Civic factions, denied conversions and the first European narrative of Jewish infanticide: Praejectus of Clermont’s Deeds of Austremonius (c.650/75)

Abstract

Abstract This is the first dedicated study of the long-overlooked Gesta (‘deeds’) of Austremonius of Clermont, now understood to be a seventh-century composition. Its central focus is the Gesta’s remarkable anti-Jewish emphases, which reinvent this hitherto obscure missionary as an early apostle martyred by Jews. Building upon earlier research on civic factionalism in Merovingian Clermont, it situates this reinvention within the city’s competitive political environment, and its fraught recent history of Christian-Jewish confrontation. It further explores the long-term significance of the Gesta’s portrayal of Clermont’s Jews as child murderers, perhaps the first of its kind in Latin Europe. A critical translation follows.