IN the thirteenth century the Church reached the peak of its power throughout Western Europe. Its policy towards its opponents became more aggressive; its war against heretics and deviants was total. Its efforts to impose unity and uniformity on its own members were generally successful, thanks to capable popes and enthusiastic friars. The continued survival of Jews in the midst of Christendom was no longer tolerated by zealous friars whose missionary spirit was reinvigorated in the newly formed orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans. The latter particularly developed new methods and adopted novel attitudes in their missionary activities. They studied Arabic and Hebrew and changed their polemical tactics and strategy. The conversion of the Jews to Christianity was a major Christian aim, with which, in theory, the kings and princes of Christian Europe, including those of the Crown of Aragon, were fully identified. Reality, however, was far more complex. Bitter rivalry existed between the secular and the religious authorities. Kings and princes were alarmed by the rise of papal power and suspicious of the pope's political designs.

CHURCH POWER AND JEWISH SPLENDOUR

No Christian king could openly oppose the Church programme to bring the Jews to the baptismal font. Many among them were, however, determined not to lose their control over the Jews, whom they considered part of their patrimony. While Christian influence penetrated deep in all sections of society and was eventually to play a leading role in shaping the Jewish policy of the kings, the Aragonese monarchs, who like many European leaders derived political and financial benefits from the Jews, were unwilling to cooperate with any group or institution whose policy would lead to financial losses for the royal treasury. The Aragonese kings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw no contradiction between their Christian loyalty and their protection of Jewish life and property.

The renewed Christian missionary activities of the thirteenth century coincided with the Reconquista and the overseas expansion in the Mediterranean of the Crown of Aragon. The great successes of the Reconquista, the holy wars waged by the Christians against the Muslims, raised the crusading spirit, the hopes and enthusiasm of the missionary forces operating in the territories of the Crown of Aragon. The period was also the greatest in the history of the Jews of the Crown.