Gratian and the Jews

Abstract

Gratian’s collection of canons and its development into what became known as the Decretum contained some thirty-six canons which specifically dealt with some kind of interaction between Christians and Jews. This article wonders why those particular canons concerning Jews were included in the Decretum and not others, and why they were placed where they were in the collection. It attempts to ascertain what the reason might have been to include them and in what context that might have occurred. These questions are particularly pertinent because the vast majority of the so-called ‘Jewish’ canons were added to what Anders Winroth has established as the first recension of the Decretum. This article makes a start to answering these question through an in-depth analysis of Distinction 54, a section of the Decretum which explores rules governing the ordination of persons of unfree status to which a number of canons were added concerning Jewish slaveholding and Jewish office holding. The article investigates the position of the ‘Jewish’ canons in Distinction 54 and attempts to ascertain why they were added. It tries to find out how they were read by examining the comments on the canons in the Glossa ordinaria to the Decretum as well as glosses in a unique late twelfth-century manuscript (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, MS 283/676) which reflect how the Decretum was taught in Oxford in the 1190s. The article hopes to show that an investigation into the process by which ‘Jewish’ canons entered the Decretum and the effect of their inclusion can add a great deal to our understanding of the intricate and paradoxical relationships between Christians and Jews in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.