Jewish Communities under Visigothic Rule

In the seventh-century Visigothic kingdom of Iberia, roughly present-day Spain and Portugal, royal and church authorities increasingly sought to bring Jewish communities under Christian rule. Councils met at Toledo, the kingdom’s political center; their canons were formal rulings adopted by bishops. Royal laws describe demands on Jewish households and on people baptized under pressure, from public professions of faith to limits on worship, travel, family ties and property.

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A Christian kingdom and Jewish communities

Earlier Visigothic kings followed Homoian Christianity, while many inhabitants of the former Roman provinces followed Nicene Christianity, the creed shaped at Nicaea in 325. King Reccared’s conversion to Nicene Christianity and the Third Council of Toledo in 589 aligned the crown with Catholic bishops. In this setting, religious unity became a royal concern, and laws directed at Jewish practice became part of governing the kingdom.

Baptism and written professions

King Sisebut ordered Jews under his rule to receive baptism, the Christian rite of initiation, around 615. At the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, bishops condemned compelling people to believe but required Jews already baptized under Sisebut to remain Christian. The rule made baptism a binding public status even when the conversion had been forced.

A declaration from Jews in Toledo to King Recceswinth, dated 654, renewed a pledge first made under King Chintila. It promised Christian marriage for signers and their descendants, observance of Christian festivals, rejection of Jewish festivals and dietary distinctions, and separation from unbaptized Jews. It added a specific food rule: if long habit made eating pork difficult, signers still promised not to refuse food cooked with pork. The document sets out the conduct demanded of converts in a royal pledge.

Erwig’s code and local supervision

In 681, King Erwig’s revised law code required Jews who had not been baptized, their children and enslaved people to receive baptism within a year. It prescribed penalties including whipping, shaving, exile and confiscation, and prohibited Jewish Passover and Sabbath observance, circumcision, teaching from Jewish books and distinctions in food.

The code required converts seeking recognition as Christian to appear before a bishop and make a written profession marked by signature or seal. Bishops and judges were to compare that declaration with the person’s conduct. The law also required clergy to provide Jews a copy of the code and preserve professions in church archives, linking a local review to records kept for future reference.

Erwig’s rules specified how travel and festival attendance were to be supervised. A Jew seeking leave to travel had to present ecclesiastical testimony about Christian conduct. If business required a journey, the parish priest prepared a signed profession and a letter to clergy in the destination district; the letter recorded the days of absence. A separate law required Jewish communities to visit a bishop or priest on the Sabbath and their festival days, and barred travel on those days without clerical permission. The code directed that wives and daughters follow the same oversight and associate with Christian women selected by clergy.

Some restrictions included an avenue for legal recognition. Erwig’s code allowed a person judged to be a sincere Christian, whose conduct matched a signed profession and oath, to retain Christian slaves. The bishop and judges therefore controlled whether a convert could claim that right.

Household ties and the decree of 694

Other laws restricted Jewish authority over Christian households, trade and dealings with Christians. Seventh-century measures also regulated marriage and the ownership of Christian slaves. Their provisions addressed relationships formed through family, work, property and conversion.

At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo in 694, King Egica accused Jews in the kingdom of conspiring with Jewish communities overseas. The council’s Canon 8 ordered the confiscation of property and the enslavement and dispersal of Jews and their families. Alberto Ferreiro’s summary of the canon adds that children over seven were to be given to Christian couples to raise as Christians. The punishment was justified in the council record by Egica’s allegation. The primary text says families would be dispersed through Spain’s provinces; a sourcebook catalogue records an exception for Jews in Septimania, the Visigothic territory north of the Pyrenees.

The Muslim conquest beginning in 711 ended Visigothic royal rule.