THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PAPACY AND THE JEWS IN TWELFTH-CENTURY ROME: PAPAL ATTITUDES TOWARD BIBLICAL JUDAISM AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN JEWRY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Marie Therese Champagne B.S.N., Southeastern Louisiana University, 1977 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1999 May, 2005 For my Father, Leo Pierre Champagne, Sr. (1921-2005), who gave me his integrity, his love, and his faith, and for my second Mother, Lorraine Edwards Champagne, who has steadfastly loved, supported, and encouraged me ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My mentors, friends, and family have provided me with invaluable support and inspiration. Dr. Maribel Dietz, my major professor, not only gave me her time, wisdom, knowledge, and insight, but also offered encouragement when the obstacles confronting me seemed insurmountable. Her belief in me and my abilities sustained and motivated me, and for that I will always be grateful. Professor Brenda Bolton generously translated portions of Latin texts, graciously facilitated my contacts with other scholars, and propelled me in my professional life through her faith in my work. Professor Kenneth Stow of Haifa University cheerfully and kindly offered encouragement and advice as my research progressed. The late Dr. Robert Edgeworth offered valuable corrections to my Latin translations in Chapter II until his untimely death in October of 2004. Dr. Edgeworth’s extraordinary kindness and humanity surpassed his incredible talents as a classicist and linguist. I am grateful to the scholars who offered their help after his death, including Dr. Mary Sirridge and Dr. Lauge Nielsen, and to those who translated portions of Latin inscriptions and Italian and German texts: Drs. Rex Stem, Steven Ross, Sarah Ross, and Anna Rocca. My friends, family, and colleagues have steadfastly stood with me on this journey through graduate school; I could not imagine succeeding in this goal without their help and support. My thanks extend especially to my brother Mike Champagne, and my friend Mary Ann Henchy. My fellow graduate student, Jean Anne Hayes Williams, generously listened and supported me through the most stressful moments. My children Tommy, Sarah, and Lauren, as always, remind me of what is most important in my life. iii PREFACE As the start of my graduate studies in history, in a graduate seminar in Art History, I read about the Treasures of the Temple of Herod, taken from Jerusalem in the first century CE, and lost to public notice after the sixth century. Textual mention of the Treasures re- emerged in an ecclesiastical text from a Lateran cleric in the late eleventh century. Fascinated with the history of the Catholic Church and Judaism and their relationship through the past two millennia, and confronted by seemingly endless popular publications about the Ark of the Covenant and mysterious secrets of the Church, I wondered what had actually happened to the Treasures and why that eleventh-century cleric suddenly promoted the idea that the Treasures were in the Lateran basilica. As I researched the subject, I decided to focus on the beliefs about the Treasures, and how those beliefs were utilized, not on whether the Treasures actually existed in the Middle Ages. That will probably never be known definitively. The story that emerged revealed that a particular relationship existed between the popes and the Roman Jews in the twelfth century, especially between 1145 and 1181. The Treasures formed an important component of biblical Judaism that was utilized by the papacy during that period. My investigation into that usage of the Temple Treasures by the popes, while they maintained a restrictive and protective relationship with the Jews, revealed an incredibly complex mosaic of papal attitudes toward the Jews and toward biblical Judaism. In light of the often tortuous journey that Christians and Jews have followed in their interactions and associations from the beginning of the Common Era, it is my wish that this dissertation will spur further research into that relationship in the latter twelfth century, a truly unique era in papal/Jewish relations. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………………….iii PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………………..iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………………vi ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………..vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………..1 II FROM JERUSALEM TO ROME: THE ORIGIN, LOSS, AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREASURES OF THE TEMPLE OF HEROD………………………………..16 The Origin of the Treasures and the Temple………………………………………18 The Final Destruction of the Temple and Transport of the Treasures to Rome…...29 The Papacy’s Claim to Possess the Temple Treasures…………………………….41 III CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH RELATIONS AND INTERACTIONS FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS TO THE TWELFTH-CENTURY POPES……………….…..58 The Relationship between Christianity and Judaism………………………….……60 The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews………………….…...………..81 Twelfth-Century Christian/Jewish Contact…………………………………………86 IV POLITICAL AND DOCTRINAL INFLUENCES ON THE ATTITUDE OF EUGENIUS III TOWARD THE JEWS………………….…………………………..99 The Struggle between Church and Empire: The Reform Papacies……………….104 Papal Protection of the Jews: Sicut Judaeis……………………………………...113 Political Upheaval in Rome: 1130-1145………………………………………....124 Eugenius III: 1145-1153…………………………………………………………137 V CONTINUITY OF TRADITIONS AND ATTITUDES THROUGH ALEXANDER III: THE CHURCH’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF BIBLICAL JUDAISM……………………………………………………………………….…..159 The Holy Thursday Ritual and the Temple Treasures……………………………163 Alexander III: 1159-1181………………………………………………………..173 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..188 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………...198 APPENDIX: LIST OF POPES 1049-1216……………………………………………..…...216 VITA……….…………………………………….……………………………………….....217 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BT Babylonian Talmud DBV Petrus Mallius, Descriptio basilicae Vaticanae DLE Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae Gesta Albinus, Gesta pauperis scolaris HIS Nicolaus Maniacutius, Historia Imaginis Salvatoris Lib. Cens. Cencius, Liber Censuum Lib. pol. Benedict, Liber Politicus LP Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis MGH Monumenta Germania Historiae SS Scriptores Const. Constitutiones MUR Benedict, Mirabilia Urbis Romae Ordo Bernard, Ordo officiorum ecclesiae Lateranensis PL Migne, Patrologia cursus completus. Series latina Regesta Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum Sacrorum cons. Mansi, Sacrorum consiliorum nova, et amplissima collectio Vulg. Vulgate vi ABSTRACT The relationship of the papacy to the Jews in the Middle Ages, which had developed under the influences of Patristic writers, Roman law, and papal precedent, was marked in the twelfth century by toleration and increasing restriction, but also by papal protection. Between the First Crusade massacres of Jews and the restrictions and persecutions of the thirteenth century, the twelfth century is set apart as a unique era in the lives of European Jews. As Eugenius III (1145-1153) and Alexander III (1159-1181) extended their protection to the Jews of Rome and perhaps all of Christendom through the papal document Sicut Judaeis, and simultaneously proclaimed Christianity’s doctrinal superiority over Judaism, the Roman Jews also acknowledged the pope as their temporal lord and ruler in Rome through their presentation of the Torah. Other motivations for that contractual relationship perhaps existed, including the popes’ need for financial backing. Eugenius III and Alexander III lived in exile through much of their reigns and struggled to maintain control of the Patrimony, a major source of papal revenues. During the same era, Eugenius III and Alexander III publicly promoted the Church’s inheritance of biblical Judaism in the claim that the Treasures of the Temple of Herod existed in the Lateran basilica. Lateran texts, special liturgical rituals, and papal processions through Rome reinforced that claim. At the same time, the attitudinal influences of the Cistercians Nicolaus Maniacutius and Bernard of Clairvaux on Eugenius, and the Jewish steward Jechiel in the papal household on Alexander, cannot be measured definitively but suggest a paradoxical relationship with the Jews. The history of continuing papal conflicts with the Roman Commune and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa confirms that Eugenius and Alexander unceasingly sought to establish their authority and power over vii Rome, the Patrimony, and Christendom throughout their papacies, and used popular perceptions that the Church possessed the Temple Treasures to buttress that authority. The popes’ emphasis on biblical Judaism and actions toward the Roman and European Jews reflects a multi-faceted mosaic of papal attitudes toward the Jews and biblical Judaism between 1145 and 1181. viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Relationships are based on opinions and attitudes, beliefs and perceptions. These facets of the relationship between Christians and Jews have varied in character, value, and intensity over the centuries since the inception of the movement within Judaism by followers of Jesus Christ.1 As Christianity grew and developed doctrinally into a religious system separate from Judaism, attitudes voiced by Church leaders, and particularly by the papacy, often determined the nature of the relationship between Christians and Jews, reinforcing or promoting popular perceptions and beliefs.2 During the twelfth century, the papacy apparently encouraged commonly-held Christian and Jewish perceptions that the legendary Treasures of the Temple of Herod were in Rome, and used them to promote publicly the Church’s identification with the heritage of the biblical Jews, and to buttress papal power and authority.3 This dissertation focuses on a portion of that century, during which Popes Eugenius III (1145-53) and Alexander III (1159- 1181) reigned as popes.4 The Temple Treasures, as physical and symbolic elements intrinsic 1 Although an ethnic identification as Jewish in the twenty-first century does not necessarily correspond to any personal religious practices, ancient and medieval writers did not seem to distinguish between variations of religious zeal among Jews, and grouped together those followers of the one God, Yahweh, as Jews. Therefore, in this paper, the terms Jew and Judaism will be used interchangeably to refer to those considered Jewish by non- Jews. Shaye D. Cohen, in “Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew,” Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989), 15-30, provides a detailed explanation of the numerous ways that one could be considered Jewish in antiquity, from mere sympathy with the Jews, to full conversion to Judaism. 2 While the attitudes of individual popes toward the Jews throughout the ages have reflected philosophical, theological, and personal influences, those attitudes may also be interpreted as indicative of the official position of the Church. This study will examine both the “official” doctrines of the Church in the twelfth century and the individual attitudes and actions of two particular popes, Eugenius III and Alexander III, toward the Jews of Rome. 3 In this dissertation, the terms “Treasures” and “Temple Treasures” will denote the table of the showbread, the menorah, the altar of incense, and any other ritual implements that were believed to be present in the first- century Temple of Herod when it was destroyed by Roman forces in CE 70, according to the eye-witness account of Josephus Flavius. 4 While only a fraction of the papal registers of Eugenius and Alexander are extant, a certain amount of their papal texts along with the dates and locations of papal actions can still be found in several collections, including Magnum bullarium Romanum a Beato Leone Magno usque ad S.D.N. Benedictum XIII, 8 vols., (Luxumburgi: 1