Free Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll

Jewish culture in Iberia thrives. Saadyah ben Joseph affirms the compatibility of religion and philosophy. What might be considered the first university is begun in Córdoba in a period of convivencia among Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
    1054 The Eastern Schism, the split between the Byzantine Church and the Latin Church, becomes formal.
    c. 1070 Pons Vitae, a Neo-Platonic portrayal of the cosmos by the Iberian Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol, gains wide readership in Europe among Christian scholars who do not know the author's identity.
    1076 Emperor Henry IV prostrates himself in the snow at Canossa before Pope Gregory VII.
    1096 With the beginning of the First Crusade, the Church defines violence as a sacred act. Crusaders attack Jewish communities in the Rhineland. Many Jews choose to die rather than convert.
    c. 1098 Anselm completes Cur Deus Homo, asserting that God became man in order to suffer and die on the cross.
    1119 Pope Callixtus II issues the papal bull Sicut Judaeis in defense of Jews; it will be reissued by more than twenty popes in the following four centuries.
    1130 Abelard rebuts Anselm, insisting that Christ came to show humans how to live, not to submit to a brutal death willed by a sadistic Father.
    1141 Bernard of Clairvaux denounces Abelard at the Council of Sens and has him condemned as a heretic. A few years later, Bernard orders crusaders not to attack Jews, but also reiterates the idea that their degradation serves God's purposes.
    c. 1144 Jews are accused of ritual murder of a Christian child in England, a "blood libel" that will be endlessly repeated.
    1159 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimón) leaves Iberia for North Africa during a period of Islamic repression signaling the end of convivencia. His work as a philosopher and physician contributes to an intellectual revival in Europe.
    1184 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa convenes the Great Diet of Mainz, to replicate Constantine's unifying achievement at Nicaea. He is the first to call himself Holy Roman Emperor.
    1215 Pope Innocent III declares the Magna Carta null and void. In the same year, he convenes the Fourth Lateran Council, which decrees "Outside the Church there is no salvation." It also introduces laws to denigrate and isolate Jews, the ancestors of the yellow star.
    1231 Pope Gregory IX issues Excommunicamtis, empowering Dominican and Franciscan courts, the beginning of the Inquisition.
    1242 King James I of Aragon forcibly requires Jews to listen to convert makers' sermons. Jews are herded into churches; friars are empowered to enter synagogues uninvited. Christians blame Jewish recalcitrance on the secrets of the Talmud. King Louis IX of France orders the Talmud burned in Paris.
    c. 1160 The Dominican Thomas Aquinas publishes Summa Contra Gentiles, a summary of Christian faith as it should be presented to those who reject it, especially Jews. Now Jews who refuse to convert are regarded as deliberately defiant, instead of "invincibly ignorant."
    1263 King James I of Aragon requires Nachmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nachman) to debate Dominicans in Barcelona. Nachmanides refutes Christian claims. The Church moves in earnest to convert Jews.
    c. 1280 Moses de Leon composes the Zohar. It will form the heart of Kabbalah, which will transform Jewish spirituality, underwrite Jewish resistance to the new conversionism, and influence the mind of Europe.
    1302 Pope Boniface VIII promulgates Unam Sanctam, claiming ultimate papal authority.
    1348 The Black Plague that devastates Europe brings with it a new level of Christian violence against Jews, with perhaps three hundred communities wiped out. A rumor is circulated that the plague originated in a Jewish well-poisoning scheme in Toledo. Pope Clement VI defends the Jews against the charge.
    1391 A massacre of Jews in Seville, and then pogroms elsewhere in Iberia, result in unprecedented rates of Jewish conversion, which in turn lead Christians to suspect all conversos.
    1449 The Statute of