ABSTRACT
Between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, believing that Jews were not merely the archvillains in distant Christian history but an ongoing menace in the present, Christians in western Europe accused Jews of a litany of crimes. These alleged misdeeds included exploiting Christians financially, crucifying Christian children, stabbing consecrated eucharistic wafers and poisoning the water supply. They also included corrupting Christians spiritually – not only by instilling doubts in Christians about Christianity but also by “luring” Christians over to Jewish beliefs and practices. 1 Christians even charged Jews with seizing and circumcizing Christian boys in order to “make them Jewish.” 2
The notion that Jews in high and late medieval western Europe would have recruited Christian converts to Judaism seems rather surprising, first and foremost on account of prevailing Jewish-Christian power dynamics. Although these were complex, there is no question that Jews lived at Christians’ mercy. The church was at the height of its spiritual and temporal might, as it launched offensives against Christian dissenters at home and against Muslims in the Holy Land. Jews, by contrast, to quote from the Talmudic admonition to prospective converts to Judaism, had never been more “pained, oppressed, harassed, and afflicted.” 3 Christians associated them with cruelty, greed, and filth. They burned Jewish books, and they massacred Jews and expelled them from one polity after another. It is difficult to imagine how, under these conditions, Jews could have wielded religious influence. 4
This chapter presents some preliminary observations about the interplay of fact and fantasy in high and late medieval Christian accusations to the effect that Jews actively proselytized. 5 I argue that several features of littleknown Christian conversions to Judaism in this period intensified Christian anxieties by suggesting that Christianity’s victory over Judaism was still far from secure. I contend also that Christian perceptions of the Jewish facilitation of Christian conversions to Judaism and of the re-Judaization of Jewish apostates – which differed starkly from Jewish understandings of these matters – strengthened the Christian conviction that Jews were intent on bringing Christians over to Judaism. Through its joint consideration of
dynamics of attraction and repulsion between Christians and Jews, the present study further shows that Christian portrayals of Jewish activities could profoundly distort lived experience, in ways that proved deadly for medieval Jews and remain treacherous for historians.
