MARTIN°

MARTIN °, name of five popes, two of whom were significant in Jewish history.

martin iv pope 1281–85. Although he employed a southern French Jewish physician, Martin iv was generally repressive in his actions concerning the Jews. He directed the inquisitors to proceed against lapsed Jewish converts (March 1, 1281), and issued an instruction to the archbishops and bishops of France not to hamper the work of the Inquisition, even suspending the right of sanctuary in the case of Jewish converts suspected of falling away from the faith. A series of articles specifying reforms for Portugal (1284) is partly concerned with the position of the Jews.

martin v pope 1417–31. On the whole Martin V was well-disposed toward the Jews. In the first two years of his reign he confirmed the Jews of Germany, Savoy, and Rome in their former privileges, and received favorably a delegation of Italian Jews and another from Spain. In 1419 (and again in 1422 and 1429) he issued a bull protecting the Jews in their synagogues. He resisted the imposition of the *badge, but ordered the Jews to abstain from work on Sundays and feast days. His aim seems to have been to encourage the fullest possible intercourse between Jews and Christians, excepting from his protection only those Jews who conspired to overthrow the Christian faith. His personal relations with Jews appear to have been good: he employed Elijah b. Shabbetai Be'er as his physician and gave the Jewish physicians in the Papal States every encouragement in the practice of their profession. Martin may have been the pope who discussed theology with Aaron b. Gerson Abulrabi of Catania. To some extent he seems to have striven to moderate the worst excesses of the Inquisition. In 1418, after receiving a complaint that the Jews of Avignon practiced sorcery, infected simple Christians with Jewish superstitions, and demanded interest at a rate of 10%, he instructed the local inquisitor to proceed against them, but he soon attempted to restrain the inquisitor's zeal. The same situation was repeated in his dealings with John of *Capistrano, against whose excesses many of his edicts of protection were probably directed. Thus in 1422 he issued an edict forbidding forcible baptism, since "a man who is known to have undertaken Christian baptism unwillingly rather than of his own accord cannot be supposed to possess true Christian faith," but barely a year later he was induced to withdraw it. In May 1427 John of Capistrano persuaded the queen of Naples (Joanna ii) to cancel the privileges of the Jews in her kingdom, but Martin's intervention resulted in the repeal of this edict in the following August.

bibliography:

E.A. Synan, Popes and Jews in the Middle Ages (1965), 121; 135–6; rej, 3 (1881), 218 (on Bull of 1281); Roth, Italy, 157ff.; S. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the xiii^th Century (1966), 274.

[Nicholas de Lange]