The 1007 Anonymous and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High Middle Ages / Hebrew Union College Annual Supplements 4

Papal policy toward Jews in the Middle Ages has long been understood as a function of protection. The papacy either serves as the Jews’ foremost protector, wants assiduously to expel the Jews from Western Europe, or originally wanted to protect the Jews but allowed pressure from outside sources to sway them into a policy of repression instead.
Kenneth R. Stow shows that these views result from a misreading of stock formulae found in the prefatory clauses of papal letters. When Jewish dis…