The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui

Abstract

The Papal Inquisition of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cannot be assigned so prominent a position in the history of French Jewry as that which the “New” Inquisition later occupied in the destinies of the Jews of Spain. It is perhaps for this reason that the Jewish aspects of the Inquisition in France have attracted comparatively little attention from scholars. The paucity of original documents relating to the subject may also have been a contributing factor. Still, though it can be understood, this neglect remains unfortunate. In addition to its intrinsic interest for the study of Franco-Jewish history and of Jewish relations with the medieval Church, research into the treatment of the Jews by the French Inquisition can shed much light on the later development in Spain. For all the difference in the historical situations, the Papal Inquisition adumbrated, in its dealings with the Jews, the institution which was to play such a formidable role in the Iberian Peninsula. There is surprisingly little in the theoretical, procedural, and even the practical approach of the Spanish Inquisition to Jewish affairs for which one cannot find the archetype in the earlier Inquisition.