Un rapport à trois. L’Inquisition romaine, les papes et les juifs aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

The rich documentation about Jews in the Roman Holy Office’s records shows that the attention paid to matters concerning conversions was on the increase. The purpose of this paper is to define the manifold and interlocking competences of jurisdictions, conflicts for power, ideological choices and practices induced by the Jewish issue between the 17th and 18th centuries in Rome, where the most important Jewish community lived. The inquisitorial casuistry concentrated on more or less forced baptisms and conversions, which had to be obtained at all costs. This is clearly an important question in a theological and juridical viewpoint, but also on the making of « borderline » cultural identities, such as those of neophytes. About forced christenings, we witness a process in which the Roman court gradually blurred the function of safeguard it had at the level of cases against Jews and ended up legitimating almost any means of conversion. The evolution became obvious in the middle of 18th century and that happened at the behest of popes. This a very important phenomenon if we are to understand the Christian origin of Catholic anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries