Presented in co-operation with the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium
Thursday, 19 March, 2026
4:00pm-5:30pm
Victoria University Common Room
91 Charles St W
The winds of reform of Christian society that had the conversion of the Jews as one of its goals blew with increasing intensity in the early fifteenth century in the Crown of Aragon. During the height of the schism that rocked the Western Church, rabbis were summoned to the city of Tortosa for a disputation ordered by Benedict XIII. Several rabbis from the Jewish community of Girona, a reputed centre of Jewish learning, attended the disputation, which lasted two years and ended with the conversion of several prominent Jewish leaders. While none of the Girona rabbis converted then, the following years were marked by the conversion of many of the key members of this community. This presentation explores the gendered nature of these conversions, in particular the resistance of wives to convert alongside their husbands, and also considers changes in converso naming practices suggesting efforts to preserve a sense of community under threat by both fiscal and ecclesiastical pressures.
Alexandra Guerson is Associate Professor Teaching Stream at New College, University of Toronto and Dana Wessell Lightfoot is Professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia. For the last thirteen years, they have worked collaboratively on Jewish women and conversas in late medieval Crown of Aragon. Their article “A Tale of Two Tolranas: Jewish Women’s Agency and Conversion in Late Medieval Girona,” published in the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies was co-winner of the Bishko Prize for 2021 awarded by the Association of Portuguese and Spanish Historical Studies and was awarded the Best Article Prize by the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies.
