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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2016
Sometime in early 1434, two northern Italian counts, Francesco Pico della Mirandola and his brother Giovanni, sent a letter to Pope Eugene IV (r. 1431–47). Out of concern for their subjects, who had long suffered from a shortage of credit, Francesco and Giovanni had allowed some Jews to settle in their lands and lend at interest. In addition, the brothers had rented a house to these Jews for the purpose of moneylending. At the time, the noblemen stressed, they had not believed their actions to be unlawful. They had since come to fear, however, that they had inadvertently brought automatic excommunication upon themselves by violating the provisions of Usurarum voraginem, a decree first issued at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 that called on secular and religious authorities to refuse lodging to foreign usurers and, in addition, to expel such usurers from their lands. The brothers' uncertainty, the petition noted, reflected the varied opinions of contemporary jurists (presumably those at Bologna, a mere 60 kilometers away), who disagreed on whether the decree was to be understood in reference to Jewish as well as Christian moneylenders. Deciding to err on the side of caution, the brothers petitioned the Holy Father to grant them absolution, if they had indeed incurred ecclesiastical censure through their actions. In addition, they asked to be granted a dispensation allowing the Jews to remain in their lands, so as to spare their subjects from even greater economic misfortune.
1. Lyon II, c. 26: “[…] We order that neither a college, nor other community, nor an individual person, of whatever dignity, condition or status, may permit foreigners and others not native to their territories (alienigenas et alios non oriundos de terris ipsorum), who practise usury or wish to do so, to rent houses for that purpose or to occupy rented houses or to live elsewhere. Rather, they must expel all such manifest usurers from their territories within three months, never to admit any such in the future. Nobody is to let houses to them for usury, nor grant them houses under any other title.” I have slightly adapted the English translation from that given in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (hereafter DEC), (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 1.328-29. In 1298, the decree was copied verbatim into the the Liber Sextus, a new codification of canon law promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII; there it appears as VI 5.5.1.
2. Shlomo Simonsohn, ed., The Apostolic See and the Jews (hereafter ASJ), 8 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988–90), 2:823 (doc. 703). I have confirmed the edition against Vatican City, Archivio segreto vaticano, Reg. suppl. 296, fol. 203rv.
3. ASJ, 2:823 (doc. 703): “Concessum de absolutione, expulsis primo Iudeis, in presencia domini nostri pape.” As an ablative absolute, the phrase expulsis…Iudeis (lit. “the Jews having been expelled”) could in theory refer to an expulsion that had already occurred; however, both the context and the use of “first (primo)” suggest instead that the phrase is to be taken as a condition of the absolution, rather than an acknowledgment of a fait accompli.
4. Half a century later, Giovanni's more famous grandson and namesake would also run into difficulty on account of his dealings with Jews, although these were of a rather different sort; see Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
5. For a general discussion of the medieval church's teachings on Jews, and the canonical injunctions in particular, see Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Latin Christendom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 242–73; and more recently, his essay on “The Church and the Jews: St. Paul to Pius IX,” in Popes, Church and Jews in the Middle Ages: Confrontation and Response (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007), art. I, 1–76. Also valuable, in the present context, is Stow's article on “Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century,” AJS Review 6 (1981): 161–84Google Scholar.
6. The lone exception is Christoph Cluse, who recently drew attention to reworkings of Usurarum voraginem; see his Darf ein Bischof Juden zulassen? Die Gutachten des Siffridus Piscator OP (gest. 1473) zur Auseinandersetzung um die Vertreibung der Juden aus Mainz (Should a Bishop Tolerate Jews? The Opinions of Siffridus Piscator OP (d. 1473) on the Debate over the Expulsion of Jews from Mainz) (Trier: Kliomedia, 2013), especially 86–87.
7. Susan Silbey, “A Sociological Interpretation of the Relationship between Law and Society,” in Law and the Ordering of Our Life Together, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 1–27, at 19.
8. For a similar example from Renaissance Italy, see Kuehn, Thomas, “Some Ambiguities of Female Inheritance Ideology in the Renaissance,” Continuity and Change 2 (1987): 11–36Google Scholar.
9. Freidenreich, David M., “Sharing Meals with Non-Christians in Canon Law Commentaries, circa 1160–1260: A Case Study in Legal Development,” Medieval Encounters 14 (2008): 41–77Google Scholar.
10. Stantchev, Stefan K., “‘Apply to Muslims what was said of the Jews:’ Popes and Canonists between a Taxonomy of Otherness and Infidelitas,” Law and History Review 32 (2014): 65–96Google Scholar, at 96.
11. Freidenreich, “Sharing Meals,” 72.
12. Roberg, Burkhard, “Die lectura des Franciscus de Albano aus dem Jahr 1276 über die constitutiones novissimae Papst Gregors X (The lectura of Franciscus de Albano from 1276 on Pope Gregory X’s Constitutiones novissimae),” Annuarium historiae conciliorum 31 (1999): 297–366Google Scholar; and 33 (2001): 26–79, at 60; see also Roberg, “Der Kanonist Franciscus de Albano als Zeitzeuge: eine Nachlese seiner lectura der Konstitutionen Gregors X (The Canonist Franciscus de Albano as Eyewitness: A Selection of his Lectura on Gregory X’s Constitutions),” Zeitschrift der Savigny–Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kan. Abt. 81 (1995): 340–51Google Scholar.
13. See the overview in Renato Bordone, “I lombardi in Europa: uno sguardo d'insieme (The Lombards in Europe: An Overview),” in Lombardi in Europa nel Medioevo (The Lombards in Europe in the Middle Ages), eds. Renato Bordone and Franco Spinelli (Milan: Francoangeli, 2005), 9–39. As the example of the Lombards reveals, Jews never enjoyed anything close to a monopoly on medieval moneylending, tenacious popular assumptions notwithstanding.
14. For the decree's canonical precedents and later commentaries, see Dorin, Rowan W., “Canon law and the problem of expulsion: The origins and interpretation of Usurarum voraginem (VI 5.5.1),” Zeitschrift der Savigny–Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 130, Kan. Abt. 99 (2013): 129–61Google Scholar.
15. The condemnation of Jewish usury appears in Lateran IV, c. 67 (Quanto amplius), in DEC, 265–66. For the treatment of Jewish usury in canon law, see Schima, Stefan, “Die Entwicklung des kanonischen Zinsverbots. Eine Darstellung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bezugnahmen zum Judentum (The Development of the Canonical Prohibition on Interest: A Synopsis with Particular Attention to References to Jews),” Aschkenas 20 (2010): 239–79Google Scholar, with further references.
16. Lateran III, c. 25: in DEC, 223.
17. Lyon II, c. 26: “[…] we order under threat of the divine malediction that the constitution of the Lateran council against usurers be inviolably observed.”
18. For detailed studies of the expulsions, along with further references, see Robin R. Mundill, England's Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Céline Balasse, 1306: L'expulsion des Juifs du royaume de France (1306: The Expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of France) (Brussels: de Boeck, 2008).
19. For a discussion of the quodlibet and its historical context, see William Chester Jordan, Unceasing Strife, Unending Fear: Jacques de Thérines and the Freedom of the Church in the Age of the Last Capetians (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12–17.
20. Jacques de Thérines, Quodlibets I et II, ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958), 157 (no. 1.14).
21. For Oldrado da Ponte (d. 1343), see Norman Zacour, ed., Jews and Saracens in the Consilia of Oldradus de Ponte (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 54–58 (no. 87) and 62–67 (no. 264). Pierre Bertrand (d. 1348) follows Oldrado's consilia almost verbatim in the second recension of his Apparatus. I relied on Paris, BnF lat 4085, fol. 158ra-vb (Clem. 5.2.1).
22. On the extension of canonical jurisdiction over Jews, see Walter Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews (Ebelsbach: Rolf Gremer, 1988), 40–83.
23. For his life and works, see Jean Dunbabin, A Hound of God: Pierre de la Palud and the Fourteenth-Century Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For the dating of the responsum, see Marcuzzi, Pier Giorgio, “L'usura, un caso di giurisdizione controversa in un ‘Responsum’ inedito di Pietro di La Palu (1280–1342) (Usury, a Case of Contested Jurisdiction in an Unpublished Responsum of Pierre de la Palud (1280–1342)),” Salesianum 40 (1978): 245–92Google Scholar, at 272, together with the critical remarks in Dunbabin, Hound of God, 273.
24. Marcuzzi, “Giurisdizione controversa,” 261–65.
25. Summa praedicantium (Basel, not after 1484), s.v. usura (U.xii.27).
26. Vienne, c. 29 (Ex gravi): in DEC, 384–85. Although first decreed at the Council of Vienne in 1311–12, Ex gravi (like the rest of the Council's decrees) did not circulate widely until 1317, when it was included among the Clementine constitutions. See Joseph Lecler, Vienne (Paris: Éditions de l'Orante, 1964), 145–48.
27. For canonistic discussion of Ex gravi's applicability to Jews, see also Benjamin N. Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), 23.
28. Giovanni d'Andrea's Apparatus is found in many editions of the Clementine constitutions, including the 1582 editio romana. Here I have relied on the 1471 Strasbourg (Eggestein) edition, ad Clem. 5.5.1 § Hereticum. See also the arguments of Albéric of Metz (d. 1354) in his Apparatus on the Clementines, in Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, MS 222, fol. 40r; and Giovanni da Imola (d. 1436), In Clementinas opus (Venice, 1492/93), fol. 164rb.
29. Paolo's position is cited approvingly by Pietro d'Ancarano in his Super Clementinis facundissima commentaria (Bologna, 1580), 248–49. For Agonet, see University of Pennsylvania, MS Lat. 95, fol. 60rb; on this author, see Zacour, Norman, “Stephanus Hugoneti and his ‘Apparatus’ on the Clementines,” Traditio 17 (1961): 527–30Google Scholar.
30. For the text of the Zamora canons, see Solomon Grayzel, with Kenneth R. Stow, eds., The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century. Vol. 2: 1254–1314 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary in America, 1989), 267–69. The reference to Ex gravi appears in c. 12.
31. Manuel Colmeiro, ed., Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla (The Cortes of the Kingdoms of Léon and Castile), 2 vols. (Madrid: Est. tip. de los sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1883–84), 1:227–30, 240.
32. ASJ, 1:324 (no. 310).
33. The pope repeatedly ordered local Jewish lenders to make restitution for their usury; three such letters survive for the year 1321 alone; see ASJ, 1:330–33 (nos. 315–17). More generally, see Kober, Adolf, “Die rechtliche Lage der Juden in Rheinland während des 14. Jahrhunderts im Hinblick auf das kirchliche Zinsverbot (The Legal Position of the Jews in the Rhineland during the 14th Century in Light of the Church's Prohibition on Interest),” Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 28 (1909): 243–69Google Scholar, especially 252–54. An additional papal letter concerning Jewish usury in Trier (Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, Best. 33, Nr. 53; dated April 23, 1330) has not yet been edited in full; for a summary, see Ernst Vogt, ed., Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Mainz von 1289–1396 (Registers of the Archbishops of Mainz from 1289–1396), 2 vols. (Leipzig: Veit, 1913–58), 1.ii.43 (no. 3079). I thank Christoph Cluse for bringing this text to my attention.
34. ASJ, 1:342–43 (no. 326; March 5, 1325); 1:347–49 (nos. 331, 332; August 1,1326).
35. Lateran IV, c. 67 (Quanto amplius), in DEC, 265–66.
36. The consilium (inc. Iudaei degentes in terris Catholicorum) is printed in Giovanni Battista Ziletti, ed., Criminalium consiliorum atque responsorum tam ex veteribus quam iunioribus celeberrimis iurisconsultis collectorum, 2 vols. (Venice, 1560), 1:32–33 (no.19).
37. A partial list of manuscripts is given in McCall, John P., “The Writings of John of Legnano with a List of Manuscripts,” Traditio 23 (1967): 415–37Google Scholar, at 434; this particular consilium is also found in Dillingen, Studienbibliothek XV 47, fol. 74rv; Eichstätt, Universitätsbibliothek, cod. st 186, fol. 64rv; and Munich, Universitätsbibliothek, 8° cod. ms. 152, 118v–121r.
38. Ziletti, Consiliorum, 1:33.
39. The consilium claims that the housing ban applied only to foreign usurers, whereas the expulsion order applied to all manifest usurers. Because it is only a single word (huiusmodi) that establishes that the restriction to foreigners in the context of the housing ban does indeed carry over to the expulsion provision, an inattentive scribe or reader might easily have missed it.
40. On the basis of its questionable attribution to Baldo, the consilium has been dated to the late fourteenth century, but it may be a product of the fifteenth century instead. For a thorough discussion of the consilium and its attribution, see Diego Quaglioni, “‘Inter Iudeos et Christianos commertia sunt permissa.’ ‘Questione ebraica’ e usura in Baldo degli Ubaldi (c. 1327–1400) (‘Commerce is permitted between Jews and Christians.’ The ‘Jewish Question’ and Usury in the Writings of Baldo degli Ubaldi (c. 1327–1400)),” in Aspetti e problemi della presenza ebraica nell'Italia centro–settentrionale (secoli XIV e XV) (Aspects and Questions concerning the Jewish Presence in North-Central Italy (14th and 15th Centuries)) (Rome: Università di Roma, 1983), 273–305, with an edition of the consilium at 303–5. Given that Baldo's other discussions of Usurarum voraginem make no mention of Jews, I continue to harbor doubts over the attribution of the consilium. For these other references, see Baldo's Consiliorum, sive Responsorum volumen Tertium (Venice [ca. 1602]), fol. 131vb (no. 449, nn. 7–8); and his Apostillae ad Novellam in Sextum, ed. Patrick J. Lally (unpublished PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1992), 240 (ad 5.5.1). Lally's edition is based principally on Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat 1398, fols. 389r–487r (here at fol. 435va).
41. Sermones thesauri novi de tempore (Strasbourg, 1491), fols. 240rv and 267r–269r. The collection was long attributed (erroneously) to Pierre de la Palud. Concerning the sermon “On the Jews,” see the remarks by Cluse, Darf ein Bischof Juden zulassen, 41–46.
42. Both sermons would be re-copied wholesale in the Sermones discipuli composed by the German Dominican Johannes Herolt (d. 1468) ca. 1418. The extraordinary popularity of this text––which survives in more than 170 manuscripts and numerous early modern printed editions––ensured that this reading would be disseminated yet further. See Herolt's Sermones discipuli de tempore (Reutlingen, ca. 1479/82), fols. 144v (no. 105) and 154r–55r (no. 114); along with the observations of Cluse, Darf ein Bischof Juden zulassen, 46–52.
43. For the proposal, see Umberto Cassuto, Gli Ebrei a Firenze nell'età del Rinascimento (The Jews of Florence in the Age of the Renaissance) (Florence: Galletti e Cocci, 1918 [repr. Florence: Olschki, 1965]), along with Michele Luzzati's recent reinterpretation of the episode in “Florence against the Jews, or the Jews against Florence?” in The Most Ancient of Minorities: The Jews of Italy, ed. Stanislao G. Pugliese (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 59–66, at 61–62. Although the consilium itself does not survive, its tenor was briefly summarized by Lorenzo Ridolfi, writing between 1402 and 1404. See Ridolfi's “Tractatus de Usuris,” in Tractatus universi iuris, 22 vols. (Venice, 1584–86), vol. 7, fols. 15ra–50rb, at fol. 36vb (q. 146).
44. Cassuto, Gli Ebrei a Firenze, 362–63 (Appendix, doc. 2): “…ordinaverunt quod nullus ebreus sive iudeus, etiam undecunque originem duceret, possit aut ei liceat per se vel alium, directe vel per obliquum, tacite vel expresse, aut aliquot colore quesito, mutuare et seu mutari facere ad usuram et seu in fraudem usurarum.”
45. Super sexto decretalium (Speyer, bef. 1480), fols. 96r–97v.
46. Novella super sexto decretalium (Pavia, 1484), ad 5.5.1.
47. There is little systematic scholarship on the methods of interpretation among late medieval canonists, but these clearly overlapped heavily with those of the civilians. On the latter, see Woldemar Engelmann, Die Wiedergeburt der Rechtskultur in Italien durch die wissenschaftliche Lehre (The Rebirth of Legal Culture in Italy) (Leipzig: Koehlers, 1938), 128–71; Walter Ullmann, The Medieval Idea of Law as Represented by Luca de Penna. A Study in Fourteenth-Century Legal Scholarship (London: Methuen & Co., 1946), 112–31; Mario Sbriccoli, L'interpretazione dello statuto: contributo allo studio della funzione dei giuristi nell'età comunale (Statutory Interpretation: A Contribution to the Study of the Role of Jurists in the Age of the Communes) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1969); and Philippe Godding, “L'interprétation de la ‘loi’ dans le droit savant médiéval et dans le droit des Pays-Bas méridionaux (The Interpretation of the ‘Law’ in the Learned Law of the Middle Ages and in the Law of the Southern Low Countries),” in L'interprétation en droit: Approche pluridisciplinaire (Legal Interpretation: A Multidisciplinary Approach), ed. Michel van de Kerchove (Brussels: Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, 1978), 443–83, with a specific discussion of canon law at 452–53. For the weight of “intent” in early modern English law, see Samuel E. Thorne, ed., A Discourse upon the Exposicion and Understandinge of Statutes. With Sir Thomas Egerton's Additions (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1942), 42–68.
48. C. 22 q. 5 c.11: “Certe noverit ille, qui intentionem et voluntatem alterius explicat verbis, quia non debet aliquis verba considerare, sed voluntatem et intentionem, quia non debet intentio verbis deservire, sed verba intentioni.”
49. See, for example, the gloss of the Perugian jurist Benedetto Capra (d. 1470) on Usurarum voraginem in Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, MS 115, fols. 216va–218rb; and that of Benedetto's contemporary and fellow Perugian, Filippo Franchi (d. 1471) in Prima lectura super sexto libro decretalium (Venice, 1499), fols. 115va–116rb. The Bolognese jurist Giovanni d'Anagni's (d. 1457) commentary on the canon Praeterea (X 5.19.17), written sometime before 1443, also quotes Domenico's position approvingly; see his Lectura super prima et secunda parte libri quinti Decretalium cum Repertorio (Milan, 1497), ad 5.19.7.
50. An edition of the two consilia is given in Cluse, Darf ein Bischof Juden zulassen, 104–32.
51. Aside from the works cited in the previous note, see also Giovanni da Prato, a Franciscan theologian and author of a mid-fifteenth-century treatise on usury, who likewise ignored the question of expulsion but declared that the decree's housing ban was to apply to Jewish usurers and seems to have considered all Jews to be “foreigners (non oriundos)” for the purposes of the decree; see his Summula Contractuum/De Usuris, in Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Ashburnham 145, fols. 155ra–178rb, at fol. 162v. A comparable approach is found in the Conclusiones on the Liber Sextus by the German canonist Peter von Andlau (d. 1480), writing in the third quarter of the fifteenth century; see Basel, Universitätsbibliothek C II 28, fols. 58v–188r, at fols. 172v–173v. To judge from the references cited in Marquardo Susanna's Tractatus de iudaeis et aliis infidelibus (Venice, 1558), fol. 35r (ad 1.11.4), many sixteenth-century canonists followed suit as well.
52. Sampieri's opposition to Domenico's position is mentioned by Alessandro Tartagni (1424–77) in one of the latter's consilia on usury; see his Consiliorum, 7 vols. (Venice, 1578), vol. 6, fol. 5v (cons. 6.6).
53. Stow, Kenneth R., “Expulsion Italian Style: The Case of Lucio Ferraris,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 51–63Google Scholar, at 57.
54. See the examples cited in Christoph Cluse, “Jewish Moneylending in Dominican Preaching,” in Dominikaner und Juden: Personen, Konflikte und Perspektiven vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert/ Dominicans and Jews: Personalities, Conflicts, and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th Century, eds. Elias H. Füllenbach and Gianfranco Miletto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 195–230, at 196–97.
55. See Alessandro Nievo, Consilium de iuris/Contra iudeos fenerantes (Venice, 1482), fol. 12r.
56. Jean de la Haye, ed. Opera omnia, (Venice: Poletti, 1745), 3.334b; a partial edition is given in Franco Mormando, The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 238–40 (Appendix 2).
57. de la Haye, Opera omnia, 3.361a–b.
58. ASJ, 2:771–74 (doc. 658).
59. ASJ, 2:844–45 (doc. 720). Whether or not the Jews were natives of Parma goes unmentioned.
60. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, cod. D 10 sup., fol. 84ra. For a brief discussion and list of manuscripts, see Creytens, Raymond, “Les cas de conscience soumis à S. Antonin de Florence par Dominique de Catalogne O.P. (The Matters of Conscience Submitted to Saint Antoninus of Florence by Dominic of Catalonia, OP),” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 28 (1958): 149–220Google Scholar, at 195.
61. For the uncertain legal force of such responsa, see Izbicki, Thomas, “The Origins of the De ornatu mulierum of Antoninus of Florence,” Modern Language Notes 119 (2004): S142–S161Google Scholar, at S146.
62. The Dominican scholar Giovanni Cagnazzo (d. 1521) included it in his Summa Tabiena; from there it spread into other early modern works on canon law and moral theology. See his Summa summarum quae Tabiena dicitur (Bologna: 1517), fol. 479r.
63. See, in particular, his Summa Theologica (Verona, 1740 [repr. Graz: Akademische Druck– und Verlagsanstalt, 1959]), 2.154–58 (2.1.10) and 3:1359–60 (3.24.49). For relations between Antoninus and Eugene IV during the winter of 1439–40, see Izbicki, “De ornatu mulierum,” 143.
64. ASJ, 2:915–17 (doc. 765), issuing for Italy the bull Super gregem dominicum, which had been issued for Spain in 1442; compare ASJ, 2:866–70 (doc. 740). For a general discussion of Nicholas V's dispensations concerning Jews, see Léon Poliakov, Les banchieri Juifs et le Saint-Siège du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle (Jewish Bankers and the Holy See from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century) (Paris: SEVPEN, 1965), 116–18.
65. For the 1448 dispensation, see ASJ, 2:927–29 (doc. 772). For the 1451 dispensation, see Ibid., 2:955–57 (doc. 789).
66. Ibid., 2:966–68 (doc. 794).
67. Ibid., 2:932–34 (doc. 774). See also Poliakov, Banchieri, 356–57 (p.j. 4); and ASJ, 3:1393–96 (doc. 1111).
68. ASJ, 7:216 (doc. 790).
69. Only the titles of the bishop's anti-usury statutes survive; see Paolino Dinelli, Dei sinodi della diocesi di Lucca (On the Synods of the Diocese of Lucca) (Lucca: Bertini, 1834), 61–114, at 114 (cc. 82–86).
70. For the background to the absolution request, see Bratchel, Michael E., “Usury in the Fifteenth-Century Lucchesia: Images of the Petty Moneylender,” Journal of European Economic History 32 (2003): 249–76Google Scholar, at 251. For Nicholas V's response, see Coniglio, Giuseppe, “L'usura a Lucca ed una bolla di Niccolò V del 1452 (Usury in Lucca and a 1452 Bull of Nicholas V),” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 6 (1952): 259–64Google Scholar, at 261–62.
71. See Karl-Heinz Zaunmüller, “Nikolaus von Cues und die Juden. Zur Stellung der Juden in der christlichen Gesellschaft um die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in den deutschen Landen (Nicholas of Cusa and the Jews. On the Position of the Jews in Christian Society in Mid-Fifteenth-Century Germany),” (unpublished PhD diss., Universität Trier, 2001), esp. 69–70 and 336–44.
72. Ludwig Schmugge, ed., Repertorium poenitentiariae Germanicum. Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen, und Orte des Deutschen Reiches (Index of Persons, Churches and Places of the German Empire Figuring in the Supplication Registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary), 9 vols. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998–2014), 2:87 (no. 902 [January 13, 1452]). On two later occasions, Arnold again sought absolution and dispensations for this same transgression as well as other instances of support for the Jews of Würzburg; see Repertorium poenitentiariae Germanicum, 3:12–13 (no. 78 [July 9, 1455]) and 3:49 (no. 348 [September 7, 1456]). With one exception (discussed in the following note), these are the only petitions from the published records of the Apostolic Penitentiary that touch directly on Usurarum voraginem. Ongoing research may turn up further instances. For a general introduction to the workings of the Apostolic Penitentiary, see Kirsi Salonen and Ludwig Schmugge, eds., A Sip From The “Well Of Grace”: Medieval Texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), part 1. I am grateful to Dr. Salonen and to Paolo Ostinelli for their advice on these materials.
73. A noteworthy variation on the latter theme arose in 1455, when the civic authorities of Padua sent a petition to Calixtus III (r. 1455–58) immediately following his election. Like many other petitioners before them, they sought absolution from the pope for having previously rented houses to Jewish usurers. Unlike previous petitioners, however, the city had already expelled these Jews and was not seeking their return. See Antonio Ciscato, Gli Ebrei in Padova (1300–1800) (The Jews in Padua (1300–1800)) (Padua: Società Cooperativa Tipografica, 1901), 243–45 (Appendix, doc. 6). For further remarks on Padua and its Jews in the fifteenth century, especially in relation to mendicant preaching, see Michael Hohlstein, Soziale Ausgrenzung im Medium der Predigt. Der franzikanische Antijudaismus im spätmittelalterlichen Italien (Social Exclusion through Preaching: Franciscan Antijudaism in Late Medieval Italy) (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), 221–40.
74. Renata Segre, The Jews in Piedmont, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1986–90), 1:330–36 (docs. 740, 741, 745, 747).
75. ASJ, 3:1410–11 (doc. 1126).
76. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, D'Ablaing 33, fols. 5v–7r.
77. Consilium de usuris/Contra iudeos fenerantes (Venice, 1482). The consilia appear here as an appendix to the Summa Pisanella. A detailed breakdown of Nievo's argument is given in Poliakov, Banchieri, 59–65; but compare the additional remarks of Angiolini, Hélène, “Polemica antiusuraria e propaganda antiebraica nel Quattrocento (Anti-Usury Polemic and Anti-Jewish Propaganda in the Fifteenth Century),” Il pensiero politico 19 (1986): 311–18Google Scholar, especially concerning the dating of the consilia.
78. See Stow, “Expulsion Italian Style,” esp. 55–59.
79. See Jordan, William Chester, “Christian Excommunication of the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Restatement of the Issues,” Jewish History 1 (1986): 31–38Google Scholar.
80. Such interpretative instability was obviously not limited to canon law; for a related example concerning a French royal ordinance, see William Chester Jordan, “Jew and Serf in Medieval France Revisited,” in Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times. A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen, eds. Arnold E. Franklin et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 248–56, at 251–53.
81. See Filippo Sedda, “The Anti-Jewish Sermons of John of Capistrano: Matters and Context,” in The Jewish-Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching, eds. Jonathan Adams & Jussi Hanska (New York: Routledge, 2015), 139–69, at 140–42.
82. Eugen Jacob, ed., Tractatus de Cupiditate, in Johannes von Capistrano, vol. 2, part 2 (Breslau: Woywood, 1911), 27–460, at 105–7.
83. An edition is given in Hélène Angiolini, “‘Cibus iudei’: un ‘consilium’ quasi inedito di Angelo di Castro sulla macellazione con rito ebraico e una ‘reprobatio’ di San Giovanni da Capestrano (‘The Food of a Jew’: A mostly-unpublished consilium of Angelo di Castro on Jewish Ritual Slaughter and a Reply from Saint Giovanni da Capestrano),” in La storia degli Ebrei nell”Italia medievale: tra filologia e metodologia (The History of the Jews in Medieval Italy: Philology and Methodology), eds. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Giacomo Todeschini (Bologna: Istituto per i beni artistici, culturali e naturali della Regione Emilia-Romagna, 1989), 102–15, at 111–14. Kenneth R. Stow also discusses the consilium in his Jewish Dogs: An Image and its Interpreters (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 153–57.
84. For his legal training and reputation, see Diego Quaglioni, “Un giurista sul pulpito. Giovanni da Capestrano († 1456), predicatore e canonista (A Jurist on the Pulpit. Giovanni da Capestrano (d. 1456), Preacher and Canonist),” in “Civilis sapientia”: dottrina giuridiche e dottrine politiche fra medioevo ed età moderna (Legal Doctrines and Political Doctrines from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period) (Rimini: Maggioli Editore, 1989), 193–206.
