Language:
German
Year of publication:
1991
Titel der Quelle:
Aschkenas; Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden
Angaben zur Quelle:
1 (1991) 65-94
Keywords:
Christian converts from Judaism
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
;
Antisemitism History 1500-1800
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism 1500-
;
History
Abstract:
Traces the history of the Church's official opposition to forced conversion of Jews. Nevertheless, in medieval pogroms Jews were confronted with the choice of conversion or death. The practice of abducting Jewish children in order to bring them up as Christians continued into the 19th century. In the 15th-18th centuries in Germany, Jews in both Catholic and Protestant lands were compelled to attend Christian sermons, but this measure resulted in few converts. Preachers (often converts themselves) who failed to convert Jews often became venomously anti-Jewish. Discusses the circumstances and motives, other than religious conviction, of cases of conversion in this period. Christian clergymen accompanied Jewish criminals to the gallows; by dying as Christians, they could escape the more painful and ignominious modes of death reserved for Jews. The more usual inducements, though, were economic and social.
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