Bulls of 1348 Protecting the Jews

The first letter is dated at Avignon on the fourth day before the nones of July in the seventh year of Clement VI, 4 July 1348. In the part that the annalist prints it lays down the terms of papal protection: no forced baptism, and no wounding, killing or robbing of Jews without the judgment of the lord of the place. The date is the one the annalist prints; some modern accounts give 6 July for this letter.

The second is dated on the sixth day before the kalends of October, 26 September. It is commonly cited by its opening words, Quamvis perfidiam, which the annalist does not print; he reports that its preamble names the earlier popes whose example Clement follows. The passage he gives in full is the pope’s argument: the plague is afflicting Jews and peoples who have never lived beside Jews, so that it is not likely that Jews caused it. The orders to the bishops, with the threat of excommunication, are given in the annalist’s summary and not in the pope’s words. Both letters reach us here through a seventeenth-century selection from the registers, and are cited with that limit. See Annales ecclesiastici (continuation from 1198) and the Black Death.