Introduction

From Jewish history to papal history

Philipp Jaffé's first scholarly publication appeared in the journal „Der Orient. Berichte, Studien und Kritiken für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur“ (The Orient. reports, studies, and reviews for Jewish history and literature) in the issues November 1842 (Heft 46) and December 1483. The article with the title „Licht- und Schattenbilder aus der jüdischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter“ (light and shadow from the Jewish past and present. Charters on the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages) contains the editions of twenty charter texts with German translations.

Writing at the age of 24, Jaffé outlined his motivations for publishing these texts in the introduction as follows: „Charters dealing with the living conditions of the Jews are now all the more important (...), since the Jews themselves were not a sufficiently interesting topic for Christian authors in the Middle Ages (...). It is thus self-evident that it must be desirable and indeed indispensable for Jewish historians to have access to the few remaining charters.”

As a university student, however, Jaffé turned away from Jewish history and its sources to exclusively pursue Christian medieval history studies in the tradition of Leopold Ranke, inspired by the latter's courses on German medieval history. He published two historiographical books in in the style of Ranke’s „Jahrbücher des Deutschen Reichs“, before shifting to the fields of Latin philology and medieval palaeography, which were arguably his strongpoints.

Stimulated by Johann Friedrich Böhmer’s "Regesta Imperii", Philipp Jaffé undertook the mammoth task of compiling a corresponding work for papal charters. It was his university professor, Georg Heinrich Pertz, who drew his attention to this topic and arranged for an albeit scanty financing of the work. In 1851, Jaffé’s monumental „Regesta pontificum Romanorum“ was published, comprising 11.000 regesta - brief summaries - of papal charters from Late Antiquity to the 12^th century. The 32-year-old Jaffé was hailed for his achievement and even congratulated by Pope Pius IX.

At the same time, some colleagues voiced their dissatisfaction that this important work of church history had been done by a Jew, of all things! On February 10 1850, for example, Johann Friedrich Böhmer wrote a letter to Joseph Chmel complaining about the restrictive conditions of work in the Vatican, adding: „I have news from Berlin that Jaffé’s regesta of the Popes up to Innocence III, comprising 10.000 bullae and letters, is in the printing. That this scholarly merit should fall to a Jew!“ (in: Johann Friedrich Böhmer’s Briefe und kleinere Schriften II, 1868, p. 13). Pertz’s efforts to obtain a position for Jaffé in Rome so that he could continue his Regesta beyond the 12^th century were thus doomed to fail.