Cum nimis absurdum and the conversion of the Jews

Abstract

In a recent major study,1 Kenneth Stow has argued that the turn for the worse in papal policy toward the Jews inaugurated by the famous bull Cum Nimis Absurdum resulted not from the desire to segregate Jews but from the hope of converting them en masse. It is not merely that the papacy made intense efforts to convert Jews in the latter half of the sixteenth century; this, as Stow indicates, is nothing new. Rather, "conversion ...w as the core to which all Jewry policy" -including ghettoization and a variety of other new regulations-"was united." 2 We are dealing with much more than a mere "outgrowth of the repressive measures that typified" the Counter-Reformation;3 the new papal policy reflects a conscious decision to convert the Jews through a series of social and economic restrictions. (from Introduction)