Why the most Christian King Philip expelled the Jews from all France: here the first reason is given.

At that time, a very great number of Jews lived in France. For a long time past, they had come there from different parts of the world because of the lasting peace and the generosity of the French. The Jews had heard of the vigor of the kings of the Franks against their enemies and of their great kindness toward their subjects. Therefore, their elders and the wiser men in the Law of Moses, whom the Jews call teachers, decided to come to Paris.

After living there for a long time, they became so wealthy that they claimed almost half the whole city for themselves. And, contrary to the decree of God and the ordinance of the Church, they had Christians as male and female servants in their houses. These Christians, openly departing from faith in Jesus Christ, Judaized with the Jews.

And because the Lord had said through Moses in Deuteronomy, “You shall not lend at interest to your brother, but to a foreigner,” the Jew, wrongly interpreting “foreigner” to mean every Christian, lent their money to Christians at interest. In this way, they so heavily burdened the citizens, knights and peasants from the suburbs, towns and villages that many of them were compelled to sell their possessions. Others in Paris were bound by oath in the houses of the Jews and were held captive as if in prison.

When the most Christian King Philip heard this, he was moved by pity. He consulted a hermit named Bernard, a holy and religious man who was then living in the wood of Vincennes, about what should be done. On his advice, he released all Christians in his kingdom from debts owed to the Jews, keeping for himself a fifth part of the total sum.

Here the second reason is given.

To add to the heap of their damnation, ecclesiastical vessels dedicated to God, namely gold and silver crosses bearing the image of the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, and chalices, which had been pledged to the Jews as security because of the urgent need of churches, were treated by them so vilely, in insult and disgrace to the Christian religion, that in the chalices in which the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ were consecrated, their children ate pieces of bread soaked in wine and drank from them.

They did not call to mind what is read in the Book of Kings: how Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Jerusalem, because the sins of the Jews demanded it, captured the holy city of Jerusalem through Nebuzaradan, commander of the army, plundered the Temple and carried away the precious vessels consecrated to God, which the most wise Solomon had made.

But Nebuchadnezzar, although a gentile and idolater, nevertheless feared the God of the Jews. He was unwilling to drink from those vessels or to put them to his own uses. Rather, he ordered them to be preserved in his temple near his idol as a most sacred treasure.

But afterward Belshazzar, who reigned sixth after him, held a great feast for his nobles and princes and ordered the vessels that his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the Temple of the Lord to be brought. The king, his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. In that same hour, the Lord, angered against Belshazzar, showed him the sign of his destruction: a hand writing against him on the wall, “Mene, Tekel, Peres,” which means “number, weighing, division.” That same night Babylon was captured by Cyrus and Darius, and Belshazzar was killed at that very feast, as Isaiah had long before foretold.

But who would dare to conceal what God chooses to reveal?

Here the third reason for the expulsion of the Jews is given.

At that time, when the Jews feared that their houses would be searched by the king’s officials, it happened that a certain Jew, who then lived in Paris and had ecclesiastical pledges, namely a golden cross adorned with gems, a book of the Gospels wonderfully decorated with gold and precious stones, silver cups and other vessels, placed them all in a sack and threw them most shamefully into a deep pit where he was accustomed to relieve himself.

A short time later, by God’s revelation, all these things were found there by Christians. After one-fifth of the whole debt had been paid to the lord king, they were brought back to their own church with the greatest joy and honor.

That year can rightly be called a jubilee. For just as in the old Law, in the jubilee year, all possessions freely returned to their former owners and all debts were remitted, so, by so great a remission of debts made by the most Christian king, the Christians living in the kingdom of France obtained perpetual freedom from debts owed to the Jews.

The deeds of the third year of the reign of Philip Augustus, king of the Franks.

In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1182, in the month of April, which the Jews themselves call Nisan, an edict went out from the most serene King Philip Augustus: all the Jews of his kingdom were to be ready to leave by the following feast of Saint John the Baptist.

Then permission was given to them by the king to sell all their movable goods until the time fixed by him, namely the feast of Saint John, while the king reserved for himself and for his successors, the kings of the Franks, their landed possessions: houses, fields, vineyards, barns, winepresses and things of that kind.

When the faithless Jews heard this, some of them were regenerated by water and the Holy Spirit and converted to the Lord, persevering in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Out of regard for the Christian religion, the king restored all their possessions to them in full and granted them perpetual freedom.

Others, blinded by their old error and remaining in their unbelief, began to entice the princes of the land, namely counts, barons, archbishops and bishops, with gifts and great promises. They tried to see whether, by their advice, suggestion and promise of endless money, they might somehow turn the king’s mind away from so firm a purpose.

But the compassionate and merciful Lord, who does not abandon those who hope in him and humbles those who presume on their own strength, sent down his grace from heaven and so strengthened the enlightened mind of the king, inflaming it with the power of the Holy Spirit, that it could not be softened by prayers or by promises of temporal things.

And, to speak truthfully, what is read of blessed Agatha can fittingly be applied to him: stones can more easily be softened and iron turned into lead than the mind of the most Christian king can be recalled from an intention divinely inspired.

On the rejection of the princes.

When the unbelieving Jews saw that the princes had suffered rejection, princes through whom they had been accustomed to bend other kings, his predecessors, easily to their will, they were astonished at King Philip’s greatness of soul and firm constancy in the Lord. Stunned and almost stupefied, and crying out in amazement, “Shema Israel,” that is, “Hear, O Israel,” they began to sell all their movable goods.

The time was already near when, by the king’s command, they were required to leave all France, and this could no longer be postponed for any reason. Then the Jews, striving to fulfill the king’s orders, sold their movable goods in astonishing haste. All their landed possessions fell to the royal treasury.

So the Jews, having sold their goods and having the price as provisions for the journey, went out with their wives and children and all their company, in the aforesaid year of the Lord 1182, in the month of July, which the Jews themselves call Tammuz, in the third year of the reign of King Philip Augustus.

How King Philip Augustus had the synagogues of the Jews dedicated as churches to God.

After the expulsion of the unbelieving Jews had been carried out, and after they had been scattered through the whole world, King Philip Augustus, not forgetful of his deeds, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1183, having begun the eighteenth year of his age, completed more gloriously, with God arranging it, the work he had gloriously begun.

For all the synagogues of the Jews, which they themselves called schools, where the Jews under the name of a false religion came together daily in pretended prayer, he first ordered to be cleansed. Against the will of all the princes, he had those synagogues dedicated as churches to God and ordered altars to be consecrated in them in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the blessed Mary, mother of God and virgin.

Indeed, he considered with pious and honorable reflection that in the place where the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, according to Jerome’s testimony on Isaiah, had daily been blasphemed, God, who alone does great wonders, should there be praised by the clergy and all the Christian people.