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Catholic Spectacle and Rome's Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance
A new investigation that shows how conversionary preaching to Jews was essential to the early modern Catholic Church and the Roman religious landscape
Starting in the sixteenth century, Jews in Rome were forced, every Saturday, to attend a hostile sermon aimed at their conversion. Harshly policed, they were made to march en masse toward the sermon and sit through it, all the while scrutinized by local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts. In Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews , Emily Michelson demonstrates how this display was vital to the development of early modern Catholicism.
Drawing from a trove of overlooked manuscripts, Michelson reconstructs the dynamics of weekly forced preaching in Rome. As the Catholic Church began to embark on worldwide missions, sermons to Jews offered a unique opportunity to define and defend its new triumphalist, global outlook. They became a point of prestige in Rome. The city’s most important organizations invested in maintaining these spectacles, and foreign tourists eagerly attended them. The title of “Preacher to the Jews” could make a man’s career. The presence of Christian spectators, Roman and foreign, was integral to these sermons, and preachers played to the gallery. Conversionary sermons also provided an intellectual veneer to mask ongoing anti-Jewish aggressions. In response, Jews mounted a campaign of resistance, using any means available.
Examining the history and content of sermons to Jews over two and a half centuries, Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews argues that conversionary preaching to Jews played a fundamental role in forming early modern Catholic identity.
Starting in the sixteenth century, Jews in Rome were forced, every Saturday, to attend a hostile sermon aimed at their conversion. Harshly policed, they were made to march en masse toward the sermon and sit through it, all the while scrutinized by local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts. In Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews , Emily Michelson demonstrates how this display was vital to the development of early modern Catholicism.
Drawing from a trove of overlooked manuscripts, Michelson reconstructs the dynamics of weekly forced preaching in Rome. As the Catholic Church began to embark on worldwide missions, sermons to Jews offered a unique opportunity to define and defend its new triumphalist, global outlook. They became a point of prestige in Rome. The city’s most important organizations invested in maintaining these spectacles, and foreign tourists eagerly attended them. The title of “Preacher to the Jews” could make a man’s career. The presence of Christian spectators, Roman and foreign, was integral to these sermons, and preachers played to the gallery. Conversionary sermons also provided an intellectual veneer to mask ongoing anti-Jewish aggressions. In response, Jews mounted a campaign of resistance, using any means available.
Examining the history and content of sermons to Jews over two and a half centuries, Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews argues that conversionary preaching to Jews played a fundamental role in forming early modern Catholic identity.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 10, 2022
32 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 28, 2022
Centuries of Despicable Behavior against Jews
Dr. Emily Michelson, senior lecturer in history at the University of St. Andrews, describes the over two and a half centuries when the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, Italy, forced Rome’s Jews to attend weekly hostile sermons. The Church’s aim was to convert the Jews to the Catholic faith. In the easy to read fascinating, eye-opening, well-documented book “Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews,” she tells how the Jews were forced to march to the sermon and sit through it while being policed by men with sticks who poked Jews from time to time when they felt a Jew was not sufficiently attentive.
These forced sermons delivered to Jews were performed during the three centuries as a demeaning spectacle with local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts watching. They were delivered by religious leaders many of whom firmly believed they were doing the right, moral, and religious thing. The hostile sermons were delivered on Saturdays, making a mockery of the biblical mandate to delight in the Sabbath and rejoice in it. The Jews were divided into three groups. One third was required to attend each week. Thus each Jew had to hear about 17 sermons each year. The sermons lasted an hour.
It “was a staged, ritualized performance that also carried complex social implications throughout the city. It fostered street violence and pamphlet wars, drew tourists and spectators, and [the caricatures of the Jews and their practices] blurred the boundaries between real and imaginary Jews.”
Jews arrived in Rome long before Christianity began in the second century BCE. From then through most of the Middle Ages, there was “an extended tolerance, stability, and civil relations between Jews and others in Rome.” But by the mid sixteenth century, there was an enormous transformation probably because of the influx of Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily in 1492, Portugal, Navarre, and Provence in 1498, and Naples and Calabria in 1510. In was then that there was the first concerted effort to convert Roman Jews en masse. Rome’s Jewish population was roughly three thousand, about 3 percent of its population before the influx, and by 1733 it was 4,059, but their imaginary presence in the mind of the Catholic leadership loomed much larger.
Along with other brutal activities designed to force or persuade Jews to convert to the Catholic religion, the first act was Rome’s restrictive ghetto ordered by the Pope which was established in 1555 that was walled and locked. Others included Pope Urban VIII order that Jewish graves should be left unmarked.
A prominent thesis of the sermons was that rabbinic Judaism was a perversion of biblical Judaism. The lecturers claimed that the rabbis made changes in Judaism to conceal the fact that the Hebrew Bible and early Midrashic literature confirmed the truth of Christianity. They also used ideas in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, as proof that Christianity is correct. And they stressed that the messiah that Judaism hoped would soon arrive, had already come.
The demeaning forced sermons were abolished in 1847.
Dr. Emily Michelson, senior lecturer in history at the University of St. Andrews, describes the over two and a half centuries when the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, Italy, forced Rome’s Jews to attend weekly hostile sermons. The Church’s aim was to convert the Jews to the Catholic faith. In the easy to read fascinating, eye-opening, well-documented book “Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews,” she tells how the Jews were forced to march to the sermon and sit through it while being policed by men with sticks who poked Jews from time to time when they felt a Jew was not sufficiently attentive.
These forced sermons delivered to Jews were performed during the three centuries as a demeaning spectacle with local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts watching. They were delivered by religious leaders many of whom firmly believed they were doing the right, moral, and religious thing. The hostile sermons were delivered on Saturdays, making a mockery of the biblical mandate to delight in the Sabbath and rejoice in it. The Jews were divided into three groups. One third was required to attend each week. Thus each Jew had to hear about 17 sermons each year. The sermons lasted an hour.
It “was a staged, ritualized performance that also carried complex social implications throughout the city. It fostered street violence and pamphlet wars, drew tourists and spectators, and [the caricatures of the Jews and their practices] blurred the boundaries between real and imaginary Jews.”
Jews arrived in Rome long before Christianity began in the second century BCE. From then through most of the Middle Ages, there was “an extended tolerance, stability, and civil relations between Jews and others in Rome.” But by the mid sixteenth century, there was an enormous transformation probably because of the influx of Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily in 1492, Portugal, Navarre, and Provence in 1498, and Naples and Calabria in 1510. In was then that there was the first concerted effort to convert Roman Jews en masse. Rome’s Jewish population was roughly three thousand, about 3 percent of its population before the influx, and by 1733 it was 4,059, but their imaginary presence in the mind of the Catholic leadership loomed much larger.
Along with other brutal activities designed to force or persuade Jews to convert to the Catholic religion, the first act was Rome’s restrictive ghetto ordered by the Pope which was established in 1555 that was walled and locked. Others included Pope Urban VIII order that Jewish graves should be left unmarked.
A prominent thesis of the sermons was that rabbinic Judaism was a perversion of biblical Judaism. The lecturers claimed that the rabbis made changes in Judaism to conceal the fact that the Hebrew Bible and early Midrashic literature confirmed the truth of Christianity. They also used ideas in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, as proof that Christianity is correct. And they stressed that the messiah that Judaism hoped would soon arrive, had already come.
The demeaning forced sermons were abolished in 1847.
October 22, 2024
This book was phenomenal. Incredible fascinating read. Niche history books are always the best. One bone to pick is sometimes the authors writing is pretentious and needlessly verbose, additionally the author occasionally quotes in foreign languages without translation as like an inside joke to annoy you, but the research and analysis the author evinces more than make up for it.
August 30, 2025
The savagery of the Roman Catholic Church
A vast edifice of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship of the Roman Catholic Church was built on institutional records that portrayed it as a monolithic, uniform, and a successful religion. In this book, the author tackles antisemitism and mistreatment of Jewish population in Rome. Before 1555, Jews had lived in the city for centuries with periods of tolerance and hardship. They were allowed to practice Judaism, run small businesses, and had synagogues. The major turning point was when Pope Paul IV took over as the head of the church, and the proclaiming the Papal Bull of 1555 “Cum nimis absurdum,” which energized antisemitism. Jews were forced into a small ghetto, an overcrowded area near the Tiber River. It was walled, guarded, and locked at night. Jews were banned from owning property, practicing medicine on Christians, and holding most other professions. The Papal Bull intensified the church’s efforts to force Jewish conversion into Christianity, and allowed numerous intimidation tactics. The author focuses largely on the weekly church sermons and the way they were conducted. It was filled with hostility and theatrical zeal to assert Catholic identity, power, and global ambition. The author also highlights the Jewish resilience and community resistance like avoidance, passive resistance, formal petitions, and public protests. The sermons were staged weekly in public for roughly 250 years. Many of these events were held at the Oratory of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. Jews were marched under guard from the ghetto to sermon; policed, cataloged, and seated under Christian spectators.
The church also organized mock processions to counter the solemn Jewish funeral march of mourners. Funerals were fraught with sadness and the threat of violence. These processions provided an occasion for Catholic church to intimidate large groups of Jews gathered together outside the ghetto. The book discusses the known case of disrupting Rabbi Tranquillo Corcos’s funeral with a satirical approach. The mock procession of local young Catholic men to counter the solemn Jewish funeral procession of mourners. At the head of the counter procession, the mock Corcos's coffin contained a live pig.
The author could have focused more on Jewish chroniclers and Jewish leaders who fought against the overreaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps their perspectives of antisemitism. This book is an important investigative work that highlights the dangers of intolerance to minority religions like Judaism and Hinduism. Antisemitism is widely spread among Muslim population around the globe. The legacy media, the liberal politicians and the Left-wing groups are intensifying antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments at an unprecedented level, and this make it possible the religious persecution of minority faiths.
A vast edifice of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship of the Roman Catholic Church was built on institutional records that portrayed it as a monolithic, uniform, and a successful religion. In this book, the author tackles antisemitism and mistreatment of Jewish population in Rome. Before 1555, Jews had lived in the city for centuries with periods of tolerance and hardship. They were allowed to practice Judaism, run small businesses, and had synagogues. The major turning point was when Pope Paul IV took over as the head of the church, and the proclaiming the Papal Bull of 1555 “Cum nimis absurdum,” which energized antisemitism. Jews were forced into a small ghetto, an overcrowded area near the Tiber River. It was walled, guarded, and locked at night. Jews were banned from owning property, practicing medicine on Christians, and holding most other professions. The Papal Bull intensified the church’s efforts to force Jewish conversion into Christianity, and allowed numerous intimidation tactics. The author focuses largely on the weekly church sermons and the way they were conducted. It was filled with hostility and theatrical zeal to assert Catholic identity, power, and global ambition. The author also highlights the Jewish resilience and community resistance like avoidance, passive resistance, formal petitions, and public protests. The sermons were staged weekly in public for roughly 250 years. Many of these events were held at the Oratory of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. Jews were marched under guard from the ghetto to sermon; policed, cataloged, and seated under Christian spectators.
The church also organized mock processions to counter the solemn Jewish funeral march of mourners. Funerals were fraught with sadness and the threat of violence. These processions provided an occasion for Catholic church to intimidate large groups of Jews gathered together outside the ghetto. The book discusses the known case of disrupting Rabbi Tranquillo Corcos’s funeral with a satirical approach. The mock procession of local young Catholic men to counter the solemn Jewish funeral procession of mourners. At the head of the counter procession, the mock Corcos's coffin contained a live pig.
The author could have focused more on Jewish chroniclers and Jewish leaders who fought against the overreaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps their perspectives of antisemitism. This book is an important investigative work that highlights the dangers of intolerance to minority religions like Judaism and Hinduism. Antisemitism is widely spread among Muslim population around the globe. The legacy media, the liberal politicians and the Left-wing groups are intensifying antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments at an unprecedented level, and this make it possible the religious persecution of minority faiths.
January 12, 2023
Boring and loose. (1) The author is by training a Catholicist and seems to believe that her personal Jewish background is enough to allow her to write a book about shared history. In actual fact, she is clearly limited to Catholic sources and evinces only the barest knowledge of Hebrew and traditional Jewish texts. She uses almost no Jewish documentary evidence. Considering the question "am I better able to write a book about 17th century Catholic history than my friend the Catholic geologist" would have been enough. (2) 90% of the book restates other contemporary scholarship, most of which is irrelevant and almost all of which is unnecessary. This could have been a really excellent journal article but 200 pages of padding makes for an amateurish book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews