This book makes use of newly available archival sources to reexamine the Roman Catholic Church s policy, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, of coercing the Jews of Rome into converting to Christianity. Marina Caffiero, one of the first historians permitted access to important archives, sets individual stories of denunciation, betrayal, pleading, and conflict into historical context to highlight the Church s actions and the Jewish response. Caffiero documents the regularity with which Jews were abducted from the Roman ghetto and pressured to accept baptism. She analyzes why some...