Introduction: Combating Oppression and Violence

Medieval W. Christendom
The authorities of both state and church were key to Jewish safety, and the Jewish
communal leadership had to arouse these authorities to fulfillment of their
responsibilities. Maintaining good relations with the rulers of Europe and the hierarchy
of the Roman Catholic Church and turning to these two sets of authorities in times of
peril was a major responsibility of the Jewish leadership.

Numerous instances of Jewish intervention with the governing authorities are
available, some successful and some unsuccessful. As the crisis of 1096 developed, with
early assaults in Speyer and Worms, the leadership of the Jewish community of Mainz
negotiated effectively with the archbishop and his courtiers, who made the following
suggestion- “Bring all your moneys into our treasury and into the treasury of the
archbishop. Then you and your wives and your children and all your retinue bring into
the courtyard of the bishop. Thus will you be able to be saved from the crusaders.” The
new allegation of Jewish murder in the French town of Blois in 1171, which we have
earlier noted, elicited immediate and effective Jewish intervention in many directions,
culminating in a successful meeting with the king of France himself. The king is
described in the surviving Jewish letter as moved by the Jewish pleas and angered by the
arbitrary anti-Jewish actions of the Count of Blois; he reassured the frightened Jews that
the charge backed by the count of Blois would never be accepted in his domain.

Jewish leaders likewise intervened with the leadership of the Church on numerous
occasions. A curious narrative—of questionable veracity—tells of an effort at forced
conversion in early-eleventh-century northern France, which moved a leader of that
community to make his way to the papal court in Rome. Purportedly aided by the Jews
of Rome, this Jew supposedly obtained an audience with the pope and elicited a
document of protection that included basic stipulation of the later Constitutio pro Judeis.
Far better documented are later Jewish interventions with the papacy in the face of the
new anti-Jewish allegations and in the wake of the French condemnation and prohibition
of the Talmud. The Jewish negotiations produced papal insistence on return of the
Talmud to the Jews, with offending materials deleted. Such interventions with the
officials of church and state were critical to Jewish well-being in medieval Europe.