Severus of Minorca: Letter on the Conversion of the Jews Oxford Early Christian Studies

Key Features

• Provides an edited text, introduction, and the first English translation of a central document in the history of religious coercion in late antiquity: Severus of Minorca's Letter on the Conversion of the Jews.
• The Letter describes the forced conversion of the Jews of Minorca to Christianity in AD 418, allegedly under the influence of St Stephen's relics.
• Although ostensibly a hagiographical work, the Letter is fundamentally an anti-Jewish document, and therein lies its interest for historians.
• It offers a fascinating perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in a Mediterranean town, and on the motives for religious intolerance in the unsettled ages of the Germanic invasions.
• In addition, its wealth of information about a diaspora Jewish community in the western empire makes it unique among the surviving sources.