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

first time in centuries, claims about people who were not slaves, who had been born into Christian families, and who apostatized to Judaism began to surface in papal and episcopal correspondence. On March 5, 1233, for instance, in the bull Sufficere debuerat (which is referred to, like all papal bulls, by the initial words of the official Latin text), addressed to archbishops, bishops, and other prelates in German lands, Pope Gregory IX reported “with sorrow and shame” that he had heard about three sets of circumstances under which Christians were apostatizing to Judaism. First, Jews owned Christian slaves whom they circumcised and forced to “Judaize.” Second, Gregory continued, “some people, who were Christians not in deed but only in name, were going over to the Jews willingly and, pursuing their rite, they allowed themselves to be circumcised and publicly declared themselves to be Jews.” Third, Jews who—in contravention of the Third Council of Toledo (589) and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)—had been granted “secular dignities and public offices” were “venting their anger against Christians” and “making some [Christians] keep their [Jewish] rite.”⁴⁵ In short, according to Gregory, some Christians were apostatizing to Judaism of their own accord. In addition, in contexts in which Jews wielded power over Christians, Jews were causing Christians to convert to Judaism.

      Three months later, on May 18, 1233, Gregory called on the archbishop of Compostela to compel King Ferdinand III of Leon and Castile to address a roster of Jewish offenses that, he said, “it would [have] be[en] not only improper but inhuman for the faithful of Christ to tolerate.” In terms nearly identical to those that he had employed in his March bull to German prelates, Gregory claimed that he had heard that, among other things, Jews in Spain who had been granted “secular dignities and public offices” were “venting their anger against Christians” and “making some [Christians] keep their [Jewish] rite.”⁴⁶ In the same year, in his tractate against the Albigensians, the Leonese bishop Lucas of Tuy—who must have been familiar with Gregory’s missive to the archbishop of nearby Compostela—accused Jews of bribing Christian officials to join their ranks. He claimed that “the malignant Jews” not only blasphemed against Christianity but also “led [Christian] magistrates to their own [Jewish] worship by means of gold.”⁴⁷

      During the middle decades of the thirteenth century, three major Castilian law codes addressed Christian apostasy to Judaism and alleged Jewish efforts to draw Christians to Judaism. The first, the Fuero juzgo (Forum of the Judges), was a Castilian translation and adaptation of the Latin Visigothic Forum judicum (Forum of the Judges), which King Ferdinand III—to whom Pope Gregory IX had written—assigned to Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, and other towns in Andalusia and Murcia as their municipal charter. The Fuero juzgo stipulated that “a Christian of either sex, and especially one born of Christian parents, who practiced circumcision or any other Jewish rite should be put to an ignominious death … and all of his property should be confiscated for the benefit of the royal treasury.”⁴⁸ In addition, the Fuero juzgo stated that men who circumcised Christians or Jews were to have their penises amputated and their possessions confiscated. Women who performed circumcisions or brought their sons to be circumcised were to have their noses cut off, suffer a financial penalty, and be exiled for the rest of their lives. Anyone who “carried Christian men or women away from the faith of Christ and turned them toward Jewish disbelief and error” was to receive the same penalties as a circumciser.⁴⁹ These provisions contravened established norms of Christian toleration of Jews and Judaism in thirteenth-century Castile, and there is no evidence that they were enforced. However, the translation and dissemination of these laws during the thirteenth century suggest at least heightened Christian awareness that Jews had the potential to draw Christians to Judaism and circumcise them.⁵⁰

      Two other Castilian law codes may have reflected contemporaneous concerns about Christian apostasy to Judaism, although they often echoed Roman and Visigothic material. Redacted between 1256 and 1265 and promulgated in 1348, the Siete partidas (Seven Divisions) of King Alfonso X (d. 1284) included a section on Jews that thrice addressed Christian apostasy to Judaism. Law 10 of this section focused on slave conversion. Law 2 threatened the death penalty and confiscation of goods for Jews who preached to or converted a Christian to Judaism “by praising the law of the Jews and deprecating the law of the Christians.”⁵¹ Law 7 stipulated that Christian apostates to Judaism were to be put to death and their possessions were to be confiscated.⁵² Redacted between 1252 and 1255 by the circle of Alfonso X as a template for municipal law codes, the Fuero real (Royal Forum) addressed Christian apostasy to Judaism in the second of its seven laws on Jews. The Fuero real forbade “any Jew to induce any Christian to turn away from his law [i.e., Christianity] or circumcise him” on pain of death and confiscation of goods.⁵³ In 1255 and 1256, Alfonso assigned the Fuero real to the towns of Sahagún, Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia, and Burgos.⁵⁴

      In sum, during the second and third decades of the thirteenth century, chroniclers, popes, kings, jurists, and others in the British Isles, German lands, Leon, and Castile began to express concern about Christian apostasy to Judaism. They penned accounts of alleged cases of apostasy, voiced outrage at rumors that Christians were going over to Judaism, and publicized penalties for apostates to Judaism and their Jewish abettors. In so doing, they depicted Christian apostasy to Judaism sometimes as voluntary and sometimes as the result of sinister Jewish machinations. They contended that Jewish men and women drew Christians to Judaism by taking advantage of Christian lust and greed, abusing the power that they sometimes wielded over Christians, and employing rhetorical skill.

      The Instability of Christian Identity

      Burgeoning thirteenth-century concerns about apostasy to Judaism were inextricably tied to broader ecclesiastical preoccupations with the instability of Christian identity. During the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical alarm about Christian deviance reached new heights. Determined to root out Christian groups that turned their backs on the church hierarchy and its teachings, Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29), which applied military force to the problem of heresy in the south of France. During the 1230s, Pope Gregory IX appointed the first inquisitors—Franciscan and Dominican friars whom the pope tasked with using Roman inquisitorial procedure to identify and eliminate Christian heretics.⁵⁵

      Meanwhile, Christian self-confidence was rattled by conversions of European Christians to Islam. Some of these transpired in Christian lands that were home to Muslim communities, such as parts of Spain, Hungary, and Sicily. Others took place among Christians who traveled, resided, or waged war in Muslim realms, including in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia.⁵⁶ Some of the same Christian authors who addressed Christian heresy and Christian apostasy to Judaism wrote about Christian apostasy to Islam. For instance, as shall be discussed further below, Pope Gregory IX reported having heard that Muslims in Hungary were buying Christian slaves, forcing them to apostatize, and forbidding them to baptize their children.⁵⁷ In addition, in 1235, in collaboration with his confessor the canonist Raymond Penyafort (1175–1275), Gregory responded to questions pertaining to Christian apostasy to Islam that had been sent to him by the Franciscan minister and the Dominican prior residing in Tunis.⁵⁸ For his part, Matthew Paris lamented in his Chronica majora that, during the Muslim siege of the French during the Seventh Crusade battle of Fariskur (1250), some Christian deserters “apostatized and adhered to [the Muslims’] filthiness” and that “the faith of many [Christians] began to waver. [Christians] said to one another … ‘Is the law of Mohammad better than that of Christ?’”⁵⁹

      In the context of widespread consternation about the instability of Christian identity, Judaism was one of several dangerous destinations to which Christians were feared to stray. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century churchmen routinely categorized Jews together with Muslims and Christian heretics as unbelievers, and they often conceived of Christian apostasy to Judaism together with Christian apostasy to Islam and falling into Christian heresy.⁶⁰ In fact, in relatively rapid succession, several popes applied the same stock phrases to describe apostasy to Judaism and Islam. For example, when, as noted above, in April 1233, Gregory IX reported having heard that “some people [in German lands], who were Christians not in deed but only in name, were going over to the Jews willingly and, pursuing their rite, they allowed themselves to be circumcised and publicly declared