The following document is drawn from the Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, which covers the complete pontificate of Innocent XI (1676–1689). After a comprehensive search of all 118,000 lines for every term associated with Jews — including Iudaei, Hebraei, synagoga, ghetto, neophyti, iudaizantes, iudaismus, conversi, Christiani Novi, limpieza de sangre, and all related vocabulary — the volume contains two documents of substantive importance.
The dominant material concerns the Portuguese Inquisition and its treatment of New Christians (Cristãos Novos) — baptized descendants of Jews accused of secretly continuing to practice Judaism. This is a complex multi-year conflict between the papacy and the Portuguese crown and Inquisition, beginning under Clement X and reaching its resolution under Innocent XI in 1681. It is represented by two documents: a preliminary brief from 1676 (Constitution VIII) and the comprehensive settlement constitution of 1681 (Constitution CVI). Together they constitute the most consequential papal intervention in the treatment of Jewish-origin populations in the entire Bullarium series to this point, and are translated in full below.
The second document (Constitution CXCV, 1688) is a confirmation of the new collected statutes of the Carthusian Order, which contains within its lay-brother liturgical regulations two incidental references: a daily intercession prayer listing “for the conversion of Jews and pagans,” and Good Friday rubrics specifying that the prostration (venia) normally made with each petition is omitted at the prayer for Jews — an ancient liturgical distinction reflecting the traditional formula Oremus pro perfidis Iudaeis. These are liturgical rubrics with no legislative significance for Jewish daily life and are treated briefly at the end.
I. Pope Innocent XI — Preliminary Brief: Committitur nuncio Portugalliae moderatio inhibitionis factae inquisitoribus dicti regni Portugalliae in causa recursus Novorum Christianorum: The Nuncio to Portugal is Commissioned to Moderate the Inhibition of the Inquisitors of That Kingdom in the Case of the Appeal of the New Christians (November 27, 1676)
Constitution VIII. Innocent XI, year I. Dated at Rome, at St. Peter’s, under the Fisherman’s Ring, November 27, 1676, pontificate year I. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 20–21. This document is a brief to Marcello, Archbishop of Chalcedon, papal nuncio to Portugal, and forms the opening act of the conflict resolved by Constitution CVI below.
Summary and translation
Innocent XI, to his venerable brother Marcello, Archbishop of Chalcedon, our nuncio to the kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves.
Venerable brother, greetings and apostolic blessing.
§1. Formerly, since our beloved sons the New Christians, as they are called, whether descended from Hebrews, dwelling in the kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves, who were being detained in the prisons of the tribunals of the Inquisition against heretical and apostate depravity — established in the cities of Lisbon, Évora, and Coimbra with apostolic authority, on account of crimes imputed to them pertaining to the office of said Inquisition, for which they were respectively accused or investigated — had had recourse to our predecessor Pope Clement X of happy memory and to this Holy See, complaining that the General Inquisitor and the other inquisitors were proceeding with excessive haste, which is wont to be the enemy of justice, and without observing the requirements prescribed by the equity of the sacred canons and apostolic constitutions, toward a new act of faith against them, or toward their condemnation, or toward compelling them to public abjuration, and in default thereof toward the infliction and execution of various penalties, to the subversion of justice and the ruin and destruction of themselves and their whole nation…
[The brief then summarizes the history of Clement X’s intervention: he admitted the appeal, avoked the cases to Rome, committed them to the Congregation of Cardinals General Inquisitors, and issued an inhibition forbidding the Portuguese inquisitors from proceeding to capital punishment, life-imprisonment in the galleys, or confiscation of property. The inquisitors, after initial compliance, then refused to transmit the case-files as ordered. Clement X suspended their authority.]
§2. Now that Clement X has departed this life and we have appointed as General Inquisitor the Archbishop of Braga Veríssimo, we find the cases still pending before the Congregation and the suspension still in effect. We therefore commission you, by our apostolic authority, to moderate the inhibition in such a way that the said General Inquisitor and the other inquisitors may proceed — following the order of law and the rules of justice and equity — against the aforesaid imprisoned New Christians, except for the penalties of capital punishment, life-imprisonment in the galleys, and confiscation of property, from which we altogether wish them to abstain until otherwise disposed by us and the Apostolic See.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 20–21. Innocent XI, Constitution VIII, Committitur nuncio Portugalliae moderatio inhibitionis…, November 27, 1676.
II. Pope Innocent XI — Redditur inquisitoribus regnorum Portugalliae et Algarbiorum auctoritas, quam amiserant non parendo mandatis apostolicis, et leges nonnullae conduntur in causis fidei servandae: Authority Is Restored to the Inquisitors of the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves, Which They Had Lost by Not Obeying Apostolic Commands, and Certain Laws Are Enacted for the Conduct of Cases of Faith (August 22, 1681)
Constitution CVI. Innocent XI, year V. Dated at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, August 22, 1681, pontificate year V. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 403–413. This is the principal document of the volume on the Jewish question and one of the most significant in the entire Bullarium series.
Background: the Portuguese Inquisition, New Christians, and the appeal to Rome
The historical context requires some explanation. The Portuguese Inquisition, established by papal authority in 1536, had jurisdiction over baptized Christians accused of apostasy — in practice, primarily over Cristãos Novos (New Christians): descendants of the large population of Portuguese Jews forcibly converted en masse in 1497, when King Manuel I ordered all Jews in Portugal to be baptized, expelling those who refused. Unlike Spain, where voluntary conversion (however coerced) had proceeded over generations, Portugal’s conversion was abrupt, total, and imposed on an entire community within weeks. The resulting converso population was enormous — estimates suggest up to a fifth or quarter of the Portuguese population had Jewish origins. Many maintained elements of Jewish practice in private, forming what historians now call a crypto-Jewish or Marrano community.
The Portuguese Inquisition from 1536 onward investigated, tried, and executed hundreds of New Christians annually for the crime of judaísmo — secret observance of Jewish practices after baptism. By the seventeenth century, New Christians had become a wealthy mercantile class with international connections, and the Inquisition’s proceedings against them — which included automatic confiscation of property upon arrest — had become not only a religious but an economic instrument. New Christians repeatedly appealed to Rome for protection, arguing that the Portuguese Inquisition’s procedures violated canon law: evidence was extracted through torture; witnesses testified anonymously with no possibility of cross-examination; descent from Jews was used as presumptive evidence of Judaizing; confessions to past Jewish practices were used to condemn as “negatives” (relapsed deniers) those who could not produce new witnesses to recantation.
Under Clement X a major confrontation erupted. New Christians imprisoned in Lisbon, Évora, and Coimbra appealed their cases to Rome. Clement X admitted the appeal, demanded the case-files, and when the General Inquisitor refused to transmit them, suspended the entire Portuguese Inquisition — an extraordinary step. The suspension lapsed into a procedural standoff that Innocent XI inherited on his election in 1676.
The 1681 settlement: structure and significance
Constitution CVI resolves the standoff. Its structure is in two parts: a narrative §§1–4 reviewing the full history of the conflict and formally restoring the Portuguese Inquisition’s suspended authority; and a normative §5 enacting twenty procedural rules that the Inquisition must henceforth observe in all cases of faith, particularly those against New Christians. The penalty for non-compliance is automatic suspension of the General Inquisitor from office and excommunication of all other inquisitors, reserved to the pope.
Preamble
Innocent XI, to perpetual memory of the matter.
The Roman Pontiff, from the duty of the apostolic service entrusted to him by God, ceaselessly watchful for the advantage of all the faithful, strives with all his strength and with every effort of his mind above all for this: that the purity of the Christian religion and the integrity of the Catholic faith be preserved unimpaired; that apostatic and heretical depravity be healed everywhere, as far as divine goodness shall permit, by appropriate means, or at least be restrained by apostolic force, and, lest it spread further to the destruction of souls redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, be extirpated at the root. And that these things be done rightly and in good order, and that no one be left with just cause for complaint, he strives — by wholesome laws drawn from the font of apostolic wisdom and equity — to resolve controversies that have arisen, to consult the dignity of tribunals piously and prudently established by the Apostolic See, to temper the rigor of law with clemency, and to hand down a certain rule of conduct suited to Christian charity.
Narrative: the history of the conflict (§§1–3)
§1. [Recounts the full history from the New Christians’ original appeal to Clement X, through Clement’s inhibition of the inquisitors, through the inquisitors’ refusal to transmit the case-files, through their suspension by Clement, through Innocent XI’s own additional demands, through the inquisitors’ continued non-compliance, through Innocent XI’s suspension of all their authority and declaration that all their subsequent acts were null and void.]
§2. [Notes that despite the suspended authority having been exercised nulliter et de facto by some inquisitors after the suspension’s declaration, causing further censures to be incurred.]
§3. Then, when at last two of the case-files that we had ordered consigned to the hands of our Nuncio Marcello, Archbishop of Chalcedon, were transmitted from Portugal to our orator the Archbishop of Braga and by our order delivered to the above-mentioned Congregation of Cardinals General Inquisitors, and examined and discussed by it — and sufficient knowledge and information having been obtained of those matters about which we desired to be informed — the same cardinals, after many meetings among themselves concerning the complaints and grievances of the aforesaid New Christians and those which they asserted were being inflicted on them, most diligently and accurately examined and discussed the said complaints and grievances and various writings submitted by the parties, and especially by our beloved son Jerónimo Suárez, one of the minor inquisitors of said kingdoms, who came to this holy City to defend the rights and procedures of the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition of those kingdoms and at present resides here. In the meantime, however, since the jurisdiction of that tribunal had ceased on account of the above suspension, and the local Ordinaries, to whom we had given during the suspension the faculty of proceeding in cases pertaining to the Office of the Inquisition, had not used that faculty on account of various impediments — from this a very grave harm or danger to Catholic piety in said kingdoms had arisen, and no less prejudice had resulted to the souls and bodies of those miserable persons detained in the prisons of said tribunal — which was also felt with distress by the General Inquisitor and the other inquisitors and their officials and ministers, who (as we are informed) are prepared to comply promptly with our and the Apostolic See’s commands in all things with filial and sincere obedience.
Resolution: authority restored, procedural laws enacted (§§4–5)
§4. Wherefore we, wishing paternally to provide — as far as is granted to us from on high — for the preservation of the Christian and Catholic religion, and for the good ordering and direction of said tribunal and its ministers and officials, as well as for the consolation of the aforesaid New Christians and the public benefit of all, having taken mature deliberation with the aforesaid Cardinals General Inquisitors and sought and heard their opinions, by our own motion and from our certain knowledge and mature deliberation, and from the fullness of apostolic power, hereby relax and lift the suspension from the office of General Inquisitor and the other respective offices and from every power of acting, proceeding, or otherwise interfering in cases pertaining in any way to the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal and the Algarves, imposed on the General Inquisitor Veríssimo and the other former inquisitors as aforesaid — so that henceforth they may freely and lawfully exercise their offices and enjoy the faculties attributed and competent to them in all things, as they were able to do before they incurred the said suspension (observing, however, the rules and ordinances written below). [Simultaneously revokes the authority granted to the local Ordinaries and fully restores the inquisitors in their former state, absolves them from all ecclesiastical censures, and dispenses them from any irregularity.]
§5. Furthermore, wishing to establish a permanent standard henceforth to be inviolably observed in cases of faith, and especially in those moved and whenever moved against New Christians, in the tribunal of the Inquisition against apostatic and heretical depravity established in the aforesaid kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves by apostolic authority, we by the same motion, knowledge, deliberation, and fullness of power, by the tenor of these presents, enact, ordain, decree, and command:
I. That henceforth confiscation shall never take place before sentence, whether declaratory or otherwise, nor shall the goods of the presumed defendant be alienated in the meantime for any reason whatsoever, except for the cause of maintenance; but only an inventory of all goods shall be made, with the intervention of a person connected to the person under investigation, and the said goods shall be consigned with due bond to the connected person or to another suitable person in the form of a deposit, from which maintenance shall be furnished to the whole family of the said person under investigation, and legitimate creditors shall be satisfied as law requires; and if in the making of the inventory goods or monies belonging to others are found, upon summary justification this shall at once be restored; after sentence, however, emphyteutic or fiduciary goods, or those otherwise encumbered, shall be restored to those to whom by law they belong, and these things having been accomplished, the fiscal authority shall exercise its right.
II. That no one shall proceed to the imprisonment of a person under investigation except upon prior legitimate indicia and as law requires, nor shall those imprisoned be held beyond necessity under any pretext whatsoever, but shall be expedited as quickly as possible, without waiting for the public act which they call the act of faith.
III. That in the oath which is administered to the advocate of defendants of the Holy Office, those words shall not be placed: that he will not act from conjecture, or other words importing the same. The said advocate of the Holy Office shall be able to speak with defendants without attendance, and a copy of the process shall be given to him with the names and circumstances identifying the witnesses suppressed. If the defendant requests another advocate, it shall be granted to him, provided he is of good repute, to whom likewise (upon oath to preserve secrecy) a copy of the process shall be given with what is to be suppressed suppressed as above; but he shall not be permitted to speak with defendants except in the presence of a person deputed by the inquisitors for this end and effect.
IV. Christians not having legal exceptions shall be admitted to depose in defense of defendants.
V. As to the proofs of a constrained negative, let them proceed according to the disposition of law and canonical sanctions.
VI. The guardian or curator who by law must be given shall in no way be the jailer, nor another official of the Holy Office, but another grave, faithful, and conscientious person shall be deputed.
VII. All suggestions, extortions, promises, and the like shall be altogether prohibited in the examinations of witnesses and in the constitutions of defendants; nor shall any proof of Judaism be able to be derived against a descendant from the descent of Hebrew blood alone; indeed not even from that descent alone shall any presumption sufficient for a judicial act arise.
VIII. If those imprisoned are not to be condemned, in no way shall they be compelled to mount the scaffold, and if they are found not culpable, their dispatch shall not be delayed, but they shall be released at once, without waiting for the public act which they call the act of faith.
IX. Nor shall New Christians be excluded from giving testimony against Old Christians from quality alone, saving legal exceptions, nor shall the oath of not deposing against Old Christians be exacted from them, and any statute or custom, if there be one, of punishing New Christians for having deposed against Old Christians shall be entirely abolished.
X. In those cases where the corpus delicti of a permanent fact can be established, no one shall be constituted among defendants unless it has been legitimately established.
XI. He shall not be held as having given a diminished confession who does not name the witness who deposed against him as a pure witness, however closely connected to him in any degree.
XII. One who has confessed in cases of apostasy from the faith, who did not name an accomplice connected to him in the first degree of the same crime, shall not be held as having given a diminished confession, unless the full and legitimate proof of said complicity, the dolous concealment of said accomplice, and the absence of any presumption of forgetfulness in the confessing defendant all concur cumulatively.
XIII. If a defendant who has confessed to having practiced Jewish ceremonies in observance of the Law of Moses at the time when he believed in it is not convicted by legal and qualified witnesses of having repeated the same Jewish ceremonies — which he denied in his new constitutions — he shall not be condemned to the ordinary penalty; and much less if those ceremonies were equivocal and indifferent.
XIV. Witnesses who are singular as to place and time, yet co-witnesses as to the specific determined heresy or apostasy from the faith, may be admitted to testify against those investigated for Judaism in the kingdom of Portugal according to its most ancient custom and from certain other circumstances concurring in that kingdom in favor of the faith — provided, however, that they are several in number and in quality considerable, qualified, trustworthy, legal, and such as law requires, and concurring with verisimilar conjectures, and with other circumstances and the quality of those against whom they depose carefully and diligently examined, testifying in such a way that they are presumed not to be speaking falsely. Singular witnesses deposing implausible and impossible things shall make no degree of proof.
XV. The repetition of witnesses shall be altogether necessary after the contestation of the suit with citation — that is, with the knowledge of the defendant — and with interrogatories to be given by the procurator of the defendant or to be supplied by the office; otherwise their depositions shall not be effective.
XVI. Witnesses who depose concerning remote indicia of extrajudicial confession of Judaism shall not prove to the effect of condemning a negative to the ordinary penalty. What proof said witnesses make as to other penalties or other effects, however, is remitted to the conscience and prudence of the ecclesiastical judge who fears God.
XVII. Confessions extorted against juridical form, or through suggestion, or through the promise of life and liberty, or which are general, or obscure, or repugnant to the age, sex, and understanding of the one confessing, shall not suffice against a negative for the ordinary penalty, and unless said confessions are legitimately supported from other sources, they shall make no proof.
XVIII. Those imprisoned shall be treated charitably, and prisons shall be made less rigorous and not so dark.
XIX. Those imprisoned in the Holy Office, whether having confessed or not, may be permitted spiritual books and the Office of the Blessed Virgin, or a breviary, in appropriate ways, and to the same imprisoned persons confessors and assistants in the article of death shall be given.
XX. As to the sacraments of the Eucharist and Extreme Unction, we remit this to the judgment and conscience of the judge as above.
§6. Commanding therefore in virtue of holy obedience the aforesaid General Inquisitor Veríssimo, and the present and whenever future General Inquisitors, and the other inquisitors present and whenever future of said kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves, and all their respective ministers and officials whomsoever, that they all and individually observe the above-written laws and ordinances inviolably and exactly in all things and throughout, and cause them to be observed by those to whom it pertains and shall pertain. Otherwise, the General Inquisitor shall know himself subject to the penalty of interdict from entry to the Church, and the other inquisitors and officials and ministers, to the penalty of major excommunication latae sententiae, respectively, to be incurred ipso facto without other declaration by those who in any way contravene, from which the benefit of relaxation or absolution can be obtained from no one except from us or the Roman Pontiff for the time being (unless constituted in the article of death).
Given at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, August 22, 1681, in the fifth year of our pontificate.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 403–413. Innocent XI, Constitution CVI, August 22, 1681. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note: the significance of Constitution CVI. This document is without close parallel in the Bullarium series. Earlier volumes contain documents protecting Jews and conversos from specific abuses — Paul III’s broad toleration grants, various privileges to individual communities — but Constitution CVI is the first document in this series that systematically regulates the procedural rights of a Jewish-origin population within an inquisitorial process, doing so with the specificity of a code of criminal procedure.
The twenty rules enacted in §5 address the most persistent abuses documented in converso appeals over the preceding century. Rules I and II address pre-trial detention and asset confiscation — the practices that most threatened New Christian economic survival, since arrest alone could destroy a merchant family even if acquittal followed. Rules III and IV address defense rights: the right to an advocate who can actually speak to the defendant and read the process; the right to call defense witnesses. Rule VII is the most radical: it categorically forbids inferring proof of Judaism from Hebrew descent alone, and explicitly states that even descent from Hebrews is not sufficient to raise a presumption adequate for judicial action. This directly attacks the foundation of the blood-purity ideology as it had penetrated inquisitorial practice: the assumption that Jewish ancestry created a standing suspicion of Judaizing requiring no further evidence.
Rule IX is equally striking: it abolishes any statute or custom excluding New Christians from giving testimony against Old Christians. The asymmetry — Old Christians could testify against New Christians but not vice versa — was one of the structural mechanisms that made New Christians permanently vulnerable, since they could accumulate accusations from enemies but could not retaliate through the same legal channel. Rule XIII directly addresses the “negative” procedure: the practice of condemning as relapsed those who, having once confessed to observing Jewish ceremonies, could not then produce witnesses to prove they had stopped. Given that the ceremonies were private domestic acts, such proof was systematically impossible to obtain — meaning any admission, however old or partial, could operate as a permanent sentence of death deferred only on the impossibility of defense. Rule XIII requires that a new witnessed conviction of resumed Jewish practice be proven before the death penalty could apply.
The political dimensions of this document are significant. Innocent XI issued it during a pontificate otherwise notable for its confrontation with Louis XIV of France over Gallicanism and for its organization of the Holy League against the Ottomans. His intervention in the Portuguese Inquisition cost him considerable political capital with the Portuguese crown, which viewed the Inquisition as a national institution and the New Christian population as economically useful but politically suspect. The fact that Innocent XI pressed the matter through five years of institutional defiance — suspending the entire Portuguese Inquisition, threatening its officers with excommunication, issuing multiple ultimata — is evidence of unusual determination.
The motivation is theologically clear from the document itself: Innocent XI frames the protection of New Christians entirely within the logic of pastoral care for baptized Christians. The New Christians are members of the Church by virtue of their baptism; the Inquisition exists to preserve the faith of the Church’s members; procedural injustice in Inquisition proceedings violates the Church’s own canon law and damages both the individuals and the institution. There is no rhetoric of tolerance toward Judaism as such; on the contrary, the document opens with the standard affirmation that apostasy from the faith must be rooted out. What is at stake, from the papacy’s perspective, is due process within a Christian judicial institution — not the rights of Jews as Jews.
Nevertheless, the practical effect of the twenty rules, particularly Rules VII, IX, and XIII, was substantial protection for a population defined by its Jewish ancestry. Rule VII’s categorical prohibition on treating Hebrew descent as evidence of Judaizing was, if enforced, a direct attack on the foundational presumption of the blood-purity system as it operated within the Inquisition. Rule IX’s abolition of Old/New Christian testimonial asymmetry was, if enforced, a structural equalization of their legal status. Whether the twenty rules were in practice observed is a historical question that the Bullarium alone cannot answer — subsequent volumes of the series will show whether further interventions were necessary.
III. Incidental liturgical references: Pope Innocent XI — Confirmatur nova collectio statutorum Ordinis Carthusiensis: Confirmation of the New Collection of the Statutes of the Carthusian Order, containing in the lay-brothers’ chapter liturgical rubrics mentioning Jews (July 20, 1688)
Constitution CXCV. Innocent XI, year XII. Dated at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, July 20, 1688, pontificate year XII. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 788–932. The Jewish-related passages are at pp. 885 and 888–889, within Chapter IX of the lay-brothers’ statutes.
The daily intercession prayer (p. 885)
Chapter IX of the statutes for Carthusian lay brothers (conversi) — not to be confused with conversos; the Carthusian conversi are professed lay brothers, not converts from Judaism — prescribes a daily morning prayer in the vernacular. The prayer includes intercessions for the following intentions, listed in order:
…for the state of our religion, for the state of the holy Roman Church and our lord the Pope, for the diocesan bishop and all other bishops and ecclesiastical persons, for the Roman Emperor or the proper king, and for all kings and Christian princes, for all benefactors, those commended, relatives and friends, for all tempted persons and those constituted in any tribulation of body and soul, for those existing in mortal sin, for the reduction of heretics and schismatics, for the conversion of Jews and pagans, for those at sea, pilgrims, and the sick, for the fruits of the earth and those who cultivate them, for the temperature of the air, for his own perseverance in the Order and the observance of the commandments of God and our religion, and for whatever else the divine inspiration may inflame and kindle in the spirit of the one praying.
The intercession pro conversione iudaeorum et paganorum is a standard element of Carthusian and many other religious orders’ liturgical prayer. It carries no legislative significance for Jewish life but reflects the theological framework within which the papacy and religious orders understood the relationship between the Church and Jews: Jews are a distinct category of non-Christian, alongside pagans, for whom conversion is the desired outcome. Their persistence in Judaism is understood as a condition from which they should be saved.
The Good Friday prostration rubric (pp. 888–889)
The statutes also prescribe the lay brothers’ observance of Good Friday. After None (the mid-afternoon office, delayed on that day), all are to gather in the church and say the Pater Noster once for the Church, once for the Pope, once for bishops and all holy orders, once for the Emperor or king, once for catechumens, once for all the afflicted and those constituted in dangers, once for heretics, once for Jews, once for pagans — nine times in all. And after each petition, excepting the eighth, which is for Jews, they make the prostration (veniam sumant). After the monks, barefoot, they are to adore the Cross…
The omission of the prostration for the Jews‘ prayer reflects an ancient liturgical distinction rooted in the traditional Good Friday prayer Oremus pro perfidis Iudaeis (“Let us pray for the perfidious Jews“). In the traditional Roman rite, the flectamus genua / levate (kneel / rise) that framed each Good Friday solemn prayer was deliberately omitted at the prayer for Jews. The original rationale was polemical: Jews allegedly mocked Christ by genuflecting before him during the Passion, and the Church therefore refused the gesture at the prayer for their conversion. This rubric — prescribing the same omission in a slightly different form — perpetuates that tradition into the Carthusian lay-brothers’ practice.
The term perfidis does not appear in this Carthusian text; the formula is simply pro iudaeis. The structural gesture of omission, however, enacts the same theological position: a deliberate liturgical distinction between the prayer for Jews and the prayer for all other categories, including heretics and pagans, who receive the prostration. This distinction had no practical legislative consequence for Jewish communities, but it encodes a theological status for Jews that is distinctive and lower even than that of heretics within the liturgical imagination of the Counter-Reformation church.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XIX, pp. 885, 888–889. Innocent XI, Constitution CXCV, July 20, 1688.