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Past and Present, no. 194 (Feb. 2007) ß The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2007
doi:10.1093/pastj/gtl024
4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
I
NUMBERS
The heroic image of Ashkenazic Jewry has numerous elements,
including the assumption that apostates were few. This notion,
like the other components, rests on medieval sources. Agobard of
Lyon, the nemesis of Narbonese Jewry in the early ninth century,
complains that ‘in spite of all the humanity and kindness we dis-
play towards them, we do not succeed in bringing over one of
them to our faith’.4 In the twelfth century, Guibert of Nogent
4
Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (Paris,
1960), 138.
8 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
for, medieval Jewish life. However, the impact of this shift for the
heroic image of Ashkenazic Jewry has been blunted in two ways:
by maintaining that it compared favourably with that of Spain;
and by classifying the Franco-German apostates as predomin-
antly the victims of coerced baptism.
II
COERCION
A second component in the mythical depiction of Ashkenazic
Jewry is that its (few) apostates were almost all forcibly baptized,
rather than being true converts to Christianity. Once again, Salo
Baron illustrates this mode of discourse: ‘Whatever the cumula-
tive effects of voluntary baptisms may have been, they were
indubitably far surpassed numerically by those of mass
Catholicization under duress, especially during massacres and
expulsions’.14 This generalization makes room for apostasy with-
out compromising the image of Ashkenazic fidelity.
The distinction between voluntary and forced conversion
seems important, and yet, remarkably, medieval sources tend to
soft-pedal this issue.15 For example, medieval Hebrew has two
terms for apostate, mumar and meshumad, and some historians
have suggested that the former was used to refer to voluntary
apostates, the latter to those who were coerced.16 Yet the two
terms appear interchangeably in the writing of the rabbinic lead-
ership of Franco-German Jewry in the tenth to twelfth centuries,
and are not used to distinguish between the two types of apos-
tasy.17 The rarity with which medieval European rabbis address
14
Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, ix, 23.
15
Cf. Ephraim Kanarfogel’s contention that ‘halakhists had to consider the inten-
tion . . . of the apostate’, in his ‘Rabbinic Attitudes toward Nonobservance in the
Medieval Period’, in Jacob J. Schacter (ed.), Jewish Tradition and the Nontraditional
Jew (Northvale, NJ, 1992), 3.
16
Solomon Zeitlin, ‘Mummar and Meshumad’, Jewish Quart. Rev., liv (1963),
84–6; Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the
Tosefta, pt 3, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1992), 402 n. 45. Cf. John M. G. Barclay, ‘Who
Was Considered an Apostate in the Jewish Diaspora?’, in Graham N. Stanton and Guy
G. Stroumsa (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity
(Cambridge, 1998). On the origins of the term meshumad, see also Moshe ben
Ya6akov ibn Ezra, Kitab al-Muhadara wal-Mudhakara [Judaeo-Arabic], ed. and
Hebrew trans. A. S. Halkin (Jerusalem, 1975), 48–9. My thanks to Daniel Frank of
the Ohio State University for this reference.
17
Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 68 n. 6; and cf. the view of Simhah Goldin in his
Uniqueness and Togetherness, 89–90.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 11
this distinction catches the modern reader by surprise and high-
lights its anachronistic and tendentious nature.
The classic example of the conflation of coerced and voluntary
apostasy is the case of the son of Gershom of Mainz, the spiritual
and communal leader of German Jewry in the tenth century.
Modern scholars could not imagine that the apostasy of this
man’s son could have been anything but coerced, and so, begin-
ning with Heinrich Graetz, they attached the story of Gershom’s
son to the persecution of Mainz Jewry in 1012. Most narratives of
this episode report the quick reversion of the forced apostates of
Mainz and note that Gershom’s son died before he was able to
revert. This circumstance, they posit, explains the tradition that
Rabbenu Gershom observed a fourteen-day period of mourning
for his son, rather than the seven days mandated by Jewish
tradition.18
A closer look at the sources concerning the mourning observed
by Gershom illustrates the manipulation of this story by medieval
rabbis and thus also later by modern historians. Isaac ben Moses
of Vienna (d. c.1250), the earliest source, states the rule that one
should not mourn villains who died unrepentant, but then adds
the following caveat: ‘However, in times of destruction,19 I heard
from my teacher, Rabbi Samson [of Coucy], that Gershom
mourned for fourteen days for his son that apostatized’.20 Isaac
does not impute to his teacher the assumption that Gershom’s
child was forcibly converted; Samson merely reports the apostasy
18
Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart,
4th edn, 11 vols. (Leipzig, 1870–97), v, 337–9, 472–4 (n. 22). Shlomo Eidelberg
rejects the possibility that Gershom’s son apostatized during the 1012 persecution
on the grounds that he could not possibly have preferred apostasy to banishment,
which was the available alternative. See Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Shlomo
Eidelberg (New York, 1956), 11. For another critique of Graetz’s reconstruction, see
H. Tykocinski, ‘Die Verfolgung der Juden in Mainz im Jahre 1012’, in Beiträge zur
Geschichte der deutschen Juden: Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstage Martin Philippsons
(Leipzig, 1916), 2–3. On the Mainz persecution, see also Avigdor Aptowitzer,
Introduction to Sefer Rabiah [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1938), 331; James Parkes, The
Jew in the Medieval Community: A Study of his Political and Economic Situation (London,
1938), 38; Avraham Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership
and Works (900–1096) [in Hebrew], 3rd edn (Jerusalem, 2001), 90, 112; Grossman,
‘Roots of Kiddush Hashem’, 125; Grossman, Early Sages of France, 502; David Malkiel,
‘Jewish–Christian Relations in Europe, 840–1096: A Historiographical Review’,
Jl Medieval Hist., xxix (2003), 79–80.
19
i.e. shemad, which can refer to physical or spiritual destruction, namely apostasy.
20
Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, Or Zaru 6a [Sown Light] (Zhitomir, 1862), pt 2, 88c,
x428.
12 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
(n. 25 cont.)
Twelfth-Century Ashkenaz’, Jl Medieval and Early Modern Studies, xxix (1999), 436–
41.
26
Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (hereafter Rashi), Responsa, ed. Israel Elfenbein
(New York, 1943), 82, no. 70.
27
Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Eidelberg, 57–60, no. 4; Simhah ben Samuel
of Vitry, Mahzor Vitry, ed. Simon Hurwitz (Nuremberg, 1923), 97, x125 and later
sources.
28
Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Eidelberg, 60–1, no. 5; Responsa and Rulings by
French and German Rabbis [in Hebrew], ed. Ephraim Kupfer (Jerusalem, 1973), 292.
14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
with different cases: the former with a coerced apostate and the
latter with a voluntary one, towards whose predicament Gershom
might have been less sympathetic.29 This, however, is a dubious
distinction, for we are told that the apostate under discussion had
become a clergyman, and it is therefore unlikely that his apostasy
was coerced.30 Moreover, Rashi allows a penitent priest-apostate
to resume his priestly status and functions whether or not his
apostasy was coerced.31 Only much later, in sixteenth-century
Safed, does Joseph Karo introduce the distinction between vol-
untary or involuntary apostasy into the legal literature once and
for all.32
The absence of a clear distinction between coerced and volun-
tary apostasy also emerges from Sefer Hasidim (Book of the
Pious), an ethical work of thirteenth-century Germany, consist-
29
Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 125–6. Shlomo Eidelberg suggests that
Gershom only ruled stringently when the apostate had become a leader or officiant
in the service of idolatry, but, ironically, Grossman rejects this solution because
Gershom’s two decisions present an identical set of circumstances. Incidentally,
Grossman’s interpretation suggests that he subscribes to the view that Gershom’s
son was the victim of forced baptism, rather than voluntary apostasy, although he
makes no explicit statement to this effect.
30
Eliezer ‘the Great’, a student of Gershom, did distinguish clearly between vol-
untary and coerced apostates, allowing only the latter to perform the priestly blessing,
but his responsum was unknown in the Middle Ages: see Responsa of the Tosafists [in
Hebrew], ed. Irving A. Agus (New York, 1954), 45–6; Grossman, Early Sages of
Ashkenaz, 224–5. The ruling of Joseph Bonfils resembles that of Maimonides, in
the tradition of the Babylonian Gaonim: see Zedekiah ben Abraham, Shibolei
ha-Leqet ha-Shalem [Complete Sheaves of Gleanings], ed. Samuel K. Mirsky
(New York, 1966), 231, x33. Grossman also cites Judah ha-Kohen, a student of
Gershom, but does not provide a specific primary source.
31
The Tosafists cite Rashi’s stance on the priest-apostate (which was also
Gershom’s lenient position), but only after they offer the traditional, more stringent
view, signifying that their stance on this issue was anything but slavish: see Tosafot on
Menahot, 109r, s.v. ‘lo yeshamshu’; Tosafot on Sotah, 39r, s.v. ‘ve-khi mehader’. But cf.
Tosafot on Ta 6anit, 27r, s.v. ‘iy mah’, which only offers the lenient ruling. Note that Meir
ben Barukh of Rothenburg refuses to follow Rashi: he rules that one does not instruct
the penitent priest to perform the priestly blessing, but that if he does so of his own
accord, he may be allowed to proceed. See Jacob ben Asher, Arba 6ah Turim [Four
Rows], pt 1, x128.
32
Joseph Karo, Bet Yosef [House of Joseph] on Arba 6ah Turim, pt 1, x128; Shulhan
Arukh [Set Table], n. 37. Karo’s innovation can be attributed, at least partly, to the loss
of tens of thousands of souls to Catholicism in Spain between 1391 and 1492, a
catastrophe which generated a wealth of rabbinic discourse on the subject of apostasy,
with an abundance of new insights. See Simhah Assaf, ‘The Conversos of Spain and
Portugal in the Responsa Literature’ [in Hebrew], in his In the Tent of Jacob [in
Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1943), 145–80; B. Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From
the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources,
3rd edn (Ithaca, 1999).
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 15
ing mainly of exempla, including one about two brothers who
apostatized. In this tale, a scholar wonders why such a tragedy
should befall a particular family, and determines that it was
the result of the sin of their ancestor, who, as rabbi of a certain
community, led his entire congregation to the baptismal font
during a time of persecution.33 As Alfred Haverkamp notes,
what matters here is the linkage of voluntary and coerced apos-
tasy: succumbing to coercion is seen as a sin, for which one pays
with the voluntary apostasy of one’s children, particularly if one
also causes others to sin.34 This text suggests that there is a certain
line of continuity between those who apostatize voluntarily and
those who do so under coercion. The author seems to feel that
although the latter acted against their will, their decision to live
was an act of weakness. In other words, capitulation under duress
was the result of a predisposition to apostatize, stemming from a
less than robust religious commitment. The distinction between
the two categories is muddied and barely perceptible.
That the forced apostates of the First Crusade were not viewed
by their memorializers as blameless emerges from an account of
the mass apostasy of Regensburg, which concludes with the
prayer: ‘And may our Rock grant us atonement for our sins’.35
Similarly, this narrative states that the apostasies of Metz were the
consequence of ‘the multitude of iniquity and culpability’,36 and
concludes with the prayer that God absolve His people’s iniqui-
ties. These statements articulate the belief that even forced apos-
tates were sinners, because only the shortcomings of one’s past
religious faith and conduct could explain the occurrence of some-
thing so awful. The line separating the coerced from the voluntary
apostate is similarly blurred in papal legislation. Jews baptized by
33
Sefer Hasidim [Book of the Pious], ed. Jehuda Wistinetzki and Jakob Freimann
(Frankfurt am Main, 1924), 465, x1922. These dicta do not support Haym
Soloveitchik’s claim that the Jews of Ashkenaz never wondered ‘to what extent the
individual was simply a victim of circumstances and to what extent his conduct was a
consequence of his inner ambiguities’: see Haym Soloveitchik, ‘Religious Law and
Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example’, Assoc. for Jewish Studies Rev., xii (1987),
215.
34
Alfred Haverkamp, ‘Baptised Jews in German Lands during the Twelfth
Century’, in Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (eds.), Jews and Christians in
Twelfth-Century Europe (Notre Dame, Ind., 2001), 262. See also Baron, Social and
Religious History of the Jews, iv, 146.
35
Abraham Meir Habermann, The Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France
[in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1945), 56.
36
Ibid.
16 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
III
REVERSION
Ecclesiastical legislation on baptized Jews gives voice to the suspi-
cion that their conversion was either insincere or incomplete.
Burchard of Worms’s Decretum, dated 1012, deals extensively
with this problem: converts may be forcibly prevented from
reverting to Judaism; they must not consort with Jews, for fear
that they might revert; lapsed converts are to be treated harshly.38
And this concern was perennial. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran
Council declared: ‘Some . . . who have come to the baptismal
font voluntarily have not departed completely the old self so as
to put on a more perfect one. Since they retain remnants of their
37
‘Numquam consentit sed penitus contradicit nec rem nec characterem suscipit
sacramenti’. See Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, vii, History
(Toronto, 1991), 243–4; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 101–3; Baron, Social and
Religious History of the Jews, ix, 13; Walter Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews
(Ebelsbach, 1988), 82.
38
John Gilchrist, ‘The Perception of Jews in the Canon Law in the Period of the
First Two Crusades’, Jewish Hist., iii (1988), 13. See also Blumenkranz, Juifs et
chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 104–34.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 17
former rite, they confound by such a mixture the decorum of
Christian religion’.39
An analogous concern is found on the Jewish side, namely that
reverting apostates might retain traces of Christian impurity, even
if their apostasy was coerced. About Benedict of York, who was
forcibly baptized in 1189 but later reverted, the chronicle of
Roger of Howden reports that ‘he was a stranger to the
common burial-ground of the Jews, even as of the Christians;
both because he had been made a Christian, and because, like a
dog to his vomit, he had returned to his Jewish depravity’.40 If this
tale is to be believed, reversion did not necessarily lead to reinte-
gration into the Jewish community, at least in this case. Suspicion
of reverting apostates was aroused particularly if they remained
among the Gentiles for ‘many days’.41 This is the crucial element
in the legend of Elhanan, the son of Rabbi Simon ‘the Great’ of
Mainz, who is baptized as a child and rises through ecclesiastical
ranks to become pope. Eventually he orchestrates a reunion with
his father and confesses his desire to revert, but asks him whether
repentance is still possible, given the length of time he has spent
among the Gentiles.42 Predictably, then, another component in
39
Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 310; Baron, Social and Religious History of the
Jews, ix, 14. Haverkamp explains that Christians suspected Jewish converts of preserv-
ing traces of their Jewish origins even after generations: see his ‘Baptised Jews in
German Lands’, 265–7.
40
‘. . . et factus est alienus a communi sepultura Judaeorum, similiter et
Christianorum, tum quia factus fuerat Christianus, tum quia ipse, sicut canis reversus
ad vomitum, rediit ad Judaicam pravitatem’: see Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene,
ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols. (Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, Rolls ser., li,
London, 1868–71), iii, 13. The translation is from G. G. Coulton, Life in the Middle
Ages, 2nd edn, 4 vols. in 1 (Cambridge, 1954), ii, 34. See also Cecil Roth, A History of
the Jews in England (Oxford, 1941), 19–20, 22; Baron, Social and Religious History of the
Jews, iv, 125, 146. The dog-vomit image is based on Prov. 26:11; it had already been
used, in the same context, by Gregory the Great: see Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic
See and the Jews, i, Documents, 492–1404 (Toronto, 1988), 5, doc. 5.
41
Cf. the similar issue of the speed with which a woman taken captive by Gentiles
returns to her community. Talmudic law assumes that such a woman has sexual rela-
tions with one or more of her captors, but she may return to her husband if she rejoined
her community and family at the earliest possible opportunity, since one could then
assume that her sexual act had not been consensual. For the earliest discussion of this
issue, from late twelfth-century France, see Mordecai ben Hillel on Kiddushin, x568;
Ephraim E. Urbach, The Tosaphists: Their History, Writings and Methods [in Hebrew],
4th edn, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1980), i, 133. See also Gerald I. Blidstein, ‘The Personal
Status of Apostate and Ransomed Women in Medieval Jewish Law’ [in Hebrew],
Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, iii–iv (1976–7), 53.
42
See Adolf Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch [House of Study], 6 vols. (Jerusalem, 1938), v,
148–52; Abraham David, ‘Inquiries Concerning the Legend of the Jewish Pope’
(cont. on p. 18)
18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
the Ashkenazic image is that all the apostates (who were few and
coerced) revert to Judaism at the earliest opportunity.43 Rever-
sion is the key to the issue of coerced versus voluntary baptism,
for non-reversion or delayed reversion undermines the edifice
of coercion which underpins the heroic reputation of medieval
Ashkenaz.
The issue of immediate or delayed reversion is not the brain-
child of modern historians, but is found in medieval sources. In an
effort to excuse the apostates, one of the Hebrew accounts main-
tains that in 1096 the community of Regensburg reverted ‘imme-
diately following the departure of the enemies of God, and
performed great acts of penitence, for they did what they did
under great duress’.44 In Metz, too, we read that the conversion
lasted only ‘until the days of wrath had passed’, after which the
apostates reverted to Judaism ‘with all their heart’.45 The pathos
with which the narrator emphasizes that reversion was immediate
and unalloyed betrays the anxiety felt by many contemporaries
concerning the loyalty of these (or any) apostates.
The same chronicler introduces another apologetical element
when he insists that the forced apostates did not deviate from the
dietary laws, and ‘only rarely went to their [Christian] place of
worship’. Moreover, we read that the converts’ Christian neigh-
bours knew of the insincerity of their conversion, and that these
apostates observed the Sabbath laws in full view of the Christian
populace.46 Clearly they thought that, although they could not
yet revert, it was important to exhibit continued fidelity to
Judaism, both actively, by continuing to observe the command-
ments, and passively, by neglecting Christian rituals.47
(n. 42 cont.)
[in Hebrew], in Zvi Malachi (ed.), The A. M. Habermann Memorial Volume
[in Hebrew] (Lod, 1983), 17–25; Abraham David, ‘Bemerkungen zur Legende vom
jüdischen Papst’, Freiburger Rundbrief: Beiträge zur christlich-jüdischen Begegnung,
xxxvii–xxxviii (1985–6), 150–3; David Levine Lerner, ‘The Enduring Legend of the
Jewish Pope’, Judaism, xl (1991).
43
Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 68, citing Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, vi, 92–3.
44
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 56.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., 57.
47
See Kanarfogel, ‘Rabbinic Attitudes toward Nonobservance’, 3; Netanyahu,
Marranos of Spain, 8–13. Cf. Soloveitchik’s claim that ‘the fidelity of the converts
was unquestioned’: see his ‘Religious Law and Change’, 215.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 19
Pre-reversion behaviour is a crucial issue in one of Rashi’s
responsa.48 Asked whether the testimony of a reverted anuss, or
forced convert, is admissible in a proceeding of Jewish law, Rashi
replies that it would be, if it were known that the witness, prior to
his reversion, only violated Jewish law under compulsion; other-
wise, he could not testify about what he had witnessed while an
apostate, even though he ultimately reverted ‘properly’. Put more
starkly, Rashi could well imagine that a coerced apostate might
willingly transgress the commandments, even the Sabbath, prior
to his reversion.49
Obviously, any delay in reversion would probably be inter-
preted as a sign that the act of apostasy had not been truly invol-
untary, even when, as in 1096, the apostates accepted baptism at
the point of a sword. This suspicion seems reasonable when we
bear in mind that those who apostatized during the First Crusade
took up to a year to revert.50 In this light, the Hebrew chronicler’s
fervent assurance that the First Crusade apostates rarely attended
Catholic services and continued to observe the commandments
makes sense, and one can also understand why some Jews might
have been sceptical about the fidelity of those who reverted. The
narrator indirectly acknowledges the existence of bad feeling in
his concluding admonishment: ‘Whoever speaks ill of them [the
apostates], it is as if he spoke ill of the Divine Presence’.51 Another
Hebrew report of the First Crusade persecution puts this suspi-
cion in the mouths of those Jews of Worms who escaped the cru-
sader onslaught. The survivors express solidarity with the forced
converts, but conclude with the warning: ‘Do not turn away from
the Lord’.52
The issue of immediate or delayed reversion crops up again in a
responsum in which Rashi is asked whether one ought to abstain
from wine handled by forced converts until these return to
Judaism and remain Jewish for ‘many days’, and their repentance
(that is, reversion) is public and well known. Speaking of these
penitent apostates, Rashi’s interlocutor notes that ‘we do not
know them well and have not seen [evidence of] their repentance’.
48
Responsa of the Tosafists, ed. Agus, 51–2, no. 9.
49
See, similarly, ibid., 238, no. 128, from a later period.
50
Only in 1097 did Henry IV issue an edict permitting their reversion: Simonsohn,
Apostolic See and the Jews, i, 42, doc. 42.
51
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 57.
52
Ibid., 96.
20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
All the same, Rashi replies vehemently that to abstain from their
wine would shame them, and that coerced apostates could never
bring themselves to offer idolatrous libations (that is, to partici-
pate in Christian worship). This formulation links reversion and
coercion. The penitent apostates in question are blameless, writes
Rashi, ‘for everything they did, they did on account of [fear of] the
sword,53 and they turned away [from Christianity] as soon as they
could’.54 The question testifies to the prevalent confusion about
the significance of the distinction between forced and voluntary
apostasy. Rashi emphasizes the element of coercion, and, indeed,
this is an exception to the indifference generally exhibited by
medieval authorities. However, by affirming that these apostates
were quick to revert, he grants the premise that the allegiance of a
forced apostate remains suspect until he or she returns to the
fold.55
Elsewhere Rashi writes, of ‘all the forced converts’, that ‘their
heart inclines heavenward, for their end testifies to their begin-
ning, that they left and returned when they found salvation’.56
This looks like a ringing endorsement of the eternal loyalty of the
forcibly baptized, but, upon closer inspection, the opposite is
clearly the case. Rashi shares the conviction that one can only
be sure that a forced convert’s heart inclined towards heaven
after his or her return to the fold, when ‘their end testifies to
their beginning’; until such time, an apostate is an apostate,
whether baptism was voluntary or coerced.57 That Rashi did
not take reversion for granted is also apparent from his
53
evhat herev, as in Ezek. 21:20. The same phrase appears in the Sefer Hasidim
passage (ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 85, x262) about a community in which
‘during a time of persecution some were killed and some apostatized with the intention
of returning to Judaism when they could, but they apostatized ‘‘on account of fear of
the sword’’ ’.
54
Rashi, Responsa, ed. Elfenbein, 188–9, no. 168. The identity of these apostates
and the circumstances of their apostasy are unclear. Ben-Zion Dinur assumes that this
text refers to those Jews who apostatized under threat of death at the hands of the First
Crusaders: Ben-Zion Dinur, Israel and the Diaspora [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1961), pt
2a, p. 43. Ephraim E. Urbach attributes the responsum to Isaac Dampierre (d. 1185?),
but offers no proof for this attribution: Urbach, Tosaphists, i, 244–5.
55
Cf., from a later period, Responsa of the Tosafists, ed. Agus, 231–2, no. 125.
56
See Judah ben Asher, Zikhron Yehudah [Memory of Judah], ed. Judah Rosenberg
(Berlin, 1846), 52b. For the phrase ‘their end testifies to their beginning’, see also
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 26.
57
Cf. Grossman’s view that Rashi’s statement that the heart of the coerced apostates
is directed heavenward is to be taken at face value: Grossman, Early Sages of France,
154.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 21
interpretation of the passage in Proverbs about the ‘strange
woman’, from whom one needs to be saved (Prov. 2:16–19).
Rashi equates this enigmatic figure with the Church, and on the
phrase ‘All who go to her cannot return’ (Prov. 2:19) he makes the
following pessimistic observation: ‘All who apostatize, after they
are tainted with heresy, do not return’.58 The absence of any
distinction between coerced and voluntary apostasy resounds
loudly in this categorically dismissive remark.
Vacillation regarding the appropriate posture vis-à-vis reverting
apostates, even those whose conversion was forced, is powerfully
expressed in the following responsum, attributed to Rashi.59 The
issue is whether one may drink with a reverted apostate. Grounds
are brought for a lenient ruling regarding apostates who, as
Christians, did not violate the Sabbath laws; but what about
forced converts who publicly transgressed these regulations and
whose reversion is as yet uncertain? Rashi rejects the view that
equates transgression of the Sabbath with idolatry, and insists
that ‘when they undertook to publicly return to the awe of our
Rock [i.e. to Judaism], they are [again] permitted’. The most
striking feature of this text is the question’s conflation of voluntary
and coerced apostates.
In the responsum cited earlier about the wine of penitent apos-
tates, however, Rashi uses the phrase ‘these forced apostates that
have just arrived’. In rabbinic parlance, the expression ‘that have
just arrived’ sometimes refers to a recent occurrence (based on
Deut. 32:17), and hence it could mean that these apostates
reverted recently. But Rashi could have meant the phrase literally,
thereby testifying to the migration that seems to have frequently
accompanied reversion. Fear of prosecution for heresy was a good
reason for lapsed converts to leave their city and settle elsewhere.
In a letter dated 1286, Pope Honorius IV complains that among
those converts who reverted, some moved to another town, but
many others did not, and lived openly with Jews and at one with
them.60 The practice of relocation also finds expression in
58
Rashi on Avodah zarah, 17r. The continuation reads: ‘and if they do return, they
quickly die, because of sorrow and the compulsion of the [Evil] Inclination, and this is
the decree of the King [i.e. God], that they die’. Cf. Rashi on Prov. 2:19.
59
Zedekiah ben Abraham Anau, Shibolei ha-Leqet — Part 2 [in Hebrew], ed. Simhah
Hassida (Jerusalem, 1988), 21–2, x5. The text was also published in Rashi’s Responsa,
ed. Elfenbein, 189–90, no. 169.
60
Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, ix, 247 n. 13; Simonsohn, Apostolic
See and the Jews, i, 262–3, doc. 255. Edward Fram attributes the practice of moving
(cont. on p. 22)
22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
(n. 60 cont.)
after reversion to the fact that political power in medieval Germany was decentralized:
see his ‘Perception and Reception of Repentant Apostates in Medieval Ashkenaz and
Pre-Modern Poland’, Assoc. for Jewish Studies Rev., xxi (1996), 313.
61
Rashi, Responsa, ed. Elfenbein, 189–90, no. 169. In the late thirteenth century, an
apostate named Andreas from the south of Italy writes that it is well known that poor
apostates escape ‘to places where they are not known and revert to their origin’: see
Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval Europe, 1200–
1500’, in Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein (eds.), Cross-
Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his
Sixty-Fifth Birthday (New York, 1995), 315.
62
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 122. This tale is told
by Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn (b. 1132), who stresses that the reversion occurred ‘in
that same year’, namely 1147, and he rather triumphantly contrasts the fate of these
apostates with that of the crusaders, who left their homes never to be seen again.
Oddly, however, Ephraim’s account does not include any large-scale incidents of
forced baptism that correspond to the story of mass reversion.
63
It is also possible that relocation was a form of exile, a penance for the act of
apostasy: see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, H. Teshuvah, ch. 2, law 4.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 23
presentations, medieval rabbis portrayed their constituents warts
and all.
IV
DISAPPEARANCE
‘Many Jews’, writes Solomon Zeitlin, ‘mourned for seven days if
one of their kin adopted another religion as they would if a
member of their family had died’.64 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
does not discuss mourning rites, but he paints the same picture
of the apostate’s disappearance:
The apostate in the Middle Ages left not only the Jewish faith, but the
Jewish quarter, his family, his friends. Whatever the theoretical attitude
that might be taken toward him in theology and jurisprudence, considered
from a sociological point of view his rupture with the Jewish community was
generally complete.65
Gerald Blidstein, too, writes that ‘the apostate had burned all
bridges’.66 These scholars reflect the widely held conviction
that in the eyes of his family and community, an apostate ceases
to exist. This idea portrays the medieval Jewish community as
pure, if scarred; there may have been a few apostates, but they
departed the scene. The resultant image is of a homogeneous
community of devoted believers.
The idea that apostates cease to exist, and hence that one must
mourn for them at the time of their apostasy as if they had died,
has no obvious source. Some have inferred this from the case of
Rabbenu Gershom’s son, interpreting the rabbi’s additional week
of mourning as an expression of mourning for the act of apostasy
per se.67 Yet the texts are quite clear that Gershom went
into mourning following his son’s death, not his apostasy.68
64
Zeitlin, ‘Mummar and Meshumad’, 86.
65
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of
Bernard Gui’, Harvard Theological Rev., lxiii (1970), 365. See also p. 366: ‘Great
hostility toward the apostate, and the sober realization that in most cases his conver-
sion to Christianity was final, combined to make the masses regard him as really no
longer a Jew’.
66
Gerald Blidstein, ‘Who Is Not a Jew? — The Medieval Discussion’, Israel Law
Rev., xi (1976), 376.
67
Louis Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France in the XII–XIV
Centuries, as Reflected in the Rabbinical Literature of the Period, 2nd edn (New York,
1972), 104.
68
Another source, also erroneous, is the remark by Rabbenu Tam that it is custom-
ary not to mourn the death of an apostate; but, again, this remark says nothing about
(cont. on p. 24)
24 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
(n. 68 cont.)
mourning at the time of the apostasy and on its account: see Isaac ben Moses of
Vienna, Or Zaru 6a, pt 2, x428.
69
Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 73–4, x192, cited by Katz, in his
Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 74.
70
Another Sefer Hasidim passage (ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 385, x1572) states
that one whose father apostatizes is called to read from the Torah not as the son of his
father, but rather as the son of his paternal grandfather, by which name he must also
sign contracts. Furthermore, if both his father and his father’s father are apostates, he
should use the name of his paternal great-grandfather. The elimination of any refer-
ence to the apostate father intimates that in a certain sense he ceases to exist. See also
Israel Isserlein, Terumat ha-Deshen [Offering of Ashes], pt 1, no. 21.
71
For the suggestion that apostasy is tantamount to death, see Sanhedrin, 60r (on
cursing God); N. Z. Y. Berlin on She8iltot, no. 110. The link was noted by Reuven
Margaliyot, in his commentary to his own edition of Sefer Hasidim (Jerusalem, 1957),
187, x190.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 25
a special model of Jewish–apostate interaction, though we know
nothing about how common a phenomenon this was. A famous
case, told in a thirteenth-century text about an incident that
purportedly occurred in 992, is that of Sehok ben Esther, an
apostate who wanders from town to town in northern France,
poses as an indigent Jew and receives alms from the local Jewish
communities. Ultimately he takes up residence in Le Mans, in the
home of his sisters, who surely knew of his apostasy.72 True or not,
the tale was meant to be believed, and hence is evidence of social
norms.
We also read of an apostate who allegedly ‘repented [i.e.
reverted], not with a complete heart but with a deceitful repent-
ance, like that of those empty ones, who roam the towns, some-
times appearing as Jews and sometimes strengthening themselves
by means of the laws of the Gentiles’.73 Similarly, an early
thirteenth-century source reports of an apostate who ‘went
from place to place, and in one city he publicly avows his belief
in idolatry, and in another city he enters the House of Israel and
says that he is a Jew, and we do not know whether he is a Jew or
not’.74 From Eudes Rigaud, the archbishop of Rouen, we learn of
a serial apostate whose repeated changes of heart appear to have
been sincere. He was burned in 1266, having converted from
Judaism to Catholicism, ‘reverted from the Catholic faith to
Judaic depravity, and once again baptized, had once more
reverted to Judaism, being unwilling afterwards to be restored
72
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 11–15; see also
Malkiel, ‘Jewish–Christian Relations’, 67–71.
73
Mordecai ben Hillel on Ketubot, x306; Maimonidean Responsa [in Hebrew],
Nashim, no. 10. Likewise, Ephraim of Bonn tells the tale of the encounter, in 1146,
just outside the city of Cologne, between ‘empty people’ who had been baptized (i.e.
voluntary apostates) and Rabbi Simon ‘the Pious’ of Trier, and of their efforts to entice
him to apostatize: Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 116.
74
Solomon Ibn Adret, Responsa, pt 7, no. 179. On this source and the previous one
(Mordecai ben Hillel on Ketubot, x306), see Urbach, Tosaphists, i, 245; Soloveitchik,
‘Religious Law and Change’, 214 n. 15. There is some evidence, including the
Mordecai ben Hillel text, that apostates wishing to revert were forced to undergo
ritual immersion before their reintegration into the Jewish community: see
Yerushalmi, ‘Inquisition and the Jews of France’, 372; Joseph Shatzmiller,
‘Converts and Judaizers in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Harvard Theological Rev.,
lxxiv (1981), 63–77; Blidstein, ‘Who Is Not a Jew?’, 376 n. 23. Placing obstacles in the
path of reversion seems to be a phenomenon of the later Middle Ages, rather than the
tenth to thirteenth centuries.
26 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
V
AETIOLOGY
The Jews of twelfth-century Germany are alleged by historians to
have been ‘beset by varying sorts and degrees of doubt concerning
the worth, viability, and future of their faith’.92 Avraham Gross-
man avers that the Hebrew First Crusade narratives, with their
martyrological bias, were written ‘to encourage the weak and
strengthen weak knees’.93 He views European Jewry as demor-
88
An analogous story exists from the Christian side, of a certain Jacob ben Isaac of
Regensburg, who hoards his father’s money prior to his own conversion to
Christianity: see Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden, 105, x226. The source is
Annales Egmundenses: Fontes Egmundenses, ed. Otto Oppermann (Utrecht, 1933),
149–50, cited by Haverkamp, ‘Baptised Jews in German Lands’, 279–81.
89
Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 75, x200. See also ibid., x201; Fram,
‘Perception and Reception of Repentant Apostates in Medieval Ashkenaz and Pre-
Modern Poland’, 306.
90
Isaac ben Moses of Vienna tells of an apostate who touched wine, which would
render it non-kosher, but later claimed to have reverted: see his Or Zaru 6a, pt 1, 64d,
x448.
91
Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 71; Katz, ‘Although He Has Sinned, He Is Still
Israel’. See also Baer, ‘Rashi and the Historical Reality of his Time’.
92
Cohen, ‘Between Martyrdom and Apostasy’, 463.
93
Grossman, ‘Roots of Kiddush Hashem’, 119.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 29
alized by the carnage of the Rhineland massacres and worn down
by the pressure of Christian propaganda.94
Whether or not apostasy among Ashkenazic Jewry truly had
risen to alarming proportions, it is clear that some apostates
were not driven to baptism by a crisis of faith. Basically, there
were ideological apostates, whose conversion was as sincere as
Paul’s or Augustine’s, and there were also venal apostates, who
opted for baptism for social, economic, psychological or other
reasons. Which category predominated? The heroic image of
Ashkenazic Jewry would seem to require that in Franco-
Germany apostasy was overwhelmingly venal, and this is indeed
the consensus. In Haym Soloveitchik’s formulation, some con-
verted ‘from conviction, some from desire for advancement, and
some, probably most, from sheer weariness’ (whatever that
means).95 Admittedly, venal apostasy, too, challenges the image
of Ashkenazic perfection, but to a lesser degree.
Medieval Hebrew sources give the distinct impression that
apostates were mostly venal, rather than ideological. Examples
are legion. The Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Old Book of Disputation),
an anti-Christian polemic of thirteenth-century Germany, states
that a Jew becomes an apostate (nishtamed) ‘to enable himself to
eat all that his heart desires, to give pleasure to his flesh with wine
and fornication, to remove from himself the yoke of the kingdom
of heaven . . . cleave to sin and concern himself with worldly
pleasures’.96 This is a classic description of the venal apostate,
albeit grotesquely exaggerated; but, more importantly, it refuses
to acknowledge ideological apostasy.
Venal apostasy receives a great deal of attention in Sefer
Hasidim. We read of a villain who threatens to apostatize if his
94
Grossman, Early Sages of France, 267.
95
Soloveitchik, ‘Religious Law and Change’, 214. Cf. the typology presented, for
the later Middle Ages, by Joseph Shatzmiller in his ‘Jewish Converts to Christianity in
Medieval Europe’. Jacob Katz seems to be swimming upstream when he observes,
with a vaguely belligerent air: ‘Christian sources tell us of many Jews who accepted
Christianity through conviction, and we have no reason to doubt this’. Katz also writes
that ‘some genuine conversions must have occurred at a time when the whole of society
lived in a state of religious tension’, a minimalistic formulation designed, it seems, to
overturn a contrary consensus or predisposition. See Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance,
75–6.
96
The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the
Nizzahon Vetus, ed. and trans. David Berger (Philadelphia, 1979), 206, x211, cited
in Cohen, ‘Between Martyrdom and Apostasy’, 462–3. See also Jewish–Christian
Debate, ed. Berger, 228, x242.
30 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194
97
Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 215, x857.
98
Ibid., 455, x1876.
99
Ibid., 336, x1376.
100
Ibid., 459, x1897.
101
Sefer Hasidim, ed. Margaliyot, 326, x479. See also ibid., 416, x637: ‘A person
ought not to say to a Jew: ‘‘If I do such and such a thing, I am not a Jew’’, for were he to
do it, he would be making himself a Gentile or an apostate, for one ought not to say an
evil thing, even conditionally’.
102
Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 74. See also William Chester Jordan,
‘Adolescence and Conversion in the Middle Ages: A Research Agenda’, in Signer
and Van Engen (eds.), Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe.
103
Simonsohn, Apostolic See and the Jews, vii, 244–5; i, 52, doc. 50.
104
Parkes, Jew in the Medieval Community, 144.
JEWS AND APOSTATES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 31
perfidy’.105 That very year a papal letter to the abbot of a convent
in Leicester states:
Care must be taken that they [converts] should be solicitously provided
for, lest, in the midst of other faithful Christians, they become oppressed
by lack of food. For lacking the necessities of life, many of them, after their
baptism, are led into great distress, with the result that they are often
forced to go backward because of the avarice of such as are possessed of
plenty — yet scorn to look at the Christian poor.106
Not only do medieval sources present more evidence of venal
than ideological apostasy, they expressly posit that apostasy is
predominantly venal. Rashi and other European authorities
accept the traditional Jewish assumption that women who
choose to apostatize do so for romantic or erotic reasons.107
However, they seem confident that men, too, are rarely convinced
of the truth of Christianity. In a case cited earlier about a serial
apostate seeking recognition of his Jewish identity, the rabbis of
northern France decide to accept his claim, because they assume
that his earlier protestations of faith in Christianity were insin-
cere, while his current declaration of faith in Judaism is believable,
‘since our faith is an honest, good, correct and true one’.108
Because the idea that one could choose Christianity in good
faith strikes these luminaries as patently absurd, their working
assumption is that any apostate must be a venal apostate.
Modern historiography, on the other hand, tends to downplay
venal apostasy and to spotlight the implosion of the ideological
apostate’s religious identity. Apostasy is thus portrayed in sombre
tones, as an act of immeasurable pathos. This meshes with the
general tenor of descriptions of Jewish–Christian relations in
medieval Europe, particularly after the First Crusade. The
105
Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 94–6, doc. 6. Similarly, see ibid., 138–9, doc.
29.
106
Ibid., 96–9, doc. 8. See also Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, ix, 21.
107
Rashi discusses such a case and admits that some (scholars) ‘make noise’ — i.e.
express doubt — about this rule, but he dismisses their reservations: Mordecai ben
Hillel on Ketubot, x286. See Blidstein, ‘Personal Status of Apostate and Ransomed
Women in Medieval Jewish Law’, 56–9. Blidstein infers from this noise-making that
popular practice did not always require reverting apostates to separate from their
spouses. He also deduces that reversion was common, but this conclusion, while it
may be true, is not warranted by the case at hand. For a similar case from a later period,
see Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg, Responsa, Prague edn, no. 1020.
108
Solomon Ibn Adret, Responsa, pt 7, no. 179, cited in Soloveitchik, ‘Religious Law
and Change’, 214 n. 15.
32 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 194