Sociohistorical Realism in Juive, a Conversion Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century Vie des pères

by Karen Casey Casebier, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

“Juive,” La Vie des pères, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5204, fol. 150v (source: gallica.bnf.fr/ BnF). The Virgin Mary appears to a Jewish woman during childbirth.

Although my background is in Old French literature, and the devotional works, miracle tales and saints’ lives that I study rarely concern themselves with issues pertinent to medieval Jewish studies, I was naturally intrigued to find a conversion miracle in which a Jewish woman becomes a Christian saint. More importantly, I began to consider how this miracle of the Virgin Mary might shed light on the relationship of Jews and Christians in medieval society, since they often shared the same communities and cultures, even if they did not share the same religious values.

Conversion miracles frequently promote the Christian faith by reiterating conventional anti-Jewish attitudes. Yet a variant of the miracle tale-type known as “The Jewish Woman Helped in Childbirth” in a fourteenth-century manuscript branch of La Vie des pères does not follow the typical conversion plot in which a Jew converts to Christianity and the tale ends. Instead, the title character of Juive not only converts to Christianity after the Virgin Mary’s miraculous midwifery but goes on to become a saint.[i] La Vie des pères is an eclectic collection of devotional literature that began as 42 tales written c. 1215-30. This First Vie des pères includes tales of pious hermits, saints’ lives, and miracle tales, but the collection was expanded twice during the thirteenth century to include 32 additional tales, mostly miracles of the Virgin (the Second Vie des pères, c. 1241-50, and the Third Vie des pères, c. 1252). In the early fourteenth century (c. 1327-28), the final expansion of the collection, the Fourth Vie des pères, adds ten more miracle tales, six of which are the first known vernacular versions of these tales in Old French. As one might expect, the poet reiterates anti-Jewish attitudes, but they also consider the practical difficulties that Jews would have encountered after their conversion to Christianity. In addition to its sociohistorical realism, Juive also reveals a shift in contemporary definitions of women’s holiness, which increasingly emphasized virtuous wives and suffering mothers instead of virginity and martyrdom. 

There are several Latin versions of “The Jewish Woman Helped in Childbirth,” but the only other known variant in vernacular literature is in Alfonso X El Sabio’s Cantigas de Santa María, which I am currently investigating as a possible source for the “new” tales in this manuscript branch. The Vie des pères’ version of the tale is unusual because the poet adds an extended post-conversion episode with hagiographic motifs. Curiously, the tale appears to have been introduced into the Vie des pères as a replacement for its other conversion miracle, Juitel, and it is the first known extant version of this miracle in Old French.[ii]

Juive’s attention to social class, childbirth customs, and Christian charity ground the fictitious miracle in sociohistorical reality. The tale is set in a large and well-established Jewish community, and the manuscript was produced just after a series of expulsions of the Jews from France (c. 1327-28); the poet’s neutrality distances the tale from the real political context, even as it alludes to it.[iii] The miracle demonstrates the role of grace in salvation, and the Jewish community represents the Law. In the prologue, the Jews are characterized as “foolish” and as “[a] difficult and wicked people” because they follow the Law and deny Jesus’ divinity.[iv] The “justice” of Jesus also contrasts with the grace of Mary, and the epilogue evokes the miracle as evidence of her desire that all sinners might know salvation.

The miracle occurs in a noble Jewish household. The husband is a descendant of Judah, and a leader in the Narbonne community. Since he holds a position of economic and political authority as a seigneur that sets him apart from other Jews, he is a “quintessential Jewish person.”[v] His virtuous wife is “worthy and full of goodness, according to her Law” (my emphasis) and her fourth pregnancy is joyful news.[vi] In a culture where the primary purpose of marriage is to produce children, the woman’s fecundity is proof of a good marriage, reflecting the fourteenth-century Christian concept of the family as an essential social and moral good. In fact, by the fourteenth century, the Christian virtue of celibate marriage had been superceded by the ideal of virtuous wives and mothers, so that the Christian notion of procreation was more closely aligned with the traditional Jewish perspective on marriage and family.[vii] Thus there is little that separates this noble family from others in medieval society, except for their religion.

The childbirth episode capitalizes on women’s realistic fear of childbirth, stating that “she was in so much pain that they expected her to die.”[viii] The woman’s physical suffering in childbirth foreshadows her holiness, but it also frames her conversion as a desperate act. When a light fortuitously descends from heaven and advises her to call upon the Virgin to end her labor and save her soul, she does so. Naturally, as soon as Mary intervenes, she gives birth to a healthy child.

“Juive,” La Vie des pères, The Hague, KB 71 A 24, fol. 127r (© The Hague, KB). The Jewish woman has a vision of Mary during childbirth.

Upon hearing their charge’s appeal to a Christian saint, the attendants react with anger, and their distress reinforces the notion that women’s (perceived) diminished intellectual capacities rendered Jewish mothers particularly susceptible to conversion during labor, encouraged by a Christian midwife.[ix] The subtle anti-Jewishness becomes overt when the midwives deny Mary’s virginity. Treatises on Jewish theology reject this core tenet of Christianity, but the description of the Holy Mother as a redhead casts doubt on her moral character. In medieval art and literature, red hair signifies deceivers and tricksters, and in women, it suggests an excessive or depraved sexuality.[x] The attendants also accuse their charge of having broken the Law, which could have had serious repercussions for the new mother, since midwives could testify in court.[xi] When the new mother refutes her conversion by claiming “‘I was between life and death—I don’t know what happened to me,’” her declaration constitutes a theological and legal response.[xii]

Grace triumphs over the Law when the new convert testifies publicly about the miracle and baptizes her older children, but these post-conversion activities are remarkably peaceful. Many conversion miracles portray Jews as murderers of Christian children (including their own), encouraging interfaith conflicts. For example, in a 10th-century Latin variant, the Jewish father kills the baptized infant, who is subsequently revived by the Virgin.[xiii] The Vie des pères refrains from inciting interfaith violence, neutrally summarizing the reaction of the entire community: “The Christians were joyful and the Jews were anguished.”[xiv]

The post-conversion narrative concentrates on the response of the Christian community, highlighting the Christian virtues of voluntary poverty and generosity. Having taken refuge in a convent, the mother uses a gifted peliçon (a fur-lined garment) to bribe the wetnurse into surrendering the infant. Ironically, the nobleman’s Christian charity contrasts with the Christian wetnurse’s greed, but the incident underscores the economic repercussions of conversion. In Spain, the Church encouraged financial assistance to converted Jews, so the poem imitates a common practice throughout Christendom.[xv]

“Juive,” La Vie des pères, Brussels, KBR 9229-30, fol. 125v (© Brussels, KBR). The Jewish convert to Christianity baptizes the miracle child.

Nonetheless, the poet uses the mother’s spiritual concern for her child to introduce the saintly motif of contempus mundi. By the fourteenth-century, religious reformers had rejected isolation in favour of social visibility, as illustrated by the mendicant orders, and voluntary poverty replaced virginity as the preeminent Christian virtue.[xvi] Regaining custody of the infant is the future saint’s first renunciation of worldly wealth, foreshadowing the hagiographic tone of the extended narrative. The act also aligns her with late medieval women saints by illustrating the influence of mothers on their children’s salvation: “A holy mother could save her children, and by extension, other sinners.”[xvii] That said, the infant’s hasty baptism may derive less from religious fervor than a desire to convert her children for legal reasons. Canon law favored apostate fathers in awarding custody of Jewish children, so the court might have preferred converted mothers, too. Once again, the details of the narrative reflect the sociohistorical realities of the newly converted.

Most versions of the miracle end here, but in La Vie des pères, the Jewish convert becomes a Christian saint. Just as she had rejected life as a noblewoman, she now abandons the relative ease of the convent to embrace the life of a mendicant. When famine breaks out in Narbonne, she moves to Montpellier, where her pious behaviour attracts the generosity of Bishop Hugues, who sends her cash and gems. But instead of using the bishop’s charity to improve her circumstances, she rejects worldly wealth to finance a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, thereby recalling two hagiographical commonplaces, the temptation of the saint and the pilgrimage.[xviii] By the epilogue, both mother and son have secured a place in heaven.[xix]

As an exemplum, Juive demonstrates the importance of faith, as well as the rejection of worldly goods for heavenly rewards. Already a virtuous wife and suffering mother, the Jewish apostate practices poverty and achieves sainthood. More importantly, numerous narrative details reflect social practices, and the protagonist’s transformation from reviled unbeliever to Christian saint presents the audience with a realistic model of sanctity. The Jewish saintis not a woman of inimitable virtue, but one whose spirituality embodies both the sociohistorical difficulties of Jewish converts and fourteenth-century notions of Christian holiness.   

Karen Casey Casebier is an Associate Professor of French at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she teaches all levels of French language, literature and culture.  Her principal area of research is the intersection of the sacred and the profane in Old French literature, but her interests include La Vie des pères, manuscript studies, bestiaries and the Arthurian graphic novel. She is currently working on the critical edition of a series of unpublished, unedited miracle tales in a 14th-century manuscript branch of La Vie des pères. To learn more about the literary and sociohistorical context of Juive, see “Sanctity, Community, Apostasy: Jews in Conversion Miracles in the Old French Vie des pères,” Reading Medieval Studies XLIV (2018): 199-239.


[i] De la juive qui Nostre Dame apela a son enfantement, The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), MS 71 A 24 , fols. 127r-128v, henceforth known as Juive and MS k. All translations are my own. Juive is Miracle 9 of an interpolation of ten miracle tales in the fourteenth-century manuscript branch, and it is one of six of tales are new to Old French. See Joseph Morawski, “Mélanges de littérature pieuse,” Romania, 61: 3-4 (1935): 145-209.

[ii] Juitel, in La Vie des pères, ed. Félix Lecoy, 3 vols. (Paris, Société des anciens textes français, 1987- 1999), vol. 1, 14-26. In “The Murdered Jewish Boy” tale-type, a Jewish glassmaker casts his son into a fiery oven after he takes communion with his Christian playmates. Juitel is among the core of 42 tales that comprise the First Vie des pères (c. 1215-30).

[iii] Philippe le Bel expelled the Jews from France in 1306, but Louis X recalled them in 1315; there was an additional expulsion in 1322. On the dating of the manuscript branch, see Mary and Richard Rouse, Manuscripts and Their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris 1200-1500, 2 vols. (London, Harvey Miller, 2001), vol. 1, 191-202.

[iv] “Celle folle juierie,/ Qui sont gent felonnesse et dure,” MS k, fol. 127r, col. B. 

[v] Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 72.

[vi] “Vaillans/ Et moult charitable en sa loy,” MS k, fol. 127r, col. B.

[vii] Jacques de Vitry’s sermons portray marriage as an order with its own duties and obligations. For the Jewish perspective on marriage and fertility, see Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton,  Princeton University Press, 2004), 22-26.

[viii] “Par l’angoise qu’el[le] ot si fort / N’y atendoient fors la mort,” Ms. k, fol. 127r, col. C. 

[ix] Paula Tartakoff, “Jewish Women and Apostasy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, c. 1300-1391,” Jewish History, 24 (2010): 7-32 (here, 8). See also Elisheva Baumgarten’s analysis of Latin childbirth conversions in Mothers and Children, 49-52.

[x] “Cele rousse Marie,” MS k, fol. 127v, col. A. For art, see Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the later Middle Ages, 2 vols., California Studies in the History of Art 32 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1994), vol. 1, 147-48. For literature, Alice Colby cites Fritz Neubert, maintaining that red hair signifies “deceitfulness or general moral turpitude” (The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature: An Example of the Stylistic Originality of Chrétien de Troyes (Geneva, Droz, 1965), 73. 

[xi] “La nostre loÿ avez fausee,” MS k, fol. 127v, col. A. Beginning in the thirteenth century, midwives were expert witnesses in cases involving virginity, pregnancy and impotence. Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance: La Grossesse et l’accouchement (XIIe –XVe siècle) (Paris, Le Léopard d’Or, 1989), 177.

[xii] “‘J’ai este entre mort et vie— / Ne ne sai que m’est avenu,’” MS k, fol. 127v, col. A.

[xiii] Wilhelm Gumppenberg, Atlas Marianus, no. 80, 1657.

[xiv] “Crestien en furent joieus,/ Et li juif moult angoisseus,” MS k, fol. 127v, col. B.

[xv] The French position is unclear, but the Spanish decree formalized financial assistance to Jewish converts in 1371 (Tartakoff, “Jewish Women and Apostasy,” 9-11).

[xvi] Likewise, Jacques de Vitry advocated the renunciation of wealth in his sermons.

[xvii] Atkinson,The Oldest Vocation, 241.

[xviii] The pilgrimage is reminiscent of Saint Paula, a fourth-century Roman widow who abandoned her property and position to lead a monastic life in Bethlehem with one of her daughters.

[xix] The manuscript record is ambiguous. MS k indicates that only the miracle child accompanies her (“son filz,” fol. 128v, col. A), whereas both MSS i (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles, MS 9229-30, fols. 125v-127r) and d (Paris, Bibliothèque national de France, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5204, fols. 150v-152r) suggest that all the children went with her on pilgrimage (“ses filz,” MS i, fol. 126v, col. C; and “ses enfans,” MS d, fol. 152r, col. A).


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Hannah Teddy Schachter (September 28, 2023). Sociohistorical Realism in Juive, a Conversion Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century Vie des pères. medievalJewishStudiesNow! Retrieved April 18, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ri7m


About Hannah Teddy Schachter

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Doctoral Fellow of the Israel Science Foundation-funded research group "Contending with Crises: Jews in Fourteenth-Century Europe" led by Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten. While my doctoral research explores the relationships between Jews and royal women--specifically queens--in 13th-century France, my other research projects consider Jewish-Christian encounters in medieval processions, dance and song, as well as costume in France and the German Kingdom during the Middle Ages.