Dominicans and Franciscans came to dominate university life in the thirteenth century, and they also captured important bishoprics. They supervised every aspect of Jewish life in Latin countries. They took the view that Augustine’s relatively tolerant attitude, whereby the Jews were preserved as ‘witnesses’ and allowed to practise their faith, was no longer tenable; they wanted to remove all Jewish rights.107 In 1236 Pope Gregory IX was persuaded to condemn the Talmud and this proved in effect, though not in intention, a decisive shift from Augustinian tolerance.108 The friars did not begin as
...more
