When They Come of Age: Religious Conversion and Puberty in Fifteenth-Century Ashkenaz

This chapter focuses on orphaned Jewish children from the persecutions of the Jews in Vienna in 1421 who were converted to Christianity. Using both Jewish and archival legal sources—I discuss different ways these children were perceived by adult society, and examine different approaches regarding the religious affiliation of the Jewish children who were forced into baptism. The sources demonstrate that the age 13, was incorporated to determine the rights of these orphans over their Jewish and Christian inheritance. In the discussed legal sources, the age 13 functioned as a watershed or an age threshold from childhood to puberty, after which the young converts were to be considered responsible for their religious status and their conversion complete, regardless of the violent events that led them into a new religion.