), . Consider also Adalbero Kunzelmann, Geschichte der deutschen
Augustiner-Eremiten (Würzburg, –), .–, for the Augustinians, and Joachim
Smet and Ulrich Dobhan, Die Karmeliten: eine Geschichte der Bruder Unser Lieben Frau vom
Berge Karmel von den Anfangen (ca. ) bis zum Konzil von Trient (Freiburg, ), , for
the Carmelites. The Augustinian province of Saxony-Thuringia appears to have been
the only mendicant province that officially endorsed Ludwig. Kunzelmann, Geschichte,
.–.
          

as the spiritual vanguard of an urban population, friars often found

themselves to be just one more urban group.
The things that identified the peculiar charism of the friars were,
after all, the very things that their opponents turned against them.62
The polemics of Guillaume de Saint Amour, Jean de Pouilly, and
Richard Fitzralph, and the insistence that mendicant poverty was a
mendacious subterfuge that merited no tolerance of friars in society,
were adapted and propagated by Konrad of Megenberg and the pop-
ular preachers Konrad Waldhäuser and Jan Milič of Kroměříče.63 Hus-
sites put a damper on this sharpest form of anti-mendicant preaching,
by making it rather undesirable for Catholics to be heretics like them.
But priests, bishops, and often entire towns remained convinced, until
the very outbreak of the Reformation, that apostolic poverty did not
guarantee special prerogatives, such as juridical exemptions. Many of
the hundreds of conflicts between parish clergy and mendicant friars
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries attest to widespread preach-

62 The conflicts described in this paragraph are the subject of a book that I am

currently writing, The Friars, the Cities, and the Parish Clergy: Religious Conflict and Social
Change in Central Europe, –.
63 Konrad of Megenberg, Planctus ecclesie in Germanium, ii.. Richard Scholz, Unbekan-

nte kirchenpolitische Streischriften aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern (–): Analysen und
Texte, (Rome, –), .. Konrad of Megenberg, Lacrima ecclesie, which I have
seen in a manuscript misattributed to Konrad Waldhäuser, under the title, Tracta-
tus contra hereticos Stuttgart, Baden-Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Thol. Fol. .
This manuscript has been overlooked by the Megenberg literature, even though its
relationship to the two otherwise known manuscripts of Konrad Megenberg’s Lacrima
were noted in  by František M. Bartoš, “Husitika a bohemika několika knihoven
němečiné a švýcarské” (“Some Hussitica and Bohemica in German and Swiss Libraries”),
Věstník královské české spole čnosti naukové, Třída filosoficko-historicko-jazykozpytná (Journal of the
Czeck Royal Academy of Sciences: Philosophical, Historical, and Linguistic Section),
 (Prague, ), –. The other two manuscripts of the Lacrima were discovered
in Wolfenbuttel and Trier by Hermann Meyer. H. Meyer, “Lacrima ecclesiae: Neue
Forschungen zu den Schriften Konrads von Megenberg,” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fur
altere deutsche Geschichtskunde,  (), –. Ibach, Leben u. Schriften, . Thomas
Kaeppelli, “L’Oeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouvee,” Revue d’histoire ecclési-
astique,  (), . Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit (Berkeley, ), . For
Waldhäuser, F.M. Bartoš, “Duě studie o husitských postilách” (Two studies of Hussite
postillae), Rozpravy Československé Akademie věd, / (), –, summary in German,
pp. –. For Milič, see Ferdinand Menik, “Milič a dva jeho spisy z r. ” (“Milič
and two of his writings from the year ”), Věstnik královské české spole čnosti naukové,
Třída filosoficko-historicko-jazykozpytná (Prague, ), –, here . Milicius, Libellus de
Antichristo, ii., in Mathias de Janov, Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, ed. Vlastimil Kybal, 
vols. (Innsbruck, –), .. C. Ocker, Johannes Klenkok: A Friar’s Life, c. –,
v. /, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, ), – and the
literature noted there.
  

ing against them in terms identical to the milder heresy of Jean de

Pouilly—mild compared to Fitzralph, Wyclif, and the Hussites. They,
like Pouilly, made the priestly power of friars strictly subordinate to any
half-lettered vicar serving in a village church. Nothing could demon-
strate the growing doubts about the mendicant orders in Germany bet-
ter than the assault on cloisters from the movement, known, a little too
fondly, as Observant. In the process of getting monks to avoid meat,
pray, and say mass consistently, and generally act more like monks, the
reformation of a cloister also had the virtue of loosening it from its old
regional jurisdiction within the order, installing an officer of the city
council as procurator, and curbing a cloister’s expansion of tax-exempt
properties in a town.64 It is not really surprising that all those offended
by the friars’ immunities—bishops and town councils most of all, along
with a few other devout princes—lined up to support the reformation
of cloisters.
Friars were one group among many. Their claims to privilege were
increasingly challenged in the fifteenth century, a trend that grossly
accelerated with the invention of popular print at the turn of the six-
teenth century. They had no particular role in the cultivation of Ger-
man hostility to Jews and Judaism in part because they had sufficient
worries of their own. One of the Jewish boys at the disputation of the
Corpus Christi play written in  in the east Franconian dialect jeers,
Ir Cristen, ir seint all affen
und volgent ewern pfaffen,
Dy kunnen euch predigen wol,
Biss jn der bewtel wurtt vol.65
You Christians, you’re all monkeys
and trail behind your clergy,
who preach a pretty sermon,
’til their wallets are bursting.
He could have spoken for many Christians of the next generation.
Contempt for friars was the most studied form of anticlericalism be-
queathed to the troubles of the s. The forces that made life difficult
for Jews in late medieval Germany, therefore, relied all the more on
rumor and folklore.

64 C. Ocker, “Religious Reform and Social Cohesion in Late Medieval Germany,”

in The Work of Heiko A. Oberman, ed. T.A. Brady et al. (Leiden, ), –.
65 Schreckenberg, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, –.
 THE EVOLUTION OF FRANCESC
EIXIMENIS’S ATTITUDES TOWARD JUDAISM

D J. V

The Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis (–), a leading author of

medieval Catalan literature, gave counsel and received favors from the
last three Catalan kings of Aragon, the Avignon papacy, and govern-
ment officials of the city of Valencia called jurats.1 He also wrote lengthy
treatises in Catalan for lay persons and shorter Latin works for the
clergy. Included among the Catalan works is El Crestià (The Christian), his
most ambitious work, a medieval Christian encyclopedia in the manner
of Vincent de Beauvais’s works.2 This set of treatises which he planned
to include in thirteen volumes—the number was chosen to represent
Jesus and the twelve apostles—survives in only four volumes, the first
three and a twelfth book. Some scholars believe he did not pen the
remaining volumes but rather changed his focus, writing instead moral-
didactic treatises, such as the Llibre de les dones (Book About Women), Llibre
dels àngels (Book About Angels), and other devotional and ascetic works in
Catalan, such as the Vita Christi and Scala Dei.3
In the Primer del Crestià (First Book of the Christian), written between 
and , Eiximenis described the foundations of Christianity and the
two other main religions of the western world at the time, Judaism and
Islam. In the section on Christianity, he included several chapters (–
) to defend this religion and its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, against
the arguments of a certain rabbi, immediately discussing, after these

1 Among the leading biographies on Eiximenis are: Martí de Barcelona, “Fra

Francesc Eiximenis, O.M. (?–?): la seva vida, els seus escrits, la seva person-
alitat literària,” Estudios Franciscanos,  (), –; Andrés Ivars, “El escritor Fr.
Francisco Eximénez en Valencia (–),” Archivo Ibero-Americano,  (), –;
 (), –;  (), –;  (), –;  (), –;  (),
–, –; Martí de Riquer, Història de la literatura catalana (Barcelona, ), II,
–. For bibliography consult: Studia bibliographica (Girona, ); David J. Viera
Bibliografia anotada de la vida i obra de Francesc Eiximenis (?–?) (Barcelona, ).
2 I believe that Peter IV of Aragon commissioned Eiximenis to write El Crestià using

St. Louis’s example, in which this French king requested that Vincent de Beauvais
compose certain works. See David J. Viera, “Francesc Eiximenis and the Royal House
of Aragon: A Mutual Dependence,” Catalan Review,  (), –.
3 Ivars, Archivo Ibero-Americano,  (), –.
  . 

chapters, his objections to Judaism (chaps. –).4 In later years he

became more tolerant of Jews, perhaps because of () pressure from
his king, Joan I (–) and queen, Violant de Bar, the niece of
Charles V of France;5 () the devastation he witnessed caused by the
 pogrom; () his emphasis on devotion, ascetic, and mystical works
in his later writings; and () his hope to convert Jews.
In this paper I will review the content of these chapters, especially
chaps. –, attempt to identify the source of the attack on Jesus and
Christianity, specify some sources Eiximenis may have consulted for his
rebuttal, and indicate his attitudes against Jews in later works, especially
the Vita Christi (–).6
In chapters – of the Primer, Eiximenis placed more passion and
assertiveness regarding his defense of Christianity vis-à-vis Judaism than
in any of his extant writings. He began chapter  by announcing that
his purpose in the following chapters was to refute a great Jewish rabbi
(un gran rabbi jueu) who believed Christianity was not founded (instituit)
by Jesus, and who was not able to promote any good whatsoever. The
rabbi also insisted that, if Christianity produced anything positive, it
was not of Jesus’ making. Basing his refutation on current messianic
beliefs within Judaism, the rabbi believed that God would send a man
who stood out by his manners, person, origin, and wealth. He would
be revered by the Jews, who would humble themselves to him and
obey his commands. Jesus, according to the rabbi, was contemptible
and ignoble. More specifically—and these are the points Eiximenis
attacks—Jesus was not of noble lineage, came from Nazareth, and kept
company with humble people, beginning with his parents and friends,
the apostles. As was his common practice, Eiximenis countered beliefs
he considered erroneous or moral behavior he regarded as sinful by
taking biblical examples, followed by illustrations from ancient and
medieval knowledge, which included patristic, monastic, scholastic, and
historical sources. When he wished to abbreviate his argument, he

4 Llibre apellat lo primer del Crestià (Valencia: Llambert Palmart,  Jan. ), chaps.

–, folios not numbered.

5 David J. Viera, “Francesc Eiximenis’s Dissension with the Royal House of Ara-

gon,” Journal of Medieval Studies,  (), –.

6 A Catalan edition of this work has not been printed although a Spanish transla-

tion with much additional information does exist: Jaume Massó i Torrents, “Les obres
de Fra Francesch Eximeniç (?–?): Essaig d’una bibliografia”; see reprint in Stu-
dia bibliographica, pp. –; Martí de Barcelona, –, reprint Studia bibliographica,
–.
  ’    

resorted to canon law and especially the Sententiae of Peter Lombard,

which he had read and from which he may have lectured during his
studies at the University of Toulouse.
To the argument that a ruler or king always comes from noble lin-
eage and a good moral background, Eiximenis stated that many rulers
became the worst sinners and tyrants, a type of ruler he abhorred.7
Good clergy, kings, and princes do not all descend from the nobility or
have their origins in noble cities. From the Bible he cited Moses and
others whose backgrounds are unknown. Saul and David, he stated,
came from peasant stock; furthermore, David’s place of origin is Beth-
lehem, a small and simple town. The oriental emperor Nebuchadressar
hailed from a vile place, information Eiximenis erroneously attributed
to Isaiah ; he had been a scribe, was ugly and a blasphemer, a grave
sin, according to Eiximenis’s moral theology, perhaps the worst sin
because blasphemy was directly aimed at God, not at one’s neighbor.8
In addition, Alexander, who was small and despicable, was not well-
born, according to the rabbi’s standards. Likewise, Caesar came from
a small town, Nero was deformed and bald, and the emperor Con-
stantine’s mother had been an innkeeper and the emperor a leper until
baptized. Eiximenis was able to resort to this kind of argumentation
because he addressed a lay Christian audience.
Chapter  opens with the quotation from Josephus’s Antiquitatis
Judaicae .–,9 often cited in Christian polemical works to defend
Jesus’ character. Eiximenis continued insisting on Jesus’ humility and
virtue, contrasting these in a biased way with the vanity and pompous-
ness that he ascribed to the Jews.
In his defense of Jesus, what obsessed Eiximenis the most was the
question of lineage and identification with Nazareth. Citing “Dama-

7 Francesc Eiximenis, La societat catalana al segle XIV, ed. Jill Webster (Barcelona,

), –.
8 Terç del Crestià, MS , Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), chap. .
9 “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a

man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people
as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was
the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing
amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come
to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to
them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other
marvelous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has
still to this day not disappeared.” Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae .–; trans. Louis
H. Feldman; LCL (Cambridge, ).
  . 

cenus” [John Damascene?]—and ultimately Matthew :–—on Jesus’

genealogy, Eiximenis insisted that Jesus came from the line of kings that
included David and Solomon. However, the Franciscan was especially
concerned about the biblical passage John :, in which Nathaniel/
Bartholomew utters, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”10 One
infers here that the rabbi whom Eiximenis rebutted treated Nazareth in
a derogatory way. The biblical passage has received much attention
from scholars and theologians who have analyzed it from historical, lin-
guistic, philological, and other perspectives.11 Eiximenis, or perhaps the
commentary (glosa) he was summarizing, followed the line of reasoning
described above. Citing the adage, “the place does not make the man,
but the man gives fame to the place,” Eiximenis resorted to knowledge
of scripture, reasoning that Jews should have abandoned David, who
was from Bethlehem, and the prophet Jeremiah, from Anatoth, a small
village. He then cited Jesus’ words that a prophet is not honored in his
own land, and Aristotle—from a commentary—that too much famil-
iarity begets fools.
According to Eiximenis, Jesus chose Nazareth as his hometown, first,
to show his humility, secondly, to cause its inhabitants to reject him, and
thirdly, to allow him to live in solitude and contemplation. In addition,
he introduced linguistic, allegorical, and historical motives. Nazareth
means a sprout, and allegorically, this sprout will bear fruit, which
signifies heaven. At this point he may have taken from his Christian
sources information on a group of virtuous men who had lived a life
of penitence (the Nazarenes).12 He continued by quoting the Bible; the

10 Nathaniel was identified as Batholomew by late medieval religious authors: John

Meheman, “Notas sobre Natanael = S. Bartolomeu (Jo , –),” Revista de cultura

bíblica (Brazil),  (), –.
11 Frederick J. Foakes-Jackson, The Beginning of Christianity (New York, ), I, pt.

, pp. –; J.A. Sanders, “ΝΑΖΩΡΙΟΣ in Matt. :,” Journal of Biblical Literature,
 (), –; Gerald Sigal, The Jew and the Christian Missionary: A Jewish Response
to Missionary Christianity (New York, ), pp. , ; Otto Betz, “Kann denn aus
Nazareth etwas Gutes kommen?” Wort und Geschichte: Festschrift für Karl Elliger zum .
Geburtstag, ed. Hartmut Gese and Hans Peter Ruger (Neukirchener, ), –; Samuel
Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Heldesheim, ), –.
12 Isidore of Seville, Etimologías, edición bilingüe, ed. José Oroz Reta (Madrid, ), I,

, . Ramon Martí, Raymundi Martini Ordinis praedicatorum Pugio fidei adversus mauros et
judaeos (Leipzig, , reprint Farnborough, ), Pt. III, dist. III, chap. XXII, pp. –
. It is unclear if Eiximenis is thinking here of a group of Christians who continued
to observe the Jewish law (known as the “Nazarenes”), or if he has in mind the Hebrew
group of Nazirites who consecrated themselves to God by taking an ascetical vow. See,
for example, the story of Samson (Judges chaps. –) or the description of Paul’s vow
  ’    

Nazarenes would become “purer than snow, whiter than milk … more
ruddy than coral … like sapphire” (Lam :). Lastly, he transformed his
passage into christological terms; the Nazarenes are the sons of grace
(fils de gràcia) of their prince, Jesus of Nazareth.
This christological reference led Eiximenis to the subject of the
Trinity, a major issue in the Jewish-Christian debates. However, keeping
in mind his lay audience, the Franciscan evaded a theological discussion
of the Trinity, insisting that this topic is too lofty to comprehend.
In chapter , the focus of Eiximenis’s polemic changes to the
rabbi’s charge that Jesus was mortal and suffered pain, to which he
answered that this was due to his human and not his divine nature.
To the objection that Jesus was born with original sin and had to be
baptized, he answered that Jesus allowed John to baptize him to give
an example of perfect humility. And the rabbi’s accusation that Jesus
broke the Law is answered with the simple assertion that “as God,
Jesus did not have to follow the Law regarding the Sabbath,” as well
as with a linguistic argument, that the Jewish be #olam meant the Catalan
lonch temps or Latin inseculum and not the Catalan perpetytat or Latin in
sempiternum. Surely this argument came from Christian sources such as
Isidore of Seville and Ramon Martí, perhaps through Nicholas of Lyra
or a commentary on either of these authors. Eiximenis admitted the
latter influence when he discussed #olam or be #olam later in the Primer,
chap. .13
Eiximenis also takes up a numerical argument from medieval reli-
gious disputations: the majority do not believe in Jesus. He acknowl-
edged that, in the world as it was known in the fourteenth century,
it was only Europe, from the Iberian peninsula to Hungary,14 that
believed in Christ. Here again he avoided a lengthy discussion with
the common adage that the majority is not always right.
The Jewish accusation of idolatry regarding transubstantiation of
the Eucharist goes without a specific reply, perhaps because, like the
Trinity, it is a theological “mystery.” However, Eiximenis was not the
type to leave an objection unanswered. Here he seized upon the word

in Acts :–.
13 Herman Hailerin, “Nicolas de Lyra and Rashi,” Rashi Anniversary Volume (New

York, ), –. Eiximenis’s library also contained Stephen Langton’s Interpreta-
cio hebraicorum nominum: cf. Jacques Monfrin, “La Bibliothèque de Francesc Eiximenis
(),” Studia bibliographica (Girona, ), , no. F. Reprint of article in Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance,  (), –.
14 Primer, chap. ; Vita Christi, IX, chap. .
  . 

“idolatry,” recalling a proverb of Cato, to the effect that one should

not accuse others of one’s own faults. He therefore consulted the Old
Testament and recalled examples of idolatry, a common practice in
Christian polemical treatises and debates with Jews. To the claim of
idolatry in the Catholic practice of placing statues in sacred places, he
provided a traditional response: these are used especially in lay piety as
reminders of the great sanctity of Christ and his saints. The statue itself
is not worshipped.
Eiximenis’s last response to the “great rabbi” is introduced by an
interesting anecdote supplied by John Beleth, author of a Summa de eccle-
siasticis officiis, which Eiximenis owned.15 This twelfth-century religious
figure stated that the Roman Emperor “Gay” refused Pilate’s request
to have a statue of Jesus placed in the temple at Jerusalem because
Jesus had preached that there was only one God and was crucified,
“a shameful death.” Eiximenis then contested the words “a shameful
death,” arguing again in simple terms for his lay readers that only sin
and fault (culpa) are shameful, but Christ was not crucified for personal
faults but rather that humans not perish. He also added that martyrs
do not die a shameful death.
Given the general and even cryptic nature of Eiximenis’s polemic,
it almost seems futile to specify his source, an effort compounded by
the fact that he based his writings on commentaries that reviewed
earlier commentaries of Latin apologetic and polemical works. The
identification is further complicated because of polemical works now
lost, such as the Bereshith Rabbah, attributed to Moses ha-Darshan.16
Given his insistence that he is rebutting a treatise by a great rabbi, we
can eliminate anonymous and multi-author works such as the Talmud
and the Toledot Yeshu. Since Eiximenis wrote the Primer between 
and , we must discount the works of Shem Tov ben Isaac ibn
Shaprut, Profiat Duran, and Hasdai Crescas.
Also complicating the identification is the question as to whether
Eiximenis knew Hebrew. Rarely did he cite Hebrew texts, preferring
Latin sources such as the Pugio Fidei, Pontius Carbonell’s Commentaria in
Universa Biblia, John Beleth’s Summa, and Isidore of Seville’s Etyimologiae,
among other Latin works. He also stated in the Primer that he deferred

15 Monfrin, p. , no. F.

16 George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” Harvard Theological Review, 
(), .
  ’    

to these sources since he did not know Hebrew,17 a statement Albert

Hauf, a leading authority on Eiximenis, regards as a commonplace
expression of humility.18 On the other hand, Joan I named Eiximenis
as one of several friars to examine Hebrew books confiscated from
Jews after the  Valencia pogrom.19 Was he appointed because of
his knowledge of Hebrew, or his knowledge of theology, or both? Hauf
and other scholars in Spain are searching the sources of the Primer
and finding much influence from Lyra’s Postilla, including Eiximenis’s
paraphrase from the Frenchman’s major work.
The main clue to Eiximenis’s sources is his argument concerning
Jesus’ genealogy and especially his exasperation at the claim that Naz-
areth was a lowly place. Our identification of Eiximenis’s sources must
begin with the works of Jacob ben Reuben. In the Milh. amot ha-Shem, this
author took up New Testament gospels, claiming that they contained
blasphemy, and specifically mentioned Nathaniel’s pejorative comment
about Nazareth (John :–), a procedure also repeated in the Nizza-
hon Vetus.20 He did not, however, malign Nazareth itself because his pur-
pose was to insist that Jesus was not the son of God but Joseph’s son,
upon whom Jesus’ genealogy must be based.21 Studies by Isidore Loeb
show that Jacob ben Reuben’s writings were very influential in south-
eastern Spain, and that the plan of works by Shem Tov Shaprut and
Moses ha-Kohen de Tordesillas followed the exact plan of the twelfth-
century Jew, and added to his polemic.22 Even if he did not read these
polemical works, Eiximenis, who traveled in Europe and eastern Spain,
could have been told of their content by friars at convents and friaries
where he stayed.
A more plausible source for Eiximenis’s writings is Nicolaus de Lyra’s
Tractatus contra Iudaeum impugnatorem evangelium secundum Matthaeum (),
also called the Responsio.23 Eiximenis was basically an unoriginal writer

17 Primer, chap. ; David J. Viera, “Francesc Eiximenis, O.F.M., y la lengua he-

brea,” Analecta sacra tarraconensia, – (–), –.

18 D’Eiximenis a sor Isabel de Villena (Valencia, ), .
19 Francisco Bofarull y Sans, “Datos para la historia de la bibliografía,” Boletín de la

Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana,  (), –, document .

20 David Berger, The Jewish Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, ),

–, .
21 Jacob ben Reuben, Milhamot ha-Shem, ed. J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, ), –.
22 “La controverse religieuse entre les chrétiens et les juifs au Moyen Age,” Revue de

l’histoire des religions,  (), .

23 Responsio fratris N. de Lira contra Iudeum neguitiam argumentem. Rawlinson manuscript

Collection, Bodleian Library, MS G , fol. v–r.

  . 

who freely copied content as well as context from his sources. Lyra’s
treatise begins with the words, “after I had written about each testa-
ment”—a reference to the Postilla— “there came into my hands a small
book written by a Jew” (venit ad manus meas quodam libellum Hebraice scrip-
tum), the purpose of which was to disparage the gospel and its author,
Jesus. A. Lukyn Williams was unable to identify the author of this
attack,24 but in  Bernhard Blumenkranz revealed that Lyra had
in his hands the Milh. amot ha-Shem of Jacob ben Reuben.25 Lyra began
the Responsio by stating that those trained in theology are in no danger
of losing their faith from this work, but that the common people and
those not schooled in theology could be upset by it. We must recall
here that Eiximenis is writing for a lay audience, not those trained in
theology.26 I therefore conclude that the original author of what Eixi-
menis called blasphemies was Jacob ben Reuben, whose ideas came
to the friar either through the treatise of Lyra or via a fourteenth-
century polemical work in Hebrew or a vernacular language.27 The dis-
paraging inference to Nazareth, however, may derive, ironically, from
Christian sources, since the word Nazareth is not mentioned outside
of the New Testament.28 This negative impression of Nazareth which
so appalled Eiximenis may have stemmed in part from the words
of Nathaniel/Bartholomew, perhaps indicating a saying of the time,29
as well as from passages in all three synoptic gospels relating to the
rejection of Jesus’ preaching in Nazareth (Matt :–; Mark :–
; Luke :–). In addition, Isidore of Seville’s remark in the Ety-
mologiae .. could have contributed to a negative view of Nazareth:
“In former times Jews, as an insult, called Christians Nazarenes as the

24 “Adversos Judaeos”: A Bird’s-Eye View of Christian Apologiae Until the Renaissance (Cam-

bridge, ),  n. .

25 “Nicolas de Lyre et Jacob ben Reuben,” Journal of Jewish Studies,  (), –.
26 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca,

), .
27 The Milhamot ha-Shem was translated from Hebrew to Spanish at the request of
.
Blanca de Portugal. The work is no longer extant; however, its contents influenced
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century authors. See Carlos Sainz de la Maza, “El Toledot
Yeshu castellano en el maestre Alfonso de Valladolid,” Actas del II Congreso Internacional de
la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Segovia, del  al  de octubre de ) (Madrid,
), II, , .
28 Robert Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (Clifton, N.J., ), .
29 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (I–XII) (Garden City, N.Y., ),

, .
  ’    

Lord and Savior was known as the Nazarene from the town in Galilee
of that name.”30
Up to this point (chaps. –), Eiximenis’s defense centered on
Christian dogma and practices. With the mention of idolatry, Eiximenis
began the most emphatic anti-Jewish section of his treatise. However,
his negativism toward Jews who practiced Judaism lacks the harsh tones
of Peter the Venerable and even Ramon Martí. He likewise avoided
false claims, such as the blood libel, host desecration, blaming Jews
for the Black Death, identification of Jews with the devil, and other
anti-Jewish folk beliefs. He did, however, repeat claims adversus Iudaeos,
handed down from patristic writers to medieval authors, that consid-
ered Jews responsible for Jesus’ death, resulting in their loss of covenant
with God and of their homeland.31 Following prophetic-apocalyptic
views of the time, he believed Jews would worship the Antichrist and be
converted to Christianity at the end of time.32 He also condemned Jews
as well as Christians of being usurers,33 a condemnation that reflects
the reality of the times. Despite claims that Jews were cold, avaricious,
and stubborn in their refusal to accept Christianity (la perfidia jueva),34 he
admired the solemnity with which Jews worshipped on the Sabbath, a
day not characterized by eating and pleasure, and he contrasted their
solemnity with the lack of respect that some Christians showed at Sun-
day Mass.35 Besides admiring Jewish fasting,36 he approved of the way
Jews dealt severely with blasphemers,37 as well as their long, loose cloth-
ing that covered the body, unlike the new fashions that had recently
entered Iberia from France.38
Some of these ideas are contained in the Segon and Terç (Second and
Third Books of the Crestià). The Dotzè (Twelfth Book of the Crestià)
and the Llibre de les dones (Book About Women) concern legal and social

30 Isidore of Seville, I, .

31 Vita Christi (Archivo de la Catedral de Barcelona), MS , chap. , fols. r–r.
32 Dotzè del Crestià (Valencia, ), chap. .
33 In his El “Tractat d’usura” de Francesc Eiximenis, ed. Josep Hernando i Delgado

(Barcelona, ), Eiximenis does not single out Jews for practicing usury.
34 Primer, chaps. –; Terç del Crestià, chap. .
35 Lo libre de les dones, ed. Curt J. Wittlin et al. (Barcelona, ), I, .
36 Terç del Crestià: Edition and Study of Sources, ed. Jorge J.E. Gracia (Ph.D. diss.:

University of Toronto, ), –.

37 Terç del Crestià, chap.  (Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid), MS .
38 David J. Viera and Jordi Piqué, La dona en Francesc Eiximenis (Barcelona, ), –

; Ivars,  (), . Dotzè llibre del Crestià, ed. Curt J. Wittlin et al. (Girona, ), II,
pt. , pp. –; Lo libre de les dones, I, .
  . 

issues, the former being a manual of government for the king or prince.
Here Eiximenis’s conviction regarding the separation of Jews, Chris-
tians, and Moors is evident.39 Most prohibitions he cited follow directly
from canon law and Peter Lombard’s Sententiae. On the other hand, he
opposed forced conversion and baptism of Jewish adults and of Jew-
ish children unless their parents were deceased, confiscation of Jewish
property, and the enslavement of Jews. He also believed that one could
not force Jews to follow church law or constitutions, and rejected any
attempts to injure, take possession of, or force work upon Jews, or des-
ecrate their cemeteries.40 Eiximenis, who wrote the Dotzè del Crestià in
the mid s, witnessed the  pogrom in Játiva, a city which, in
time, regained its Jewish quarter. He was immediately called to Valen-
cia by the jurats, because its Jewish ghetto was devastated.41 In the years
that followed, Eiximenis dedicated himself to writing books on angelol-
ogy, devotional works, and a Vita Christi, in which he approved of and
showed good will toward converts from Judaism, describing them as
“good and proven Christians who venerate the great figures of the Old
Testament,” especially the patriarchs and prophets. He also added that
the church and Christians gain much from the conversos and that the last
pope and emperor would be converted Jews.42
Eiximenis wrote his Vita Christi in his seventies. He seems to have
become disillusioned with the royal family, except for the devout María
de Luna, the niece of Benedict XIII, the last Avignon pope.43 Albert
Hauf is correct in describing Eiximenis as intransigent toward Jews
even in the friar’s last years.44 However, the confrontational attitude
and anti-Jewish tone of the Primer, especially chaps. –, is not
as pronounced in the Vita Christi.45 What effect did the sight of the

39 Dotzè, MS Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), chaps. –; Dotzè libre del Crestià, ed.

Wittlin, II, pt. , pp. –.

40 Dotzè (Valencia, ), chaps. –; Dotzè llibre del Crestià, ed Wittlin, II, pt. ,

–.
41 David J. Viera, “Sant Vicent Ferrer, Francesc Eiximenis i el pogrom de ,”

Actes de sisè Col.loqui d’Estudis Catalans a Nord Amèrica (Barcelona, ), .
42 Vita Christi, Tractat , fol. LXVII; Hauf, p. .
43 Andrés Ivars, “Franciscanismo de la reina de Aragón Doña María de Luna (–

),” Archivo Ibero-Americano,  (), –.

44 Hauf, p. .
45 Rather than directly accusing Jews of being avaricious (Terç, chap. ), Eiximenis

interrupts his account of Christ’s life (Vita Christi, tractate , chaps. –) to point out
how the Jewish law differs from Christ’s teachings (New Testament): “The thirteenth
law our Savior made is more profitable for it orders us not to ardently desire temporal
wealth so that we incur evil and eternal damnation.”
  ’    

ravages in the Jewish calls of eastern Iberia have on him? On the other
hand, forced baptism and the destruction of holy books of the Jews
produced in Iberia a counter-reaction by the writings of Profiat Duran,
Hasdai Crescas, among others, with whom Eiximenis may have come
in contact.46 Yitzhak Baer stated that, in his Kelimat ha-goyim, Profiat
Duran wrote (Hozefah IV, p. ), “Such was the answer I made to a
certain Gentile scholar by the name of Buan[?], who came to me En
Filis [?] and told me,” etc. Baer abruptly stopped here and asked, “Is
it possible this is a reference to Francesc Eiximenis?”47 The latter, who
served Joan I from Valencia and was named his confessor, may have
known Profiat Duran and Hasdai Crescas for, according to written
records, both were prominent astrologers in the court of John I and
Violant de Bar.48
In addition to anti-Christian polemical works by these authors, schol-
ars cite a Hebrew work that both Benedict XIII and the Aragonese
King Fernando I condemned in .49 Copies of the work were de-
stroyed and the title that appears on the papal document is difficult
to read: Macellum, Mar mar Jesu, Mace Ihesu.50 Morris Goldstein, in his
Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, suggests that the title Masseh Yeshu (Deeds of
Jesus) was an alternate title of the Toledot Yeshu.51 No doubt this work was
in circulation when Eiximenis wrote the Vita Christi, as evident from a
strong condemnatory passage he included in his work.52 We can only
speculate as to whether the existence of the Masseh Yeshu provided a
motive for Eiximenis to write the Vita Christi (i.e., to combat the con-
tent of the former work). However, despite the circulation of the Toledot
Yeshu and the polemical writings of Isaac ibn Shaprut, Hasdai Crescas,
and Profiat Duran, Eiximenis did not, for the most part, take a defiant
attitude toward Jews of his time in his later writings but rather blamed

46 Philippe Wolf, “The  Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?” Past and Present,

 (), .
47 A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia, ), II, .
48 Richard W. Emery, “New Light on Profayt Duran ‘Efodi’,” Jewish Quarterly Review,

 (), –.
49 Yitzhak F. Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien: Aragonien, Navarre (Berlin, ), I,

, no. ; H.H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig, ), VIII, .
50 José Amador de los Ríos, Historia social, política y religiosa del los judíos de España y

Portugal (Madrid, ), ; Hauf, pp. – n. .

51 Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (New York, ), . Carlos Sains de la Maza (pp. –

, –) points out that a Spanish version of the Toledot Yeshu was read in Iberia
from the time of Abner of Burgos.
52 Vita Christi (MS , Museu Episcopal de Vic), fols. –v.
  . 

Jews of Jesus’ age for Jesus’ passion and death and those of his own
age for resisting conversion. The lack of an abrasive attitude in the Vita
Christi, a treatise that contains a substantial section on Jesus’ passion
and death, may be explained by his old age, his witness to the plight
of the Jews in Iberia in , pressure from Joan I, and/or his desire to
convert them.
In summary, Eiximenis’s attitude toward Jews was formed in part
by his own interaction with them in Gerona, Barcelona, Valencia, and
other European cities where he lived. In addition, shortly after receiv-
ing his Master of Theology degree from Toulouse, Eiximenis was com-
missioned by Peter IV of Aragon to write El Crestià. In the first book of
this series, Eiximenis compared Christianity, Judaism, and Islam with
the aim of convincing his bourgeois Christian readers that their reli-
gion was the true faith. To do so he wrote in Catalan and, in his early
chapters, avoided complex explanations of doctrine that the church
calls “mysteries of the faith,” such as the Trinity and transubstantia-
tion of the Eucharist. In later chapters of the Primer (–), Eixime-
nis presented a more systematic and thorough discussion of his belief
that the church was superior to the synagogue. These chapters, whose
sources are being studied by other scholars, seem to be directed to more
sophisticated readers and perhaps to the educated clergy.53 His irrita-
tion with a “great Jewish rabbi” who spoke in derogatory terms (blas-
femia) about Jesus and Mary led to his short but poignant defense. The
great Jewish rabbi to whom Eiximenis referred must be either Jacob
ben Reuben or a commentator on his works, and Eiximenis’s source
of the great rabbi’s polemic may be Nicholas de Lyra’s Responsio. In
works that followed the Segon (second book of the Crestià), which deals
with sin and temptation, Eiximenis’s writings became more social, and,
with the Dotzè, political and legal in content. After the  pogrom,
beginning with the last treatise of the Llibre de les dones (), his works
took on a devotional and ascetic character, due perhaps to several rea-
sons, including the effects of social and political change, his age, the
steadfastness of Jews who refused to accept Christianity, and the immi-
nent millennium featuring Christ’s second coming. He truly believed
that the apocalypse would take place in  and was preparing for the

53 Nolasc del Molar, “Francesc Eiximenis y los Espirituales,” Miscel.lània Melchor de

Pobladura (Roma, ), I, –.

  ’    

ultimate conversion of Jews.54 His emphasis, therefore, shifted between

 to the end of the century from convincing Christians that theirs
was the true faith to a preoccupation with the approaching end of
time.

54 Pere Bohigas, “Prediccions i profecies en les obres de fra Francesc Eiximenis,”

Franciscalia (Barcelona, ), .

This page intentionally left blank
 SAMUEL OF GRANADA AND THE
DOMINICAN INQUISITOR: JEWISH MAGIC AND
JEWISH HERESY IN POST-1391 VALENCIA

M D. M

On  March , Ramon Ermengaud, Dominican friar and lieu-

tenant inquisitor, and Joan Gascó, vicar of the bishop of Valencia and
his special judge for cases of heresy, dispatched a letter to the governor
and bailiff general of the kingdom of Valencia demanding that these
royal officials place in their custody Samuel of Granada, a Jew whom
the royal prosecutor had denounced for administering poison to royal
subjects with the counsel of a demon he had conjured.1 Ermengaud
and Gascó pointed out that such crimes against the faith fell under
the church’s jurisdiction. Lay magistrates had no business interfering;
they could punish Samuel only after ecclesiastical judges determined
his guilt. The governor and bailiff had to hand the Jew over within
three days or face excommunication.2

1 Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley, ), –,

discusses cases of Jewish physicians accused of poisoning Christians and sometimes of

necromancy as well.
2 Arxiu del Regne de València [hereafter ARV]: Bailia [hereafter B] Procesos, Letra

P, . The original letter of Ermengaud and Gascó is on a single unnumbered folio
separate from the rest of the dossier. The letter is copied by a scribe of the court of
the bailiff general on folios r–r of the dossier proper. It reads: “Quamquam cog-
nescere de criminibus fidei presertim heresim sapientibus manifeste ad nos pertineat
pleno jure prohibitumque sit judicibus secularibus sub interminatione divini judicii ne
de huiusmodi crimine se intromittant, tamen vos sicut vera didicimus informatione in
vim cuiusdam denunciationis per fiscalem regium coram vobis de dicto crimine oblate
contra Samuelem de Granata qui pro judeo se gerit adversus illum proceditis incessan-
ter de dicto crimine vos judicem constituendo. Ex quo sicut fertur in eadem denunci-
atione depingitur dictum Samuelem venena seu potula mortifera vassallis domini regis
consilio invocati per eum demonis tradidisse. Quare procurator fiscalis noster et in
dictis negotiis nos cum instantia requisivit ut cum dictum crimen sit exceptum et de
maioribus divinam offendens magestatem de quo aliis si que vestre noscioni spectan-
tibus idem Samuel comisit per nos primitus est cognoscendum ad remittendum nobis
Samuelem ipsum compellere deberemus. Nos igitur huiusmodi requisitioni annuentes
debite velut juste easdem circumspectiones vestras attentius deprecamur et requirimus
in fidei favorem per presentes quatenus infra triduum a presentatione presentium vobis
facta in antea computandum … dictum Samuelem una cum libris et scripturis repro-
bate artis magice et aliis susiscitationibus prohibitis penes eum repertis ad nos remittatis
ut de dicto crimine heresis de quo apud nos extitit denunciatus per justiciam cognoscere
  . 

It is difficult, indeed impossible, to establish precisely what crimes

Samuel had allegedly committed, exactly why the Dominican inquisi-
tor and the episcopal vicar were so interested in his case, or even who
Samuel really was.3 The extant dossier on Samuel contains only the
testimonies of the sixteen witnesses that Pere d’Anglesola, the royal
prosecutor, and García del Porto, a notary acting as Samuel’s defense
attorney, recorded at the behest of the bailiff general, the magistrate
in whose court Samuel was first arraigned. Missing from the dossier
are Anglesola’s indictment of Samuel, the questions that the prosecu-
tion and the defense directed at their witnesses, and the sentence of the
bailiff general. It is possible, however, that the bailiff never ruled on the
case but instead remitted Samuel’s case to the inquisitor’s court. Yet
on the question of the bailiff’s obedience to the inquisitor’s command,
the dossier also leaves us in the dark. At the end of this essay, I will

valeamus.” It is hardly surprising that in  an inquisitor would have claimed jurisdic-
tion over a case involving the “heresy” of a Jewish necromancer. For treatments of the
process through which the church eroded the conceptual distinctions between heretics,
sorcerers, and Jews, and brought all three within the purview of the papal Inquisition,
see Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law (Philadelphia, ), –;
Joshua Trachtenburg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its
Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New Haven, ); and Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge, ), –. See also Nicolau Eimeric and Francisco Peña,
El manual de los inquisidores, trans. Luis Sala-Molins and Francisco Martín (Barcelona,
), –, for Eimeric’s discussion of the invocation of the devil and demons and its
relationship to heresy.
3 Fritz (Yitzhak) Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien: Urkunden und Regesten, vol. :

Aragonien und Navarra (Berlin, ; reprinted London, ), , asserts that Samuel
was probably from a Jewish family of Zaragoza. The documents Baer cites, however,
say nothing about his origins, although they do suggest that his mother-in-law was
from a family resident in Crown territories (see n. .) Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó
[hereafter ACA]: Cancilleria Real [hereafter C] : r–r ( January ), the
document Baer undoubtedly had in mind, does list a “Samuel de Granada” among
other Jews of Zaragoza to whom the king was granting a moratorium on the payment
of all outstanding debts. Our Samuel of Granada, however, was not in Zaragoza in
January , but in Valencia, where he had been since early December  (see n.
). Before that, he had been resident in Barcelona, at times under official detention,
since at least  May  (see n. ). Of course, the debts in question could have been
contracted prior to May . In any case, I am not convinced that Samuel of Granada
was a native of Zaragoza. Taking into account Samuel’s toponymic and his ability to
read and speak Arabic fluently, as well as the suspicions of the royal prosecutor and the
inquisitor that he was a baptized Jew who had returned to Judaism sometime after ,
I think that Samuel settled in Zaragoza and married the daughter of a local family—
hence the mother-in-law—only after his return to Crown lands from “Granada” or
North Africa, where he had relapsed into Judaism after forced conversion in . See
below at nn. –.
        

nonetheless suggest an answer, but only after reconstructing the main

charges against Samuel, and then locating Samuel’s case within a his-
tory of jurisdictional conflict between crown and Inquisition regarding
Jews and baptized Jews (conversos), itself part of a larger history of men-
dicant, especially Dominican, efforts first to confine the Jews and ulti-
mately to remove them from the kingdom of Valencia. The reconstruc-
tion and contextualization of Samuel’s case should shed some light on
the nature of the mendicant assault on Jews and Judaism and its impact
on the position of Jews and conversos in early fifteenth-century Valencia.
Even though royal and ecclesiastical authorities frequently squabbled
over jurisdictional issues, they agreed often enough on the necessity of
promoting the Catholic faith and ensuring the orthodoxy of its adher-
ents. Both crown and Inquisition would have found cause for alarm in
the allegations that the royal prosecutor was making about the activi-
ties of Samuel of Granada. There seem to have been two main charges
against Samuel. The first was that Samuel was a sorcerer, conjurer of
demons, and practitioner of evil and diabolic arts.4 This charge had
little to do, however, with Samuel’s alleged poisoning of royal subjects.
Instead it was based on Samuel’s efforts, through medicinal and mag-
ical means, to solve the problems of Old and New Christian clients
seeking his assistance.5
Much of the case against Samuel as sorcerer centered on his deal-
ings with Gil Blay, an elderly Old Christian carpenter who could not
consummate his marriage with his young bride. According to Blay’s
own testimony, sorcery had caused his impotence, or his sexual incom-
patibility with his bride, and he therefore gladly took the advice of
well-meaning female relatives who recommended that he pay a visit
to “a Jew whom they call Master Samuel, [who] knows much about
such things, as it is said that he has helped others.” On his first visit
to Samuel, Blay received perfumes with which to douse himself and
his wife. Samuel also asked Blay and his wife to drink a bowl of water
over which he made “signs of Solomon” and other things Blay “did not
understand.” Unfortunately these measures did not solve Blay’s prob-
lem. On the next visit of his dissatisfied client, Samuel told him, “Sir,

4 Judging by the depositions of the witnesses, which are structured in accordance

with their responses to specific (though no longer extant) questions, all of them were
asked whether Samuel indeed practiced these various malefic arts.
5 By “New Christians” I mean converted Jews (or Muslims), and by “Old Chris-

tians” I mean Christians without Jewish or Muslim ancestry.

  . 

I need to go outside [the city] for a while [to see] a Muslim, my great
friend, to learn about your bewitchment—how it was done and who
did it.”6
When he returned to Valencia three days later, Samuel informed
Blay as to the nature of his bewitchment: when Blay and his bride went
to Mass on the day of their nuptials, there were two men standing on
each side of the entrance to the church holding a chain; just after the
couple and their party entered the church, the two men locked the ends
of the chain together “in the name of Satan and Barabbas.”7 Despite
Blay’s importunities, Samuel would not reveal the identity of the two
men or the location of the chain. He could not, he asserted, because
“the spirits would not consent” to it. Samuel did, however, tell Blay
that the authors of the spell had acted out of envy, for they had wanted
Blay’s bride to marry someone else. He assured Blay that he would cure
him.8

6 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v–v. The testimony of Gil Blay: “… ell dit tes-

timoni pres per muller una fadrina … e segons ell dit testimoni enteu de continent lo
jorn de les noces lo ligaren en tal manera que james ell dit testimoni no es pogut pasar
a consumar son matrimoni. Et stant axi ab gran congoxa per la dita raho, dues dones
parentes e benvolentes dell dit testimoni complanyent dell li dixeren tals o semblants
paraules: ‘En Gil voleu haver recapte de desligar a vos e vostra muller? Dit nos han que
un juheu al qual dien maestre Samuel sap molt de semblants coses e aydarna a vos axi
com se diu quen ha aydat a altres. Voleu quey anem?’ Et de continent ell dit testimoni
ensemps ab les dites dones parentes e benvolentes sues anaren cercar lo dit juheu appel-
lat maestre Samuel e trobaren lo e comtaren a aquell tot lo feyt … e axi queli plagues
de ajudarne a ell dit testimoni … Et de continent lo dit maestre Samuel dix quell li
daria bon recapte … [Blay and Samuel then haggle over the fee, and agree on four
florins.] … lo dit maestre Samuel dona a ell dit testimoni dientli que sen perfumasen ell
dit testimoni e sa muller. Et axi mateix li dona aygua de ques que fos e en una scudella
lo dit maestre Samuel en esta forma, que en la dita scudella lo dit maestre Samuel feya
senyales de Salamo e altres coses quell dit testimoni no entenia e puis destembravau
ab aygua no sap ell dit testimoni quinya e donavau a beure a ell dit testimoni. Et axi
mateix en altra scudella e feyau beure a la muller dell dit testimoni. Et les dites coses feu
lo dit maestre Samuel per ben quatre vegades jatsia les dites coses valguesen fort poch
a ell dit testimoni. Et veent ell dit testimoni que les dites coses no li valien res, ana al dit
maestre Samuel … Et lo dit maestre Samuel respos a ell dit testimoni: ‘Senyor, yo haure
de necesitat anar de fora un poch a un moro, gran amich meu, per saber lo vostre liga-
ment, com ses feyt e qui la feyt.”’ The testimony of Maria (r–v), widow of the sailor
Guillem Palma, corroborates Blay’s account. She was one of Blay’s two benevolent
female relatives and had previously consulted Samuel about her own aches and pains.
7 For other cases in which Barabbas was invoked, along with Satan and other

demons, see Juan Blázquez Miguel, Eros y Tanatos: Brujería, hechichería y superstición en
España (Toledo, ), , , , , , , , , , . These are all
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cases.
8 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r–v. The testimony of Gil Blay continues: “Et ell
        

Blay never saw Samuel again and the marriage apparently remained
unconsummated; hence Blay expressed disgruntlement that Samuel
had kept the initial fee of four florins. Yet Samuel had told Blay’s
wounded ego just what it wanted to hear: that sorcery and jealous rivals
were indeed the cause of the impotence. But he had not revealed too
much. By remaining closed-mouthed about the names of Blay’s ene-
mies, Samuel hoped to perpetuate the delusion that salved Blay’s pride
and to keep him coming back for more of his ministrations. Samuel’s
performance as a benevolent yet inscrutable Jewish magician, privy to
the secrets of King Solomon and aided by a mysterious Muslim friend,
provided Blay with a kind of psychological therapy for a malady that
did not admit of a medicinal cure. The circulation of rumors regard-
ing his bewitchment and Samuel’s efforts to cure him also enabled Blay
to hold his head up in the neighborhood.9 His neighbors could not so
easily mock him for having sexual problems of a supernatural origin.
Samuel’s magical practices no doubt contributed to his “mystique”
in the eyes of his Christian clientele.10 Still, Samuel was not merely pos-
ing; he really was a healer with genuine interests in magic and alchemy.
Samuel was, in fact, a licensed physician, a “master in medicine” as
King Fernando I referred to him in .11 Given the destruction of

dit testimoni dix, ‘Senyor en Samuel prech vos quem diguau la manera com ses feyt
lo meu ligament.’ Et lo dit maestre Samuel li dix, ‘Yous ho dire: Sapiau que que [sic]
quant vos e vostra muller anas a missa lo jorn que fos novios dos homens stigueren a
la porta de la sgleya, la hun a la una part del portal e l’altre a l’altra part, e tenien un
cadenat e com vos e vostra muller entras per la dita sgleya ells ajuniren la clau ab la
boca del cadenat et quant vench que vos e vostra muller e tots los quius acompanyaven
a la misa fos entrats dins la dita sgleya ells tancaren lo dit cadenat en nom de Baraban
e de Satan …’ Et lladonchs ell dit testimoni dix al dit maestre Samuel, ‘Senyor, vos me
haveu a dir qui son los homens quen han feyt e per que ho han feyt’; e ell li respos
que per enveja ho havien feyt que volien que altre hagues hauda sa muller e no ell dit
testimoni. Et lladonchs ell dit testimoni dix, ‘e donchs nos pot desfer?’ e lo dit maestre
Samuel respos, ‘confie en dios que yo hi dare bon recapte …’ Et ell dit testimoni dix al
dit maestre Samuel: ‘Digau me on es lo cadenat e qui son los homens. Digau me que
yous pagare be.’ Et lo dit maestre Samuel li respos que no curas dels homens que ab
sagrament e homenatge ho tenia de no dir ho quels spirits non volien consentir quen
digues.”
9 The testimony of the knight Arnau Saranyó (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v–

r) shows that rumors had been circulating: “… havia hoyt dir a un hom, qui dien en
Gil Blay, fuster … quell era stat ligat ab sa muller e que alcunes persones lo haurien
ligat per enveja e que era anat al dit maestre Samuel, juheu.”
10 Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, , raises interesting questions about the “mystique”

of Jewish doctors.
11 ACA : r–v ( November ): “Samuelem de Granada, judeum mag-

istrum in medicina.”
  . 

Valencia’s Jewish quarter in , Samuel must have been the only
licensed Jewish doctor working in the city.12 His reputation for med-
ical learning appears to have been widespread among local Chris-
tians, who thus usually called him “Master Samuel.” Yet the cures of
Samuel which are recorded—a poultice of cow dung and vinegar for a
woman’s aching shoulder, and the use of hares’ teeth for toothaches—
label him as an empirical practitioner who sometimes employed sym-
pathetic magic.13
There was nothing at all unusual about a licensed physician practic-
ing magic and alchemy. Many late medieval physicians, Jewish, Chris-
tian, and Muslim, were keenly interested in the “occult sciences” and
their therapeutic utility.14 As impotence in particular was often deemed

12 Luis García Ballester, Michael R. McVaugh, and Augustín Rubio Vela, Medical

Licensing and Learning in Fourteenth-Century Valencia (Philadelphia, ), –, document

numerous instances of Jews being licensed to practice medicine in Valencia between
 and . Luis García Ballester, La medicina a la València medieval (Valencia, ),
–, also discusses this question and shows that a number of conversos were licensed
to practice after . Jewish doctors, however, continued to work in other towns in
the kingdom that still permitted Jewish residence, such as Castelló de la Plana. See
José Ramón Magdalena Nom de Déu, “Estructura socio-económica de las aljamas
castellonenses a finales del siglo XV,” Sefarad,  (), .
13 Maria, the widow of Guillem Palma, recounted Samuel’s suggestion as to how she

might relieve the pain in her shoulder (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r): ‘“madona,
en lo mal de la spatla pondrets femta de bou e bolliscla ab vinagre e metets vos ne
un empaster en la spatla que aço’us levara la dolor.”’ Joan Ysern testified (r) about
Samuel’s response to officials when asked why he had hares’ teeth in his house: “Et
trobarenhi axi mateix quexals de lebre, los quals dix maestre Samuel que eren bons a
dolor de quexals e de dents de homens.” On sympathetic magic, see Kieckhefer, Magic,
; and Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New
York, ), , , who also notes () that parts of the hare were sometimes used in
love potions, an application which would have been more appropriate in the case of Gil
Blay.
14 Regarding Christian physicians, see, for instance, Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval &

Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, ), ,
; and Danielle Jacquart, “Theory, Everyday Practice, and Three Fifteenth-Century
Physicians,” Osiris, nd series,  (), –. The Islamic background is explored
by Danielle Jacquart and Françoise Micheau, La médicine arabe et l’occident médiéval (Paris,
); David Pingree, “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe,”
in La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel medio evo europeo (Rome, ), –; and, for
late medieval Spain in particular, Luis García Ballester, Historia social de la medicina en la
España de los siglos XIII al XVI, vol. : La minoría musulmana y morisca (Madrid, ). In
the case of Jewish physicians, the tendency to mix medical science, magic, demonology,
and Kabbalah was perhaps even more accentuated in Renaissance Italy. See the study
of Abraham Yagel by David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural
Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge MA, ), –; and the
studies of Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah
        

to be a result of bewitchment, Gil Blay chose wisely when he turned

to Samuel, a physician conversant with magical techniques.15 Samuel’s
use of “signs of Solomon” to treat Blay was consistent with a tra-
dition, by then widespread among adherents of all three faiths, that
attributed power over demons and spirits to King Solomon and to
those who acquired a mastery of Solomon’s esoteric knowledge and
methods.16 His consultation with a Muslim colleague must have fur-

in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Cooperman
(Cambridge MA, ), –, and “Hermeticism and Judaism,” in Hermeticism and
the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ingrid Merkel
and Allen Debus (Washington, ), –. While there is no evidence that Samuel
of Granada was a student of Kabbalah, the point to be made is that his pursuit of
the “occult sciences” was not atypical of Jewish physicians in the medieval and early
modern periods.
15 James A. Brundage, “The Problem of Impotence,” in Sexual Practices and the

Medieval Church, ed. Vern Bullough and James A. Brundage (Buffalo, ), –,
shows that canon lawyers took seriously the possibility that impotence might be induced
by witchcraft when handling the sexual problems of married couples. See also Henry
E. Sigerist, “Impotence as a Result of Witchcraft,” in Essays in Biology in Honour of
Herbert M. Evans (Berkeley, ), –; Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset,
Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton, ), –
; Jacqueline Murray, “On the Origins and Role of ‘Wise Women’ in Causes for
Annulment on the Grounds of Male Impotence,” Journal of Medieval History,  (),
–; Richard Kieckhefer, “Erotic Magic in Medieval Europe,” in Sex in the Middle
Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Joyce Salisbury (London, ), –, –; and Michael
R. McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and their Patients in the Crown of Aragon,
– (Cambridge, ), –. It is significant, then, that when Gil Blay found
himself unable to consummate his marriage, he assumed that he had been ligat, that
is, “bound by a spell.” He therefore asked Samuel to desligar him and his wife, that is,
“to free them from the spell” that had been cast upon them. Regarding similar beliefs
among medieval Jews, see Peter Schäfer, “Jewish Magic Literature in Late Antiquity
and Early Middle Ages,” Journal of Jewish Studies,  (), , –; H.J. Zimmels,
Magicians, Theologians, and Doctors: Studies in Folk-medicine and Folk-lore as reflected in the
Rabbinical Responsa (th–th Centuries) (London, ), ; and especially Trachtenberg,
Jewish Magic, –, –, who points out () that Jews used the Hebrew verb "asar
(“to bind”) when describing magical impediments to the sexual relations of a married
couple.
16 Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews,  vols. (Philadelphia, –), .–

, –, and ., –; F.C. Conybeare, “The Testament of Solomon,”
Jewish Quarterly Review,  (), –, especially  and , regarding demons who
cause problems for married couples; Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimen-
tal Science,  vols. (New York, –), .–; Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and
Science, –; and Idel, “Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations,” –. Joaquina
Albarracín Navarro and Juan Martínez Ruiz, Medicina, farmacopea y magia en el “Mis-
celáneo de Salamón” (Texto árabe, traducción, glosas aljamiadas, estudio y glosario) (Granada,
), –, discuss the Solomonic tradition among Muslims in reference to an Arabic
text redacted, with aljamiado glosses, by Castilian Muslims sometime between the mid-
fourteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. The text itself (–, –, , , ,
  . 

ther impressed Blay. Despite the erosion of Islamic high culture in the
kingdom of Valencia during the centuries following the Christian con-
quest, Muslims continued to study and practice medicine, and they
maintained a reputation among Christians for being effective practi-
tioners of medicine and magic.17 Samuel “of Granada” knew Arabic
and could thus profit from the expertise of his Muslim counterparts,
whether through oral consultation or through reading Arabic texts in
their possession.18

, ) treats various problems of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth caused by
demons; impotence, however, is not specifically addressed.
The testimony of the knight Arnau Saranyó (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r)
may shed additional light on the magical cures Samuel administered to Gil Blay.
Regarding the bowl of water that Samuel had had Blay and his wife drink (r–v),
Saranyó added the detail, which “some persons had told him,” that “the said Jew had
written [words of] the gospel of Saint John on a bowl and that he had mixed it with
water (hauria scrit lo avengeli de sent Johan en una taça e quen havia destemprat ab aygua), and that
he had given it to him [Blay] to drink, and that he had made him a pharmaceutical
preparation (letovari) that he ate.” Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, , notes the use of love
potions concocted of written spells mixed in wine or water; and Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals
of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, ), –, discusses
the “eating of texts” by Jewish children for pedagogic purposes. Why Samuel might
have used the “gospel of Saint John” (if he did so at all) is unclear. Perhaps he did
this to impress a Christian client, or perhaps Saranyó, an Old Christian, instinctively
referred to a New Testament text. It would not in any case have been outlandish had
Samuel asked his patient, in effect, to “drink texts.” See also Schäfer, “Jewish Magic
Literature,” , on magic bowls.
17 García Ballester, Medicina a la València medieval, –; and García Ballester, “A

marginal learned medical world: Jewish, Muslim and Christian medical practitioners
and the use of Arabic medical sources in late medieval Spain,” in Practical Medicine
from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. Luis García Ballester et al. (Cambridge, ), –
. Ecclesiastical authorities in the kingdom of Valencia and in Catalonia tended
to associate sorcery with the Muslim inhabitants of their regions, and they penalized
Christians who had recourse to Muslim empirical practitioners and “sorcerers.” (They
also punished Christian sorcerers.) See M. Milagros Cárcel Ortí and J.V. Boscá Codina,
eds., Visitas pastorales de Valencia (siglos XIV–XV) (Valencia, ), –, ; M. Teresa
García Egea, ed., La visita pastoral a la diócesis de Tortosa del obispo Paholac,  (Castelló,
),  (the diocese of Tortosa encompassed the northern part of the kingdom of
Valencia); and Josep Perarnau i Espelt, “Activitats i fórmules supersticioses de guarició
a Catalunya en la primera meitat del segle XIV,” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics,  (),
–.
18 The squire García Sánxez testified (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r) that he

saw a former Muslim captive speaking to Samuel in Arabic (parlava ab lo dit maestre
Samuel en alguaravia). Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, , –, notes that Jews in the Crown
of Aragon were still using Arabic scientific works in the mid-fourteenth century. García
Ballester, “Marginal learned medical world,” –, distinguishes between these
Jews, who, over the course of the fourteenth century, gradually lost the ability to read
Arabic and so increasingly relied on medical works in Hebrew, Romance, or even
        

Of the books that people witnessed Samuel receiving or discussing,

however, only some were written in Arabic; others were written in
Romance or Latin. Most apparently dealt with alchemy.19 Although
Samuel read one book that offered amusing advice on how to “get
women,” and allegedly sought to borrow another on necromancy for
the purpose of finding treasure in France, alchemy seems to have been,
aside from medicine, his greatest interest.20 According to Joan Ysern,
the converso tailor whose house Samuel rented, Samuel’s medical prac-
tice only supplemented his main livelihood as a metalworker, a craft

Latin, and their Castilian counterparts, who were still reading Arabic medical texts
in the fifteenth century. Although, as Baer suggests (see n. ), Samuel was probably not
of Granadan origin, he must have spent some time there, thus acquiring his toponymic
as well as his knowledge of Arabic.
19 The Valencian shoemaker Johan Grinau (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r–

r) had known Samuel four or five years earlier in Barcelona and there had seen a
certain En Carmona, a member of the household of the archbishop of Tarragona,
entrust to Samuel a book in which were “scrits algunes dolencies” that he did not
want anyone else to see. The Valencian tailor Berenguer d’Alcanyiç (v–r), who
also witnessed this incident in Barcelona, heard Samuel and Carmona several times
conversing about “the matter of alchemy,” which is suggestive as to the book’s content.
The tailor Joan Ysern (v–r) saw Samuel receive another book “with parchment
covers” in Valencia, but did not know anything about the contents except that it was
probably the book that interested the royal prosecutor. The squire García Sánxez (r–
r), who witnessed Samuel conversing in Arabic with a former Muslim captive (un
hom qui paria de aquests que ixen de catiu), saw the latter entrust three books to Samuel.
From what little García could understand of their conversation, he believed that the
books dealt with alchemy. In one of the books he saw a diagram of three concentric
circles in the center of which was a sword; there was a drawing of a man next to the
circles. Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, has much of interest on late
medieval alchemy in vols.  and ; see especially .–, where Thorndike points out
that, despite the decretal of Pope John XXII and the writings of the inquisitor Eimeric
against alchemy, the opinions of most canon lawyers were lenient on the issue. Raphael
Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, ) is a very rich
work. Among the observations he makes of relevance to this essay (pp. – deal
with the medieval period) are that most Jewish alchemists were physicians, that they
frequently deemed King Solomon to be the source of all alchemical knowledge, and
that Christians tended to regard them as masters in the field.
20 When Berenguer d’Alcanyiç (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v) asked Samuel

and En Carmona what was so funny about the book they were reading, Samuel
answered, “rient nos de aquest libre qui parla de amos e de haver dones e tot parla
de burles.” The testimony of Guillem Santa Linea (v–r): “… maestre Samuel
interrogua a ell dit testimoni si sabia art de igromancia [necromancy], car ell ho
volia per traure un tresaur en Franca … Et lo dit maestre Samuel demana a ell dit
testimoni si tenia libres que fosen de la dita art.” On the medieval use of necromancy
for locating hidden things, see Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual
of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, ), –.
  . 

that fit perfectly with, or served as a cover for, his alchemical pursuits.21
When the royal prosecutor and his colleagues inspected Samuel’s pos-
sessions, they found various tubes filled with powders and one contain-
ing quicksilver, a primary substance that alchemists utilized to trans-
mute metals. Samuel maintained that these materials were “good for
his office of metalworker” and for concocting the unguents he gave
people for their aches and pains.22
The royal prosecutor, as Samuel recognized, did not appreciate the
potential benefits of alchemical experimentation. Yet, curiously enough,
King Fernando did. Like his predecessors, Pere III (d. ) and Joan
I (d. ), who had welcomed Jewish physicians to the royal court
and had licensed Jewish alchemists to conduct experiments, probably
in the hope that they might succeed in transforming base metals into
gold,23 Fernando prized Samuel for his skills as both a physician and
an alchemist. Fernando himself acquitted Samuel after the royal pros-
ecutor and Samuel’s own mother-in-law had accused him of somehow
using sorcery against the king.24 Still enjoying the king’s favor and no
doubt pleased to escape his in-laws, Samuel was within the week en
route to Valencia. There he was supposed to engage in alchemical
work in behalf of the king and to receive for his labors a salary of
eight sous per day for a maximum of one hundred days. King Fer-
nando thus instructed the bailiff general to locate a secret place in
the city or a nearby castle where Samuel, his wife, and two Muslims
could live and work. Furthermore, the king, according to the noble
Pere de Centelles, “for the friendship that he bore for him [Samuel],

21 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r–r.

22 The testimony of Berenguer d’Alcanyiç (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r): “Et
veu ell dit testimoni que trobaren entre les altres coses uns canonets ab polvores e hun
canonet altre ab argent viu [quicksilver] … e dels canonets dix [Samuel] que los uns
eren bons a son offici de batifulla … e altres a medecines.” The noble Pere de Centelles
observed (llv), “maestre Samuel de Granada usava fer alquimia. Et que axi mateix
practicava de medecina.”
23 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, –; and Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, , , .
24 ACA: C : r–v ( November ): “Informati veridice quod inquisitio

que per vos [two lawyers of Barcelona appointed as judges by Prince Alfons] … ad
inquirendum contra Samuelem de Granada, judeum magistrum in medicina, delatum
seu inculpatum de fatillis nobis per eum factis seu fiendis, et que extitit utique facta
tam ad fisci nostri quam Bonanate judee socrus Samuelis eiusdem instantiam fundari
minime valuit neque valet ad presens.” Samuel was first arrested on the basis of these
charges sometime before  May , when King Fernando ordered Joan Marot, a
jurist of Barcelona, to review the case (ACA: C : v–r).
        

commanded the bailiff of Valencia that if the said Master Samuel

needed anything, he should give it to him.”25
The king’s friendship and pardon should have rendered Samuel
practically invulnerable to prosecution by lay or ecclesiastical author-
ities. Yet there was Samuel, indicted by the royal prosecutor, arraigned
before the court of the bailiff general, and targeted by the Inquisition.
Pere d’Anglesola, the prosecutor, had his own agenda, and the bailiff
general must have felt obliged at least to hear Anglesola’s charges.
After all, Samuel had not been on the king’s payroll since mid-March
 and had since been practicing medicine, magic, and alchemy in
the house he rented from Joan Ysern. Valencia, moreover, was not
Barcelona, particularly with regard to affairs of the faith. In the king-
dom of Valencia, as will be seen, the inquisitors had minds of their own
and a history of defying kings, usually with the support of the bishop
and sometimes with that of lay officials as well. However much protec-
tion King Fernando’s goodwill afforded Samuel, it was but temporary.
Less than a week after Ermengaud and Gascó sent their letter to the
bailiff general, the king was dead.26
In March, however, neither the prosecutor nor the inquisitor had any
way of knowing that King Fernando would pass from the scene after
only four years on the throne. What they did know and believe was that
Samuel of Granada was a danger to Valencian Christians, Old and
New. In their view, Samuel’s alleged sorcery and necromancy were bad
enough, but they assumed their full and disturbing significance only
when combined with the other main charge against him: that he was a
baptized Jew who had relapsed outside of Crown territories, perhaps in
Muslim Granada, and then returned as a Jew. Given that, in the years

25 ACA: C : r ( December ) is the king’s letter to the bailiff general.

For a summary of the contents of this letter, which I was, unfortunately, unable to
consult myself, see The Tortosa Disputation: Regesta of Documents from the Archivo de la Corona
de Aragón, Fernando I, –, compiled by Gemma Escribà (Jerusalem, ), , no.
. I am grateful to Gemma Escribà for sending me the recently published catalog.
The testimony of Pere de Centelles (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r–v): “Et dix que
… havia hoyt dir … que lo dit maestre Samuel de Granada … havien pres en la ciutat
de Barcelona, pero quen era exit ab sa bona justicia; hoc encara quel senyor Rey lo
havia en amistat e que per l’amistat que li havia hauria manat al batle de Valencia que
si res havia mester lo dit maestre Samuel que loy donas.” The testimonies of Joan Ysern
(v), Berenguer d’Alcanyiç (v), and Arnau Saranyó (r) corroborate the statement of
Centelles.
26 Fernando I died on  April .
  . 

after , a number of Jews and forced converts departed Spain for
North Africa and even Palestine, such an accusation was by no means
incredible.27
In their letter, Ermengaud and Gascó thus pointedly described Sam-
uel as he “who claims to be a Jew.”28 The prosecution and the defense
both questioned the witnesses about Samuel’s religious identity. All
stated that they believed him to be Jewish, and the converso witnesses
were emphatic that Samuel was a fully observant Jew. The broker
Andreu Gaçó, for instance, described Samuel kissing the fringes of his
prayer shawl, and the tailor Berenguer d’Alcanyiç noted that Samuel
did not merely recite parts of prayers, as a crypto-Jew might do, but
that he “finished his prayers.”29
Even if the converso witnesses convinced the bailiff general that Sam-
uel had never been baptized, their acknowledgment of their own fre-
quent contact with this pious Jew must have concerned him. Uncer-
tainty about the fealty of Valencian conversos to the Catholic faith had
plagued lay as well as ecclesiastical authorities since the mass baptisms
in . The evidence contained in Samuel’s dossier would have fed
this uncertainty and evoked disquieting notions of the blurring of reli-

27 See B. Dinur, “A Wave of Emigration from Spain to Eretz Yisrael after the

Persecutions of ,” [Hebrew] Zion,  (), –; the corrections and further
evidence presented by Joseph R. Hacker, “Links Between Spanish Jewry and Palestine,
–,” in Vision and Conflict in the Holy Land, ed. Richard I. Cohen (New York and
Jerusalem, ), –; H.Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa,  vols.
(Leiden, –), .–; and below at n.  for specifically Valencian examples.
That Samuel “of Granada” had a mother-in-law who was apparently of Catalan or
Aragonese origin lends some substance to the suspicions of the inquisitor and the royal
prosecutor. On the other hand, the Inquisiton sometimes falsely accused Jews who had
never been baptized of backsliding after conversion in ; see below at n. .
28 See n. : “… qui pro judeo se gerit.”
29 The testimonies of Andreu Gaçó (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r): “… lo

interrogava si era juheu o crestia, lo qual li respos que juheu era e tota vegada de lavors
ença ha tengut ell dit testimoni per juheu e li ha vist fer algunes cerimonies judayques
axi com besar cint a manera de sobrepellir en aquelles hores que vestir lo devia e
semblants abits usen los que son prohomens e bons juheus”; and Berenguer d’Alcanyiç
(v–r): “Es veritat quel coneix per bon juheu e li ha hoyt dir ses oracions axi com
bons juheus deven e acostumen dir … e aço sap ell dit testimoni per tal com diverses
vegades entrava en casa del dit maestre Samuel e trobava aquell que feya oracio a
la manera judayca no parlant trosus que aquell havia acabades ses oracions.” The
portrait of Samuel as an observant and pious Jew that emerges from these and similar
depositions was not incongruous with his practice of magic and alchemy. For useful
methodological perspectives, though concerning later and earlier periods, respectively,
see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, –; and Michael D. Swartz, Scholastic
Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, ), –, –.
        

gious boundaries between Old and New Christians and Jews and Mus-
lims, and of their mingling in a world of sorcery, alchemy, and Judaism,
where seemingly everything but Catholicism was practiced.30
These were precisely the kinds of developments against which the
Dominican inquisitors were determined to defend the church. Were
they to get their hands on Samuel’s dossier, they would have more
ammunition with which to attack the conversos and more evidence with
which to make the case to the king that the very presence of Jews
in the kingdom constituted a grave threat to the faith of Valencian
Catholics. Imputing such designs to the Dominican inquisitors should
not seem too much of an overstatement after a brief consideration of
the history of mendicant, especially Dominican, initiatives against Jews
and conversos in the kingdom.
Missionizing friars entered the newly conquered kingdom in the
later thirteenth century. Although few Jews succumbed to the friars’
new modes of persuasion, they still had to face the menacing Chris-
tian crowds and threats from the mendicants themselves entailed in
the preaching campaigns.31 Mendicant preaching, moreover, pointed

30 See, for instance, the case of Jacob Façan, a Jew of Morvedre, in which King

Joan I makes similar associations and expresses similar fears; ACA: C : r–r (
May ) (largely transcribed in Baer, Die Juden, .–); and my interpretation
of this case in “The Jewish Community in Murviedro [Morvedre] (–),” in
The Jews of Spain and the Expulsion of , ed. M. Lazar and S. Haliczer (Lancaster,
Calif., ), –. There is a large and growing historiography on the conversos.
The great majority of the historiography, however, treats only Castile in the years after
. The conversos of the Crown of Aragon, including the kingdom of Valencia, and
converso experience between  and the mid-fifteenth century tend to be neglected.
On conversos and the Spanish Inquisition in Valencia, see Ricardo García Cárcel,
Orígenes de la Inquisición española: El tribunal de Valencia, – (Barcelona, ), –
, –; Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, –
 (Berkeley, ), –; and Angelina Garcia, Els Vives: Una familia de jueus
valencians (Valencia, ). There is very little on the early period, but see Jaime
Castillo Sainz, “De solidaritats jueves a confraries de conversos: entre la fossilització
i la integració d’una minoria religiosa,” Revista d’Història Medieval,  (), –;
and José Luis Luz Compañ, “Familias judías—familias conversas. Aproximación a los
neófitos valencianos del siglo XIV,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma: Historia Medieval, serie III,
 (), –. Mark D. Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain
(Princeton, ), chaps.  and , presents a detailed discussion of the situation of Jews
and conversos in the kingdom of Valencia, and their treatment by monarchs and papal
inquisitors between  and .
31 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca,

), esp. –; Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Mission-
izing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, ); Yom Tov Assis, The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry:
Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, – (London, ), –; and Jaume
  . 

toward a socioreligious order so different from the prevailing one, in

which Jewish officials lorded it over Christians, that it must have con-
tributed to the widespread demand for the ouster of Jewish bailiffs, a
demand to which King Pere II acceded in .32
Ramon Despont, bishop of Valencia from  to , took further
steps to put the Jews in their place, though it is striking that his anti-
Jewish agitation began only after his entry into the Dominican Order
in . A reformer who addressed himself to the needs of the poor and
who thus established the almonry of the see of Valencia, Bishop Ramon
moved aggressively against usurers, Christian and Jewish.33 Regarding
Jewish lenders, the bishop and his Official were determined not just to
restrain those who charged interest at a rate higher than that set by the
crown but to suppress their activity altogether. They therefore enjoined
notaries to take an oath not to redact credit instruments for Jews and
Christians; they encouraged Christians to boycott Jewish lenders; and
they censured and even excommunicated Christian officials who coop-
erated with Jewish creditors.34 The bishop also called for the destruc-
tion of at least one synagogue that a Jewish community had built to

Riera i Sans, “Les llicències reials per predicar als jueus i als sarraïns (segles XIII–
XIV),” Calls,  (), –. Robert I. Burns, “Christian-Islamic Confrontation in
the West: The Thirteenth-Century Dream of Conversion,” American Historical Review, 
(), –, covers the case of the Muslims and provides much useful information
on the context of the missionary campaigns among the Jews.
32 David Romano, Judíos al servicio de Pedro el Grande de Aragón (–) (Barcelona,

), esp. –; Jerome Lee Shneidman, “Jews as Royal Bailiffs in Thirteenth-
Century Aragon,” Historia Judaica,  (), –, and “Jews in the Royal Adminis-
tration of Thirteenth Century Aragon,” Historia Judaica,  (), –; Baer, A History
of the Jews in Christian Spain,  vols. (Philadelphia, –), .; and Robert I. Burns,
Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (Princeton, ), , ,
and Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia (Cambridge, ), .
For a different interpretation of the evidence, see Mark D. Meyerson, Jews in an Iberian
Frontier Kingdom (Leiden, ), chap. .
33 Vicente Cárcel Ortí, Historia de la Iglesia en Valencia, (Valencia, ), vol. : –;

and I. Pérez de Heredia, “Sínodos medievales de Valencia: edición bilingüe,” Anthologica

annua,  (), –, for the synods held by Bishop Ramon. For a discussion of
the approaches of church and western European monarchies to the problem of Jewish
moneylending in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see Joseph Shatzmiller, Shylock
Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society (Berkeley, ), –, and esp. 
and  n. , emphasizing the hard line taken by leading Dominican thinkers, such as
Ramon de Penyafort and Thomas Aquinas, against Jewish usury.
34 ACA: C : v ( July ), r ( September ); C : r ( December

), v, r; C : v ( March ); C : v–r ( July ); Cartas Reales
Jaume II, caja , no.  ( August ).
        

accommodate its expanding population.35 One effect of the actions of

the zealous bishop was an intensification of anti-Jewish violence dur-
ing Holy Week. The several Jewish complaints to the king, in the years
after the bishop’s conversion, about the marked zest with which Chris-
tians attempted to humiliate and harm them suggest as much.36 The
successors of Bishop Ramon were not mendicants, but they largely fol-
lowed his line on the issue of usury and periodically caused problems
for Jewish lenders, and thus, later in the fourteenth century, irritated
the king.37
Even if not friars themselves, the bishops of Valencia and their
vicars usually cooperated and worked closely with mendicant inquisi-
tors on cases concerning Jews. Valencian Jews first fell under inquisito-
rial scrutiny in , and again in , because of the aid and encour-
agement they gave to relapsed Jewish converts from Provence.38 More
controversial than the alleged ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Jews in
such cases were the claims of inquisitors, most notably Nicolau Eimeric,
that they could prosecute Jews for the crimes and heresies they com-
mitted against their own faith as well as for those committed against

35 ACA: C : r–v ( March ); and C : r ( April ). The

synagogue in question was that of the Jews of Morvedre.

36 ACA: C : r ( November ); C : r–v ( December ), v

( April ); and C : r ( April ). See also Mark D. Meyerson, “Bishop
Ramon Despont and the Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia,” Anuario de Estudios Medieva-
les,  (), –.
37 For instance, ACA: C : r–v ( July ). See Meyerson, Jews in an Iberian

Frontier Kingdom, chap. .

38 Yom Tov Assis, “Juifs de France réfugiés en Aragon (XIIIe–XIVe siècles),” Revue

des études juives,  (), –; and Yom Tov Assis, “The Papal Inquisition and
Aragonese Jewry in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Mediaeval Studies,  (), –
. The work of Assis is especially useful regarding Catalonia and the kingdom of
Aragon. For the procedure of the Inquisition against some Jews of Xàtiva in ,
see Johannes Vincke, Zur Vorgeschichte der Spanischen Inquisition: Die Inquisition in Aragon,
Katalonien, Mallorca und Valencia während des . und . Jahrhunderts (Bonn, ), , no.
 (ACA: C : r [ April ]). Although the document does not state why the
inquisitor was taking action against these Jews, their assistance to baptized Jews from
Provence is the probable cause, given the contemporaneous procedure against Jews of
Calatayud for this cause (Assis, “Juifs de France,” –). ARV: B : v–r, r–v,
v–v, r–v, r–v, r–v, v, r–v, v–r, r–v all concern the initiatives taken
by the Franciscan inquisitor, Bernat Dezpuig, between January and May  against
several Jews of Borriana, due to their aid to relapsed Provençal converts. José Ramón
Magdalena Nom de Déu, “Delitos y ‘calònies’ de los judíos valencianos en la segunda
mitad del siglo XIV (–),” Anuario de Filología,  (Barcelona, ), –, notes
the confiscation of property from relapsed Provençal converts in .
  . 

the Catholic faith.39 The practice of magic and necromancy by some

Jews, deemed a violation of both Jewish and Christian law, provided
inquisitors with opportunities to realize their claims. In  and 
the Inquisition prosecuted Valencian Jews for sorcery and for having
recourse to Jewish diviners in order to locate lost and stolen property.40
In , it more ominously investigated Christian adoration of devils
in the home of the Jew Salamies Nasci.41 King Pere III, who was fre-
quently at loggerheads with the inquisitors, permitted them to proceed
but asserted that punishment of the Jews, who were fined in these cases,
was the royal prerogative.
When Joan I succeeded Pere in , he moved decisively to ham-
string the inquisitors. Taking advantage of the schism and his leverage
with the Avignon papacy, Joan demanded that Pope Clement VII rec-
ognize the crown’s exclusive jurisdiction in cases involving Jews and
Muslims. The pope did not comply, however, and Joan found himself
fighting the same battles as his father and with no greater success.42
King Joan’s own tendency to believe the inquisitors’ most fantastic
charges against Jews prevented him from taking too firm a stand. As
prince he had zealously tortured and executed Jews for alleged host des-
ecration, despite his father’s disapproval.43 As king he did not prevent
the inquisitor from jailing Mahir Xuxen of Xàtiva on charges of fash-
ioning and worshipping an image of metal and mandrake. Although

39 Inter alia, see Cohen, Friars and the Jews, –; Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic

See and the Jews,  vols. (Toronto, –), .–; Josep Perarnau i Espelt,
“El Tractatus brevis super iurisdictione inquisitorum contra infideles fidem catholicam agitantes de
Nicolau Eimeric: Edició i estudi del text,” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics,  (), –;
and Eimeric and Peña, Manual, –.
40 Vincke, Vorgeschichte, , no.  (ACA: C : v [ February ]); and Baer,

Die Juden, ., no.  (ACA: C : v [ April ]). ARV: B : v–r (
July ) concerns the procedure of the Official of the bishop of Valencia against
maestre Menasse Turi, Jew of Valencia, because “aquell ana a una juhia fetillera o
adevina per demanar a aquella si li sabria dir qui tendria una pedra preciosa … la
qual era stada perduda.” Considering the usual cooperation between the bishops of
Valencia and the papal inquisitors, the latter were in all likelihood involved in this case
as well.
41 Vincke, Vorgeschichte, , no.  (ACA: C : r [ September ]).
42 Perarnau, “Tractatus brevis,” –; and Jaume de Puig i Oliver, “El Tractatus de

haeresi et de infidelium incredulitate et de horum criminum iudice, de Felip Ribot, O. Carm.

Edició i estudi,” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics,  (), –.
43 Joaquim Miret y Sans, “El proces de les hosties contra.ls jueus d’Osca en ,”

Anuari del Institut d’Estudis Catalans,  (/), –; Baer, History, .–. See
J.M. Roca, Johan I d’Aragó (Barcelona, ), on the “superstitious” character of King
Joan.
        

Joan challenged the inquisitor, he did so not because of the absurdity

of the accusations against Xuxen but on jurisdictional grounds, and in
order to secure for the crown a share of the inheritance of Xuxen, who
died in prison just months before anti-Jewish violence swept the king-
dom of Valencia in July .44
The violence of  created a markedly different socioreligious land-
scape in the kingdom. The huge Jewish community of Valencia city
was destroyed; most of its members converted. There were also mass
baptisms in Borriana, Castelló, and Xàtiva, and although small Jew-
ish communities reemerged in these towns, only Morvedre, whose Jews
mostly escaped the violence, continued to have a sizeable Jewish com-
munity.45
For the inquisitors, all this signified the beginning of the end of
Judaism in the kingdom. Like their famous Dominican confrere Vicent
Ferrer, they were anxious to complete the proselytizing work begun
in July , a point of view not necessarily shared by the monarchy.
Kings and inquisitors concurred, however, on the necessity of prevent-
ing the conversos from returning to Judaism, whether in the kingdom or
abroad.46
Throughout the s King Joan and his successor Martí endeav-
ored to stop the clandestine flight of conversos to North Africa. Mate-
rial as well as religious concerns motivated the monarchs. Hence they
pardoned affluent conversos apprehended on the beach or at sea, and
they permitted conversos to trade with North Africa as long as they left

44 Winfried Küchler, “Mosse Mahir Suxen: Ein Beitrag zur Inquisition und zum

Judenregal in den Ländern der aragonischen Krone,” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kultur-
geschichte spaniens,  (), –. Transcribed documents on this case can be found
in Vincke, Vorgeschichte, –, nos. – (ACA: C : v [ August ]; C
: r [ December ]); and in Simonsohn, Apostolic See, .–, no. .
Xuxen died sometime before  December .
45 Baer, History, .–; Philippe Wolff, “The  Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis

or Not?” Past and Present,  (), –; Jaume Riera Sans, “Los tumultos contra las
juderías de la Corona de Aragón en ,” Cuadernos de Historia: Anexos de la Revista
“Hispania,”  (), –; Eliseo Vidal Beltrán, Valencia en la época de Juan I (Valencia,
), –; and José Hinojosa Montalvo, The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia: from
Persecution to Expulsion, – (Jerusalem, ), –. Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance,
chap. , treats the impact of the events of  on the Jews of Morvedre.
46 I can provide here merely a sketch of the policies of Joan I and Martí I toward

Jews and conversos in the kingdom of Valencia and their changing views of the anti-
Jewish initiatives of the papal inquisitors and the bishop of Valencia. For a detailed
analysis, see Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance.
  . 

their families behind and substantial securities with the bailiff general.47
Lacking the machinery to patrol the coastline, the inquisitors played a
minimal role here.
They were of course key players in the struggle against judaizing
conversos and their Jewish accomplices inside the kingdom, though the
freedom of action the kings were prepared to allow them changed
over the years. King Joan ordered royal officials in November  to
cooperate with the inquisitor general Barthomeu Gaçó in his procedure
against “wicked” conversos holding “the erroneous sect [Judaism] in their
depraved heart[s],” whom the king characteristically associated with
“other wicked persons touched by heretical depravity who … invoke
evil spirits and adore and perfume them.”48 Earlier that year the king
had heavily fined a Jew of Morvedre for spiriting his baptized son to
North Africa and for practicing “the diabolic art” along with Jewish,
Muslim, and Christian sorcerers. The presiding official in this case was
none other than the royal prosecutor Pere d’Anglesola, the nemesis of
Samuel of Granada twenty-three years later.49 In the minds of King
Joan and Anglesola, where Judaism, sorcery, and devil-worship seem to
have converged, the judaizing of conversos presented a dire threat to the
Catholic church.
Still, in the interest of the royal treasury, to which Jews and conversos
contributed, Joan could not allow either his imagination or the inquisi-
tors to run too wild. Hence in  he reproached the inquisitor Gaçó
for indiscriminately punishing conversos in Borriana and Valencia and
precipitating their flight.50 The question of the very jurisdiction of the
papal Inquisition in cases involving Jews and Muslims, as opposed to
New Christians, was, as far as the king was concerned, debatable. He
therefore bade officials in Morvedre not to cooperate with the inquisi-

47 Hinojosa, Jews, nos. , , , , , , , , , and ; and ACA: C

: v ( January ), r ( March ); C : r–v ( September ); C
: r–r ( January ); C : r–v ( July ).
48 Vincke, Vorgeschichte, , no.  (ACA: C : r–v [ November ]): “Com

l’amat nostre religios frare Barthomeu Gaço mestre en la santa theologia enqueridor
per nos deputat en lo dit regne de Valencia … per fer alguns enantaments contra
alguns malvats converses qui la secta erronea … tenen en lur cor empravitada e
aximateix per enquerir contra algunes altres malvades persones tocades de la heretical
pravitat qui … invoquen mals spirits e aquelles adoren e perfumen.”
49 ACA: C : r–r ( May ); see n.  for further details.
50 ACA: C : r–v ( April ) [Hinojosa, Jews, , no. ], for Borriana;

and C : r–r ( September ) [Hinojosa, Jews, –, no. ], for
Valencia.
        

tors in their “daily” investigations of local Jews for heresy, lest the Jewish
quarter be depopulated. Later, however, Joan had these same officials
prohibit Morvedre’s conversos from living and praying with Jews.51
Though given less to fantasy than his brother Joan, the pious King
Martí I (d. ) was equally determined to end the Jewish practices
of conversos, and he issued various proclamations to this effect.52 It was
also Martí who, in , terminated efforts to reestablish a Jewish
community in Valencia, believing that the coexistence of Jews with the
city’s numerous conversos would result in “grave scandals and errors.”53
In  he forbade Jews doing business in Valencia to stay there for
more than ten days; nor could they be lodged in any converso parish or
household. Yet this legislation applied only to the kingdom’s Jews, those
most likely to encourage baptized relatives and friends to judaize. In
the interest of commerce, foreign Jews, like Samuel of Granada, were
permitted longer visits.54
Martí initially favored the Inquisition, and he commanded lay offi-
cials to work with it to extirpate the errors of conversos and to separate
them from the Jews.55 Believing that the “heresies” of the Talmud were
responsible for the blindness of the Jews to Christian truth, Martí feared
that some talmudic Jews were disseminating their ideas among conversos
and thereby rendering them impervious to Christian teaching. He thus
permitted the papal Inquisition to prosecute the guilty Jews, and even
ordered royal officials to confiscate copies of the Talmud.56

51 ACA: C : v–v ( March ) [Hinojosa, Jews, , no. ], regarding

the inquisitors’ activities; and C : r ( April ) [transcribed in Antonio
Chabret Fraga, Sagunto: su historia y sus monumento,  vols. (Barcelona, ; reprinted
Sagunto, ), .– n. ], regarding the separation of Jews and conversos in
Morvedre.
52 ACA: C : r ( February ); C : r ( August ). We still lack a

thorough study of the reign of Martí I or an extensive biography of him, but see Rafael
Tasis i Marca, Pere el Ceremoniós i els seus fills, nd ed. (Barcelona, ), –.
53 ACA: C : r–r ( February ): “… unde inconvenientia quam-

plurima proveniunt aliasque scandala gravia et errores evenire proculdubio sperantur.”

54 ACA: C : r ( September ).
55 ACA: C : r ( February ).
56 ACA: C : r ( August ). To this letter, addressed to all royal officials

throughout his realms and entitled “pragmatica contra neophytos ad evitandos judeo-
rum ritus,” Martí added, as almost a postscript, an order calling for the enforcement of
the rulings of Popes Gregory IX and Innocent IV on the Talmud. (Inter alia, see Cohen,
Friars and the Jews, –; and Simonsohn, Apostolic See, .–, and the literature
cited there.) This indicates that Martí wanted officials to confiscate copies of the Tal-
mud for examination, if not burning. However, I have not encountered evidence that
this order was carried out, certainly not for the kingdom of Valencia. Martí’s pragmat-
  . 

By the end of , however, the king had begun to sing a different
tune because the inquisitors were exceeding the limits of their mandate.
The inquisitors and their allies in the episcopal palace were not satisfied
with correcting heretical New Christians and their Jewish accomplices;
they were intent on harassing, punishing, and converting whichever
professing Jews they could get their hands on. They imprisoned several
Jews, mostly women, on spurious charges of having received baptism
in  and then abandoning the Catholic faith. Apparently their plan
was to terrorize or starve these women into submission, in the hope
that their demoralized kin would either follow them into the church or
perhaps simply flee the kingdom. At least two Jewish women died in
prison.57
The inquisitors’ excesses clearly disgusted King Martí and Queen
María. In a letter of  to the inquisitor Gaçó, Martí argued that,
since the Jews are not members of the church, they could not fall under
the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.58 Despite this argument and other
royal letters forbidding inquisitorial prosecution of Jews, the inquisitors
would not relent. By the end of his reign, Martí had even begun
to wonder about the inquisitors’ initiatives against conversos, accusing
them of ransacking converso homes on questionable grounds and causing
converso emigration.59 Also, in letters with ominous implications for the
case of Samuel of Granada, Martí enjoined Valencia’s criminal justice

ica was soon followed by a letter enjoining all officials to cooperate with “inquisitio-
nis officium contra judeos et sarracenos inceptum seu etiam incipiendum per inquisi-
tores heretice pravitatis seu comissarios eorundem”; ACA: C : v ( September
). A similar letter (C : r) was sent to officials in the kingdom of Mallorca
and in the counties of Rosselló and Cerdanya urging cooperation with the Dominican
inquisitor.
57 ACA: C : r ( August ) concerns the death of the wife of Saçon

Najari, a Jew of Teruel, whom Gil Sánchez Munyos, a canon of the see of Valencia
commissioned by the inquisitor, prosecuted and imprisoned. (The Aragonese town of
Teruel fell under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in Valencia.) ACA: C : v (
September ); and C : r–v (– September ) [Baer, Die Juden, .–,
no. ] treat the case of Mira, a Jewish woman of Morvedre, whom the inquisitor
imprisoned and attempted to starve into submission. ACA: C : v ( November
); C : v ( September ); C : r–v ( September ); and
C : v ( June ) deal with the procedure of the Inquisition against Samuel
Suxen, Jew of Morvedre, his wife Jamila, and Jamila’s elderly aunt Astruga, the widow
of Salamó Abenmarvez. Astruga died either in prison or shortly after her release from
an illness contracted in prison. See Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, for further details.
58 ACA: C : r–v ( August ) [Baer, Die Juden, .–, no. ].
59 ACA: C : r ( March ).
        

and other officials to cease arresting and remitting to the bishop’s court
North African Jewish, Muslim, and converso merchants.60
During the short, eventful reign of Fernando I (–), Pope
Benedict XIII staged the Disputation of Tortosa in – and
both Pope Benedict and King Fernando issued restrictive laws against
the Jews in . Their actions owed much to the influence of the
Valencian Dominican Vicent Ferrer.61 Intent on converting the Jews,
Ferrer preached to captive Jewish audiences throughout Castile and
the Crown of Aragon. Even though he criticized the violence and
forced baptisms of , his inflammatory preaching, which attracted
large crowds of Christians, caused attacks on Jews. Ferrer was also
very anxious about the ill effects of contact with Jews on Christians,
especially conversos, and therefore called for the complete separation
of Jews from Christians. He even demanded the excommunication of
Christians who continued to mingle with Jews. Ferrer’s ideas inspired
the oppressive laws promulgated in Castile in , the model for those
issued by Benedict XIII and Fernando I in . The aim of these
laws, which, if fully enforced, would have reduced the Jews to the
status of impoverished pariahs, was to pressure the Jews to convert.
In Morvedre at least, all this anti-Jewish activity resulted, as hoped, in
the conversion of several Jews and in the further confinement of the
rest.62

60 ACA: C : r ( March ); and r–v ( March ).
61 Inter alia, Baer, History, .–; Maurice Kriegel, Les juifs à la fin du Moyen
Age dans l’Europe méditerranéenne (Paris, ), –; Francisca Vendrell, “La política
proselitista del rey D. Fernando I de Aragón,” Sefarad,  (), –; Vendrell,
“La actividad proselitista de San Vicente Ferrer durante el reinado de Fernando I de
Aragón,” Sefarad,  (), –; Vendrell, “En torno a la confirmación real, en
Aragón, de la pragmatica de Benedicto XIII,” Sefarad,  (), –; Bernardino
Llorca, “San Vicente Ferrer y su labor en la conversión de los judíos,” Razón y fe, 
(), –; José M. Millás Vallicrosa, “En torno a la predicación judaica de San
Vicente Ferrer,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia,  (), –; Millás
Vallicrosa, “San Vicente Ferrer y el antisemitismo,” Sefarad,  (), –; and
P.M. Cátedra, “La predicación castellana de San Vicente Ferrer,” Boletín de la Real
Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona,  (), –. I am grateful to Professor
David Viera for allowing me to consult his unpublished paper, “The Treatment of the
Jews in Vincent Ferrer’s Vernacular Sermons.” See also his contribution to this volume
on the Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis, whose views and writings were influential in the
city of Valencia.
62 For example, ACA: C : r–v ( August ); C : r–v ( August

); C : r-v ( July ); C : r ( July ). See also the comments in
Meyerson, “Jewish Community in Murviedro [Morvedre],” –, and in Meyerson,
Jewish Renaissance.
  . 

There was another key player in the case of Samuel of Granada: the
municipality of Valencia. Concerned to promote Valencia’s power and
prosperity, which they linked to its demographic growth, and anxious
to propagate an image of Valencia as a Christian republic, its ruling
elites were perennially obsessed with the sins of the Christian popu-
lation, which, they feared, might besmirch the city’s image and bring
upon it divine punishment, in the form of plague and famine. They
often viewed Jews and Muslims as sources of temptation for Christian
sinners, and when plague threatened or struck they issued orders, in
almost ritual fashion, calling for their separation from Christians. In all
this, the city government was seconded by the local ecclesiastical estab-
lishment and most notably by that preacher of penitence and apoca-
lypse, Vicent Ferrer. A native Valencian, Ferrer functioned practically
as an ideologue for the municipality. Through his preaching he widely
disseminated his conception of a proper socioreligious order, one that
accorded with and contributed to the urban image that the elites were
so keen to project.63
In , violence and the cleansing waters of baptism had removed
one large blemish from Valencia’s socioreligious landscape: the Jew-
ish community. Although the aldermen (jurats) expressed discomfort
and regret about the violence, they also sacralized it by disseminat-
ing accounts of the miraculous replenishment of the chrism which had
been exhausted through the baptism of so many Jews.64 It was, more-
over, the aldermen who sought from King Martí the “privilege” of
never again having a Jewish quarter and who urged him to prohibit
Jews from entering the city.65
The destruction of the Jewish community had not, however, solved
all of the city’s problems with sin. Of this Vicent Ferrer reminded the
citizens when he preached in Valencia during the Christmas season of
.66 The city council reacted promptly to the friar’s sermons. On 
January  it enacted prohibitions against gambling, prostitution, and

63 Agustí Rubio Vela, “Ideologia burgesa i progrés material a la València del Tres-

cents,” L’Espill,  (), –; Rubio Vela, Peste negra, crisis y comportamientos sociales en la
España del siglo XIV: La ciudad de Valencia (–) (Granada, ), –; and Rafael
Narbona Vizcaíno, Pueblo, poder y sexo: Valencia medieval (–) (Valencia, ), –
, on the activities and influence of Ferrer in Valencia.
64 Arxiu Municipal de València [hereafter AMV]: Lletres misives [hereafter LM],

g–: v–v ( July ) [Hinojosa, Jews, –, no. ].
65 See note ; and Agustí Rubio Vela, ed., Epistolari de la València medieval (Valencia,

), –, no. .

66 AMV: Manuals de Consell [hereafter MC] A–: v ( December ): the
        

blasphemy. It also outlawed diviners, sorcerers, and necromancers, and

forbade persons “of whatever law [religion], estate, or condition” to
consult them for any purpose whatsoever, whether to locate lost prop-
erty or to obtain medicinal cures.67 In addition to these transgressions,
there were the “abominations, nefarious acts, and violations of the holy
Catholic faith that are perpetrated by the New Christians of this city.”
Such sins threatened “to provoke our Lord to bring on us plague and
pestilence.”68 “Moved by the holy teachings of the reverend Master
Vicent Ferrer,” the municipality took steps in April to disperse the clan-
nish conversos among the city’s Old Christian population as a means of
facilitating their complete Christianization.69 In the Dominican’s ideal
Christian republic, there was little room for Jews, sorcerers, and judaiz-
ing heretics.
Only three years later, Samuel of Granada was, then, in a precarious
position: resident in a city whose government, at least according to its

councillors discuss the expense involved in “fer los cadafals e banchs al ort de prey-
cadors per lo sermo de Mestre Vicent Ferrer.”
67 AMV: MC A–: r–v, specifically r–v regarding sorcerers and the like:

“Consell han establit e ordenat … que alguna persona de qualsevol ley, estament o
condicio sia no gos o presumesca recorrer o anar a devins o a divines, encantadors,
sortilers o conjuradors o a altres de mal saber o art reprobada per saber o demanar
consell o ajuda de coses perdudes o amagades ni per altra rao o specie de divinacions
o encantacions, encara que fos per recaptar salut o medicine a qualque persona o
per qualsevol altra colorada causa o rao, ne en alguna manera gos o presumesca
invocar demonis ne fer o fer fer rotles o altres sortilegis, divinacions, encantacions
o conjuracions que toque art de nigromancia o invocacions de demonis.” Sorcerers,
necromancers, and the like were to be whipped through the streets half-naked, while
their clients were to pay a fine of fifty gold morabatins or be whipped as well. The
councillors then listed all the misfortunes that could befall the city were such crimes
left unpunished. Regarding the preachments of Vicent Ferrer on the matter of sorcery,
see Miguel Llop Catalá, San Vicente Ferrer y los aspectos socioeconómicos del mundo medieval
(Valencia, ), – and the sermons cited there.
68 Thus did the jurats express themselves in a letter to King Fernando on  March

 (AMV: LM g–: v): “Sobre alcunes abhominacions e actes nepharis e con-
trariants a la santa fe catholica quis fan per cristians novells daquesta ciutat … a vostra
senyoria … suplicam aquella humilment … donyets per merce en tal manera prove-
hir que aquells qui son occasio de provocar nostre Senyor a donar sobre nosaltres
plagues e pestilencies sien de vostra senyoria molt catholica corregits en semblants actes
extirpats.”
69 AMV: LM g–: v, r ( March ), r–v ( April), and r–v (

April) are all letters of the jurats concerning the problem of judaizing conversos and
the remedy. In r–v they note that they were “moguts per les sanctes doctrines del
Reverent Mestre Vicent Ferrer.” AMV: MC A–: r–v ( April ) [partially
transcribed in Hinojosa, Jews, –, no. ] is the actual legislation of the city
council.
  . 

official line, regarded him, a Jewish sorcerer and healer, as an abom-

ination; prosecuted by a credulous royal prosecutor, Anglesola, who
attempted to portray him as a diabolical relapsed Jewish convert; and
sought by inquisitors who frequently ignored royal warnings, who had
the cooperation of the bishop and many lay officials, and who probably
hoped to use his case as further ammunition in their campaign against
the kingdom’s conversos and Jews. How in all likelihood did Samuel fare?
Despite the prosecutor’s efforts, the sixteen witnesses—nine Old
Christians and seven conversos—produced little damning evidence
against Samuel.70 Both Old and New Christians, as pointed out above,
deemed him Jewish and said nothing about prior baptism. Being a for-
eign Jew in Valencia was still not a crime.
With the exception of one, the witnesses did not allow Anglesola to
lead them to depict Samuel as a maleficent, demon-conjuring Jew. The
one exception, Guillem Santa Linea, an Old Christian artisan, stated
that “he heard” Samuel knew how to invoke devils. Yet Santa Linea
probably wanted to deflect suspicion from himself, for the inquisitor
had recently confiscated his own books on necromancy which Samuel
had asked to consult for the purpose of locating treasure.71 None of the
other witnesses regarded Samuel’s interest in alchemy and his use of
magic for medicinal purposes as synonymous with diabolical sorcery.
Even Gil Blay did not view Samuel in this light. The worst things

70 The Old Christian witnesses for the prosecution were Gil Blay, carpenter; the

noble Pere de Centelles; the squire García Sánxez; Maria, the widow of the sailor
Guillem Palma; the knight Arnau Saranyó; Guillem Santa Linea, carder; and Nicolau
Millot, student. The Old Christian witnesses for the defense were Johan Grinau,
shoemaker; Falquo Sánxez, furrier; and the squire García Sánxez, who testified for
both sides. The converso witnesses for the prosecution were Joan Ysern, tailor; Berenguer
d’Alcanyiç, tailor; and probably Joan de Riusech, donzell. The conversos who testified
for the defense, other than Ysern and Alcanyiç who testified for the prosecution
as well, were Andreu Gaçó, broker; Arnau Castellar, tailor; Jacme Rigolff, tailor;
and Jacme de Sayes, tailor. I am grateful to José Luis Luz Compañ for permitting
me to consult the prosopographical appendix of his tesis de licenciatura, “Evolución y
estrategias de integración de las familias judeoconversas valencianas en el tránsito al
siglo XV” (Universidad de Valencia, ), –; this enabled me to identify the
converso witnesses.
71 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v–r: “Et dix que … ha hoydes dir a alcunes

persones ço es quel dit maestre Samuel sap invocar diables e que sabia molt d’art
d’igromancia.” In response to Samuel’s question whether he knew anything about
necromancy and whether he could see the books on necromancy in his possession (see
n. ), Santa Linea responded, “que veritat era quell dit testimoni ne havia usat alcuns
speriments [of necromancy] pero que ara non volia usar nin usaria … e … que non
tenia [books on necromancy] que lo inquiridor los li havia presos.”
        

that Samuel did, according to his testimony, were to fail to cure his
impotence, and to inform him about the evil, incapacitating spell cast
by his Christian rivals.
The uniformly favorable testimonies of the conversos are hardly sur-
prising, although their admissions of frequent contact with Samuel
entailed some risk.72 More remarkable are the approving statements of
the Old Christian witnesses, and this in a city that had not housed
a Jewish community for a quarter of a century and whose population
had frequently been the object of Vicent Ferrer’s charismatic preaching.
The Old Christian witnesses came from all social ranks: noble, squire,
artisan, student, and sailor’s widow. Some said that Samuel was a Jew
but not a “bad man.”73 The squire García Sánxez was a bit more effu-
sive, describing Samuel as “a good man in his law, … pacific and of
good condition.”74
Samuel had acquired among Old as well as New Christians a rep-
utation as a healer, as a source of empirical and magical cures and
of a kind of practical wisdom which could put one’s mind at ease.
Despite the decrees of the city council, many came to Samuel with
their aches and pains, including Maria, the sailor’s widow, who learned
of Samuel when other physicians could not treat her sore feet.75 Women
also flocked to Samuel’s wife to obtain hair gel and cosmetics, or to be
made up.76

72 The converso witnesses who maintained that Samuel was indeed Jewish either

testified to having seen him perform Jewish rituals or implied that they had. Given
the prohibitions against conversos consorting with Jews, these witnesses risked coming
under the scrutiny of lay and ecclesiastical authorities.
73 For example, the noble Pere de Centelles, a witness for the prosecution (ARV: B

Procesos, Letra P, : v): “… ell dit testimoni nol te al dit Samuel com a juheu per
mal hom com no sapia ell dit testimoni que aquell havia feytes malvestats.”
74 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v: “… ell dit testimoni [dix que] en tant com

pot conexer lo dit maestre Samuel es bon hom en sa ley … ell dit testimoni … vol dir
ni sap ni ha hoyt dir que aquell faça res de mal ni de males arts, ans lo coneix per hom
en sa ley pacifich e de bona condicio.”
75 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v–r: “… quella dita testimoni ha e te mal en

los peus … e per guarir del dit mal ha cercat diverses metges e medecines, jatsia no sia
guarida del dit mal. Et veent ella dita testimoni que no podia guarir, hoy dir que un
juheu havia en Valencia al qual deyen maestre Samuel de Granada e que aquell sabia
molt e moltes coses e que per ventura aquell li daria bon recapte, e tantost ella dita
testimoni per cercar sanitat ana e troba lo dit juheu.”
76 The testimony of Joan Ysern (ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v): “… veya ell

dit [testimoni] que alcunes persones avents alcunes dolors venien al dit maestre Samuel
per demanarli si sabia alcunes coses per aguarirne … que a vegades veya venir diverses
dones e sovent a casa del dit maestre Samuel e venien a sa muller per haver alcunes
  . 

Samuel’s shrewd manipulation and assuaging of the frustration of Gil

Blay has already been discussed.77 His dealings with the Old Christian
student Nicolau Millot provide further insight into his modus operandi.
Nicolau went to Samuel believing that the Jew could identify the man
who had stolen his coat of mail through reading certain verses in a
psalter.78 Samuel obliged the student, and when asked if a specific
individual had committed the theft, Samuel replied, “no … someone
else did it.” With this ambiguous response Samuel avoided identifying
the thief himself while satisfying Nicolau and preventing him from
possibly making erroneous accusations.79
Nicolau then beseeched Samuel to cast a spell so that his girlfriend,
whom he suspected of infidelity, could not sleep with another man. In
contrast to his performance for the impotent Gil Blay, for whom he
played to the hilt the role of Jewish magician so that Blay could endure
his condition with the comforting illusion that he was the victim of
sorcery, Samuel decided to give Nicolau some sound advice, the kind
that a wise, old uncle might give to his nephew. “Nicolau my friend,”
said Samuel, “Were God to help me, I don’t believe that such things
could be done, nor, if God were to help me, would I do them. And so

olletes de pelaments e alcuns affayts. Et la muller del dit maestre Samuel a vegades ella
mateixa les pelava.”
77 Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, , points out that rabbis occasionally permitted

magical cures and incantations, not because of their direct effect on illness but because
they set the patient’s mind at ease. Although I think that Samuel of Granada believed in
the efficacy of at least some forms of magic, for medical and other purposes, I also think
that he was acutely aware of the psychological impact that his magical performances
had on his clients. Thus, in the case of Gil Blay, while Samuel probably believed that
his Solomonic incantations and medicine might effect a cure, he probably fabricated
the story of Blay’s rivals casting a Satanic spell upon him in order to make Blay feel
better.
78 Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, , notes the use of Psalm  for disclosing the

identity of a thief.
79 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : r–v: “E dix quell dit testimoni conex e ha

conegut al dit maestre Samuel de Granada de un any ença poch mes o menys açi en la
ciutat de Valencia en aquesta forma: ço es que a ell dit testimoni fou furtada una cota
de malla e per aquesta raho com ell hagues entes a dir quell dit maestre Samuel sabia
legir uns vesors del saltiri ab que podia hom saber quin havia furtat, ana a casa del dit
maestre Samuel e pregal affectuosament quell dignes fer per manera quell dit testimoni
sabes qui li havia furtada la dita cota de malla. Et lo dit mestre Samuel a pregaries dell
dit testimoni legi certs vesos del saltiri, los quals tenia scrits en un rotol de pergami,
e nomenats per ell dit testimoni alcuns en los quals havia sospita. Et lo dit maestre
Samuel com ha acabat de legir los dits vesos e dita una oracio, lladonchs nomena un
de aquells qui ell dit testimoni li havia primer nomenats en los quals havia sospita, pero
no fou veritat que aquell hagues furtada la dita cota car un altre ho havia feyt.”
        

I ask you not to believe in such things. Your whole problem is jealousy.
Just let that woman be, let her do what she wants, and don’t worry
about a thing.”80 Samuel could not cure Blay’s impotence; neither
he nor Nicolau could stop the girlfriend from sleeping around if she
wanted to, and Nicolau, after all, would probably move on to another
girl and eventually marry. What Samuel did accomplish in both cases,
through the application of magic or worldly wisdom, was to provide his
clients with some psychological relief.
In the city of Valencia, circa , there was yet a place for Jews,
as long as they proved themselves useful. And this “Master Samuel,”
the healer, certainly did. That Gil Blay and Nicolau Millot were willing
to turn to Samuel with their most intimate problems—impotence and
an unfaithful lover, the sorts of problems that crushed the self-esteem
of the Valencian male and dishonored him before his fellows—suggests
something more about the role that a Jew like Samuel could play. In this
agonistic society where Christians of all social classes frequently traded
insults and blows in a constant jockeying for position, a Jew, excluded
from such social competition by virtue of his faith, could appear as a
kind of disinterested confidant and advisor.81 It was enough for him to
be a good man—or “a Jew” but “not a bad man” as some witnesses
put it.
It is unlikely that the Dominican inquisitor ever got his hands on
Samuel of Granada. There simply was not enough damning evidence
against Samuel himself for the royal prosecutor or anyone else to have
made a case against him. The bailiff general, the hardheaded guardian
of the royal patrimony and the king’s interests, was not likely to have
released a Jew to an ecclesiastical court on such flimsy charges.82 Fur-

80 ARV: B Procesos, Letra P, : v–r: “Encara dix mes ell dit testimoni que

com ell tingues una fembra per amigua e hagues oppinio que aquella se jagues ab un
altre hom, ana altra vegada al dit maestre Samuel e pregal molt que si ell en alcuna
manera podia fer que li ligas la dita fembra que no pogues jaure ab altra persona sinon
ab ell dit testimoni que lin faria gran plaer. Et lladonchs lo dit maestre Samuel dix a
ell dit testimoni tals o semblants paraules: ‘En Nicolau, amich, si deu me ajut yo no
creu que semblants coses se puxen fer ne yo si deu me ajut non se fer. Et axi prech vos
que no creguau semblants coses e tot quant mal vos havets tot es çels. Et axi lexats star
aquexa fembra e lexatsli fer a sa guisa e no curets de res.”’
81 I have been investigating social competition and violence within the Christian,

Muslim, and Jewish communities of late medieval Valencia and their distinctive honor
cultures. My general comments are based on wide reading in archival sources.
82 In the kingdom of Valencia secular magistrates like the bailiff general sometimes

demonstrated a remarkable respect for due process of law, even in the case of runaway
Muslim slaves. See Mark D. Meyerson, “Slavery and Solidarity: Mudejars and Foreign
  . 

thermore, the new king, Alfonso the Magnanimous (–), was

much more favorable to Jewish interests than his father Fernando, who
had in any case been partial to Samuel.83
Even the city fathers, notwithstanding their anxiety about the sins of
the citizenry and divine wrath, would not necessarily have supported
the Inquisition in its efforts to try Samuel. They were well aware that,
although the Inquisition existed for the righteous cause of eradicating
heresy, individual inquisitors had a tendency to cast their net too widely
and prosecute the innocent. In – urban officials, incensed by
Nicolau Eimeric’s unbridled persecution of local Llullists and Beguines,
had successfully striven for the deposition of the inquisitor, and as
recently as  they had raised questions about the procedures of the
Dominican inquisitor Francesc Sala against conversos and other Chris-
tians.84 They probably would have advised the bailiff general to proceed
with circumspection.

Muslim Captives in the Kingdom of Valencia,” Medieval Encounters,  (), , –
; and especially the Ph.D. dissertation of my student Debra Blumenthal, “Imple-
ments of Labor, Instruments of Honor: Muslim, Eastern, and Black African Slaves in
Fifteenth-Century Valencia” (University of Toronto, ).
83 María Rosa Jiménez Jiménez, “La política judaizante de Alfonso V a la luz de las

concesiones otorgadas en  a la aljama de Murviedro,” IV Congreso de Historia de la

Corona de Aragón (Palma de Mallorca, ), –, conveys the basic idea.
84 For the confrontation between the municipality of Valencia and Eimeric, see

Jaume de Puig i Oliver, “El procés dels lul.listes valencians contra Nicolau Eimeric
en el marc del Cisma d’Occident,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, 
(), –; and José Hinojosa Montalvo, Pedro López Elum, and Mateu Rodrigo
Lizondo, “Relaciones de la Ciudad de Valencia con el Pontificado durante el Cisma
de Occidente (–): Regesta de los fondos del Archivo Municipal,” Boletín de
la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura,  (), –, which summarizes the contents
of a number of interesting letters pertinent to the Eimeric affair. Relations between
the municipality and the inquisitor Francesc Sala were uneven. On  November 
the jurats wrote to Pope Benedict XIII asking that he restrain Sala, who had been
unduly vexing local conversos (ARV: LM g–: r–v). One month later, however,
they asked the pope not to intervene, since Sala had appeared before them with
records of his processus against the neophytes, which a law professor, Guillem Çaera,
was about to examine (ARV: LM g–: v–r). Sala apparently behaved himself
for a while, but in  he was again abusing his authority, to such a degree that he was
bringing the local Dominican convent into disrepute and causing many benefactors
to cease patronizing the Order. Of the local convent the jurats wrote: “Sustinet enim
onus eorum humeris excessuum de fratre Francisco Sale, inquisitore heretice pravitatis,
vexante nimie neophitos et alios quos, exhigente justicia, post bonorum innocentum
distraccionem non modicam, habuit absolvere ut innoxios christianos; novum etenim
insolitum catholica patitur civitas nostra insimul cum fratrum predicatorum conventu”
(ARV: LM g–: v–r [ June ]; and r–v for a similar letter to the master
general of the Dominicans).
        

Samuel’s dossier nonetheless contained much disturbing evidence

about Christian belief in and practice of magic, and the close con-
tact of Old and New Christians with Jews. But this is precisely the
point. A Jew such as Samuel of Granada could survive and thrive in
“Jew-free” Valencia because of the inconsistencies between the Chris-
tian façade that the municipality constructed and the unseemly realities
that lay beneath, between the sermons that Vicent Ferrer and other fri-
ars preached and what Christians actually did, and between the rigidly
Catholic society the inquisitors endeavored to create and what the
monarchs and many of their Christian subjects were prepared to per-
mit. The city of Valencia still had a large Muslim quarter, brothels, and
gambling dens, and within its own jurisdiction the town of Morvedre,
with a growing Jewish community. Outside of Valencia’s jurisdiction,
other smaller Jewish communities hung on and a very large Muslim
population resided on the lands of the seigneurs, who constituted the
main counterbalance to the political and economic weight of the capi-
tal city.85 The inquisitors had their work cut out for them.
If Samuel of Granada did appear before the inquisitorial tribunal,
he must not have been sentenced too harshly. For by January 
he was receiving remuneration from the royal court of Navarre.86 By
that time Alfonso the Magnanimous had begun to ease the pressure
on the Jews that his father had applied. Alfonso and his successor
Juan II would give the Jews, Muslims, and conversos of the kingdom
several decades of reprieve, time enough for the Jews to recreate, under
different conditions, a vital and prosperous community life. But the
inquisitors would have their day in court again and ultimately their
way with the kingdom.

85 Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, treats the history of Morvedre and its Jews under

Valencia’s jurisdiction and the reasons for the remarkable expansion of Morvedre’s Jew-
ish community over the course of the fifteenth century. For useful data on the kingdom’s
Jewish communities in the fifteenth century, see Hinojosa, Jews; and J.R. Magdalena
Nom de Déu and J. Doñate Sebastià, Three Jewish Communities in Medieval Valencia: Castel-
lón de la Plana, Burriana, Villarreal (Jerusalem, ); and for the Muslims in this period,
Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexis-
tence and Crusade (Berkeley, ).
86 Joseph Jacobs, An Inquiry into the Sources of the History of the Jews in Spain (New York,

), , transcribes the relevant entry from the Archivo de Comptos (Pamplona),
cajon , no.  ( January ): “Ordena que el Maestro Samuel de Granada que
havia venido de su Reyno de Tierras estrañas por algunas cosas que le havia mandado
tenga para su mantenimiento  fl. en cada mes.”
This page intentionally left blank
 LEONARDO DATI’S SERMON
ON THE CIRCUMCISION OF JESUS (1417)

T M. I

Leonardo Dati’s name is unlikely to be well known to students of

Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. He is better known either for the financial relief he
provided to his brother, the Florentine merchant and diarist Goro Dati,
or for his role as the lone papal apologist at the Council of Constance
(–).1 His sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus,
delivered to that council on the first day of , does have a papalist
message; but it can be used to explore Christian ideas about a central
Jewish rite as they appear outside of a polemical context.
When Dati, the Dominican master general,2 rose to preach on the
Feast of the Circumcision, the assembled fathers of the Council of Con-
stance may have expected him to speak about Peter and the papacy,
since he already had preached two sermons of this sort in , one
at the beginning of Lent (March ) and one on the Feast of Francis of
Assisi (October ).3 The latter even inspired a polemical exchange in
the form of memoranda.4 Dati did not disappoint his hearers, address-
ing Paul’s rebuke of Peter for refusing, under pressure, to eat with uncir-
cumcised converts (Gal :–).5 Nonetheless, the theme of the sermon

1 See, respectively, Gene Brucker, Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of

Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati (New York, ), –, , , , and Brian
Tierney, “‘Divided Sovereignty’ at Constance: The Problem of Medieval and Early
Modern Political Theory,” Annuarium historiae conciliorum,  (), –. For Dati’s
works, see Thomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi,  vols. (Roma,
), .–.
2 On Dati as master general, see Daniel A. Mortier, Histoire des maîtres généraux de

l’Ordre des frères précheurs,  vols. (Paris, ), .–; Paolo Viti, “Dati, Leonardo,” in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol.  (Roma, ), –.
3 For a poor edition of the former, see Christian W. Walch, Monimenta medii aevi

(Göttingen, –; London, ), vol. , pt. , pp. –. An edition of the latter
sermon is being prepared by Chris L. Nighman and the author.
4 Acta concilii Constantiensis, ed. Heinrich Finke et al. (Münster, –), .–

.
5 For a conciliarist use of this text, see Paul Tschackert, Peter von Ailli (Gotha, ),

pp. []–[]. See also the sermon on Peter and Paul delivered at the Council of Basel
by Thomas de Courcelles in Vat. Palat. lat.  fol. v.
  . 

was Luke’s account of the circumcision of Jesus, drawn from the festal
lectionary. In particular, he chose to emphasize the passage, “After eight
days were accomplished, that the child should be circumcised” (Luke
:), which was open to symbolic interpretations of the number eight,
some derived from the Platonist tradition, and to theological reflections
of the place of circumcision in the history of salvation.
The quotation from Luke appears in the protheme of the sermon,
linked to an explanation of the nature of the boy to be circumcised:
“Here, then, is the Son of God, Who was born in our flesh, Who was
circumcised on the eighth day, to Whom alone, according to Daniel’s
prophecy, it is given to open the sealed book of mysteries …”6 Later
in the protheme, the boy is identified instead with humanity, which
is purified in baptism for the circumcision of vices.7 A more symbolic
reading, however, can be found shortly before that passage in a refer-
ence to Mary as “the advocate of our glorification … on the eighth
[day], that is, of those arising [from the dead].”8 This combination of
incarnational theology, moral message, and historical periodization is
typical of the rest of the sermon.
The body of the sermon, following a restatement of the theme,
begins with three questions concerning circumcision followed by brief
answers. The first is why that rite was conferred. A related question,
regarding why this remedy was not given at the beginning, but only
“after eight days,” is added. Dati, following Paul (Gal :–), speaks
only to the latter point, saying that the fullness of time had not yet
come. The second question concerns what determines the fullness of
time, and Dati points to the incarnation. The third question posed, and
the most interesting, is why Christ had to be under the law. Dati’s reply,
again borrowed from Paul, is that he had to be under the law in order
to redeem those who are under it.9
A full exposition of the nature of circumcision, “an expression of
sacramental signs,” follows, pointing—among other things—to the

6 Typescript edition, p. , “Hic est enim Dei filius qui in carne nostra natus est,

qui octaua die circumcisus est, cui soli, secundum Danielis prophetiam, est datum
misteriorum librum aperire signatum …”
7 Typescript, p. , “… ut scilicet circumcideretur puer, homo scilicet, baptismate

purus circumcisione uiciorum, ut scribit Bernardus in sermone de eius purificacione.”

8 Typescript, p. , “Ob hoc aduocata glorificacionis nostre data est et sancte con-

sequende rei Postquam scilicet consumati sunt dies octo in octaua scilicet resurgencium, ut
scribit Augustinus in sermone de eius in celum assumpcione.”
9 Typescript, pp. –.
  ’       

male member, “the member through which the original infection is

transmitted,”10 as the active principle in the perpetuation of original
sin. Thus, Dati says, quoting extensively from Thomas Aquinas, it had
to suffer pain to evitate concupiscence, which helps perpetuate the cycle
of infection, person corrupting nature and nature corrupting person.
Furthermore, the shedding of blood in the rite was a sign of Christ’s
passion.11 And so circumcision was given as a sign of God’s fidelity, a
sacramental promise of deliverance from sin.
It is this sacramental relationship that ties the subsidiary question,
that of the fullness of time, into a grander historical scheme. The rite
of circumcision was revealed to Abraham in the third age, which was
symbolic of the Trinity but also a time when faith in redemption from
sin was increasing in the world. (The first age, after the fall, and the
second, after the flood, were not so rich in faith.)12
The nature of circumcision as a sacrament of the old law, pointing
toward Christ, required that it cease, with other ceremonial and legal
precepts, once the Messiah had come. The sacraments of the old
law once were of saving value, but, under the law of baptism, they
have become deathtraps.13 This is the hook from which Dati hangs his
discussion of Peter and Paul, which lies outside the focus of this paper.14
Returning to the theme, Dati focuses on the second question, that of

10 Typescript, p. , “… nam primo quantum ad membrum per quod originalis

transfunditur infectio.” For Dati’s explanation, based on Aristotle as commented by

Albert the Great, of man as the active principle and woman as the passive source
of matter for conception, see Typescript, pp. –, “Sed a uiro, uelut a principio
actiuo, infectio transfunditur, in qua eciam proprie fundatur ratio originalis peccati
…” [p. ]. For the Aristotelian viewpoint and its reception, see Ian Maclean, The
Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge, ), –. Dati also (Typescript, p. ) cited
the Summa theologiae to show that Adam, not just Eve, had to fall in order for original sin
to afflict humanity; see Summa theologiae (Ottawa, ), .–.
11 Typescript, pp. –. For Aquinas’s original text, in the commentary on the

Sentences, see Opera (Parma), vol. , pt. , p. . For the Angelic Doctor’s teachings
on the law and its rites, see, John Y.B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia, ),
–.
12 Typescript, pp. –, “Sic enim, secundum processum temporis, crescente fide

redemptionis a peccato, crescere debuit et signorum sacramentalium expressio …”

Thomas regarded circumcision and other rites of the old law as more reliable than
natural law as a means of salvation; see M. Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and
Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, ), –.
13 Typescript, p. , “Sacramenta omnia ueteris legis ac legalia esse terminata,

ita quod, sicut sub lege ueteri erant salutifera et de necessitate salutis, sic sub lege
baptismatis sunt dampnabilia et mortiefera utentibus eis, ut deducitur Act. xv c.”
14 Dati refers back to the sermon on Saint Francis and his “declaratory” document

in support of it; see Typescript, p. .

  . 

the timing of the establishment of the rite of circumcision. Here he

undertakes an examination of the symbolic meaning of the number
eight, which he ties to the eight “days” or ages of the world. The
eighth day, symbolized by the timing of circumcision, is the day of the
healing of sin’s infection and “of the renewal of the creature.”15 In this
instance, Dati ties the preceding ages to calamities, the murder of Abel,
the confusion of languages, the enslavement of Israel and its wandering
in the desert, the spread of idolatry, the destruction of the temple, the
vicissitudes of the true faith and, last, the death of all living, when the
world is cleansed by justice. Only on the eighth day do the dead rise,
and then the human being becomes a new creature.16
This symbolic interpretation of the number eight extends to Dati’s
reading of the moral message of the gospel text. He lightly touches
upon the literal sense, referring to Maimonides’ opinion that the child
could not safely undergo circumcision before the eighth day.17 Then his
sermon, founding itself on Macrobius and Boethius, and on Platonic
numerology, treats eight as the number of perfection.18 The message
here is one of purification and ascent. The seven days are associated
with the virtues, leading to perseverance, which permits the human
being to endure to the eighth day.19 Circumcision, in line with the
ideas stated above, receives its moral interpretation, involving reform
and the curbing of vice.20 The remainder of that passage, however, with
its reflections on the “deformation” of morals, especially through bad
leadership, belongs in a study of Dati’s ideas on reform and obedi-

15 Typescript, pp. –, “Octo dies legis dies octo seculi designant, quoniam, sicut

octaua die temporis, circumcisio a lege fieri iubebatur in carne. Ita dabatur intelligi
ut omni infeccioni que in septem precedentibus diebus seculi secundum processum
temporis homini ex peccato aduenerant circumcisio quedam spiritualis fieret in octaua
et inouacio creature.”
16 Typescript, p. . Dati’s ideas on the last days are mild compared to those of many

of his contemporaries; see Roberto Rusconi, L’attesa della fine: crisi della società, profezia ed
Apocalisse in Italia al tempo del grande scisma d’Occidente (–) (Roma, ). Although
the eight-day scheme had classical and patristic roots, Augustine had made the division
of history into six ages the most common historical framework in the West; see Richard
Landes, “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern
of Western Chronography – CE,” in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle
Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke et al. (Leuven, ), pp. –.
17 Typescript, p. .
18 Typescript, pp. –.
19 Typescript, pp. –.
20 Typescript, pp. –.
  ’       

ence.21 Dati, however, concludes this section of the sermon with another
mention of the circumcised boy as humanity, “renewed by the purity
of Christ’s glory,” with a risen body “spiritually circumcised of vices,”
sharing in the eighth day of those arising from the dead.22
Dati then returns to the question of Christ’s submission to the law.
Christ is described, like any other legislator, as bound to obey the law
“not of necessity but on account of fittingness.”23 Nonetheless, Jesus
obeyed the law “lest the Son should seem to loose the Father’s law.”24
Dati follows this discussion with an excursus on why a pope might
be bound by charity to resign his office if the situation required it.
He even refers to Celestine V as having set an example for this act.25
This act of renunciation is described by Dati as a “civil circumcision,”
much in the line of his moral message in this sermon.26 Concluding
his sermon, Dati applied his moral lesson to the Council of Constance,
which enjoyed the support of Sigismund, king of the Romans, in acting
where claimants to the papacy—and here he points to Benedict XIII,
although not by name—would not resign.27 Dati even proved able to
include his number symbolism in this sermon by noting that eight years
had passed since the Council of Pisa. It had ordained civil circumcision,
and John XXIII, “a boy of depraved morals,” had undergone it.28

21 Typescript, pp. –. Thomas M. Izbicki, “Reform and Obedience in Four

Conciliar Sermons by Leonardo Dati, O.P.,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Louis Pascoe, S.J., ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and
Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden: Brill, ), –.
22 Typescript, p. , “Nobis ergo circumcisis, Postquam consumati sunt dies octo, octaua

scilicet resurgencium, circumcidetur puer, homo scilicet, puritate Christi glorie innoua-
tus, quoniam tunc reformabit corpus humilitate nostre, configuratum corpori claritatis sue ad phil.
, humilitatis in quam nostre, idest illorum dumtaxat qui hic fuerunt a uiciis spiritualiter
circumcisi, nam omnes resurgemus, sed non omnes immutabuntur, prima ad cor. xv.”
23 Typescript, p.  “… leges quas in homines sanxit et ipse seruare decreuit non

necessitate sed congruitate.”

24 Typescript, p. , “Et ex hoc factum est ut ipse, coeternus patri et consubstantialis

filius, sub lege ex tempore factus, Postquam consumati sunt dies octo ut circumcideretur puer, ne
legem patris uideretur filius soluere, qui illam uenerat adimplere, eo testante Mt [:].”
25 Typescript, p. .
26 Typescript, p. , “Ex quo eciam Christi facto apud theologos sequi uidetur

quod papa debet pocius circumcisionem sui officii ciuilem et libere uelle accipere
quam scandalum in ecclesia et manifestum plebis malum dampnabiliter introducere,
maximeque si est dubitatus, ut eciam super capitulo Nisi cum pridem de renunciatione
[X ..] canoniste potiores annotauerunt.” On the resignation of the pope, see John
R. Eastman, Papal Abdication in Later Medieval Thought (Lewiston, N.Y., ).
27 Typescript, pp. –.
28 Typescript, p. , “… rationabiliter inferre habemus quod operatione serenissimi

regis nostri factum est quod Postquam consumati sunt dies octo ut circumcideretur puer, quoniam
  . 

Action against another such boy, Benedict, was pending.29 It was in

this way that the council was observing the law of circumcision, so that
those under the law could be redeemed.30
Throughout this sermon Dati presumes certain things, that circum-
cision once was valid, both as a sacrament of the law and as a sign of
future redemption, that the coming of Christ left the rite without fur-
ther sacramental value, in fact with negative results, and that its only
present place was in moral discourse, signifying the curbing of con-
cupiscence and the removal of leaders who failed to do the work of
Christ. Most of these points could be found readily enough in the work
of Thomas Aquinas and other mainstream theologians, and this is the
academic theology that Dati took into the pulpit.
It remains, however, to be determined how typical Dati’s sermon for
the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus is and to what extent it can be
used to gauge the value of such sermons for the study of the attitudes of
the friars and other late medieval preachers toward the Jews.
Another text worth treating, and based on the same excerpt from
Luke’s gospel, is a sermon of Jean Gerson, delivered in Paris in .31
This sermon speaks of invoking Mary so that Jesus, himself circum-
cised, might circumcise the ears of the mind of the preacher, Gerson
himself.32 The preacher is at pains, when dealing with the number
eight, to distance himself from any reference to the rites of the Gentiles,
even while invoking the image of bifrons Janus, namesake of the month
of January, giving way to the true God.33 Like Dati, Gerson speaks of
the divine lawgiver submitting to the law by his own choice.34 After
mentioning the eight Beatitudes, the preacher settles into a discussion of
circumcision itself. To Gerson, Jesus was circumcised in order to avoid
scandalizing the Jews or seeming to reprove the law, for the consumma-
tion of which he had come into the world.35 Aside from this theological
reply, the sermon speaks of the moral meanings of circumcision, painful

postquam consumati sunt anni octo a concilio Pisano citra in quo hec ciuilis circumcisio
ordinata est circumcisus est puer unus, hic Iohannes, scilicet, olim xxiii, puer certe
moribus prauis.”
29 Typescript, p. .
30 Typescript, p. .
31 Jean Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris, ), .xiv.
32 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, ..
33 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, ..
34 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, ..
35 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, .–.
  ’       

but potent, warding against illicit pleasure and warning against exces-
sive preoccupation with things of the flesh.36 The remainder of the text
is concerned with the name of Jesus, invoking it for aid and in triumph.
Gerson, near the end of the sermon, describes himself as assailed by
the vices, some of them the same vices against which he had spoken
of being circumcised. And then he cries out: “… I say I have no king
except You, Lord Jesus. Come, therefore, Lord, disperse them in Your
strength [virtus]; and You will reign in me, because You are my king and
my God.”37 Here again we are confronted with circumcision described
as once potent but now consummated in Christ, as of no continuing
sacramental value but teaching a moral lesson, linking pain to deliver-
ance from evil.
A brief glance at some earlier sermons by friars on the Feast of the
Circumcision of Jesus will have to suffice.38 Bonaventure spoke of cir-
cumcision as instituted “for a time and for a place.” Speaking of its
time, he described it as instituted with Abraham, fulfilled by Christ and
now prohibited. Preaching on a text from Galatians [:], this Fran-
ciscan luminary spoke of neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mat-
tering in the time of grace and of humanity freed from servitude to the
law.39 He also preached on the circumcision of the heart, which requires
spiritual renewal: “This spiritual renewal, however, begins from seven-
fold grace and is consummated in deiform glory.”40 Eight days, in
this sermon, reflect the removal of guilt and punishment due to sin,
replaced by a single glory and seven-fold grace.41 In another sermon,
Bonaventure, preaching on Luke’s account of the circumcision of Jesus,
affirmed that Jesus wished to be circumcised, although he was not obli-
gated to do so.42 In others, he preached on various spiritual meanings
of the eight days.43
Albert the Great, preaching on Luke’s text, spoke of the way in
which the blood shed in circumcision signified Christ’s saving effusion

36 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, .–.

37 Gerson, Oeuvres complètes, ..
38 None of the texts used here contains exempla. Since many of these made mention

of Jews, their absence may make these sermons seem more neutral in tone than they
were in the pulpit; see Joan Y. Gregg, Devils, Women and Jews: Reflections of the Other in
Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, N.Y., ), –.
39 Opera omnia (Quaracchi, ), .–.
40 Opera omnia, ..
41 Opera omnia, ..
42 Opera omnia, ..
43 Opera omnia, ..
  . 

of blood. He also spoke of the circumcision of the body’s senses to keep

them from all varieties of sin.44 In another sermon he spoke of the
eight days of the week, including their spiritual meaning. These days
culminate in the seventh day of rest and the eighth day of glory. On the
eighth day, “we will be liberated from all misery and punishments by
a glorious circumcision; and we will be called Jesus, that is, saved and
freed from all tribulations.”45
Jacobus de Voragine, in The Golden Legend, celebrates the same feast
as commemorating the first time in which Jesus shed his blood for all
humanity. He also showed himself to be fully human and set an exam-
ple for the work of purification. In a more polemical mode, Jacobus
described Jesus, by allowing himself to be circumcised, as taking away
from the Jews “any excuse for their actions toward Him.” He also
showed how he came not just to abolish the law but “to complete and
to fulfill it.”46
These are only a few of the texts which might be investigated to show
how the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, as represented by sermons
and Jacobus’s hagiographic work in support of preaching, reveal com-
mon Christian suppositions about circumcision and—by extension—
the Jews. Circumcision, as in Dati’s sermon, is fulfilled and thus no
longer valid. Its chief role, except in showing the Jews that it points to
Jesus, is moral, preaching the circumcision of hearts and minds. Any
other use of it was seen as obsolete and deathdealing, thus worthy of
condemnation.

44 Opera omnia (Paris, ), .–.

45 Opera omnia, .–.
46 The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger

(New York, ), –. Jacobus mentions the cult of Janus among other pagan
practices in The Golden Legend, p. .
 ALFONSO DE ESPINA ON THE MOSAIC LAW

S J. MM, OFM C.

Although Christians appealed to reason (philosophy), morals and his-

tory in their arguments against Jews, much of Christian anti-Jewish
polemical literature of the Middle Ages focused on biblical and theo-
logical issues between Jews and Christians. Since theology was primar-
ily shaped by the study of the Bible, and the Hebrew Scriptures were
the common biblical text between the two faith communities, the bat-
tleground was the sacred page Christians call the Old Testament. If
Christians were to prove to the Jews that the Christian doctrines of the
messiahship and divinity of Jesus Christ were the truth, that the new
covenant had replaced the Mosaic law, and that salvation was exclu-
sively obtained by faith in Jesus Christ, they had to do so primarily
from the Hebrew Scriptures.
One of the central issues of the Christian-Jewish debate of the early
church and Middle Ages was the observance or abrogation of Mosaic
law. It is no different today. For example, the vast amount of literature
devoted to Paul’s approach to the Mosaic law in the last ten years
reveals that it is a problem that still seeks a definitive solution.1 It
was an issue that appeared in many medieval theological treatises and
summae, and found a prominent place in virtually every Christian anti-
Jewish text in the Middle Ages.2 It was therefore not strange that
the Franciscan preacher and writer Alfonso de Espina would devote
many pages of his mid fifteenth-century text, the Fortalitium Fidei, to the
subject of the Mosaic law.
Alfonso takes up the issue of the Mosaic law in both Books I and III
of the Fortalitium Fidei. Almost one half of Book I ( folio pages out

1 For example, Terrance Callan, “Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People,” in Within

Context: Essays on Jews and Judaism in the New Testament, ed. David P. Efroymson, Eugene
J. Fisher, and Leon Klenicki (Collegeville, ), –; and Donald A. Hagner,
“Paul’s Quarrel with Judaism,” in Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity: Issues of Polemic and
Faith, ed. Craig A. Evans and Donald A. Hagner (Minneapolis, ), –.
2 For example, on Thomas Aquinas’s approach to the Mosaic law, see John Hood,

Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia, ). See also Kenneth Stow’s discussion of exegesis
in his Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, ), –,
and, more recently, Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jews in Medieval
Christianity (Berkeley, ).
  . ,  .

of ) and a number of the theological arguments in Book III (five

arguments in the Consideration Four, making up  / folio pages)
are taken up with the issue of the Mosaic law.3 As we shall see, there
are no great innovations here; Alfonso was not an original thinker,
but a master at gathering and synthesizing material for his Christian
audience. The importance of his work, therefore, is in the quantity
of theological data he has gathered and presents to his readers in the
Fortalitium Fidei.

Book I

In Book I, after a discussion about the spiritual armor all Christians

need in their fight against the enemies of the church and a considera-
tion about preachers and their sermons in this war, Alfonso concerned
himself (the third and last section, which constitutes the bulk of Book
I) with the issues of the Mosaic law (and the messiahship of Jesus of
Nazareth). Alfonso begins his discussion about the Mosaic law by argu-
ing that faith in Jesus Christ is actually older, more stable, noble, perfect
and useful than the Mosaic law. For example, in his argument that faith
in Jesus Christ is older than the Mosaic law, Alfonso presents two rea-
sons. First, he points out that Abraham was justified by faith before
his circumcision, which the Apostle Paul had previously declared in
Galatians . Not only was Abraham justified by faith before the arrival
of the Mosaic law, but also Abel, Enoch, Jacob, Joseph and Moses
were justified without the law, as stated in Hebrews . Secondly, four
promises were given to Abraham by God which find their fulfillment
in Christ: numerous descendants, the possession of the promised land,
an offspring and the blessing of all people through Abraham. Concern-
ing Abraham’s descendants, once again Alfonso appeals to Galatians ,
where Paul states: “There were promises spoken to Abraham and to
his descendant. Scripture does not say: ‘and to your descendants’ [in
seminibus], as if it applied to many, but as if it applied only to one, ‘and
to your descendant’ [in semini tuo], that is, to Christ.” Alfonso concludes

3 This constitutes pages XI to XXV and XXXIV to XLII of the Anton Koberger

incunabula edition (Nüremberg, ) of the Fortalitium Fidei. There are a few other
places in Book III where Alfonso addresses the Mosaic law; for example, in the eighth
chapter of Book III, Alfonso deals with Jewish falsities in regard to the Mosiac law and
the prophets (“Quartus passus est de fatuitatibus Judeorum contra Legem Mosaicam et
contra prophetas”).
        

that the only one to whom these promises could be directed is Jesus
Christ, who was a blessing not only for the Jews but also for all peoples
(omnes gentes).
Alfonso moves on to argue that the Mosaic law is no longer a valid
law for Jews to observe but it actually ceased to be law with the coming
of Jesus Christ. Since the divinely intended purpose of the law of Moses
was to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, God chose the Jews
as a special people and gave to them the law, commandments and
sacraments, until the time of correction arrived (cf. Heb ). But the
other peoples of the earth were given the natural law which was not
written in tablets of stone nor in pages of papyrus or parchment but
was written in their hearts (cf.  Cor ). With the arrival of the new
divine law that Christ writes in the hearts of all believers, Jews and
Gentiles alike, the law of Moses lost its purpose. The natural law and
divine law are now unified under the new law of Christ. The Mosaic
law has been fulfilled (Matt ), and those who continue to observe it are
actually working against the divine will and therefore continue day and
night to be enemies of God.
Next, Alfonso states that the continued practice of circumcision has
put the Jews under the wrath of God and made them an abomination
before God. The Jews claim that circumcision continues to be an ever-
lasting sign of the eternal covenant between God and the Jews given
to Abraham in Genesis. However, Alfonso believes that the Jews are
mistaken when they claim that this was to be an eternal practice. He
finds a parallel use of the term sempiternum which was used in Exodus
 with reference to the observance of the feast of Passover, which the
Jews say means that they were to observe this feast perpetually (in eter-
num): “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all generations
shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.”
However, Alfonso points out that Jeremiah stated at a later date that
“the Days are coming, say the Lord, when they shall no longer say, ‘As
the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt,”’
which means that when “those days” arrive, the Passover will no longer
be observed. The same goes with circumcision, which was to last only
a period of time until the coming of the Christ, as a vigil lasts only until
the time of the arrival date of a feast. Circumcision was intended, there-
fore, to be simply a symbol of a vigil or period of preparation for the
coming of Christ and baptism (which is the maximum festum). Further-
more, just as property is limited by two boundaries, so also circumcision
was limited between Abraham and Christ, since Christ takes the role of
  . ,  .

God in the covenant between God and Abraham (pactum inter me et te of

Genesis ). Since the end of the Mosaic law has come in the arrival of
Christ, the practice of circumcision should have come to an end also.
The Jews who continue to circumcise are living in the greatest wrong
(magna iniuria) and therefore they live in the wrath and hatred of God.
In the following section, Alfonso turns his attention toward the pos-
itive use of the Old Testament whereby Christians, who are now liv-
ing in the period of grace/fulfillment and the evangelical law, can find
positive value in the things that were written in the time of “prefigure-
ment” and the Mosaic law. All things that happened in the Old Testa-
ment are examples (or types) for Christian instruction, as the Apostle
Paul declares in  Corinthians ; therefore in the Old Testament the
main Christian truth claims are prefigured or foretold. These include
the Trinity, the birth, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
and all seven sacraments. This is followed by an exposition on how
twelve vices (pride, envy, avarice, guile, etc.), to be corrected in the age
of grace, were foretold in the Old Testament. Implied in this exposition
is the judgment that those presently living according to the Mosaic law
are hopelessly stuck in the “prefigurement” stage of salvation history
and are thus not able to enjoy all that is offered to true believers in
this period of the fullness of grace which Christ inaugurated with his
arrival.

The Mosaic Law in Messianic Doctrine

In the last section of Book I—composed of twelve “treasuries”—Alfon-
so is concerned with showing how all the things written in the Old
Testament about the coming Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The
Third Treasury is concerned with the prophetic belief that the true
Messiah was to be like Moses in giving a law based on the passage from
Deuteronomy :: “I will raise up for them a prophet, like you from
among their kinsmen.” The argument is divided into four parts, the
first of which asks the question: How was Moses unique in giving a law?
Alfonso responds by showing how other lawgivers, like Theodosius and
Justinian, were similar to Moses in giving (human) laws, but points out
that there are two other types of law: the law of nature and the divine
law.4 Moses was like no other in that he gave a divine law. Alfonso then

4 Alfonso derives this point from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.

        

shows how Jesus fulfilled the prophecy contained in Deuteronomy 

about the rise of “another Moses”:
If, therefore, Moses was unique in giving a divine law, and if only “the
prophet to be raised up from the midst” was to be made “like him” in
that in which he was unique, it follows that this prophet was to give a
divine law, which was fulfilled only in the case of Jesus Christ, our Savior,
who gave the gospel law, which is a divine law and a new law, just as
Moses gave the divine, ancient law.5

The second part asks: Was Jesus, the true Messiah, to give another law
other than the law of Moses? Finding support for a positive response
to this question in certain passages of Scripture and rabbinical com-
mentaries, Alfonso proves that, according to Jewish belief, another law
was to be established with the arrival of the Messiah.6 This is based
on the interpretation of three verses from the Old Testament, the first
of which is Isaiah :: “The law shall come forth from Zion, and the
word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Clearly Isaiah meant that the law
of Moses came forth from Mount Zion, and “the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem” refers to the word of Jesus and his disciples who began
the word of preaching in Jerusalem, and continued to make public the
word throughout the whole world. A review of Jewish writings on this
theme—from the Midrash on the Psalms and the Song of Songs—
shows that the Jews knew that there were two laws to be given in the
course of history, one by Moses and the other by the Messiah. Alfonso
quotes from the Midrash on the Song of Songs:
From ancient times then, Moses was teaching them the law, and those
who were learning utterly forgot [it]. And they said: “As Moses is mortal
and a transient, thus his doctrine is passing by us.” And the Rabbi said,
“Would that God had wanted to be shown to us a second time, and now
‘would that he kiss me with the kisses of the mouth’ [Song :], such
that his teaching might be reaffirmed in our hearts.” And Moses said to
them, “This cannot be now, but it will be in the time of the Messiah,”

5 “Si igitur Moyses id dando legem divinam fuit singularis et solus in illo quo sin-

gularis, fuit propheta suscitaturus de medio debebat ei assimilari, sequitur quod ille
propheta debebat dare legem divinam, quod solum impletum est in Jesu Christo salva-
tore nostro, qui dedit legem evangelicam, que lex divina est et nova, sicut Moyses dedit
legem divinam antiquam” (p. XXXVvb). The page numbers given in parentheses—
and further citations from the text—refer to the Anton Koberger edition of the Fortali-
tium Fidei.
6 Our author draws upon many Christian anti-Judaic polemical texts for this argu-

ment, especially the Acta of the Tortosa Disputation, the Pugio Fidei of Ramon Martí,
the Postillae of Nicholas de Lyra, and the Contra Judaeos of Gerónimo de Santa Fé.
  . ,  .

because it is written thusly: ‘I will give my law in their bowels, and I will
write it in their hearts’ (Jeremiah [:]).7

This second law was the law David was requesting in Psalm ::
“Instruct me, O Lord, in the way of your statutes [iustificationum], that I
may exactly observe them always.” This second scriptural witness tes-
tifies to the fact that this law David was requesting was not the law of
Moses, because this law was already promulgated. David says “the way
of your statutes [iustificationum]”; this law has to belong to the true Mes-
siah, Jesus of Nazareth, because only his law justifies (iustificat). Further-
more, Alfonso makes the point that sacrifices were not established with
the law, as the Lord says: “I did not speak to your fathers in the day
that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter
of burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Jer :). Alfonso brings forth Rabbi
Moses the Egyptian (Maimonides),8 who clarifies this point by stating:
“These sacrifices were only given so that they would withdraw from the
sacrifices of idols, and as a sign of this, they were not given to the peo-
ple until afterwards when the people turned to idolatry by adoring the
molten calf.”9 These sacrifices, therefore, were intended by God only to
divert the people from worshipping idols and, as such, they were never
actually pleasing to God.

7 “Ex illo tunc docebat eos Moyses legem, et qui addiscebant oblivioni tradebant,

et dixerunt, sicut Moyses est carnalis et transiens sic doctrina sua transit a nobis, et
dixerunt Rabi, utinam vellet Deus secundo ostendi nobis et iam oscularetur nos osculis oris
sui taliter quod sua doctrina refirmaretur in cordibus nostris, et dixit eis Moyses hoc
non potest esse modo, sed in tempore messie erit, quia sic scriptum est Hiere xxxi,
dabo legem meam in visceribus eorum et in cordibus eorum scribam eam” (p. XXXVra). Benzion
Netanyahu points out that the sources for this quote are Gerónimo de Santa Fé, Contra
Judeos, and the Acta of the Tortosa Disputation. See Benzion Netanyahu, “Alonso de
Espina: Was He a New Christian?” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research,
 (),  n. c.
8 Netanyahu (“Alonso de Espina,” p.  n. d) states that the sources for this section

of the argument are Gerónimo de Santa Fé’s Contra Judeos, the Acta of Tortosa, and the
Pugio Fidei.
9 “Ista sacrificia non fuerunt data nisi ut retraherentur a sacrificiis idolorum, et in

signum huius non fuerunt data populo nisi postquam populus ad idolatriam declinavit
vitulum conflatilem adorando” (p. XXXVra–b). Alfonso states that this passage is from
Maimonides, although it actually is derived from Rashi. Herman Hailperin states that
Rashi, in his commentary on this verse, “teaches that the Prophet historically and
literally refers to Exodus :, and that the Prophet wishes to say: At that moment I
did not ask for sacrifices as a condition of My choice—I did not utter a single word
about them—but only for the moral obedience towards Me and the Commandments
which I was then to announce to you. Have you kept them?” Nicholas of Lyra followed
Rashi in showing that “God did not command the Israelites in the day that they were
        

Furthermore, the sacrifices did not justify the sinner before the eyes
of God, “because with their offering, the offering of the priest was
always required, [which] is clear in Leviticus.”10 This is confirmed by
another point:
But what if the priest was evil and unworthy—would he be heard by
God? Certainly the whole sacrifice guaranteed nothing, and this is what
the theological teachers say in the fourth part that the sacrifices had
power not ex opere operato but ex opere operante.11 Not so concerning the
sacrifices of our true Messiah, Jesus the Nazarene, which have power ex
opere operante and ex opere operato, as is clear in baptism which however evil
and awful the minister—even a Jew or an infidel—whoever does what
the Church intends, the baptism achieves its effect.12
The law David was requesting is the law given by Jesus the Nazarene
on Mount Sion, which is that spoken of in Jeremiah —the third
scriptural witness:
“Behold the days are coming,” that is, the times of the New Testament,
“says the Lord, and I will make with the house of Israel and the house
of Judah,” that is, with the faithful confessing Christ generally and espe-
cially the believers from the Jews—wherefore it is stated in Acts [:]:
“It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first,”
etc.—“a new covenant,” that is, the new law, for the law is frequently
called a covenant in the Old Testament; “not according to the covenant
which I made with your fathers, in the day that [I took them by the
hand] to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the covenant which they
made void” [Jer :] by transgressing against it repeatedly, as is clear
from the books of the Judges, Kings and Paralipomenon [Chronicles].13

brought out of Egypt ‘concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices”’ (Nicholas de Lyra,

Postillae on Jeremiah :, IV, ). See Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars
(Pittsburgh, ), .
10 “Item patet quod sacrificia legis Moysi non iustificaverunt, quia semper cum

eorum oblatione requirebatur oblatio sacerdotis patet in Levitico” (p. XXXrb).

11 That is, not by the power of the completed sacramental rite itself but of the

subjective disposition of the recipient. Usually the last phrase is ex opere operantis. See
Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars, , on Nicholas of Lyra’s discussion of this
point in sacramental theology.
12 “Sed quid si sacerdos esset malus et indignus utrum exaudiretur a Domino, certe

nihil valebat totum sacrificium, et hoc est quod dicunt doctores theologi in quarto quod
sacrificia valebant non ex opere operato sed ex opere operante. Secus est de sacrificiis
veri nostri messie Jesu Nazareni, que valent ex opere operante, et ex opere operato ut
patet in baptismo qui quantumcunque sit malus minister et pessimus, etiam Judeus et
infidelis quicumque faciens quod ecclesia intendit baptismus complet suum effectum”
(p. XXXVrb).
13 “Scilicet Hieremias ca. xxxi, dicit, Ecce dies veniunt, id est tempora Novi Testamenti,

dicit Dominus et faciam domui Israel et domui Juda, id est fidelibus Christum confitentibus
  . ,  .

Alfonso points out that this new law spoken of by Jeremiah must be
a law of the promised Messiah, namely, of Jesus Christ, which cannot
be the same as the law of Moses. To drive home the point that there is
a radical difference between the two laws, our author lists twenty-five
differences between the Mosaic law and the law of Christ, which he
gathers from the writings of St. Paul. For example, “the law of Moses
is the law of the flesh, the law of Christ is the law of the Spirit; the
law of Moses is the law of fear, the law of Christ is the law of love.”14
Alfonso then lists the special differences: the law of Moses is the law
of the servant Moses whereas the law of Christ is the law of the Lord
of the universe; the law of Moses was given to a particular people,
whereas the law of Christ is universal; the precepts of Moses were also
binding on a limited number of people, whereas the precepts of Christ
are binding on all peoples; the law of Moses is limited to the land of
promise, but the law of Christ is universal; the law of Moses was to
endure in a limited period of time, the law of Christ eternally. Because
of these differences, the law of Moses had to come to an end with the
arrival of the new law of Christ. Therefore Alfonso states that
it is better stated that one law annuls the other totally; I mean to say
that there cannot be a law of God directed to the salvation of souls by
observing which the human being gains paradise except one alone which
is the law of grace to which the law of Scripture is incompatible.15

He concludes this argument by stating: “And thus the law of Moses

was to come to an end, as a particular law, with the advent of the law
of Christ, which is universal and communal, like the lesser, as it were,
giving ground to the greater.”16

generaliter et credentibus de Judeis specialiter secundum quod dicitur Act. xiii. Primum
vobis oportebat loqui verbum Dei, et cetera, fedus novum, id est legem novam, lex enim fre-
quenter in Veteri Testamento vocatur fedus non secundum pactum quod pepigi cum patribus
vestris in die qua eduxi eos de terra Egypti quod irritum fecerunt, ipsum multipliciter transgredi-
endo, sicut patet in libris Judicum Regum et Parali” (p. XXXVrb).
14 “Lex Moysi est lex carnis, lex Christi est lex Spiritus, lex Moysi est lex timoris, lex

Christi est lex amoris” (p. XXXVIva).

15 “Melius dicitur quod una lex alteram totaliter annullat volo dicere quod non

potest esse lex Dei ordinata ad salutem animarum quam observando homo meretur
paradisum nisi una sola que est lex gratie cui est incompatibilis lex scripture” (p.
XXXVIvb).
16 “Est ergo altera lex Christi a lege Moysi quia una particularis et altera universalis,

igitur non secundum pactum et cetera, ut supra. Et sic cessare debuit lex Moysi sicut
particularis adveniente lege Christi que est universalis et communis sicut minor dando
locum maiori” (p. XXXVIvb-ra).
        

In the third part of the argument on the similarity of Jesus with

Moses in giving a law, Alfonso asks if the Messiah was to write the
law which he was destined to give and whether he ought to write
that law on skins, rocks, or some other external material? He judged
that this was an important question because “it seems that it would be
exceedingly reasonable that he would write some book of Sacred Scrip-
ture, whose principal performer and writer was himself, because every
discipline has its principal author, as grammar has Donatus, logic has
Aristotle, [and] geometry has Euclid.”17 Espina mentions that Thomas
Aquinas had addressed this issue in his Summa and he borrows some
of Thomas’s material in this section. Alfonso states that there are five
reasons why Jesus Christ did not write his own law, the first of which is
that it would diminish his dignity, since, although he could write about
his miracles and works of holiness without them being an occasion of
pride, in the minds of human beings this might appear to be a sign
of arrogance. Secondly, it would take away authority from the Holy
Spirit, whose special authority is “the internal inspiration of human
beings and of the writing of the Scriptures by holy individuals. Whence
Gregory says in the prologue of the Moralia, that the agent of Sacred
Scripture is the Holy Spirit, and the Apostle, in the Second Letter
to Timothy :, says that ‘Sacred Scripture is divinely inspired and
useful for teaching.”’ Thirdly, it would diminish his unique excellence,
because, although some excellent teachers wrote books,
the more excellent way is to impress the teaching in the minds [or hearts]
of the hearers, as Christ did, than to write it in a book. Therefore he
ought not write down his own law, like Pythagoras and Socrates and the
ancient philosophers, who were the most outstanding teachers, [who]
understood that way because they never wrote any books.18

Fourthly, because the Mosaic law was the law of fear, it was written in
books and codes of law; because the new law of Christ was the law of
love, it was written only on the hearts. The fifth and last reason why

17 “Videtur enim quod fuisset valde rationabile quod ipse fecisset aliquem librum

sacre scripture cuius ipse fuisset principalis actor et scriptor, quia quelibet scientia habet
suum principalem actorem sicut gramatica Donatum, loyca Aristotelem, geometria
Euclidem” (p. XXXVIra).
18 “Sed excellentior modus est doctrinam in mentibus auditorum imprimere, sicut

faciebat Christus quam in libro scribere, igitur non debuit scribere legem suam, unde
Pitagoras et Socrates et philosophi antiqui qui fuerunt doctores excellentissimi, istum
modum tenuerunt quod nunquam aliquos libros scripserunt” (p. XXXVIrb). For
Thomas’s discussion of this point, see his Summa Theologicae, III, q. , art. .
  . ,  .

Christ did not write a law was that it would show forth the eminent
kingship of Jesus, because “it behooves the royal majesty that his sayings
and deeds would be written by his witnesses, not by himself, as was
done by the four evangelists, the secretaries of Christ Jesus, the true
Messiah.”19 Alfonso concludes: “So it is clear, therefore, that Christ
ought not write a new law by himself on some external matter; but
out of love, he wrote it in the hearts of the faithful, as is stated in
the aforementioned source Jeremiah :: ‘But, I will give my law in
their bowels, and I will write it in their hearts.”’20 Jesus was, therefore,
like Moses in giving a law, but this was a new law that was “not on
some external matter but in the bowels and in the hearts of the faithful,
[on account] of all that has been fulfilled literally in Jesus Christ, our
savior.”21
The fourth part of this argument, which concerns Jesus’ likeness to
Moses in giving a law, deals with the question: What is the excellence of
the new law in relation to the imperfect old law? Alfonso answers that
there are six grades of perfection, which are as follows:

) The new law is most excellent, based on its manifestation of the

knowledge of God. In the old law there was not, as in the new law, an
explicit knowledge of the one true God, the incarnation of Christ or
the Trinity. There was a progression of knowledge from symbol to the
reality symbolized. Alfonso states: “Under the symbol of this knowledge
[which became explicit with the appearance of Jesus Christ], Moses
spoke to the people with a veiled face, as is found in Exodus [:–],
because the mysteries of our faith are veiled in symbols and riddles.”22
When the temple veil was torn in two during the passion of Jesus Christ
the full manifestation of the mystery of the Trinity and incarnation was
revealed. The veil of Jesus’ identity was lifted: He was Lord and the

19 “Et decet regiam maiestatem quod sua dicta et facta per suos notarios scribantur

non per se sicut fecerunt quatuor evangeliste Christi Jesu veri messie notarii” (p.
XXXVIrb).
20 “Sic igitur patet quod Christus non debuit legem novam per se scribere in ali-

quibus extrinsecis sed ex amore scripsit eam in cordibus fidelium sicut dicitur in
supradicta auctoritate Hiere. sed dabo legem meam in visceribus eorum et in corde eorum scribam
eam” (p. XXXVIrb).
21 “… et quod illam non debuit scribere per se in aliquibus extrinsecis sed in

visceribus et in cordibus fidelium que omnia ad literam impleta sunt in Jesu Christo
salvatore nostro” (p. XXXVIrb).
22 “In figura huius Moyses loquebatur ad populum velata facie, ut habetur Exo.

xxxiiii quia mysteria fidei nostre erant figuris et enigmatibus velata” (p. XXXVIIva).
        

Messiah. Also the new law which Jesus proclaimed, which is perfect in
understanding, is the “perfect gift descending from the Father of lights,”
as was said in James :.

) The new law is shown to be most excellent from the reasonableness

(rationabilitate) of its contents. Alfonso gives a lengthy presentation on
how the old law is imperfect in its entirety, that is, in its moral, judi-
cial, sacramental and ceremonial precepts.23 For example, the moral
prescriptions of the law of Moses are considered imperfect because
they regulated the external acts of men only, wherefore the Apostle
in Romans : calls the law of Moses “the law of works.” Concern-
ing the interior acts, however, in which the moral good consists, the
law regulated little or nothing. The ancient law is considered imperfect
because the Mosaic law regulated external acts imperfectly, as is plain
in Deuteronomy :–, which speaks thus: “You shall not demand
interest from your countrymen on a loan of money or of food or of any-
thing else, but do this to a foreigner.” Here, Alfonso points out, usury
is allowed with foreigners, a thing which is illicit and against the voice
of right reason. “And because of this imperfection, the Mosaic law is
called ‘our tutor’ in Galatians [:], that is to say, a rule of children
and the imperfect, in the case of whom interior perfection is not aimed
at, but who are constrained from unbecoming external acts by the fear
of punishment.”24 But the new law is perfect in its moral prescriptions,
because it perfectly regulates human acts, not only external acts but
also internal acts, and in this it makes good the imperfection of the
law, wherefore the Savior says, fulfilling the imperfection of the law,
in Matthew :–: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients,
‘Thou shall not kill’; and that whoever shall kill shall be liable to judg-
ment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall
be liable to judgment.” This text clearly indicates that Jesus was speak-
ing primarily of internal reactions within the human person rather than
of the person’s external behavior. Alfonso points out that Jesus therefore
not only forbids an idle word to these people, but he also forbids con-
sequently a harmful word, and much more stringently every evil act.

23 Alfonso does not explicitly cite any polemical text from which he is borrowing in

this section. Certain portions of the argument are derived from the Acta of the Tortosa
Disputation, the Pugio Fidei, and the Contra Judaeos of Gerónimo de Santa Fé.
24 “Et propter hanc imperfectionem lex Mosaica dicitur pedagogus noster ad Gal.

iii, id est regula puerorum et imperfectorum in quibus non queritur perfectio interior
sed ab exterioribus inhonestis timore discipline reprimuntur” (p. XXXVIIra).
  . ,  .

In Matthew , Jesus concludes his address to the young man who had
faithfully kept the commandments of the law all his life, with the radi-
cal demand of evangelical perfection: “What one thing is yet lacking to
you: If you wish to be perfect, go, and sell all that you have, and give to
the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

) The clarity of Jesus’ miracles also shows the excellence of the new
law. This section is basically a commentary on Augustine’s presentation
of miracles in The City of God. In a word, the miracles of Jesus simply
confirm his teaching of the gospel and his teaching helps explain his
miracles. The real miracle is not that Jesus was able to perform mar-
velous acts, but that the whole world has come to believe in Jesus as
Lord and Messiah without experiencing any miracles.

) The steadfastness of the church in both its head and members is also
a witness to the excellence of the new law. Since the sacrifice of the new
law is to endure to the end of time, the new law itself is to endure until
the consummation of the world. Alfonso says:
In the same way, as long as the sacrifice of the new law remains, the
new law also remains; but that sacrifice will endure until the end of time,
is clear in the last chapter of Matthew [:], where the savior says:
“Behold I am with you,” namely, in the sacrament of the altar, until the
consummation of the world. Therefore the law of Christ, in which such
a sacrifice will be contained, will endure until the consummation of the
world.25
Since the church is the steward of this sacrifice, it too will endure until
the consummation of the world. Thus the excellence of the new law
is shown in the promise that the head, Jesus, will be present to the
members of his church until the end of time.

) The new law is shown to be most excellent because of the divine

goodness which is given to those who believe. In this short section,
Alfonso says that “this divine goodness is not lacking to those who
seek salvation with their whole heart.”26 The conversion of many peo-

25 “Item manente sacrificio legis nove manet et lex nova: sed usque ad finem istud

sacrificium durabit patet Math. ultimo, ubi dicit salvator, Ecce ego vobiscum sum, scilicet
in sacramento altaris usque consummationem seculi, lex igitur Christi in qua tale
sacrificium continabitur durabit usque ad consummationem seculi” (p. XLIIva).
26 “… ex divina bonitate, que non deest toto corde querentibus salutem”

(p. XLIIva).
        

ple and the endurance of the martyrs proves that “God approved
this law uniquely and without reserve and ordained it to salvation,
as the most excellent and perfect law without which salvation cannot
exist.”27

) Finally, the delightful incomparability of the promises concludes

Alfonso’s argument that the new law is most excellent. Our author
argues that the promises of the old law were imperfect in that they
promised temporal goods, life, and peace.28 For Christians, however,
more excellent things are promised with the law of Christ, because he
promised spiritual and eternal goods: grace in the present life, glory in
the future life, and the kingdom of heaven.
Alfonso concludes the Third Treasury by summarizing how these six
grades of perfection make clear the perfection of the new law of Christ.
The law of Christ is more perfect because it is prior in both perfection
and in time. Espina says that the new law is prior in time because it was
revealed four hundred and thirty years before the law of Moses when
Abraham came to believe in God.29 The new law is the fulfillment of
the divine law which is manifest in the Old Testament; therefore it is

27 “Tormenta quoque per eam plures in magna exultatione spiritus et tristicias sunt

perpessi, que non videntur probabilia nisi Deus hanc legem singulariter et irrefraga-
biliter approbaret et ordinaret ad salutem tanquam excellentissimam et perfectissimam
legem sine qua salus esse non potest” (p. XLIIva–b).
28 As for the law of Mohammed, Alfonso states: “But what does the law of Mahomet

promise? Certainly it promises to its believers, as final blessedness, that which is owed
to pigs and she-asses, namely, gluttony and sexual intercourse.” But Alfonso does add
a correction to this negative view of Islam by quoting Avicenna: “Our law, which
Mahomet gave, speaks of another end, as it were, perfection, and it is more suitable to
men, and it shows the condition of unhappiness and misery which belong to the senses
of the body, and this is the other promise which is understood concerning the intellect.”
Avicenna continues: “To a much greater extent for the wise ones the desire was to
attain this happiness [of the intellect] than of the body, which, although it was given to
them, nevertheless, they did not give heed to it nor did they value it in comparison with
the happiness which was connected especially to the truth” (p. XLIIvb).
29 In the second article of the Third Consideration, Espina states: “Abraham ante

legem immo et ante circumcisionem iustus fuit et non fuit iustus nisi merito fidei, ut
patet Gen. xvi [actually :], credidit Abraham Deo et reputatum est ei ad iusticiam. Item
merito fidei fuit sibi facta repromissio, et spiritualiter illa semine tuo benedicentur omnes
gentes, ut patet Gen. xxii. Sequitur igitur ex his quod fides Christi fuit ipsa lege Moysi
tempore prior. Et quamvis Apostolus hoc spiritualiter probet ad Gal. iii, exemplo
Abrahe, tamen hoc idem probat ad Heb. x, per plura exempla sicut patet de Abel,
Enoch, Noe, Sara, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph et Moyse. Isti enim et multi alii iusti fuerunt
ante legem iustificati ut patet ibidem” (p. XIva).
  . ,  .

entitled the “testament of the Most High,” the “recognition of truth,”

and the “Book of Life.”30 Concerning these titles, Alfonso states:
In truth, this is the “Book of Life” because the gospel words give life
to the soul; indeed, it is also the “testament of the Most High” because
the gospel words promise eternal rewards to those who deserve it; indeed
also it is the “recognition of truth” because the Gospel words put to flight
the darkness of errors from the mind.31

Book III

In the first five arguments of the Fourth Chapter of Book III (“On
the War of the Jews by Arguments Taken from the Law of Moses”),
Alfonso raises the issue of the Mosaic law in five propositions which
he will dispute: That the law of Moses was to endure perpetually till
the end of time; That the law of Moses has not been abrogated; That
the divine sanctions of the Old Testament have not been altered with
the coming of Jesus; That circumcision was intended by God to endure
perpetually; That if the Sabbath ceased to be observed, the new law
advocating this change is not from God.

. That the law of Moses will endure perpetually

In the first argument on the permanence of Mosaic law, Alfonso reports
that the Jews argue, “All works of God are perfect, but the ancient
law was given by God; therefore it is impossible that imperfection is
present in it, for which it should have ceased.”32 Alfonso points out
that Christians do agree with the truth of the major premise because
Deuteronomy : states: “The works of God are perfect.” Since God
confirms the divine law by miracles, the principal issue centers on the
miracles of the Old Testament (old law) in relation to the miracles
that confirm the new law of Jesus Christ. Alfonso first states that even
though “the works of God are perfect,” the law given was “made

30 The first two titles are found in Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) :: “Hec omnia liber vite et

testamentum altissimi et agnitio veritatis.”

31 “Vere liber vite est quia verba evangelica animam vivificant, vere etiam testa-

mentum altissimi quia verba evangelica eterna premia observantibus promittunt, vere
etiam agnitio veritatis quia verba evangelica errorum tenebras a mentibus fugant” (p.
XLIIrb).
32 “Omnia opera Dei sunt perfecta, sed lex antiqua fuit data a Deo, igitur impossi-

bile est in ea dare imperfectionem, propter quam debuerit cessare” (p. LXXXIva).
        

according to the state of the people receiving the law.”33 Clearly the
Israelites were imperfect people as the rebellion of the people in the
desert (who wanted to return to Egypt) reveals in the fourteenth chapter
of Numbers and the golden calf incident (idolatry) reveals in Exodus
–. Alfonso then points out that
in the coming of the greater disposition in people a more perfect law was
due to be given, just as the soul of a boy is not thus perfect as the soul of
a grown person; so the law, having been given to an ignorant people in
the age of Moses, was not thus perfect as was the law given in the time
of Christ, and thus it is was not to endure perpetually.34
He states that more miracles do not prove the perfection of the law.
Rather, if many miracles were needed then these people were actually
showing themselves to be less perfect. The Jews had many miracles
performed for them and they still did not arrive at the truth. On the
other hand, the people of the New Testament, having been made the
more perfect, did not need a multitude of miracles but only a few
miracles to arrive at the fullness of truth. The focus is not on the
quantity of miracles, but their quality: “For it was a greater miracle
to liberate the whole species of humanity from diabolic power, which
Christ accomplished in the new law, than to liberate the Jewish people
from Egyptian servitude.”35 The Jews walked through the parted Red
Sea, whereas Christ walked on water; Moses took a piece of wood
and threw it into the water at Marah, making the bitter water sweet,
whereas Jesus turned water into wine. Alfonso goes on to say that “the
gospel law converts water into wine because it leads to the highest and
perfect joy.”36 The miracles of Jesus were, therefore, qualitatively better,
but we can also claim that “when the miracles in the Gospels and in
the Acts of the Apostles are gathered together there are many more
in number than which have been performed in the Old Testament.”

33 “Dico autem ad argumentum cum dicitur, omnia opera Dei esse perfecta quod Deus

fecit legem antiquam ita esse perfectam sicut fieri potuit secundum conditionem populi
recipientis legem” (p. LXXXIva).
34 “Sed adveniente maiori dispositione in populo perfectior lex dari debuit sicut

anima pueri non est ita perfecta sicut anima viri, ita lex data populo rudi tempore
Moysi non fuit ita perfecta sicut lex data tempore Christi et sic nec perpetuo durabilis”
(p. LXXXIvb).
35 “Nam maius miraculum fuit liberare totum genus humanum a potestate dyabolica

quod fecit Christus in lege nova, quam liberare populum Iudaicum a servitute Egypci-
aca” (p. LXXXIvb).
36 “… lex evangelica aquam in vinum convertit quia ad summum et perfectum

gaudium perducit” (p. LXXXIra).

  . ,  .

A comparison of the miracles proves that Jesus’ miracles are therefore

greater quantitatively and qualitatively in relation to the miracles of the
Old Testament. The miracles of Jesus are so divinely sanctioned that
if the Jews are unwilling to accept these miracles, they would be damning
themselves. Indeed in Isaiah [:], God said to them: “If you do not
believe you shall not be established”; therefore it is revealed that the law
of Moses is not more perfect than the new law, and consequently, it will
not endure perpetually.37

Not only are the Jews wrong about the perfection of the miracles, they
have, being envious of the miracles of Christ, blasphemed God by com-
posing a book called the Toledoth Yeshu. This text, which Alfonso bor-
rows directly from the Pugio Fidei of Ramon Martí, casts Jesus as “a
figure with a certain pathos, driven to defiance by ill-treatment at the
hands of Jewish authorities, who used magic by his willful, illicit mis-
appropriation of divine power.”38 Alfonso adds no commentary to this
long quote from the Pugio Fidei concerning the Toledoth Yeshu, probably
figuring that it was enough simply to report what he claimed the Jews
were saying about Jesus: that his miraculous power came from a type
of sorcery. Alfonso wanted to make the point that the Jews hold that, if
Jesus was a sorcerer, they would not have to listen to him or his disci-
ples’ teachings.39

37 “Si autem ista miracula Iudei recipere nolunt teneant sibi damnum. Dixerat enim

eis Ysaias, in ca. vii, si non credideritis non permanebitis, patet igitur quod lex Moysi nec est
perfectior lege nova nec consequentur perpetuo duratura” (p. LXXXIra).
38 Marc Saperstein, “Jewish Images of Jesus Through the Ages,” Proceedings of the

Center for Jewish-Christian Learning,  (), . Saperstein provides a good summary of
the text: “In this story, Jesus, angered by the status of illegitimacy that was bestowed
upon him by the Jewish authorities, seeks revenge by surreptitiously learning the true
Divine Name, the most jealously guarded secret of the ancient Temple. With this name,
he is able to work miracles: to fly through the heavens, to exorcise demons, cure lepers,
even bring the dead back to life. This brings him into open conflict with the Sanhedrin.
A man named Judah [Judas of the Gospels] is sent to infiltrate the circle of his closest
disciples. He removes the Divine Name from Jesus’ possession, enabling him to be
captured, tortured, stoned, and then hanged upon a tree. As the story continues, Judah
took the body from the cave and hid it in his own garden in order to prevent the
disciples from making off with it. The disciples then claimed that it had ascended to
heaven. Queen Helene, who had been impressed by Jesus’ powers, believed in the
claims of the disciples, and the sages felt their position to be precarious. At this point,
Judah saved the day by producing the body, dragging it by the hair before the queen.
That, we are told, ‘is why the monks now shave their hair in the midst of their heads.”’
39 Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish

Response (Berkeley, ), –. The Jewish defense against forced sermons being
preached to them beginning in the s was based on the principle that, since the
        

. That the law of Moses has not been abrogated

The second question concerns whether the law of Moses has been
abrogated or whether it still needs to be observed. The Jewish charge
against Christians is that Christians do not observe all of the com-
mandments that God decreed: “Cursed is the one who shall not have
remained in all these things which have been written in the law” (Deut
:). The Jews claim that Christians observe only a part of the law
and therefore they are being disobedient to God. Alfonso takes up Alan
of Lille’s argument that this passage of scripture, if interpreted liter-
ally, forces one into believing in a contradiction.40 In other words, “the
whole law could be obeyed if it were not observed literally.”41 For exam-
ple, if God created everything good (Gen :), how does one explain
the difference of clean and unclean food in the law? God commanded
Moses to build the altar out of the earth (de terra) and yet, in a later
verse of Exodus, one reads, “Moses made the altar of incense of aca-
cia wood” (Exod :). Another example is when God commands
in Deuteronomy :: “You shall not plow with an ox and an ass
together,” but the law permits them to pasture together. Furthermore,
the law does not forbid the ox to plow with a horse or with another
unclean animal. Alfonso responds by stating that:
If we truly accept the law in its intended meaning [debito sensu], we
will be able to observe all the commandments of the law with due
observance: by accepting that certain things have been said literally and
without concealment of figures; and by understanding that certain things
have been said literally and have been concealed with a darkened veil;
certain things have been commanded to be observed for the time, certain
other things without any determination of time: for those things were
foretelling of another sacramentum, and they would reveal the figure of
truth in its own time; with the manifestation of the thing [itself] and the
presence of truth being evident, it was necessary that the prefiguration
and the figure should not remain [at the same time].42

Pharisees considered Jesus a sorcerer, to listen to anything concerning him would be to

force Jews to trespass their own commandments.
40 On the twelfth-century discussion on this point concerning the Mosaic Law, see

Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London/New
York, ), .
41 Abulafia, Christians and Jews, .
42 “Si vero legem debito sensu accipimus, omnia legis mandata debita observatione

observare poterimus; quedam ad litteram et sine ulio velamine figurarum dicta esse
accipiendo, quedam ad figuram et profundo velamine obumbrata esse intelligendo:
quedam ad tempus observari iussa sunt, quedam sine ulla temporum determinatione.
  . ,  .

In other words, when the anti-type or “truth” has come to be, the
figure of that truth is no longer needed. This was a long-standing
argument against the Jews in Christian anti-Jewish literature.

. That the divine sanctions of the Old Testament have not been abrogated.
The third issue is the claim by the Jews that the divine sanctions
(or commandments) of the Old Testament have not been abrogated.
Alfonso (borrowing from the writings of Alan of Lille) holds that the
divine word is not annulled in any way and the divine sanctions have
not changed; he attempts to prove this in four ways. First, he responds
that Christ came not to abrogate or end the law, but to fulfill it. In ful-
filling the ancient law, Christ demands more than what is commanded
in the Mosaic law: the Mosaic law prohibits homicide, Christ prohibits
anger and hate; the Mosaic law prohibits the adultery of the flesh,
Christ also prohibits the heart’s desire itself.
Second, Alfonso points out that the literal observance of the law
leads to a contradiction. For example, kosher laws demand that Jews
not eat pork, as the flesh of the pig was considered unclean and a sign
of sinfulness. The Jews had to observe this law because only the figure
of the present truth was present, and this figure had to be conserved
until the truth of the figure arrived. The truth arrived in the person of
Jesus Christ. There would be a contradiction in Scripture itself if one
were to hold to the kosher laws pertaining to pork, because in the first
chapter of Genesis it is written that “God saw all things that he made
and they were very good.” How can pork be considered unclean when
God declared that all things were good in the act of creation?
Third, Alfonso also points out that even during the period of time in
which the Scriptures were being written, God was already foretelling
the people of Israel that the covenant was going to be replaced by
another, as God says through the prophet Jeremiah: “I will establish
a new covenant with the house of Judah, with the house of Israel” (Jer
:). The new law is the gospel law and, because it has arrived, the
old law must cease to be observed, for they both cannot remain at the
same time, “because in the arrival of the truth, the shadow of the truth

Que enim alicuius sacramenti prenunciativa erant, et veritatis figuram faterentur, suo
tempore, manisfestata rei atque veritatis presentia, oportuit ut eorum non remaneret
prenunciatio et figura” (p. LXXXIIIrb).
        

ceases.”43 God desired the eventual cessation of the old law, as Isaiah
:, Psalm :, Psalm :, and Psalm :– testify.
Fourth, Alfonso concludes this argument against the permanence
of the old law with the statement that the Jews do not observe many
elements of the law anyway:
We see also among the Jews that they have for the most part abandoned
those things which pertain to the law: for there is not among the Jews
the sacrifice or holocausts, nor prophets, nor king, no priests, no temple,
no place for sacrifices; and what work operates through the singular? For
the major part, the law has been abrogated. It seems, therefore, that the
law of Moses does not now have a place.44
This claim has a long history in Christian anti-Jewish polemic, and
Alfonso includes it here as a concluding argument to show that God
has indeed abrogated the divine sanctions of the Mosaic law.

. That circumcision is intended to endure perpetually

The fourth issue is whether the practice of circumcision was intended
by God to be a perpetual practice. The Jews say it was to be so
based on Genesis , where circumcision is spoken of as a sign of an
“eternal covenant.” Alfonso indicates that he has already addressed
this issue earlier in Book I, but believes that a clearer presentation of
Jewish blindness is needed; he therefore refuses to pass over this issue in
silence at this point. He makes an initial distinction between carnal and
spiritual circumcision:
It must be said that we discover a twofold circumcision in the old law, one
carnal which they observe, and the other a spiritual one, of which it is
said in Deuteronomy [:]: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your
heart, and be no longer stubborn.” And in Jeremiah [:]: “Circumcise
yourselves [to the Lord] and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O
people of Judah.”45

43 “Adveniente enim veritate, dicitur umbra cessare” (p. LXXXIIIIra).

44 “Videmus etiam apud Judaeos in magna parte cessare que ad legem pertineat:
non enim est apud Iudeos sacrificium, vel hostia, non propheta, non lex, non sacer-
dotes, non templum, non locus sacrificii, et, quid opus ire per singula in maxima parte
abolita est lex: videtur ergo quod lex Moysi iam locum non habeat” (p. LXXXIIIIra–
b).
45 “Dicendum ergo quod in veteri lege duplicem invenimus circumcisionem unam

carnalem quam ipsi observant et aliam spiritualem de qua dicitur Deutero. x, Circum-
cidite igitur prepucium cordis vestri, et cervicem vostram non induretis. Et Hiere iiii, Circumcidimini
et auferte prepucium cordium vestrorum viri Juda” (p. LXXXIIIIrb).
  . ,  .

Alfonso points out that there is a difference in meaning between the

words “eternal” and “everlasting” (eterno and sempiterno) when applied to
the covenant:
Sometimes it is reckoned simply “eternity” as in Psalm [:]: “You
however, O Lord, remain in eternity.” And that of Jeremiah [:], “But
the Lord is the true God, he is the living God and the everlasting King.”
Sometimes it is really taken in keeping with a finite duration: such is that
of  Kings  [ Samuel :]: “Achish trusted David, saying, ‘He has
done many bad things against the people Israel, therefore he will be my
servant always”’; it is clear that here it is taken as everlasting in keeping
with a finite duration: because this servitude could not endure more than
their life; similarly one has Genesis [:], where it is said that “Esau
hated Jacob always.”46
When we apply the word “forever” in regard to circumcision, to which
sense does it belong? Clearly when we speak of spiritual circumcision,
as we find in Jeremiah :, the intent is for an eternal object. But in
regard to carnal circumcision, Alfonso states that:
it was prescribed for only one people (the Hebrews), the sign had to
endure, by which that people were distinguished from the other nations;
and when the law ceases, the sign also had to cease. And therefore it
is said in Genesis  that circumcision was given as a sign. Because of
which, as long as that people [the Israelites] was separated from other
people in the desert, not one of them was circumcised; but entering the
land of promise, full of diverse people, everyone at once was circumcised
at Gilgal, as is read in Joshua .47

46 “Interdum enim ponitur pro eternitate simpliciter ut in Psalmo, Tu autem domine

in eternum permanes. Et illud Hieremie x, Dominus autem Deus verus est et ipse Deus
vivens et rex sempiternus. Aliquando vero accipitur pro duratione finita: quale est illud
Primo Regum xxvii, Credidit ergo achis david dicens, Multa mala operatus est contra populum
Israhel, erit igitur mihi servus sempiternus, manifestum est quod hic accipitur sempiternum
pro duratione finita: quia non poterat plus durare ista servitus quam eorum vita.
Simile habetur Gene. xxvii, ubi dicitur quod oderat semper esau Jacob” (p. LXXXIIIIrb–
LXXXVva).
47 “Si vero loquaris de circumcisione carnali accipe similiter sempiternum secundo

modo dictum: quod quamdiu lex duravit que soli uni populo precipiebatur debuit
durare signum quo ille populus ab aliis gentibus distinguebatur et cessante lege signum
etiam debuit cessare. Et ideo dicitur Gen. xvii, quod circumcisio data est in signum.
Propter quod, quamdiu ille populus seperatus fuit ab omni gente in deserto, nullus
eorum circumcisus fuit sed intrantes terram promissionis plenam diversis populis omnes
simul fuerunt circumcisi in Galgalis, ut habetur Josue quinto capitulo” (p. LXXXVva).
        

. That if the Sabbath ceases [as the new law commands], the new law is not from
God
The fifth issue concerns the Jewish claim that if the Sabbath would
cease, the new law of Christians is not from God, because the obser-
vation of the Sabbath, which God instructed in the old law, has been
prohibited in the new law and therefore it is contrary to God and does
not have a divine origin. Alfonso admits two positive things about the
Sabbath at the beginning of his argument: that because of reverence for
God, the people ceased from all servile work so that they could more
freely have time for sacrifices, and this can be considered a moral act.
Secondly, the gospel law does not take away this observance but it com-
mands it, as is clear concerning Sundays and other arranged feasts in
the new law.
The first point Alfonso wants to make is that the observance of the
Sabbath falls within the realm of ceremonial precepts—precepts that
could be changed because of a reasonable cause. Now the Jews observe
the Sabbath on Saturday in memory of the day of rest God took on
the seventh day of creation (cf. Genesis : and Exodus :–). But
Alfonso argues that Christians not only remember the day of rest but
also the spiritual renewal which has begun in the resurrection of Christ,
and therefore the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh day to
commemorate that event. Sunday also signifies that which was to hap-
pen on the eighth day, the eighth day of the resurrection on which we
expect perfect rest. Christians are not bound to a specific day of Satur-
day for rest because Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath: “This is the aspect
of Sabbath observance that the Messiah our Lord Jesus Christ, thirty
years after he was born, set free by curing the sick, by giving the sick
man the freedom to carry a mat [on the Sabbath] (John [:–]) and
by plucking heads of grain for the hungry disciples (Mark [:–]).”48
Alfonso then states that the Sabbath was a sign of the exclusive
covenant between God and the children of Israel (Exod :). He
presents a text from Jewish rabbinical literature, the book “Bima,” that
claims that Christians do not need to observe the Sabbath because
keeping Sabbath observance was intended only for the Jews and not

48 “Hic est quod messias noster dominus ihesus christus postquam factus est, xxx

annorum solvit quantum ad partem istam sabbatum curando in eo infirmos, et dando

eis licentiam lectulos asportandi Johannis v, et spicas discipulis suis esurientibus con-
fricandi Marci ii” (p. LXXXVvb).
  . ,  .

Gentiles, based on Exodus : where God says, “It is a sign forever
between me and the children of Israel.”49
Espina moves on to speak about the ten horns (or bounties) given to
Israel, which, because of their sins, have been taken away from them
and given to the Gentiles.50 The proof text here is Psalm :: “All
the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous
shall be exalted.” The point is that, “since Israel had sinned these [ten
horns or cornu] were removed from them and given to the Gentiles of
that age.”51 This was accomplished through the agency of the Romans,
who removed the legal requirements of the Jews though an imperial
edict. This fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel :: “After this I saw in
the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrible and dreadful and
exceedingly strong; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke
in pieces and stamped the residue with its feet, it was different from
all that beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns,” as well as
Lamentations :: “God has cut down in fierce anger all the horns
of Israel.” However, the Jews regained the practice of circumcision,
Sabbath, and other elements of the Mosaic law through the agency
of the devil, not through an angel, prophet, or holy person. This
connection between the Mosaic law and the devil is derived from the
Jews’ own literature; according to Alfonso, the first of these texts is the
Tractate Me#ilah, which has been summarized by Robert Chazan in
the following manner:
The key element in the story concerns the visit of Rabbi Simon bar
Yohai and Rabbi Eliezer ben Yose to the Roman emperor. On their way
to this crucial encounter, they were asked by a demon if they would
like his assistance, which was accepted. The demon then infected the
emperor’s daughter and was subsequently exorcised by Rabbi Simon bar
Yohai. In gratitude, the emperor promised to grant any wish the rabbi
might make. His request was for the annulment of the imperial edict
against Jewish law, and this request was speedily granted.52
Alfonso concludes this section by stating that the same devil seduced
them into worshipping the golden calf and their following of the devil

49 This text is borrowed from the Pugio Fidei of Ramon Martí.

50 On the argument concerned with the ten horns in earlier polemical literature, see
Chazan, Daggers of Faith, –.
51 “Quando autem peccaverunt Israel, ablata fuerunt eis, et data fuerunt gentibus

seculi” (p. LXXXVrb). This section is totally borrowed from Ramon Martí. The horns
are Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, prophecy, the law, the priesthood, Levitical family,
Jerusalem, and the King Messiah.
52 Chazan, Daggers of Faith, .
        

now shows to the Christians of Alfonso’s day how “great is the foolish-
ness and how great the insanity and how immense the senselessness of
the Jews who do not cease to observe circumcision, the Sabbath, and
other things which God removed from them and the devil restored.”53
The remaining sections of this argument concern the reasons why
Christians rightly celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday. Borrowing from
Johannes of Valladolid, Alfonso holds that the Jews claim that the
Christians derived this change from the union of the sun and moon
at the beginning of creation, which took place on Monday. Alfonso
then makes the point that the change from Saturday to Sunday for
the Sabbath ultimately stems from the fact that Sunday was the day of
Jesus’ resurrection. He then proceeds to show how significant Sunday
is by presenting the list of twelve privileges of Sunday from the Evange-
lio Eterno of Bernardino of Siena (which includes that Sunday was the
day the precepts were given to Israel and the day Christ was born).
Next, Alfonso asks why the Jews consider Saturday to be the Sabbath
day, and not any other day of the week. He shows, through the argu-
ments of Johannes of Valladolid, that Saturday is associated with the
astrological calculations concerning the union of Saturn with Jupiter
and the movement of the planets. This connection between Saturn and
the Jews is appropriate because the Greek astronomer Ptolemy claimed
that misery, misfortune, and evil were characteristic of a captive people
under the influence of Saturn. Who else but the Jews does this descrip-
tion fit?
Alfonso concludes his presentation on the Sabbath by stating that
the Jews are wrong who claim that the observance of the Sabbath
cannot change based on what is said in the Talmud. In fact, drawing
from the convert Paul of Burgos, the Talmud actually states that it is
not improper to say that all feasts, fasts, and acts of remission can be
changed, based on the words of Leviticus :: “These are the feasts
of the Lord which you shall proclaim holy.” The gloss of the rabbis
highlights the phrase, “You shall proclaim,” interpreting this to mean
that they must reconsider from time to time what is considered to be
holy. Thus it is not improper for those who have received the new

53 “Evidenter [ergo] apparet, quod intentio, et studium diaboli, ac voluntas erga

homines numquam est nisi mala: quare satis est manifestum, quam grandis est stulticia,
et quam magna insania, et quam immensa Judeorum vecordia, qui Circumcisionem,
et Sabbatum, et alia que Deus illis abstulit, diabolus vero reddidit, non cessant obser-
vare” (p. LXXXVIvb). On this passage in the Pugio Fidei, from which text Alfonso is
borrowing, see Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith, –.
  . ,  .

law which the Messiah has promulgated to change the observance of

the Sabbath, because the Messiah clearly indicated there was to be a
change in the observance of the Sabbath, when he said, in response to
those who said he was not allowed to cure on the Sabbath: “the Son of
Man has power over the Sabbath” (Matt :–).

Evaluation and Conclusion

Alfonso de Espina has gathered together many arguments against the

Jews concerning the Mosaic law. As I have argued elsewhere, Alfonso
is a master gatherer and synthesizer of previous Christian anti-Jewish
material.54 Among his sources are the works of Alan of Lille (c. –
), Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyra, and Bernardino of Siena.
These authors represent the three previous centuries and his own time
period, the fifteenth century. There is very little original work found in
his text and thus no substantial development in the history of polemical
literature.55 Because his sources are all Christian, even when he is
quoting from a Jewish text, there is no actual engagement with the
living Jewish community on their interpretation of the Mosaic law.
Alfonso does refer to times in which Jews were present at his preaching,
but there is no evidence of actual engagement with Jews over the issue
of the Mosaic law and the new law of Jesus Christ. He accepts as
authentic earlier “dialogues” with Jews, as if they were conversations
in which Jews have been proven wrong and brought to Christian truth,
e.g., the eleventh-century Dialogi of Petrus Alfonsi. His contribution to
Christian anti-Jewish literature was to present an overview of all the
arguments against Jews and Judaism, including the arguments against
the continual acceptance and practice of the Mosaic law.
Besides his presentation of all the other ways in which Jews present a
danger to Christians of his time, we have seen the attention he placed
on the issue of the Mosaic law. This is the foundation of Jewish life
and spiritual practice that Alfonso knew had to be addressed in a

54 Steven J. McMichael, “The Sources for Alfonso de Espina’s Messianic Argument

Against the Jews in the Fortalitium Fidei,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle
Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J., vol. I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo, ed. Larry
J. Simon (Leiden, ), –.
55 In fact, a comparison between the Fortalitium Fidei and the previous polemical

material Alfonso used (e.g., Pugio Fidei) would show that Alfonso left out much of the
more sophisticated and detailed argumentation of these earlier works.
        

comprehensive way. It is one thing to present the dangers that Jews

posed to Christians in regard to other areas of theology and philosophy,
and the way they acted against Christians in history, their devilish
character, their trickery with words and magic, etc. But it is quite
another to prove that the very foundations on which Judaism stood
theologically have been destroyed with the coming of Jesus of Nazareth
and his new law. This is what Alfonso attempted to do in the pages of
the Fortalitium Fidei.
This page intentionally left blank
 ANTI-JEWISH PREACHING IN THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY AND IMAGES OF PREACHERS
IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART

R R

The source for the inspiration of a subject is obviously quite relevant,

but in the field of religious and devotional iconography a difference in
aim is deeply influenced by the nature of the painted object: the public
of a fresco cycle is wider, and different, from the single owner of an
illuminated manuscript, and people paid a different degree of attention
to a small predella than to the huge polyptych, not to mention single-
sheet prints.
The anti-Jewish orientation of the main stream of popular preaching
was reflected in the Italian art of the fifteenth century in many ways.
Usually, the subject was not included in the representation either of
a preacher or of a sermon; the direct inspiration, from spoken and
written sermons, to give shape to anti-Jewish representations in art was
possible, but not common. A quite different case is connected with the
preaching activity in Germany by the Franciscan John Capistrano: at
the same level of the raised hand of the friar standing on a pulpit, a Jew
is forced to come and attend his sermon—a story which was reported
in the records of the time1 (fig. ).
What is more important is that, in most cases, even an explicit anti-
Jewish representation in art was not inspired directly by a theological
or hagiographical source, but reflected only in the deep change of a
specific iconography. That is exactly the case of the changing repre-
sentation of preaching and preachers in the Italian art of the fifteenth
century.
For these reasons, specific expressions and words will be used accord-
ing to two competing systems of reference and meaning: the medieval

1 See Roberto Rusconi, “Giovanni da Capestrano: iconografia di un predicatore

nell’Europa del ’,” in Predicazione francescana e società veneta nel Quattrocento: Committenza,
ascolto, ricezione, nd ed. (Padua, ), – (– and fig. ). Color reproduction on
the front page in Der Bussprediger Capestrano auf dem Domplatz Bamberg (Bamberg, );
see also Peter Schmidt, “Judenpredigt und Judervertreibung in Bamberg –,”
–.
  

anti-Jewish use and contemporary speech. Sometimes they will not fit
very well together, of course.2

Mendicant Prosecution From The Pulpit

The fabricated charge of ritual murder in the case of the child Simon in
Trent, brought against the Jews of the local community, and the active
role in the propaganda, by the mendicant preachers, in order to pro-
mote the cult and canonization of the new martyr of the Christian faith
needs no further summary.3 The contrasting opinions on the subject,
and the reluctant attitude of some Roman officials at the time, did not
allow any reference to the fact to enter the iconographical attributes of
the Franciscan preachers deeply involved in an active propaganda from
the pulpit. Such was clearly the case with the Observant Michele Car-
cano from Milan,4 and also with his fellow Bernardino da Feltre, the
most active promoter of the foundation of the Monte di Pietà,5 the char-
itable institution whose beginnings were easily connected with vague
anti-Jewish preaching. The lack of official recognition for the Francis-
can preachers’ personal sanctity gave a first stop to that chance; accord-
ing to late medieval vocabulary, after their death they were venerated
as “blessed,” and not as “saints,” and in the devotional paintings each
of them had no halo, buy only rays around his head. None of them

2 Some information dealing with the subject of this contribution can by found

also in Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juden und Judentum in der mittelalterlichen Kunst (Stuttgart,
), and Gabriella Ferri Piccaluga, “Ebrei nell’iconografia lombarda del ’,” in La
Rassegna mensile di Israel,  (), –. More recently, see Sara Lipton, Images of
Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley, ).
3 See Anna Esposito, “Lo stereotipo dell’omicidio rituale nei processi tridentini e il

culto del ‘beato’ Simone,” in Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento (–), vol. I: I processi
del , ed. Anna Esposito and Diego Quaglioni (Padua, ), –; Anna Esposito,
“Il culto del beato Simonino e la sua prima diffusione in Italia,” in Il principe vescovo
Johannes Hinderbach (–) fra tardo Medioevo e Umanesimo, ed. Iginio Rogger and
Marco Bellabarba (Bologna, ), –. See Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of
Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, ), –.
4 See Fabio Bisogni, “Iconografia dei predicatori dell’Osservanza nella pittura dell’

Italia del Nord fino agli inizi del Cinquecento,” in Il rinnovamento del Francescanesimo:
l’Osservanza (Assisi, ), – (–, tav. ).
5 See Roberto Rusconi, “Bernardino da Feltre predicatore nella società del suo

tempo,” in Bernardino da Feltre a Pavia: La predicazione e la fondazione del Monte di Pietà, ed.
Renata Crotti Pasi (Como, ), –. Information on Bernardino’s iconography can
be found in Vittorino Meneghin, Iconografia del beato Bernardino Tomitano da Feltre (Venice,
), and, more carefully, in Bisogni, “Iconografia,” –.
 -      

had any anti-Jewish “attribute,” that is, a peculiar object to allow the
immediate identification of the revered friar by the common unlearned
faithful.
A solution was found with the representation of the most recent
Franciscan saint, the Observant Bernardino of Siena, who was canon-
ized as a preacher, in association with the image of the “blessed” Simon
of Trent (fig. ). The example can be found in a devotional fresco (i.e.,
paid for by some devout person), painted in the crypt of the monastic
church of a Benedictine women’s monastery, S. Ponziano near Spoleto,
in southern Umbria, an area which had been reached by the wander-
ing preacher of the Franciscan Observance, Bernardino da Feltre—a
“second Bernardino” also in the name—during his preaching tours.6
As a matter of fact, the painting on the fresco was directly dependent
on the northern Italian iconography on the subject.7

Conversion To The Gospel And The Wicked Jews

Since the beginning of the fifteenth century, a growing importance

was connected, in the religious paintings, to the representation in art
of preachers and of the performance of preaching. Also, the saints
of the first century of the Christian era were represented more and
more openly as preachers, according to an iconography that made
contemporary preaching in the late medieval and Renaissance times
correspond exactly to the first evangelization by the Christians.8
A major representative of this new orientation was Fra Angelico,
that is, the Dominican painter and illuminator Giovanni da Fiesole.
The friar painted in fresco the private chapel of Pope Nicholas V,
inside the Vatican Palace, in the years between  and ; on the
walls he executed the stories of the Roman deacon, St. Lawrence, and
the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. The purpose was quite clear:

6 Roberto Rusconi, ‘“Predicò in piazza’: politica e predicazione nell’Umbria del

’,” in Signorie in Umbria tra Medioevo e Rinascimento: l’esperienza dei Trinci (Perugia, ),
– (–, fig. ).
7 Laura Dal Prà, “L’immagine di Simonino nell’arte trentina dal XV al XVIII

secolo,” in Il principe vescovo Johannes Hinderbach, –. See also Dominique Rigaux,
“L’immagine di Simone di Trento nell’arco alpino lungo il secolo XV: un tipo icono-
grafico?” in Il principe vescovo Johannes Hinderbach, –.
8 Roberto Rusconi, “Le pouvoir de la parole: Représentation des prédicateurs dans

l’art de la Renaissance en Italie,” in La parole du prédicateur, Ve–XVe siècle, ed. Rosa Maria
Dessì and Michel Lauwers (Nice, ), –.
  

to represent a visual parallel story, taken from the early church in

Jerusalem and the Roman church at its beginnings.9
In the Roman fresco, St. Stephen is presumed to be actually preach-
ing to the people in Jerusalem, according to the hagiographical legend,
and disputing with the Doctors of the Law. The stage of his sermon is
an Italian setting, and his audience is composed of faithful Christians.
This is juxtaposed with, on the other side of the same fresco, the con-
frontation with the wicked Jews, who were going to decide to put him
to death (fig. ). In this image, there is not any trace of a major histor-
ical element: Stephen himself and his audience at the sermon were, of
course, Jews. As a matter of fact, the ways in which the iconography of
the first Christian preaching in Palestine has been modified allows one
to measure the major changes in the attitude against the Jews: from
lack of concern on the topic to open hostility.
A similar problem was related to the representation in Christian
art of the Fathers of the church, e.g., St. Augustine and St. Ambrose
of Milan, whose sermons, according to the sources, were directed to
promote the conversion of the Gentiles. The Gentiles were usually,
since the fourteenth century, represented wearing oriental dress, and
not only in the iconography connected to these Fathers, but also in the
representation of a recent Dominican saint.
Thomas Aquinas’s sanctity was officially recognized in the year ,
and on the right wall in the chapter chapel of the Dominican convent
S. Maria Novella in Florence (the so-called Spanish Chapel), painted
by Andrea di Bonaiuto in the years –, St. Thomas holds an
open manuscript of his Summa contra Gentiles, putting to desperation
his opponents wearing “oriental” dress,10 understood, in this case, as
medieval heretics (fig. ). Oriental hats and long beards appear also in
the iconography of the first saint of his order, St. Dominic, when he
wins the confrontation with the Cathars in Southern France.11
Here there is an association of ideas and images deserving attention,
since in this case a very indirect message must be perceived: in the
Western society of the Late Middle Ages, the only people living in Italy
who were perceived as “orientals” were precisely the Jews.

9 Color reproduction in John Pope-Hennessy, Angelico (Florence, ), .

10 Color reproduction in Santa Maria Novella: La Basilica, il Convento, i chiostri monumen-
tali, ed. Umberto Baldini (Florence, ), –, .
11 See Roberto Rusconi, “Immagini di predicatori e scene di predicazione nell’arte

italiana all’epoca di fra Girolamo da Ferrara,” in Girolamo Savonarola: da Ferrara all’Euro-

pa, ed. Gigliola Fragnito and Mario Miegge (Firenze ), –.
 -      

The Child Cut Into Pieces And The Eucharistic Metaphor

Around the year  the painter Colantonio was working at a polyp-
tych ordered by the Queen of Naples. She belonged to the Aragonese
dynasty, and the painting was placed in the Dominican church of the
capital town of the southern kingdom. The setting of the iconography
was still a late medieval one: the saint friar, the Dominican Vicent Fer-
rer, was standing in the middle, more like a master of theology than a
wandering preacher. On both sides, the story of his life was summarized
in a series of scenes, whose source was the official legend written by a
fellow, a Dominican from Palermo, in Sicily, Peter Ranzano, according
to the proceedings of his very recent canonization ().12 At the same
level as his raised hand, a sermon in the open air was painted, deliv-
ered from a wooden pulpit standing outside the city walls, in front of
an audience where some people clearly wear an oriental dress (fig. ).
“The power of his sermons was proved either by the repentance of the
Christian people of both sexes and mostly by the conversion of many
thousands of Jews and Muslims,” according to the legend, and the his-
torical place of the sermon could have been Murcia, in the Kingdom of
Aragon.13 In the Aragonese kingdom of southern Italy, a real reference
of that kind could be made only to the Jewish community, after their
expulsion from the Kingdom of Aragon in the Iberian Peninsula—in
that case, with no direct responsibility of Friar Vicent, who personally
did not avoid preaching against the Jews, at least in an attempt to force
them to a “spontaneous” conversion to Christianity.14
At the top right, in a distinguished position, the most famous miracle
performed by the saint during his lifetime was represented: the child,
cut in pieces by his crazy mother, whom the saint healed and, of course,

12 General information is provided by Roberto Rusconi, “Vicent Ferrer e Pedro

de Luna: sull’iconografia di un predicatore fra due obbedienze,” in Conciliarismo, stati

nazionali, inizi dell’Umanesimo (Spoleto, ), – (–). See also the general
remarks by Mark J. Zucker, “Problems in Dominican Iconography: the Case of St
Vincent Ferrier,” Artibus et Historiae,  (), –.
13 “Efficaciam sermonis eius ostendit, tum Christianorum hominum utriusque sexus

diversorumque statuum poenitentia, tum multorum millium Judaeorum Sara-

cenorumque conversio”: Petrus Ranzanus, Vita S. Vincentii Ferrerii, in Acta Sanctorum,
Aprilis, I (Antwerp, ), F nr. . See Leandro Rubio García, “Documentos sobre
la estancia de san Vicente Ferrer a Murcia,” in Miscel·lània Sanchis Guarner, ed. Antoni
Ferrando,  vols. (València, ), .–.
14 See F. Vendrell, “La actividad proselitista de San Vicente Ferrer durante el

reinado de Fernando I de Aragón,” Sefarad,  (), –.

  

put together again. Once again, some people wearing oriental dress
were a part of the attending crowd. This subject was almost never
missing in his painted legends (and even in circulation on printed fliers
in Germany after his canonization).15
This miracle was easily, and quickly, transformed in the iconography
of St. Vicent Ferrer in order to carry a eucharistic allusion and a related
anti-Jewish meaning. In another polyptych painted in the Aragonese
Kingdom, on the island of Sicily, for the Dominican church of Castel-
vetrano (a small town near Trapani, where a Jewish community was
living at the time),16 the healed child is kneeling on a dish, whose shape
reminds one of a liturgical paten, where usually the consecrated host
would be set.17
The strong link between the Dominican friars, who could read the
Latin legend of the recent saint of their order, and the actual presence
of a Jewish community in the area was even more evident in the case of
Modena (a brief reference could possibly be made to another polyptych
from Bologna, painted by Francesco del Cossa and his workshop, in
whose predella the stories of the new Dominican saint had the same
orientation).18 Between the late s and the early s of the fifteenth
century, the workshop of the Erri family painted four polyptychs for
the Dominican church of the town, with the stories of the four male
saints of the order (Dominic, Peter Martyr, Thomas Aquinas, Vicent
Ferrer).19 In the case of Vicent Ferrer, the source for inspiration in
a large choice of his stories was obviously the same official legend,

15 See Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhun-

derts,  vols. in  (repr. Stuttgart, ),  nr. . For a panel painting from Ger-
many, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, see Albert Fries, “Albertus Mag-
nus auf der Kanzel: Ein Andachtsbild,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum,  (), –
 (incorrect identification for St. Vicent Ferrer).
16 Francesco Renda, “I marrani di Sicilia,” in Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. I: Dall’alto

Medioevo all’età dei ghetti, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Torino, ), .
17 See George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art: Iconography of the Saints in the Art of Central and

South Italian Schools of Painting (Florence, ), fig. .

18 The predella painted by Ercole de’ Roberti is now at the Vatican Gallery. The

anti-Jewish orientation of its main subject has been disputed by Augusto Gentili, “Mito
cristiano e storia ferrarese nel Polittico Griffoni,” in La corte e lo spazio: Ferrara estense,
ed. Guido Papagno and Amedeo Quondam (Roma, ), –, and by Fabrizio
Torella, “L’ombra della mezzaluna sull’arte italiana: Il polittico Griffoni,” Musei ferraresi,
 (–), –.
Color reproduction in Monica Molteni, Ercole de’ Roberti (Cinisello Balsamo/Milano,
), –.
19 Complete color reproduction in Daniele Benati, La Bottega degli Erri e la pittura del

Rinascimento a Modena (Modena, ). See also Rusconi, “Vicent Ferrer,” –.
 -      

and the final result was a major stress on the anti-Jewish meaning in
the entire representation (in that large and full program were included
some episodes never painted either before or since).
The story of the child cut in pieces looks like a horror movie in
bright colors, with no overt anti-Jewish sentiment apparent (fig. ). The
adult couple, baptized inside the Dominican church of Modena (fig.
), is obviously a matter of converted Jews, even—or mostly?—for the
people who do not read legends in Latin (no doubts on that, if one
looks at the many people in Oriental dress attending to the Christian
ritual). The subject was not unusual at all, and a votive painting for the
women’s monastery of S. Domenico del Maglio in Florence, executed
by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini shortly after Vicent Ferrer’s canon-
ization, had in its predella the baptism of a young man, possibly the
commissioner himself, understood to be a converted Jew even in this
case.20
In addition, the main story in the polyptych, located under the
standing figure of St. Vicent Ferrer, offers clear confirmation of a
strong anti-Jewish orientation in the whole painting. According to the
legend by Peter Ranzano, in the year  the Dominican friar was
preaching at Perpignan, and Benedict XIII, the pope of Avignon,
was present, as were Ferdinand VII, the king of Aragon, and the
Emperor Sigmund (fig. ). The details of the written story have been
kept, but the iconography chosen for the painting deeply modified
the evident stress on special points of it. The historical and legendary
event became a sermon delivered in the open air, on the square in
front of the (quite recognizable) Dominican church of Modena. The
“Three Powers” were only small figures in a balcony, and the saint
friar was preaching to a devout audience on his preferred subject, the
imminent end of this world. (This allusion is made with reference to the
Dominican’s iconographical “attribute,” his finger pointing to a Christ-
Judge mandorla). On the right side of the audience, in the foreground,
three sitting persons wearing a distinctive oriental dress (not to mention
their long hair and beards) were an unmistakable allusion to the Jews,
who, according to the legend, had been forced to attend his sermons,

20 Reproduction in Cesare Gnudi and Luisa Becherucci, eds., Mostra di Melozzo: e del

Quattrocento romagnolo (Bologna, ), – and pl. B. On conversion to Christianity
in Italy during the fifteenth century, see A. Toaff, “Conversioni al Cristianesimo in
Italia nel Quattrocento, movimenti e tendenze: il caso dell’Umbria,” in Ebrei e cristiani
nell’Italia medievale e moderna: conversioni, scambi, contrasti, ed. Michele Luzzati, Michele
Olivari, and Alessandra Veronese (Roma, ), –.
  

and whose resistance had been broken.21 In the painting the power
of the preacher’s word is shown by a miracle performed in favor of
the obsessed woman, jumping dishevelled into the middle of the white
female audience.
The allusion made to the Eucharist was very clear to a large number
of contemporary viewers, who easily connected the story of the child-
cut-into-pieces to the sacramental symbolism, and were very likely able
to perceive a hidden anti-Jewish meaning. In some way, this miracle
was a sort of anti-miracle: on the one side, the wicked Jews’ ritual
murder had dismembered the poor child Simon in Trent; on the other
side, the prodigious Dominican friar was able to put the pieces of a
dismembered child together again.
At the end of the fifteenth century, a predella painted by Domin-
ic Ghirlandajo’s workshop for the Altare Maggiore in the Dominican
church of S. Maria Novella in Florence had lost any fidelity to the
written text of the legend, and did not represent a horror story in a
kitchen, but a celebration of the mass: the saint is wearing liturgical
clothes, and the healed child is standing on the altar table, near the
chalice, as a living host22 (fig. ).
In northern Italy, the blessed Simon was also painted in a fresco for
the parish church of S. Maria di Nato (Vicenza, as early as ),23
standing in a basin filled with his blood, whose shape had been trans-
formed from a dish into a chalice. At the end of the fifteenth century,
the martyred child was standing directly over an altar, in another fresco
for the church of S. Stephen di Rovato (Brescia).24

The Alleged Messiah: The Antichrist And The Jews

In the years between  and , Luca Signorelli painted the fres-
coes on the walls in the “new” chapel of the Orvieto cathedral, whose
program had been started at the time of Fra Angelico and whose sub-

21 Ranzanus, Vita, E nr. .

22 A predella, possibly from the Altare Maggiore in S. Maria Novella in Florence,
represented this peculiar subject; see Christian von Holst, Francesco Granacci (Munich,
), , fig. , and  (at that time: New York, Gallery F. Mont). For the same subject
by Ghirlandajo’s circle in Florence’s Museum Stibbert, see George Kaftal, Saints in
Italian Art: Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, ), fig. .
23 Color reproduction in Rigaux, “L’immagine,” fig. .
24 Color reproduction in Rigaux, “L’immagine,” fig. .
 -      

ject was the representation of Christian eschatology.25 The deeds of the

antichrist were the subject of one scene; it was absolutely uncommon
as a fresco in Italian art at that time.26 Suggestive of an anti-Jewish
inspiration of this section of his work, a Jewish moneylender has often
been identified as a figure in the foreground (even if some arguments
do not seem completely plausible) (fig. ), and St. Vicent Ferrer has
been suggested in connection with the disputing Dominican friar in the
middle.27
There is absolutely no doubt with reference to the iconographical
source of the representation: a wood engraving by Michael Wolgemut,
printed in Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum by Anton Koberger
in Nürnberg in . In the German print, on the right side, the last
preachers are the Jewish prophets, Enoch and Elijah, but on the oppo-
site side, in the middle of the audience of the antichrist’s sermon, in the
crowd of his followers, one could easily recognize some Jewish people,
from their hats and beards.28 In the case of this print, the allusions are
more overt than in the Orvieto fresco, where the antichrist’s figure is
iconographically depicted as a perfect Christ-like figure, that is, a false
messiah of Jewish origin.
The anti-Jewish orientation evident in the visual representation of
stories of the antichrist is even more evident in some popular booklets,
which appeared in print in France and in Milan, in Italy, at the end
of the fifteenth century.29 These booklets contained a line of develop-
ment in content and illustration, which made them very different from

25 See Jonathan B. Riess, The Renaissance Antichrist: Luca Signorelli’s Orvieto Frescoes

(Princeton, ); more recently, Steffi Roettgen, Italian Frescoes (New York, –);
also Giusi Testa, ed., La Cappella Nova o di San Brizio nel Duomo di Orvieto (Milan, ).
Creighton E. Gilbert, How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World (University
Park, Pa., ) was published after the completion of this essay.
26 Color reproduction on the back cover of Riess, The Renaissance Antichrist. Details in

color by Roettgen, Italian Frescoes and Testa, La Cappella Nova.

27 Stanley Meltzoff, Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola: Theologia Poëtica and Painting from

Boccaccio to Poliziano (Florence, ), , identifies the Dominican friar as Savonarola’s
follower Domenico Benivieni.
28 See Riess, The Renaissance Antichrist, fig. . See also Ewin Hall and Horst Uhr,

“Patrons and Painters in Quest of an Iconographic Program: The Case of Signorelli

Frescoes in Orvieto,” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte,  (), –.
29 See Lamberto Donati, “La Vita dell’Anticristo,” La Bibliofilia,  (), –, and

more recently Edoardo Barbieri, “L’Anticristo: vita, morte e (falsi) miracoli,” in L’oggetto
libro ’: Arte della stampa, mercato e collezionismo (Milan, ), –, and “Dalla Francia
all’Italia: ‘La vita dell’Anticristo”’ (forthcoming).
  

similar booklets written, illustrated, and printed in southern Germany.30

The text was originally written in Latin, collecting the traditional the-
ological sources on the topic, and quite soon translated into the ver-
nacular, into French and Italian. The number of the issues was clearly
the result of some popularity of the publication, whose purpose was to
promote individual repentance, pretending that the end of the world
was almost near (as one can read on its pages, which do not show any
millenarian bias).
In the Auctoritates de Antichristo printed in Milan around the year ,
the illustrations are decorating the story of the antichrist as the anti-
“Last World Emperor” (in contrast, in the German series, the antichrist
is represented as “completely opposed to Christ,” as one could read
since the times of Adso in the tenth century).31 In a scene in which the
antichrist is standing over a pulpit, he is rewarding his followers with
money. In the foreground, impiety is represented on the right, where
broken sacred images are lying on the floor (and not by chance, they
are images of Saints Peter and Paul). On the left, once again, bearded
men appear in the audience with oriental hats (fig. ).
A major step in the final events, according to Christian eschatology,
was connected to the role of the Jewish people in the final times, once
again dangling between wickedness and conversion. The attendance of
Jews at an ecclesiastical sermon was tightly connected to an eschatolog-
ical hope, the idea that the final conversion of the people of Israel to
the Christian faith was a last step before the end of this world and the
beginning of the kingdom of heaven.
This theme was quite pronounced in the decoration of illuminat-
ed manuscripts in the fifteenth century. In a book of hours, the Très
Riches Heures of the French Duke of Berry (–), Saints Peter and
Paul are preaching from the same pulpit to an audience where two
major figures are a black man and a Jew;32 a multi-ethnic audience
is represented also in the Apocalypse (–) illuminated for the
Duke of Savoy, Amedeo VIII (who became the Antipope Felix V at the

30 See Der Antichrist und die fünfzehn Zeichen, ed. Heinrich Theodor Musper (Munich,

), and Der Antichrist und Die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht, ed. Karin
Boveland, Christoph Peter Burger, and Ruth Steffen (Hamburg, ).
31 Adso Dervensis, De ortu et tempore antichristi, ed. Daniel Verhelst (Turnhout, ).
32 Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms. , fol. r: reproduction in Millard Meiss, French

Painting at the Time of Jean de Berry, III: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, II (London,
), fig. .
 -      

Council of Basel in  and was renounced in ), where the text
speaks of the angel of the Apocalypse.33

Christian Devotion And Anti-Judaism

In a treatise on roguery, the Speculum cerretanorum written by Teseo Pini

between  and , there is a special group of scoundrels, whose
name is “Acconi” (the source of the name comes from the word icon)
for the following reason, according to the author’s explanation: “As
a matter of fact, (I)con is the first term used to make reference to
painted images of saints painted on wood. These people, I said, carry
the images of the saints, and lay them down before the doors of the
churches and on the churchyards, and in order to beg some money,
they sing some hymns on the blessed Simon of Trent, and the so-called
joys of the Blessed Virgin. When they had got money through begging
with these images, they said to each other: ‘We seized our birds.”’34
The prohibition issued by the papal letters in  was not effective
“against the people who paint the images of the child Simon and keep
them at home,”35 as we can see from the text of a Venetian decree of
the same year; for instance, single sheets and illustrated books with the
images of the supposed saint were widely circulated by these rascals.36
At the end of the fifteenth century, the thieves of the piety of the faithful
made use of the hymns of the Virgin Mary and of the story of the
blessed Simon of Trent — making money, we may imagine, by giving
them small prints. The way in which Christian devotion and anti-
Judaism were deeply connected at the people’s level is evident enough.
The audience of a sermon and the public of a painting are at the
crossroads of a manifold story: on the one side, the real story of the
personage, then the legend of the saint, finally the devotion of the

33 El Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, Ms. E. Vitr. V, fol. v. Facsimile

reproduction in L’Apocalypse figurée des ducs de Savoie, ed. Clément Gardet (Annecy, ),
and El Apocalipsis figurado de los duques de Saboya, ed. C. Santiago Agut (Madrid, ).
34 Original Latin text in Teseo Pini, “Il libro dei vagabondi: Lo ‘Speculum cerre-

tanorum,”’ in “Il vagabondo” di Raffaele Frianoro e altri testi di “furfanteria,” ed. Piero Cam-
poresi (Turin, ), –.
35 Gabriella Ferri Piccaluga, “Economia, devozione e politica: immagini di france-

scani, amadeiti ed ebrei nel secolo XV,” in Il Francescanesimo in Lombardia: Storia e arte
(Cinisello Balsamo/Milano, ), –; see p.  n. : contra pingentes et habentes
puerum Simonem in domibus suis.
36 See some iconographical examples in Dal Prà, “L’immagine,” figs. –.
  

faithful; on the other side, the command of the commissioner, the work
of the artist after it, the role of the iconographical models—not to
mention the importance of the time and place, that is, when and where
the paintings have been produced.
In the last decade of the fifteenth century, in the rural parish church
of Pisogne, S. Maria in Silvis, where the image of the “blessed” Simon
of Trent had been painted in the s, in a “Triumph of Death,”
one can still read in Italian verses, “Death is leading to the infernal
ranks/Tartars, Turks, Saracens and Moorish,” all the people who could
be represented in an oriental dress.37
The Franciscan Bernardino da Busti, an Observant wandering
preacher active at the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of
the sixteenth centuries, wrote a collection of Latin sermons, a sort of
encyclopedic handbook to be used by other preachers. In some way,
the main themes of the friars’ preaching of almost a century could be
found in his pages; for instance, included is a sermon “About the con-
demnation of the sects, of the heathens, of the Muslims, of the Jews.”38

Conclusion

In the second half of the fifteenth century, something had changed in

the basic Christian attitude to the Jews, as far as we are able to tell from
the modified representation in Italian art of the story of St. Stephen,
the first Christian martyr (and the first Christian saint to be murdered
by Jews, long before any persecution of the faithful by the Romans).
Vittore Carpaccio executed, between the years  and , five
big paintings for the Venetian confraternity which took its name from
the devotion to the saint.39 In the choice of the episodes, the “Dispute
with the Doctors of the Law” had the central position, an importance
stressed also by the attendance at the performance by the officials of
the confraternity itself, as an audience contemporary to the events.40 In

37 Ferri Piccaluga, “Economia,”  n. .

38 Ferri Piccaluga, “Economia,” – n. .
39 See Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New

Haven, Conn., ), –, and more recently Augusto Gentili, Le storie di Carpaccio.
Venezia, i Turchi e gli Ebrei (Padua, ), whose arguments will be followed (see pp. –
).
40 Color reproduction in Peter Humfrey, Carpaccio: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Firenze,

), .
 -      

the whole series, St. Stephen is acting in an historical Jerusalem, that is,
in a recognizable setting and location (the town in Palestine), where the
population, and the audience of his deeds, was a mixture of Arabs and
Jews and Byzantines, whose costumes were drawn according to reliable
sketches already available in Venice (fig. ).
St. Stephen is preaching in a real Jerusalem, and wearing his liturgi-
cal garments.41 His sermon comes after his consecration, his judgment
comes before his stoning, the dispute is in the middle; the saint’s ges-
ture and the Jews’ reaction strongly indicate a lively discussion (fig. ).
At the end, the choice in the sequence of the episodes makes clear that
the images had the purpose, not to stress the victory of the preaching of
the gospel, but to remind the viewers that the wicked Jews of that time
had murdered the Christian preacher who addressed them.42

41 Color reproduction in Humfrey, Carpaccio, .

42 An expanded Italian version of this text is in print in the journal Iconographica: Studi
di iconografia medievale e moderna,  ().
This page intentionally left blank
 JEWS, FRANCISCANS, AND
THE FIRST MONTI DI PIETÀ IN ITALY (1462–1500)

A T

The years between  and  may be considered as the period
when the institution of Monti di Pietà was established and spread
throughout Italy. It is generally acknowledged that the pio istituto, the
fruit of Franciscan preaching, was meant to put an end to the “iniq-
uitous usury” of the Jews by replacing them in the small loans sec-
tor, which was directed toward the poorer segments of the population,
among which they had hitherto enjoyed a sanctioned and almost total
monopoly. As of , the year in which the Monte di Pietà in Perugia
was founded and generally deemed by scholars to be chronologically
the first Monte di Pietà, the institution spread rapidly, especially in the
Umbria and Marche regions of central Italy, as well as in the areas
of Tuscany, Lazio, Veneto, and Abruzzi. It is thought that, between
 and , approximately forty Monti di Pietà were founded in these
regions and many more in the period that followed.1 Their establish-
ment was linked to the most prestigious names among the Francis-
can preachers, such as Bernardino da Feltre and Andrea da Faenza,
in addition to a host of other, less renowned friars, such as Barnaba
Manassei of Terni, Michele Carcano of Milan, Giacomo della Marca
and Fortunato Coppoli of Perugia, indefatigably active in promoting
and spreading the “pio istituto.”
Alberto Ghinato, a well-known scholar in this field, observed that the
foundation of the Monti di Pietà always followed a fixed scenario, every
phase of which was repeated in each city.2 It began with a sermon by
a Franciscan friar against the usurious activities of the Jews, during the
course of which threats of excommunication were pronounced against
the governors of the Commune and the entire population: the first
for having signed a moneylending charter with the Jews, who were

1 See Stanislao Majarelli and Ugolino Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di Perugia, periodo

delle origini (–) (Perugia, ), , where we can find an almost complete map
of the first Monti di Pietà in Italy.
2 See Alberto Ghinato, “I Monti di Pietà, istituzione francescana,” in Picenum

Seraphicum,  (), –.

  

thereby allowed to enrich themselves by sinful usury, the inhabitants

of the city as a whole, for having passively permitted the Jews “to
suck their blood” and for not having rebelled against the decisions
of their governors. In order to cancel out this mortal sin, which was
purported to be the origin of wars and mortal epidemics, the cities had
to free themselves of the presence of Jews, immediately and unilaterally
annulling the moneylending charters that gave legal sanction to their
activities. At the same time, so as not to harm the poor, who were
obliged to have recourse to the onerous loans granted by the Jewish
banks, it was imperative to establish the Monte di Pietà, which would
provide credit at no interest whatsoever for the less affluent population.
Following the friar’s preaching, there would be an emergency meeting
of the municipal council (the Council of Priori), often in the presence
of the friar, to discuss the annulment of the Jews’ moneylending charter,
their removal from the city, and the foundation of a Monte di Pietà, using
capital created out of public and charity funds. A citizens’ committee,
presided over by the same preacher, was then elected in order to draft
the new statutes of the Monte. At the same time, the decisions of the
Council of Priori were presented to the Jews, who were commanded to
cease their moneylending activities immediately and to set a date for
the public auction of unredeemed pledges. As soon as they retrieved
their capital, the Jews were invited to leave the city, never to return.
If this was the immutable pattern of events that recurred unchanged
in every case, the question raised by historians, who ask what factors
permitted the de facto continuation of Jewish moneylending activities
alongside and, at least in part in competition with the Monti di Pietà,
should seem surprising. In fact, if the establishment of the Monti was
always preceded by the annulment of the moneylending charters with
the Jews and followed by their expulsion, there would be no reason
for the question to be raised. If the Jews were unable “to practice
their usury” and, furthermore, could not be physically present in the
city, they would certainly not be in a position to operate alongside the
Monti di Pietà nor in competition with them. Last but not least, how
could the friars and their supporters justify the Monti di Pietà activities,
while in the city the awful usury of the Jews did not come to an
end, which, according to their own words, automatically caused the
Christian population to fall into mortal sin and excommunication?
In presenting the case study of the foundation of the first Monti di
Pietà, I shall propose certain conclusions that could serve to shed light
on these factors which, in spite of everything, even after the creation
 , ,       

of the Monti di Pietà, permitted the Jews to continue their lending

practices. I shall endeavor, among other things, to identify, both within
and outside the cities, the power groups that came to the aid of the
Jews, and to investigate their motives for so doing. Ultimately, I shall try
to reconstruct the real relationships between the friars and the Monti
di Pietà on the one hand and the Jews on the other, going beyond
stereotyped and widely accepted formulas which were derived from
official documentation. All this in no way detracts from the theory
stressing the different economic character and function of the Monti
di Pietà as compared to the Jewish banks, for whom the less wealthy
population constituted only a portion, and often the less important one,
of their clientele.3 The most salient case, in many ways a paradigmatic
one, that I intend to present, is that of Perugia, the historic birthplace
of the Monte di Pietà and the seat of one of the most flourishing and
large Jewish communities in central Italy, with about fifteen banks open
to the public and operating with official authorization.4
In the spring of  the Franciscan friar Michele Carcano of Milan
was preaching in Perugia, having returned to Italy after a stay of over
one year in the Holy Land. His demands, directed to the Priori of
the city, were that the moneylending charter granted to the Jews be
rescinded immediately to release “the above-mentioned city of Peru-
gia from the bonds of excommunication” (ad dictam civitatem perusinam
liberandam a vinculo excommunicationis) and that there be established a
Monte di Pietà for the relief of the poor.5 The Council of Priori met and
decided to comply with the friar’s requests, approving officially his pro-
posals. At the same time, the city’s governors set up a plan to raise the
funds, which were not easily available, needed for the new Monte. The
solution, albeit a paradoxical one, was soon found. The Jews, seen as
docile victims, were called upon to furnish to the pious institute the first
means of subsistence, in the form of an interest-free loan amounting to
the enormous sum of  florins “to establish and expedite the above-
mentioned Monte” as the institute for moneylending (pro dictum Montem
sive prestum exequendo et expediendo). The Jews, presumably far from enthu-

3 See recently Viviana Bonazzoli, “Monti di Pietà e politica economica delle città

nelle Marche alla fine del ’,” in Banchi pubblici, banchi privati e Monti di Pietà nell’Europa
preindustriale (Roma, ), –; F. Pisa, “Attività bancarie locali nell’Italia dei sec-
oli XIV–XVI,” in Zakhor: Rivista di storia degli ebrei d’Italia,  (), –.
4 See Ariel Toaff, Gli ebrei a Perugia (Perugia, ), –.
5 See Majarelli and Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di Perugia, . On Michele Carcano,

see P. Valugani, Il beato Michele Carcano da Milano (Milan, ).

  

siastic about such a demand, asked that the sum to be lent be reduced
and, at the same time, urged for a negotiated settlement regarding their
new status in the city, limiting the damages and obtaining a confirma-
tion of the rights they had acquired over two centuries. A first reduction
of the loan gratis et amore to  florins was followed by another, bring-
ing the sum down to  florins. Finally the sum was collected from
the Jews of Perugia, who turned for help to the Jewish banks operating
in Florence. At the end of March , about a year later, the loan (that
nobody really intended to pay back) was delivered by the Jews to the
Monte officials and the pious institution was able—with Jewish money—
to start its operations.6 At the same time the negotiations between the
Jews and Berardo Eroli, bishop of Spoleto and papal legate in Perugia,
reached a surprising settlement. The Jews were still prohibited from
exercising moneylending activities in the city, but in exchange for the
loan to the Monte, they obtained a confirmation of the privileges they
had hitherto enjoyed, including those proceeding from their citizen-
ship rights. Furthermore, they were granted anew the protection of the
papal authority.7 The following April, Pope Pius II Piccolomini him-
self officially ratified the privileges of the Jews of Perugia, and this—the
papal breve says it clearly—in exchange for the  florins contributed
by them to the creation of the Monte.8 In the autumn of  the Jewish

6 Archivio di Stato di Perugia (= A.S.P.), Consigli e Riformanze, , cc. r, r,

r, r, v; , cc. v, rv; Giudiziario, Jura Diversa, busta III, aa. –;
Camera Apostolica, , cc. v, v. See A. Fabretti, Sulla condizione degli ebrei in Perugia
dal XIII al XVII secolo (Torino, ), –; Majarelli and Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di
Perugia, –, –; Ariel Toaff, The Jews in Umbria,  vols. (Leiden, ), .XXV–
XXXII.
7 A.S.P., Camera Apostolica, , c. v: “… et quia nostra mediante opera et

inductione prefati hebrei ad dictam quantitatem milleducentorum florenorum mutuo

concedendam subventione et augumento dicti Montis sunt inducti, prout etiam iam
dictam quantitatem per eos fuisse effectualiter solutam costare dignoscitur, ad quod
mutuum nostre non fuisse intentioni eos cogere invitos, sed potius eos induximus
volentes ad id faciendum allicientes eos sub spe nostre protectionis, ideo etiam dicta
ordinamenta, in quantum favorem ipsorum hebreorum dignoscuntur, similiter ex certa
scientia confirmamus ac grata habemus”: “… given that, thanks to our commitment
and persuasion, the Jews were induced to make a loan of  florins to help and
increase the above-mentioned Monte, and it is known that they have actually delivered
that sum and, given that our intention was not to force them to make this loan against
their will, but on the contrary to persuade them to lend this sum willingly, relying on
our protection; for that reason we officially, willingly, and in full awareness have decided
to ratify those regulations that are in favor of the Jews” (or: “those regulations known to
have been issued to favor the Jews”).
8 A.S.P., Camera Apostolica, , c. r. See Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and

the Jews (–): Documents and History (Toronto, –), – (no. ).
 , ,       

bankers were requested to make an official statement in the presence

of the Priori that they had ceased all moneylending operations in the
city.9
Up to this point there is nothing new. We have the foundation of
the Monte di Pietà (even though, paradoxically, with the basic help of
Jewish capital) and we have, at the same time, the cessation of Jewish
moneylending. The success of the friars’ preaching, therefore, seems to
be absolute and is often presented as such. But this is misleading.
First of all, let us ask ourselves what interest the Jews could have had
to remain in Perugia once their principal and most lucrative activity
was forbidden to them. A careful study of the available documentary
sources helps us to answer this question, giving us a picture of the situa-
tion which is quite different from what we had been led to expect. From
the autumn of , in the months subsequent to the establishment of
the Monte, until the end of , a year after they had declared that
they had complied with the order to cease all their loan operations,
many Jews were arrested and fined for having disobeyed the order.10
Other Jews seemed to have been arrested from time to time in the fol-
lowing years, up to the end of the century. Thus it seems evident that
the Jewish banks continued to operate in Perugia, albeit illegally, after
the foundation of the Monte.
In October  Friar Michele of Milan, the promoter of the Monte
di Pietà of Perugia, accused the Jews of the city of doing their utmost—
according to him—by means of pressures and machinations, to prevent
the opening of the charitable institution: “the establishment of the
said Monte was prevented in many ways until now and delayed, as
we are told openly, mainly by the tricks, pleas and machinations of
the Jews.”11 It seems strange that the friar accused the Jews, the very
people who were at the time, in spite of their uncertain and difficult
political situation, raising the money necessary for the opening of the
Monte. Furthermore in the statutes of the Monte di Pietà of Perugia in
, repeated to the letter in the statutes of other Monti (Assisi ,
Terni ), there still appears a clause, stipulating the heavy fine of 
golden florins for the Priori and other officials who, incited by the Jews,

9 A.S.P., Consigli e Riformanze, , c. r.

10 A.S.P., Notarile, Tancio di Niccolò di Tancio, , cc. r–v; , cc. r, v,
r, rv, v; Giudiziario, Podestà, originali B, , cc. v, r.
11 A.S.P., Consigli e Riformanze, , c. r: “astutia maxime ac precibus et art-

ibus ipsorum Ebreorum—ut publice dicitur—executio ipsius Montis varie impedita

hucusque ac dillata fuerit.”
  

may have jeopardized the existence of the Monte, bringing about its
bankruptcy: “many could be the machinations and corruptions carried
out by the Jews and other vicious men, leading the citizens and other
people to extinguish the above-mentioned Monte.”12 Who were these
“maligne persone,” certainly Christians, who, in cahoots with the Jews,
strove to harm the new institution wanted by the Franciscans?
Friar Michele Carcano had been quite clear in this regard during
his preaching in Perugia, when he accused many members of the
local patriciate and commercial ranks of having clandestinely invested
their capital in Jewish banks so as to derive illicit profits which were
forbidden by Christian law. “In our times,” the friar complained, “not
only the Jews … but also many Christians, making use [or: by means]
of the Jews, secretly increase the usuries in number” (nostris temporibus
non solum Judei … insuper et Christiani plures per Judeorum manus occulto
usuras multiplicant).13 It is not surprising, therefore, that in every case
where, after the establishment of the Monte, Jews were arrested for
having contravened the order prohibiting moneylending, they were
speedily released, after their fines and bonds, often onerous ones, were
paid on their behalf by merchants belonging to the richest aristocratic
families of Perugia, such as the Ercolani, the Oddi and the Valeriani.
At other times the names of the guarantors for the Jews were not
explicitly stated in the notarial documents, but that they were people
of influence in the city seems evident in the light of the deliberately
obscure wording adopted by the notary: “somebody, whose name is
omitted at the moment for good reasons” (quisdam cuius nomen ad presens
pro meliori partito tacetur).14 Obviously appropriate pressures sufficed to
make cautious even the most honest and courageous of notaries.
In fact, already at this point, we can present certain conclusions.
The first is that the Jews, after the foundation of the Monte di Pietà
and the annulment of their agreements with the Commune of Perugia,
continued to lend money in semi-illegal conditions and without the
protection of an official charter (condotta). I have said “semi-illegal”

12 A.S.P., Monte di Pietà, Miscellanea , c. v: “perchè molte poriano esere le

versutie et corruptele deli Judei et altre maligne persone ad inducere li cittadini et

altre persone ad estintione del detto Monte.”
13 See Michele Carcano, Sermonarium de decem preceptis (Venetiis, Giovanni e Gregorio

de’ Gregori, ), c. v.

14 A.S.P., Giudiziario, Podestà, originali B, , cc. v, r.
 , ,       

and not “illegal,” because it is likely that this occurred with the tacit
approval of the Priori, who were interested in the continuation of their
financial activity.
The second conclusion that seems to emerge clearly is that in Perugia
(as well as in many other places in central and northern Italy), there
were many Christians, patricians and merchants, who had invested
their capital unofficially in Jewish banks.15 These Christians continued
to have relations with the Jews even after the establishment of the Monte,
affording them protection and guaranteeing the continued exercise of
their loan operations in spite of the prohibitions.
Patricians and Christian merchants were not the only source of assis-
tance on which Jewish bankers could rely. Also the popes, from afar
and through their legate in Perugia, did not spare efforts to intervene
in their behalf, so as to protect them and to guarantee de facto the pur-
suit of their financial operations. Pius II Piccolomini, on the th of
April,  approved with an official breve the Monte di Pietà of Peru-
gia and the privileges of the local Jews, on condition that they cease
moneylending. But the same pope, only ten days before, had granted to
a group of Jewish bankers of Perugia the right to open their banks in
nearby Deruta, in spite of the prohibition, at the same time absolving
the Christian community from any danger of excommunication. The
privileges granted to the Jewish bankers in Deruta were officially con-
firmed when the first charter expired ten years later.16 It was evident
that the pope intended to allow circumvention of the order that, after
the foundation of the Monte di Pietà of Perugia, forced the local Jews to
cease their moneylending operations.
The case of Perugia is not an isolated one. When, in the autumn
of  the Commune of Terni, overwhelmed by debts to the Holy
See and the local bishop, Tommaso Vincenzi, turned to the pope for
his advice as to how to face their obligations, Sixtus IV della Rovere
responded by warmly advocating the immediate reopening of the Jew-
ish banks in the city, on condition that they not imperil the existence of
the local Monte di Pietà, founded in : “on condition that it will be
clearly understood and declared that, in signing the agreements with
the Jews, nothing will be done that could damage the city’s Monte di

15 On the deposits made by Christians in Jewish banks see A. Toaff, Love, Work and

Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria (London, ), –.

16 A.S.P., Consigli e Riformanze, , c. r; , c. r. See Simonsohn, Apostolic See,

– (no. ).

  

Pietà” (hoc tamen intellecto et declarato quod in conductione dictorum hebreorum

non fiat in aliquo contra officium Montis Pietatis dicte civitatis).17 This provi-
sion sounded like a formality, a lip service, rather than a sign of real
concern for the welfare of the Monte di Pietà. In fact, several years later,
in March , a Franciscan preacher, probably Fra Nicola of Spoleto,
a disciple of Bernardino of Siena, complained that the city of Terni
should consider itself to be excommunicated, because it permitted Jew-
ish usury even after the foundation of the Monte. One of the local Jew-
ish bankers hurried to Rome, however, bringing back a breve from Six-
tus IV, who unequivocally absolved the city of Terni of any sin of con-
science or danger of excommunication: “The Jewish banker came to
Rome, where he got a brief from the pope, granting to our commu-
nity of Terni full impunity and absolution from any sin of conscience
in occasion of the said loan” (bancherius judeus accessit Romam et obtinuit per
breve SSmi D.N. quod communitas nostra Interamnis impune et absque gravamine
conscientie remaneat et remanere possit occasione dicti fenoris).18
In Assisi, where a Monte di Pietà was founded in  on the initiative
of the Franciscan friars Fortunato Coppoli of Perugia and Giacomo
della Marca, the policy of the Holy See to protect the Jewish banks’
activities manifested itself clearly.19 On July ,  a letter from Rome
on this subject was addressed to the Priori of the city. It was signed
by Angelo Fasolo, bishop of Feltre and pontifical treasurer, and Pedro
Ferriz, bishop of Tarragona and judge in the Rota pontifical tribunal.
The two high prelates expressed the pope’s displeasure at the illegal
cancellation of the charters with the Jews and exhorted the governors of
Assisi to respect them until their expiration. The letter also contained
a stern admonition to the preachers, reflecting the official position of
the Holy See in this matter: if they wanted to correct the behavior
of the Christian people, they were free to do so, but they were not
to harass or harm Jews who respected the law, simply because their
customs differed from those of the Christians. “You have to warn the
preachers to condemn the sins and exterminate them, but at the same
time to permit the Jews to live according to their customs, because even

17 Archivio di Stato di Terni (= A.S.T.), Riformanze, , III, c. v.

18 A.S.T., Riformanze, , II, c. v. See A. Ghinato, I primordi del Monte di Pietà di
Terni, II (Roma ), –.
19 See A. Cristofani, Le storie di Assisi (Venezia, ), –; A. Toaff, The Jews in

Medieval Assisi (–) (Firenze, ), –. On Fortunato Coppoli see A. Ghinato,
Un propagatore dei Monti di Pietà del ’: P. Fortunato Coppoli da Perugia, in Rivista di Storia
della Chiesa in Italia, X (), –.
 , ,       

in our laws their presence among the Christians is tolerated” (predicatores

admonete ut peccata redarguant et exterminent, Judeos autem permittant suo more
vivere, qui etiam secundum leges nostras tollerantur inter Christianos). Paul II’s
authoritative intervention enabled the Priori of Assisi to reinstate the
validity of the cancelled contracts with the Jews.20
Similarly in Trevi, in December , with Franciscan friars preach-
ing in the city and threatening excommunication, the rulers felt obliged
to annul the loan charter signed with the Jews. But a month later the
Holy See hastened to enjoin the Priori of Trevi to cancel their deci-
sion, reinstating the lending charter with the Jews.21 Ten years later it
was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II, who wrote to
the governors of Trevi, authorizing them to confirm the provisions of
the moneylending charter with the Jews and absolving them explicitly
from the danger of excommunication: “without any punishment, even
of excommunication” (sine aliqua pena etiam excommunicationis).22
Returning to Perugia, from which we started (if its case is paradig-
matic, as it seems to me), the conclusions appear to be quite clear.

) The creation of the Monte di Pietà was accompanied effectively by the

cessation of officially authorized Jewish moneylending, as required by
the Franciscans.

) The Jews did not de facto desist from their activity and continued
to make loans without chapters (senza capitoli), that is to say, without
the legal protection constituted by the charter (condotta), enjoying the
support of local patricians and merchants, which were connected to the
Jewish banks as silent partners.

) The Holy See, as I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, was another

of the “silent partners” in the Jewish banks, at least from the middle
of the thirteenth century. In cases where it could not help to restore
the validity of the loan charters, unilaterally annulled by local rulers (as
in Perugia), the Holy See sought to open up alternatives, some more,
some less attractive for the Jews, in nearby sites, so as to allow them to
continue their financial operations with minimum inconvenience and,

20 Archivio Comunale di Assisi (= A.C.A.), H, Riformanze, , c. v.

21 Archivio Comunale di Trevi (= A.C.Tr.), Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , cc. r,
r, v.
22 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. v; , c. r.
  

presumably, with the wealthy population as their main clientele. The

example of the bankers of Perugia, empowered to reopen their banks
in neighboring Deruta, is certainly significant.

) Those Jewish bankers, who did not intend to have any problem with
the law, maintained their residence and citizenship in the Commune
(in our case, in Perugia), continuing to exercise their profession in the
centers outside the city district (extra districtum civitatis Perusii). This was
the case of many Jews who, from their home in Perugia, directed their
business in a multitude of banks, small and large, in every part of
Italy—in Sangemini, Orte and Montepulciano, in Fossombrone, San
Severino Marche and Urbino, in Castelnuovo di Parma, Borgo San
Donnino in Lombardy and in Fondi in Campagna.23

At this point it should be quickly pointed out that, contrary to what we

would expect, there were many cases in which the Monte di Pietà coex-
isted, from its inception, with the Jewish banks, in spite of what Francis-
can preaching demanded as a conditio sine qua non. Thus in Assisi, where
the Monte had been founded in , Jews continued to make loans,
sometimes with condotta, sometimes without, having among their clients
the Commune, the San Pietro Abbey and the friars of the “Monas-
tero di S. Francesco” themselves.24 It is not without significance that,
in , Friar Fortunato Coppoli, the founder of the Monte di Pietà in
Assisi, accused the Christian merchants in the city of diverting their
money from the Monte, in order to make clandestine investments in the
local Jewish banks.25 In Amelia, where the Monte di Pietà had been estab-
lished in , on the initiative of the same Coppoli, Jewish bankers
continued to operate without any interruption whatsoever, with an offi-
cial loan charter, counting among their clients, in addition to the Com-
mune, both the governor and the bishop of Perugia.26 In Spoleto, too,
where the Monte di Pietà began its operations in , the Jews con-

23 A.S.P., Notarile, Francesco di Giacomo, , c. v; , c. r; , cc. r, r,

r, r, r, r, r; Angelo di Domenico, , c. r; Giudiziario, Jura Diversa,
mazzo , aa. –.
24 A.C.A., Notarile, Mariotto di Ludovico, , fasc. , c. r; Ludovico di Giovanni

di Angelo, S  bis; H, Riformanze, , fasc. , c. r. See Toaff, Jews in Medieval Assisi,
–.
25 A.C.A., H, Riformanze, , c. v.
26 Archivio Comunale di Amelia (= A.C.Am.), Riformanze, , cc. v–v, r;

, cc. r, v–v, v–v, v; , cc. v–r; , cc. r, r; , cc. v–
r, v; , cc. r, r; , c. v; , cc. r–r. See A. Ghinato, Fondazione
 , ,       

tinued their financial activity in the city with official authorization.27

In Foligno the Monte di Pietà was founded in  by Friar Giacomo
della Marca.28 Notwithstanding the repeated demands made by famous
Franciscans, such as Fra Bernardino da Feltre, who still in  clam-
ored for the expulsion of the Jews and the consolidation of the Monte
(“It has to be provided for the expulsion and removal of all Jewish mon-
eylenders from the city of Foligno and its countryside … and you have
to increase the capitals of your Monte di Pietà” [se habbia a provvedere de
scacciare et mandare via fore della città de Fuligni et contado tutti li Judei che
prestano ad usura … et vogliate procurare de augmentare il vostro Monte de Pietà]),
the Jews continued to make loans undeterred, at times with an official
condotta, sometimes without. In the latter case the arrests and fines of
the bankers caught in the act, served above all to enrich the coffers of
the Commune, but they certainly did not aim at putting an end to the
phenomenon.29
How, then, and why did the friars in many cases accept in practice
the presence of the hated and reviled Jewish bank, alongside their Monte
di Pietà? Furthermore, at least from the point of view of their ideology,
how could a Monte di Pietà operate in a city that was in mortal sin
and struck by excommunication because of the presence in its midst of
usurious Jews who, on top of everything, were officially permitted to
exercise their nefarious art?
The case of Trevi seems significant to me in answering these ques-
tions, casting a revealing ray of light on the real relations between the
preaching friars, the Monti di Pietà, and the Jews, often more pragmatic
in nature than one had been led to suppose. In  the Franciscan
Agostino of Perugia founded the Monte di Pietà in Trevi.30 Surprisingly,
the communal council did not decide, in accordance with the pattern

e statuti del Monte di Pietà di Amelia, in Archivium Franciscanum Historicum, XLVIII (),
–.
27 Archivio Comunale di Spoleto (= A.C.S.), Notarile, Paride di Pierdonato, ,

cc. r, r: “Hebrei mutuant denarios christianis … cum nulla habeant capitula
cum comuni Spoleti et ex quo est in civitate Spoleti ordinatum Mons Pietatis, ad
quem Montem pauperes et egentes habeant recursum pro eorum necessitatibus.” See
A. Salzano, Il Monte dei denari e il Monte del grano a Spoleto nella seconda metà del Quattrocento
(Spoleto, ); Toaff, Love, Work and Death, –.
28 Archivio Comunale di Foligno (= A.C.F.), Riformanze, , c. v; , c. r;

, c. r; , c. r. See A. Messini, Le origini e i primordi del Monte di Pietà di Foligno
(–) (Foligno, ).
29 A.C.F., Riformanze, , c. r; , c. r.
30 See Majarelli and Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di Perugia, –.
  

amply illustrated above, at the same time to annul the moneylending

charter with the Jews of the city. Instead, it turned to the same Friar
Agostino, assigning to him the task of coming to a new agreement with
the Jews, which would enable them to continue their loan activity with
official authorization. “The drafting of the agreements with the above
mentioned Jews, regarding moneylending and usuries, will be commit-
ted to our Friar Agostino of Perugia of the Minors Order, and he may
cancel, correct or restrict the agreements at his own free will” (ordinatio
capitulorum predictorum hebreorum et aliorum quoquomodo concernentium mutuum
usurarium committatur predicatori nostro fratri Augustino de Perusia ordinis Mino-
rum, ut possit predicta capitula cancellare etiam emendare ac minuere suo libito
voluntatis). Even more surprisingly, Fra Agostino accepted the task and
set to work to draft, with the Jews’ agreement, the conditions for pro-
ceeding with their loan operations in Trevi, alongside the local Monte
di Pietà, which he himself had founded.31 The excommunication of the
city and the mortal sin incurred by the Christian population did not
appear unduly to concern the friar, who also appears as the founder of
the Monte di Pietà in Terni years before.32 Several days later Fra Agostino
presented the new agreements, undersigned by the Jewish bankers, for
ratification by the Commune. In the preamble of the condotta, the draft-
ing of which had certainly been previously agreed upon with the Jews,
usury is defined as a necessary, and perhaps inevitable evil, in spite of
its moral and legal condemnation, shared by both Jews and Christians:
“because the vicious usury is prohibited by the natural law, the law
of Moses and the prophets, the canon law and also the political and
civil law, and very clearly by the evangelical law” (cum nephande uxure sint
radicitus prohibite per legem naturalem, mosaycam, propheticam, canonicam ac etiam
politicam et civilem, saltim hodiernis temporibus et expressissime per legem evangeli-
cam). But custom and necessity appeared to be stronger than laws, be
they civil, Jewish, or Christian, and thus the pious friar authorized the
Jews to issue loans at an interest of one bolognino per florin per month,
tantamount to  % per year. The terms of the condotta stipulated that
each year the officials of the Monte di Pietà would preside over the public
auction of unredeemed pledges held by the Jewish bankers.33 Friars and
Jews de facto agreed to operate in different sectors of the local money
market.

31 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. v.

32 A.S.T., Riformanze, , c. r. See Ghinato, Monte di Pietà di Terni, I, –.
33 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. r.
 , ,       

But according to the canonical law, at least, the solution adopted

was quite unacceptable and liable to criticism and censure. Thus a few
years later, in , again at the suggestion of the Franciscan preachers,
a different solution was adopted, one that was to endure through
time. The Priori of Trevi decided to cancel officially the moneylending
charter with the Jews, but at the same time they invited the bankers
to continue their financial activity unofficially, on condition that they
not stop paying the annual business tax and the usual contribution to
the Commune for the traditional S. Emiliano palio: “if the Jews want
to go on, continuing to lend money without any charter signed by our
community, they are allowed to do so as they please; on this matter
we will consult our preacher and according with his opinion we will
act” (si ipsi hebrei fenerationi et mutui artem voluerint sine capitulis communitatis
exercere, id sit et remaneat eorum voluntate et de omnibus istis consilium habeatur
et ratiocinium cum patre predicatore et secundum eius consilium procedatur).34 As
for the religious norm, the appearances were saved with a compromise
that, to all intents and purposes, satisfied both friars and Jews. Without
any doubt also the Commune of Trevi appeared to gain by it.
The example of Trevi leads us to conclusions that seem valid for
all the other numerous cases, where the Monte di Pietà carried out its
operations alongside the Jewish banks, which continued their activities
in spite of official bans. It was apparently accepted practice, suggested
by the communal councils and approved by both, friars and Jews, that
the cancellation of the loan charters was to be taken as a purely formal
act, meant to solve, on paper, problems of an exclusively religious
nature. The Jews continued to lend money without a condotta, with the
tacit consent of the friars, as long as they did not compete unfairly with
the Monti di Pietà and continued to pay taxes, levies, and contributions
to the Commune on their banking business.
With the passage of time the relations between the Monti di Pietà
and the Jewish bankers continued to be far less dramatic than what
often is inferred from the official documentation. This holds true apart
from the undeniable fact that the Jewish bankers and the Monte officials
rightly thought themselves to be members of the same guild and felt
barely hidden feelings of reciprocal professional esteem. We cannot,
therefore, be unduly surprised by the fact that in Volterra a Jewish
banker converted and, a year later, thanks to his financial experience

34 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. r; busta , reg. , c. v.
  

and with his new Christian name, he was called upon by the municipal
council to run the local Monte di Pietà, a task he carried out successfully
for many years.35 But there is more. There was no lack of Communes,
such as Trevi, which, in order to pay their debts, had recourse both to
loans from the Monte di Pietà and, in equal measure, from the Jewish
bankers.36 Then there were municipal councils that did not hesitate
to withdraw the pledges from the Monte di Pietà in order to deposit
them in Jewish banks, thereby obtaining new loans.37 For their part,
the Jews, such as those of Perugia in , , and , did not
shrink from pawning articles with the Monte di Pietà or acquiring from
it large quantities of fabrics, unredeemed pledges that remained unsold
in public auction.38 These contacts should not be overestimated, but
in my view they are of some significance. We can agree partly with
the Franciscan scholar Mariano d’Alatri, who wrote recently, perhaps
with excessive enthusiasm: “From many aspects the Monti di Pietà are
a derivation and, one might say, a Christian version of the Jewish
banks. What is more, this analogy, or rather, outgrowth of the Monte
organization from that of the Jewish banks, did not escape the notice at
the time.”39
Besides the famous case of Perugia, the Jews were, in special circum-
stances, called upon to finance the Monti di Pietà during the frequent
crises that struck them. The motives underlying their intervention were
always linked to the local political situation and were certainly not dis-
interested. But this phenomenon is not without significance and serves
to play down the presumed irreducible hostility existing between the
Jewish banks and the Monti di Pietà (completely unjustifiable, besides,
on the strictly economic level, given the structural differences between
their respective basic clientele). In Pisa in  the Jews contributed
to the Monte di Pietà more than half of the money needed to put it
financially back on its feet, in addition to committing themselves to
pay the rent of the building in which the institution planned to estab-

35 See M. Luzzati and A. Veronese, Banche e banchieri a Volterra nel Medioevo e nel

Rinascimento (Pisa, ), –.

36 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. v.
37 A.C.Tr., Tre Chiavi, busta , reg. , c. r.
38 A.S.P., Miscellanea di computisteria, , cc. r–r; Notarile, Francesco di Gia-

como, , c. r. See Majarelli and Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di Perugia, pp. –.
39 See Mariano d’Alatri, Francescani e banchieri ebrei nelle città d’Italia durante il Quattro-

cento, in Picenum Seraphicum, IX (), –.

 , ,       

lish its headquarters.40 During the same years, the Macerata Monte di
Pietà received an interest-free loan of  golden ducats from the local
Jewish community.41 In  the Franciscan friar Giacomo Ongarelli
preached in Terni, obtaining such a success as to receive the unex-
pected gift of  florins for the Monte di Pietà from the Jews. “Friar
Giacomo Ongarelli of the Observant Order of St. Francis, when he
was preaching in the city of Terni, received from the Jews  florins
as alms in favor of the Monte” (frater Iacob Ungarelli Ordinis Observantiae
S. Francisci, tempore sue predicationis in civitate Interamnis, recepit pro dicto Monte
in elemosinis florenos centum quos habuit ab hebreis).42 Thus, it does not seem
paradoxical to me that in , Angelo of Camerino, the well-known
Jewish banker of Foligno, acted like his relative Manuele da Camerino,
banker in Florence, and like Isach da Pisa, one of the most important
Jewish bankers in Tuscany, leaving in his will an important bequest in
favor of the Monte di Pietà, which was—at least officially and on paper—
created to replace his activity.43

40 See P.M. Lonardo, Gli ebrei a Pisa sino alla fine del secolo XV, in Studi Storici dir. da

A. Crivellucci, vol. VIII, fasc.  (Pisa, ), –; L. Poliakov, Les banquiers Juifs et le Saint
Siège du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, ), .
41 See L. Zdekauer, La fondazione del Monte Pio di Macerata e i primordi della sua gestione,

in Rivista Italiana per le Scienze Giuridiche, XXVII (), –.

42 A.S.T., Riformanze, , II, c. v.
43 A.C.F., Notarile, Taddeo Angelelli, /II, c. r. See Toaff, Love, Work and Death,

p. . On the bequests of Manuele da Camerino and Isach da Pisa in favor of the
Monti di Pietà of Florence and Pisa see U. Cassuto, Gli ebrei a Firenze nell’età del
Rinascimento (Firenze, ), –.
This page intentionally left blank
 PAPAL MENDICANTS OR MENDICANT POPES:
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN PAPAL POLICIES
TOWARD THE JEWS AT THE END OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY

K R. S

God alone—do we need reminding?—has a monopoly on the creation

of something from nothing. Indeed, try as they might to infringe on
this monopoly, challengers, like alchemists, have come up with empty
hands. Accordingly, there is no choice but to put aside any thought of
saying that there was a series of mendicant popes whose policies toward
the Jews differed measurably from those of their papal colleagues. It
would also be wrong to say that papal policies were cloaked with the
strongest of mendicant animosity and intended to reify the aspirations
of Franciscans such as Bernardino da Feltre, who called for amputating
that limb—the Jews—whose gangrenous condition was about to infect
the (Christian) heart.1 To say that such policies existed would be to
restructure history according to whim, much as did the mid-nineteenth
century Comte de Falloux (so he signed his name) who wrote of Jewish
cruelty and the Dominican Pope Pius V’s salutary repressive actions,
basing his case, in turn, on the Vita … Pio Quinti of Girolamo Catena of
 (reprinted ) and the identically named Vita by Paolo Alessan-
dro Maffei published in .2
To understand papal policies properly, we should look to the six-
teenth-century Joseph ha-Kohen, someone not known for his objectiv-
ity as a modern historian, and one who, speaking of Pope Julius III,
said: “May the mountains burst into song, for Giulio de Monte is dead,
the pope who burned our glorious books, the pope who sought to

1 See Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge,

),  and , citing Leon Poliakov, who confuses Bernardino of Siena with
Bernardino da Feltre. Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, ), ,
brings the full citation, also referring to Bernardino of Siena. But see Stow, “The Good
of the Church, the Good of the State: The Popes and Jewish Money,” in Christianity and
Judaism, ed. Diana Wood (Cambridge, Mass., ), .
2 Le Comte de Falloux, Histoire de Saint Pie V Pape (Paris, ), ; Paolo Alessandro

Maffei, Vita di Pio Quinto (Rome, ), ; Girolamo Catena, Vita … Pio Quinti (Rome,
, reprinted ), –.
  . 

pass us through the [baptismal] waters.” By contrast, when speaking

of the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV in connection with the blood libel at
Trent in , ha-Kohen was remarkably reserved, and informed.3 It
was none other than Pope Sixtus who sent the legate de’ Giudice to
investigate the Tridentine proceedings, and it was Sixtus who refused
to have the “victim,” Simonino, canonized (or, it appears, beatified).
One suspects that ha-Kohen may even have known Sixtus’s bull of 
which concluded the affair from the Curia’s point of view.4 On the one
hand, the pope accepted the decision of a commission of cardinals,
based on the legal opinion of the well-known Paduan jurist and auditor
of the Sacred Rota G.F. Pavini, validating the (juridically irregular) pro-
ceedings of late  and early . On the other hand, the pope not
only ordered that the children of those unfortunate ones who had been
executed for their “crime” be restored to their (now baptized) mothers,
but also that the mothers’ confiscated dowries be returned. More sig-
nificantly, the bull reiterates the central clauses of the constitution Sicut
iudaeis, forbidding any actions against Jews that were not the result of
clear judicial decision. It also forbids the unwarranted expropriation of
Jewish money or property as well as any attempt to cancel the Jews’
privilege to observe their religious rites.
The message seems straightforward: correct or incorrect, the pro-
ceedings and procedures at Trent were not to recur. About this mes-
sage, Sixtus’s  text leaves no doubt. To support his approval of the
Tridentine proceedings, Pope Sixtus noted the bull of Innocent III that
denies protection to Jews whose actions threaten Christian safety. He
was, of course, referring to Innocent’s unique version of Sicut iudaeis,
with its menacing codicil that even the Dominican Ramon de Penyafort
must have considered potentially too inflammatory to be incorporated
into the normative Decretales of Gregory IX.5 Paradoxically, the effect

3 Joseph ha-Kohen, #Emeq ha-Bakha, ed. Meir Letteris (Cracow, ), –, .
4 Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents, – (Toronto,
), no. .
5 The bull of Innocent III is found in Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in

the Thirteenth Century, vol.  (New York, , reprinted ) and vol. , ed. K.R. Stow,
(Detroit, ), , no. . The special codicil repeats in the text of Martin IV, Grayzel,
The Church and the Jews, vol. , no. . By contrast, R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent  (New
Haven, ), , mistakes the reference of Sixtus for the bull of Innocent IV concern-
ing the libel at Valreas in ; recently followed by David Berger, “From Crusades to
Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism,” Second
Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History (Touro College, March
, ), –. The bull of Sixtus IV as published by Simonsohn, note  above, says
      

of alluding to Innocent III’s codicil in the dual contexts of Pavini’s

opinion and the principal clauses of protection in Sicut iudaeis—the very
clauses Sixtus had reiterated—was to emphasize the perennial validity
of the bull as a whole. The need, if there ever were one, to suspend its
protection was momentary and fleeting. Sixtus would not subscribe to
Pavini’s position that painted the Jews as a constant danger, and, more
importantly, he was not about to accept Pavini’s break with tradition.
For Pavini had claimed that the proceedings at Trent were valid on
the grounds that Jews were true servi 6 and, hence, persons deprived of
normal legal safeguards. This was an argument that the mid sixteenth-
century Udinese jurist Marquardus de Susannis, himself a Paduan by
training, like Pavini, said was false according to the best medieval legal
opinion,7 and which argument, as Pavini himself had admitted, none
other than Thomas Aquinas had rejected. Sixtus IV rejected it as well.8
But, then, the position that Jews had no legal rights was a posi-
tion that no pope had ever, or could ever have, espoused. Even Bene-
dict XIII had warned against violating Jewish rights and privileges in
his otherwise devastating Etsi Doctoris of .9 The same applies to the
revolutionary papacy of Paul IV, who was careful not to leave the Jews
destitute of legal protection.10 The inherent danger to Jewish rights and
safety was also no doubt a factor in the decision of the Franciscan Six-
tus V, one hundred years later, to allow only the (local) cult of Simonino,
not canonization.11 And Sixtus V, as I have shown elsewhere, in stead-

clearly Innocent III, and, more importantly, indicates in concilio generali editum, which
must refer to the Fourth Lateran Council of , over which Innocent III presided.
This is apparently confusion by the chancery, mistaking the council’s decrees for mate-
rial edited in the Decretals. But, whether the one or the other, this phrase cannot apply
to the bull of , which was not issued at a council. In any case, the described content
of the bull leaves no doubt that the reference is to the Sicut iudaeis of Innocent III.
6 Diego Quaglioni, “I giuristi medeoevali e gli ebrei: Due ‘consultationes’ di G.F.

Pavini (),” Quaderni Storici,  (), –, esp. –. See also Anna Esposito and
Diego Quaglioni, Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento, – (Padua, ), .–.
7 Marquardus de Susannis, De Iudaeis et Aliis Infidelibus (Venice,  and ), .,

.
8 Diego Quaglioni, “Propaganda Antiebraica e Polemiche di Curia,” in Un Pon-

tificato ed una città: Sixto IV (–), ed. Massimo Miglio, Francesca Niutta, Diego
Quaglioni, and Concetta Ranieri (Vatican City, ), –, esp. , and also “I
giuristi medeoevali.”
9 Kenneth Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, - (New York, ),

–.
10 Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, esp. –.
11 See Hsia, Trent , –, and the text in the anonymous Die Paepstlichen Bullen

ueber die Blutbeschuldigung (Munich, ), passim, including the opinion of Cardinal
  . 

fastly refusing to allow Jews to live outside the Roman ghetto, was any-
thing but revisionist in his policy regarding Jews.12 Sixtus V, indeed,
remained always the Franciscan, to wit, his sermon on the Virgin found
in ten copies in the Vatican Library and his appointment as cardinal by
none other than Ghislieri, Pius V.13 Zeal for the Catholic faith thus was
not ipso facto to be equated with zeal unconditionally to trample on the
Jews.
One may object, of course. Why were both popes, Sixtus IV directly
and Sixtus V indirectly, willing to accept an apparent reversal of the
stance taken in  by Innocent IV, who declared ritual murder libel
inherently false, which it was in the case of Simonino?14 In fact, the
situation was anything but transparent, which is precisely what Joseph
ha-Kohen was indicating. More to the point, what Innocent IV could
permit himself, Sixtus IV could not. For Innocent IV sat astride the
institutions of the church, was himself a legist of distinction, and it
was he who set the tone with respect to canon law and the Jews.15
In Innocent’s day, this law was as balanced as it was restrictive, as
also was the tone of the ius commune, the civil parallel of canon law.
The dominant concept was that “appropriate” regulation, allowing
law-abiding Jews to live peacefully within Christian society, could be
found; the Jews, after all, were fideles of the Church Militant, de popolo
Romano.16 The principal concern was to keep Jews at a safe distance
from Christians, to avoid contamination through “excessive familiarity,”
namely through touch, or by eating at a common table, or sleeping
under the same roof, that disqualified the potential communicant, a

Ganganelli, Clement XIV, . Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, , goes
too far in saying “canonization.”
12 Kenneth Stow, “The Consciousness of Closure: Roman Jewry and Its Ghet,” in

D.B. Ruderman, Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New
York, ), –.
13 Martine Boiteux, “Rivaltà festive: Rituali pubblici romani al tempo di Sisto V,”

Roma e Lazio, ed. M. Fagiolo and M.L. Madonna (Rome, ), ., –.
14 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. , nos.  and .
15 See B.Z. Kedar, “Canon Law and the Burning of the Talmud,” Bulletin of Medieval

Canon Law,  (), –.

16 See Stow, Catholic Thought, . On issues of contact impurity, see James Brundage

“Intermarriage Between Christians and Jews in Medieval Canon Law,” Jewish History, 
(), –; the problem derives from Paul in  Cor :–, who warns Christians
to maintain eucharistic purity by having no contact with pagan altars, and he points to
Jews keeping non-Jews away from the altar of the temple. By John Chrysostom’s time,
and certainly following, dining with Jews was as potentially contaminating as dining
with pagans. Agobard of Lyons is beside himself with the problem.
      

concern that loomed ever larger once the Fourth Lateran Council of
 made taking the Eucharist at Easter obligatory.
Yet this search for balance had lost much ground by the time of Six-
tus IV. To be sure, it had not ceded altogether: had not Sixtus IV rep-
rimanded his Avignonese adjutants for violating custom by not judging
the Jews tanquam veri cives?17 At the same time, an indignant letter to
Saragosa clarifies that, between unconditional trampling and uncondi-
tional protection, lay the wide swath of heavy restraint. The pressure
to increase that restraint was also growing, as Pavini’s strident tones
demonstrated. And Pavini represented an entire school, one centered,
as I believe future research will confirm in detail, at the Law Faculty of
Padua. Paduan legists had eschewed the theory of balance articulated
in the fourteenth century by Perugian legists, and, in its place, they had
adopted a theory concentrated almost exclusively on preventing con-
tamination via social contact. This theory was typified by the remark of
Dr. Tiberino, the chronicler of the events of  and a fellow traveler
of the Paduans, who wrote that, when Simonino was brought before
them, the Jews of Trent began ululare, to bark like dogs. As the late
fourth-century John Chrysostom had said, the Jews are dogs, while we
Christians (alone) are the children of God. Chrysostom was comment-
ing on Matthew :, in which Jesus says he has brought the bread—
eventually explained as the Eucharist—for the children, not the dogs;
he was also referring to participants in Paul’s eucharistic fellowship (of 
Corinthians :–), to which only the pure might belong. The Jewish
dogs, as Chrysostom saw it, were always seeking to steal the children’s
“bread.” Clearly continuing this exegesis (there are many other exam-
ples), the “Jewish dogs” of Dr. Tiberino’s tale thus were attacking not
only a Christian child, Simonino, but Christian purity; indeed, they
were attacking Christ and Christianity itself. It was in this spirit that
Pavini had his opinion on the proceedings at Trent published alongside
the noted consilia of the fourteenth-century Avignonese legist Oldradus
da Ponte,18 consilia which insist, following the spirit of Paul in Gala-
tians, that the son of Hagar (here understood as the Jews, not as Islamic
Ishmael) might be expelled should they threaten irremediable damage,
by which Paul intended contamination through adopting Jewish prac-
tices.19

17 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .

18 Diego Quaglioni, “Propaganda antiebraica,” .
19 Oldradus da Ponte, Consilia (Rome, ), Cons. , c. vA–B; see, too, the consil-
  . 

My own reading of Oldradus is a more balanced one, but this is irrel-

evant. Here, it is Pavini’s reading that counts, a reading that may well
have anticipated what the Observant Franciscan Bernardino da Busti
would write in  of l. nullus, a civil (Roman) law enacted originally to
protect the Jews, but which da Busti would imply sanctioned expulsion
should the Jews threaten the Christian peace.20 Pavini certainly knew
the consilium, or rather a statutum, of John Capistrano—like Busti, a
Franciscan—whose sole emphasis lies on the canons of exclusion: from
table fellowship, from contact, from potential contagion, and, of course,
from lending (que autem conventio Christi ad belial [ Cor ]).21 Pavini was
also no doubt influenced by the four magisterial consilia of the Paduan
Alexander de Nievo, which—in opposition to the stance of the clas-
sical Perugian school of Bartolus, Baldus, and, in particular, Baldus’s
Paduan student, Paolo di Castro, and the latter’s son Angelo (Capis-
trano, intriguingly, was a graduate of Perugia)—forbid lending on all
counts. They also refute the objections in favor of lending made by the
Perugians, who had said that lending served “the needs of the poor.”22
The stand of the Franciscan Observants against lending and its sup-
posedly deleterious effects was greatly strengthened. Sixtus IV, however,
did permit lending. He absolved the people of Corneto from oaths that
they had taken to a Franciscan preacher not to tolerate lending,23 and,
contrary to Nievo, he echoed the traditional reasoning about sustaining
the Christian poor.24 He also echoed the traditional argument perfected
in thirteenth-century papal legislation balancing consent to lending, a

ium in which Oldradus states that the Jews are peiores than sodomitis, cited in Quaglione,
“Propaganda antiebraica,” , a motif going back at least as far as Agobard of Lyons
in the ninth century; and also Oldradus, Cons.  and , and the discussion of Nor-
man Zacour, Jews and Saracens in the Consilia of Oldradus da Ponte (Toronto, ),
.
20 See Kenneth Stow, “Expulsion Italian Style: The Case of Lucio Ferraris,” Jewish

History,  (), –, here – C.,,, nullus.

21 Hélène Angiolini, ‘“Cibus iudei’: un ‘consilium’ quasi inedito di Angelo di Castro

sulla mecellazione con rito ebraico e una ‘reprobatio’ di san Giovanni da Capestrano,”
–, esp. –; for the Capistrano text in La Storia degli ebrei nell’Italia medievale: tra
filologia e metodologia, ed. M.G. Muzzarelli and G. Todeschini (Bologna, ).
22 Anna Esposito and Diego Quaglioni, Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento, .–, and

Quaglioni, “I giuristi,” –; and Diego Quaglioni, “Fra tolleranza e persecuzione: Gli
ebrei nella letteratura giuridica del tardo Medioevo,” in Gli ebrei in Italia, Storia d’Italia
Annali , ed. C. Vivanti (Torino, ), –, on the Paduan school and Perugians,
although Quaglioni himself does not draw a sharp distinction between “schools.”
23 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .
24 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .
      

consent voiced even at the Fourth Lateran Council of , against the
sharp prohibition of excess or openly taken interest.25
In the late sixteenth century, Sixtus V, too, found a way to sustain
lending by allowing ghettoized Roman Jews to remain in the small town
of Lazio, but without granting them permanent right of residence.26
The source of this solution could well have been the de Iudaeis et Aliis
Infidelibus of Marquardus de Susannis (, ), whose meticulous
discussion of lending favors the principles of the Perugians Bartolus
and Baldus. De Susannis’s sole reference to the consilia of Nievo is the
perplexing “quod habeo,” as though he had a random copy, despite the
consilia’s repeated printings. This reference allows de Susannis cleverly
to accept de iure the prohibition of Nievo, but, ultimately, to suggest
a pragmatic stratagem allowing the pope to neglect to punish usury
and its Jewish practioners.27 This was, however, the same Marquardus
de Susannis who professed belief in a host of Jewish crimes, that of
Trent in particular. The  edition of his de Iudaeis goes on about
it at great length, as well as it declares that Jews poisoned wells in
. One would thus have expected de Susannis staunchly to support
Nievo, but he did not. Likewise, he opposed the school of Duns Scotus
that consented to the baptism of children parentibus invitis, an argument
brought to bear in  at Trent, with Pavini himself sanctioning the
act. De Susannis did accept that improperly baptized children should
not be returned to Jewish parents,28 concerned that biological Jewish
parents would teach their children to blaspheme. What de Susannis
opposed was forced baptism, as did his near contemporary Cardinal
Pier Paolo Pariseo.29 Otherwise, de Susannis held that a thorough rite
de credal passage was possible—precisely what so many, especially in the
Iberian Peninsula, then doubted.
Accordingly, de Susannis (whom I view as emblematic) emerges as
a legal traditionalist moved far to the right, a traditionalist prone to

25 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, nos. , .

26 Stow, “The Consciousness of Closure,” –.
27 De Susannis, De Iudaeis, I., “in eius consilio quod fecit contra iudaeos fenerantes

quod habeo et impressum reperitur post Pisanellum”; as though people did not even
know it; others are referred to by precise references, assuming the texts are at every
jurist’s beck and call. Diego Quaglioni, “Fra tolleranza e persecuzione,” , on Nievo
and Di Castro.
28 De Susannis, De Iudaeis, I..
29 Discussed in Kenneth Stow, “Church, Conversion, and Tradition: the Problem of

Jewish Conversion in Sixteenth Century Italy,” Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, 
(), .
  . 

accept the worst as true, and a traditionalist out on the furthest branch
of the tree.30 And it is this rightward movement of even the exponents
of tradition that provides us with a key to explain the acts of Sixtus IV
and those of Sixtus V, or even of Pius V, the third mendicant pope of
this period, as well as of Paul IV, the Theatine, who followed suit. It was
not the individual pope, but the overall atmosphere, as represented by
the shift in legal emphasis (heightened by other factors now to be men-
tioned), that was progressively undermining old postures. So threatened
were these postures, that, as late as the eighteenth century, Cardinal
Ganganelli (again a Franciscan and the future Pope Clement XIV)
repudiated the blood libel. Nonetheless, he admitted to the homicide
of Simonino—called, by him, Beato—at the hand of the Jews.31 The old
medieval equilibrium stated in Gregory IX’s Decretales and in Thomas’s
Summa theologiae was becoming ever more a pale shadow of its former
self.32
It was in this spirit of precariousness that Sixtus IV injected a highly
emotional language into papal letters, calling for the strictest appli-
cations of the canons concerning Jews, a language far more strident
than any of the actually formalized rhetoric found in thirteenth-century
papal letters, instructing, for example, the Dominican inquisitor in
Sicily to proceed against Jews who offend Christianity and corrupt
Christians (“ora sua spurcissima aperire, ac prava et obscena quedam diabolica
figmenta, suis falsissimis dogmatibus confingere”), deceiving, dogmatizing, and
proselytizing (among converts?) to the detriment of the faith.33 Charges
long dormant on the part of the popes against the Talmud were also
brought back to life. However much the context suggests that the pope
really was quite ignorant of the Talmud,34 the tone remained emotional.
It was more emotional yet in the above-mentioned letter to Saragosa of
.35 The pope was distraught about the “contagione iudaica … ut chris-
ticolas a veritate seducere et se voluptatum suarum compotes facere valeant.”
Charges were leveled that the Jews had built a new synagogue, taken
down a statue of the Virgin, were supervising prostitution, fathering
Christian children, eating with Christians, sleeping with them, and

30 Stow, Catholic Thought, –.

31 See the texts cited in n. , above.
32 Stow, Alienated Minority, –.
33 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .
34 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. ; on this text, see Fausto Parente, “La Chiesa e il

Talmud,” in Gli ebrei in Italia, ed. C. Vivanti, –, esp. .

35 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .
      

bathing with them in the public baths. Since they were not wearing
distinctive clothing, they were taken for priests; there were even cases
where sacraments had been offered in Jewish houses. Violations like
these, which, since at least the times of the ninth-century Agobard
of Lyons, had been felt by some to endanger Christian purity, and
especially unity, “forced” the pope to demand restraint in the manner
of Nievo and Pavini. But this demand also recalls Sixtus’s balanced
 resolution of the crisis at Trent. The foundations may have been
tottering, yet the pope called for correction alone. He did not raise
the prospect of expulsion, precisely as Nievo and Pavini might have
preferred. Instead, Sixtus followed the lead of Innocent III, who in 
had ordered Jews to wear distinguishing clothing, yet, just one year
later, insisted that he had not intended this order to expose Jews to
physical danger.
It was perhaps this papal hesitancy to abandon tradition entirely
that moved the three principal Hebrew chroniclers of this time to
warn us to judge popes such as Sixtus IV circumspectly. Joseph ha-
Kohen, Benjamin ben Elnatan, and Shelomo ibn Verga all report
libels at Rome in which the pope eventually acts to derail Christian
knavery. Were these libels really made, especially the fantastic story of
the demise of a credulous cardinal in the always elusive plots of ibn
Verga?36 For our purposes it matters little. The issue is the type, the
model, what all three authors wanted their Jewish readers to think.
Even Joseph ha-Kohen, who, as we saw, has serious reservations about
papal behavior in other situations, or who labels Pius V impio, and calls
him the meshugah,37 the mad man, reminiscent of references in Jewish
literature to Mohammed, was led to qualify what should have been a
universally pessimistic outlook.
Yet was not ha-Kohen, as well as the other two chroniclers, a keen
observer? Even the truly draconian Pius V (one need but look at Pros-
peri’s recent treatment38) who imprisoned and fined Bolognese Jews,
had their remaining books burned, and then in  expelled them,
was compelled, together with his inquisitors, to accept legal limits.
Thanks to this, the terrifying story of Ishmael Haninah, tortured by

36 Solomon ibn Verga, Shebet Jehudah, ed. A. Shohat (Jerusalem, ), ; Joseph

ha-Kohen, #Emeq ha-Bakha, ed. M. Letteris, ; Isaiah Sonne, ed. Mi-Pavolo ha-Revi#i #ad
Pius ha-Hamishi (Jerusalem, ), –.
37 Joseph ha-Kohen, #Emeq ha-Bakha –.
38 See Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali di Coscienza (Torino, ),  in particular for

Pius V, and passim.

  . 

the Bolognese Inquisition in  (in response, most likely, to charges of

blasphemy made by the neofita Alessandro Giusti),39 had a “happy end,”
at least in the sense that Rabbi Ishmael was freed when he stood his
ground. There were, so to speak, certain inviolable principles, the same
principles that had informed Sixtus IV’s actions (albeit perhaps with
greater real concern) in the aftermath of Trent. Ishmael’s fate was thus
the opposite of the ferocious finish at Mantua in , where, appar-
ently with ducal connivance, seven Jews were hanged for mimicking
a preaching friar and on charges of taking Christ’s name in vain.40
However Jews understood, or misunderstood, what was going on (as
I have suggested in the past), or however much they may have min-
imized the import of papal programs—verbally, at least—as they did
before the Jewish rabbinic notaries at Rome,41 they could perceive that
certain lines were never crossed. Pragmatic experience and knowledge
may also have told them that popes were not truly free agents; papal
actions were shaped by forces not always under exclusive papal control.
One glance at the bulls of Sixtus IV concerning the Spanish Inqui-
sition is sufficient to reveal the pressure placed upon the pope by the
Spanish clergy and royalty to approve the institution’s functioning.42
Yet, in contradiction (did he fear that the Inquisition might frustrate
sincere conversion?), Sixtus also reprimanded that body for exceeding

39 On these issues, see M.G. Muzzarelli, “Ebrei, Bologna e sovrano-pontifice: la fine

di una relazione, tra verifiche, restrizioni e ripensamenti,” –; Rossella Rinadli, “La
giustizia in citta: Indagini sulla comunità ebraica di Bologna tra ’ e ’,” –,
esp. –, and Mauro Perani, “Documenti sui processi dell’Inquisizione contro gli
ebrei di Bologna e sulla loro tassazione alla vigilia della prima espulsione (–),”
–. All of these essays are found in Verso l’epilogo diuna convivenza: gli ebrei a Bologna
nel xvi secolo, ed. M.G. Muzzarelli (Florence, ). See also David B. Ruderman, “An
Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth Century Bologna,” Hebrew Union College Annual, 
(), –.
40 This episode is well detailed in Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy

of Mantua (Jerusalem, ), –.

41 Kenneth Stow, The Jews in Rome,  vols. (Leiden, –), vol. , nos.  and

.
42 On all these matters, see A. Herculano, History of the Origin and Establishment of the

Inquisition in Portugal (New York, ), , and the texts cited there. In particular, see the
text of January , : “quamplures alii, justo timore perterriti, in fugam se conver-
tentes, hinc inde dispersi sint, plurimique ex eis se Christianos et veros Catholicos esse
profitentes, ut ab oppressionibus huiusmodi releventur, ad sedem prefatam, oppresso-
rum ubique tutissimum refugium, confugerint, et interpositas a variis et diversis eis per
dictos inquisitores illatis gravaminibus appellationes, huiusmodi querelas continentes,
nobis presentaverint, earundem appellationum causam committi, de ipsorum innocen-
tia cognosci, cum multiplici lachrimarum effusione humiliter postulantes.” (This text
also appears in Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .)
      

its privilege, for improper procedures, for violating the ius commune, and,
in particular, for falsely executing the innocent.43 In addition, in Italy,
Sixtus directed the acquittal of a Jew accused of buying silver from a
church and later tortured and tried by an inquisitor.44 He also freely
gave Jews licenses to practice medicine,45 once even withstanding pres-
sure to the contrary by Observant Franciscans, who had aroused the
local populace in Terni.46
Looking at these contradictions, Attilio Milano accused Sixtus IV of
exemplifying those popes with an “atteggiamento ondeggiante.”47 In fact,
Sixtus’s policy toward Jews was typified by a consistent positioning,
such as we have just seen, that involved balancing a will to restrain
with a reverence for tradition. But this balance was also constantly
buffeted. It was strained, in particular, by such ubiquitous political
exigencies as those of the Papal State, whose unique nature virtually
forced popes to flout legal and theological norms and which created
pressures such as those that led Sixtus IV to sanction the Spanish
national Inquisition. By contrast, it was no doubt the needs of the Papal
State qua body politic that informed the issue of whether to grant Jews
permits to practice medicine. In this, however, the pope could invoke
the loophole (pointed out, for instance, by de Susannis) that, despite
rigid prohibitions, Jews could medicate Christians, should the Jewish
physician possess unique medical skills.48 And, of course, the needs of
the “secular” Papal State encouraged the papal policy of permitting
Jews to collect non immoderatasve usuras.49
Yet any such concessions were subject to challenge. And challenged
they were in the internecine struggles within the papal Curia, Six-
tus’s court, whose control was essential for all of his activities—not
the least of which were the aggrandizement of his cardinal nephews—
and where, among other things, Sixtus had to deal with pressures by
humanists and their prelate allies.50 In particular, and what concerns us

43 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, nos. , , .

44 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .
45 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, nos. , .
46 See the text in Ariel Toaff, The Jews in Umbria,  vols. (Leiden, ), no. .
47 Attilio Milano, Storia degli Ebrei in Italia (Torino, ), .
48 De Susannis, De Iudaeis, II..
49 On the nature of the Papal State, see Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontifice: un corpo e due

anime (Bologna, ), and on the popes and Jewish lending, see Stow, “The Good of
the Church, the Good of the State,” passim, and the literature cited there.
50 The most recent studies on these matters are Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of

Letters (Rome, ), –, esp. –, and also –; and John D’Amico, Renaissance
  . 

most, Sixtus had to weather the pressures applied in  and later by
the humanist bishop of Trent, Hinderbach.51 Curial politics were thus
influenced by those of the academy. They were also carried on in aca-
demic terms. The verbal fight, sometimes in the coarsest of language,
between the Dominican legate de’ Giudice, whom Sixtus IV had sent
to Trent (despite squabbles between Dominicans and Franciscans), and
Sixtus’s bibliothecarius, the humanist Platina,52 was at once, at least in
its overtones, a fight over rhetorical acumen, not to mention academic
egos, as well as over principles and politics.
The late John D’Amico judged that the humanists in the Curia
eventually, by the time of Julius II, were harnessed to papal needs,53
but this does not seem to have been the case fifty years earlier. Paul II,
before Sixtus, had once arrested Platina among other members of
the so-called Roman Academy on charges of paganism, a paganism
that included reading such sources as Tacitus, with his descriptions of
what he saw as Jewish malevolence.54 The link between a new kind
of humanism and attitudes toward Simon of Trent seems quite clear.
No wonder that Platina himself has been suspected of making a de
voto to Simonino, or that humanists such as the Trentino Raffaele
Zovenzoni—in addition to the physician Tiberino, whose description
of Simonino’s corpse and death was crucial—were closely allied, in
opposing and defeating de’ Giudice, with Bishop Hinderbach and with
his major ally, the auditor of the Rota, Pavini himself.55 The defeat,
moreover, was in part of the pope, which may be inferred from the
concessions to these humanists and their ilk made in the bull conferring
legality on the Tridentine proceedings.
Also affecting this bull and, in fact, the whole affair at Trent, were
mendicant vagaries, including the tension between Franciscans and

Humanism in Papal Rome (Baltimore, ), passim; and see esp. Charles L. Stinger, The
Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington, ), .
51 See esp. Esposito and Quaglioni, Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento, .–.
52 See Lee, Sixtus IV, –, and passim, but esp. Diego Quaglioni, Apologia Iudaeo-

rum, Invectiva Contra Plantinam (Roma, ), passim.

53 D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, –.
54 Tacitus, Histories, .–; D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, , and, in particular, on

the involvement of humanists directly in anti-Jewish activity, using “anti-Jewish” in the

literal sense, see Anna Foa, “The New and the Old: The Spread of Syphilis (–
),” in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero
(Baltimore, ), –.
55 Quaglioni, “Propaganda antiebraica,” ; and Esposito and Quaglioni, Processi

contro gli ebrei di Trento, ..

      

Dominicans. Sixtus, who was normally diffident about Franciscan de-

mands, especially those concerning Jewish lenders and physicians (he
did allow a Monte di Pietà in his own city of Savona56 in Liguria),
nonetheless chose to defend Giacomo della Marca, one of the most
vociferous of the Franciscan preachers against the Jews, because della
Marca was so prominent in the Franciscan-Dominican debate over the
nature of Christ’s blood.57 This kind of interplay serves as background
for what I believe to be a highly reasonable speculation.
There seems to be little question that somehow Sixtus, Papa Della
Rovere, remained faithful to his original mendicant vocation. The ob-
servation of Luke Wadding that Sixtus wore his papal gown over a
Franciscan habit,58 however true or apocryphal, nevertheless may well
capture the spirit of this pope,59 who was a professor of theology, the
author of theological tracts De sanguine christi (disputing the Dominicans)
and De potentia dei,60 and a priest who dwelt on his devotion to St.
Francis as the source of his papal election.61 Yet, once again, Sixtus’s
responsiveness to Franciscan aspirations—he himself was a Conventual,
although he was General of all three branches of the Order62—was
a function of political and religious tensions combined. Regardless of
Sixtus’s promotion of Franciscan piety, he had to be wary, not only of
the degree to which the charismatic Observants were taking control
of people’s minds and religious piety through preaching, but also of
the increasing mendicant influence worked through their penetration
of those civic confraternities that often were the key to urban social life
and order.63 For this penetration implied a potent challenge to Sixtus’s

56 Simonsohn, Apostolic See, no. .

57 See here Concetta Bianca, “Francesco della Rovere: Un Francescano tra teologia
e potere,” in Un Pontificato ed una città, Sisto IV (–): atti del Convegno, Roma, –
 Dicembre , ed. Massimo Miglio et al. (Vatican City, ), –, esp. ; also
Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome, ), –.
58 Lee, Sixtus IV, –, citing Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum: seu, Trium ordinum a

S. Francisco institutorum Annales,  vols. (Florence, ), ..

59 Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, , reports Sixtus’s supposed oath

never to remove his Franciscan habit.

60 Bianca, “Francesco della Rovere,” , and Lee, Sixtus IV, .
61 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, –.
62 Lee, Sixtus IV, –.
63 Among the legion of recent studies on confraternities in the urban setting and

relations with mendicants, see Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion
in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, ); Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the
Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, ); and esp. Roberto Rusconi, “Confraternite, compag-
nie e devozioni,” in La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, Storia di
  . 

control over the urbs, the city of Rome itself, and over its noble families,
a control that by definition was indispensable for Sixtus’s rule, since he
was representative of a new and non-noble family from distant Savona.
Toward enhancing this control, Sixtus had embarked on a major
building program, the Ponte Sisto being one its most notable products,
and he announced a Jubilee to make Rome a focus of international
attention.64 Yet this was all preparatory, or accompaniment, for his real
project of subduing the nobility, marginalizing its power, and chang-
ing the entire governmental process of the city. This largely accom-
plished, however, Sixtus had to confront the accentuated role the nobil-
ity was assuming in Roman lay confraternities, that of the Salvatore,
in particular,65 creating within them a pseudo-governmental structure
that was also dedicated to family aggrandizement. Within the confra-
ternities, the nobility had established a kind of “civic-Romanity” or
“Romanism,” a political mentality akin to the mental constructions that
Hans Baron, however mootly, called civic humanism in regard to Flo-
rence.66 The mendicants’ ever greater insertion into confraternal spir-
itual life at this time,67 injecting it with a burgeoning sense of piety
and mission, could only have encouraged the development of a mysti-
cal aristocratic political self-consciousness, as had happened constantly
with ideologically motivated political bodies in the past. In response,

Italia, Annali , ed. G. Chittolini and G. Miccoli (Turin, ), –, where Rusconi
argues that, in rural sectors in particular, the lay confraternity is never purely that,
but was heavily infiltrated by religious orders (). Consult also Charles de la Ron-
ciére, “Les confréries en Toscane aux XIV et XV siècles d’aprés les travaux récents,”
–, esp. – on confraternities as a mode of escape, or, alternately, a safe refuge
for aristocrats from Medici pressures, and also Giulia Barone, “Il movimento frances-
cano e la nascita delle confraternite romane,” –, Paola Pavan, “La confraternita
del Salvatore nella società romana del Tre-Quattrocento,” –, Anna Esposito, “Le
‘confraternite’ del Gonfalone (secoli XIV–XV),” –. All these articles are in Luigi
Fiorani, ed., Le confraternite romane: esperienza religiosa, società, committenza artistica. Ricerche
per la storia religiosa di Roma,  (Rome, ). Finally, see Paola Pavan, “Permanenze di
schemi e modelli del passato in una società in mutamento,” –, in Miglio et al.,
Un Pontificato ed una città.
64 Lee, Sixtus IV, –.
65 This fraternity is discussed fully in Paola Pavan, “La confraternitadel Salvatore

nella società romana del Tre-Quattrocento,” –; and see also Anna Esposito, “Le
‘confraternite’ del Gonfalone,” – in Fiorani, Le confraternite romane.
66 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican

Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, ); on which, see Edward Muir,
“The Italian Renaissance in America,” American Historical Review,  (), –.
67 See Roberto Rusconi, “Confraternite, compagnie e devozioni,” Storia di Italia,

Annali , .
      

papal apprehensions about unrestrained noble and mendicant inten-

tions could only grow. This was not a propitious moment to make light
of Franciscan preaching, for instance, that of Michele Carcano, on a
subject so delicate as the libel at Trent.68
Yet, we should not think that Sixtus only ceded to pressure. De’
Giudice’s apology—the apology of the pope’s envoy, that is—written
to counter his detractors, concluded by warning against false miracles
and their ignoble proponents: namely, Hinderbach, Pavini, and Platina,
very instigators at Trent, whom de’ Giudice pronounced fit for nothing
but a fiery furnace. These were the same people who had flouted papal
rescripts. Had they also not sought to remove spiritualia from papal
jurisdiction, to have them aired in civil courts, despising thereby the
papacy itself ?69 For Sixtus IV to have fully acquiesced to humanist
and mendicant pressure in the matter of Simonino would have meant
seriously compromising papal prerogative. This Sixtus could not do,
nor would he, which, I believe, is the true message of the bull of 
in its simultaneous restatement and curtailment of tradition and in its
reflection of the forces and counter forces of curial political life.70
The fate of the Jews in papal hands was thus entwined not only with
the vicissitudes of tradition, in this case, its rightward movement. It was
also inextricably bound up with urban politics, family aggrandizement,
and issues of learning and faith. Or put otherwise, as in fact was said
at the outset, there is nothing whatsoever in Sixtus’s case that points
to a policy of a Franciscan or Dominican pope specifically as such. If
anything, Sixtus IV’s policy demonstrates that the opposite was true.
The same, I believe, may be said of the mendicant pontificates of
the sixteenth century, those of Pius V and Sixtus V, and by osmo-
sis, if you will, of Paul IV. We may include here the other Franciscan
pope, the thirteenth-century Nicholas IV; the too brief pontificates of
the Dominican Benedict XI in  and the Franciscan Alexander V in
 need not concern us. Contrasting Nicholas IV’s policies to those
of papal contemporaries such as Martin IV, Nicholas III, Honorius IV,
and Boniface VIII, the differences are imperceptible. There was per-
haps a greater involvement in the Inquisition itself, but a lack of notable
innovations. Ominously for the future, Nicholas IV saw in the agree-
ment of Jews to have their children baptized in order to avoid death,

68 Hsia, Trent , .

69 Quaglioni, Apologia iudaeorum, –.
70 This idea repeats the essence of the Summa Angelica of the fifteenth century.
  . 

an act of consent to baptism by the parents themselves and, hence,

a de facto admission of culpability for heresy should they continue as
practicing Jews. But Nicholas also reissued Sicut iudaeis, took the part of
Meir of Rothenberg, and importantly issued Orat Mater Ecclesia, warn-
ing against clerical mistreatment of Roman Jews.71 Nicholas’s language,
moreover, is far less rhetorically charged than that of Sixtus IV, relying
on traditional, quasi-ritualized formulations of condemnation. Nicholas
certainly never reached the point of accusations of magic found in the
bulls expelling the Jews from the Papal State in  and .72
In any case, the real telltale gap over the centuries in papal policies
toward the Jews is that between the attitude bespoken by Nicholas’s
non-mendicant predecessor, Martin IV, and the one professed by Pius
V nearly three hundred years later. Despite Martin IV’s clear support
of the Inquisition, he insisted that simple familiaritas with a convert is no
sufficient reason to accuse a Jew of aiding and abetting apostasy.73 Pius
V turned the matter on its head.74 It was this path, from legal balance
to the presumption of threat, that the church had taken with the Jews
over time, a path in which mendicant identity or membership played
no visible or specific role. The willingness of Sixtus IV, for reasons at
once political and religious, to accept, or at least to acquiesce to, radical
arguments, namely, by declaring a condemnation for ritual murder
legal, reveals that Sixtus had gone far down this path indeed.75 At the
same time, the papal robes he wore over a mendicant habit, at least
figuratively, reminded him of the need to keep mendicant radicalism
under close control and to cling, both principally and in principle,

71 Ramon Martí, Pugio Fidei Adversus Mauros et Judaeos, ed. J. Carpzov (Leipzig, ),

Part three, dist. , : “ita agendum est de Christianis: Occidendi adhuc Christianos,
e praecipitandi pueros ipsorum in foveas et puteos et etiam trucidandi quando occulte
possunt,” ref. to avodazara. For these references, I thank Jeremy Cohen.
72 See Kenneth R. Stow, “The Avignonese Papacy or, After the Expulsion,” in From

Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen
(Weisbaden, ), –, and Stow, Catholic Thought, –.
73 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. , no. .
74 See the text cited in Prosperi, Tribunali, , which indeed insists on familiaritas as

a cause for suspicion and investigation by the inquisition.

75 This is similar to the conclusion in the article cited in n.  (pp. –) above,

that a turning point in general was reached in the mid-fourteenth century, that pres-
sures of various kinds were working against the equilibrium established by the medieval
papacy, and that the results of these pressures created the apparent vacillations of papal
policy. Nonetheless, on the whole, the popes remained faithful to tradition until Paul IV
and Pius V, when the radical shift to ghettos and permanent suspicion make it difficult
to say that tradition had not snapped.
      

to tradition, especially when doing so promoted papal power. It was

perhaps this sense of papal continuity, of the predictability in papal
behavior, that such sixteenth-century Jewish chroniclers as Joseph ha-
Kohen, following the lead of Meir ben Simeon and the  Anonymous
in the thirteenth century, also saw, however much they realized that this
predictability was being so menacingly challenged in their day.76
To repeat, therefore: a mendicant papal program as such simply did
not exist. Indeed, considering the truly active antagonists at Trent, the
humanists and legists, Hinderbach, Pavini, Platina, and, by extension,
Nievo, one may question not only the role of the mendicant popes in
promoting radicalism, but whether the mendicants as a whole were
radicalism’s central proponents. As a text of none other than the author
of the Pugio Fidei, Ramon Martí, strikingly reveals,77 the friars had limits.
Excoriating Jewish perversity, Martí reverts solely to Innocent III’s
accusation that Jews were wont to kill Christian children. Writing ca.
, Martí thus was sustaining—purposefully, beyond a doubt—the
determination of Innocent IV, who, in the wake of the blood libel at
Valreas in , had said that, whatever else Jews might plot, including
the murder of Christian children, their purpose was not to obtain
Christian blood.78 When Franciscan Observants preached the cult of
Simonino, therefore, they were breaking with the mendicant, or at least
the Dominican, past, making themselves the protagonists, although not
necessarily the innovators, of the tone and tenor of Christendom as
a whole. It was Christian culture, Christian jurisprudence, even that
novel Christian expression “Renaissance humanism,”79 not to mention
humanism’s potentially inflammatory, if limited, pagan aspect, that, at
the dawn of the modern era, the Jews truly had to fear.

76 On Jewish attitudes toward the popes expressed in medieval Hebrew texts, see

Kenneth R. Stow, The  Anonymous and Papal Sovereignty (Cincinnati, ), –.
77 Ramon Martí, Pugio Fidei, Part three, dist. , , where, despite saying that Jews

kill their own children, Martí does not include the charge of ritual murder. This
is especially noteworthy in the light of Martí’s remarks about the sucking of blood
during circumcision in his Capistrum iudaeorum .–. For this reference, too, I thank
Jeremy Cohen.
78 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. , nos. , ; and also Die Paepstlichen Bullen,

 (n. , above), for the opinion of Cardinal Ganganelli, Clement XIV.
79 See again Foa, “The Old and the New,” –.
This page intentionally left blank
 THE FRIARS AND THE JEWS:
MESSIANISM IN SPAIN AND ITALY CIRCA 1500

J E

In my vision, [the Lamb] then broke the sixth seal, there was a violent
earthquake and the sun went as black as coarse sackcloth; the moon
turned red as blood all over, and the stars of the sky fell on to the earth,
like figs dropping from a fig tree when a high wind shakes it; the sky
disappeared like a scroll rolling up and all the mountains and islands
were shaken from their places. Then all the earthly rulers, the governors,
and the commanders, the rich people and the men of influence, the
whole population, slaves and citizens, took to the mountains to hide in
caves and among the rocks. They said to the mountains and the rocks,
“Fall on us and hide us away from the One who sits on the throne and
from the anger of the Lamb. For the Great Day of his anger has come,
and who can survive it?”
[Rev :–, Jerusalem Bible]

And then [Inés] told me how her mother, who was already dead, came
there and took her by the hand and told her not to be afraid, because
it was God’s will that she should go up to heaven and see its secrets and
see wonderful things. And at that moment her other hand was taken by
another, a boy who had died a few days before, and the angel was flying
around them, and in this way she said that they took her up to heaven,
where she saw purgatory and the souls who were suffering in it, and in
the same way how, in another remote part [of heaven], there were others
on golden chairs, in glory. In the same way she told me that, while she
was there, in another place higher up, it seemed to her that there was
much marble, and she asked the angel who it was speaking up there, and
the angel said, “Friend of God, those who are speaking up there are the
ones who were burnt here on earth, who are there in glory. In the same
way she saw angels of three kinds and other things …” Thus I was left
in such confusion and disturbance that I could not decide what was the
truth or what I should believe.
[Evidence given by Juan de Segovia, a shoemaker, at the trial of Inés de
Herrera, before the Inquisition in Toledo, in May ]1

1 Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien,  vols. (Berlin, , ),

.–, translated by John Edwards in The Jews in Western Europe, – (Manch-
ester, ), –.
  

LOZANA: Lord Silvano, what does it mean that the author of my

portrait does not call himself a Cordoban, since his father was one, and
he was born in the diocese?
SILVANO: It’s because his most chaste mother and his cradle were in
Martos and, as they say, “it’s not where you’re born but who you graze
with.” Lady Lozana, I can see some people coming, and if I’m here I
shall be in your way. Let me go, and you decide when you want me to
come and serve you.
LOZANA: My lord, let it not be tomorrow or Saturday, because I’ll be in
a rush, but let it be on Sunday at dinnertime, and the whole of Monday,
because I want you to read to me, you who have grace, the verses of
Fajardo, the Tinalaria comedy, and the Celestina. It’s a long time since
I’ve heard them read.
SILVANO: Have you got [the Celestina] in the house, your ladyship?
LOZANA: You can see it here, but they don’t read it to me the way I
like it, as you will. Bring your guitar, and we’ll play my tamborine.
[Dialogue from the Retrato de la Lozana Andaluza ascribed to Francisco
Delicado]2
The first in this apparently strange juxtaposition of texts is an extract
from the book of the Apocalypse, or Revelation, composed in the latter
part of the first century C.E., which purports to give the author’s
divinely inspired vision of the forthcoming judgment on the church
and the world. The second is a piece of testimony from the trial by
the Inquisition, in , of a girl called Inés, from Herrera del Duque,
to the north of Córdoba, who was accused of being a prophetess and
of encouraging a messianic movement among the large community of
Jewish Christians, conversos, in the city itself. The third passage comes
from an anonymous, semi-dramatized novel, which has been attributed
since its rediscovery in the mid-nineteenth century to an Andalusian
priest named Francisco Delicado, and which is supposed to have been
published in Venice in . The passage in question forms part of
a lengthy dialogue, between the eponymous “heroine” and a character

2 Francisco Delicado, Retrato de la Lozana andaluza, ed. Claude Allaigre (Madrid,

) p. :
LOZANA: Señor Silvano, ¿qué quiere decir que el autor de mi retrato no se llama
cordobés, pues su padre lo fue, y él nació en la diócesi?
SILVANO: Porque su castísima madre y su cuna fue en Martos, y como dicen: “no
donde naces sino con quien paces.” Señora Lozana, veo que viene gente, y si estoy aquí
os daré empacho. Dadme licencia, y mirá cuándo miráis que venga a serviros.
LOZANA: Mi señor, no sea mañana ni el sábado, que terné priesa, pero sea el
domingo a cena, y todo el lunes, porque quiero que me leáis, vos que tenéis gracia, las
        

named Silvano, who takes an increasingly large role in the development

of her life as the book moves towards its conclusion. It should become
clear, as this argument unfolds, that the story of Lozana is as much a
part of the messianic and apocalyptic tendencies, which appeared so
strongly in both Spain and Italy around the year , as the trials of
prophetesses and supposed “judaizers” in Córdoba during those years,
or the New Testament Apocalypse of John on which so many of these
developments, including the supposed activities of the prophetess Inés,
were based. What, though, was the prophetic context of these messianic
and apocalyptic movements in the two countries at the turn of the
sixteenth century?
As far as the Iberian Peninsula is concerned, the accession of Isabella
and Ferdinand to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, in  and 
respectively, had been accompanied by an upsurge in political prophecy
and messianism, which was matched by that of the Portuguese King
Alfonso V, when he invaded Castile on behalf of his niece and wife,
Joanna, the doubtfully legitimate daughter of Isabella’s brother Henry.
As early as , when Ferdinand was still little known, an Aragonese
poet had hailed him as a future ruler of the world, while propagandists
for Alfonso announced him in Castile as the “hidden” or “hooded”
king (rey encubierto), who was prophesied in many sources as the coming
deliverer of the kingdom from tyranny and evil. In , during the
Granada war, one of the leading Andalusian magnates, Rodrigo Ponce
de León, claimed to have been assured, by “a very knowledgeable man
and Catholic Christian,” that Ferdinand of Aragon would not only
drive the Muslims out of Spain, but would go on to conquer the whole
of Africa, destroy Islam completely, reconquer Jerusalem and the holy
places, and become “emperor of Rome, and of the Turks, and of the
Spains.” The Aragonese king seems to have believed until his last days,
in –, with the encouragement of the reforming Dominican nun
and prophetess, Sor María de Santo Domingo, that he would not die
until he had conquered Jerusalem.3

coplas de Fajardo y la comedia Tinalaria y a Celestina, que huelgo de oir leer estas
cosas mucho.
SILVANO: ¿Tiénela vuestra merced en casa?
LOZANA: Señor, velda aquí, mas no me la leen a mi modo como haréis vos. Y traé
vuestra vihuela y sonaremos mi pandero.
SILVANO: Contempláme esta muerte.
I am preparing an English edition and translation of the Retrato.
3 J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish kingdoms, –, vol. : –: Castilian hegemony
  

For Spain’s Jews, the expulsion edict of  March  was not only
a devastating blow but also an inspiration to messianic thought, and
even action.4 The document stresses the crown’s declared preoccupa-
tion with “certain bad Christians who judaized and apostasized from
our holy Catholic faith, for which much of the reason was the commu-
nication of Jews with Christians.” Thus Jews who had remained loyal
to their faith were explicitly linked with those who had either converted
to or been brought up in the Christian Church, and the evident hope
was that Spain’s remaining Jews would see the error of their ways and
convert. On  May , while Jews were still making up their minds
whether to leave or convert, the inquisitor-general, Tomás de Torque-
mada, was instructed by the king to collect evidence from his subordi-
nates on the recently converted, and take such cases into his personal
care, so that they would not have their previous Jewish practice held
against them.5 Whatever official hopes may have been, still prevailing
images of the fate of Spanish Jews who refused to be baptized under
the conditions offered by the government of Ferdinand and Isabella
come not only from Jewish commentators, such as Solomon ibn Verga,

(Oxford, ), –, –, , –; Crónica incompleta de los Reyes Católicos
(–), ed. J. Puyol y Alonso (Madrid, ), –, –; “Historia de los
hechos de Don Rodrigo Ponce de León, marqués de Cádiz (–),” in Colección
de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España,  (), –; Richard L. Kagan,
Lucrecia’s dreams: Politics and prophecy in sixteenth-century Spain (Berkeley, ), n. For
political prophecies concerning the “new David” and the “bat,” as well as the “hidden
king,” see Alain Milhou, ‘“La chauve-souris,’ le nouveau David et le roi caché (trois
images de l’empereur des derniers temps dans le monde ibérique, XIIIe–XVIIe s.),”
Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez,  (), –.
4 The text of the Castilian version of the edict (in this case addressed to the authori-

ties of Burgos in Old Castile), is reproduced in Luis Suárez Fernández, Documentos acerca
de la expulsión de los judíos (Valladolid, ), –: partial facsimiles of the Siman-
cas and Avila versions of the edict are reproduced in B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the
Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York, ), opposite p. , and Convivencia:
Jews, Muslims and Christians in medieval Spain, ed. Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and
Jerrilynn D. Dodds (New York, ), . There is a good complete facsimile of the
Avila version, with French translation, in Sarah Leibovici, Christophe Colomb Juif: Défence
et illustrations (Paris, ), –. The Castilian version is translated into English in The
Expulsion  Chronicles: An Anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the
Jews from Spain and Portugal, ed. David Raphael (North Hollywood, Calif., ), –
, and by John Edwards in The Jews in Western Europe, –. The version of the edict
issued in Aragon, which differs in various details, is reproduced in Rafael Conde y Del-
gado de Molina, La expulsión de los judíos de la Corona de Aragón: Documentos para su estudio
(Zaragoza, ), –.
5 Conde y Delgado, La expulsión de los judíos, , translated in Edwards, Jews in

Western Europe, –.

        

but also, and vividly, from the Andalusian priest and chronicler, Andrés
Bernáldez, who certainly had no love for Judaism or for those who
adhered to it:6
In the six [sic] months of the edict, they sold and virtually gave away
whatever they could of their estates. Young and old prepared themselves
for the journey, demonstrating great courage and hope of having a
prosperous departure and great happenings. And in everything they had
perverse misfortunes. For Christians took their many estates, very many
rich houses and landed properties for a few coins, and [the Jews] went
about begging to sell them, but they could not find anyone to buy them.
They exchanged a house for an ass, and a vineyard for a small piece
of cloth or linen, because they could not take out either gold or silver.
But it is true that they secretly took out an infinite amount of gold
and silver, which they swallowed and carried out in their bellies through
those customs posts at which they had to be searched, and in the ports
[of passage], both inland and beside the sea. The women, in particular,
swallowed more; a person might swallow thirty ducats at a time.
Earlier in this chapter, however, Bernáldez refers to the religious reac-
tions of some Spanish Jews to the dilemma with which they were faced
by the edict of  March :
The Jews at that time, whether unlettered or educated, commonly held
the opinion, and all believed, that just as with a strong hand and out-
stretched arm and with much honour and wealth, God through Moses
had miraculously taken out the other people of Israel from Egypt, so
too from these parts of Spain they would depart and return, with great
honour, and without losing any of their property, to possess the Holy
Promised Land, which they confessed to having lost because of their
great and abominable sins, which their ancestors had committed against
God.
It will be noted that Bernáldez here adopts the medieval Christian
habit of equating the biblical Israelites with his own Jewish contem-
poraries, but the particular point to notice is that, if the chronicler is
right (and he appears to be), then the heads of many of Spain’s Jews in
 were filled with notions of the arrival of the messianic kingdom, as
foretold in the Jewish Scriptures, for example by Micah [chaps.  and
], Haggai and Zechariah [chap. ]. Bernáldez gleefully records the
suffering and disappointment of many of the exiles, but the revival of

6 Solomon ibn Verga, Shevet Yehuda, translated in Raphael, The Expulsion  Chron-

icles, –; Andrés Bernáldez, Memorias de los Reyes Católicos, ed. Manuel Gómez-
Moreno and Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid, ), , translated in Edwards, Jews in
Western Europe, –.
  

messianic and apocalyptic belief in Spain between then and the s
was at least as strong among those Jews who became, or had previ-
ously become, Christians as it was among those who chose to leave the
country rather than convert.
Some Jews were baptized as Christians during the four-month period
allowed by the royal edict. In the Aragonese town of Teruel, the small
remaining community is said by local Christian sources to have con-
verted en masse.7 Elsewhere, for example in the documented case of the
diocese of Soria and Burgo de Osma, in north-eastern Castile, Jews
who had departed during the summer of , often with smuggled
possessions, to the neighboring kingdom of Portugal, began to trickle
back to their homeland as baptized Christians. The crown actively
encouraged this process by issuing a further edict, in Barcelona on
 November , that granted Jews a royal safe conduct to return
home from Portugal as Christians, provided that they were baptized
there or in the Spanish border towns through which they had origi-
nally departed (Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Zamora) and had a cer-
ificate to prove it. Those who fulfilled these conditions were not only
allowed to repatriate under safe conduct the goods which they had
been allowed to take out of the country (though subsequent develop-
ments showed that many of these goods had been smuggled to Portu-
gal),8 but were also entitled to enlist the help of the local authorities in
their former places of residence in Spain, in order to regain the prop-
erty that they had been forced to sell under the terms of the edict of 
March. The New Christians were also given royal authority to obtain
repayment of debts that had been owed to them before their departure
to Portugal, with the customary formal proviso that the rates of interest
should not be “usurious.”9 Some of the consequences of the November
edict, though not, unfortunately, the number of individuals involved,
are recorded in surviving registers of the inquisitorial tribunal for the
diocese of Soria and Osma. This fact, in itself, indicates the religious
ambiguity of many of the returnees who, despite royal efforts to incor-
porate them easily into Christian society, continued to tangle with the
Inquisition.10 The dilemmas faced by those who either accepted bap-

7 Baer, Die Juden, .; Henry Kamen, “The Mediterranean and the expulsion of

Spanish Jews in ,” Past and Present,  (), –n.

8 See note , below.
9 Suárez Fernández, Documentos acerca de la expulsión, –, translated in Edwards,

Jews in Western Europe, –.

10 On the departure of Jews from Spain to Portugal in , see Fontes Iudaeorum Regni
        

tism immediately after the issue of the “expulsion” edict or did so dur-
ing the succeeding years is perhaps best indicated in a statement made
in , to the Inquisition in Guadalupe, in Extremadura, by a converso
named Francisco de Torres:
If the king, our lord, ordered the Christians to become Jews, or else leave
his kingdoms, some would become Jews and others would leave, and
those who left, once they realized they were lost, would return and make
themselves Jews, in order to return to their original state. And yet they
would still be Christians, and pray like Christians, and would deceive the
world. People would think they were Jews, yet inside, in their hearts and
wills, they would be Christians.11

While some of Spain’s Jews were making a pragmatic settlement of

their religious and social affairs, in and after , other Jewish Chris-
tians, whether first-generation or more established, took a more apoca-
lyptic view of the events of these years.
The interest of conversos in Jewish messianic prophecy had already
come to the attention of the papally nominated tribunal of the Inquisi-
tion in Valencia, which, like others in Aragon and Catalonia, predated
Ferdinand and Isabella’s  foundation, as early as . In that year,
a group of such converts, who, perhaps significantly, originated in Cór-
doba, arrived in the east-coast city claiming that they had had regular
contacts there with Jews and believed, as Jews rather than as Christians,
that the Messiah would shortly come, and lead them to the Promised

Castellae [FIRC], vol. : Provincia de Salamanca, ed. Carlos Carrete Parrondo (Salamanca,
), –, – and Pilar Huerga Criado, En la raya de Portugal: Solidaridades y tensiones
en la comunidad judeoconversa (Salamanca, ), especially –. For sources on the
activities of the Inquisition in Soria and Burgo de Osma, and Jews who returned to
that diocese as Christians, see FIRC, vol. : El tribunal de la Inquisición en el obispado de
Soria (–), ed. Carlos Carrete Parrondo (Salamanca, ) and FIRC, vol. :
Los judeoconversos de Almazán, –: Origen familiar de los Lainez, ed. Carlos Carrete
Parrondo and Carolina Fraile Conde (Salamanca, ). For an analysis of these
sources, see José María Monsalvo Antón, “Herejía conversa y contestación religiosa a
fines de la Edad Media: las denuncias a la Inquisición en el obispado de Soria,” Studia
Historica: Edad Media,  (), –, and Edwards, “Religious faith and doubt in
late medieval Spain: Soria circa –,” Past and Present,  (), – (the latter
reproduced, with the succeeding debate with C. John Sommerville, “Religious faith,
doubt and atheism,” Past and Present,  [], –, in Edwards, Religion and society
in Spain, c.  [Aldershot, ]). On the returnees, see Edwards, “Jews and conversos
in the region of Soria and Almazán: departures and returns,” in Religion and society in
Spain, no. VI.
11 Baer, Die Juden, . [ July ], translated in Edwards, “Jews and conversos in

the region of Soria and Almazán,” .

  

land, by way of Venice or Constantinople.12 When it began work in

, the new Inquisition tribunal in Córdoba itself began to hear sim-
ilar evidence, while the Toledo tribunal was told, in , that many
Cordoban conversos had believed, at the time of the riots directed against
them in , that the Turks, who had conquered Constantinople not
long before, were the heralds of the Jewish Messiah.13 The messianic
prophecies of Inés de Herrera, the daughter of Juan Esteban, from
Herrera del Duque, led to her trial and that of thirty of her follow-
ers, before the Toledo Inquisition. Witnesses such as the Cordoban
shoemaker Juan de Segovia, whose evidence has already been men-
tioned, and Luis Guantero (a glover), from Herrera itself, testify that
Inés claimed to have gone up to heaven and seen those who had died
at the hands of the Inquisition dining there in glory. She was said to
have prophesied among the conversos that, in the words of another shoe-
maker, called Rodrigo Moreno, “Elijah would come to preach on a
cloud, and the Messiah was to come to take all the conversos to good
lands.” The Toledo tribunal seems to have succeeded in repressing Inés
and her followers within its jurisdiction, but it was with the attempt of
the Inquisition to repress support for her ideas in Córdoba, after 
under the leadership of the soon notorious Diego Rodríguez Lucero,
that the episode gained national importance, leading, in , to the
ousting of this inquisitor by a “Catholic Congregation” which had been
specially convened by Ferdinand for the purpose in Burgos. The abuses
committed by the Córdoba Inquisition, under Lucero, were so blatant
and excessive as to be condemned in large measure even by those, at
the time, who accepted without question the righteousness of the tri-
bunal’s cause. Thus the more exaggerated accusations of the setting up
of synagogues in converso households in the city, and particularly in the
house of the jurado (parish councillor), Juan de Córdoba, may safely be
discounted.14 Nevertheless, the notion that conversos of all social classes

12 Baer, Die Juden, ..

13 On the  anti-converso riots in Córdoba, see Edwards, “Massacre or ritualised
violence? The riots against judeoconversos in Córdoba, –,” in The Massacre in
History, ed. Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (New York, ).
14 Baer, Die Juden, .–, –, –, –; Rafael Gracia Boix, Colec-

ción de documentos para la historia de la Inquisición de Córdoba (Córdoba, ), –; Tar-
sicio de Azcona, “La Inquisición española procesada por la Congregación de ,”
in La Inquisición española: Nueva visión, nuevos horizontes, ed. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva
(Madrid, ), –; Edwards, “Elijah and the Inquisition: Messianic prophecy
among conversos in Spain, c. ,” Nottingham Medieval Studies,  (), –, and
“Trial of an Inquisitor: the Dismissal of Diego Rodríguez Lucero, inquisitor of Cór-
        

in Córdoba, from municipal councillors to servants, took part in a mes-

sianic movement with strong Jewish overtones in the years either side of
, cannot but suggest a parallel with the extraordinary response of
the wealthy Jewish community of Amsterdam, in the mid-seventeenth
century, to the claims of Sabbatai Zevi.15 What, though, is the connec-
tion between all this and the friars?
There has never been any doubt that Christopher Columbus, before
and during his voyages of discovery to the New World, was in contact
with Franciscan friars. In recent years, though, increasing and, some
might say, belated attention has been paid to his growing preoccupation
with messianic and even apocalyptic ideas, which are not, of course,
the same. Not all are convinced. Following in the footsteps of the
discoverer’s great biographer Samuel E. Morison, Felipe Fernández-
Armesto, for example, begins the preface to his biography of Columbus
with the robust statement that,
Considered from one point of view, Columbus was a crank. Even in
his own lifetime he had a cranky reputation … He claimed to hear
celestial voices. He embarrassed the court of the Spanish monarchs by
appearing provocatively attired in public, once in chains and regularly in
a Franciscan habit.

These remarks, which no doubt guaranteed the author a sympathetic

laugh when Reagan-Thatchernomics were in their pomp, may have
caused greater unease at a time of change in the millennium. Fernán-
dez-Armesto, presumably for personal reasons, finds it difficult to be-
lieve that Columbus took seriously notions of Spain’s role, and his own,
in the preparations for the future coming of the antichrist and the Last
Judgment. He rejects the notion that the future Admiral was already
what he describes as a “millenarian fantasist” before his first voyage in
. Nevertheless, Fernández-Armesto acknowledges that, in Colum-
bus’s entail of his estate, drawn up in Seville on  February , in
response to the signal favour of the grant by the crown of permission

doba, in ,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History,  (), –, both reprinted in Reli-
gion and Society in Spain, nos. VIII and IX.
15 Edwards, “El Mesias, los conversos y la expulsión de los judíos de España,” in

Actas del Primer Congreso Anglo-Hispano de la Asociación de Hispanistas de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda,
vol. : Historia: In memoriam Derek Lomax, ed. Richard Hitchcock and Ralph Penny
(Madrid, ), –; Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical Messiah, –
(Princeton, ), –; Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism,
– (Oxford, ), –; Henry Méchoulan, Amsterdam au temps de Spinoza:
argent et liberté (Paris, ), –.
  

to establish a mayorazgo, Columbus referred to his long-standing cam-

paign for the recapture from Islam of the “holy house” (temple) in
Jerusalem, which Fernández-Armesto characterizes as an “esoteric ref-
erence to the millennial city.” He also suggests that Columbus’s state-
ment (in his memorandum drawn up in  for Ferdinand and Isabella
under the title, “The reason I have in believing in the restoration of the
Holy House to the Holy Church Militant”) that as author he relied
“entirely on holy, sacred Scripture and certain prophetic texts by cer-
tain saintly persons who by divine revelation have had something to
say on this matter,” may have overtones of “Franciscan tradition, which
assigned a high value to holy simplicity and was mistrustful of the van-
ity of unnecessary learning.”16 John Larner, in his fine survey of writing
on the Admiral up to the late s, is similarly, though rather more
moderately, skeptical of messianic and apocalyptic prophecy as a prime
mover of Columbus’s activities, saying that what he describes as “mys-
tical delusions” only appeared in , and that “However important
they are in any general assessment of Columbus’ character, it is per-
haps too much to make them the mainspring of his enterprise.”17
It should also be pointed out that, during the years –, when
Columbus was actively propagating his views on his, and Spain’s, role
in the forthcoming apocalypse, the main religious influence on him
seems to have come, not from Franciscans, whether in La Rábida or
elsewhere, but from Gaspar Gorricio, a Carthusian who originated in
Novara in Italy, and was then in the order’s house of Santa María de
las Cuevas, Seville. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that a strong thread
of messianism and apocalyptic runs through the Admiral’s later works,
and in particular what is commonly known as his Book of Prophecies.18
John Leddy Phelan demonstrated, some years ago, the strong millenar-

16 Samuel E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea,  vols. (Boston, ), ., refers to

Columbus’s “paradisiacal conceits”; C. Jane, Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of
Columbus,  vols. (London, ), .liii, states that “there was in him a profound strain
of mysticism … But it is not therefore to be concluded that Columbus was converted
into a mystic by the misfortune which he suffered; on the contrary, it would seem that
he was mystical by nature. That he was so is suggested by his marked attachment to
the Franciscan order”; Felipe Fernández Armesto, Columbus (Oxford, ), vii, , ,
–, –.
17 John Larner, “The certainty of Columbus: some recent studies,” History,  (),

– (quote from p. ).

18 The best English edition is now The Book of Prophecies edited by Christopher Columbus,

ed. Roberto Rusconi, trans. Blair Sullivan (Berkeley, ).

        

ian preoccupation that the Spanish Franciscans took to the New World
in the wake of Columbus’s discoveries.19 More recently, Alain Milhou,
Pauline Moffitt Watts, and Valerie Flint have not only stressed the evi-
dent links between Columbus and Franciscan spirituality in general,
but also pointed explicitly to the influence on the discoverer of the
prophecies of the Calabrian Abbot Joachim of Fiore (ca. –),
whose works had strongly influenced the “Spiritual” strand of the Fran-
ciscan movement since the thirteenth century.20 By taking up Joachim’s
ideas, Columbus fitted in easily with the prevailing current in Ferdi-
nand and Isabella’s court, which envisaged the general reform of the
church under the aegis of the last emperor, as a preparation for the
end of days. Not all that was published under the name of Joachim
can in fact be ascribed to him, however, and the Spiritual Franciscan
“Pseudo-Joachite” tradition was known, by , to the Catalan physi-
cian and mystic Arnold of Vilanova (ca. –), in the form of the
earlier version of Vaticinia de summis pontificibus (“Prophecies concerning
the supreme Pontiffs”).21 It seems that it was from Arnold that Colum-
bus, or his religious advisers, obtained the Pseudo-Joachite prophecy
that a Spaniard would achieve the restoration of Jerusalem to Christian
rule, and the rebuilding of the Holy Places. In his “Lettera rarissima” to
Ferdinand and Isabella, written during his fourth and final voyage, the
Admiral stated that “Jerusalem and the Mount of Zion are now to be
rebuilt by Christian hands, and God through the mouth of the prophet
in the fourteenth psalm said so. The abbot Joachim said that this man
was to come from Spain.”22

19 John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berke-

ley, ).
20 Alain Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica en el ambiente franciscano español (Val-

ladolid, ); Pauline Moffitt Watts, “Prophecy and discovery: on the spiritual ori-
gins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies,”’ American Historical Review,
 (), –; Valerie I.J. Flint, “Columbus and the friars,” in Intellectual Life in the
Middle Ages: Essays presented to Margaret Gibson, ed. Lesley Smith and Benedicta Ward
(London, ), –, and The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton,
).
21 Marjorie Reeves, “The Vaticinia de summis pontificibus: a question of authority,”

in Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, –; Robert Lerner, “On the origins of the
earliest Latin Pope prophecies: a reconsideration,” Fälschungen im Mittelalters, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica Scriptores, , pt.  (), –.
22 Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus,  (Psalm  [Vulgate ]:

“Yahweh, who has the right to enter your tent, or live on your holy mountain?” is here
interpreted as referring to the Christian, “whose life is blameless,” and who “does not
ask interest on loans” [vv. , , ]).
  

In the Book of Prophecies, which does not quote from Psalm  (Vul-
gate), he states, “We read that Joachim, abbot of Calabria, predicted
that someone from Spain would recover the wealth from Zion.”
In reality, this prophecy seems to come from Arnold of Vilanova’s
Vae mundo in centum annis, which had spread from radical Franciscan to
Aragonese political circles by the end of the fourteenth century.23 Thus
Franciscan and Spanish monarchical prophecy were easily united, but
there was no resolution of the question of the social and religious basis
on which a general reform, led by Spain, was to take place. At this
point, it is best to return to Lozana’s dialogue with Silvano, which led
them both to contemplate a skull.
Although one of the most prominent modern editors of the Lozana,
Bruno Damiani, has published a biography of its supposed author,
Francisco Delicado, to whom the book was first attributed by Pascual
de Gayangos in , almost nothing is known about this writer’s
life. The only evidence of his authorship is his claim to the book
(“when I composed the Lozana”), made in the preface to his edition
of the Spanish chivalric novel Primaleón, which he published under
his own name in Venice, in .24 Aldonza, as the leading lady is
known at the beginning of the book, was born in Córdoba, probably
in about . According to various statements put into her mouth,
she came from a fairly wealthy family, which fell on hard times in the
last years of the fifteenth century. She later told people in Rome that
her father was an inveterate gambler and chaser after whores. He died
leaving his wife and three daughters with a legal dispute over the family
house, presumably because of his debts, and Aldonza later claimed that
she acquired early legal experience by representing her mother in a
legal action at the High Court (Audiencia or Chancillería) in Granada.
This dates her activity to  or after, as it was in that year that
the southern tribunal of the High Court was transferred there from
Ciudad Real; it also suggests that property of considerable value was
involved. The case went against them, and Aldonza and her mother left
Córdoba, travelling via Carmona to Jerez de la Frontera. Nothing more
is heard of the other two sisters. Misfortune struck again, however,

23 Book of Prophecies, ed. Rusconi, –, –, .

24 Bruno Damiani, Francisco Delicado (New York, ); Libros de caballería, con un
discurso preliminar y un catálogo razonado por D. Pascual de Gayangos, Biblioteca de Autores
Españoles (Madrid, ), xl n. ; La Lozana andaluza, ed. Bruno Damiani (Madrid, ),
–.
        

with the death of Aldonza’s mother, after which the orphan moved
in with her aunt, who lived in Seville. This aunt pushed her into the
arms of a Genoese merchant called Diomedes (in classical mythology,
“he who turns copper into gold”), but was shocked when the couple
immediately eloped, without waiting for a legal marriage. This lack of
circumspection turned out to be the beginning of Aldonza’s problems.
She accompanied Diomedes on a huge voyage around the Mediter-
ranean, including North Africa, the Middle East, and Greece, on behalf
of her lover’s family firm. There are references to children of the liai-
son, but, while Aldonza was, according to her own account, a sparkling
hostess, who acquired at this time the name “Lozana,” which in Span-
ish refers to beauty, power, and gallantry, Diomedes’ father became
determined that she should not be his daughter-in-law. He summoned
his son to a business conference in Marseilles, and Diomedes, appar-
ently in good faith, took Aldonza/Lozana with him, saying that, when
he had sorted things out with his father, he would take her to Barcelona
and marry her. But Diomedes’ father came to Marseilles in disguise,
had his son arrested and imprisoned, and hired a ship’s captain to take
Aldonza out to sea and drown her. Instead, the captain took pity on her
and dumped her on a rock, from which she was eventually rescued by a
passing ship. She was landed at Livorno, whence she managed to travel
to Rome, apparently with the help of a gold ring which she had hidden
in her mouth when she was stripped of her other possessions in Mar-
seilles. She arrived in the “Eternal City” in March , at the time of
Pope Leo X’s coronation, and stayed there for the next fourteen years,
engaged in various trades, including prostitution, pimping, midwifery,
and the disposal of unwanted babies, as well as the manufacture and
application of cosmetics. In , she fled from Rome, along with many
of her compatriots, and, while the frontispiece of the Portrait [Retrato]
suggests that her destination was Venice, the text states that she retired
to the island of Lipari, to the northeast of Sicily.
In the sense of biographical incident, nearly all the “action” takes
place at the beginning, with a mysterious change of lifestyle at the end.
According to the author’s reckoning, and “Auctor” plays an important
role himself in the book, one hundred and twenty-five speaking char-
acters appear in the Lozana. Their names indicate that the majority
of them are more stereotypes than individuals. Some, including the
Lozana herself after her change of name, indicate personal character-
istics, such as Divicia (wealth) and Prudencia, while more than a third,
like the surnames which were increasingly employed in Western Europe
  

at the time, refer to occupations. Some, like Diomedes, have classical

names (the author prides himself on his knowledge of the classics), oth-
ers are referred to by their place, region or country of origin, and still
others are defined only as relatives of other characters, this being a
common, and frustrating, practice in most, if not all, of the administra-
tive institutions of the period. This almost total lack of characterization
seems, like everything else in the book, to be deliberate. The entire
book revolves round Lozana herself and is indeed, as indicated by its
title, her retrato, in the sense of “portrait.” This word was clearly very
important to the author, as not only does it appear on the title page,
but the preliminary “Argument” makes it plain that he saw his work
as the equivalent of a painted portrait, though he produces conflicting
statements on the “naturalness” of the result. But this is not all. Not
only is portraiture the essence of the Lozana, but the meaning of the
Spanish word retrato in the early sixteenth century was wider than it is
today. Its more common meaning was “retreat” or “withdrawal,” gen-
erally in a religious sense, and, indeed, the use of the word to describe a
work of literature in the s seems to have been innovative. But then,
so was the painted portrait itself, and the author refers to the “picking
up” of Lozana’s portrait, as was commonly done with pictures at the
time. One thing is clear: the modern editor, Claude Allaigre, is right to
indicate a religious dimension to the use of the word retrato in the text.25
Now, though, it is necessary to return to the already-quoted dialogue
between Lozana and Silvano.
The text of the Retrato is effectively a “portrait” of Lozana in sixty-
six chapters, ironically described as “tomes” (mamotretos), surrounded by
a “frame” of introductory and concluding material. At the beginning
the author provides a prologue of dedication to an anonymous “lord,”
and sums up the plot of the book in an “Argument.” He concludes
with a series of “postscripts,” which begin with a linguistic note on
the origin of the name “Lipari.” It continues with a letter, written by
the author, which compares Rome at the time of the  sack with
Babylon, then the excommunication of a heartless woman by Cupid,
a letter from Lozana to her successors as courtesans in Rome, which
also refers to the  sack, and, finally, an account by the author of

25 Nicholas Penny, “Back to the wall,” a review of In Perfect Harmony: Picture and Frame,

–, ed. Eve Mendgen, in London Review of Books,  September , ; Allaigre,
Retrato, .
        

his departure to Venice. Within this “frame,” the “portrait” itself is

divided into three parts, the first of which (chaps. –) takes Lozana
from her birth in Córdoba to her establishment as a successful cour-
tesan in Rome, while the second (chaps. –) sees her in her pomp,
though the “Author” begins to warn her of the dangers of her cho-
sen career. The third part is announced as containing “more gracious
things than have happened” so far.26 Given the nature of Lozana’s way
of life, Claude Allaigre, like other modern editors, assumes that this
statement is ironic, but what exactly happens in the third and final sec-
tion of this “word-portrait”? To begin with (chap. ), Lozana sends
away a group of women who have come to her for help with cosmet-
ics. She then, remarkably, gets rid of her Neapolitan boyfriend Rampín,
who had been her lover since soon after her arrival in Rome (chap. ).
In the next chapter, while she meditates in solitude, Lozana receives an
unexpected visit from the Author (Auctor), and they discuss her future,
as well as that of Rome itself, and Spanish political involvement in
the matter. The Author tries to persuade her to abandon her interest
in dreams and divination, but, at this stage, although aware that such
things are contrary to the church’s teaching, she pleads that she must
earn a living somehow. In chapter , it appears to be business as usual
at Lozana’s house, with a ceaseless traffic of clients and provisions, but
a change is heralded by the Author, who leaves to find his friend Sil-
vano, and then returns to see her once again. The next four chapters
(–) form a coherent block, in which Silvano and Lozana engage in
dialogue; they are the hinge of the book. In effect, Silvano hears the
Cordoban lady’s confession, and, for the first time, a Christian refer-
ence becomes explicit. Lozana begins to look towards an eschatalogical
future, and mockingly (or seriously?) suggests that the retired prostitutes
of Rome should be treated like the Roman soldiers of old, and even as
martyrs of the church. Silvano is not averse to this idea, but is more
concerned with the immediate danger to Lozana and her colleagues in
prostitution, which is the scourge of syphilis (from which the supposed
author Delicado is believed to have suffered). Resisting her confessor,
Lozana puts forward her own, varied experience, including her time
with Diomedes in the Middle East, but then admits that she has fallen
on hard times again, and that she no longer has the trust she once had
in her lover Rampín.

26 Allaigre, Retrato, .

  

After this confessional monologue, Silvano speaks, taking his “pen-

itent’s” mind back to her native Andalusia, to Córdoba and the rock
of Martos. It is at this point that, in the passage already quoted, Sil-
vano is sent away on Thursday, and told to return on Sunday, when
he will read to her from her favorite books.27 The first of these is the
popular collection of verses here called the Coplas de Fajardo, which is an
obscene comedy, supposedly written by a friar called Montesinos, about
the adventures of the penis of a knight called Diego Fajardo.28 The sec-
ond, the Comedia Tinalaria (Tinellaria) has so far been almost totally over-
looked by editors, but is of great interest in the interpretation of the
Lozana’s “portrait.” It was written by Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, a
playwright from Extremadura, on the Spanish side of the border with
Portugal, and was first performed, probably in , in the presence of
both Pope Leo X and of his own patron, Bernardino López de Car-
vajal, Cardinal of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (Santa Cruz). The story,
in which an all-male, multilingual caste attempts to communicate in the
servants’ hall (tinello), largely concerns those preoccupations so typical of
old-style Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the pecking order in hall, the
prospect of obtaining ecclesiastical benefices, and women.29 The third
work mentioned by Lozana to Silvano, and the one with which the Por-
trait is explicitly linked on its original title page (“contains many more
things than the Celestina”), is Fernando de Rojas’s Comedy or tragicomedy
of Calixtus and Melibea, commonly known as the Celestina.30
After contemplating the skull with Silvano on Thursday, and arrang-
ing for him to come back on Sunday, Lozana’s life seems, for a brief
while, to continue as before. Customers come to benefit from her skills
in cosmetics, and she continues to consort with those, both married and
single, who exercise, or are on the fringes of, the trade of prostitution.
She now starts to experience much stronger competition, however, and
to doubt herself in a way not apparent before. Finally, in chapter ,
she suffers violent abuse from a client, apparently for the first time in
her life, and resolves to abandon prostitution. The lessons of the Author

27 Allaigre, Retrato, –.

28 Caragicomedia compuesta por el reverendo padre fray Bugeo de Montesino … dirigida al muy
antiguo carajo del noble cavallero Diego Fajardo, in the Cancionero de obras de burlas provocantes a
risa, ed. Frank Domínguez (Valencia, ), –.
29 Tinellaria, in Propalladia and Other Works of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, ed. Joseph

E. Gillet,  vols. (Bryn Mawr, Pa., –), .– and .–.

30 Among the many editions of this work see Fernando de Rojas, Comedia o tragicome-

dia de Calistoy Melibea, ed. P.E. Russell (Madrid, ).

        

and Silvano are beginning to be absorbed, and, as forebodings of the

sack of  come to dominate the remaining chapters, an increasingly
mediative, and explicitly religious, tone prevails. In this final passage of
the “portrait,” Lozana’s visions cease to concern profit-making divina-
tion and become apocalyptic. Pluto, the god of the underworld, rides
over the Sierra Morena, above her native Córdoba, Balaam’s ass speaks
home truths about human society, under the name of Robusto, and
Rome (or the world?) appears as the Tree of Vanity.31 What does all this
mean?
Lozana’s Portrait seems to have gone underground as soon as it was
published, and only one apparently original copy has since come to
light, in the Austrian National Library.32 Having been rediscovered,
it was fairly soon excluded once again from the “canon” of Spanish
literature, and placed on the secular “index of forbidden books,” by
the mighty editor and critic Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who con-
demned it as “filthy” (inmundo) and “ugly” (feo) and declared its literary
value to be “nil” (nulo).33 Thus the Lozana’s lack of success in the six-
teenth century has largely continued into modern times, in both cases
in sharp contrast to its supposed model, the Celestina. The French his-
torian and critic, Marcel Bataillon, compares the Retrato unfavourably
with Rojas’s masterpiece, even in the realm of sexual morality, which
seems to be fairly extensively depicted in the earlier work. It is not the
customs of prostitutes, pimps, and ruffians which in themselves interest
Rojas.34
Despite this tradition of moralistic condemnation, editions and crit-
icism of the Lozana have proliferated in recent years, and, in general
terms, the book is commonly seen as a precursor of the Spanish genre
known as the “Picaresque,” in which low life is portrayed, with the lead-

31 Allaigre, Retrato, –.

32 Ferdinand Wolf, Studien zur Geschichte der Spanischen und portuguesischen Nationalliteratur
(Berlin, ), . The Austrian National Library copy was published in facsimile by
the Murcian bibliophile Antonio Péres Gómez, in a limited edition, in Valencia in .
33 Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, in the Nueva Biblioteca de Autores

Españoles, , vol. , Novelas dialogadas, con un estudio preliminar (Madrid, ), cxciv, cxcvii.
This view is perhaps unsurprising, given the overall historical, moral, and political
views of that writer. Peter Linehan (History and the Historians of Medieval Spain [Oxford,
], ) observes, “The Spain whose demise D. Marcelino had lamented was the
Spain of the century after : Spain evangeliser of half the world; Spain hammer of
heretics; light of Trent: sword of Rome; cradle of St Ignatius”’—hardly the world that
“Delicado” and his leading lady inhabited.
34 Marcel Bataillon, La Célestine selon Fernando de Rojas (Paris, ), .
  

ing rogue as anti-hero.35 Until recently, despite Menéndez y Pelayo’s

admission that the book is a good source of information on prosti-
tution in Rome in the years before the sack of , historians have
neglected the Lozana. The first historian to take the lady’s story seri-
ously was Angus MacKay, who, in his published work on the subject,
firmly places the book in the context, not only of prophecy in gen-
eral, but of the experience of Spanish Jews and conversos in particular.
MacKay compares “Delicado’s” treatment of Lozana, and her life in
Spain and Italy, with the complaints made after the introduction of the
new Inquisition in Spain, in the s, by the converso royal chronicler
Fernando del Pulgar, who is briefly quoted in the text. Pulgar was con-
cerned that the new tribunals in Seville and in Lozana’s birthplace,
Córdoba, were being particularly cruel to the female members of the
converso community who, for social reasons involving virtual incarcera-
tion in their houses, had received little or no instruction in the Chris-
tian faith.36 Part of MacKay’s thesis concerning the Retrato is, therefore,
that Delicado’s account of his “heroine” indicates her involvement in
such circles, both because of her upbringing in Córdoba and because
of her dealings, immediately after her arrival, with the Spanish Jewish
and converso communities in Rome.37 While MacKay sees the Portrait as
favourable to the Spanish, and more particularly the Andalusian, con-
versos, Louis Imperiale has suggested, in a recent study, that the book
is, in reality, anti-Jewish. On the basis of the presentation in the Retrato
of the Jew Trigo (Goldcorn), who, when Lozana first arrives in Rome,
sells her precious gold ring for her at an extravagant commission and
provides her with clothes and lodgings in order to engage in prostitu-
tion, this critic states: “If we were to look for an ‘ideal’ model of the
rapacious Jewish moneylender, false neighbor and hypocritical philan-
thropist, Trigo, the Spanish Jew, would definitely be the best-qualified
candidate.”38

35 See, for example, Augusta Espantoso Foley’s critical guide, Delicado: La Lozana

andaluza (London, ).

36 Angus MacKay, “A lost generation: Francisco Delicado, Fernando del Pulgar, and

the conversos of Andalusia,” in Circa : Proceedings of the Jerusalem Colloquium: Litteræ
Judæorum in Terra Hispanica, ed. Isaac Benabu (Jerusalem, ), –, and “The
whores of Babylon,” in Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance period: Essays, ed. Marjorie
Reeves (Oxford, ), –; Allaigre, Retrato, –: “Y como dice el coronista
Fernando del Pulgar, ‘así daré olvido al dolor.”’
37 For example in Allaigre, Retrato, –, –, –.
38 Louis Imperiale, El contexto dramático de La Lozana Andaluza (Potomac, Md., ) [=

Scripta Humanistica, ], .

        

There is no doubt that, by her own account, Lozana was proud

of her Cordoban origins and recalled them frequently throughout her
years in Rome. When she first arrived there, she told a widow from
Seville, “I am Spanish, and from Córdoba,” while towards the end of
her time in the Eternal City she said to a group of her fellow prostitutes,
“I give many thanks to God because he formed me in Córdoba rather
than any other land, and made me a wise woman and not a beast, and
of the Spanish nation and no other.”39
Damiani and Allaigre have tended either to miss references to Cór-
doba in the text, or else, where they are undeniable, to interpret them
as ironical, in accordance with these editors’ overall interpretation of
the Retrato as obscene and cynical. There is, however, more evidence in
the book for MacKay’s judeoconverso theory than he appears to realise,
in one particular passage. Near the beginning of the Author’s narrative
account of her life, he has her say to her aunt in Seville, about her cook-
ing skills, “concerning which [a particular dish of pickled meat, known
as adobado], as many cloth merchants as there were in Fair Street [Calle
de la F/Heria] wanted to try it.”40 Although both Damiani and Allai-
gre identify this as a reference to the street of the same name in Seville,
not only is this in fact one of a series of mentions of well-known places
in Córdoba, including the Potro and the Plaza de la Corredera, but it
places Lozana’s upbringing in a highly significant spot. During her long
years in Rome, she remembered the very streets in which, on  March
, at the corner known as the Cruz del Rastro, during a procession
of the “Old” Christian Confraternity of Charity (La Caridad), the inci-
dent of a child spilling water on the statue of the Virgin led to a violent
attack on the converso community of the city.
The result was, in the words of a hardly sympathetic cathedral doc-
ument of the time, “great fires and robberies and scandals,” and many
further sufferings for Córdoba’s New Christians, particularly in the
period of Lozana’s likely upbringing in the city.41 Some kind of Jew-

39 Allaigre, Retrato, : “Soy española, y de Córdoba,” and : “Yo doy munchas

gracias a Dios porque me formó en Córdoba más que en otra tierra, y me hizo mujer
sabida y no bestia, y de nación española y no de otra.”
40 Allaigre, Retrato, : “Sobre que cuantos traperos había en la cal de la Heria

querían proballo.”
41 Edwards, “Massacre or ritualised violence?”; Archivo Catedralicio de Córdoba,

Actas Capitulares, , fol. , in Manuel Nieto Cumplido, “La revuelta contra los
conversos de Córdoba en ,” Homenaje a Antón de Montoro en el V centenario de su muerte
(Montoro, ), .
  

ish context for the Retrato thus seems undeniable, but it is question-
able whether MacKay is right to suppose that Lozana and her Spanish
friends in Rome, many of them very probably conversos or even Jews
who had fled from Spain in  rather than convert, had in reality
abandoned religion altogether. In several of his works he has main-
tained, in agreement with Francisco Márquez Villanueva, that “Deli-
cado’s women are remarkably indifferent to any form of organised reli-
gion,” and that “while, on the one hand, they never talk about any-
thing that could remotely be called Christian, it can hardly be main-
tained that they are crypto-Jews.”42 Instead, MacKay places Lozana,
and her Spanish contemporaries in the prostitution, cosmetic, shirt-
making, and laundry trades of High Renaissance Rome, in the cate-
gory of religious skeptics which, following the inaccurate perceptions
of the late medieval church, he associates with the Muslim physician,
jurist, and philosopher Averroes (–).43 He further states that
“the indifference to religion is not based on a pre-meditated attitude
which arises out of a knowledge of religious doctrines. On the contrary,
the indifference seems to reflect theological ignorance coupled with a
picaresque-type perception of how people behave.”44
In accordance with this view of Lozana and other characters, espe-
cially the females, MacKay contrasts the supposed sophistication of the
“priest-author” Delicado, “who knows his scriptural texts,” and is “a
writer and linguist,” with the apparently humble and unsophisticated
life, aspirations, and religion (if any) of Lozana and her friends.45 But
are things that simple, or rather is it not the case that “for the religious
person, doubt has always been an intrinsic part of faith”?46 It seems
that, as in so much of the debate which has flowed from this remark,
scant attention has been paid to the weight of evidence for it in both

42 MacKay, “A lost generation,” ; Francisco Márquez Villanueva, “El mundo

converso de La Lozana Andaluza,” Archivo Hispalense,  (), –.

43 MacKay, “Averroistas y marginadas,” in Actas del III Coloquio de Historia Medieval

Andaluza: la sociedad medieval andaluza: grupos no privilegiados (Jaén, ), – and “The
Hispano-converso predicament,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series (),
–, especially –. These articles are reproduced in MacKay, Society, Economy
and Religion in Late Medieval Castile (London, ). On the falsehood of late medieval
Christian perceptions of Averroes, see Dominique Urvoy, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (London,
), especially –.
44 MacKay, “Lost generation,” .
45 MacKay, “Averroistas,” – and “The Hispano-converso predicament,” .
46 Edwards, “Religious faith and doubt,” .
        

Scripture and hagiography.47 If this applies to late medieval and early

modern Spaniards in history, might it not also apply to Delicado and
his characters in literature?
In the first place, Lozana’s Cordoban youth will have been spent,
not only under the shadow of the Inquisition but in the midst of mes-
sianic expectations, which seem to have gripped Jewish and non-Jewish
Christians alike. The lists of prosecution witnesses in the notorious trials
conducted by the inquisitor Lucero contain many names from the busi-
ness community on and around the Calle de la Feria, for which Lozana
did her famous cooking.48 It is thus dangerous to assume that “averro-
ism” was a general response of Spain’s Jewish Christians (or Christian
Jews?) to the tensions and disruptions of life which afflicted them in the
years around . A further point, which needs to be made at this
stage, is that it is equally rash to assume that all references, in Spain
in this period, to the Jewish Scriptures are necessarily to be linked to
Judaism, when they were also basic texts of Christianity. This is the
mistake that Sarah Leibovici seems to have made, with the backing of
Shmuel Trigano, in her attempt to demonstrate that, despite his explic-
itly Christian Book of Prophecies and other writings, apart from his sig-
nature as Christo ferens, the Christ-bearer, Columbus was in fact a Jew.49
In any case, there can be no doubt that Lozana found herself, in the
Rome of Leo X, Hadrian VI, and Clement VII, in a climate of explic-
itly Christian prophecy.
Although the Author states, at the beginning of part one, that he
composed his work in , the book is in fact studded with references,
of growing intensity, to the sack of the city in  by imperial troops,
including Lutherans, at first under the command of the constable of
Bourbon, and then, after his death, of the prince of Orange, to whom
it has been suggested that the Lozana was dedicated.50 In her Letter

47 Edwards, “Faith, doubt and atheism”; Maureen Flynn, “Blasphemy and the play

of anger in sixteenth-century Spain,” Past and Present,  (),  n. ; Sara Nalle,
God in La Mancha: religious reform and the people of Cuenca, – (Baltimore and
London, ), –. But see the comment by Nicholas Griffiths, in an unpublished
paper entitled “Religious unbelief in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cuenca”: “In
my view, the Conquense material bears out Edwards’ interpretation” ( n. ).
48 Edwards, “Trial of an inquisitor,” – and “The Judeoconversos in the urban

life of Córdoba, –,” in Villes et sociétés urbaines au Moyen Age: Hommage à M.

le Professeur Jacques Heers (Paris, ), –, both reprinted in Religion and Society in
Spain, XVIII.
49 Leibovici, Christophe Colomb Juif.
50 Giovanni Allegra, “Pequeña nota sobre el ‘Ilustre Señor’ de La Lozana Andaluza,”
  

to all those women who decide to come to see the Campo de’Fiori in Rome,
Lozana begins: “It occurred in Rome that fourteen thousand Teutonic
barbarians entered and castigated and tortured and sacked us.”51 Apart
from the  sack itself, another theme that recurs throughout the
Portrait is the equation of Rome with Babylon. As Silvio [not Silvano]
puts it to his friend the Author, at the beginning of part two, “Do you
think they say in vain, ‘Babylon’ instead of ‘Rome,’ if not because of
the great confusion which liberty causes? Do you not see that they say
‘Rome the whore,’ since it is the capital of sinners?”52
The equation between Rome and Babylon is, of course, to be found
in the Revelation of John, the Apocalypse, in which the second angel
prophesied, while the Lamb, or Christ, was on Mount Zion with the
, redeemed: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great, who has made
all nations drink the wine of God’s anger roused by her fornication”
(Rev :).
In the book of the Apocalypse, this punishment duly ensued, while
in Herrera del Duque and Córdoba, in  and , the prophetess
Inés used very similar imagery to describe the conversos of village and
city who would be led by Elijah away from the persecution of the
Spanish Inquisition to the messianic kingdom, and banquet, in Israel.
The arrival of another Cordoban, Lozana, in Rome coincided with
an upsurge of prophecy and messianic concern throughout Italy. The
invasion of the peninsula by Charles VIII of France in , and the
subsequent defeat of the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola’s attempt at
spiritual and secular reform in Florence, had encouraged a yearning
for reformation (reformatio), and a readiness to try to detect the “signs
of the times.” Apart from preachers, of the kind observed by Lozana
and her boyfriend Rampín, on their first trips around Rome together
in , other portents caused concern, there and elsewhere in Italy, at
the turn of the sixteenth century. A monster was said to have been
found in the Tiber at Rome in ; it was held to be the “Papal
Ass,” and had female breasts, a scaly skin, a pig’s trotter on one leg
and a bird’s claw on the other, as well as the face of an old man
on its rump.53 The Borja pope, Alexander VI, seems to have been

Boletín de la Real Academia Española,  (), –; Allaigre, Retrato, , , , ,
, –.
51 Allaigre, Retrato, .
52 Allaigre, Retrato, .
53 The image was much appreciated in Lutheran circles: R.W. Scribner, “Demons,
        

the original target of this satire, but a further monster presaged the
bloody battle of Ravenna, in , while a monstrous birth occurred
in Bologna in , on  January, the feast of the Conversion of St.
Paul. At the time of the Medici Pope Leo X’s election and coronation,
as well as the supposed arrival of Lozana in Rome, a short exposition
of Psalms , , and  was published by an Augustinian friar, Andrea
de Ferrara. The work attacked the former pope, Julius II, who died ten
days after its publication, on  February , and stated that the next
pope, “if chosen according to human will and not according to God,”
would be no better, and would bring down divine punishment on the
world.54 Parallels with Andrea’s Augustinian brother, Martin Luther,
spring readily to mind, but what connection does all this have with
the Lozana?
Having established that Lozana lived in a similar prophetic world to
Inés de Herrera, but in an explicitly Christian context, it is necessary
to return to the Cordoban lady’s encounter with Silvano and a skull, in
the forty-seventh “tome” of the Retrato, and to Torres Naharro’s Come-
dia Tinellaria, which she hoped to hear Silvano perform, to the accom-
paniment of vihuela and pandero, the old forms of the guitar and the
tambourine, when he returned from his occupations in the Triduum
between Thursday and Sunday. Torres Naharro’s patron, Cardinal
Bernardino de Carvajal, is known to have been strongly influenced
by a manuscript entitled the Apocalypsis Nova, which was attributed to
a Portuguese nobleman, João Mendes de Silva, whose sister, Fran-
cisca de Bobadilla, was an intimate companion of Queen Isabella of
Castile, and founded the convent of the Encarnación in Toledo. João
took the name Amadeo, and was confessor to the Franciscan Pope Six-
tus IV, who later, in , issued the bull for the foundation of Isabella
and Ferdinand’s Inquisition. In , though, João/Amadeo joined the
Observant Franciscan congregation at San Pietro in Montorio, on the
Janiculum. He lived as a hermit on the hillside below the convent,
and founded what was known as the Amadean congregation. Cardinal

defecation and monsters: popular propaganda for the German Reformation,” in Popular
culture and popular movements in Reformation Germany (London, ), –.
54 Ottavio Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane

(Princeton, ), , –, –. The psalms on which Andrea commented are:
() “The fool hath said in his heart: there is no God”; () “Lord, who shall dwell in
Thy tabernacle: or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill?”; () “Hear the right, O Lord,
consider my complaint: and hearken unto my prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips.”
For Columbus’s use of Psalm  (Vulgate ), see note  above.
  

Bernardino, a former professor of theology and rector of Salamanca

University, and confessor to Isabella, took a close personal interest in
the Montorio community (the buildings now house the Spanish School
in Rome), and was long aware of the New Apocalypse. Silva died in ,
without the book having been opened, a book that is entirely within the
Spiritual Franciscan tradition derived from Joachim of Fiore and medi-
ated through Peter John Olivi. This was eventually done, in dramatic
circumstances, and in the presence of Cardinal Carvajal, in the Church
of San Pietro in Montorio, in . Carvajal seems sincerely to have
believed that he was the “angelic pope” of which radical Franciscan
exegesis spoke.55 His attempt, with some other, mainly French, cardi-
nals, to set up a reforming council of the church, in Pisa in , failed
dismally, and by the time Torres Naharro’s Tinellaria was performed in
his hall, in , he had no choice but to accept a very unreformed
pope, Leo X, as his guest of honour.56 This was the price of his reha-
bilitation, both in Rome and in his native Spain. By then, his ambi-
tions must have largely withered away, though he remained patron of
the reformed collegiate church of Husillos, in the Castilian province of
Palencia, until his death in , but it seems more than probable that
whoever wrote the Portrait, and whoever Lozana was, their circles were
not just Spanish but Christian, and not just Christian but reforming
Franciscan.57
From the time of Augustine of Hippo to the present day, commen-
tators have attempted to find a structure in John’s Apocalypse, and the
temptation has been to equate it with the past and future history of the
church and the world.58 It would hardly be surprising, therefore, given
the circumstances in which it was apparently written, if the Portrait of the
Lozana partook of the eschatological anxiety of the years around ,
in both Spain and Italy. Some years ago, Pamela Brakhage suggested

55 Anna Morisi-Guerra, “The Apocalypsis Nova, a plan for reform,” and Josephine

Jungic, “Joachimist prophecies in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Borgherini chapel and Ra-
phael’s Transfiguration,” in Prophetic Rome, –, –.
56 On Carvajal’s involvement in the  Council of Pisa, and its consequences, see

José M. Doussinague, Fernando el Católico y el cisma de Pisa (Madrid, ), , , –
, –, and Historia de la Iglesia en España,  pt. , ed. Ricardo García-Villoslada
(Madrid, ), –.
57 On Carvajal and Husillos, see Edward Cooper, Castillos señoriales en la Corona de

Castilla,  vols. (Salamanca, ), .–.

58 David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadel-

phia, ); Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation
(Edinburgh, ); A.J.P. Garrow, Revelation (London, ).
        

a Christian reforming context for the Lozana, but found it in the ideas
of Erasmus and his circle.59 The suggestion here, based on internal as
well as contextual evidence, is that the source of the book’s “message”
is to be found in Observant Franciscan circles in Rome, with strong and
highly placed Iberian connections. The problem is, of course, that, as
Heiko Oberman has rightly pointed out, such reforming movements
among friars, in Spain and Italy and elsewhere, tended to take up
the eschatological imperative of converting Jews in all too literal and
urgent a fashion.60 If the “angelic pope,” whether Cardinal Bernardino
or some other, who seems to lurk behind events in this period in both
countries, was a potential threat to the rich and powerful in the church
of Leo X and Clement VII, Paul IV’s bull of , Cum nimis absurdum,
which established the first ghetto in Rome, illustrates all too clearly the
point that he was just such a threat to Jews as well.61

59 Pamela S. Brakhage, The Theology of La Lozana Andaluza (Potomac, Md., ).

60 Heiko A. Oberman, “The stubborn Jews: Timing the escalation of antisemitism
in late medieval Europe,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book,  (), xi–xxv.
61 Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, – (New York,

).
This page intentionally left blank
 LIMPIEZA VERSUS MISSION:
CHURCH, RELIGIOUS ORDERS, AND CONVERSION
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

A F

During the sixteenth century, in the gray area situated somewhere

between concerns for Catholic reform and Protestant schism, between
Counter-Reform closure and what a more attentive historiography calls
ecclesiastical “disciplining,” the Catholic world embarked on three di-
verse paths in its relationship with the Jews. The first was a drive to
convert the Jews, which only toward mid-century was fully adopted by
the church of Rome, to become one of the central moments of Catholic
religious life.1 The second was the Inquisition, born, as is known, in its
“modern” form in Spain in  and whose purpose was to ensure the
religious fidelity of that country’s conversos.2 The third, too, was Spanish,
an ideology that erected a wall between Old and New Christians,
and the side on which one fell was decided by the matter of blood.
Blood, purity of blood, limpieza de sangre, no longer religious faith, would
determine whether converts, or even their descendants, could enter the
colleges, the religious orders, and ecclesiastical careers.3
The interrelationship between these three paths is complex. At first
glance, the theory of limpieza de sangre appears diametrically opposed to
a desire for conversion. This is certainly what was sustained by the the-
ory’s opponents, who underlined its anti-Christian aspect. Nicholas V,
in particular, explicitly recalled the universalist principles of St. Paul:
“Non est distinctio Iudei et Greci, nam idem Dominus omnium,”

1 See Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, – (New York,

); Stow, “Church, Conversion and Tradition: the Problem of Jewish Conversion in
Sixteenth Century Italy,” in Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica (), –. This
special issue is entitled Conversioni nel Mediterraneo, ed. Anna Foa and Lucetta Scaraffia.
2 See Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (New York, );

Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(London, ); Historia de la Inquisición en España y America, ed. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva
and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet (Madrid, ); Francisco Bethencourt, L’Inquisition a
l’epoque moderne. Espagne, Portugal, Italie (XV–XIX siècles) (Paris, ).
3 See Albert Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts de pureté de sang en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe

siècle (Paris, ); Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Los judeoconversos en la España moderna
(Madrid, ), –.
  

when he threatened anyone who supported the laws of discrimination

with excommunication in a stern bull of  entitled Humani generis
inimicus.4 Nonetheless, despite the obvious contradiction of principles,
such later popes as Clement VII and Paul III approved the Statutes—
even though they both were outspoken proponents of Jewish conver-
sion. Limpieza was also espoused by important members of the Spanish
church, nagged by doubts about the religious fidelity of converts, and it
was debated in the writings of ecclesiastics and theologians.
As for the Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, should we not best
view it as the barricade erected by Spanish society to prevent the inte-
gration and assimilation of converts, far more than simply as an insti-
tution created to check the backsliding of tepid converts and crypto-
judaizers?5 The primary objectives of the Inquisition were thus not
proselytizing and could easily clash with the conversionary ideal. It is
a fact that at the end of the fifteenth century, during the years preced-
ing the expulsion of , when the fires of the auto-de-fe were burning
and many conversos, including churchmen, took refuge from the Inqui-
sition in Rome, conversionary ardor in Spain was virtually spent. For
the Spanish Inquisition had aligned itself with the supporters of the
idea of the purity of blood and had started to consider every converso as
a clearly marked suspect. Inquisition as opposed to conversion, there-
fore? Not so simple. Ignatius of Loyola, one of the major proponents
of conversionary programs at Rome, possibly the very founder of the
Roman Casa dei Cathecumeni, and certainly an opponent of the introduc-
tion of the norms of limpieza de sangre in his new Society of Jesus, was
also one of the ideologues of the Roman Inquisition who took the side
of the Portuguese court in its conflict with Rome over the institution
of a Spanish-type inquisition in Portugal.6 This movement on Ignatius’s

4 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, ; Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the

Jews (Toronto, –), no. ,  Sept. . The Bull stated: “sub excommu-
nicationis poena mandamus ut omnes et singulos ad Christianam fidem conversos aut
in futurum convertendos, seu ex gentilitate vel ex Iudaismo, … ac eorum posteros,”
should not suffer discrimination.
5 See Yoseph Hayim Yerushalmi, “Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism: the Ibe-

rian and the German Models,” The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture,  (New York, ), –;
Maurice Kriegel, “La definitiva soppressione del pluralismo religioso nella Spagna dei
re cattolici: limiti e efficacia dell’approccio ‘intenzionalista,”’ in Rassegna Mensile d’Israele
 (), . This special issue is entitled Oltre il , ed. Anna Foa, Myriam Silvera,
and Kenneth Stow.
6 See Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, –; James Reites, S.J., “St. Ignatius and

the people of the book” (Diss., Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, ); Francisco de
    

part, at first glance contradictory, in fact had its own internal logic,
whose meaning and significance will prove a key to what I am about to
say. Personally, I am convinced that at Rome during the sixteenth cen-
tury, as well as in the church as a whole, including, of course, within the
religious orders, a great match was being decided between those who
sustained not only the possibility of conversion, but also its necessity,
and those who considered conversion a mirage.
This conflict was precipitated by events in the Iberian peninsula, and
by their theological and canonical repercussions: first, the mass forced
conversion in  (considered force even according to the most lim-
ited definition of force as defined by canon law and openly admitted to
have been forced conversion by Rome) of the Portuguese Jews, followed
almost immediately by widespread marranism; and, second, no less jar-
ring, the spreading of the theory of purity of blood, so foreign to funda-
mental Christian principles. Add to these also the problem of the con-
version of the Indians in America, it too pregnant with legal implica-
tions,7 and the whole official ideology of conversion had been plunged
into crisis. The entire question of force in baptism had to be discussed
anew, taking into consideration as well those who, at the end of the
fifteenth century (not only in Spain, but also in the humanist curia
of Rome at that time), denied that baptismal waters were sufficient to
make a Christian out of a Jew.8 The opponents in this match were not
limited, or at least not exclusively, to Rome and the Iberian courts, the
pope and the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. The borders were
far hazier. At Rome in particular, concessions about the theory of raza
(race) were frequent, although, as Adriano Prosperi has recently put
it, they shook the “universalistic pretensions” of Rome, without actually
destroying them.9 In , for example, the inquisitional tribunal of Pisa
furnished that of Palermo—a Spanish one, it should be remembered—
with information about the raza of an aspiring candidate for the post

Borja Medina, S.J., “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’ in Ignacio de Loyola y

su tiempo (Bilbao, ), –; Eusebio Rey, S.J., “S. Ignacio de Loyola y el problema
de los ‘cristianos nuevos,”’ Razon y fé,  (), –.
7 See Adriano Prosperi, “America e Apocalisse: Note sulla ‘conquista spirituale’ del

Nuovo Mondo,” Critica Storica,  (), –.

8 See Anna Foa, “Converts and conversos in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in The Jews of

Italy: Memory and Identity, ed. Barbara Garvin and Bernard Cooperman (Bethesda, Md.,
), –.
9 Adriano Prosperi, “L’Inquisizione romana e gli Ebrei,” in L’Inquisizione e gli Ebrei

in Italia, ed. Michele Luzzati (Bari-Roma, ), –.

  

of inquisitional familiar.10 We, accordingly, find ourselves before two

diverse positions, which, however approximately, we may call “conver-
sionistic” and “anti-conversionistic,” although we should keep in mind
that, in theory, both positions ultimately go back to a unified principle
of conversion and that even among the most ardent supporters of the
theory of purity of blood, there was nobody who would deny that all
the Jews must be converted.
In this conflict, the church appears sometimes as irretrievably di-
vided, sometimes as achieving a difficult unity through strenuous juridi-
cal and theological compromise. But in the long run, if somewhat cau-
tiously, at Rome the necessity—and possibility—to convert the Jews
would be sustained. And, as a result, a program of conversion would be
launched, to become a fundamental plank in papal policy toward the
Jews. One might say, moreover, that this conversionary policy became
feasible only when the debate over the events that had taken place at
the end of the fifteenth century came to a close, and the trauma of the
forced conversions of  passed, enabling the two originally intrinsi-
cally opposed doctrines of conversion and its impossibility to be recon-
ciled.
The Jesuits played a fundamental role in this reconciliation. For they
alone were in a position to weigh properly the Spanish and Portuguese
experiences, to understand indepth the problem of limpieza, but also
to integrate the discordant issues of limpieza and conversion into a
decidedly proselytizing approach. Contemporaneously, Rome would
not oppose the closure in the Iberian world of public and ecclesiastic
office to New Christians, a decision facilitated by the concrete, indeed,
banal, fact (to which perhaps too little thought has been given) that in
the Iberian Peninsula conversion of itself was no longer an issue. That
had already occurred, at least de facto; there remained only apostasy
to unveil. The religious destinies of the Iberian Peninsula and that of
the rest of the church each went its own way. Of course, the church
had lost an historical opportunity to oppose a doctrine negating the
universalistic principles on which it was founded. Events, indeed, seem
to have repeated themselves nearly five centuries later, in the year .
In the face of the Nazi threat and the tide of growing anti-Semitism,
Pope Pius XI ordered an encyclical to be prepared (one of whose
collaborators was the Jesuit John La Farge) sharply condemning racism.

10 Prosperi, “L’Inquisizione romana e gli Ebrei,” .

    

Pius XI’s death prevented this encyclical, which would have been called
Humani generis unitas, from being published. One wonders whether the
resonance with the title of the bull of Nicholas V (Humani generis inimicus)
was more than mere coincidence.11
The story of the fifteenth-century Statutes of limpieza is well known.
Its principal lines were traced by Sicroff in his indispensable study of
. I will limit myself here to recalling those points that bear on our
discussion of the politics of limpieza and the Inquisition as opposed to
those of conversion.
The Statutes of limpieza preceded the institution of the Spanish In-
quisition and in some measure determined its nature. This is the first
point to keep in mind. The establishment of the Sentencia-Estatudo at
Toledo in , the work of Sarmiento, grew out of a popular revolt
against royal taxation and against the conversos; it was founded on the
presupposition that by nature conversos are untrustworthy and are, in
reality, still Jews. This principle of indiscriminately segregating conversos
(New Christians) due to their intrinsic nature led to the increase and
diffusion of anti-conversos laws. In , the Fortalitium Fidei of Alfonso
de Espina accused the New Christians—all of them—of being secret
Jews.12 In this context, the establishment of the Inquisition may have
been construed positively by the New Christians, who saw in it a
unique instrument capable of distinguishing among the indiscriminate
mass of conversos that proverbial fly in the ointment—the duplicitous
crypto-Jews and judaizers as opposed to faithful Christians. They may
have understood that the task of the Inquisition was to punish the
guilty and proclaim the innocent free of guilt. “With a singular lack of
foresight,” Yerushalmi has noted, “many conversos seem even to have
welcomed the idea of an Inquisition in the hope that, if the judaizers
could be weeded out, their own Catholic orthodoxy would no longer be
impugned.”13 The ideological origins of the Inquisition thus were not
those of the Statutes of Purity, whose single purpose was to segregate.
It was, indeed, in this spirit that, in , in the midst of violence and
tumult against New Christians, the General of the Jerusalemite Order,

11 Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suckecky, L’encyclique cachée de Pie XI: Une occasion

manquée de l’Eglise face a l’antisemitisme (Paris, ).

12 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, ff.; Yitzak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian

Spain (Philadelphia, ), .–.

13 Yerushalmi, “Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism,” . Sicroff, Les controverses des

statuts, ff.
  

Alonzo de Oropesa, organized the first episcopal Inquisition in Castile

and, immediately afterward, in Toledo.
Nonetheless, although the theoretical underpinning of the Inquisi-
tion—a commitment to search out individual guilt alone—was distinct
from the assumption that all conversos were really Jews, in the end, both
Inquisition and the Statutes of Purity were often mutually supportive.
The trials of the Inquisition brought to light, partly because it wanted
to believe it, but partly because it indeed was so, the depth and scope
of crypto-judaizing, and this, in turn, fueled suspicions rather than lim-
iting them. The Inquisition itself eventually took an active role in the
ever wider dissemination of the purity laws. However, the exclusion of
descendants of conversos from the actual institution of the Inquisition did
not become generalized until the mid-sixteenth century. Some Inquisi-
tors even wrote memorials against such laws. Even later, the Inquisition
often found these laws to its dislike: the control of purity was relatively
light, so much so, in fact, that the military orders, zealous advocates of
purity, refused to consider acceptance by the Inquisition as a “familiar”
(lay servant) as its guarantee.14
That the laws of limpieza contradicted the essence of the theology
of universal conversion and baptism was repeatedly said by all their
opponents. “All the prophets cried for the Jews’ conversion, and you
alone remain deaf to their voice,” wrote a nameless author in the
first years of the seventeenth century, accusing the Statutes of deriving
from pagan inspiration.15 In response, proponents of the Statutes tried
to show their consistency with tradition. However, since proponents
found themselves running up against the Pauline text, which would
never consent to such laws, time and again, the justifications were never
theological, but practical: the conversos’ infidelity and untrustworthiness.
The insistence on the latter, in particular, would become a leading
motif, a constant theme that would sow the seeds of suspicion and
diffidence with respect to conversion itself, and whose fruit is evident
for a long time in so many expressions of religious culture. Thus, in
the s, during the debate within the Jesuit Order about whether
to adopt the laws of purity, the Portuguese Jesuit Rodriguez (mindful
of those Jesuit priests of distant Jewish descent) described converts as
follows: “Where they live and carry on their lives, they are considered

14 Dominguez Ortis, Los judeoconversos en la España moderna, .

15 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, .
    

as Jews and suspect with regard to their faith, so ready to abandon it, in
fact, that it takes but one old woman to have baptized men, learned and
even considered scholars by Christians, convert to Judaism.”16 However,
beyond the problem of reconciling the laws of limpieza and the doctrine
of Christian universalism, there was another important problem: how
to reconcile the contradiction of purity and mission. If conversion
was intrinsically false, if the conversos continued to profess Judaism or
were, in the best of cases, unable to resist the seductions of their old
religion and truly to accept Christianity, why make efforts to convert
them in the first place? Conversely, what Jew would accept conversion,
knowingly exposing himself or herself to exclusion and want? In ,
the Dominican Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio) spoke out on this
theme. Responding to a request made to him by the Jerusalemites, he
discussed the principle that “they should not be received in the Order
simply because they are descendents of Jews” and argued that, apart
from their evident injustice, laws like these gave the Jews “good reason
not to convert to our faith (for their descendants will be permanently
excluded from the community of the religious).”17
At the end of the fifteenth century, when the laws of limpieza had
just begun to take hold and the option to create special inquisitorial tri-
bunals to control the conversos was still fresh and even under debate, the
religious orders, too, stood before a choice: whether to accept conver-
sos as members. This choice had to be congruous with a conversionary
tradition (fostered by these orders) that considered the conversion of the
Jews a primary objective; and this was before Rome began to ponder
how seriously it, too, should pursue the goal of conversion. But during
the sixteenth century, the problem became urgent, especially when the
laws of purity were applied with respect to membership in the Francis-
can and Dominican Orders, particularly in the latter, which was more
involved in the form and administration of the Inquisition, although not
everywhere, and not always in the same way. Some monasteries opted
for discrimination; others accepted conversos. The Inquisitor Torque-
mada obtained from Alexander VI approval of the Statutes of Purity
for the Dominican monastery he had founded in St. Thomas di Avila,
using monies confiscated from persons the Inquisition had condemned.
Paul III issued similar privileges in  to the Dominicans of Aragon

16 Borja Medina, “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’  n. .

17 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts,  n. .
  

(although the limitations extended only to the fourth generation).18 The

Statutes seem never to have taken hold throughout the Dominican
Order, and among the Franciscans they were approved and annulled—
on again, off again—during the entire sixteenth century.19 Many names
of Dominican and Franciscan friars of converso origin appear on lists of
those investigated and condemned by the Inquisition. At the theatrical
auto-de-fe of Spanish conversos held at Rome in , noted the Milanese
ambassador, there was one converso Franciscan, clearly a refugee from
the grip of the Inquisition in Spain, who, like others participating in
this spectacle, had come to Rome in search of absolution and rehabili-
tation.20 There were also a number of Franciscans and Dominicans who
wrote tracts designed to combat the Statutes’ application.
The Jesuit Order, too, was no less equivocal in its attitude toward
limpieza versus mission. Ignatius of Loyola’s opposition to the Statutes is
well known. The Order did introduce them in , but this was against
a backdrop of polemics and opposition, not the least of which came
from Pedro de Ribadeneira, despite his truly advanced age. Moreover,
what was introduced was, to use the expression of Borja Medina, “a
true statute of limpieza, among the most excluyentes y exclusivos de cuan-
tos existian en las ordenes religiosas de su tiempo.”21 Concerning the intro-
duction of the Statutes into the Order, there has been in recent years
a historiographical debate, especially among historians who are them-
selves Jesuits. Effectively embarrassed by the facts, they have underlined
Ignatius’s personal objections, including the absence, in the Constitu-
tions that Ignatius drew up, of lineage as a reason for disqualification
from membership. They have also pointed to the high rank achieved by
certain New Christians in the Jesuit hierarchy, beginning with Laynez,
Ignatius’s successor as General, who was not himself a convert (his

18 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, ; Domínguez Ortiz, Los judeoconversos en la España

moderna, . The Bull of Paul III on the monastery of Avila is in Simonsohn, The
Apostolic See and the Jews, no.  ( March ). For the Bull on Dominicans in Aragon
see Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, no.  ( June ).
19 Clement VII ( March ) ratified the Statutes for the Observant Franciscans,

whose discriminations applied until the fourth generation. The Bull was, however, valid
only in Spain (“in regnis Hispaniarum tantum”). See Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and
the Jews, no. . See also Simonsohn, “La ‘limpieza de sangre’ y la Yglesia,” in Actas
del II Congreso Internacional Encuentro de las tres Culturas (Toledo, ), –.
20 Foa, “Un vescovo marrano: il processo a Pedro de Aranda (Roma ),” Quaderni

Storici,  (), –.

21 Borja Medina, “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’ .
    

Jewish descent was through one grandfather alone), and extending to

Polanco, whose descent ultimately disqualified him from the general-
ship.22
Indeed, strong opposition to this decree persisted. In , during
the Order’s sixth General Congregation, the decree was moderated.
But the changes concerned only the number of generations (since the
original conversion) that qualified or disqualified a Jesuit from holding
office, not the ideology itself, as Borja Medina emphasizes, citing the
Portuguese Rodriguez, a strong supporter of exclusion: “solo cambiò el
anterior en quanto a la realidad cronologica, pero no en cuanto a la ideologica.”23
The decree was thus seen as breaking with Ignatius’s intentions, an
infraction of the spirit of the Ignatian Constitutions. Ribadeneira, in
fact, said as much on the occasions of the Statute’s approbation in :
“es contra nuestras Constituciones, las quales no excluyen a los tales, ni ponen por
impedimiento esencial ni aun secundario ser de tal o tal generacion.”24
All this notwithstanding, the fact is that from the very beginnings of
the Order, there were pressures, especially from the Jesuit’s Spanish and
Portuguese provinces, to introduce the Statutes regarding the exclusion
of candidates of New Christian descent from the Order. These pres-
sures became very strong in the s, as may be seen in the insistent
letters sent to the General Aquaviva in  and  by Pablo Her-
nandez, consultant to the Holy Office in Granada, and by Salcedo,
the Inquisitor of Granada.25 The matter was not one of a split in the
Order between one group faithful to the original ideas of Ignatius and
a second that wished to rid the Order of conversos. The ambiguities actu-
ally go back to Ignatius himself. For in distinction to the ideological
struggles carried on during the late fifteenth century by Dominicans
and Franciscans, the Jesuit debate during the later sixteenth century
was never one of principle. In the struggle that pitted Loyola against
Siliceo from  until his death in , precisely on the subject of the
refusal of the Jesuits to introduce the Statutes, Loyola adopted a policy
of compromise. Taking into account the peculiarities of the Iberian sit-
uation, Loyola apparently turned a blind eye on the introduction of the
Statutes—there. This is evident in his decision in  to have mem-
bers of the Order of New Christian descent posted elsewhere, mainly

22 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, –.

23 Borja Medina, “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’ .
24 Rey, “S. Ignacio de Loyola y el problema de los ‘cristianos nuevos,”’ .
25 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts, .
  

in Italy, “where people were not so discriminating about their race.”26

Or at least such Jesuits were to be sent to places where they were
unknown—and their names changed.27 Yet, was not this essentially
the same resolution that Laynez, too, eventually would espouse, albeit
his tone concerning such “imaginaciones,” that is, racial discrimination,
was notably more strident? Writing, in , eight years after Loyola’s
death, about impediments to membership in the Society, Laynez said:
“We do not accept persons stained by imperfections specified by the
Law of God or the canons, but as far as those whose stains are figments
of the imagination, it is sufficient to act with care, and moderately, in
those countries where such humors ad duriciem cordis eorum dominate.”28
There was no question, either here or with Ignatius, about legitimacy
per se. The ideological clash between the party of conversion and the
party of race seems simply to have disappeared and its place taken
by a pragmatic line: One could simultaneously pursue conversion and
accept the idea that somehow Jewish descent was a stain nearly impos-
sible to wipe out.
No less complex was Loyola’s attitude toward the Inquisition. At the
express desire of King John III, he petitioned, first in  and then in
–, the pope and the Roman curia to approve the reactivation
of the Portuguese Inquisition.29 This petition was noteworthy indeed.
It was made in the wake of the grand debate about the forced con-
versions of , whose echoes were still reverberating in the halls of
the Vatican, and, in fact, at a moment when the activities of the Por-
tuguese Inquisition had been suspended at papal order on account of
its excesses.30 But what is most noteworthy about Ignatius’s petition was
its reliance on the official justifications (emanating from Portugal) that
the Inquisition was necessary to combat the heresy and apostasy of the
New Christians. On November , , Loyola reported on his activi-
ties to King John and his hope of having removed any roadblock that
might impede “such a universal good.”31 In , he wrote anew telling

26 Borja Medina, “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’ .

27 Borja Medina, “Ignacio de Loyola y la ‘limpieza de sangre,”’ . The letter is
from Ignatius to Portuguese provincial Miron, February .
28 Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts,  n. .
29 Reites, “St. Ignatius and the people of the book,” ff.
30 Alexandre Herculano, History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal

(New York, ), –.

31 Reites, “St. Ignatius and the people of the book,” .
    

the king that matters had turned out well: “The Portuguese Inquisition
could proceed as that in Castile, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.”32
That Loyola was wholehearted in his support of the Portuguese
Inquisition seems undeniable. In May , the Portuguese king asked
Miron, the Jesuit Provincial, to have the Order take the helm of the
Inquisition. Miron, who highly favored accepting the royal offer, asked
Loyola’s advice. “These New Christians,” he said, “are odious. Their
punishment is looked upon everywhere with favor, and, as a result,
we will win esteem and even enhance our authority.”33 Nonetheless,
Miron was also hesitant, for religious rather than political reasons,
about linking the destiny of the Order with that of the Inquisition. Loy-
ola, too, was hesitant, and he appointed six Jesuits, including Laynez
and Polanco, to decide the matter. Over Laynez’s sole opposition, the
commission decided that “there is no reason to refuse the works which
would serve the king and the purity of religion in the kingdom.”34 Loy-
ola, moreover, gave his full assent. However, in fact, the Jesuits were not
awarded the Inquisition. Instead, their numbers, at that time limited,
convinced the king to entrust its control to Dominican hands.
Thus, as it confronted the collective tragedy engendered by the
resort to forced conversion in Portugal, the church had to choose
one of two paths. The first, actually taken into consideration for a
number of years between  and , was to restate unambiguously
the necessity of spontaneity for conversion to be valid, refining, in
the process, the concept of forced conversion as it is found in the
canons. The second path was that of the Inquisition: to evaluate the
sincerity of conversion case by case. With certain reservations, it was
this second path that carried the day. And the role of Ignatius and his
Jesuit Order in reinforcing the Inquisition is beyond question. But what
this really meant was that a new synthesis had been achieved which
allowed reconciling respectively conflicting principles and discordant
practices, a reconciliation that until then had appeared out of the
question. Yet without this reconciliation, it would have been impossible
to initiate freely a policy of mission and conversion at Rome, the heart
of Catholicism. The Jesuits thus undertook a policy that responded well
to the debate about the possibility of conversion that had taken place at
Rome during the first half of the century, that reflected the hesitations

32 Reites, “St. Ignatius and the people of the book,” .

33 Reites, “St. Ignatius and the people of the book,” .
34 Reites, “St. Ignatius and the people of the book,” .
  

about the nature of the conversos, and that led to a resolution of the
conflict between those who held that conversion was possible and those
who insisted on viewing the converted as still Jews.
This resolution made itself felt in the policies undertaken at Rome, in
particular, in the founding of the Casa dei Cathecumeni in , preceded,
perhaps even more instructively, by the bull Cupientes iudaeos of , in
whose publication Loyola was instrumental, if not decisive.35 This bull
presages the launching of a true conversionary policy, combining, as it
does, economic incentives, especially with regard to the possibility of
a convert retaining his or her property, with the precept of religious
instruction to ensure neophyte fidelity. But the bull is also severe on the
subject of judaizing and apostasy. Taken as a whole, these themes, at
once traditional with roots in long-standing canons, but also innovative
in the concern for instruction, made envisaging the pursuit of conver-
sion realistic. Indeed, a fully articulated search for conversion, already
proposed in some circles, but only as a hope, would be elaborated at
Rome in subsequent decades. Without these developments of  and
, it might not have been.
Ignatius’s resolution also allowed a remaining problem to be chan-
neled, containing it, so that it did not overwhelm conversionary drives
as a whole. It was, namely, the problem of doubt that, however much
a thorn in previous centuries, had become the heart of the debate over
conversion in Spain and certainly the principal raison d’être of the Inqui-
sition. Doubts about the sincerity of the converts, in fact, not only justi-
fied the creation of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions—providing
grist for the mill of the proponents of limpieza de sangre. But now they
became a leitmotif in tracts written to promote conversion, a constant
preoccupation for whoever engaged in the mission to the Jews. Even
one strongly in favor of conversion, such as the legist Marquardus de
Susannis, carefully differentiated between true and false conversion and
spoke of the need for constant vigilance to curb the latter.36 Distanc-
ing himself from the papal letters of the s that referred generically
to the forcibly converted in Portugual as “those who should not be
counted among the members of the Church,” since canonically their
baptism was illegal, the fruit of absolute force,37 de Susannis painted the

35 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, no.  ( March ); Attilio Milano,

Il ghetto di Roma (Roma, ), ff.

36 Marquardus de Susannis, De Judeis et aliis infidelibus (Venice, ), ..–.
37 See Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, no. .
    

Pogrom of Lisbon in  as the fruit of “duplicitousness” and insincer-

ity.38 Nor was this doubt a passing phenomenon. As late as the eigh-
teenth century, one of the Rectors of the Ospizio dei catecumeni in Torino
wrote: “Fino ad oggi, nessun diavolo si e’ ben convertito” (“those Devils [that
is, the Jews] did never have sincere conversions”).39
Thus a policy and doctrine of conversion could coexist with an
active suspicion of converts themselves. Their sincerity might be put
to the test in tribunals, and its suspected absence might provoke the
reprimands of confessors and directors of souls. But this also means that
the church had found a way to make peace with doctrines of exclusion
and discrimination—even among its own clergy—without doing more
than superficially disturbing its principle of universalism, the universal
proclamation of the gospel word. Is it any wonder, therefore, that in
Italy, cases of the papal Inquisition pursuing converts were few and far
between? By contrast, in Spain, living so much in its unique, closed-
in society, with paths and byways all its own, the obsession with purity
could be developed without reserve, a lack of restraint that perhaps may
best be ascribed to the simple fact that after  and  there were
no more Jews in the Iberian Peninsula. Nobody was awaiting his or her
turn at the baptismal font.

38 Marquardus de Susannis, De Judeis et aliis infidelibus, ...

39 Luciano Allegra, Identità in bilico: Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento (Torino, ),
.
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 INDEX

Abraham, , –, , , , , Bernardino of Siena, Friar, ,
, –,  , , , , , ,
Agostino of Perugia, Friar, ,  Plate 
Alan of Lille, , , ,  Black Death, , 
Albert V, Duke of Austria, n– Blasphemy, , , , , , 
n Bodecker, Stephan, see Stephan
Albert the Great, OP,  Bodecker
alchemy, –, –, ,  Bonaventure, Friar, –, , ,
Alexander VI, Pope, ,  , , , , –, ,
Alexander Lombardus, Friar, – 
,  Book of Sentences (Peter Lombard), ,
Alfonso III of Aragon, –,  
Alfonso de Espina, Friar, –,
 Cajetan, Cardinal, OP, 
Alfonso the Magnanimous, King, Carcano, Friar Michele, see Michele
– Carcano, Friar
Alonzo de Oropesa,  Casa dei Cathecumeni, , 
Angelo da Chivasso, Friar,  Cathars, –, , , 
Apocalypse, Book of, , , –, Circumcision, , , , –,
–, –, –, ,  , , –, –, ,
Aristotelianism, ,  –, –
Arnold of Vilanova, – Circumcision of Jesus, Feast of,
Astesanus, Friar, –, ,  –
Augustine of Hippo, –, , , Clement VII, Pope, , , ,
, , , ,  
Auto-de-fe, ,  Columbus, Christopher, –,

Baptism, , , , –, , – Constance, Council of (–),
, , , –, , , , , , 
–, , –, , , Conversos (New Christians), , ,
, , , –, –, , –, –, –,
 –, , –, –,
Barthomeu Gaçó, ,  , –
Basel, Council of (–), , crusades, , –, –, 

Battista de’ Giudice, , ,  Dati, Leonardo, OP, see Leonardo
Benedict XIII, Pope (Pedro de Dati, OP
Luna), –, , , ,  Decretales of Gregory IX, , 
Bernard of Clairvaux, , –, , , Delicado, Francisco, see Francisco
, –,  Delicado
Bernardino da Busti, Friar, ,  Disputation of Barcelona (), ,
Bernardino da Feltre, Friar, , , 
–, , ,  Disputation of Mallorca (), 
 

Disputation of Tortosa (–), Ignatius of Loyola, SJ, , , ,

 
Inghetto Contardo, –, 
Eiximenis, Francesc, Friar, see Innocent III, Pope, , , ,
Francesc Eiximenis, Friar , 
Ermengaud, Ramon, see Ramon Inquisitions, , , –, ,
Ermengaud –, , , , 
Eucharist,  Isabella and Ferdinand, see
Eudes Rigaud, Friar, – Ferdinand and Isabella
Eugenius III, Pope, , ,  Isidore of Seville, , , 
Eugenius IV, Pope, n
Expulsion of Jews from Spain (), Jacob ben Reuben, , , 
– Jacobus de Voragine, 
Jacopo della Marca, see Giacomo
Ferdinand and Isabella, “Catholic della Marca
Sovereigns” of Spain, –, Jaume I of Aragon, –, –
, – Jaume II of Aragon, –, –
Fernando I (King of Aragon), , Jaume II of Mallorca, , , 
, – Jean Gerson, –
Fortunato Coppoli of Perugia, Friar, Jerusalem, , , 
,  Jesuits, –
Fourth Lateran Council (), , Joachim of Fiore, Abbot, –, ,
,  , , , –, 
Fra Angelico, OP, , , Joan I (King of Aragon), , ,
Plate  , , , –
Francesc Eiximenis, , , , Joan Gascó, , 
– Johannes of Frankfurt, , 
Francesc Sala, OP,  Johannes of Vallodolid, 
Francesco da Empoli,  Johannes Pfefferkorn, 
Francis of Assisi, , ,  John III, King, 
Francisco Delicado, , ,  John XXIII, Pope, 
John Capistrano, Friar, , , ,
Gaufrid of Auxerre, – , –, , , Plate 
Gerson, Jean, see Jean Gerson John Duns Scotus, Friar, , ,
Giacomo della Marca, Friar, , , , , , , , , ,
, ,  
Gil Blay, –, –, , John La Farge, SJ, 
– John Peckham, Friar, , , 
Giovanni da Fiesole, see Fra Joseph ha-Kohen, , , ,
Angelico, OP , 
Josephus, 
Hasdai Crescas, ,  Judas, , 
Herolt, Johannes, OP,  Juan II, 
Hildegard of Bingen, – Julius II, Pope, 
Host Desecration, , , n Julius III, Pope, , 
Hugh of St. Cher, OP, 
Hussites, , n, ,  Laynez, SJ, , , 
  

Leonardo Dati, OP, – Olivi, Peter John, see Peter John
Lipmann, Rabbi Yom Tov, , , Olivi

Lombard, Peter, see Peter Lombard Pablo Christiani, see Pau Cristià
Louis IX, King, (Saint Louis), , Passion plays, –
, ,  Pau Cristià, –
Lozana, ‘Portrait of ’, –, – Paul II, Pope, 
 Paul III, Pope, , 
Lyons, First Council of (),  Paul IV, Pope, , , 
Lyons, Second Council of (), Paul of Burgos, 
 Paul, the Apostle, , , , , ,
, , , , 
Magical practices, –, , Pavini, G.F., , , –
–,  Pere II, King, 
Maimonides, ,  Pere III, , 
Mantua, hanging of Jews (),  Peter IV (King of Aragon), 
Marco da Montegallo, Friar,  Peter Abelard, 
Marquardus de Susannis (De Iudaeis Peter Auriol, Friar, –
et Aliis Infidelibus), , ,  Peter Cantor, 
Marti I, King, –,  Peter Damien, , , 
Martin V, Pope, –, n, , Peter John Olivi, Friar, –, ,
n,  , , , , , , ,
Masseh Yeshu,  , 
Medicine, , –, – Peter Lombard, , , , , ,
Meir ben Simeon, ,  , , 
Meir of Rothenberg,  Peter Schwartz, OP (Petrus Niger),
Messianism, – –
Michele Carcano, Friar, , , Peter the Venerable, , 
, –,  Petrus Alfonsi, 
Miron, SJ,  Petrus Niger, see Peter Schwartz
Mongols,  Pfefferkorn, Johannes, see Johannes
Monti di Pietà (Volterra, Perugia, Pfefferkorn
Trevi, Foligno, Amelia, Spoleto, Philip II Augustus, , 
Assisi), , – Pierre d’Ailly, 
Moses ben Nahman, Rabbi Pius II, Pope, , 
(Nahmanides),  Pius V, Pope, , , , 
Moses ha-Cohen de Tordesillas,  Pius XI, Pope, , 
Moses ha-Darshan,  Polanco, SJ, 
Muslims, , , , ,  Profiat Duran, , 

Nazarenes, ,  Ramon de Penyafort, OP, –,

Necromancy, , , – , 
Nicholas V, Pope,  Ramon Ermengaud, OP, , 
Nicholas of Cusa,  Ramon Llull, , , , , ,
Nicholas of Lyra, Friar, –, , 
, , ,  Ramon Martí (Pugio Fidei), , ,
Nizzahon Vetus,  , , , , 
 

Revelation, Book of, see Apocalypse, Sixtus IV, Pope (della Rovere), ,
Book of , –, 
Richard of Saint Victor,  Sixtus V, Pope, –, –
Rigaud, Eudes, see Eudes Rigaud Solomon, , , 
Ritual murder, accusation of, (at Solomon ibn Adret, Rabbi, 
Trent ), , , (at Valreas Stephan Bodecker, 
), –
Rodriguez, SJ,  Talmud, , , , , ,
Roger Bacon,  
Thomas Aquinas, OP, , , ,
Sabbath, , – , , , , , , ,
Salimbene de Adam, Friar, , ,  , 
Samuel of Granada, –, – Toledot Yeshu, , 
 Tractate Me#ilah, 
Schwartz, Peter, OP, see Peter Tractate Sanhedrin, 
Schwartz
Sentences commentaries, , , usury, , , –, , ,
– –
Shev Tov ben Issac ibn Shaprut,
, ,  Vicent Ferrer, OP, , –, ,
Simon of Trent, , , –, , –, , Plates –
, –, –, , , Vital du Four, Friar, , 
, , Plate 