The Counts of Toulouse and the Jews

Toleration and favour shown to the Jews was one of the main complaints of the Roman Church against the Counts of Toulouse.

Following the Crusaders' successful wars against Ramon VI and Ramon VII, The Counts were required to discriminate against Jews like other Christian rulers. In 1209, stripped to the waist and barefoot, Raimon VI was obliged to swear in front of a relic-laden alter, in the presence of nineteen bishops and three archbishops, that he would no longer allow Jews to hold public office. In 1229 his son and heir, Raimon VII, underwent a similar ceremony where he was obliged to prohibit the public employment of Jews, this time at Notre Dame in Paris. Explicit provisions on the subject were included in the Treaty of Meaux (1229).

By the next generation a new, zealously Catholic, ruler was arresting and imprisoning Jews for no crime, raiding their houses, seizing their cash, and removing their religious books. They were then released only if they paid a new "tax".

As an English historian of the Cathar crusade puts it:

"Organised and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in the south only after the Crusade because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist on the application of positive measures of discrimination".
(Michael Costen, The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, p 38.)

Click on the following link to read a detailed article on the Christian Church and its promotion of anti-Semitism