First published in Dutch in 2016, The Convert appeared in English three years later. This bestselling work of historical fiction, set in medieval France, is a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of the love between a Jewish boy and a Christian girl. Mose Apelblat speaks with the author, Stefan Hertmans, about how he became aware of the real-life episode that inspired it:
The Convert takes place mainly in France in the years before the outbreak of the First Crusade in 1096. Vigdis Adelaïs Gudbrandr, born in Rouen in 1070, was the daughter of an aristocratic mother and a Norman knight. She was just seventeen when she ran away with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and visiting student from Narbonne.
If caught, both risked their lives [for violating ecclesiastical law]. But she would elope, marry David, convert to Judaism, and take the name Sarah Hamoutal Todros. Then she would journey with her husband to Moniou, a village in Provence, where the first of her four children was born. However, tragedy would strike when soldiers of the First Crusade attacked the village and burned the synagogue. Her husband would be killed and two of her children taken away.
Hertmans, a Belgian by nationality, became aware of the story in 1994, when he and his wife purchased a summer home in the Provençal village of Moniuex, near the ruins of a medieval settlement thought to be the Moniou where Sarah and David settled:
He was fascinated that the ruins were just 200 meters from his house, outside the village center but still inside the defense walls that surrounded it. He heard rumors about a hidden Jewish treasure and a Jewish cemetery in the village. His neighbor, Andy Cosyn, who had written a book about the treasure, showed him the steps in a water hole. Hertmans identified it as the remnant of a Jewish ritual bath or mikveh. Back then, it was probably inside an annex to the local synagogue.
The very existence of a Jewish community in the village is still doubted by some scholars. Other scholars argue that Monieux has been mixed up with Muno close to Najera in northern Spain. Both places are written with the same letters in Hebrew. . . . During his research, Hertmans explored Rouen, where street names still recall its Jewish past. An intact yeshiva—a traditional Jewish rabbinical school—with a Hebrew inscription on the porch has been found in a cellar under the current courthouse.
Read more on Brussels Times: https://www.brusselstimes.com/452331/piecing-the-fragments-of-a-medieval-love-story