Rivista Internazionale di
Diritto Comune 23 (2012) 23-44
KENNETH PENNINGTON
The Law’s Violence against Medieval and Early
Modern Jews
Since Anders Winroth and Carlos Larrainzar discovered earlier
versions of Gratian’s Decretum, legal historians have explored these
manuscripts for evidence that they hoped would reveal how Gratian’s
changes and additions to his text could provide insights into how his
thought and ideas developed 1. Although there is still a vigorous debate
about exactly how the manuscript tradition reflects the evolution of his
Decretum, we know far more about Gratian now than we did before. Not
everyone agrees on what we know. I think that Gratian began teaching
in the 1120’s, that the Saint Gall manuscript 673 is the earliest witness
to his teaching, and that the other manuscripts discovered by Winroth
and Larrainzar provide evidence that a version of his Decretum
circulated widely in the 1130’s. The final version of his Decretum ca. 1140
was compiled by gradually adding canons to various parts of the text over
an extended period of time 2. That is an outline of what I think we know.
*
Kelly-Quinn Professor of Ecclesiastical and Legal History, The Columbus
School of Law and the School of Canon Law, The Catholic University of America,
Washington, DC.
1 Anders Winroth’s book, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge
2000), was responsible for opening new vistas for the study of the Decretum. On
the St. Gall manuscript see Carlos Larrainzar’s essays, ‘El borrador de la
“Concordia” de Graziano: Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 673 (= Sg)’, Ius
ecclesiae: Rivista internazionale di diritto canonico 9 (1999) 593-666 and ‘El
decreto de Graciano del códice Fd (= Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,
Conventi Soppressi A.I.402): In memoriam Rudolf Weigand’, Ius ecclesiae: Rivista
internazionale di diritto canonico 10 (1998) 421-489. I will limit my citations to
the rather large literature that has been published since 1998. Almost all the
relevant essays touching upon the issues that I mention in my first paragraphs
are dealt with in essays printed in the Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law between
1998 and 2012 and the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtgeschichte,
Kanonistische Abteilung during the same period. In the footnotes of those essays
can be found references to essays printed elsewhere.
2 Melodie H. Eichbauer, ‘From the First to the Second Recension: The
Progressive Evolution of the Decretum’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 29
(2011-2012) 119-167; Eichbauer provides a good bibliography for work on all
aspects of the Decretum.
23
KENNETH PENNINGTON
The value of the Saint Gall manuscript is particularly controverted.
In my opinion no one has been able to prove conclusively that it is an
abbreviation – or the contrary. The winnowing and sifting of the evidence
proceeds apace. The status of Saint Gall is primarily important for
understanding how Gratian began to teach canon law. My conviction that
it represents how Gratian first began to teach canon law in the 1120’s
cannot be proven now and probably never can be. Still, the format of the
manuscript contains a powerful clue. It only contains the causae. They
were Gratian’s remarkable contribution to twelfth-century education. He
invented a system of teaching law that depended on introducing his
students to hypothetical cases based on legal problems that could have
easily been heard in the courts during the first half of the twelfth
century. In addition Gratian employed the dialectical methodology
created by the masters in northern France to legal problems. I think the
great success of the Decretum and its immediate and enthusiastic
adoption by teachers from Italy to Spain and from Austria to northern
France (to rely on the manuscripts that have survived), can be attributed
to his case-law methodology that reflected legal problems that Gratian
and his students would have encountered if they had visited episcopal
tribunals 3.
When Winroth and Larrainzar established the existence of different
recensions of Gratian’s Decretum in the manuscripts, scholars
immediately realized that they might begin to see how Gratian’s thought
evolved on various subjects. Unfortunately, to date they have uncovered
very little evidence about the development of Gratian’s thought in any
area of law. Winroth has attempted to demonstrate that Gratian changed
his opinion about the primacy of spousal consent in marriage law and
about the validity of the marriage of slaves 4. In both of these cases the
evidence is not without ambiguity.
3 Not everyone agrees that Gratian drew upon real life for his examples;
Anders Winroth argued in a recent essay that Gratian’s hypothetical cases could
not have been real court cases, ‘The Teaching of Law in the Twelfth Century,
Errore. Solo documento principale.Law and Learning in the Middle Ages:
Proceedings of the Second Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal
History, 2005, edd. Helle Vogt and Mia Münster-Swendsen (Copenhagen 2006)
41-61 at 47.
4 Anders Winroth, ‘Marital Consent in Gratian’s Decretum’, Readers, Texts
and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in
Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl, ed. Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing
(Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, CT, 2009) 111-121 at 115 n.29 and his essay
‘Neither Slave nor Free: Theology and Law in Gratian’s Thoughts on the
Definition of Marriage and Unfree Persons’, Medieval Church Law and the
Origins of the Western Legal Tradition: A Tribute to Kenneth Pennington, edd.
Wolfgang P. Müller and Mary E. Sommar (Washington, D.C., 2006) 97-109.
24
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
While preparing a talk on Gratian’s treatment of the Jews, I noticed
that the canons Gratian included in his Decretum to establish norms for
the legal status of the Jews were not in St. Gall or Gratian I. He treated
the legal status of Jews only in the last, vulgate version of the Decretum 5.
This fact raises the question why did Gratian become interested in the
Jews ca. 1140, the date of Gratian II? 6 I have yet to find a convincing
explanation. There were notorious Jewish cases in the mid-twelfth
century that might have attracted Gratian’s notice, but he provided no
clues in the dicta around these canons which events may have captured
his attention. These additional canons are not, however, an example of
the evolution of Gratian’s thought; they are an example of Gratian’s
beginning to have thoughts on an issue rather late in the game.
Gratian introduced his students to the legal status of Jews in four
significant clusters of texts that are not in St. Gall nor Gratian I but
which he added to Gratian II in two distinctions and two causae. In
Distinctio 45 canons 3, 4 and 5, Gratian raised the issue of the validity of
coerced conversions of Jews and more generally how Christian rulers,
especially ecclesiastical authorities, should treat them. Distinctio 54
canons 13, 14, 15 established that Jews cannot have or own Christian
servants, they cannot hold public office, and Jewish slaves who convert to
Christianity are freed. Further along in the Decretum he added C.17 q.4
c.31 and dicta p.c.30 and p.c.31, which repeated the norm that Jews
cannot hold public office. In Causa 2 quaestio 7 canons 24-25, Gratian
discussed procedure and noted that Jews could not bring suit against a
Christian in court. Finally, in his treatise on marriage, Causa 28
quaestio 1 canons 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, he included canons that prevented
any interreligious marriages, dictating that Jews who marry Christian
women must convert. Moreover, Christian children must be removed
from Jewish parents and relatives, and Jewish converts must be
separated from other Jews. Christians may not marry Jews under any
circumstances. In this essay I will focus on the problems raised by the
coerced conversion of Jews in Distinctio 45.
5 They are in the margins or the appendices of Florence, Barcelona, and
Admont. That means the canons came to Gratian’s attention well before he
stopped working on the Decretum, see Eichbauer, ‘From the First to the Second
Recension’ 154, 156, 161, 164.
6 Although I believe that the evolution of the Decretum cannot be described as
having proceeded in set “stages” or “recensions”, I will employ the terminology
established by Winroth for the sake of clarity. For the evolution of Gratian’s
Decretum see Peter Landau, ‘Gratian and the Decretum Gratiani’, The History of
Canon Law in the Classical Period, 1140-1234: From Gratian to the Decretals of
Pope Gregory IX, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (History of
Medieval Canon Law; Washington, D.C.: 2008) 22-54.
25
KENNETH PENNINGTON
The dictum at the beginning of D.45 is strange: “Sequitur ‘non
percussorem’ ”. Friedberg’s footnote explains that this is a reference to 1
Timothy c.3 verses 2-5, which reads:
Oportet ergo episcopum irreprehensibilem esse, unius uxoris virum,
sobrium prudentem, ornatum, pudicum, hospitalem, doctorem, non
vinolentum, non percussorem, sed modestum, non litigiosum… non
neophytum.
A little searching in the Decretum reveals that Gratian cited the
first part of 1 Timothy at the beginning of D.36, and that he dealt with
“ornatus et hospitalis” in D.40 and D.41-D.42, “pudicus” in D.43, a
“vinolentus” and clerical drunkeness in D.44, “non percussorem” in D.45,
“non litigiosum” in D.46 7, and “neophyti” in D.48 as guidelines to
episcopal rectitude 8. After D.48 Gratian abandoned 1 Timothy as a
framework for discussing clerical discipline. In Gratian’s notation at the
beginning of D.45 in Gratian I and II he seems to have assumed that the
reader would remember from his reference to 1 Timothy in D.36 and
from his using words from 1 Timothy in D.40-44 that “non percussorem”
followed “vinolentum” in the epistle of the Pseudo-Paul. The dictum in
St. Gall was more helpful as a aide-mémoire than the dictum in Gratian
I and II: 9
Neque percussor iuxta eundem (i.e. the author of 1 Timothy) esse debet.
Non enim oportet episcopum irascibilem et animi esse turbati ubi
percutiat quia patiens debet esse et eum sequi qui dorsum posuit ad
flagella.
This more extensive reminder to the reader was necessary there,
perhaps, because St. Gall did not include the texts in D.44 on drunkeness
nor did he include the texts from D.40-41-42-43. St. Gall did contain
D.46. Do these omissions provide evidence that St. Gall is an
abbreviation? I think not. In St. Gall, Gratian began his gloss to 1
Timothy with D.36 and continued to build his commentary in D.45-46.
He added to his analysis of the episcopal office and clerical discipline in a
logical way in Gratian I and II.
In St. Gall and Gratian I the focus of D.45 was on irascible prelates
who abused their subjects. Although the connection between Christian
7 1 Timothy 3.3. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 673, established the general pattern
that Gratian I followed.
8 It was quite natural that Gratian would have used 1 Timothy as an outline
for episcopal and clerical rectitude.
9 St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 673 p.13a.
26
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
prelates and Jews is not obvious, Gratian inserted three canons on the
legal status of Jews in Gratian II after D.45 c.2. Pope Gregory I’s letter
provided the text for c.3, Pope Gregory IV’s for c.4, and the Fourth
Council of Toledo (A.D. 633) canon 57 was the final addition. Pope
Gregory I’s letter reminded Pascasius, the bishop of Naples, that the
Jews of Naples should not be prevented from celebrating their festivities.
Pope Gregory IV’s letter emphasized that prelates should not correct
their subjects harshly, including, he stated, the “presumption of the
Jews”.
The most important text in D.45 was the canon from the Council of
Toledo that stipulated that that Jews should not be coerced to accept the
Christian faith, but if they became Christians, they should be compelled
to remain Christian. This canon circulated widely in pre-Gratian
canonical collections. Twenty-two extant collections contain it.
Uncharacteristically, Gratian resolved the question without creating any
distinctions. His reading of the conciliar canon was brutally simple:
“Jews should not be forced to convert to the faith, but if they were
converted, they must remain Christian” 10. If a Jew was baptized, he
became a Christian. D.45 became the place where all later jurists talked
about the forced conversion of Jews. Gratian’s successors developed a
more flexible doctrine. They created a distinction between conditional
and absolute coercion, which was determined by the Roman law
principles but not by the language of Roman law 11. They concluded that a
forced conversion or baptism of a Jew was valid if bestowed under only
moderate terror.
The text of the conciliar canon was not precise on what ceremony or
step constituted a valid conversion. It did state that if Jews had been
baptized and received the major sacraments, they could be coerced to
remain Christians (D.45 c.5):
De Iudeis autem precepit sancta sinodus, nemini deinceps uim ad
credendum inferre. “Cui enim uult Deus miseretur, et quem uult
indurat”. Non enim tales inviti salvandi sunt, sed volentes, ut integra sit
forma iustitie. Sicut enim homo propria arbitrii voluntate serpenti
10 D.45 c.5; Gratian concluded in his dictum after c.4 that this conciliar canon
meant that “Iudei non sunt cogendi ad fidem, quam tamen si inviti susceperint,
cogendi sunt retinere”. On the Jews in canon law see Walter Pakter, Medieval
Canon Law and the Jews (Abhandlungen zur rechtwissenschaftlichen
Grundlagenforschung 68; Ebelsbach, 1988).
11 For a detailed discussion of when fear invalidated an action, see Stephan
Kuttner, Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die Dekretalen Gregors
IX: Systematisch auf Grund der handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt (Studi e
Testi 64; Città del Vaticano: 1935, reprinted 1961) 299-314.
27
KENNETH PENNINGTON
obediens periit, sic vocante se gratia Dei proprie mentis conversione
quisque credendo salvatur. Ergo non vi, sed libera arbitrii facultate ut
convertantur suadendi sunt, non potius inpellendi. Qui autem
iampridem ad Christianitatem coacti sunt, sicut factum est temporibus
religiosissimi principis Sisebuti, quia iam constat eos sacramentis
diuinis associatos, et baptismi gratiam suscepisse, et crismate unctos
esse, et corporis Domini extitisse participes, oportet, ut fidem, quam vi
vel necessitate susceperint, tenere cogantur, ne nomen Domini
blasphemetur, et fides, quam susceperunt, vilis ac contemptibilis,
habeatur. (This holy synod commands that Jews not be forced to believe.
Rather, God has mercy on those he chooses and punishes others he does
not (Rom. 9:18). The unwilling must not be saved but only the willing, as
an example of a complete model of justice. As man perished by obeying
the serpent with his own will, he is saved through the grace of God by
believing. Therefore the Jews are not to be converted by force but by
persuasion and through their free will. Those who have already been
forced to convert to Christianity as had been done in the time of the most
pious ruler Sisebut, since they have accepted the divine sacraments,
received the grace of baptism, the anointed with holy oil, and taken the
body of the Lord, they must remain in the faith that they received
whether by force or by necessity so that the name of the Lord and the
faith they hold not be considered vile and contemptible).
Must a Jew have received all the appropriate sacraments to become
a Christian? Christian thinkers had very early on concluded that a valid
baptism was the key to becoming a Christian 12. An anonymous glossator
commented on the words “willing, as an example of a complete model of
justice”, “Namely to come to the sacrament of baptism” 13. From the early
twelfth century on, baptism became the liturgical act and the sacrament
that defined a Christian from a non-Christian and established
“citizenship” within the Christian church.
The most important canonist of the twelfth century, Huguccio,
established the jurisprudential ground rules for defining what
constituted a forced valid conversion or baptism. In a gloss to the Toledo
conciliar canon, Huguccio explored what constituted consent of a Jew to
baptism. Rufinus had already defined coercion as either absolute or
12 Jean Gaudemet, ‘ “Baptismus, ianua sacramentorum” ’ CJC, c. 849:
Baptême et droits de l’homme’, Rituels: Mélanges offerts au R.P. Pierre-Marie Gy,
edd. P. de Clerck and E. Palazzo (Paris 1990) 273-282, reprinted in La doctrine
canonique médiévale (Collected Studies; Aldershot-Brookfield 1994).
13 Köln, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek 127, fol. 43v interlinear
gloss to D.45 c.5 s.v. volentes: “scilicet ad sacramentum salutis uenire”.
28
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
conditional when he discussed the validity of oaths 14. Huguccio applied
the terminology to coerced baptisms 15:
I distinguish between absolute and conditional coercion: If anyone is
baptized by absolute coercion, for example if one person tied him down
and another poured water over him, unless he consents afterwards, he
ought not to be forced to embrace the Christian faith.
Because he believed that baptism was valid whether willing or
unwilling, awake or sleeping, he concluded posterior consent made a Jew
a Christian 16. Not all later jurists accepted Huguccio’s reasoning. They
held that invalid acts could never been validated by later consent. For
example, invalid confessions extracted by torture were never valid ex
post factum 17. Huguccio specified in some detail exactly what constituted
conditional coercion 18:
If someone is baptized under conditional coercion, for example if I say I
will beat, rob, kill, or injure you, unless you are baptized, he can be
forced to hold the faith, because from conditional coercion an unwilling
14 Rufinus to C.22 q.5 c.1 s.v. Qui compulsus, Summa decretorum, ed.
Heinrich Singer (Paderborn: 1902, reprinted Aalen: 1963) 399-402.
15 Huguccio, Summa to D. 45 c.5 s.v. associatos unctos corporis Domini, Lonsle-Saunier, Archives départementales du Jura 16, fol. 61v, Admont,
Stiftsbibliothek 7, fol. 61v, Vat. lat. 2280, fol. 44r: “De coactione autem distinguo,
aut est absoluta aut est conditionalis. Si absoluta coactione quis baptizetur, puta
unus tenet eum ligatum et alius superfundit aquam, nisi (ubi Lons-le-Saunier)
postea consentiat, non debet cogi ad fidem Christianam tenendam”. Mario
Condorelli, I fondamenti giuridici della tolleranza religiosa nell'elaborazione
canonistica dei secoli XII-XIX: Contributo storico-dogmatico (Università di
Catania Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza 36; Milano 1960) 55-56
prints this text from Franz Gillmann, Die Notwendigkeit der Intention auf Seiten
des Spenders und des Empfängers der Sakramente nach der Anschauung der
Frühscholastik (Mainz: 1916) 16.
16 Ibid.: “quia sive volens sive nolens, vigilans sive dormiens quis baptizetur in
forma ecclesie sacramentum accipit”.
17 See my essay ‘Torture and Fear: Enemies of Justice’, Rivista internazionale
di diritto comune 19 (2008) 203-242.
18 Huguccio, Summa to D. 45 c.5 s.v. associatos unctos corporis Domini, Lonsle-Saunier, Archives départementales du Jura 16, fol. 61v, Admont,
Stiftsbibliothek 7, fol. 61v, Vat. lat. 2280, fol. 44r: “Si vero coactione conditionali
quis baptizetur, puta: te verberabo vel spoliabo bel interficiam vel leda, nisi
baptizeris, debet cogi ut fiedm teneat, quia per talem coactionem de nolente
efficitur quid volens, et volens baptizatur. Voluntas enim coacta voluntas est et
volentem facit, ut xv. q.i. Merito (C.15 q.1 c.1)”.
29
KENNETH PENNINGTON
person is made into a willing person, and as a willing person is baptized.
A coerced choice is a choice, and makes consent.
Thirteenth-century jurists found Huguccio’s definitions of
conditional coercion persuasive. Raymond of Peñafort (ca. 1234) accepted
conditional coercion conferred a valid baptism but did not accept
Huguccio’s conviction that absolute coercion could confer a valid
sacrament. Pope Innocent III had issued the decretal Maiores in which
almost the entire last part of De Iudeis was quoted. The pope declared
that if a Jew had adamantly and steadfastly refused to accept baptism,
the sacrament and the conversion were not valid 19. Innocent’s decretal
was the last piece of papal canonical jurisdiction that directly touched
upon the issue of coerced baptisms.
Maiores and De Iudeis left many questions open. A significant issue
was the fate of Jewish children in families in which one of the parents
became Christian or in which the parents did not convert, but a child was
baptism. A case decided in 1229 at the papal curia about the status of a
Jewish child became a bench mark for deciding the rights of the father,
mother and child for centuries. Raymond de Peñafort included the
appellate decision in the Decretales of Gregory IX. 20 A Jew in Strasbourg
had converted to Christianity and left a staunchly Jewish wife and four
year old son behind. He had petitioned the bishop to grant him custody of
his son. He wanted to baptize him and raise him as a Christian. The man
made only one argument, at least only one argument was reported in the
decision: his son should be given to him immediately to be raised a
Catholic. Remarkably, the mother appeared before an episcopal synod
which heard the case and put forward arguments that still resonate with
maternal love. The boy was young, she pleaded. He needed the
consolation of his mother more than his father. His gestation had been
difficult, his birth painful, and his post partum strenuous. From these
facts the court could understand that the legitimate conjoining of a man
and a woman is called matrimony, not patrimony. A mother’s rights
should not be abrogated to appease a paternalistic jurisprudence. It was
a strikingly clever argument that the jurists pondered for centuries
afterwards. Her last argument was especially touching. The bishop had
custody of the boy during the hearing, but his mother begged that the
boy should remain with her since her husband had only recently
converted. Failing that solution, neutral custodians should take care of
19
Summa de penitentia (Rome 1603) 33: “quia corporaliter cum violentia
traherentur et super infunderetur aqua, non conferretur character baptismi,
extra de bapt. et eius effectu, Maiores, circa finem (3 Comp. 3.34.1 = X 3.42.3)”.
20 X 3.33.2.
30
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
the boy until he reached majority 21. A mother’s plea did not move the
court.
After the mid-thirteenth century, the jurists used a new genre of
literature, the consilium, to expand their discussion of the legal status of
converted Jews and their children 22. Two of the earliest consilia I know
that deal with the legal status of Jews date from the second half of the
thirteenth century. They treated the baptism of Jewish children and
much more. A Dominican inquisitor, Florio da Vicenza, was particularly
interested in relapsed baptized Jews who had “Judaized” 23. A similar
problem was posed by Jews who persecuted other Jews who had
converted to Christianity. The inquisitor’s holy zeal led him into
uncharted legal territory. A number of jurists from Padua or possibly
Bologna responded to his questions about several cases on his docket
that involved Jews. The questions posed by Brother Florio indicate that
Jews were only recently coming to the attention of inquisitors and also
reveal how little help the normative texts in the canonical collections
were in solving more intricate problems. The jurists dealt with eight
questions that Florio must have asked them to answer. The first was
whether relapsed Jews should have the legal status of heretics and be
subject to the inquisitor’s court. The answer was simply yes, without any
explanation of their reasoning 24.
21 X 3.33.2: “Ad quod illa respondit, quod, cum puer adhuc infans exsistat,
propter quod magis materno indiget solatio quam paterno, sibique ante partum
onerosus, dolorosus in partu, [ac] post partum laboriosus fuisse noscatur, ac ex
hoc legitima coniunctio maris et feminae magis matrimonium quam patrimonium
nuncupetur, dictus puer apud eam debet convenientius remanere, †[quam apud
patrem ad fidem Christianam de novo perductum transire debebat, aut saltem
neutrius sequi, priusquam ad legitimam aetatem perveniat. Hinc inde multis aliis
allegatis: tu autem praedicto puero medio tempore in tua potestate retento, quid
tibi faciendum sit in hoc casu nos consulere voluisti (pars decisa de Decretales).]”.
22 Mario Ascheri has devoted a lifetime of scholarship to the medieval and
early modern consilia, e.g. ‘ “Consilium sapientis”, perizia medica e “res iudicata”:
Diritto dei “dottori” e istituzioni comunali’, Proceedings of the Sixth International
Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Berkeley, California, 28 July-2 August 1980,
edd. Stephan Kuttner and Kenneth Pennington (Monumenta iuris canonici,
series C 7; Vatican City: 1980) 532-579 and ‘Legal Consulting in the Civil Law
Tradition’, Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition, edd. Mario Ascheri,
Ingrid Baumgärtner, and Julius Kirshner (Studies in comparative legal history;
Berkeley 1999) 11-53. Space does not permit me to follow my subject to the early
modern period through the jurists’ consilia.
23 Riccardo Parmeggiani, I consilia procedurali per l’inquisizione medievale
(1235-1330) (Bologna: 2011) 121-122; Bolognese jurists repeated much of the
consilium in their own that Parmeggiani prints on pp. 126-128.
24 Ibid. 124.
31
KENNETH PENNINGTON
The second question was more ominous and threatening to the
Jewish communities. Could Jews who aided and abetted relapsed Jews
be tried in inquisitorial courts as “supporters, receivers, and defenders of
heretics?” 25. The jurists said yes. They also provided insight into their
reasoning: the Jews held their legal rights in Christian society only as a
privilege, not as a right. The jurists concluded by citing legal maxim that
had long been embedded in canonical jurisprudence: those that abused
their privileges lost them 26.
The next two questions involved procedure. When and how could
Jews be tortured? If the proofs contained “presumptiones violentae,” that
is evidence that fell just short of complete proof, Jews could be tortured.
This standard was the common one of the Ius commune for determining
whether a person could be tortured. 27 It is striking that the jurists
applied the same principles to Jews as they did to Christians. They also
concluded that Jews could not be tortured in ways that would draw
blood 28. This limitation seems to imply that the jurists did not consider
relapsed Jews to have committed a crime.
The other points in the consilium covered Jews who used their
synagogues to wash away baptisms of Christians or in which they
circumcised Christians. The synagogues should be destroyed 29. The
seventh question in the consilium was what should be done with a
Jewish child of a baptized Jew (i.e. Christian), who was away or in
regions unknown. Could the child remain with Jewish mother? The
jurists did not hesitate to take the child away from his mother on the
grounds of the “favor fidei”. It had become the common opinion of the
25 Ibid: “dicunt eum posse et debere procedere contra eos sicut contra fautores,
receptores et defensores hereticorum”. This language was taken from decretals
and secular legislation; see my ‘Pro peccatis patrum puniri: A Moral and Legal
Problem of the Inquisition’, Church History 47 (1978) 137-154, reprinted with
additions in Popes, Canonists and Texts, 1150-1550 (Aldershot 1993) XI pp. 3-16,
especially at 11-12.
26 Ibid. 124: “Licet Iudei ab ecclesia in suis ritibus tollerentur, tamen ratione
delicti quod in ecclesiam committunt, sunt severitate ecclesiastica coherecendi.
Et privilegium meretur amittere qui permissa sibi abutitur potestate”. See D.74
c.6 and C.11 q.3 c.63 for the earliest appearance of this maxim in canon law. It
did not have its roots in Roman law.
27 Pennington, ‘Torture and Fear: Enemies of Justice’, Rivista internazionale
di diritto comune 19 (2008) 203-242.
28 Parmeggiani, I consilia procedurali 124: “potest et debet eam extorquere
suppliciis citra effusionem sanguinis per executorem vel iudicem secularem”.
29 Ora Limor, ‘Christians and Jews’, The Cambridge History of Christianity, 4:
Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100-1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons
(Cambridge: 2009) 494-556, with bibliography; also R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of
Ritual Murder: Jew and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven 1988).
32
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
jurists, following the precedent of Pope Gregory IX’s decretal (X 3.33.2)
(discussed above), that a Jewish child of a mixed marriage should live
with the Christian parent 30. The Church, the local bishop, or the
Christian prince should take the child to be raised by Christians who
were not suspect and who were baptized. They granted an exception:
unless the child had the “impediment of a contrary will (obex contrariae
voluntatis)”. This strange terminology dates back to a similar phrase of
Saint Augustine and had been employed by Pope Innocent III,
theologians and by canonists to evaluate the intentions of those who
received baptism in order to judge whether the baptism was validly
bestowed 31.
Pope Nichaolas III declared in a letter dated 1277 that Jews who
converted under threats of death cannot return to Jewish practices
because they were not “absolutely and exactly coerced (absolute seu
precise coacti)”. Gradually the “praecisa coactio” replaced “absoluta
coactio” in the terminology of the jurists 32. Pope Boniface VIII used that
terminology in his decretal letter Contra Christianos that was later
included in his Liber Sextus. The pope also confirmed the opinions of the
jurist who advised Florio da Vicenza that relapsed Jews were to be
equated with heretics and that any Jews who aided or abetted those
Jews who had apostatized were subject to the jurisdiction of Christian
courts and could be punished with the same penalties as those imposed
upon relapsed Jews 33.
Gratian inclusion of the Fourth Council of Toledo’s fifty-seven canon
on Jews shaped the legal discussion of the legal status of baptized Jews
for centuries. The puzzle must remain unresolved: why did Gratian not
include canons on Jews in earlier recensions? Partially the answer lies in
the structure of his Decretum. Unlike all earlier collections Gratian did
not divide his collection into books and titles. The major pre-Gratian
canonical collections, which were all divided into books and titles, had
often devoted a section to the Jews 34. None of his distinctiones and
30
Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews 318-321.
Parmeggiani, I consilia procedurali 125: “parvulus filius Iudei baptizati
existens apud matrem que remansit in Iudaica cecitate patre absente in remotis
partibus et ignotis, favore fidei est accipeindus ab eo per ecclesiam vel loci
ordinarium seu principem Christianum, cuius subest dominio; et nutriendus
apud fideles non suspectos et baptizandus, nisi obex in eo contrarie voluntatis”.
On the phrase “obex contrariae voluntatis” and issue of forced baptism, see
Condorelli, I fondamenti giuridici della tolleranza religiosa 88-105.
32 “Praecisa coactio” is not a term of Roman law; the Roman jurists did use
“praecise” in several different contexts, e.g. Dig. 36.3.1.20.
33 VI 5.2.13.
34 E.g. Burchard of Worms, Decretum and Polycarpus, Collectio canonum.
31
33
KENNETH PENNINGTON
causae dealt with Jews in Christian society. When he decided to include
canons on Jews, his structure limited the places where he could place
material. Consequently, all the canons he included treating the legal
status of Jews are awkwardly placed. Perhaps that is a metaphor for the
status of Jews and other non-Christians in medieval Christian society.
Later consilia provide evidence that the forced conversion and
baptism of Jews by Christians remained a threat to Jewish families in
the late Middle Ages and into the early modern era. This act of Christian
intolerance raised a number of legal issues: were forced baptisms of
Jewish adults, servants or children below the age of twelve valid? Guido
de Baysio and some others argued that Christian princes could compel
the baptism of Jewish children because Jews had the legal status of
slaves 35. Guido’s argument was rejected by most jurists but, as we will
see, was resurrected in the sixteenth century.
There were two contrary opinions circulating among the theologians.
The distinguished theologian Duns Scotus argued that Jewish children
should be baptized and raised Christian 36. Thomas Aquinas, however,
insisted that Jews should never be baptized unwillingly. Other questions
circulated among jurists and theologians: If Jewish children had received
a valid baptism could they be taken from their families? If these children
could remain with their families, what guarantees should the parents
give to ensure that the children would remain Christian? The jurists took
the language directly from earlier papal and imperial decrees in which
the legal status of heretics and their supporters were equated.
There was a period of tolerance, at least in theory. Two jurists,
Gaspar Calderini († 1390) 37 and Petrus de Ancharano († 1415) 38, dealt
with the baptism of juvenile and adult Jews at the end of the fourteenth
35
Guido de Baysio, Rosarium (Venice 1480 and 1495) D.45 c.3, s.v.
blandimentis (unfoliated): “credo quod principes quorum sunt servi Iudaei,
possunt eis auferre filios parvulos absque ommi iniuria, cum illi in filiis non
habeant potestatem tanquam servi, ut patet in eo quod legitur et notatur xxxii.
q.iii.(recte iiii.) Sicut (C.32 q.4 c.8) Idem principes possent eosdem parvulos
tanquam mancipia sua aliis dare vel vendere in servitutem, invitis parentibus,
ita possunt eos aufferre ad baptizandum, et in hoc mererentur; dum tamen hoc
non faciant propter compellendos hoc modo parentes ad fidem, sed propter
salvandos pueros per fidei dacramentum, ad cuius perceptionem sufficit, quod
non inveniat obicem contrariae voluntatis”. This gloss had wide circulation when
it was attached to Raymond of Peñafort’s Summa confessorum (Rome 1603) 33.
36 Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews 327; Edward A. Synan, The
Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (New York 1965) 180.
37 H.J. Becker, ‘Calderini, Gaspare’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 16
(1973) 605-606.
38 See my essay (with Ennio Cortese) that will be published in Dizionario
biografico dei giuristi italiani (secc. XII-XX) (2013).
34
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. Both consilia have been
translated into English and printed with their Latin texts 39. Although
Ancharano was a much more important jurist, it was Calderini’s
consilium that was continuously cited for the next two centuries 40.
Calderini’s consilium became a touchstone for later jurists because
he argued vigorously that Jewish children under twelve years cannot be
baptized against their parents’ will. His most provocative argument was
that it would not be congruent with the great favor of the faith, as Pope
Gregory IX’s judges had alleged, but that it would be a violation of justice
to take children away from his father 41. The second part of his consilium
dealt with the question if a Jewish child had been validly – if perhaps
illegally? – baptized, could he be taken from his parents? His solution
was, again, to protect the rights of the parents. The Jewish parents were
required to provide a surety that they would not undermine their child’s
Christian belief and would not stop the child from leaving them when he
reached his majority 42.
39 A.M. Kleinberg, ‘Depriving Parents of the Consolation of Children: Two
Legal Consilia on the Baptism of Jewish Children’, De Sion exhibit lex et verbum
domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in
Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. Yitzhak Hen (Turnholt 2001) 129-144, at 139-144.
40 Calderini wrote other consilia that dealt with Jews: two other consilia
under the title De Iudaeis, one dealing with a case of a Jew who had publicly
proclaimed “Nascha il vermocane al papa et chilse papa, dio non poterebbe fare
che esso fusse papa. Et se io avesse iddeio el papa el veschovo nelle mane Io
trarei loro gli occhi”. The other consilia treated the issues of whether a Jew could
lease a house of the church perpetually and whether they could make valid wills.
41 Kleinberg, ‘Depriving Parents’ 139 (variations in Kleinberg’s text are noted
with (K): “Nec obstat quod magnus facor debeatur fidei, tamen non debet preberi
contra iustitiam, de foro compet. Ex tenore (X 2.2.11) et de donat. inter virum et
uxorem, Nuper (4.20.6), et contra iustitiam [iustitia K] essest auferre filios
patribus [filio parentibus K]”. I have used editions of Calderini’s consilia 1472,
1491, 1497, 1582. The most useful guide to the printed consilia collections is
edited by Peter Pazzaglini, and Catherine A. Hawks, Consilia: A Bibliography of
Holdings in the Library of Congress and Certain Other Collection in the United
States (Washington: Library of Congress, 1990).
42 Kleinberg, ‘Depriving Parents’ 139-142: “Vnde propter talem suspitionem
vel presumptionem dico quod ipsi parentes prestent idoneam cautionem et
sufficientem de ipso filio cum pervenerit ad etatem legitmam qua [que
K],videlicet, fit doli capax, quod permittent libere abire et eundem tunc in sua
cohabitatione nullatenus retinebunt... Eo ergo casu quo [quod K] prestatur dicta
cautio, restituatur filius dictis parentibus”. Collated with 1472, 1491, 1497, 1582
editions.
35
KENNETH PENNINGTON
Petrus de Ancharano’s consilium as it is preserved is a frustrating
document 43. The case is not described, and we are left to reconstruct it on
the basis of his argument. It seems that a Jewish boy was baptized by a
lay person. Petrus argued that the baptism was valid only if there was
pressing necessity because the priest did not preside and holy water was
not used. Consequently, this baptism was invalid and the Jewish child
remained a Jew 44. As we will see, however, necessity becomes an
important principle in deciding whether a baptism was valid.
A century later two distinguished jurists, Matthaeus de Afflictis
(1448-1528) and Paulus Petrus Parisius (1473-1545) dug into the issue of
Jewish forced conversions and baptisms. Matthaeus worked and taught
in Naples under the Spanish kings of the Kingdom of Naples 45. At the
request of Serenissimus King Frederick IV of Naples (1496- †1504) he
wrote a undated consilium on whether the King of Portugal, probably
Manuel I (1495-1521), could legally compel the relatives of a certain Jew
named Joseph to have his son, also named Joseph, baptized by a priest,
while Joseph the father was absent 46. The case must have come to
Frederick’s attention ca. 1497 when Manuel began a vicious campaign of
baptizing Jewish children and sending them to live with Christian;
43 Ancharano wrote three other consilia that treated Jews: Consilium 15: One
dated September 1395 in which he discussed a case in which a Jew in Cesena
threw shit and other unclean objects at a crucifix bearing the image of Christ.
The potestà of Cesena claimed jurisdiction over the case, but the bishop disputed
his juridiction. Petrus decided that the podestà had jurisdiction. Consilium 243:
Could a Christian prince promulgate a statute that permitted Jews to claim
usurious payments in a Christian court (yes, pro bono publico!). Consilium 271:
Jews may not be elected to public offices.
44 Kleinberg, ‘Depriving Parents’ 142-144: “Quod ergo unus, non sacerdos,
nulla necessitate cogente, baptizando pueram Hebreum possit subvertere tot
sacrorum canonum traditiones et parentibus subtrahere solatium filiorum
discretione carentium inqiquissimum videretur. Et ideo (immo K) concludo
dictum puerum non esse baptizatum per rationes et iura predicta que possunt
multis aliis rationibus confirmari, gratia brevitatis omissis”. I have used Petrus
de Ancharano’s editions of 1490 and 1539.
45 Ernst Holthöfer, ‘De Afflictis (D’Afflitto), Matthaeus’, Juristen: Ein
biographisches Lexikon von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael
Stolleis (München 1995) 153-155, who does not mention Matthaeus extensive
consilia.
46 The consilia can be valuable sources for history because they can contain
reports of cases found nowhere else. I have written about a trial of Queen Sibílla
Fortià of Aragon in ‘Women on the Rack: Torture and Gender in the Ius
commune’, Recto ordine procedit magister: Liber amicorum E.C. Coppens, edd.
Louis Berkvens, Jan Hallenbeek, Georges Martyn, and Paul Nève (Iuris Scripta
Historica 28; Brussells: 2012) 243-257, at 245-248.
36
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
adults who refused baptism were burnt 47. Manuel’s onslaught against
Jewish families was, perhaps, the worst example of Christian intolerance
before the twentieth century.
Matthaeus began his consilium with the arguments, beginning with
the thirteenth-century gloss of Johannes Teutonicus, that Jews must not
be forcibly baptized or converted. After that he cited a dozen jurists and a
half dozen theologians who endorsed Johannes’ opinion 48. He reached
back into the tradition, however, and adopted the argument of Guido de
Baysio that Jews had the legal status of slaves 49. The prophecy of Elias
that Jews must be present at the end of the world did not deter
Matthaeus. There will always be Jews on some island waiting to be
saved 50. Rather surprisingly Matthaeus concluded Jewish children
should not be baptized if their parents were unwilling 51. Nevertheless,
Matthaeus reverted to the position taken by a number of theologians: a
conditional baptism was valid, even if the parents were unwilling. If the
baptism was valid, even if the parents were unwilling, then the child was
47
François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King
Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7) (The Medieval
Mediterranean, Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1500, 69; Leiden 2006)
194-239 and ‘King Manuel I and the expulsion of the Castilian Conversos and
Muslims from Portugal in 1497: new perspectives’, Cuadernos de Estudos
Sefarditas 8 (2008) 33-62. Also Giuseppe Marcocci, ‘ “... per capillos adductos ad
pillam”: Il dibattito cinquecentesco sulla validità del battesimo forzato degli ebrei
in Portogallo (1496-1497)’, Salvezza delle anime disciplina dei corpi: Un
seminario sulla storia del battesimo, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Pisa 2006) 339-424 .
For the later history of the Portuguese Jews in Italy see Lucia Fratterelli, ‘Sul
battesimo dei bambini ebrei: Il caso di Livorno’, Salvezza delle anime disciplina
dei corpi: Un seminario sulla storia del battesimo, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Pisa
2006) 449-482.
48 Matthaeus de Afflictis, Decisiones sacri consilii neapolitani (Lyon 1552)
Decisio 151, pp. 271-275.
49 Ibid. 272: “Sed contrariam partem, scilicet, quod Rex Portugalliae potuit
compellere consanguineos huius infantis, et ipsum infantem ad baptism etiam
sine consensu parentum, hoc voluit Arch. in dicto capitulo Qui Syncera (D.45 c.3,
see above n. 34), per rationem quia Iudaei sunt servi Regis”.
50 Ibid. 273: “Nec obstat illa prophetia Esaiae quia potest intelligi de fidelibus,
vel potest intelligi de aliquibus Iudaeis, qui sunt in aliqua insula, quia tunc salvi
erunt”.
51 Ibid. 273: Sed posito propter authoritatem tantorum patrum, quod parvuli
Iudaeorum invitis parentibus non possint baptizari, ut tenet beatus Thomas de
Aquino per tres rationes, quas refert et sequitur beatus Antoninus in secunda
partre Summae, tit. xii. capitulo ii. § Pueri Iudaeorum (Antoninus, Summa
sacrae theologiae, Part II. title 12 c.2 § 4, ed. Venice 1571, p. 361r)”.
37
KENNETH PENNINGTON
a Christian 52. With that Matthaeus proclaimed that the theological and
legal tradition supported his conclusion 53:
I am of the opinion that the Jewish child ought not be given back to the
father, Joseph, because of the favor of the Christian faith and lest the
baptized child would fall into heresy by living with his Jewish father.
Many theologians and doctors of canon law in the council of his majesty
were of my opinion.
Matthaeus’ opinion in the climate of the age is hardly shocking. In a
Spanish court under a Spanish king during a period in which Jews were
being killed, burned, exiled, and expelled en masse, unwilling baptisms
might seem to be a humane policy.
Petrus Paulus Parisius was a cardinal of the Roman church, an
auditor of the Roman curia, a professor of canon law at Bologna. In spite
of his name he was born in Calabria and had been married, during which
time he produced a son. He died in Rome, May 1545 54. Panciroli called
him a man of great erudition but of dirty habits because he sold his
consilia for gold 55. If Panciroli is right, Parisius made a few ducats from
his consilium on the Jews. It was a long disquisition on almost
everything that one would want to know about the relationship of Jews
and the law 56. Beside the issue of the baptism of Jews, he discussed
heretics and a number of principles and problems that arise in legal
procedure. One of the most interesting sections of his consilium was
whether Old Christians (i.e. Portuguese who were born Christians) could
testify in court against New Christians (i.e. converted Jews). He
concluded that the Old Christians were “capital enemies (capitalis
inimicitia)” of the Jews. This was a procedural term in the Ius commune
52 Ibid. 274: “Nam in isto baptismo huius pueri omnia requisita ad baptismum
intervenerunt, videlicet materia, et forma, et intentio seu voluntas sacerdotis
baptizantis, et voluntas parentis spiritualis offerentis eum in baptismo, Et sic in
fide parentis spiritualis recipit characterem baptisimi ipse infans, qui non habet
nec nolle nec velle, ut dicit beatus Antoninus in dicto § Pueri Iudaeorum”.
53 Ibid. 275: “Sum igitur voti, quod non debeat iste parvulus filius Iudaei
baptizatus restitui dicto Ioseph patri suo propter favorem fidei Christianae, ne
dictus baptizatus morando cum patre Iudaeo incidat in haeresim. § Et in hoc voto
fuerunt multi Thelogi et doctores iuris canonici de Consilio suae maiestatis. Et
ita postea executum fuit”.
54 According to Angelus Zavarroni, Bibliotheca Calabra sive illustrium
virorum Calabriae (Naples 1753) 67.
55 Guido Panciroli, Claris legum interpretibus libri quatuor (Leipzig: 1721)
267.
56 Petrus Paulus Parisius, Consilia (4 vols. Frankfurt am Main 1590) vol. 4,
consilium 2, fol. 5r-10v.
38
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
for a witness whose views were so notoriously biased that the person
could not testify in court. It is quite remarkable that Parisius would
include all Portuguese Christians in that category. The tales of brutality
he must have heard shocked him 57. In any event, if Portuguese judges
would have accepted his arguments, the inquisitorial courts would have
ceased to exist.
His main objective, however, was to review the validity of King
Manuel of Portugal’s actions against Jews. It was probably written for
Manuel’s son, King John III (1521-1557). Besides the baptism of Jews, he
discussed a privilege that Manuel bestowed on the newly converted
Christians that their faith could not be questioned by the courts for
twenty years. The issue was whether King John could abrogate the
privileges 58. Parisius concluded that a contract was a contract and that
the king could not break his father’s agreements 59.
Parisius’ first sentence would not give any Jew a sense of relief: he
asserted that to be a Jew was a crime but softened the blow by adding
that the crime was not punishable 60. He also rejected the argument that
57
Ibid. fol. 7r: “An veteres Christiani dictorum regnorum et dominorum
possint admitti in testes contra ipsos, ex eo quia sunt capitales inimici ipsorum et
contra ipsos coniurati, conspiratores et complices, et armata manu ipsorum
noviter conversorum absque causa interfecerunt quinque millia et plus et fuerunt
et sunt coniurati contra eos falsa testimonia proferre... dico contrarium ex quo
propter mortem et occisionem tantorum noviter conversorum sine causa
patratam per ipsos veteres et antiquos Christianos fuit et est causata... Qua
capitali inimicitia stante proculdubio ipsi veteres Christiani contra istos noviter
conversos in testes recipi et admitti minime possunt”.
58 Soyer, Persecution 224, cited from the chronicle of Damião de Góis.
59 Ibid. fol. 8v: “Ex istis insuper inferri potest ad resolutionem sextae
dubitationis in qua queritur an Ioannes rex predictus potuerit et possit tale
privilegium et patris et suum revocare et contra illud venire. In qua disceptatione
dicendum videtur tale privilegium et concessionem potuisse et posse revocari
etiam sine causa...”. His conclusion, however, was that King John could not
revoke the privilege because it was a contract, fol. 9r “Verum igitur erit, regem
ipsum Ioannem dictum privilegium et concessionem non posse revocare,
ipsumque teneri illa observare in his, de quibus disponere potuit, cum iam
transiverint in vim contractus et conventionis”. The inviolability of contracts had
a long history in the Ius commune; see K. Pennington, The Prince and the Law:
1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley-Los
Angeles 1993) 125-129, 154-155, 205-209, 278-281.
60 Ibid. fol. 5v: “Etsi esse Iudaeum sit crimen et delictum, ut tradit Accursius
in l. Sed si res de legat. i. (Dig. 30.1.40) Ex eo quoniam reprobatam
superstitionem prosequitur... Tamen quo ad iudicem et forum conteniosum non
est proprie delictum punibile”. In spite of Parisius, Accursius does not say that
being a Jew is a crime.
39
KENNETH PENNINGTON
Jews were or could be slaves of Christian princes 61. In rejecting this
argument of Guido de Baysio, but accepted by some later jurists, he
called into question King Manuel’s subjecting large numbers of Jews to
slavery during his campaign to cleanse Portugal of non-Christians.
Parisius continued his discussion of Jews and the law by accepting the
tradition that if a Jew were baptized by “vis praecisa” the sacrament was
not bestowed, and the Jew remained a Jew. If the baptism was
administered with “vis coacta (conditionalis)” the sacrament was valid.
He mentioned that those Jews who had been baptized during the reign of
King Manuel (of good memory!) were not made Christians. 62 Parisius
struggled to make sense of the decision of the Neapolitan court reported
by De Afflictis, which had gained, it seems, notoriety. He knew that it
flew in the face of the greater authority and the common opinion of the
jurists 63. He invented a story to explain the court’s decision: the young
boy grew, did not protest, became an adult and reached his majority,
performed acts of faith, and consequently one could argue that his
baptism was valid. As the legal commonplace states, observed Parisius,
many things seem objectionable that are valid when once are done 64.
Most importantly, although Parisius presented the standard
jurisprudence that baptisms bestowed with “vis praecisa” were not valid,
he did not unequivocally conclude that the decision of the Neapolitan
court was wrong.
Pope Benedict XIV (Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, 1740-1758) wrote
a letter about Jewish baptisms in February 1747 that provides a window
into the status of Jews in the papal states during the eighteenth
61
Ibid. fol. 6r: “vt magis servi principum dicantur, quam obedientes legibus
Christianis, non autem quod vere et stricte sint servi. Ad quod etiam quoniam
ipsi sunt capaces et participes iuris et legis civilis et constitutiones et statuta loci
eos comprehendunt”.
62 Ibid. fol. 6r: “Ex quibus infertur quod illi Iudaei adulti per vim praecisam
tempore regis Emanuelis bonae memoriae inviti et reclamantes baptizati per
talem baptisum non fuerunt effecti Christiani”.
63 Ibid.fol. 6v: “Et quamvis alia opinio <against de Afflictis> magis
auctoritatibus sit suffulta et dicatur communior, tamen quoniam dicti parvuli
semel apparent baptizati et ad baptismum re ipsa et facto perventum fuit, et dicti
parvuli ita baptizati effecti maiores et adulti, et postquam ad annos discretionis
pervenerunt, per longum tempus tacuerunt nec contradixerunt et plures actus ad
fidem pertinentes exercuerunt, approbantes tacite baptismum...”.
64 Ibid.: “Ad quod illud vulgatum ‘multa impediri fieri, quae iam facta tenent”.
The earliest use of this principle that I know of is Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum
doctrinale (4 vols. Venice 1591) fol. 152v, Book 9 cap. 78: “quia multa fieri
prohibentur, quae si facta fuerint, obtinent firmitatem”.
40
THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
century 65. Benedict was the most learned pope of the early modern period
with degrees in law and theology 66. His voluminous writings were
reprinted again and again until the last century. The case he dealt with
was presented to him by the titular archbishop of Tarsus, Ferdinando
Maria de Rossi (1696-1775), who became a cardinal twelve years later.
Rossi had come to see the pope as usual (de more) and told him about a
case with which he had to deal. Antonio Vaviani had gone into the
Jewish quarter and entered the house of Perla Mesani. In the home he
found three daughters nine years old and under. A twelve-year-old son
was also present. No explanation was given why Antonio entered a
Jewish home. Antonio, perhaps, was a priest and baptized the three girls
using the proper words. He ran out of <holy?> water and did not baptize
the boy. Rossi told the pope what punishment he decreed for Antonio and
what he intended to do about the girls. Benedict did not, however, give us
any details about either the punishment or the fate of the girls. He did
observe that similar events happened too often in Rome and outside of
Rome. Opinions varied on how these cases were to be decided. Therefore
he decided to write a treatise in the form of a letter 67. First he laid down
the rule that minor children should never be baptized without the
consent of their parents 68. Some theologians had come to embrace the
idea of coerced infant baptism. Benedict quoted one of the most radical,
Aurelio Piette († 1730), whose screed against Jews and the papacy was
extraordinary for its rancor and vehemence. Piette argued unrelentingly
65
Pope Benedict XIV, Bullarium, Tomus Secundus, in quo continentur
constitutiones, epistolae, aliaque edita ab anno MDCCXLVI usque ad totum
annum MDCCXLVIII (Volume 5; Melchiniae 1826) 6-112.
66 Mario Rosa, ‘Benedetto XIV, papa’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 8
(1996) 393-408. Maria Antonietta De Angelis, Prospero Lambertini, Benedetto
XIV: Un profilo attraverso le lettere (Collectanea Archivi Vaticani 66; Vatican
City: 2008). Also Christian Zendri, Umanesimo giuridico ed ebraismo: La
questione del battesimo ‘invitis parentibus’ nel pensiero di Ulrich Zasius con
l’edizione e la tradizione delle ‘Questiones de parvulis iudeorum baptisandis’
(1508) (Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche Università di Trento 98; Milano 2011)
4-12. A muddled account of Benedict’s attitude toward coerced baptisms can be
found in Marina Caffiero, Battesimi forzati: Storie di ebrei, cristiani e convertiti
nella Roma dei papi (Rome 2004), translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, Forced
Baptisms: Histories of Jews, Christians, and Converts in Papal Rome (BerkeleyLos Angeles-London: 2012) 49-56.
67 Bullarium 6: “Sed quoniam facta hujusmodi frequenter Romae, et alibi
audiuntur, quotienscumque vero id accidit, multae hinc statim opiniones,
maximeque diversae, perinde quasi tunc id primo evenerit, excitantur, Ideo
operae pretium existimavimus epistolam hanc scribere, eamdemque typis
impressam in lucem edere”.
68 Ibid. 9-26.
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KENNETH PENNINGTON
that Jewish children should be baptized, whether their parents wanted it
or not 69:
Why therefore does the Church of Rome not baptize the children of the
Jews and take these baptized children from their parents lest in hatred
of Christ they instill multiple impieties? Response. I ask again, why does
the Vicar of Christ tolerate those most hostile enemies of Christ in his
own city? Why does he not send them away?
Benedict’s answer to this rant was simple: Jews lived in Rome and
the papal states with the indulgence of the pope, and the pope may not
demand from the Jews what rightly he should not. He should seek their
conversion and baptism piously, faithfully, and moderately, without an
coercion or injury 70. Benedict did have a short list of circumstances in
which Jewish children could be baptized: if their parents were absent
and their guardians consented; if the father commanded it, even if the
mother were unwilling; if the mother converted, the children could be
baptized even if the father were unwilling; if the grandfather converted
and the child’s father died, the child could, “without a doubt,” be baptized
against its mother’s wish; and in cases of necessity, e.g. when the child
was gravely sick 71. One can imagine people like Aurelio Piette finding
69 Bullarium 22; Benedict quoted Aurelio Piette from an edition I have not
seen; in the 1730 edition of Piette’s work the quotation is on p. 361 (Aurelio
Piette, Elucidationis difficiliorum theologiae quaestionum Pars Quinta [Louvain
1730]: “Petes, cur ergo Romae Ecclesia filios Judaeorum non baptizat,
baptizatosque a parentibus non avellit ne in odio Christi, multiplicique impietate
enutriantur? Resp. et peto ego, cur insensissimos illos Christi hostes ipse Christi
Vicarius Pontifex Romanus in sua civitate tolerat? Cur eos inde non amandat?
Sicut ergo suas habet rationes gentem illam Deo abominabilem Christoque
insensissimam tolerandi, ita et rationes habet quare infantes eorum ipsis invitis
non baptizet, nec ab eis avellat. Ratio autem utriusque haec reddi solet primo
quia expedit ut gens illa perseveret, convertenda, ut communis fert opinio, in fine
mundi… Cur ipsosmet adultos haereticos ad veram fidem non compellunt? Si
respondeant multa licere quae non expediunt”.).
70 Bullarium 24: “ac si Romae, aliisque in Pontificiis Urbibus commorantur
<Iudaei>, id potissimum Summorum Pontificum indulgentiae acceptum referunt.
Ex quo quidem colligere aperte licet, non id ab iis expetendum esse, quod iure
non potest exigi, tum etiam eorum ad Christum conversionem atque infantium
baptismum moderate, religiose, pie procurandum esse, sine ulla vi, aut iniuria”.
71 Bullarium 26-30. Necessity was a legal principle in the Ius commune that
was very powerful. American and English common law never embraced the
principle to the extent civil law systems did. See Franck Roumy, ‘L’origine et la
diffusion de l’adage canonique “Necessitas non habet legem” (VIIIe-XIIIe s.)’,
Medieval Church Law and the Origins of the Western Legal Tradition: A Tribute
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THE LAW’S VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWS
loopholes in these exceptions, but Benedict lived in a world that was
becoming increasing hostile to Jews. His analysis reflected that reality.
Benedict’s invoking the principle of necessity was a loophole that led
to one of the most infamous cases of Jewish baptism in modern times. In
1858 a Christian servant baptized a sick Jewish child named Edgardo
Levi Mortara in Bologna, which was within the Papal States. When
church officials learned of the baptism and decided it was valid on the
grounds of necessity, Pope Pius IX removed the boy from his home and
adopted him. It is reported that the pope played a role in his upbringing.
Edgardo eventually became a priest who did missionary work among
Jews in Europe and the United States. Although the Mortara family
received international support in their quest to have their son returned
to them, the pope remained adamant. In 1865 Pius was quoted as saying
“I had the right and the duty to do what I did for this boy, and if I had to,
I would do it again”. In spite of the pope’s certainty, one may wonder
whether Pius had read Gratian and considered the admonition to observe
the “integra forma iustitiae” that the 57th canon of the Fourth Council of
Toledo demanded and the canonical tradition partially if not completely
affirmed.
Summary: Although there were numerous texts in pre-Gratian canonical
collections that treated the status of Jews in Christian society, Gratian did not
include any canons that established legal norms for Jews until the last recension
of his Decretum. He placed three canons in Distinction 45, the most important
being a canon from the Fourth Council of Toledo (a. 633) that discussed the
coerced conversion of Jews to Christianity. This canon became the text on which
jurists centered their discussions of the legality of Jewish conversions for
centuries. After the thirteenth century, the jurists moved their discussion from
Gratian’s Decretum and the decretal collections to consilia. From the fourteenth
to the eighteenth century jurists continued to debate the validity of Jewish
conversions in a society that became increasingly hostile to Jews. The brutal
treatment of Portuguese Jews in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
provided jurists with legal problems that forced them to apply the legal tradition
to status of Jews on the Iberian peninsula.
Sommario: Sebbene vi fossero numerosi testi nelle collezioni canoniche pregrazianee che trattavano dello status degli Ebrei nella società cristiana, Graziano
non incluse alcun canone che disciplinava la condizione degli Ebrei fino all’ultima
recensione del suo Decretum. Nella Distinctio 45 collocò tre canoni, il più
importante dei quali, emanato nel Concilio di Toledo del 633, poneva il problema
della conversione coatta degli Ebrei al Cristianesimo. Questo canone divenne il
testo sul quale, per secoli, i giuristi centrarono le loro discussioni sulla legittimità
della conversione degli Ebrei. Dopo il secolo XIII le discussioni dei giuristi si
to Kenneth Pennington, edd. Wolfgang Peter Müller, and Mary E. Sommar
(Washington, D.C., 2006) 301-319.
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KENNETH PENNINGTON
spostarono dai margini del Decretum e delle collezioni di decretali nella nuova
sede dei consilia. Dal secolo XIV al XVIII i giuristi continuarono a dibattere sulla
validità delle conversioni degli Ebrei in una società che diveniva sempre più
ostile agli Ebrei. Il trattamento brutale degli Ebrei portoghesi fra il tardo secolo
XV e gli inizi del secolo succesivo pose problemi giuridici che costrinsero i giuristi
a fare ricorso alla tradizione medievale per discutere dello status degli Ebrei nella
Penisola iberica.
Key words: Jews, Coerced Conversions to Christianity, Gratian, Guido da
Baysio, Consilia, King Manuel I of Portugal, Matthaeus de Afflictis, Paulus
Petrus Parisius, Pope Benedict XIV, Pope Pius IX, Edgardo Levi Mortara.
Parole chiave: Ebrei, conversioni coatte al Cristianesimo, Graziano, Guido
da Baisio, consilia, Re Manuele I del Portogallo, Matteo d’Afflitto, Paolo Pietro
Parisi, Papa Benedetto XIV, Papa Pio IX, Edgardo Levi Mortara.
44