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“Conversi” Revert: Voluntary and Forced Return to Judaism in the Early Fourteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kristine T. Utterback
Kristine T. Utterback
Affiliation:
Ms. Utterback is associate professor of history at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.
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Extract

Forced to choose between conversion and death, many medieval Jews chose to be baptized as Christians. While not all Jews in Western Europe faced such stark choices, during the fourteenth century pressure increased on the Jewish minority to join the Christian majority. Economic, social, and political barriers to Jews often made conversion a necessity or at least an advantage, exerting a degree of coercion even without brute force. Once baptized these new Christians, called conversi, were required to abandon their Jewish practices entirely. But what kind of life actually awaited these converts? In the abstract, the converts had clear options: they could either remain Christians or return to judaism. Reality would surely reveal a range of possibilities, however, as these conversi tried to live out their conversion or to reject it without running afoul of the authorities. While the dominant Christian culture undoubtedly exerted pressure to convert, Jews did not necessarily sit idly by while their people approached the baptismal font. Some conversi felt contrary pressure to take up Judaism again. In the most extreme cases, conversi who reverted to Judaism faced death as well. This paper examines forces exerted on Jewish converts to Christianity to return to Judaism, using examples from France and northern Spain in the first half of the fourteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 16 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1995

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References

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