Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe by Paola Tartakoff (review)

In 1230 Matilda de Bernham claimed she had found Edward, son of Master Benedict, a Norwich physician, lamenting and saying that he was a Jew. Moreover, she accused the city’s Jews of trying to retrieve the boy by force, calling him “their Jew.” Four years later, Master Benedict, who had not actively searched for Edward, accused the Jews of circumcising him. There followed both legal proceedings and attacks on Norwich Jews and their property. Some Jews fled elsewhere, and three moneylenders were condemned to be hanged. A church court awarded Master Benedict land and a house owned by Jews. Edward, who was five years old in 1230, then nine, was made to undergo physical examinations as part of the proceedings. The examinations were inconclusive. Paola Tartakoff notes that the official records, such as survive, may have omitted Edward’s mother because she was a Jew. That would explain the claims of local Jews that Edward, named Jurnepin, a diminutive of Joseph, after his circumcision, was “their Jew.”

Paola Tartakoff takes this case as a springboard for an inquiry into the borders between Christian and Jewish identities in the European Middle Ages. Her principal point is that these borders were permeable rather than fixed. There were conversions of Jews to Christianity in some numbers, but also (as she shows) some conversions of Christians to Judaism. Further, converts in either direction might return to their original communities. (Tartakoff’s studies of Christians who embraced a Jewish identity are particularly interesting, whether or not they retained it.) Medieval Jews were particularly worried about their children being abducted for baptism. Reports remain that some killed their children rather than have them forcibly christened.

Although the borders were permeable, attitudes on either side differed dramatically. Christians were often eager to convert Jews, and they supposed Jews were equally zealous. As the author shows, Jews were often reluctant to embrace converts. One reason for this reluctance was fear of Christian retribution. However, Jews did accept some of these converts, circumcising the men, men and women alike accepting a ritual bath. There was more zeal evident for winning back those Jews who embraced what was seen as Christian error. Christian authorities were harder on those they uncovered practicing as Jews. Those who would not repent this “apostasy” might be burned for embracing Jewish “unbelief.” (These condemnations and penalties are shown to fit into a larger pattern including heretics and Muslims as enemies of orthodoxy.)

Tartakoff extends her inquiry into a more familiar realm, the belief that Jews practiced ritual murder of Christians, especially of their children. The English chroniclers William of Newburgh and Matthew Paris early on tied Edward’s circumcision to that anti-Jewish libel. They and many others thought circumcising Edward was one step toward reenacting the crucifixion of Jesus by murdering a Christian made a Jew with a bris. That belief, and not just in the subsequent accounts of the Norwich case, passed over from Catholic to Protestant belief, including in the writings of the marty-rologist John Foxe.

This book presents compelling evidence that the borderline between Christians and Jews was not impermeable. Moreover, it shows how Christians often projected fears of apostasy onto their Jewish neighbors. Small wonder that the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 tried to reinforce that religious division by requiring Jews living in Latin Christian lands to wear distinctive badges. There is one weakness in the argument. Evidence of Christian attitudes toward circumcision tends to be drawn from inquisitors and Latin chroniclers. Theologians presented more nuanced views of that rite in commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. They treated the Jewish rite of initiation as once useful but since superseded. That omission, however, does not vitiate the value of Tartakoff’s penetrating study.