THE JEWS IN EUROPE. 211 



imperial laws appearing to have satisfied them. Gregory the Great 

 protected them unweariedly against the acts of violence common in 

 Southern Italy, and forbade forcing them into the Church. On the 

 other hand, he sought to procure their conversion by vouchsafing 

 privileges to them, and set up the doubtful principle, which was often 

 evoked later on when forcible conversions were attempted, viz., if the 

 Church does not win thereby those who have been bought over, it 

 certainly wins their children. 



From that time on, for nearly three centuries, the Popes are silent 

 respecting the Jewish people. After the middle of the ninth century 

 the first considerable assumption of power on the part of the Papacy 

 took place under the Pseud-Isidore, Nicholas I, and his nearest succes- 

 sors. When Stephen VI (885-891) broke the long silence, a strong 

 hostile feeling had already taken the place of the earlier mildness in 

 Rome. The Pope wrote to the Archbishop of Narbonne, that " he 

 had been plunged into deadly anxiety by the news that the Jews, 

 those enemies of God, had become possessed there by royal permission 

 of property in land, and that Christians lived together with these 

 dogs, and even performed service for them, although, as a punishment 

 for the death of Christ, all the pledges and promises which God had 

 confirmed to them were canceled." With this the signal was given, 

 and the new path entered upon on which men now proceeded to ad- 

 vance. It is true that the Jews were not seldom successful in ob- 

 taining Papal letters of protection. The injunction not to force them 

 to baptism, or to rob or kill them, was often repeated ; but, while on 

 other occasions, even in matters of little consequence, banning, inter- 

 dicting, outlawing, and other drastic means were threatened and ap- 

 plied, these bulls for the protection of the Jews consisted of general 

 exhortations, and were of little use, because the penal sanction was 

 wanting. The kings and high nobility set everywhere the example of 

 lawlessly oppressing, abusing, and plundering the Jews, and we do not 

 find that the Popes called them to account for this, or took the part of 

 the oppressed against them. On the contrary, when Philip Augustus 

 robbed and banished the Jews of France, Coelestin III declared that the 

 king in doing this had shown his ardent zeal in the cause of God ; and 

 when any temporal ruler, who was also an official in the Church, in order 

 to be sure of his right to do so, asked for Papal authorization to drive 

 out the Jews from his dominion, it was readily granted him. The 

 declaration of Innocent III, that the whole people was condemned 

 by God, on account of its guilt, to perpetual slavery, became the 

 oft-cited Magna Charta for all those whe lusted after the gains and 

 possessions of the Jews ; in accordance with it rulers and peoples 

 acted. Nor could the impression it made be greatly diminished by 

 the circumstance that the Popes supported the letters, which they 

 from time to time gave for the protection of the Jews, by referring 

 to the prophecy about a remnant of the people that should remain 



