The following documents are drawn from the Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, covering the final years of the pontificate of Paul V (1611–1621) and the brief pontificate of Gregory XV (1621–1623). This volume contains three distinct bodies of legislation touching the Jews, each quite different in character.
The first — and most administratively detailed — is Paul V’s sweeping Reformatio tribunalium Urbis (1612), a comprehensive reorganization of the Roman courts. Embedded within it is a self-contained section, §VII, titled De iurisdictione in hebraeos — “Concerning jurisdiction over the Hebrews” — which allocates the trial of Jewish defendants among Rome’s competing tribunals: the Governor, the Camerarius, the Auditor of the Camera, and the Vicar. The companion tax schedule (Constitution CXCV) specifies notary fees for cases involving Hebrew bankers, and — significantly — declares that absolutions “from transgressions” are not only not taxed for Jews but are not to be granted to them under any circumstances.
The second is Gregory XV’s extensive definition of the Camerarius’s faculties (1621), which contains several clauses directly governing Jews: the Camerarius’s right to receive a share of the “vigesima hebraeorum” (a 5% tax on Hebrew transactions); his authority to grant absolutions to Hebrews with limitations; his power to license Hebrew pawnbrokers and money-changers in Rome and the Papal States; and — critically — his absolute prohibition from granting Hebrews licenses to lend at interest outside the Ecclesiastical State without the consent of the local temporal lord, or to build synagogues, take a second wife, or do anything else contrary to the apostolic constitutions. The list of officials subject to the Camerarius explicitly includes the keeper of the keys of the Hebrew ghetto at Ancona and the commissioner for reviewing the account books of the Hebrew bankers at Ancona.
The third is Gregory XV’s confirmation (1622) of Philip IV of Spain’s decrees defining which persons are excluded from membership in the military orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara on grounds of impure lineage — explicitly including those who descend from “Moors, heretics, or Hebrews.”
I. Pope Paul V — Reformatio Tribunalium Urbis: Reform of the Tribunals of Rome — §VII: Jurisdiction over the Hebrews (March 1, 1612)
Constitution CXCIV. Paul V, year VII. Dated at Rome, at Saint Peter’s, Kalends of March, year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1612, pontificate year VII. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, p. 71b. The companion tax schedule (Constitution CXCV) with §XI Taxa notarii Hebraeorum is at pp. 111–160, items 73, 93–94.
Preamble: Paul V undertakes a comprehensive reform of the courts of Rome
We must diligently watch over the entire field of the Lord, though with capacities unequal to the task, by divine dispensation — so that the thorns and thistles which spring up daily in it from the ancient curse may be extirpated, as far as it is permitted from above, by the ministry of our apostolate. And if we owe this solicitude to all parts of the world, by the duty of our office, we are bound to devote it especially to those places entrusted also to our temporal governance.
Since, therefore, many abuses have crept in over the course of time — as the human condition tends — into the various reform constitutions of our predecessors concerning the tribunals of our beloved City, issued by Paul III and IV, Pius IV and V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V: we have therefore judged it necessary to apply apostolic authority to restoring proper order and form to those same tribunals, as justice and the public utility demand…
§ VII: Concerning jurisdiction over the Hebrews
1. The Governor of the City may proceed against Hebrews in criminal matters, even when the case is between Hebrews alone.
2. In camerial matters — that is, matters touching the Camera in any way — or in matters pertaining to the Camerarius, even by reason of pledges or the persons of Hebrew bankers, or pertaining to the Presidents [of the Camera]: the Camerarius and the Presidents may proceed against them.
3. In cases concerning stolen pledges, as regards Hebrew bankers, the rule of prevention [i.e., whichever tribunal first seizes the case retains it] shall apply between the Camerarius and the Governor.
4. As regards the Auditor of the Camera, Hebrews shall be subject to his jurisdiction exclusively against all others in matters involving a camerial obligation, except in cases depending on the proceedings and acts of other tribunals within their own competence. In criminal matters, however, the same Auditor of the Camera may proceed against them as he was accustomed to proceed in the past.
5. As between the Vicar and the Senator, in offenses in which Christians are in some way participants — that is, when there is a mixture of Christian and Hebrew offenders — the rule of prevention shall apply by office rather than by complaint. In other cases, however, the constitution of the happy-memory Julius Pope III, our predecessor, shall be observed, which provides that when the case is between Hebrews themselves, the Vicar shall have jurisdiction both actively and passively; but when the case is between others [i.e., Christians suing Jews or vice versa], passively only.
From Constitution CXCV, §XI: Notary fee schedule for Hebrew cases
The companion constitution (CXCV) establishing the fee schedule for all Roman court notaries includes a dedicated section for the notary assigned to Hebrew cases, setting rates in bononeni (quattrini) and iulii for each type of act: citations, productions of evidence, interrogatories, seizures, decrees of detention and release, pledge auctions, and so on.
Two items in the general camerial fee schedule (also in CXCV) bear special note:
Item 73: “For approval of the account book of Hebrew bankers: twenty-seven bononeni.” [This refers to the mandatory periodic review and official approval of the account ledgers kept by Jewish pawnbrokers — a form of financial oversight specific to the Hebrew banking community.]
Item 93: “For the letter of toleration for Jews, for each year: notary five and a half iulii, seal eleven iulii.” [The annual tolerantia — the formal permission for a Jewish individual or community to reside and conduct business in a given locality — required a paid license renewed each year.]
Item 94: “Absolutions, which are called ‘from transgressions,’ for Jews, are not taxed, because they are not to be granted under any circumstances.” [Absolutiones a transgressibus were general camerial pardons for violations of papal regulations, available for a fee. The constitution here makes an absolute exception: no such pardon may ever be issued to a Jew, and accordingly no fee is set for it.]
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, pp. 58b–80a (Constitution CXCIV, Reformatio tribunalium Urbis, §VII at p. 71b) and pp. 111–160 (Constitution CXCV, taxa schedule, §XI Taxa notarii Hebraeorum at p. 153b; items 73, 93–94 in general camerial schedule). Pope Paul V, March 1, 1612. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note. The Reformatio tribunalium Urbis is one of the great administrative documents of Paul V’s pontificate, running to over eighty pages in the printed Bullarium and reorganizing every aspect of the Roman judicial system. The dedicated section on Hebrew jurisdiction (§VII) reflects the special legal status of Rome’s Jewish community, which was simultaneously subject to multiple competing tribunals — the Camerarius (who had general oversight of the ghetto and the licensed Hebrew pawnshops), the Governor (criminal matters), the Auditor of the Camera (financial matters, especially camerial debts), and the Vicar (mixed cases involving Christians). The settlement of precedence among these tribunals had been contested for generations; this constitution attempts a definitive allocation.
Item 94 — the absolute prohibition on absolutiones a transgressibus for Jews — is particularly striking. These camerial pardons were a standard mechanism by which individuals who had violated papal regulations could compound for their offenses by paying a fee to the Camera. The constitution categorically removes Jews from eligibility for this administrative mercy entirely. Earlier in the series (Vol. X, Clement VIII’s Caeca et Obdurata), we saw the Camerarius’s faculty to grant such pardons to Jews severely curtailed; here it is abolished for the notarial schedule altogether. Gregory XV’s constitution on the Camerarius (below) revisits the question and restores a limited faculty.
II. Pope Gregory XV — De Facultatibus S.R.E. Cardinalis Camerarii: On the Faculties of the Cardinal Camerarius of the Holy Roman Church — Clauses Concerning Hebrews (1621)
Constitution IX. Gregory XV, year I. Dated at Rome, May 14, 1621, pontificate year I. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, pp. 521–535.
Background: Gregory XV formally defines the faculties of the Camerarius upon appointing his nephew Cardinal Ludovisi to the office
It befits the Roman Pontiff to interpose the parts of his pastoral office in those matters by which ecclesiastical persons — above all the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, whom the Holy Apostolic See has wished to surpass others in the honor of the sacred purple — whenever they are appointed to exercise some office, may be adorned before others with the prerogative of special graces and indults, so that they may thereby the more easily and happily discharge it.
Since we have therefore lately granted and assigned the office of the Camerariateship, then vacant by the death of Cardinal Aldobrandini, to our beloved son Ludovico, titular cardinal of Santa Maria in Trastevere — our close kinsman, nephew of our own brother — to hold, govern, and administer for as long as he shall live… we now enumerate the faculties pertaining to that office.
§ 9: The Camerarius is assigned a share of the vigesima hebraeorum
We assign to the said Ludovico and the Camerarius for the time being all regal dues, revenues, and rights — both ancient rights flowing from the seal, custodianships, prefectures, offices, exactions, taxes, and various other things, and especially those enumerated in the faculty letters of Cardinal Petrus Aldobrandini and other camerarii — as well as the collectoria in the kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, and Naples, and throughout all Italy, known as the vigesima [i.e., a 5% tax on transactions], which accrues at the rate of two per hundred on the spoils, fruits, rights, and emoluments of all those and other collectoriates wherever instituted, and also on tithes and subsidies imposed and to be imposed: excepting only the regalia and emoluments of one per hundred from the compositions of the congregation of Regulars, and of a half per hundred from the vigesima hebraeorum [the Hebrew tax], and also of a half per hundred from the triennial subsidy.
[Note: The vigesima hebraeorum — the “twentieth of the Hebrews” — was a standing tax levied on the Roman Jewish community and on Hebrew financial transactions more broadly. The constitution here specifies that while the Camerarius receives the general vigesima revenues, the vigesima hebraeorum yields only a half-percent share to him rather than the full two-percent, the remainder being reserved to the Apostolic Camera directly.]
§ 13: Absolutions and licenses for Hebrews
Furthermore we will and ordain that the said Ludovico cardinal and the Camerarius for the time being grant absolutions — called “from transgressions” — to Hebrews who resort to him (provided they are granted with the following limitations and reservations: excepting only lèse-majesté, homicide, sacrilege, rebellion, and counterfeiting; and provided the offender has not been indicted for the offenses, or the offenses do not pertain to the office of inquisition; and provided peace and concord have been made with the injured party in cases where that is required by law, and the right to proceed civilly is nevertheless reserved to the injured party).
In addition, licenses to retain immovable property and to take it in lease for a fixed term — exclusively as against all and each of the governors and other officials, even cardinals of the same Holy Roman Church serving as legates a latere, in whatever provinces, cities, lands, and places, even in the said City, appointed or to be appointed — he may grant to Hebrews; and likewise the license to exercise the art of money-changer or banker, even as regards the exchange of gold and silver, for such number and under such conditions as may seem good to him.
§ 14: Perpetual prohibitions — the Camerarius may NOT grant Hebrews certain licenses
He shall, however, refrain in all future times from granting to Hebrews outside our Ecclesiastical State licenses to lend at interest — called “tolerations” [tolerantiae] — unless the temporal lords of those places shall have requested it. In the Ecclesiastical State itself, where Hebrews dwell — as in Avignon, Ancona, and the Legation of Ferrara — he may grant such licenses to the Hebrews dwelling there. In the City [Rome] also, he shall not increase the number of bankers beyond seventy, the so-called convenuto, unless for some just and reasonable cause it shall seem otherwise to him.
Tolerations and privileges prejudicial to Christians, licenses to practice medicine, to build synagogues, to take another wife while the first is still living, and other things contrary to the apostolic constitutions — he shall not grant.
§ 15: He may not issue certain monetary or debt-relief instruments
He may not give license to carry into the City counterfeit or rejected coins. From the granting of moratoriums or delays — the prohibition of which we renew — he shall likewise abstain.
List of officials under the Camerarius — two specifically concerned with the Hebrew community of Ancona
The constitution enumerates at length the officers, custodians, and commissioners whose appointments fall under the Camerarius’s authority. Among them, two specifically concern the Jewish community:
“Custos clavium ghetti Hebraeorum Anconae” — Keeper of the keys of the Hebrew ghetto at Ancona.
“Commissarius super revisione librorum Hebraeorum bancheriorum Anconae” — Commissioner for the review of the account books of the Hebrew bankers at Ancona.
§ 32: Pledge auctions involving Hebrew bankers
Auctions of pledges held by Hebrew bankers shall take place at the Monte di Pietà, where the residue of the sale price is customarily deposited, or at the house of the notary — but with a decree of the said Ludovico cardinal and the Camerarius for the time being, or his auditor, recorded by the acts of the same notary, free of charge. And in cases of theft of pledges of the said bankers, the Camerarius alone shall proceed, exclusively as against all others, notwithstanding the aforesaid reform.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, pp. 521–535. Gregory XV, Constitution IX, De facultatibus S.R.E. cardinalis camerarii, §§ 9, 13–15, 32, and list of offices. May 14, 1621. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note. This constitution is principally an institutional document defining the jurisdiction and prerogatives of the Cardinal Camerarius — the chief financial and administrative officer of the Holy See — upon the appointment of Gregory XV’s nephew to the post. Its Hebrew-related clauses are embedded within a much longer enumeration of the Camerarius’s powers, and they reveal the degree to which the management of Rome’s and the Papal States’ Jewish communities was integrated into the general administrative structure of the Church.
The restoration of the absolutiones a transgressibus faculty for Jews (§13) — which Constitution CXCV of Paul V had declared impossible to grant “under any circumstances” — is notable. Gregory XV restores the faculty but hedges it with conditions: no pardon for crimes touching lèse-majesté, homicide, sacrilege, or counterfeiting; the offender must not be under inquisitorial investigation; and peace must first be made with the injured party.
The absolute prohibition in §14 on granting Hebrews licenses to build synagogues, to take a second wife, or to receive “tolerations and privileges prejudicial to Christians” represents the late-Counter-Reformation papacy’s effort to maintain the discriminatory regime of Cum Nimis Absurdum (Paul IV, 1555) and its successors even as it delegated day-to-day administration of Jewish affairs to the Camerarius. The explicit mention of synagogue construction — and the prohibition on licensing it — echoes the long-standing canonical prohibition going back at least to Honorius III (Vol. IV of this series).
The two Ancona-specific officials are particularly revealing. Ancona was one of the three cities (with Rome and Avignon) where Clement VIII’s 1593 expulsion bull had permitted Jews to remain in the Papal States. Its Hebrew community was significant and commercially active, especially in the Levant trade. The Camerarius held the keys to the Ancona ghetto and supervised the account books of its bankers directly — a degree of financial surveillance that made the community’s books, in effect, a permanent open audit under papal administrative control.
III. Pope Gregory XV — Confirmation of the Decrees of the Catholic King Concerning the Exclusion from the Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara of Those Descended from Moors, Heretics, or Hebrews (October 14, 1622)
Constitution LXXXII. Gregory XV, year II. Dated at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, October 14, 1622, pontificate year II. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, pp. 748–750.
§ 1: The statutes of the military orders prohibit admission of those of impure lineage
Our beloved son Philip, Catholic King of the Spains, lately caused it to be set forth to us that the statutes and stabilimenta of the Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara — enacted in their general chapters with the support of apostolic authority — provide, among other things, that no one shall be admitted to them who is not of the required noble lineage according to the manner and form of the kingdoms of Spain — that is to say, who derives his origin from Moors who have converted, heretics, or Hebrews, or from ignoble persons, or from those who have been punished by the office of the Inquisition for matters of the faith up to the fourth generation on either side; and that only those shall be received who are born of ancient noble Christian lineage on both parents’ sides and on the grandparents’ sides of both lines, in name and arms, such that public fame is not to the contrary, and whose parents were not merchants, tenant-farmers, bankers, usurers, or servants or mechanical officials of similar persons in such offices, nor live or have lived from such offices.
§ 2–3: Philip IV has clarified the merchant exclusion; Gregory XV confirms his decrees
Since, however, the said Philip King, occupied with many affairs, cannot celebrate a general chapter of those Orders to formally enact this clarification, and in order to remove all ambiguity in the aforesaid matters and the disparity in the manner of interpreting the exclusion of merchants from the habit of those Orders — so that the judges of the royal council of those Orders may henceforth judge uniformly and without divergence of opinion in this matter — he has decreed that the exclusion of said merchants from the habit of the Orders of Calatrava and Alcantara is to be understood according to the declaration of the stabilimentum of the fifth chapter of the first title of the Order of Santiago, namely: that those merchants who have kept an open shop of any kind of merchandise and have sold goods in it personally or through their agents — but not those who have invested their own money for profit in large sums at wholesale, as it is commonly called, and who have not themselves sold or caused to be sold at retail — are to be understood as excluded from the habit of those Orders without apostolic dispensation.
We, wishing that the decrees made by the said Philip King, as aforesaid, be inviolably observed by all to whom they apply, as far as we can with God, and desiring to assent to the wishes of the said Philip King, inclined to the supplications humbly presented to us in his name concerning this matter — by apostolic authority, by the tenor of the present letters, we approve and confirm the aforesaid decrees made by the said Philip King, and we add to them the strength of inviolable apostolic firmness; and all and each of the defects in law or in fact, if any have intervened therein in any way, we supply.
Given at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, October 14, 1622, in the second year of our pontificate.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XII, pp. 748–750. Gregory XV, Constitution LXXXII, Confirmatio decretorum a rege catholico latorum circa exclusionem mercatorum et aliorum ab habitu militiarum de Spatha, Calatrava et Alcantara, October 14, 1622. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note. This constitution belongs to the long tradition of limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”) statutes that took hold in the Spanish church and crown institutions from the mid-fifteenth century onward and were progressively extended to the military orders. The three orders — Santiago (founded 1170), Calatrava (1158), and Alcantara (1176) — were among the most prestigious institutions in the Spanish monarchy; membership conveyed nobility, land revenues, and social standing of the highest order. Their exclusion of those with Jewish, Moorish, or heretical ancestry — even converts to Christianity and their descendants — represented the thoroughgoing application of racial rather than purely religious criteria to social hierarchy.
The papal role here is confirmatory rather than initiatory. The limpieza statutes of the military orders had been apostolically confirmed and reconfirmed through the sixteenth century — most notably by Paul III and Julius III — and Gregory XV here confirms Philip IV’s administrative clarification of what precisely counts as “merchant” ancestry sufficient to trigger the exclusion. The mention of Hebrews sits alongside Moors and heretics in the list of disqualifying ancestries, and the document makes no distinction between those of unconverted Jewish descent and descendants of converted Jews (conversos): the exclusion runs to the fourth generation in any case.