The Pope's Jews

The synagogue stands in the center of Carpentras. its austere stone exterior relieved only by a plaque bearing a laconic message: THIS HOUSE OF PRAYER, BUILT IN 1367, WAS RECONSTRUCTED FROM 1741 TO 1743. Inside, all is ornate --fine old chandeliers, green woodwork, delicately forged iron. The Louis XV decor in a synagogue seems as out of place as the large cross formed by the windows. The window arrangement, however, is entirely appropriate: for the synagogue of Carpentras, near Avignon, is a relic of a strange medieval relationship between the papacy and a Jewish community.

The people who were to become known as the Pope's Jews were mostly refugees from Languedoc in southwestern France, whose ruler, King Philip IV, banished Jews from the province in order to seize their property. Ironically, Philip had also helped provide a place of asylum. A quarrel between the king and Pope Boniface VIII had played a part in the election of a French Pope, who moved the papal court to Avignon in 1308. There it remained until 1377, and there the banished Jews found a home. The Avignon Popes, beginning with Clement V, welcomed them--at least partly as valued taxpayers--and guaranteed their safety.

Promised Land. By 1358, one-fifth of the 2,500 people living in Carpentras were Jewish, earning for the town the sobriquet La Petite Jerusalem. In contrast to most of Europe, the Jews were allowed to own land and engage in any occupation they chose except finance and the administration of justice; some of them became wine growers. Now and then the Jews were accused of poisoning fountains, propagating plagues or conniving with Saracens and lepers, but the Pope kept anti-Semitism in check by threatening to excommunicate religious bigots.

Gratefully the Jews included their benefactor in their prayers, petitioning God to "exalt our sovereign and Holy Father, the Pope." The group also developed a self-protective prejudice of their own. Foreign Jews were tolerated for three nights, then asked to leave. Lingerers were escorted out of town by the Pope's guard. When a "foreign" Jew married into the Carpentras circle, the locals called it a mixed marriage.

Both the return of the Popes to Rome and the rise of a burgher class began to turn the courteous arrangement sour. By the mid-15th century, bourgeois resentment had determined that the Pope's Jews could not expand beyond their one-street ghetto. The only place to go was up so they built some of Western Europe's earliest residential skyscrapers, houses ten to eleven stories high. To enforce humility, the town limited the number of pearls a Jewish woman might wear for her wedding. The serving of sugar-coated almonds, a local delicacy cherished by the Jews, was banned.

Psalm singing at funerals was forbidden, and, when the wife of a prominent Catholic citizen had a child, the ghetto had to offer her twelve pounds of sugar, twice that for twins.

Lasting Immunity. Despite the discrimination, the Carpentras Jewish community numbered nearly 1,200 on the eve of the French Revolution. Then the revolutionists' policy of religious liberalism succeeded where bigotry had failed. Free to go where they wanted, the Pope's Jews wandered off into other parts of Europe.

Today Robert Ezechiel Cremieux, 70, a tailor by trade, is the last surviving descendant of the original group left in

Carpentras (though a number of other Jews have settled in the vicinity).

Cremieux's own survival results from the special status accorded to the Pope's Jews centuries ago. "During the last war," he recalls, "I wasn't arrested because I could prove I was a Pope's Jew. I actually went down to the Carpentras library to look up my family tree. I got back to Jacob cremieux, who was born in Carpentras in 1611. That was good enough for the Petainists. Later on, four French fascist policemen prepared to arrest me anyway. But then an American bomb blew up police headquarters and killed the four." Unfortunately, cremieux will not be passing on his heritage. He married a Roman Catholic and considers himself an agnostic. Further, he is childless; with him, nearly 700 years of history in Carpentras will end.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.