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Slaves, clerics and the policed boundary

Date

633CE

633–838 CE

There were conversions from Christianity to Judaism, in all probability mostly of slaves in Jewish households, and also of clerics such as Bodo, chaplain to Louis the Pious, in 838; Christian authorities reacted to keep the boundary.

Religious historySocial and economic history39.8567°N 4.0245°W
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Under the Cross: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

4 statements

01Where converts came from

Though less common than Jewish conversions to Christianity, there are cases of conversion from Christianity to Judaism, often of clerics trained in Scripture. Bodo, chaplain to Emperor Louis the Pious, converted to Judaism in 838, took the Hebrew name Eliezer and fled to Muslim Spain, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Jewish households could include slaves and servants, who sometimes took on their masters' religion. Jewish law encouraged circumcising and converting non-Jewish slaves, and most converts to Judaism probably came from this group. Once converted and freed, they held full standing as formal proselytes and the protection of Jewish law.

02The Christian response

Slave conversion troubled Christian authorities deeply, and they sought to block it. In 633 a church council meeting at Toledo (the fourth held there) issued a text called 'On the Keeping of Slaves': Jews were not to own or purchase Christian slaves, and any they held were to be removed from their control and freed. The line between Christianity and Judaism stayed clear because Christian authorities policed it too, not only because Jews defended it.

Context

The charter records Jewish complaints about Christians who pushed Jews' slaves into baptism as a way of escaping their masters. The emperor sided with the Jews on this point, decreeing that no one could baptize a Jew's slave without the owner's consent.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
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§ 04Network

Connections

§ 05Bibliography

Further reading

No specific reading recorded for this event.

§ 06Apparatus

Sources on this page

  1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190inspect
  2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190inspect
  3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 190inspect
  4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 186; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 186inspect
  • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
  • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
  • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
  • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
  • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.