In 838 CE, a remarkable event took place: A young Christian deacon named Bodo, who came from a noble family and was highly regarded in the court of King Louis the Pious of France, abandoned the religion of his family to become a ger tzedek, a righteous convert to Judaism. Even more fascinating—Bodo's conversion is not known to us from any Jewish books, but completely from Christian sources.

Who was Bodo? When was he born? What inspired him to abandon his high position in life and cling to Judaism? What was his life like before and after his conversion?

Before we go on to introduce Bodo, some historical background is necessary.

The year 838 places us towards the end of the so-called Dark Ages which swept across Europe following the collapse of the mighty Roman Empire into a quagmire of warring Germanic tribes. This situation persisted for a few centuries, until Charlemagne, king of the Franks, succeeded in creating an empire in what is now modern-day France and Germany. He was a staunch Christian, and through his efforts Christianity became widespread throughout Europe. Charles’s son Louis I (also known as Louis the Pious) succeeded his father in 814, becoming the first in a very long line of future King Louises.

It was during Louis I's reign that Bodo was born. Born to a wealthy, aristocratic Frankish family, Young Bodo learned how to read and write—something very uncommon in those days—and entered the Church. He rose to the position of a deacon and also became a member of King Louis’s court. Despite the outside appearance of a young, talented, charismatic church officer, Bodo was undergoing a fierce inner battle, struggling with his place in life, and in particular the religion within which he was raised. We don't know how long Bodo fought his inner war, but the end result was that he did something so shocking that it is recorded in the Annales Bertiniani, the official state chronicles of the Frankish empire, usually reserved for events of national consequence.

Official Record

The entry for the year 839 reads:

Meanwhile, an event that was lamentable and very much to be decried by all the sons of the Catholic Church became known through the delivery of rumor: there was the deacon Bodo, born of Alamannic stock and somewhat imbued, almost from the cradles, in the Christian religion with the divine eruditions of the palace and the literature of the humanities. In the preceding year, he had asked from the august people the opportunity to hurry to Rome for the sake of prayer and he got what he wanted, in addition to being granted many votive offerings to take.

However, misled by the enemy of the human race, he abandoned Christianity and converted to Judaism. And indeed, as soon as he entered into the plan of his betrayal and perdition with the Jews, he did not fear to plot cunningly against those whom he had led with him to be sold to the pagans [i.e., the Muslims]. With these people drawn apart, he retained only one person with him, who was said to be his nephew. Having denied the faith ... he professed himself to be a Jew. And thus circumcised, while growing hairs and a beard, and having changed and indeed adopted the name of Elazar.1 He was also bound with a military belt, and married the daughter of a certain Jew, and his aforementioned nephew was coerced and similarly brought over into Judaism. At last with the Jews, bound by the most wretched greed, he entered into Caesaraugusta [Zaragoza], the city of Hispania, in the middle of August.”

Another Christian source reports:

We note something that never happened before: a deacon of the palace was seduced by them. He was of noble birth and upbringing, and exercised in the office of the Church. He was also well-regarded in the eyes of the emperor. But such was he misled, that drawn away and enticed by their diabolical persuasions, he abandoned the palace, abandoned the homeland and parents, and abandoned the realm of the Christians within: and now in Hispania among the Muslims he has been joined to the Jews and persuaded by the impious … to profane the grace of baptism, to accept circumcision of the flesh and change his name, so that he who was previously called Bodo is now called Elazar. Such that having been made wholly Jewish in superstition and habit, and every day in the synagogues of Satan, bearded and married as he is, he blasphemes Christ and his Church along with the rest of his people.

So here we have it. Bodo became so disenchanted with Christianity, that he set out to pray at the Christian holy places in Rome, even bringing his nephew along with him, but converted to Judaism and changed his name to Elazar in the end. Of course, as a renegade Christian from a noble family, he needed to flee Christian Europe, and he ran to Saragossa, which was then the capital city of the Muslim kingdom of Aragon. (It is also possible that he first fled to Aragon and only then converted; it’s not clear from the sources where the conversion took place.) In addition to being a safe haven from a furious King Louis, Saragossa also had a significant Jewish community, and over the ensuing centuries would host major Jewish luminaries such as R’ Shlomo ibn Gabirol, and Rabbeinu Bechaye ibn Pequda, author of Chovot Halevavot.

Reading between the lines of the annals quoted above, “and his aforementioned nephew was coerced and similarly brought into Judaism,” it seems that Bodo did not keep his struggles with Christianity to himself and that he shared his difficulties with his nephew until they both made the decision to embrace Judaism. We also see that Bodo became a convert in the fullest sense of the word, having a circumcision, changing his name, growing a beard, and fully integrating into Jewish society by marrying a woman from the local community.

But that is not the last we hear of Bodo.

Controversy and Correspondence

A few years later, in 840, Bodo began corresponding with a certain Paulus Alvaro, who was either a Jew who had converted to Christianity, or a Christian from a Jewish background. It seems that each tried to get the other to “repent,” and come around to his point of view. While Alvaro's letters to Bodo were carefully preserved by the Church, Bodo's responses were heavily redacted and edited over the centuries by Christian scribes, who erased a lot of content from the original manuscript, unfortunately leaving us in the dark about many details of Bodo’s life and worldview, including the reason for his conversion.

One interesting observation is that the letters of Alvaro (which are too long to quote here at length) change from initial friendly overtures to outright hostility, as Bodo counters Alvaro’s arguments. They reflect the deep-seated hatred the Church had towards Judaism at the time.

Although Alvaro was not successful at converting Bodo, it seems he or someone else may have been involved in a plot to implicate Bodo, as the Annales Bertiani reports that, in 847, a petition was brought to King Charles claiming that Bodo was involved in stirring up anti-Christian sentiment among the Muslims in Spain. Furthermore, the petition charged, Bodo was trying to convince the local Muslim authorities to order all Christians in Aragon to choose between Islam, Judaism, or death! The petition asked that the King request the Muslim authorities to extradite Bodo back to France.

Were these claims true?

While there were a number of Christians executed by the Muslims for publicly insulting the founder of Islam in the 850s, there are no surviving Jewish or Muslim documents corroborating this claim. Given the antisemitic sentiment expressed by the Church of the time, and even more so towards someone like Bodo, who had “left the fold” so to speak, one must take such reports with a grain of salt.

Perhaps Bodo was even the subject of a plot, although this would also be speculation, as there are no sources that support the claim.

Was the petition successful?

There is no mention in the annals of Bodo's deportation, so we may assume that Bodo lived out the rest of his life in Spain.

Historical Context

You may be curious why Bodo's life is only known to us from Christian sources, and we find no mention of his name in any Jewish documents. We began this article by providing some historical context from a secular perspective, and if we place Bodo's life in a Jewish historical perspective, we can understand why that would be.

Bodo lived during the Gaonic period, which was the era between the Amoraim (rabbis of the Talmud) and the Rishonim (who left extensive commentaries on the Talmud). Although there was no lack of tremendous Torah scholars during that time period, very little writing has survived from that era. (As an aside, this may also account for the rabbinic silence regarding the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, which occurred during Bodo's lifetime, around the year 836.)

Add the fact that the Spanish Peninsula was on the frontiers of Jewish life at the time (with most Jews concentrated in Babylon and North Africa), it makes sense why his name slipped out of Jewish history.

What are some takeaways from Bodo-Elazar's life?

A verse that comes to mind is from Ecclesiastes 1:9 -10: “There is nothing new under the sun, Sometimes there is a phenomenon of which they say, ‘Look, this one is new!’” It occurred long ago, in ages that went by before us.”

While many people are familiar with Ovadiah the Norman Convert, also a churchman from a noble European family who fled to Muslim lands to convert to Judaism, Bodo’s conversion preceded Ovadiah's by several centuries.

Indeed, this stream of brave converts has always been active, sometimes a trickle and sometimes a river, but they’ve always come, bringing to Judaism their unique perspectives, experiences, and inspiration.