FATHER, FORGIVE THEM!

The three following passages are here put together as illustrating the too common attitude of the medieval Church towards the Jews. Popes did indeed often protect the Israelites, but (if we are to believe their contemporaries) mainly for the same causes which moved so many lay lords to protect them, as profitable beasts of commerce. Saints like St Bernard might also protest against massacres of the Jews; but the mass of the clergy, and especially of the monastic clergy, were among their hottest persecutors. No. 12 is from the Chronicle of Prior Geoffrey, printed in Dom Bouquet's Historiens, t. XII, p. 436. No. 13 is from the Life of St Théodard, Bishop of Narbonne (Duchesne, Scriptores, vol. III, p. 430). No. 14 is from the Chronicle of Adhémar de Chabannes. (ed. Chavanon, p. 175).

RAYMUND TRENCHAVAL, viscount of Béziers, returned from Jerusalem in the year of Grace 1152, whereupon he received money to release the Jews from the affliction which they suffered from the Christians in the week of our Lord's Passion. I will narrate the matter at length to such as may be ignorant of it. Many Jews have dwelt in the town of Béziers from time immemorial; on Palm Sunday the bishop, having preached a mystic sermon to the people, was wont to exhort them in many words to the following effect: " Lo! ye see before you the descendants of those who condemned the Messiah, and who still deny that Mary was the Mother of God. Lo! here is the time wherein our heart echoes more often to the injury done to Christ. Lo! these are the days wherein ye have leave from the prince to avenge this so great iniquity. Now therefore, taught by the custom of your ancestors and fortified with our benediction after that of the Lord, cast ye stones against the Jews while there is yet time, and, in so far as in you lieth, atone manfully for the evil done to our Lord." When, therefore, the bishop had blessed them and (as in former days) the prince had given them the customary leave, then they would batter the Jews' houses with showers of stones, and very many were oftentimes wounded on either side. This fight was commonly continued from Palm Sunday until Easter Eve, and ended about the fourth hour; yet none were permitted to use other arms but stones alone. All this, as we have said, was forgiven to the faithless Jews by this Raymund.

(Coulton II, p.23)