Giliu Ferrante – a Sicilian convert
The orders of expulsion issued by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 applied also to the Jews living in the Kingdom of Sicily. A certain number of Jews converted to Christianity in order to avoid the expulsion, but many converted two or three years later while living in the Kingdom of Naples. Those who returned asked to be given back the property they had left in Sicily, but in certain cases they needed a royal safeguard to protect them from debtors or harassment by their neighbours. Only a few explained the reasons that had led them to convert. Giliu Ferrante,formerly the Jew Elia Balam, left Sicily at the time of the expulsion and returned two years later as a convert to Christianity. Before his conversion he had been a dayyan (judge) of the community of Sciacca, in south-western Sicily. In November 1494, after his return, he petitioned the authorities to grant him a safeguard to recover his property, as had been promised to all Jews who converted to the Catholic faith. The official letter granting him permission to recover his goods, dated February1495, quotes a statement he gave regarding his conversion. Giliu Ferrante, the neophyte, while he was still living as a Jew named Elia Balam, even before the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom, and also after the said expulsion, had had the intention of abandoning Jewish perfidy and had wanted to embrace the Catholic faith and convert, coming to it as a Christian. Yet, he did not choose to be baptized before the expulsion because of his respect for certain Jews, namely his close relatives, and particularly his wife and sons (in Sicilian Latin: haviri havuto firmo propositu et deliberata intencioni di lassari et abandunari la Iudaica perfidia et recanuxendu la catholica fide christiana si convertiri, in quilla viniri comu christianu, non prisi lo dicto baptismo ante dictum recessum iudeorum  per respectu chi intendia certi autri iudei, soi astricti parenti et premaxime sua mugleri et figli). At the time he could not convince them to follow his wish and be baptized together with him in order to live as Christians. Nevertheless, he had now fulfilled his wish and had already received the said baptism and was made a Christian. Giliu Ferrante returned to Sicily and lived in the town of Giuliana until his death. He earned his living as a merchant, apparently a wealthy one, as demonstrated by several notarial deeds which mention various transactions. Despite his seemingly sincere conversion, the inquisition had him executed in effigy during an Auto de Fé celebrated in Palermo on the 11 of July 1511.

Alexander Van der Haven:
Co-organizer: Leipzig University. Religionswissenschaftliches Institut. Crisis and Religious Madness. Madness and Religion in Daniel Paul Schreber's Revelations (February 23).

Daniel  J. Lasker  

“Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics in Light of Mass Conversion to Christianity,” Polemical Encounters. Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, Madrid, September 29, 2014

Dov Stuczynski:

Organizer: The Political Dimensions of the Converso Phenomenon in Portugal and Beyond, an
International Conference, May 26-28, 2015, Bar-Ilan University and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner:

The London Symposium by the Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University: Medieval Jewish Life in Word & Image, March 9-10th 2015 at the British Library in London.

 

"Lions Snakes a Rabbi and a "Parnas": A New Look at the Debate about the Art Work in the Medieval Synagogue in Cologne”, Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University : The Jewish Neighborhood, April 12-14, 2015, An international conference in memory of Lt. Hadar Goldin.

Keren Abbou-Hershkovits:
“Ze’ev Rubin Forum”, “Abbasid Ladies and the Formation of Galenic Medical Circle”, May 2015, Tel Aviv University.

Nadia Zeldes:
“Abraham Zacut in Tunis: A Refuge for Those Expelled from Spain and a Center of Return to Judaism”, Abraham Zacut. Science, Historiography, Talmud and Polemics. International Conference to Mark the 500th Anniversary of his Death, May 4th, 2015. Organized by Hispania Judaica at the Hebrew University in Collaboration with CSOC, CSIC (Madrid), and the Spanish Embassy in Israel.

 

 Amir Ashur:
"‘Seeing is owning’, Veiling and its Implications in the Jewish Community of Medieval Cairo," Workshop: Language, Gender and Law in the Judaeo-Islamic milieu, 13–15 July 2015, Cambridge University Library.

Keren Abbou-Hershkovits:

"Sharing the Holy Land - Perceptions of Shared Sacred Space in the  Medieval and Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean", (London, the Warburg Institute, 12-13 June, 2015).

Austrasia and the Columbanians: the Complicated Nature of Early Pippinid Monastic Patronage’, L’Austrasie: pouvoirs, espaces et identités à la charnière de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Âge, St-Dizier- Reims, September 2015

:Alexander Van der Haven  

 “The War and Transcendental Order: Critique of Violence in Benjamin, Canetti and Daniel Paul Schreber.” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte. Texturen des Krieges: Körper, Schrift und der Erste Weltkrieg 43 (Summer 2015). 

 

                                                                  June 16, 2015    

Prof. Brian A. Catlos

Colorado University 

 

"Readings into Islamization"

 

                                Ben Gurion University                                 

                                                                       

                                                                     Details T.B.A