Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe. Paola Tartakoff

Honorius had not referred to circumcision).⁶¹ In 1225, in a missive addressed to the archbishop of Kalocsa in Hungary, Honorius had reported having heard that “some Christian peasants [in Hungary] were going over to the Saracens willingly and, pursuing their rite, they publicly declared themselves to be Saracens.”⁶² In letters that he dispatched on March 3, 1231, and August 12, 1233, to the archbishop of Esztergom and to King Andrew II of Hungary, respectively, Gregory reapplied some of this language to apostasy to Islam. He wrote of “many Christians who went over to the Saracens willingly, adopting their rite.”⁶³ The deployment of identical phrases to describe apostasy to Judaism and apostasy to Islam is a reminder that these documents reveal more about practices of document production in the papal chancery than about lived experience. Scribes typically drew phrases and passages from formularies, instead of composing missives from scratch. The deployment of identical phrases shows also, however, that churchmen deemed the phenomena of apostasy to Judaism and apostasy to Islam to be similar in essence and morally equivalent.

      Illustrating further that influential Christians conceived of apostasy to Judaism as fundamentally similar to apostasy to Islam and falling into heresy, in its section on Muslims, the Siete partidas prescribed the same consequences for “a Christian man or woman … who bec[ame] a Jew, Muslim, or heretic.” Regardless of the faith for which a Christian departed, if he or she remarried, his or her former spouse was to receive all of his or her property.⁶⁴ Similarly, in law 7 of its section on Jews, the Siete partidas prescribed the same punishments for apostates to Judaism and Christian heretics: “Where a Christian is so unfortunate as to become a Jew,” it stated, “we order that he shall be put to death just as if he had become a heretic, and we decree that his property shall be disposed of in the same way that we stated should be done with that of heretics.”⁶⁵ Promulgated by King James I of Aragon in 1240 and again, in expanded form, in 1261 (revised in 1271), the law code known as the Furs de Valencia (Forum of Valencia) prescribed the same penalty for apostates to Judaism and Islam. It decreed that a Christian who “chose the Jewish or Muslim law and, on account of this, was circumcised, was to be burned.”⁶⁶

      In the context of broader ecclesiastical preoccupations, Jews were one of several groups whom leading thirteenth-century churchmen conceptualized as seeking to spiritually corrupt Christians. Gregory IX, for instance, articulated concerns, not only about Jews leading Christians over to Judaism, but also about Christian heretics and Muslims bringing faithful Christians into heresy and Islam, respectively. On April 19, 1233—six weeks after he wrote to German prelates about Christians who were voluntarily becoming and publicly declaring themselves to be Jews, and one month before he wrote to the archbishop of Compostela about Jews in public office who were causing Christians to become Jews—Gregory promulgated the bull Gaudemus in which he first appointed papal inquisitors to eradicate Christian heresy. In this bull, Gregory reported having heard that “the wicked ministers of Satan [i.e., Christian heretics] were sowing the evil seed for the harvest of [their] master … wickedly infecting an unbridled multitude … spreading venom … and bringing many people to Tartarus.”⁶⁷ In his 1231 letter to the archbishop of Esztergom and in his 1233 letter to the king of Hungary, Gregory warned that Muslims in their domains were “wickedly attracting [Christians] to the error of disbelief.”⁶⁸ In 1236, in a letter to Emperor Frederick II, Gregory IX wrote that Muslims in the Sicilian kingdom were “driving the flocks of the faithful away from the Lord’s sheepfold.”⁶⁹

      Further demonstrating that early thirteenth-century churchmen thought about Jews together with Muslims and Christian heretics as spiritual corruptors, ecclesiastical leaders described all three groups as operating similarly in their alleged efforts to draw faithful Christians into their respective beliefs and practices. Echoing the New Testament, twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christian legislation and exempla routinely portrayed Christian heretics as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”—that is, as men and women who masked false doctrine with good works and sophistry in order “more freely to invade the [Christian] flock.”⁷⁰ Lucas of Tuy reported that some heretics chose to assume the appearance of Jews—even becoming circumcised—in order to “more freely sow heresies.”⁷¹ The theme of false appearances figured in ecclesiastical writings about Jews, as well. In 1239, for instance, in a letter to the bishop of Córdoba, Gregory IX reported that he had learned from clerics in Córdoba and Baeza that Jews were pretending to be Christians in order to deceive Christians even more. These Jews allegedly abducted Christian children and sold them to Muslims.⁷² Gregory IX cast Muslims, too, as assuming false appearances. In his 1231 letter to the archbishop of Esztergom and in his 1233 letter to the king of Hungary, Gregory accused Muslims of “falsely pretending to be Christians” “in order covertly to shoot the innocent.” In this instance, the Christians on whom infidels allegedly preyed were women. “While seeming to be Christians,” Gregory explained, “[Muslim men] marr[ied] Christian women whom they later force[d] to apostatize.”⁷³ The article that was proposed between 1227 and 1230 for discussion at the provincial synod of Tours also cast Jews as preying on Christian women. It claimed that Jews took advantage of Christian women who came to them from near and far for loans and frequently impregnated them and led them to Judaize.⁷⁴

      Thirteenth-century churchmen conceived of Jews, Muslims, and Christian heretics not only as assuming false appearances in their efforts to mislead Christians spiritually but also as targeting particularly vulnerable members of Christian society. As noted above, they conceived of Muslims and Jews as targeting Christian women, and Gregory IX depicted Jews as kidnapping Christian children whom they sold to Muslims. The Norwich circumcision case reveals that some early thirteenth-century Christians believed that Jews tried to convert young Christian children to Judaism. In 1304, the Dominican preacher Giordano da Pisa, who preached daily in the vernacular to crowds of middle-class townsmen in and around Florence, echoed this conviction. He reported that Jews abducted poor Christian boys, promised them money, and circumcised them.⁷⁵

      Most frequently, the particularly vulnerable Christians whom churchmen claimed that Muslims, Jews, and Christian heretics sought to mislead were “simple” Christians—that is, Christians who lacked the necessary knowledge and capacity for sophisticated rational thought and therefore depended on the religious guidance of the learned. The article that was proposed for discussion at the provincial synod of Tours contended that Jews were deceiving “simple” Christians and leading them into error.⁷⁶ In his 1233 missive to German prelates, Pope Gregory IX warned that Jews were causing “simple” Christians “to slide into the snare of [Jewish] error under the pretext of disputation.”⁷⁷ Over the course of the thirteenth century, the Franciscan scholastic theologian Alexander of Hales (ca. 1183–1245) and other prominent churchmen repeated words of Pope Alexander III: “Our mores and those of the Jews do not agree in anything. Hence [Jews] might be able easily to make simple souls incline toward their [Jewish] superstition and faithlessness through their continuous contact and assiduous familiarity.”⁷⁸ In 1267, in the bull Dampnabili perfidia judaeorum, addressed to the archbishop and bishops in Poitiers, Toulouse, and Provence, Pope Clement IV lamented having heard that Jews were trying to “attract simple Christians of both sexes to their damnable rite.”⁷⁹ Popes used this same trope in missives about Muslims and Christian heretics. For example, in his 1199 bull Vergentis in senium, addressed to the clergy and people of Viterbo, Pope Innocent III described Christian heretics as having “deceived many simple people and seduced certain astute ones, while cloaked in the appearance of religion.”⁸⁰ Gregory IX echoed these words and sentiments in his letter of March 3, 1231, to the archbishop of Esztergom and again in his letter of August 12, 1233, to the king of Hungary. In both, he lamented having heard from the archbishop and others that Muslims “deceived many simple people among the Christians and seduced some of the astute, while cloaked in the appearance of piety.”⁸¹ On April 19, 1233, in the bull Gaudemus, Gregory reported having heard from the Dominican friar known as Brother Robert that Christian heretics who “had the appearance of piety” were “deceiving the astute and seducing the simple.”⁸² Like the use of related phrases to describe apostasy to Judaism and apostasy to Islam, these portrayals of Jews, Muslims, and Christian heretics as operating similarly arose in the first instance from scribal practices that involved copying formulas. At the same