Papal legates, Jews and the Fourth Lateran Council in England, 1215–1221

benedict wiedemannThe visits of Pandulf Verracclo and Guala Bicchieri to England may be among the best-known papal legations in medieval English history.Pandulf negotiated England's new status as a papal fief in 1213, and he and Cardinal Guala Bicchieri then supported King John, and his son Henry III, against the rebellious barons and their French and Scottish allies during the Magna Carta wars.Pandulf was even mentioned in the 1215 Magna Carta, and Guala reissued the Magna Carta in 1216 under his own seal.Pandulf's and Guala's few comments on England's Jewish community have consequently attracted some attention, especially since it was during their legations that England became, for example, the first realm to enforce the wearing of the tabula, a distinctive badge to identify Jews by their attire.This article looks at the legations of Pandulf and Cardinal Guala, their attitude to England's Jewish community, and the influence of the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council that dealt with Jewish matters.In so doing, I intend to illustrate the attitudes and approaches of Pandulf, Guala, and the English government to Jews in the early thirteenth century, but also to throw light on how the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (Lateran IV) were received, applied, and interpreted in the years immediately following their promulgation.There are two parts to this article: the promulgation and enforcement of the tabula in 1218; and Pandulf's comments in a letter on the "immoderate usury" supposedly being charged by Isaac of Norwich in 1219.The first of these offers a reinterpretation of how a canon of Lateran IV might be adapted "on the ground"; the second provides early evidence for the reception and use of the text of the decrees of Lateran IV in the provinces.benedict wiedemann with Innocent since 1208 over his refusal to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury.This dispute had led England to be placed under an interdict -the banning of all church services -and John to be excommunicated by the pope.John rejected Pandulf's embassy, but not without a stormy altercation with Pandulf, according to the Annals of Burton. 1 In 1213 Pandulf returned, again as nuncio, and this time successfully arranged the end of the interdict, the acceptance of Langton as archbishop, and even John's recognition that he ruled England and Ireland as fiefs of the papacy. 2 Now that papacy and monarchy were realigned -indeed closer than ever since England was a papal fief -Pandulf and a papal cardinal-legate, Nicholas de Romanis, cardinal bishop of Tusculum, were active in their support for John against his baronial and ecclesiastical enemies.Pandulf's support was rewarded with the bishopric of Norwich, to which he was elected in 1215.He went back to Rome in late 1215 and did not return to England until 1218.In 1216, Innocent III sent a new legate, Guala Bicchieri, cardinal priest of S. Martino, to England, to support