The Letter of bishop Severus of Minorca provides unique and in some ways horrific insight into relations between Jews and Christians on a tiny island in the Mediterranean in late antiquity. The letter describes, in gruesome details, a carefully devised campaign to convert forcibly the Jewish community on the island. The bishop enumerates a series of strategies aimed at changing the balance of communal relations in order to eliminate Judaism. Long suspected of being a forgery composed in the seventh century C.E. to support the Visigothic campaign of forced conversion of the Jews of Spain, the authenticity of the letter as an early fifth century C.E. composition has been vindicated through the discovery of the new letters of St Augustine of Hippo. The venerable African bishop was evidently informed of the happenings of Minorca although his reaction has not been recorded.

The Letter also illustrates the difficulties of reconstructing Jewish life in the Latin west. The sources are invariably written by Christians with a specific agenda rarely conducive to precision. Jewish reactions are presented through the prism of the converting agent. Other documents, such as inscriptions, or archaeological data, are either absent or rarely bear direct relevance to the contents of texts like Severus'letter.