Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque: Fifteen Centuries of The Catholic Church's teaching on The Jews summarized

As early as A.D. 598, Gregory the Great clearly laid

down that the Jews, while they were to be restrained

from presuming upon the toleration accorded to

them by the law, had a claim to be treated equitably

and justly. They were to be allowed to keep their

own festivals and religious practices, and their rights

of property, even in the case of their synagogues,

were to be respected (Greg. Mag. Regesta, M. G. H.,

II, 67 and 383).

In the later Middle Ages there may be traced

through a long series of pontificates the repeated

confirmations of the Bull, assignable probably in the

first instance to Pope Callixtus II (c. 1120) and

known as "Sicut Judæis". It was a sort of papal

charter of protection to the Jews and in its first

sentence are embodied certain words of one of

Gregory the Great's letters just referred to. "As

licence", says this document, "ought not to be

allowed to the Jews to presume in their synagogues

beyond what is permitted by the law so they ought

not to be interfered with in such things as are

allowed. We therefore, although they prefer to

continue in their hardness of heart rather than be

guided by the hidden meaning of the prophets to a

knowledge of the Christian faith, do nevertheless,

since they invoke our protection and aid, following

in the footsteps of our predecessors and out of the

mildness of Christian piety, extend to them the

shield of our protection." The document then lays

down;

that the Jews are not to be compelled by force to embrace Christianity, but are only to be baptized of their own free will;
that apart from a judicial sentence in a court of law no one is to injure them in life or limb or to take away their property or to interfere with such customary rights as they may have enjoyed in the places where they live;
that they are not to be attacked with sticks and stones on occasion of their festival celebrations, nor are they to be compelled to render any feudal services beyond such as are customary;
that their cemeteries in particular are not to violated. (See M. Stern, "Urkundliche Beiträge", n. 171.)
This charter reissued and confirmed as it was by some twenty or thirty pontiffs during a period of 400 years is certainly of much more weight as laying down the Church's view of the duty of toleration, as an abstract principle, than any persecuting edicts evoked by special circumstances or coloured by the prepossessions of the individual legislator.