Innocent II - On the Jews: Decree of 1199
We decree that no Christian shall use violence to compel the Jews to accept baptism. But if a Jew, of his own accord, because of a change in his faith, shall have taken refuge with Christians, after his wish has been made known, he may be made a Christian without any opposition. For anyone who has not of his own will sought Christian baptism cannot have the true Christian faith. No Christian shall do the Jews any personal injury, except in executing the judgements of a judge, or deprive them of their possessions, or change the rights and priveleges which they have been accustomed to have. During the celebration of their festivals, no one shall disturb them by beating them with clubs or by throwing stones at them. No one shall compel them to render any services except those which they have been accustomed to render. And to prevent the baseness and avarice of wicked men we forbid anyone to deface or damage their cemetaries or to extort money from them by threatening to exhume the bodies of their dead....What brought this up was my helping my youngest daughter with her history homework. Her class is studying the Crusades, and she informed me that her teacher had taught her that Pope Innocent had launched the Fourth Crusade at Constantinople in order to take gold and wealth back to Rome.
Utter rubbish. Innocent excommunicated the Crusaders who took part in the sack of Constantinople and Zara. From his letters, we know that Innocent forbade an attack on Constantinople:
None of you should therefore dare to assume that it is permissible for you to seize or to plunder the land of the Greeks, even though the latter may be disobedient to the Apostolic See, or on the grounds that the Emperor of Constantinople has deposed and even blinded his brother and usurped the imperial throne.I pointed out language from a book that rebutted that notion, and cautioned her that much of what she learns about the Catholic Church from her teachers will probably be derogatory misinformation.
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