King's Converts - by Lauren Fogle (Hardcover)

About the Book

This study examines efforts to convert Jews to Christianity in twelfth- and thirteenth-century London. The author examines the activities of King Henry III's Domus Conversorum and compares his conversion policies to practices elsewhere in Europe.

Book Synopsis

This study examines efforts to convert Jews to Christianity in twelfth- and thirteenth-century London. The author examines the activities of King Henry III's Domus Conversorum and compares his conversion policies to practices elsewhere in Europe.

Review Quotes

The King's Jews sheds new light on how converts lived in medieval London, but it also tells the story of the role, function, and symbolic and practical significance of the Domus Conversorum for the English kings who supported it--some reluctantly-- through its history. This is an important and welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Jewish conversion.

In this original book dealing with the Jewish community in medieval London, Dr. Fogle has particularly focused on those Jews who 'broke faith' and apostatized. She examines the pressures (or inducements) that were brought to bear on the London Jews and their treatment once they had become 'conversi'. In this study, she has been able to shed light on the attitudes to Jews prevailing among the London population, and reveals for the first time the distinctiveness of the policies pursued by Henry III and later English kings. In her research Dr Fogle made the unexpected discovery that the house in London founded by Henry III for converted Jews - the Domus Coversorum - continued to be important to refugee Jews from all over Europe well into the sixteenth century: its significance clearly did not end with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290. This important study throws new light not only on the Jews themselves but also on the communities in which they lived and, on occasion, prospered.

About the Author

Lauren Fogle is visiting lecturer in history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.