Severus of Menorca
bishop
Severus of Menorca was a bishop on the island of Menorca in the early 5th century. According to the Epistula Severi (Letter on the Conversion of the Jews written by Severus of Menorca) Severus was at the forefront of a mass conversion where most of the Jewish population on the island converted to Christianity in 418 C.E. The Epistula Severi explains that the relationship between the Jews and the Christians on the island grew tense when relics of St. Stephen arrived on the island approximately a year before the conversion began. It took eight days to convert the Jewish population to Christianity and, in that time, the synagogue on the island was burnt to the ground and 540 Jews were converted.
Authenticity of the Epistula Severi
Cardinal Baronius initially published the letter in 1594. However, it was not until 1752 that it underwent its first scrutiny by R. P. Ludovici Du Mesnil. He, like many scholars after him, was skeptical of the paper's authenticity. Some scholars of the era claimed the letter was a "willful distortion or even an outright forgery". Even today, some scholars doubt the letter's authenticity. A more recent scholar who believes the text is a forgery is Bernhard Blumenkranz.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q9335721. VIAF identifies the subject as 264002293. The Library of Congress control number is n87898833. 1 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1594 and 1752.
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This entry incorporates text from “Severus of Menorca” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.