Jewish conversions to Catholicism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

Weakened by the religious challenges of the Protestant Reformation, the early modern Catholic Church sought "stability and reassurance."1 One way it did so was through "tales of individual Jewish conversions," which went hand in hand with aggressive conversionary efforts. In Rome, these efforts began in the sixteenth century, through the burning of the Talmud and through the pressure exerted by ghetto life. In 1584, Gregory XIII ordered Roman Jews to submit to forced preaching.2 This process repeated itself in the mid-eighteenth century, especially under Pope Benedict XIV. But the motives this time were different. Rather than battling disintegrating Catholic unity, as it did in the sixteenth century, the eighteenth century papacy was responding to religious and political chal lenges that accompanied the rise of anti-clericalism, secularism, and demands for religious tolerance.3 Similar, albeit perhaps more subtle, attempts to con vert Jews, complemented by tales and polemics decrying Jewish error and telling of conversionary miracles, were also known in late seventeenth and eighteenth century Poland. Yet contrastingly, the eighteenth century Polish Church and its clergy were reacting to stimuli similar to those the Church in Rome had reacted to over a century and a half before. As in so many other areas of "modernization," in the matter of policy, and attitudes, toward Jews, Poland once again lagged behind, its Church still embroiled in pre-modern religious and political conflicts and still responding to the aftershocks of early modern religious crises and wars, including those involving Protestants, Muslims and the Eastern Orthodox.4 Seeking to buttress itself and to enhance its weakened authority, and perhaps even more its weakened prestige in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish clergy resorted to mission and to glorifying narrative of the kind that would show, as was so often said in sixteenth century Rome, that truly, there was only "one flock and one pastor."5 Battling non-Catholics and unruly secular leadership created a sense of purpose. More importantly, it reassured. Admittedly, neither efforts to convert Jews in Poland, nor the results, were spectacular. Still, materials from numerous Church archives point to a steady, if limited, influx of converts to Catholicism not only from Judaism, but also