This rabbinical synod of Mayence renewed many ordinances of the times of Rabbenu Tam, and established others besides. Its decisions mark the condition of the German Jews in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The synod enacted that Jews should on no account incur blame by dishonorable dealings with Christians, or by the counterfeiting of coin. An informer was to be compelled to make good the loss which he had caused by his information. Those who had freedom of access to the king (emperor), were none the less under the obligation to bear the communal burden in raising the tax. He who received a religious office through Christian authorities incurred the penalty of excommunication. In the synagogues, devotion and decorum were to prevail. The brother-in-law was to complete the release of his widowed sister-in-law from her levirate marriage without extortion of money and without trickery, and he was not to keep her in suspense. He who would not submit to the regulations of the synod, or did not respect a sentence of excommunication, was to be delivered over to the secular power. The determination of disputed cases was left to the rabbinate and the congregations of Mayence, Worms, and Speyer, as the oldest German Jewish communities.
In spite of the many exertions of the cultured Jews to avert the disgrace of wearing the badge, papal intolerance gradually gained the ascendancy, and the edict of the Lateran Council of 1215 henceforth had sway. Even Emperor Frederick II, the most intelligent and enlightened prince that Germany ever had, whose orthodoxy was more than doubtful, had at length to bow to the will of the papacy, and introduce the Jew-badge by law in his hereditary provinces of Naples and Sicily.
In southern France, where, in consequence of the war against the Albigenses, the spirit of persecution had been intensified among the clergy more perhaps than in other Christian countries, the edicts of Innocent III for the degradation and humiliation of the Jews found only too zealous supporters. At a council at Narbonne (1227), not only were the canonical ordinances against them confirmed, the prohibition of taking interest, the wearing of the Jew-badge, the payment of a tax to the Church, but even the long-forgotten decrees of the ancient time of the Merovingian kings were renewed against them. The Jews were not allowed to be seen in the streets at Easter, and they were prohibited from leaving their houses during the festival.
In the next year the Albigensian war came to an end, and the horrors of a blind, revengeful, bloodthirsty reaction began. The preacher-monks, the disciples of Domingo, glorified Christianity through the agonies of the rack and the stake. Whoever was in possession of a Bible in the Romance (Provençal) language incurred the charge of heresy at the court of the Dominicans, who had the exclusive right to bloodthirsty persecutions. Their allies, the Franciscans or Minorites, energetically seconded them. It was not long before these destroying angels in monks' cowls placed their clutches upon the sons of Jacob.
Four men appeared simultaneously on the stage of history, who were thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, and especially with its oppressive, unlovely, inhuman form, and they rendered the life of the Jews in many countries an inconceivable torture. The first was Pope Gregory IX, a passionate old man, the deadly enemy of Emperor Frederick II, whose sole ambition was the extension of the power of the Church and the destruction of his opponents, who cast the torch of discord into the German Empire, and annihilated its unity and greatness. The second was King Louis IX of France, who had acquired the name of "the Saint," from the simplicity of his heart and the narrowness of his head; he was a most pliant tool for crafty monks, a worshiper of relics, who was strongly inclined to adopt a monk's cowl, and most readily assisted in the persecution of heretics, and who hated the Jews so thoroughly that he would not look at them. Similar to him was his contemporary Ferdinand III of Castile, who inherited also the crown of Leon, and was likewise recognized by the Church as a saint, because he burnt heretics with his own hand. Lastly, the Dominican-General Raymond de Penyaforte (Peñaforte), the most frantic oppressor of the heretics, who applied all his efforts to convert Jews and Mahometans to Christianity. In this spirit he exercised his influence upon the kings of Aragon and Castile, and caused seminaries to be established, where instruction in Hebrew and Arabic was given, in order that these languages might be employed for the conversion of Jews and Saracens. These tyrannical, pitiless enemies, furnished with every resource, were let loose upon the Jews. Gregory IX exhorted the bishop of Valencia (1229) to crush the arrogance of the Jews towards the Christians, as if the Church were hovering in the greatest peril. Consequently, under Jayme I, of Aragon, the position of the Jews of Aragon and of the provinces belonging to it took an evil turn. Spurred on by clerical fanaticism and by greed for gold, this king declared the Jews to be his clients, i. e. in a manner, his "servi cameræ."
Everywhere the hostile spirit which first proceeded from Innocent, and was spread by the Dominicans, assumed the form of severe laws against the Jews. At two Church assemblies, in Rouen and Tours (1231), the hostile decrees of the Lateran Council against the Jews were re-enacted, and at the latter meeting another restriction was added, the Jews were not to be admitted as witnesses against Christians, because much evil might arise from the testimony of Jews.
The narrow-minded disposition of the Church towards the Jews was felt, through the increased power of the papacy after Innocent, even by the Jews dwelling on the banks of the Lower Danube and the Theiss. In Hungary they had settled at a very early date, having immigrated thither from the Byzantine and Chazar empires. Since there were many heathen and Mahometans among the dominant Magyars, the kings had to be very tolerant towards them; besides this, the Christianity of the Magyars was only superficial, and had not yet affected their feeling and mode of thought. Consequently, the Jews of Hungary from time immemorial had had the right of coinage, and were in friendly relations with their German brethren. Till the thirteenth century, Jews as well as Mahometans were farmers of salt mines, and of the taxes, and filled various royal offices. Mixed marriages between Jews and Christians also occurred frequently, as the Church had not yet established itself in the country. This enjoyment of dignities by the Jews in a country only half Christian, could not be tolerated by the Church: it was a thorn in its side. Accordingly when King Andreas, who had quarreled with the magnates of the country, and had been compelled to issue a charter of liberty, applied to Pope Gregory IX for help, the latter, in a letter to Robert, Archbishop of Gran, ordered him to compel the king to deprive both Jews and Mahometans of their public offices. Andreas at first submitted to the papal will, but did not carry out the orders of the Pope zealously, because he could not well dispense with his Jewish officials and farmers. On this account and for other grounds of complaint, the archbishop of Gran passed sentence of excommunication on the king and his followers by order of the Pope (beginning of 1232). By various strong measures, Andreas was at last compelled to obey, and, like Raymund, of Toulouse, solemnly to promise (1232) that he would not admit Jews or Saracens to offices, nor suffer any Christian slaves to continue in their possession, nor allow mixed marriages, and lastly that he would compel them to wear a badge. The same oath had to be taken, by order of the papal legate, by the crown prince, the king of Slavonia, and all the magnates and dignitaries of the kingdom.