The following document is drawn from the Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, which covers the final years of the pontificate of Clement XII (1734–1740). After a comprehensive search of all 86,749 lines for every term associated with Jews — including Iudaei, Hebraei, synagoga, neophyti, catechumeni, ghetto, strazzaria, iudaismi, iudaicis, and all related vocabulary — the volume contains no primary legislation directed at Jews. As with Vol. XXIII, the only substantive Jewish-related content appears in blood-purity statutes embedded within religious order constitutions confirmed en bloc by Clement XII.
Three items of varying significance emerge: blood-purity provisions in the confirmed constitutions of the Discalced Trinitarians of Spain (Constitution CCXXVII, August 2, 1738), which establish the most expansive hereditary exclusion encountered in this series thus far; a mild neophyte restriction in the constitutions of the Maronite Monks of Syria (Constitution CCLXXII, 1740); and a single theological passage in the canonization bull of John Francis Regis SJ (Constitution CCIV, 1737) deploying the figure of the “carnal Jew” as a rhetorical foil. None of these constitutes primary anti-Jewish legislation.
Across Vols. XXIII and XXIV together, covering the entire pontificate of Clement XII (1730–1740), there is not a single papal constitution primarily directed at Jews. This ten-year legislative silence on the subject stands in marked contrast to the active legislative production of Benedict XIII (Vol. XXII), and confirms that by the 1730s the framework governing Jewish life in the Papal States was operating on institutional autopilot, requiring no fresh papal intervention.
I. Blood-Purity Statutes in the Constitutions of the Discalced Trinitarians of Spain — Constitution CCXXVII (August 2, 1738)
Constitution CCXXVII. Clement XII, year IX. Confirmatio constitutionum fratrum Discalceatorum Ordinis SS. Trinitatis Redemptionis Captivorum Congregationis Hispaniae — Confirmation of the constitutions of the Discalced Friars of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, Congregation of Spain. Dated at Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, under the Fisherman’s Ring, August 2, 1738, pontificate year IX. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, pp. 395–485.
Background
The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (Trinitarians) was founded in the late twelfth century by John of Matha and Felix of Valois with a specific mission: ransoming Christians held captive by Muslims in North Africa. Its spirituality was built around the paradox of voluntary self-offering for the sake of the enslaved — friars were to devote a third of their revenues to ransom, and in theory could offer themselves as exchange hostages. The Discalced (Excalced) branch, established in Spain in the seventeenth century as part of the broader wave of mendicant reform, represented an intensification of this original ideal, combining the ransoming mission with stricter poverty observance.
By the early eighteenth century, the Discalced Trinitarians of Spain had accumulated several decades of constitutions, decrees of general chapters, and rulings of the general definitorio that had never been gathered into a single confirmed text. In 1738, the order’s procurator general petitioned Clement XII to confirm a compiled and corrected version of all their constitutions under one apostolic diploma. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars reviewed and approved the compilation; Clement XII confirmed it on August 2, 1738, in the ninth year of his pontificate.
Blood-purity provisions: the absolute bar
The blood-purity statutes in the confirmed Trinitarian constitutions are the most expansive encountered in this series. Unlike the Hieronymite constitutions (Vol. XXIII, Constitution XI), which set a four-degree limit on the exclusion of those of Jewish ancestry, the Trinitarian constitutions impose an absolute bar with no degree limit at all. The text provides, in §2 of the chapter on the novitiate:
“Also not admitted is a neophytus, nor anyone who has descended in a direct line in any degree whatsoever from Jews, heretics, Moors, or Moriscos, nor anyone whose predecessors, also in a direct line and in any degree whatsoever, were punished by the inquisitors of heretical depravity for the crimes of heresy, Judaism, or the Muhammadan sect. If anyone among the above-mentioned, concealing some of the aforementioned impediments, makes profession with us, as soon as such impediment is detected he is to be expelled, because the religious order does not grant its consent to such a profession.”
The phrase “in any degree whatsoever” (in quolibet gradu) is crucial. It means that a single Jewish ancestor anywhere in the family tree, however remote, constitutes an absolute bar to entry. There is no grandfather clause, no dispensation procedure for distant ancestry, no provision for those whose ancestors converted many generations ago. The religious order simply does not consent to the profession, rendering it null and void ipso facto if made under concealment.
The same absolute bar extends to those whose ancestors were condemned by the Inquisition for Judaism. This adds a documentary dimension: Inquisition records naming an ancestor as a judaizante (one who Judaized), however remotely in time, attach a perpetual disability to all descendants.
The investigative interrogatory
Particularly notable is the constitutions’ formal investigative procedure for implementing this bar. Before any candidate is admitted, a clandestine investigation is conducted into “the office and qualities of the parents and ascendants of the candidate.” If that preliminary inquiry reveals nothing disqualifying, a formal judicial investigation follows, with witnesses examined under oath. The constitutions provide a specific interrogatory — a numbered list of questions to be put to witnesses — of which the third and fourth explicitly concern Jewish ancestry:
“Third: Whether he knows that the said candidate descends from Jews, heretics, Moors, or Moriscos, or from those penanced by the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition for the crime of heresy, Judaism, or the Muhammadan sect, or whether he has heard that any of the parents or ascendants of the candidate have any of the aforesaid defects.
“Fourth: Whether he knows the candidate to be a neophytus, or one recently converted to the faith, or whether he has heard anything concerning this.”
The witness examination takes an oath that the witness cannot excuse himself from perjury by claiming the cause is religious and pious. Witnesses are specifically warned that even a meritorious motivation does not justify false testimony — an acknowledgment that witnesses might be tempted to conceal a candidate’s ancestry out of genuine goodwill.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, pp. 469–478. Clement XII, Constitution CCXXVII, August 2, 1738. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note: the Trinitarian statutes in comparative perspective. The contrast between the Trinitarian constitutions and the Hieronymite constitutions confirmed in Vol. XXIII is instructive. The Hieronymites, a purely contemplative and scholarly Iberian order, imposed a four-degree limit — a restriction that was already comprehensive but at least theoretically bounded. The Trinitarians, a ransoming order whose entire mission involved contact with the Islamic world and the redemption of captives from Muslim captivity, imposed an unlimited hereditary bar. The logic may have been partly mission-related: friars traveling to North Africa to negotiate ransoms needed to be beyond any suspicion of sympathy with Islam or Judaism. The absolute bar also reflects the Trinitarian order’s Spanish identity, operating in a religious culture shaped by the most extreme expressions of limpieza de sangre ideology.
The interrogatory procedure reveals how seriously these statutes were taken in practice. The clandestine preliminary inquiry followed by a formal judicial investigation with sworn witnesses, specific questions, and warnings against perjury suggests an apparatus that genuinely expected to uncover disqualifying ancestry and considered the stakes high enough to warrant elaborate evidentiary procedure. The instruction that the preliminary inquiry be conducted “in every possible secrecy” (omni possibili sigillo) reflects awareness that disclosure of the investigation could harm both the candidate and his family if the result was negative.
As noted in connection with the Hieronymite statutes in Vol. XXIII, Clement XII’s confirmation of these provisions does not represent an independent papal judgment about limpieza de sangre — he is confirming the Trinitarian constitutions as a whole. The absence of any papal commentary on the blood-purity provisions in the confirming document’s preamble or body suggests Clement XII did not consider them remarkable or requiring special authorization. By 1738, such statutes were so standard a feature of Spanish religious order constitutions that they required no elaboration.
The index of Vol. XXIV, under the entry for the Discalced Trinitarians, lists the content of their constitutions by topic without separately indexing the blood-purity provisions — they appear, if at all, within the general rubric “de novitiatibus, receptione, educatione et approbatione novitiorum” (on novitiates, reception, education, and approval of novices). The editorial decision not to index them separately (unlike, for instance, the entry for “Hebraei” as a separate category in earlier volumes of this and other bullaria) reflects the same normalization of limpieza de sangre within the genre of religious order constitution confirmation.
II. Neophyte Restriction in the Constitutions of the Maronite Monks of Syria — Constitution CCLXXII (1740)
Constitution CCLXXII. Clement XII. Confirmatio regulae et constitutionum monachorum Maronitarum Ordinis sancti Antonii abbatis Congregationis sancti Isaiae in Syria — Confirmation of the rule and constitutions of the Maronite monks of the Order of St. Anthony Abbot, Congregation of St. Isaiah in Syria. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, pp. 603 ff.
Background and provision
The Congregation of St. Isaiah was a Maronite monastic congregation of Syria, distinct from the more prominent Congregation of Mount Lebanon (confirmed separately by Clement XII). Their constitutions, modeled on those already approved for the Mount Lebanon congregation, were confirmed by Clement XII in 1740.
Among the novitiate requirements, Part II, Cap. I, §VI of the constitutions provides: “The novice must be born of Christian parents and be orthodox; therefore, if he himself or either of his parents is not Christian, or has denied the Christian faith, or a neophytus accessed it, or has passed from the Catholic faith to a sect of heretics, without the permission of the general congregation he is received by no one. Whoever is born of heretical or schismatic parents is not to be received by the abbot of the monastery except with the permission of the abbot general.”
This provision is categorically different from the Spanish limpieza de sangre statutes. It does not mention Jews or Judaism by name. It does not establish a hereditary bar running through generations of ancestry. Its concern is the immediate family circle (the candidate, his parents) and the sincerity of their Christian faith — a practical concern in the context of Syrian Christianity, where the boundaries between Christian communities, Islam, and various heterodox movements were fluid and where conversion and reconversion were living realities rather than historical memories.
The term neophytus here means “one newly come to the faith” — a recent convert — and the concern is the reliability of that conversion rather than any notion of hereditary taint. A candidate whose parent was a recent convert requires the permission of the general congregation not because that parent’s ancestry is suspect in perpetuity, but because the depth and stability of the family’s commitment to Christianity has not yet been demonstrated over time. The provision is prudential rather than genealogical.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, pp. 607–608. Clement XII, Constitution CCLXXII, 1740. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note. The Maronite Church’s situation in eighteenth-century Syria illustrates the extent to which the category of “neophyte” carried entirely different meanings in different geographic and cultural contexts. In Italy and Spain, a neophytus was typically a former Jew or Muslim who had converted to Christianity — the term was used almost synonymously with converso and carried the stigma of the hereditary blood-purity discourse. In Syria, a neophytus might be a former Muslim, a former Druze, a convert from another Christian community, or someone returning to Maronite Christianity after a period of apostasy. The practical concern was community stability, not genealogical purity.
III. The “Carnal Jew” in the Canonization of John Francis Regis SJ — Constitution CCIV (1737)
Constitution CCIV. Clement XII, year VIII. Beatus Ioannes Franciscus Regis, Societatis Iesu presbyter, Sanctorum Confessorum canoni adscribitur — The Blessed John Francis Regis, Priest of the Society of Jesus, Is Enrolled in the Canon of Holy Confessors. Dated 1737. Source: Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, pp. 245–265.
The passage
The preamble to the canonization bull of John Francis Regis (1597–1640), a Jesuit missionary who worked among the rural poor of southern France, opens with an extended meditative passage on the “high mountain of sanctity” to which the saints ascend. The passage adapts a traditional Christian typological reading of Moses on Sinai: Christians who have been baptized and purified through penance may ascend toward the divine presence; those who remain outside the new covenant may not. The passage includes:
“Let not the carnal Jew dare to approach this place; let him remain within the boundaries and enclosures of the legal precepts, and, standing far off at the base of the mountain, let him gaze with equal wonder and terror upon the smoke, darkness, fire, lightning, thunder, the sound and blast of trumpets, the glory of the Lord — that is, the great works of his grace and the prodigies of holiness. Away from here every wild beast and unclean animal, lest it defile the holiness of the place with blood or contaminate it with impurity. Outside are the dogs, and sorcerers, and the impure, and murderers, and those who serve idols, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
This passage then pivots to the positive: those who have been reborn in baptism and purified through penance, clothed in white garments, may approach. The rhetorical movement is from exclusion to inclusion — the saint whose canonization is being celebrated has ascended this mountain, and the passage frames his holiness by contrast with those who cannot or will not make the ascent.
Source. Bullarium Romanum, Taurinensis Edition, Vol. XXIV, p. 247. Clement XII, Constitution CCIV, 1737. Translated from the Latin.
Historical note: the “carnal Jew” as theological figure. The figure of the “iudaeus carnalis” (carnal Jew) is a standard element of patristic and medieval Christian exegesis, deriving primarily from Augustine’s distinction between the fleshly or literal reading of Scripture (associated with Jews) and the spiritual or allegorical reading (associated with Christians). In this tradition, the “carnal Jew” is not primarily an ethnic or social designation but a theological type — the one who cannot or will not move from the letter to the spirit, from the old covenant to the new, from the base of the mountain to its summit.
By the eighteenth century, this figure had become a purely conventional element in Catholic hagiographic and theological preambles, requiring no particular anti-Jewish animus or engagement with the actual situation of Jews. It is worth noting that the passage pairs the “carnal Jew” with “every wild beast and unclean animal” and then cites Revelation’s catalogue of those excluded from the holy city (dogs, sorcerers, the impure, murderers, idol-worshippers, liars). The rhetorical effect is one of escalating exclusion rather than specific anti-Jewish polemic. The intended audience of this canonization bull was not Jews but Catholics; the “carnal Jew” functions as a mirror image of the saint, not as a description of actual Jewish persons.
Nevertheless, the casual deployment of this figure in a solemn papal document — placed in the mouth of the pope himself, not merely cited from patristic sources — is a reminder that anti-Jewish theological rhetoric remained entirely normalized in official Catholic language throughout this period, functioning as conventional preamble-decoration rather than considered theological statement.