This is Thomas’s letter to Margaret of Flanders, often known as his “Letter on the Treatment of the Jews.” The letter does, in fact, discuss how a ruler should deal with Jews living in a land during the 1200’s (although it touches on other issues, as well). I made this translation from the Leonine Edition, left Thomas’s sometimes turgid text alone as much as possible, and added only the biblical references he makes into the body of the text.

The letter was likely written in 1271, not to the “Duchess of Brabant” (as many historians, and even the Leonine editors thought), but rather to Margaret, Countess of Flanders, who had a great interest in the Dominican Order, and likely knew Thomas directly. Leonard Boyle’s research into this, trusting Tolomeo of Lucca (why does everybody distrust Tolomeo?), provided good reason for making this “scholarly change,” in his “Thomas Aquinas and the Duchess of Brabant,” in Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Louvain: FIDEM, 2000), pp. 105-121. Torrell (Saint Thomas Aquinas, [Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996] p. 355) accepts Boyle’s research.

My translation therefore alters one word in the Leonine Edition’s text; in the eighth response, where the Leonine Edition had the Latin word potentiam I read (with Boyle and the MSS) provinciam, such that the sentence is: “Finally you ask whether it is good that Jews throughout your province are compelled…”

Happy reading. Please don’t hesitate to send any corrections to me.