Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

Paola Tartakoff is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is author of Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

"In her original and impressively researched investigation of medieval Jewish and Christian understandings of religious identity, Paola Tartakoff shows how a single conversion could affect families and entire communities in unpredictable ways. Specialists will welcome the volume of evidence she brings from both archival and published sources, as well as her elegant and persuasive exposition of the critical role of conversion in worsening relationships between Christians and Jews across thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe. Non-specialists will find this study entirely accessible." --- "Tartakoff offers a nuanced exploration of how Christians and Jews thought about these compelling yet dangerous movements between faiths. Tartakoff adopts the pioneering approach of intertwining the study of Christian conversion to Judaism with that of Jewish conversion to Christianity . . . By exploring conversion as a bidirectional phenomenon, she offers new insight into both the experiences of converts and the multifaceted attitudes of both communities toward conversion. Her careful delineation of the parallels and divergences between converts paints a portrait of religious transformation, change, and fluidity that is at once broadly synthetic and richly detailed." --- "Tartakoff's work is groundbreaking. She confirms the processes that shaped the idea of medieval conversion and its practices. She has uncovered its porosity, its cultural fluidity, its interactions, and its connectivity. As among early modern Jews and Christians, the past life of converts could not be eradicated and continued to remain potentially threatening. Without a doubt, this book furthers our understanding considerably not only of the Norwich circumcision case, but of medieval Jewish and Christian conversion in general. It provides an indispensable tool for anyone interested in the subject."