Infidels and Jews: Clement VI’s attitude to persecution and toleration

Clement VI was a pope who appeared to face both ways. This impression is confirmed by the fact that some historians have hailed him as a humanist pope, if not the first humanist pope, whereas his conception of the Christian society and of papal sovereignty followed thoroughly traditional and authoritarian lines. A glance at his best known political sermon, that preached in 1346 to approve the future emperor Charles IV as king of the Romans, would suffice to show this. His attitude to infidels and Jews also appears paradoxical, for he persecuted the one and tolerated the other, and this despite the threat presented by both to the purity of the Faith. This is not to suggest that Clement was the only pope to exhibit this dichotomy, for it was a common enough one: it was just that his views on infidels and Jews were more extreme than those of others, and the contrast therefore more pointed.