May 9 1244 – 29 Iyar 5004
Pope Innocent IV sent a letter to King Louis IX of France instructing him to have all copies of the Talmud in his realm burned, along with any book that quoted it. Innocent’s predecessor, Gregory IX, had issued a similar papal bull, resulting in the Paris trials of the Talmud and the subsequent public burning of confiscated volumes in 1240. Generally, however, Innocent IV sought to protect the lives and property of Jews within the Holy Roman Empire; thus when the license he’d granted to enter Jewish homes in search of volumes of the Talmud resulted in lawless plunder of Jewish property, using the blood libel to justify the attacks, he issued a new instruction to his bishops. On July 5 1247, he asked them to prevent Jews under their jurisdiction being molested, writing that the condition of the Jews under Christian princes was a great deal worse than that of their forefathers under Pharoah.
On August 2 he reversed his position on the Talmud in another letter to King Louis of France. The Talmud was now to be censored, rather than burned. Innocent’s stance became the official position of the Catholic Church regarding Jews, although in practice the Church still sometimes encouraged blood libels and riots against Europe’s Jewish population.