Hilduin°
HILDUIN°
HILDUIN ° (Alduin, Audoin, Audouin ), bishop of Limoges, 990–1012. A Hebrew source records that during Hilduin's term of office, in 994, there occurred a local persecution of the Jews in Limoges, stirred up by an apostate from Blois; the end of the account is missing but everything seems to indicate that the apostate's plan was foiled. It is not impossible that this outrage was connected with an epidemic of St. Anthony's fire which was rife in this same year, especially in Limousin. If the Christian chronicler Adémar of Chabannes is to be believed, Hilduin himself inaugurated an anti-Jewish persecution in 1012: after a series of disputations he gave the Jews of Limoges the alternative of baptism or banishment; according to one manuscript several Jews killed themselves to escape expulsion. However it is also quite likely that this incident was no more than a local manifestation of the general anti-Jewish persecution widespread in France between 1007 and 1012.
bibliography:
P. Ducourtieux, Histoire de Limoges (1925), 80; B. Blumenkranz, Auteurs chrétiens latins… (1963), 250ff.; idem, Juifs et chrétiens… (1960), passim.
[Bernhard Blumenkranz]