An expansive papal bull delineating protections and rights of the Jews.
Sicut Judaeis literally means “and thus to the Jews,” but it is generally referred to as “the Constitution of the Jews.”
Reactive to the persecutions, houndings and slaughters of the First Crusade, Pope Calixtus II moves forcefully. His papal bull forbids Christians, among other things, from coercing Jews to convert, to harm them, to take their property, to interfere with their cemeteries – on pain of excommunication (this last point regarding excommunication being key).
This papal bull was reaffirmed intermittently by assorted popes in the period 1191 CE to 1447 CE.
There is a “catch” here, however; many times, if not always, preambles or post–texts to the papal bulls existed, which alerted Christian followers, nevertheless, to “deficiencies” of the Jews, whether as pertaining to their Christian–alleged role in the crucifixion of Jesus, their Christian–alleged “assigned role” by God to suffer, or whatever. Thus, on the one hand, the Jews are formally “protected,” but on the other hand, the lower clergy and masses are fed toxic fuel for the fire.
This pattern, of leaving the “top of the pyramid” (the popes and cardinals et al.) with “clean hands,” while the lower clergy and masses are given ample toxic fuel, is a pattern repeated ongoing to this very day even in much–celebrated Nostre Aetate in the late twentieth century.
It is not the refined and erudite Vatican functionaries who are rampaging with battle axes against unarmed Jewish housewives and Jewish school children; rather, it is the very basest component of the Catholic masses that are preying on the weak and the isolated and unarmed. This base–component layer receives all the “green light” it needs from the “mixed message.” Basically, no light at all. Rather, business as usual.
Basically, everyone “hears” what he or she wants to hear. The Jews “hear” protection, of sorts. The basest component of the Christian masses, on the other side, hears a rationale to persecute the Jews. Many Catholic apologists centuries later post–Holocaust “scrub” history, and discern only the pristine segment.
By the time of Calixtus II, however, the degradation of the Jews fomented by the Church Fathers in the 100 CE – 500 CE period, had been coursing through Europe for over 600 years. In the case of the “good popes,” as in the case of many exceptional individual Catholics over the centuries to come, the diabolical institutional posture of the Church Founders of the 100–500 CE period, previously spread through the far reaches of Christendom, would most often overwhelm individual good will, papal or otherwise. A spreading cancer of hatred and denigration against the Jews had been embedded in the corpus of Europe by the Church Fathers. Once implanted, intermittent benign cosmetic surgery or minor surgery or “mixed message” surgery would prove ineffective at stopping the cancer’s virulent spread.
The worst was yet to come for the Jews of Europe.
And beyond Europe, the prognosis was bad, as well. Ultimately, this “cancer,” originally implanted across the Roman Empire, would spread far beyond its original boundaries, following in lockstep with global Catholic missionary activity.
In turn, post–1948, the Arab and Muslim masses across the Middle East and parts of Asia, would feed–off this poison, in turn spread by their own politico–religious leaders and demagogues. “Hate sells.” Virulent hatred sells even better.
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In the case of the extraordinary and valiant Calixtus II however, the papal bull was enormously effective. The blood orgies against the Jews of the First Crusade, were quite radically blunted, albeit far from eliminated in the Second Crusade.
The Calixtus bull warned of excommunication as a consequence for transgressors of the papal bull’s prohibitions. This is language understood even by “the masses.” This is language “with teeth.” It is meaningful—and to a great extent, it worked.
Is the current pope listening?
The Jews at that East Side Manhattan synagogue visited by the pope in 2008 do not need papal protection. The Jews of Latin America and rural Russia surrounded, 40–50 years after Nostre Aetate, by still–virulent anti–Semitism, might not mind some proactive papal action – Unambiguous – and “with teeth.”