The popes' Jewish doctors, 492-1655 CE

Popes from the 5th-17th centuries were torn between two tendencies: to prohibit the practice of Jewish physicians among Christians or to use the services of these physicians whom they regarded as bearers of centuries-old Arabic and Jewish medical traditions. Many members of the Catholic Church's hierarchy transgressed canonical decrees (such as the prohibition of the Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 692, or the decision of the 1434 Ecumenical Council in Basle, forbidding the Christians to take medical service from a Jew) which they themselves or their predecessors had enacted. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)