This dissertation explores the relationship between religious and racial persecution by examining Christian responses to converted Jews in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century northern France. By reconstructing attitudes of Christian intellectuals towards the possibility of Jewish conversion and exploring the socio-economic status and integration of converts, the dissertation clarifies the degree to which Judaism was believed to be inextricably linked to identity in medieval France.

The dissertation draws on financial and administrative records to reconstruct the career trajectory of Philippe le Convers, a high-level royal agent and the godson of King Philip the Fair (r. 1285--1314). Other prominent medieval converts, such as Henry of Winchester in England, eventually faced limits to their ability to integrate into Christian society, but Philippe's status as a convert does not appear to have limited his career---or his influence at court---in any way. The dissertation also draws on evidence from property records, guild records, and tax assessments to examine the socio-economic status of other French converts, showing that a significant number of converts were well integrated into multiple sectors of the Parisian working world in the late thirteenth century. Parisian converts lived and worked in Christian neighborhoods throughout the city, and a significant number of Parisian converts practiced lucrative, prestigious trades. Some Parisian converts formed associations with prominent bourgeois by gaining access to Christian guilds or by marrying into well-placed bourgeois families. The dissertation also draws on narrative sources, such as chronicles and ecclesiastical visitation registers, in order to explore Christian chroniclers' perceptions of converted Jews from the late twelfth through the late fourteenth century, arguing that Christian chroniclers in France began to express heightened concerns about the status and trustworthiness of French converts, as a group, only after the expulsions of Jews from France in the early fourteenth century.

France was one of the earliest countries to implement a national expulsion of Jews, and French policies played a major role in establishing the tone of anti-Jewish legislation throughout medieval Europe. Other studies have shown that the persecution of Jews intensified in northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and scholars have assumed that negative attitudes towards Jews must have applied to converts, as well. However, this dissertation argues that until the expulsions of the early fourteenth century, French converts were well integrated into Christian society and that evidence from a broad range of sources demonstrates a growing concern about the status and trustworthiness of converts in France only after the waves of expulsions in the fourteenth century.