To the archbishops and bishops appointed throughout the kingdom of France.

Although the unbelief of the Jews is to be condemned, their interaction with Christians is nevertheless useful and in some way necessary. They bear the image of our Savior and were created by the Creator of all. Therefore, by the Lord’s prohibition, they must not be killed by their fellow creatures, namely the faithful of Christ. For however perverse their blindness may be, their fathers were made friends of God, and a remnant of them will also be saved.

Certain Christians of the kingdom of France, however, paying little attention to this, afflict and oppress these Jews with various burdens and intolerable troubles. Raging cruelly against them and greedily desiring their goods, they persecute them savagely with hunger, thirst, the hardships of prison and unbearable bodily torments.

We have heard that recently, in certain parts of that kingdom, it was decreed by a certain invention that, after the payment of debts owed by Christians to the Jews had been delayed for four years, the debts should be paid to them in installments each year, and that no one should be required to pay them anything beyond the principal, openly going against the agreements made between them on these matters.

But after the four years had passed, these same Jews were seized and committed for so long to the narrow custody of prison until, with all the debts they were owed by Christians taken away from them, they gave such security as pleased the local lords that they would in no way pursue them for payment of those debts within a certain time, whether the debts were paid or not.

Because of this, some of these Jews, unable to pay what was demanded from them, are said to have died miserably from hunger, thirst and other hardships of prison. Even now, while some are still held in chains, certain of their lords rage so cruelly against them that, unless the Jews pay what they demand, they split their nails, pull out their teeth and inhumanely inflict other kinds of torture on them.

Some nobles of the said kingdom, rashly intending the destruction of these Jews, are also said to have sworn recklessly that they will not allow agreements made, or to be made, between Christians and Jews to be observed.

Therefore, since these Jews, expelled from the lands of the aforesaid lords because they cannot satisfy their greed, are killed by others who see them driven out by their own lords, and are robbed and suffer many other injuries and losses in person and property, and since there is no one to assist them with proper protection or to see that justice is done for them, they have fled to the protection of the Apostolic See. They humbly ask us that, since they are ready in those matters in which they seem troublesome to Christians, namely contracts, not to receive usury or anything else in fraud of usury, and otherwise to do nothing in disgrace of the Christian faith, but to live among Christians according to legitimate and canonical sanctions, we should deign to assist them in these matters by apostolic providence.

Since, by the office of the apostolate entrusted to us, we are debtors both to the wise and to the foolish, we command you, if this is so, to announce that such oaths, made more from the heat of anger than from the judgment of the mind, are entirely without force.

On our behalf, you are to warn carefully and seek to persuade all the faithful of Christ throughout your dioceses not to presume in any way to injure these Jews in their persons, seize their goods or expel them from their lands on account of money, without reasonable cause or manifest fault on their part. Rather, they should permit them to live according to their own law in their accustomed condition, provided that they presume to plot nothing in disgrace of the Christian faith.

Once the captive Jews have been restored to their former liberty, and with usury entirely ceasing, Christians should observe the legitimate contracts or agreements they enter into with them.

Kindness should be shown to Jews by Christians, the same kind of kindness we wish to be shown to Christians living in pagan lands.

Given at the Lateran, on the eighth day before the Ides of April, in the seventh year of our pontificate.