revive a dead bull, he would believe that they operated by the power of God and not by the power of the devil. For their part, the Jews agreed that, if Sylvester could raise the bull in the name of Jesus, they would believe in Christ.130 Some contemporaneous Christian authors evoked the interchangeability of religious identities similarly in relation to Islam. According to Ramon Llull’s autobiographical Vita coaetanea (A Contemporary Life), in the 1290s, Llull assured Muslims in Tunis—likely in order to draw them into debate—that, if they could convince him of the truth and superiority of Islam, he would convert to Islam.131
The fourteenth-century Old French version of the (now lost) eleventh-century Latin Historia Normannorum (History of the Normans) portrayed a Christian missionary as actually becoming drawn to Judaism. It recounted how “Jews’ rhetoric”—“the venomous sweetness of their words”—temporarily “destroyed the devotion to the [Christian] faith” of a Christian youth who had set out “to dissuade the Jews from their evil belief and faith.” According to this text, “the Jews counseled this Christian [youth] to leave the Son and believe only in the Father,” and “the devil bound [the youth] to the Jews’ words.”132
The notion that encounters between Christians and infidels could result in conversion either to or from Christianity is evident also in the simultaneous circulation of narratives that were closely related, except that one culminated in Jewish conversion to Christianity and the other culminated in Christian apostasy to Judaism. Two types of references to a host desecration charge that was leveled in Paris in 1290 illustrate this phenomenon.133 Latin and French homiletic and chronicle accounts of this host desecration charge portrayed it as having led to conversions from Judaism to Christianity. According to the anonymous De miraculo hostiae (On the Miracle of the Host, ca. 1299), for example, when the Jewish host desecrator threw the host into a cauldron of boiling water, the water became bloody and the host was transformed into a crucifix that hovered above the cauldron. Upon witnessing this miracle, the Jewish culprit’s wife and children converted to Christianity. In addition, “many other Jews, moved by so patent a miracle, converted to the [Christian] faith, as well, and embraced the sacrament of baptism.”134 By contrast, in the same year (1299), in a plea to the justices of his kingdom to cooperate with inquisitors in punishing a spectrum of purported Jewish offenses, King Philip IV, “the Fair,” of France referred to Jewish host desecration not by way of celebrating how associated miracles could lead Jews to convert to Christianity but, instead, by way of warning that Jewish offenses of this nature could lead Christians to apostatize to Judaism. “[By] daring wickedly to handle the most holy body of Christ [i.e., to desecrate the host] and to blaspheme other sacraments of [the Christian] faith,” Philip cautioned, Jews were “seducing many simple Christians and circumcising those whom they had seduced.”135 Here, Philip IV took Christian concerns about the impact on Christians of alleged Jewish anti-Christian blasphemy and sacrilege to a new level. Previously, Christian authorities had contended that Jewish expressions of scorn for Christianity could sow or deepen Christian doubts about Christianity. Philip warned, however, that they could drive Christians to abandon Christianity and join the Jews.
Another set of late thirteenth-century narratives that attests to Christian recognition that the border between Judaism and Christianity could be crossed in either direction described dream visions of the afterlife. The first type of narrative in this set appeared in the Cantigas de Santa María and the Speculum historiale (Mirror of History) of the French scholar Vincent of Beauvais (d. ca. 1264), as well as elsewhere. Here, the Virgin Mary appeared to a London Jew named Jacob, first in a dream, then in person. Mary showed Jacob a valley filled with dragons and devils that were torturing the souls of Jews. Then, she showed him Christ in glory, surrounded by singing angels and a great host of saints. Moved by these visions, Jacob went to a monastery where the abbot baptized him.136 A contrasting narrative is preserved in an anonymous work on dreams, Expositio sompniorum (Interpretation of Dreams), in a Paris manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century. Drawing on a tale from the Collationes patrum in scetica eremo (Conferences of the Desert Fathers) of John Cassian (d. 435),137 It tells of a monk who, after hearing about the great deeds of Moses and beginning to prefer Moses to Christ, received a dream from the devil. In this dream, this monk saw Moses with a chorus of angels dressed in white and Christ with a chorus of men dressed in black. On account of this vision, this “wretched” monk “strayed from the faith of Christ and was made a Jew.”138
Together with texts that explored the notion that the same individual could serve as an agent of conversion to his or her own faith or apostatize to another faith, these two sets of narratives—the set about the consequences of Jewish host desecration and the set about dream visions of the afterlife—indicate that, during the latter half of the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth, Christians were pondering conversion to and from Judaism in similar terms and sometimes in tandem. These narratives also underscore the stark opposition in Christians’ eyes between these two directions of conversion. Conversion to Christianity was the product of divine grace and revelation, of eucharistic miracles and apparitions of the Virgin Mary. It was the ultimate desideratum, the happiest of conceivable endings. Apostasy to Judaism, by contrast, was the result of anti-Christian crimes and demonic deception, of Jewish blasphemy and sacrilege and dreams from the devil. The worst of nightmares come true, apostasy to Judaism was the portal to perdition.
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The thirteenth-century revitalization of Christian concerns about apostasy to Judaism is key to understanding Master Benedict’s contention that Norwich Jews seized and circumcised his son because they “wanted to make him a Jew.” Indeed, Master Benedict’s accusation stands as early evidence of this revival. Voiced and validated in a milieu with close ties to the papal curia, the links of this specific charge to broader ecclesiastical anxieties are unmistakable. Leading churchmen who traveled in the same circles as the bishops who adjudicated the Norwich circumcision case conceived of apostasy to Judaism as being of a piece with a broader set of deviations and defections from the church. They treated movement into heresy and apostasy to Islam and Judaism as parallel and morally equivalent phenomena, and they conceptualized Christian heretics, Muslims, and Jews as agents of Christian apostasy who operated similarly in their efforts to “seduce” the Christian faithful. Moreover, some of these same men participated in thirteenth-century Christian conversionary efforts and likely were uneasy about the apparent interchangeability of religious affiliation. Polemical works, literary exempla, royal pronouncements, sermons, and chronicles all reveal that thirteenth-century Christians pondered apostasy to Judaism as the troubling inverse of Jewish conversion to Christianity. The charge that in Norwich in 1230 Jews sought to convert a Christian to Judaism thus resonated with ecclesiastical anxieties about Christian deviance, infidels’ and heretics’ alleged anti-Christian designs, and the instability of religious identity.
In addition to drawing attention to the thirteenth-century revival of Christian concerns about Christian apostasy to Judaism, the Norwich circumcision case provides insight into how a single allegation that Jews attempted to convert a Christian to Judaism could reinforce and further disseminate Christian fears. The Christians who attended the various hearings in the Norwich circumcision case constituted a cross-section of Christian society. As noted in the Introduction, they included King Henry III, noblemen, bishops, Dominicans, Franciscans, and municipal officials, as well as thirty-six male residents of Norwich, the woman named Matilda de Bernham who allegedly rescued Edward after his circumcision, and undoubtedly other commoners, as well. Surely, each of these onlookers spread word of the affair within his or her personal and professional circles. Moreover, the high-ranking ecclesiastical officials traveled internationally, including to Rome, after the legal proceedings in the Norwich circumcision case were under way, carrying news of the case with them. There is reason to think also—although there is no hard evidence—that news of the case spread to German lands. In 1236, Henry III sent two Jewish converts to Christianity to counsel Emperor Frederick II regarding a blood libel accusation—the charge that Jews ritually murdered Christian children specifically in order to collect their blood—that had been leveled in Fulda.139 These two Jewish converts to Christianity from
