The following document is drawn from the Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XVIII, which covers the full pontificate of Clement X (1670–1676). After a comprehensive search of all 92,000 lines for every term associated with Jews — including Iudaei, Hebraei, synagoga, ghetto, neophyti, cathecumeni, iudaica caecitas, iudaica perfidia, conversi, sanguinis puritas, and all related vocabulary — the volume contains no standalone adversus Judaeos legislation and no document whose primary subject is the Jewish people.
Three passages touch on Jews in passing:
The first is in Constitution CLIV (Indictio universalis iubilaei anni sancti MDCLXXV), Clement X’s proclamation of the Holy Year of 1675, which describes the Christian jubilee as “wisely derived from the ancient divinely-transmitted discipline of the Hebrews” who observed the jubilee year every fiftieth year — a standard typological reference, positive in tone, presenting Hebrew practice as the prefiguration of the Christian institution. There is no adversarial content here.
The second is in Constitution CLXXVIII (Erectio hospitii pro noviter conversis ad fidem, 1675), which establishes a hospice in Rome for those who have converted to the Catholic faith. The converts in question are described as having “abjured perfidious heresy” — the document is concerned with Protestant and lapsed Catholic returnees, not specifically with Jews.
The third, translated below, is the only passage that bears substantively on Jews: a blood-purity statute embedded within the constitutions of the Discalced Trinitarian Order of Spain, confirmed by Clement X in Constitution CCIII (July 1, 1676). The statute, in Chapter XLII of those constitutions, categorically excludes from profession in the order anyone who can be shown to descend “in the direct line, in any degree, from Jews, heretics, Moors, or persons of Moorish origin” — and anyone whose ancestors were punished by the Inquisition for heresy, Judaism, or Islam.
Vol. XVIII is, by a wide margin, the volume in this series most barren of specifically Jewish-directed papal legislation. The contrast with the dense legislative activity of Vols. VI–IX (Paul III through Gregory XIII) is striking. Clement X issued no document targeting, protecting, restricting, taxing, or addressing Jews as such. The only trace of Jews in his entire pontificate’s legislative output — as recorded in this Bullarium — appears in the admissions standards of a Spanish religious order whose constitutions he was asked to ratify.
I. Pope Clement X — Confirmatio Constitutionum Congregationis Hispaniae Fratrum Discalceatorum Ordinis SS. Trinitatis Redemptionis Captivorum: Confirmation of the Constitutions of the Spanish Congregation of the Discalced Brothers of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, containing in Chapter XLII a Blood-Purity Statute Excluding Those Descended from Jews, Heretics, and Moors from Profession in the Order (July 1, 1676)
Constitution CCIII. Clement X, year VII. Dated at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, July 1, 1676, pontificate year VII. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XVIII, pp. 670–692. The blood-purity statute is in Chapter XLII of the incorporated constitutions (pp. 681–683).
Preamble and petition: the Discalced Trinitarians submit their revised constitutions for approval
Clement X, to perpetual memory of the matter.
The pastoral concern of the office by which we preside by divine appointment over the governance of the Catholic Church impels us, bearing paternal care for the religious congregations piously and holily established in God’s Church and continually striving to bring forth the abundant fruits of good works with the Lord’s aid, to provide as far as is granted to us from on high for their adornment and advantage, and especially for the promotion of the sacred studies of learning that vie with one another for God’s glory and the growth of religion.
§1. Our beloved son Diego de Jesús, procurator general of the Spanish Congregation of the Discalced Brothers of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, has lately set forth to us that the brothers of the said Congregation in their general chapters made certain constitutions for the happy and prosperous governance of the Congregation, which the general definitorum recently revised, augmented, and corrected, and caused to be sent to this Holy See so that they might be strengthened with our and the same See’s patronage.
§2. We therefore committed those constitutions, as presented to us, to certain prelates of the Roman Curia whose faith, prudence, and knowledge of the sacred canons are well known to us, to be examined. These, readily complying with our commands, maturely and diligently examined them, and — with certain things removed, certain things added — reported to us that the remainder could be confirmed.
§3–§4. [Standard clauses of absolution, and formal acceptance of the petition.]
§5. We therefore, by our own motion, from our certain knowledge and from the fullness of apostolic power, confirm and approve, and as far as is necessary renew, the said constitutions as revised, and decree them to be perpetually valid and effective.
Chapter XLII of the incorporated constitutions: On novitiates, the reception, education, and approval of novices
[Section 1, De personis non admittendis ad sanctum nostrum habitum — Concerning persons not to be admitted to our holy habit:]
§1.i. Those shall not be admitted to our habit who have a contagious illness; nor those who are or have been slaves; nor those who, clothed in secular dress, request our habit, if they have made profession (whether validly or invalidly) in any other religion or congregation of our Order, for example in our Calced Fathers, or likewise in the Discalced or Reformed of the same Order not subject to our jurisdiction; nor shall there be admitted a neophyte, nor one who has descended in the direct line (in any degree) from Jews, heretics, Moors, or persons of Moorish origin; nor any person whose predecessors in the direct line, and in any degree also, were punished by the inquisitors of heretical depravity for the crimes of heresy, or of Judaism, or of the Mohammedan sect.
If any of those mentioned in this constitution, concealing some one of the above-narrated impediments, shall have made profession with us, as soon as such impediment is discovered he shall be expelled, because the order does not furnish its consent to such a profession. Wherefore all shall be publicly warned before the community both before the reception of the habit and before profession, that if they have any of the impediments enumerated in this paragraph, the profession (even if it is made) is invalid and null, even if they have been in the order for many years. We admonish, however, that the above-mentioned expulsion of one who has made profession cannot proceed except within five years from the day of profession, and with the causes brought before his superior and the Ordinary, according to the prescription of the sacred Council of Trent, which by the opinion of the Sacred Congregation vindicates its place not only when the subject wishes to bring forward the causes of the nullity of his profession, but also when the superior wishes to expel him as one who has made profession invalidly.
[Section 3, De forma informationis pro nostrum habitum — Concerning the form of inquiry for our habit:]
§3.i. Before anyone is admitted to our holy habit, a religious designated by the father provincial shall, on the commission of the provincial, make a juridical and full inquiry concerning lineage, character, and life, according to the Bulls of the Supreme Pontiffs, receiving the oaths of witnesses, and then proceeding according to the following questionnaire.
§3.iv. Third: whether the witness knows that the said aspirant descends from Jews, heretics, Moors, and persons of Moorish origin, or from those penanced by the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition for the crime of heresy, or of Judaism, or of the Mohammedan sect, or whether he has heard that any of the parents or ascendants of the said aspirant has any of the aforesaid defects.
§3.v. Fourth: whether the witness knows the aspirant to be a neophyte, or newly converted to the faith, or has heard anything in this regard.
[The full questionnaire continues with questions about legitimacy of birth, freedom from slavery, freedom from matrimonial or betrothal bonds, freedom from contagious illness, freedom from debts, and prior religious profession.]
Given at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, July 1, 1676, in the seventh year of our pontificate.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XVIII, pp. 670–692. Clement X, Constitution CCIII, Confirmatio constitutionum Congregationis Hispaniae fratrum Discalceatorum Ordinis SS. Trinitatis Redemptionis Captivorum, July 1, 1676. Translated from the Latin. The blood-purity statute is at Chapter XLII, §1.i and §3.iv–v of the incorporated constitutions.
Historical note: the Trinitarian Order and its Spanish context. The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives — the Trinitarians — was founded in the late twelfth century with the specific mission of ransoming Christians held captive by Muslims in North Africa and the Ottoman world. The Discalced reform branch, founded in Spain in the late sixteenth century and given formal independence from the Calced Trinitarians by Urban VIII in 1637, was particularly active in the Iberian peninsula and its overseas territories. By the seventeenth century the Order had a substantial institutional presence in Spain, and like virtually every Spanish religious institution of the period, it had developed blood-purity (limpieza de sangre) requirements for admission.
Historical note: blood-purity statutes in the Church. The limpieza de sangre — “cleanness of blood” — movement in Spain emerged in the mid-fifteenth century as a way of distinguishing between “Old Christians” (those of unmixed Christian ancestry) and “New Christians” (conversos: descendants of Jews or Moors who had converted, often under duress). The first institutional blood-purity statute was adopted by the cathedral chapter of Toledo in 1449. Over the following century the practice spread to cathedral chapters, universities, military orders, and religious orders throughout Spain and its empire. The statutes barred conversos and their descendants — regardless of their own personal faith, regardless of how many generations had elapsed since the conversion — from holding office, entering institutions, or (in the case of religious orders) making profession.
The papacy’s relationship to blood-purity statutes was consistently ambivalent across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Several popes — including Sixtus IV (1478), Leo X, Paul III, and Paul IV — issued documents expressing discomfort with or opposition to the statutes, on the theological grounds that baptism effaced all distinctions of ancestry and that singling out conversos as permanently suspect was contrary to Christian unity. The Council of Trent did not address the statutes directly. In practice, however, the papacy routinely confirmed the constitutions of Spanish orders and chapters that contained them, as Clement X does here — treating the statutes as a matter of internal religious order governance rather than a doctrinal question requiring intervention.
The statute in Constitution CCIII is formulated in the standard Iberian pattern. It operates at three distinct levels. The first exclusion targets neophytes themselves — that is, recent converts from Judaism, Islam, or heresy. The second and more sweeping exclusion targets anyone “descended in the direct line, in any degree, from Jews, heretics, Moors, or persons of Moorish origin” — meaning that Jewish or Moorish ancestry anywhere in the paternal or maternal line, no matter how distant, constituted a permanent bar. The third exclusion targets anyone whose ancestors were “punished by the inquisitors of heretical depravity for the crimes of heresy, or of Judaism, or of the Mohammedan sect” — meaning that an Inquisition sentence against any ancestor, however remote, transmitted disqualification to all their descendants.
The phrase “in any degree” (in quolibet gradu) is the most radical element of the formulation. It means, in principle, that a person with a single Jewish ancestor fifteen generations back — in 1476, the year before the Spanish Inquisition was established — would be permanently barred from profession in the Discalced Trinitarian Order. This was the logical terminus of the blood-purity ideology: ancestry, not faith, as the defining criterion for membership in a Christian institution.
The questionnaire in §3 operationalizes the statute by institutionalizing neighborhood and community surveillance. Before any candidate for the habit could be admitted, a designated investigator was sent to the candidate’s home community to interview witnesses under oath about the family’s lineage going back multiple generations. This system of informaciones de limpieza — purity inquiries — was a standard feature of Spanish institutional life by the seventeenth century, generating a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the investigation and documentation of ancestry.
It is worth noting what the statute does not say. It does not mention any theological rationale — no claim that Jewish blood carries heretical inclinations, no scriptural warrant, no theological argument. By 1676 the blood-purity requirement was simply a procedural norm, stated flatly alongside other disqualifications (contagious illness, slavery, prior religious vows), with no more explanation than those others receive. The ideology had become so embedded in Iberian institutional culture that it required no justification.
Clement X’s confirmation of these constitutions — signed at Santa Maria Maggiore and registered in the Secretariat of Briefs — makes the blood-purity statute part of the formally approved internal law of the Discalced Trinitarian Congregation, with the full weight of apostolic authority behind it. This is not unusual: the same pattern can be found in the confirmations of dozens of other Spanish religious orders throughout this series. But it is worth marking that by 1676 the papacy had, through the routine mechanics of constitutional confirmation, become an institutional endorser of the principle that descent from Jews — in any degree, in perpetuity — was a bar to full participation in Christian religious life.