Table Of ContentTHE 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
