Letter on the Conversion of the Jews (review)

The Epistula Severi is an important but previously not widely examined account of a forced conversion to Christianity of over 500 Jews on the island of Minorca in 418. Bradbury here offers a critical Latin text with full apparatus, a clear, accurate, readable translation (the first in English), a judicious set of notes, and an extensive introduction of 77 pages which might serve as a model of the genre.

Because the Letter is not well known, a word about the events it recounts may be in order, though—let the reader beware!—Peter Brown has described them as “a thoroughly dirty business.” Shortly after some relics of St. Stephen (themselves recently discovered near Jerusalem) had been deposited on Minorca by Paul Orosius, the Christians of the island, in large numbers, led by Severus, their zealous new bishop, march on the Jews. There is sporadic disputation and some rock-throwing. The synagogue is burned down, and nearly the entire Jewish population, many fearing for their lives, become Christian.

Among the fascinating details passed along by Severus are the previous amicable relations between the two communities, and the respect in which several named notables among the Jews were held, as well as their political and economic leadership on the island. Much of the Letter is occupied with accounts of the conversion/surrender of some dozen individual Jews, among whom four—the longest to hold out—were women.

While the perspective of the Letter is clearly that of Severus, for whom all of this is a source of triumphant joy, there is enough here for the reader to discern much of “what really happened,” thanks in large part to Bradbury’s thorough Introduction. He is especially helpful in gathering other relevant material to serve as framework for what we can know of the Jews of Minorca and their relations with the Christian community there. The events are placed in the context of the discovery and adventures of the relics of St. Stephen, the possibility of millenarian concerns as a factor, and, perhaps most informative, the debates about the appropriateness of coercion. This last is important because of the role of a certain Consentius, a correspondent of Augustine (Epp. 119–20, 205; Contra Mendacium; and now Letters 11* and 12* in the Divjak collection), who, though unmentioned in the Letter, certainly had a hand in its composition, the thought behind it, and an adversus Judaeos treatise (now lost) which originally accompanied it. Bradbury’s text, based on nine (seven useful) manuscripts, must supersede Migne’s two editions (in PL 20 and 41), both dependent on one carelessly copied manuscript. His argument for date and authenticity (against Blumenkranz and others) is both clear and absolutely compelling.

The “dirty business” recounted with such satisfaction by Severus ought to be better known and more widely studied in courses on early Christianity, perhaps along with broadly available texts such as Ambrose’s Epp. 40 and 41, on the dispute surrounding the burning of the synagogue at Callinicum in 388. Would that the publisher can find a way to offer an inexpensive paperbound edition of this important Letter and Bradbury’s unassuming but invaluable scholarship!