Cum nimis absurdum

thumb|Pope Paul IV

Cum nimis absurdum was a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV dated 14 July 1555. In order to incentivise Jewish conversion to Christianity, the bull revoked all the rights of the Jewish community and placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States, renewed anti-Jewish legislation and subjected Jews to various degradations and restrictions on their personal freedom.

The bull established the Roman Ghetto and required the Jews of Rome, who had existed as a community since before Christian times and numbered about 2,000 at the time, to live in it. The Ghetto was a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night. Under the bull, Jewish males were required to wear a pointed yellow hat, and Jewish females a yellow kerchief. Jews were required to attend compulsory Catholic sermons on the Jewish shabbat.

The bull also subjected Jews to various other restrictions such as a prohibition on property ownership and practising medicine among Christians. Jews were allowed to practice only unskilled jobs, as rag men, secondhand dealers or fish mongers. They could also be pawnbrokers.

Paul IV's successor, Pius IV, enforced the creation of other ghettos in most Italian towns, and his successor, Pius V, recommended them to other bordering states. The Papal States ceased to exist on 20 September 1870 when they were incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy, but the requirement that Jews live in the ghetto was formally abolished only in 1882, though, in this period between the end of the Papal States and the requirement abolition, this requirement was seldom, if ever enforced.

Background

Gian Pietro Carafa was 79 years old when he assumed the papacy as Pope Paul IV, and was by all accounts austere, rigidly orthodox, and authoritarian in manner. As a cardinal, he had persuaded Pope Paul III to establish a Roman Inquisition, modelled on the Spanish Inquisition with himself as one of the Inquisitors-General. Carafa vowed, "Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him."

In September 1553, Cardinal Carafa had overseen the burning of the Talmud in Rome. Deutsch and Jacobs link this to part of the reaction to the Protestant Reformation that led to censorship of books deemed detrimental to Christians.

Content

Two months after becoming Pope, Paul IV issued Cum nimis absurdum. As temporal ruler of the Papal States it applied to those areas over which he had direct control. It takes its name from its first words:

Provisions

Paul IV sought to strictly enforce earlier canonical restrictions against the Jews — as those prohibiting their practising medicine among Christians, employing Christian servants, and the like — but he also restricted them in their commercial activity, forbade them to have more than one synagogue in any city, enforced the wearing of the yellow hat, refused to permit a Jew to be addressed as "signor", and finally decreed that they should live in a designated area separated from Christians. The last measure was carried out in Rome with unrelenting cruelty.

Paul IV restated a canon of the Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 that required Jews and Muslims to wear something to distinguish them from Christians, and Paul required that Jews wear some distinguishing sign, yellow in color.

They were forbidden to have Christian nurses, maids or servants, nor Christian wet-nurses. They were prohibited from working or having work done on Sundays or on other public feast days declared by the Church, or from fraternizing in any way with Christians. In Poland, Church officials never proposed segregation of the Jews, as such a measure would not have been supported by the king or the nobles.

References

Sources

Bice Migliau and Micaela Procaccia with Silvia Rebuzzi and Micaela Vitale, Lazio Jewish Itineraries: Places, History, and Art, trans. Gus Barker. Venice: Marsilio, 1997.

External links

Original Latin text
English translation of original text