Jews on trial

Katherine Aron-Beller

By contrast to many fields subsumed under the umbrella of minority or ethnic studies that have defined the subjects of their inquiries in opposition to the ethnic/race/gender normative of society, Jewish studies has, since its inception in the 19th century, been driven by an intense aspiration to fashion itself along the norms of the European/west-ern humanistic tradition. In this essay I suggest that the early modern era may offer a unique opportunity to revise this paradigm and offer two directions for the future of the field: the synthesis of the Jews' histories of persecution and integration in Europe; and the exploration of the Jews' role in global history.

Jews on trial The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598-1638 KATHERINE ARON-BELLER Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Jews on trial Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROP EA N HIS TORY This series aims to publish challenging and innovative research in all areas of early modern continental history. The editors are committed to encouraging work that engages with current historiographical debates, adopts an interdisciplinary approach, or makes an original contribution to our understanding of the period. series editors Joseph Bergin, William G. Naphy, Penny Roberts and Paolo Rossi Also available in the series Sodomy in early modern Europe ed. Tom Betteridge The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft Hans Peter Broedel Latin books and the Eastern Orthodox clerical elite in Kiev, 1632–1780 Liudmila V. Charipova Fathers, pastors and kings: visions of episcopacy in seventeenth-century France Alison Forrestal Princely power in the Dutch Republic: Patronage and William Frederick of Nassau (1613–64) Geert H. Janssen, trans. J. C. Grayson Representing the King’s splendour: Communication and reception of symbolic forms of power in viceregal Naples Gabriel Guarino The English Republican tradition and eighteenth-century France: between the ancients and the moderns Rachel Hammersley Power and reputation at the court of Louis XIII: the career of Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621) Sharon Kettering Popular science and public opinion in eighteenth-century France Michael R. Lynn Catholic communities in Protestant states: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570–1720 eds Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, Benjamin Kaplan and Judith Pollman Religion and superstition in Reformation Europe eds Helen Parish and William G. Naphy Religious choice in the Dutch Republic: the reformation of Arnoldus Buchelus (1565–1641) Judith Pollman Witchcraft narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561–1652 Alison Rowlands Orangism in the Dutch Republic in word and image, 1650–1675 Jill Stern Authority and society in Nantes during the French Wars of Religion, 1559–98 Elizabeth C. Tingle The great favourite: the Duke of Lerma and the court and government of Philip III of Spain, 1598–1621 Patrick Williams Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Jews on trial The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638 KATHERINE ARON-BELLER Manchester University Press Manchester Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Copyright © Katherine Aron-Beller 2011 The right of Katherine Aron-Beller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 8519 2 hardback First published 2011 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Perpetua with Albertus display by Koinonia, Manchester Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access To my parents Ralph z”l and Diana Aron and Jonathan Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Shylock: What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? (William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV Scene i) Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Contents Figures Tables Preface Abbreviations page ix x xi xiii Introduction 1 I The Inquisition and disciplining Jews 1 Jews, Papal Inquisitors, and the Estense dukes 2 Procedure and reaction 17 51 II A study of Jewish offences in different settings 3 The Jewish household: Jewish masters and Christian servants 4 The piazza: verbal offences on the streets of Modena 87 125 III Micro-history 5 The Jew’s balcony: a tale of a young Jewess’s flirtation with Christianity 6 The pingolo: a locus for fantasy 7 Proselytizing at Purim 163 191 219 Conclusion 239 Bibliography Index 247 270 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Figures 1 Eighteenth-century map of the duchy of Modena showing the areas where the Jews lived 2 Diagram showing the walls of the ghetto and San Domenico (the Holy Office building) superimposed on a modern map of Modena page xiv xiv 3 The Church of San Giovanni Battista in Soliera 206 4 The back left side view of the church 207 5 The front left side view of the church 207 6 View of the back of the church with its surrounding modern buildings 208 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Tables 1 Types of offence for which professing Jews were prosecuted by the Modenese Inquisition in 1598–1638 2 Lists of outcomes for processi of Jews in 1598–1638 3 Processi 1598–1638 page 56 67 130 4 Dates and numbers of interrogations faced by Jews in Davide de Norsa’s trial of 1604 199 5 Days when Christians reported hearing Jewish disturbances 205 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Preface From 1988, the final year of my undergraduate studies, I had the privilege of being a student of Brian Pullan, the distinguished scholar of Venetian social history. Brian instilled in me a love of Italian history and a fascination with the complex pattern of religious change and non-conformity in early modern Europe. His generous support and critique have accompanied all my years of study, and words cannot express my debt to him. But a love of learning does not usually start or end in the seminar rooms of a university campus, and I must thank a number of people who have helped me along the way. My dear mother has been my closest friend, unswervingly loyal in her support and encouragement, and my late father gave me a love of learning and, as a Holocaust survivor, showed me how one’s personal history can dominate one’s life and thoughts. At school it was Ann Woodings, my history teacher, who helped me articulate a love of history, and Dennis Samuel, my uncle, spent many a Sunday afternoon discussing my S Level history essays with me. After coming to live in Israel with a young family in 1993, my research interests eventually came to focus on the Italian Inquisition and I was able to take my studies further under the tutelage of Kenneth Stow, thanks to a doctoral grant from the University of Haifa. During this period, I became intrigued by the significant number of unknown ‘voices’ of professing Jews I uncovered in the Inquisitorial archives of Modena, and my aim became not only to get to know them but to decode their testimonies. The staff of the Archivio de Stato in Modena were most accommodating and welcoming, as were those of the many libraries and institutes where I have worked over the years. I also wish to express my deep thanks to Kenneth for his continuing support, advice and precise attention to detail, as well as to Enrico Angolini, Reuven Bonfil, Bernard Cooperman, Anna Foa, Federica Francesconi and Benjamin Ravid for their helpful suggestions and assistance at various stages of my research. My time in the Judaica Department of the Israel Museum brought me into contact with many wonderful people who helped broaden my interests and my understanding of Jewish culture and ethnography, including Nurit Bank, Lorna Carmel, Rosemary Eshel, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access xii PREFACE Susan Hazan, Chen Mellul, Joseph Shadur z’l and Nurit Shilo-Cohen. In 2007–8 I had the pleasure of serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History and Judaic Studies departments at the George Washington University, where I was blessed with supporting colleagues including Tyler Arbinger, Daniel Schwartz, Ronald Spector, Lauren Strauss and Max Ticktin. Special thanks go to Rob Eisen, whose advice and encouragement in writing this book have been a tremendous help and from whom I have learned much. He is also a dear friend. My students on my Inquisition and Jews seminar course asked crucial questions, which helped me articulate my opinions further. They include Aviva Berman, Jamie Chassen, Eric Goodstein, Arielle Gumer, Jacqueline Stricker and Ross Sarraf. My continual teaching online at Gratz College of Jewish Studies in Philadelphia has enabled me to sit quietly during this past year to finally write my manuscript. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to those who have read the manuscript with such thoughtful care and who have provided a host of useful suggestions for improving it, Erica Brown, Rob Eisen, Gretchen Starr Le Beau, Brian Pullan and Dennis Samuel (who also helped with Latin texts), who have read it all (and some more than once). I also thank Claudia Rosenzweig, who gave me many hours of her time to check the Italian and make some important suggestions, as well as my dear friends Nicole Broder, Deborah Felstein and Nomi Zebar for their patience and support.Their loyalty has been unconditional. I also thank Miriam Saffer, who has been a wonderful running partner for many years and inspires me to work hard after a morning run. Words cannot express my gratitude to Jonathan Beller for his love and companionship over the years, and it is to him and my dear parents that I dedicate this book. Finally, I cannot fail to mention our children Samuel, Joshua and Naama, who bring sunshine into our lives almost every day. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Abbreviations ACEMo Archivio della Comunità ebraica di Modena. ASCM Archivio Storico Comunale di Modena. ASMo Archivio di Stato di Modena. ASMoAME Archivio per Materie Ebrei.These papers are found in the ASMo. Numbers following represent the busta number. ASMoFI Fondo dell’Inquisizione. ASMoFICH Fondo dell’Inquisizione, Causae Hebreorum. The busta number is cited followed by the folio number. Finally the page numbers appears in parenthesis. For example ASMoFICH 27 f.2 (2r–v). ASMoFIP Fondo dell’Inquisizione, Processi. The busta number is then cited followed by the folio number and finally the page number in parenthesis. For example ASMoP 45 f.6 (1r–v). CAHJP Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (located at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem). Key to canon law references Taken from Emil. A. Friedberg (ed.), Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959). Decretals of Gregory IX (Liber Extra) will be cited as X. followed by the book, then the title and then the canon: for example, X.1,1,1. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Plate 1 Eighteenth-century map of the duchy of Modena showing the areas where the Jews lived Plate 2 Diagram showing the walls of the ghetto and San Domenico (the Holy Office building) superimposed on a modern map of Modena Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Introduction This book explores two areas of interest: the Papal Inquisition in Modena and the status of Jews in an early modern Italian duchy. Its purpose is to deepen existing insights into the role of the former and thus lead to a better understanding of how an Inquisitorial court assumed jurisdiction over a practising Jewish community in the seventeenth century. In recent years, a significant number of publications and conferences has reflected increasing interest in the history of the Inquisition. However, efforts to identify individual Jews (who had no relation to conversos – that is, Jews who forcibly or out of choice had converted to Christianity – either as former conversos themselves or as those who gave conversos returning to Judaism aid and comfort), and understand the issues confronting them in the Inquisition are just beginning to be considered.1 Scholars have in the past tended to group trials of Jews and conversos in Italy together and to see these two groups as being treated as one and the same by the Inquisition. This book argues that trials of the two groups are different because the ecclesiastical tribunals viewed conversos as heretics but Jews as infidels. It emphasizes the fundamental disparity in Inquisitorial procedure regarding Jews, as well as the evidence examined, especially in Modena where the Duke did not have the power during the period in question to reject Inquisitorial trial procedure, and uses the detailed testimony to be found in Inquisitorial trial transcripts to analyse Jewish interaction with Christian society in an early modern community. The Archivio di Stato in Modena houses a complete Inquisitorial archive, a ‘unicum’ as Paolo Prodi has termed it, perhaps the most extant register of any Roman Holy Office, due to the sheer extent and ‘organic unity’ of its records of trials, account books, collection of edicts, and correspondence with Rome, from the end of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth.2 The Holy Office in Modena, which served the duchy, as did its neighbouring Holy Office in Reggio (both set up in 1598), contains details of at least 393 processi of practising Jews (8% of the total number) covering the period from the post-Tridentine Inquisition’s establishment to its demise in 1785, compared with some 4,829 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 2 JEWS ON TRIAL of Christians, a collection unmatched by any other Inquisitorial archive in Italy.3 This book concentrates on Inquisitorial activity during the first 40 years of the history of the tribunal in Modena, from 1598 to 1638, the year of the Jews’ enclosure in the ghetto, the period which historians have argued was the most active in the Inquisition’s history.4 Moreover, by 1638 Inquisitors had fully developed their techniques for identifying, prosecuting and condemning offenders and their supporters, which enabled a degree of standardization of trial proceedings. In these 40 years there were 186 proceedings against Jews, compared to approximately 1,678 against Christians, meaning that 10% of trials carried out by the Holy Office were against Jews, and on average five proceedings were conducted against members of the Jewish community each year. In these 186 processi there were approximately 325 Jewish suspects. Interestingly, proportionately fewer of the proceedings were against Jewish women (34 or 10%, compared with 310, or 18%, for Christians). This was because few Jewish women were accused of practising sorcery or malefic magic, which were common charges against Christian women, especially at the beginning of the seventeenth century.5 When in December 1638 the ghetto was established the number of trials of Jews brought before the Modenese Inquisition fell to approximately one a year for two reasons. First, the Christian community became more conscious of the physical and religious boundaries demanded by the Church and, second, social segregation meant that Jews had less opportunity to violate the ecclesiastical regulations.6 A meeting of the International Symposium on the Inquisition held in the Vatican in October 1998 produced a final report which maintained that the Spanish Inquisition was not as terrible as had been previously believed, claiming that fewer than 2% of those interviewed by the Inquisition had been turned over to the secular powers for execution, whereas in contrast Portuguese studies have continued to confirm the ferocity of the Inquisition there.7 In Italy research on the Roman Inquisition and its activities is still in progress. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s research on the Roman Inquisition centered more on trials than statistics, such as heresy, judaizing, witchcraft and possession of prohibited books.8 From the 1990s, comprehensive studies began with John Tedeschi’s groundbreaking work The Prosecution of Heresy, followed by that of François Bethencourt, who made a salient attempt to contrast the Roman Inquisition with that of the Spanish and Portuguese on all fronts including trial procedure, bureaucracy, autos da fé and the Inquisitions’ respective emblems.9 From that time, Italian historians, including Adriano Prosperi, Paolo Prodi, Peyronel Rambaldi, Giovanni Romeo, Massimo Firpo, Vincenzo Lavenia and Maria Pia Fantini, have furthered our knowledge of the tribunal. Adriano Prosperi’s work in particular concerned the church, which in the post-Tridentine period became a social, cultural and moral institution, establishing norms of individual and collective Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 3 behaviour.10 More important in terms of Inquisitorial history is the work of Andrea del Col, in particular his 2009 landmark study which confirmed not only the institutional weakness of the Inquisition but also the variety of Inquisitorial practice within the Italian peninsula.11 At the same time, his work is the first to argue that the prosecution of professing Jews had a definitive place in the history of the institution in early modern Italy. Christopher Black’s 2009 work has recently enabled the English-speaking world to understand the actions of the Inquisition in Italy, and furthers the argument that the Inquisition was a creative and didactic institution. His meticulous attention to detail is admirable.12 The three-volume encyclopedia of the Inquisition published in 2010 by the Edizioni della Scuola normale superiore di Pisa under the auspices of the major research project directed by Adriano Prosperi, and co-edited by Prosperi and Tedeschi, has engaged dozens of scholars since 2006, and will be a significant aid to further research.13 Works that have touched on the Papal Inquisition in Italy and professing Jews include the 14 lectures from the international conference L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia held in Livorno in 1992, which were published in a volume edited by Michele Luzzati.14 Yet both this work and the ground-breaking research of Brian Pullan’s The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1670 mainly concentrate on the trials of conversos and neophytes rather than practising Jews. Wendehorst’s Roman Inquisition, the culmination of a series of workshops on the theme in 2001 and 2002, as well as including the conclusions drawn from the first viewings of the archives of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which opened its doors to scholars in 1998, raises many questions that historians need to keep in mind when researching the topic but offers few answers.15 A further collection of essays as a result of the conference Le inquisizioni cristiane e gli ebrei in Rome in December 2001, which dealt with both judaizing and professing Jews, has interesting contributions by Renata Segre and Guido Dall’Olio, on trials of professing Jews in Pesaro and in Ferrara respectively, although no study of trials in Modena.16 Marina Caffiero’s book on forced baptism in Rome has enlightened scholars about the strategies of the Congregation of the Holy Office to forcibly convert professing Jews in Rome during the eighteenth century.17 However, despite these numerous studies, no historian has as yet categorically studied the prosecution of practising Jews in Italy before a Papal Inquisition in order to understand the effect of such prosecution upon the Jewish community and its interaction with neighbouring Christians. The specific question of Jews and the Inquisition in Modena has been examined by a number of historians, in particular Andrea Balletti, Albano Biondi, Romano Canosa, Mauro Perani, Federica Francesconi and Maria Pia Balboni. Balletti’s work in 1930 offered an important introduction to Jewish life in Modena from medieval to modern times, and made some primary refer- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 4 JEWS ON TRIAL ences to the Inquisition’s jurisdiction over Jews.18 Biondi worked more on the structure of the Papal Inquisition in Modena, touching upon the Inquisition’s treatment of Jewish–Christian interaction and the way formal Catholic doctrine regarded Jews at the start of the modern era.19 He described the close relationship between Jews and Christians in Modena and the attraction of Christians to Jewish customs and rituals, and discussed the case of Christian women from Livorno who worked as servants in the houses of wealthy Jews in Modena and were as a consequence brought before the Inquisition for having adopted certain Jewish rituals. (This was not judaizing in the explicit sense, but they had a sufficient patina of Jewishness to attract the Inquisition’s attention.) Canosa has described several processi of Modenese Jews, as well as those of Jews before other tribunals, but without comment or broader observation.20 Mauro Perani and more recently Federica Francesconi have used Inquisitorial trials to decipher the literary focus and culture of Modenese Jews and the censoring of Jewish books by the tribunal.21 Maria Pia Balboni’s recent monograph on the Jews of Finale provides an enlightening study on the history of the Jews in the small town in the duchy of Modena.22 In effect this study continues where these scholars have stopped and primarily analyses the processi of an Inquisitorial tribunal to further our understanding of Jewish–Christian interaction in the early modern period. In Modena, Jews were accused of a number of offences, which included employing Christian servants and wetnurses, irreverently cursing, dissuading other Jews from being baptized, desecrating Christian images, disturbing Christian prayer, fraternizing with Christians, possessing prohibited books, proselytizing, obstructing the work of the Holy Office, building synagogues without licences, sexual intercourse with Christians, abusing the Christian sacraments, threatening neophytes, maleficio, astrology and divination. Most of these offences, the Inquisition argued, had been committed by Jews during their daily contact with Christians. Nevertheless, the use of processi for historical research continues to remain contentious for cautious historians, since these sources contain testimonies which focus on the transgressive experience of events rather than the real one. A close look at the historiography of the Inquisition and crime reveals that, since some of the most polemical writings began in the nineteenth century, historians have analysed the prosecution and activities of law courts from the standpoint of many needs and interests.23 At first scholars interested in the role of religion in both public and private life pointed to the persecution of minority faiths in the name of orthodoxy, its political role as a tool of the authoritarian state and the extent to which it contributed to Spain’s political, cultural and economic decline.24 Then, in the twentieth century, as religious conviction declined, historians began to study the records of legal tribunals to gather statistics and understand the extent of their activities. In his monumental four-volume work A History Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 5 of the Inquisition in Spain of 1922, Henry Charles Lea contested the traditional apologetic approach of previous Inquisitorial historians, to produce a systematic critical study of the Inquisition’s role and effect. In the later twentieth century, scholars such as Carlo Ginzburg, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Guido Ruggiero, Natalie Zemon Davis and Daniel Lord Smail studied trials in various secular and ecclesiastical archives across Europe using sophisticated modes of analysis that combined anthropological and historical methods.25 Trial transcripts which had previously been used to compile the inventories of the proceedings began to yield compelling stories of the behaviour and thoughts of ordinary people. These scholars trusted the meticulous note-taking of Inquisitorial notaries who compiled the trial dossiers, accepting them as sources that produced facts and knowledge that was considered authentic. Such studies by influential historians continue to be published and these works exhibit less concern for the limitations of what these documents reveal than determination by these scholars to uncover not only the workings of the judicial institutions, but the makings of the transgressing society that gave rise to such prosecutions. There is still, however, serious criticism of this type of historical research.26 Two Italian historians, Mario Sbriccoli and Eduardo Grendi, have taken opposite sides, the former maintaining that criminal records are highly formulated texts that can only provide historians with the history and statistics of legal institutions, the latter arguing that trials bring to light the religious, social and cultural practices of suspects and witnesses which jurists sought to regulate.27 A compromise position, and one which seems more acceptable, is taken by Andrea Del Col, who maintains that trial proceedings remain incomplete records which it is the historian’s duty to use in conjunction with extrajudicial sources which allow a wider understanding of the tribunal’s history.28 There can be no doubt, as Del Col argues, that using Inquisitorial trial transcripts as primary sources brings several problems, particularly concerning how the text should be read and understood.29 The Inquisitorial courtroom, after all, was a place of tension and conflict.The Inquisitor demanded information from a position of power and control. His suspects or witnesses remained unsure of the extent of his knowledge and whether he knew of facts they wished to hide or avoid confronting. The trial document contains information introduced by three categories of persons – delators, suspects and witnesses – all of whom had reasons both to lie and to tell the truth.30 It is therefore questionable whether historians can learn the whole truth about them, the relations between them and the offence that was allegedly committed. Having been obliged to remain in prison for weeks or months during a long investigation and then being exposed to threatening questions, suspects were understandably anxious and stressed; they spoke under the constraints of authority, which meant that the threat of punishment and fear of torture conditioned what they said. Delators and witnesses, too, framed their Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 6 JEWS ON TRIAL answers within constraints set by the procedures of the court, the categories of legal thought, and the wider circumstances of the alleged offence and its investigation. Their narrative combines perception, memory and articulation, reproducing facts, but modifying them, adapting them to their situation and purposes, depending on their relationships with the authorities, their adversary and the group to which they belonged.31 As a result, the historian must not take the testimony of the delator, suspect or witness at face value. The Inquisitor was often seeking information on events that had taken place months or even years ago; it would be surprising if witnesses were able to give complete, balanced and accurate answers to every question. Inconsistencies and even misinterpretations are only to be expected. If, however, these problems can be surmounted, and a level of decoding achieved, the trial becomes a mechanism which makes accessible many surprising facets of the population. Trials certainly reveal how the Inquisition affected the daily life of the community, the offences of which people were accused, and the sorts of punishments given, but they also allow a historian searching for social contact between Jews and Christians to decode and garner this information, since details of daily living – the scope of interaction, the places of meeting and the types of relationships – filter through testimonies often more easily than polemic non-conformist beliefs or complex maleficio spells. The notarial proceedings of the trials, which purport to record testimony verbatim, provide extraordinarily rich images of daily life, concerns, anxieties and interaction between Jew and Christian, uncovering who said what to whom and how particular people absorbed and communicated information. The transcript records not just the obviously central deeds of delators and suspects but the behaviour of witnesses, neighbours, family, friends and enemies. As a result, the historian discovers traces of behaviour that emanate from various levels of society and are viewed from multiple perspectives. Trial records give access to the lives of people on all social levels. Moreover, this is often the only source the historian has to show that a particular form of offence has taken place; no local chronicler or secular court notary knew enough of the details of the Inquisitorial investigations to comment. Except for the account by RabbiYishmael Hanina of his torture by the Bolognese Inquisition in 1568 and the description of the Inquisition’s prisons in Rome by Benjamin Ben Elnatan of Civitanova around the same time, no Jewish record of an Inquisitorial trial has as yet been discovered.32 Inquisitors held private interrogations; the Inquisitorial judges were ecclesiastics whose professional sense of secrecy and loyalty was based on their commitment to eradicate heresy and deviance, and the Inquisitorial court notaries were forbidden to comment on their work. These documents therefore provide important information about a private tribunal and the authority it held over a local Jewish community. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 7 The study of these trials is based on three facets of the complex and multilayered text of Inquisitorial trials – the judicial aspect, the biographical aspect, and inter-community interaction. Judicial aspect The procedures of the Inquisitorial courtroom are reconstructed and the assumption by the Inquisition of the authority to prosecute practising Jews in early modern Italy is investigated. In medieval times Inquisitorial procedure in both ecclesiastical and lay courts had been concerned specifically with Christians, dealing with issues of canon law, in particular the right to regulate the lives of Christians ‘from the cradle to the grave’, and criminal jurisdiction.33 Although in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries highly respected authorities such as Thomas Aquinas and Nicolau Eymeric had argued that in principle the Inquisition was entitled to judge practising Jews who had never been baptized, it is unlikely that this occurred regularly in the late Middle Ages. The Modenese records provide the earliest known evidence of a branch of the Roman Inquisition attempting systematically to discipline a Jewish community. The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office was founded in 1542 with the bull Licet ab initio. By the 1560s and 1570s official tribunals controlled by a centrally organized bureaucratic structure operated through most of Italy. These tribunals established firmer boundaries between Catholics and infidels. Jews, who had become more permanent inhabitants of many Italian states and duchies, began to face segregation and ghettoization in allocated areas of cities where they lived. As a result, Inquisitorial jurisdiction over Jews helped to further its own goal of ‘disciplining’ Catholic society, the term successfully adopted by Paolo Prodi and Adriano Prosperi in their work on the Papal Inquisition, although as Wietse de Boer has succinctly argued, whether this was achieved in reality is still questionable.34 The Inquisitorial court in Modena did not have the cohesive judicial structure, authority, funding or ability to develop and shape legal doctrine on the Jews and their position in Christian society. The trials instead hint at the tensions produced by local enforcement of canon law on the one hand and the growing strength of ducal jurisdiction and secular law on the other. These trials from the beginning of the seventeenth century provide important information about the daily monitoring of Jews by different authorities in the duchy, suggesting that this task was increasingly entrusted to secular and ecclesiastical courts, until the final abolition of the Inquisition by Duke Ercole III on 6 September 1785. None of the Jews involved in the trials were put to death by the Inquisition in Modena, the sentence in most cases being a monetary fine (which was Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 8 JEWS ON TRIAL paid either by the individual or by a collection among the Jewish community).35 This leads to the question whether local Jews actually feared the Inquisition or whether they, especially those far from communal power, simply saw it as just another court to which they might turn in the event of dispute with the local Jewish community. In Modena Jews were never granted the right to set up their own law courts, but as in Rome could appoint their own Jewish arbiters. Disputes, whether involving Jews and Christians or just Jews, were settled by compromise between arbiters, sometimes Christian, sometimes Jewish, and then, in order to make them enforceable, the agreements were brought to official lay notaries. But it is interesting to note that on occasions Jews themselves as well as neophytes – Jews who had recently converted to Christianity – used the Inquisition to denounce practising Jews. Why did these marginalized individuals choose the Inquisition as the court they believed would listen to their case?36 Biographical aspect Another aspect of the trials which is of interest is the profiles of the individual Jews summoned before the Inquisition, who found themselves at odds with the criteria for Jewish behaviour sanctioned by the Church. Although most of them did not put pen to paper, their personal testimonies as recorded by the court notaries constitute an important type of oral text not found in other sources. They came from all levels of Jewish society, wealthy bankers, shopkeepers, mattress-makers and prostitutes. A full analysis of the 186 trials combines the disciplines of history, anthropology and gender studies to provide an understanding of these Jews and their situations, as well as, when possible, of their Christian neighbours who denounced them. The testimonies of delators, suspects and witnesses are not the stories of their lives from before the time of the offence as much as judicial tales based on what the records of investigations and prosecutions reveal about the offence. Moreover, trial investigations were not standardized – not all Jews were required to give details of their marital and family status, their address and their place of origin – which makes it impossible to gather the important facts and statistics that are required. It also makes it impossible to assume, since Jews often had identical names, that one particular Jew is the same suspect as another in a different processo. Once the trial is over the individuals disappear, unless of course they are summoned again or appear in other extant records. It is not always possible to know whether Jews returned to their community in Modena after receiving punishments and absolutions, or went to live somewhere else. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 9 Inter-community interaction The final aspect of these trials which is investigated is the critical interweaving of relations, the encounter between members of the Christian and Jewish communities, which is their essence. A study will be made of the dynamics of the social and cultural relationships between Jewish and Christian communities in Modena in the early seventeenth century. What degree of physical proximity was there between Christians and Jews? Did specific economic relationships affect matters in any way? At a time when subjects were expected to declare their religious allegiances so that the state might supervise them effectively, were ordinary people anxious to maintain visible distinctions between the Jewish outsiders and themselves, or was this imposed from above by magistrates or clergy? The answers to these questions can be found by examining in detail the various testimonies given by Christians and Jews in these trials. The book is divided into three parts. The first, comprising Chapters 1 and 2, deals with the Inquisition as a judicial body and its disciplining of Jews in the duchy of Modena. Chapter 1 sets the Inquisition and the Jewish community in their social and political contexts and concentrates on a survey of the methodology of the Inquisition, charting the way the court came to judge Jews. At issue are the attitudes towards practising Jews and the sort of prosecution they were subjected to. Chapter 2 concentrates on Inquisitorial trial procedure and clarifies procedural adjustments made by the Inquisition in its treatment of Jews, the main strands of its trial procedure, and the ways in which these factors shaped the material the Inquisition produced. Statistics show the number of Jews who were tried, the type of offence and the sorts of punishments they faced. The chapter ends with an assessment of the deepened insights into the role of the Inquisition in Jewish life and how the increasing jurisdiction of this ecclesiastical court affected Modenese life in the early modern period. The second part of the book, containing Chapters 3 and 4, focuses on the types of offences for which Jews were tried more often than others in the duchy, that of hiring Christian servants and blasphemy. Chapter 3 examines the interaction between Jews and Christians in a Jewish household, particularly the employment of Christian wetnurses and servants in contravention of ecclesiastical regulations, revealing Christians entering the homes of Jews without hesitation, the encounter and communication between Jewish masters and Christian servants, and the support that the latter gave to the former when they (the Jews) were put on trial. Chapter 4 examines trials in which Jews were accused of profane swearing, or heretical blasphemy (bestemmia hereticale as it was labelled by the Inquisition) in public, on the streets, in piazze or shops. Examination of these offences reveals, among other things, that the Modenese Inquisition was a tribunal to which Jews on occasion had recourse against their co-religionists. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 10 JEWS ON TRIAL These proceedings for blasphemy therefore give an important opportunity for studying discipline, community and individual identity. The third part contains three micro-historical studies, examining individual trial proceedings for dissuading others from being baptized, disturbing Christian ceremonies and proselytizing, reading them in light of the previous analysis and in relation to the other trials of the period which dealt with the same offences. The processi on which they are based were chosen because they are exceptionally well documented or give special insights into Jewish–Christian interaction in the duchy of Modena. Near the beginning of each chapter, the trial or trials of the Jews who committed these offences are described in detail, as there is intrinsic value in presenting this material in extenso since the trials are not otherwise available other than in their original archival manuscripts. The original Italian or Latin is provided in footnotes if it is difficult to translate literally or has technicalities which cannot be easily turned into English. Chapter 5 deals with the fascinating processo against the wealthy Jewish banker Viviano Sanguinetti, who was accused of dissuading his daughter from being baptized in 1602. It uncovers a romance that took place mostly in the traditional Italian setting of a window balcony, between the wealthy young Jewess Miriana Sanguinetti and her Christian admirer, and requires a new analysis of the reasons why, and the circumstances in which, Jews would choose to convert to Catholicism. Most scholars have argued that the main reasons were poverty and faith, but here it was the romantic dream of a wealthy young Jewess that led her into a dangerous flirtation with a Christian, halted eventually by her own intelligence rather than her emotional family ties. Chapters 6 and 7 analyse trials that report tensions between Jews and Christians during a clash of festivals – Passover and Holy Week, and Purim and Holy Week respectively. Any incident during Lent, let alone Holy Week, was taken very seriously by the Holy Office. Chapter 6 studies the continuous disturbances that a group of Jews created in their castello in 1604 in the small town of Soliera, within earshot of the local church during church offices. An attempt is made to understand why the Jews would chose by a process of amalgamation and illusion, to act as though they themselves were the defiant insiders at Easter time and not the Christians. Chapter 7 focuses on a trial in which a Jewish banker, Moisè de Modena, well respected in the community (Christian as well as Jewish), decided in 1625 to make a stand against a couple of constables and refuse them the customary ‘protection money’ which they asked for during the festival of Purim. This event provided the shaky foundation for their charge of proselytizing. De Modena faced persistent Inquisitorial prosecution but chose also to hire Christian legal counsel to defend him. The trial raises questions about Jews who were able to handle their defence and work behind the scenes during Inquisitorial prosecu- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 11 tion to ensure their acquittal, as well as the process of gift-giving as a specific social practice between Jews and Christians during the Jews’ ‘carnivalesque’ Purim, which in this particular year fell in Holy Week. The geographical areas studied here are the city capital of Modena and the small towns and rural settlements around it such as Carpi, Castelfranco, Correggio, Finale (now Finale Emilia), Formigine, Marano (now Maranello), Mirandola, Nonantola, San Felice, Sassuolo, Soliera, Spezzano, Spilamberto and Vignola, where the families of bankers and other businessmen lived.37 Jews from these communities were indicted and called to the Inquisition for prosecution. But knowledge about the communities is limited due to the scarcity of sources, both in the Archivio di Stato di Modena and the Jewish community archives. Jews living in these areas were not forced into the ghetto in 1638, which housed only those Jews living in the city-capital.38 The prosecution of practising Jews in Italy by a Papal Inquisition is a subject hitherto largely unanalysed that demands further exploration and integration into the better-known history of both the Inquisition and the Jews in an early modern Italian duchy. An analysis of Inquisitorial documents in the light of other extrajudicial sources regarding Jewish life in Modena provides insight into an important aspect of social relations in an early modern political and social community. Notes 1 See Stephan Wendehorst (ed.), The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Contexts, Sources and Perspectives (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2004). 2 See the preface by Paolo Prodi in Giuseppe Trenti, I Processi del Tribunale dell’Inquisizione di Modena: Inventario Generale Analitico 1489–1874 (Modena: Aedes Muratoriana, 2003), p. v. On the correspondence of the Modenese Inquisition with the Congregation of the Holy Office, see Grazia Biondi, ‘Le lettere della Sacra Congregazione Romana del Santo Ufficio all’Inquisizione di Modena; note in margine a un regesto’, Schifanoia, 4 (1987), 93–107. 3 On the number of processi in the archives, see Trenti, I Processi, p. 46. Trenti gives a total for the 245 buste from 1489 to 1784 of 5,185 trial pamphlets and 6,070 individual cases. This final number does not seem to take account of the 194 trial proceedings against Jews in the Archivio di Stato di Modena (from now on abbreviated as ASMo) Causae Hebreorum. Regarding the number of proceedings against professing Jews, Albano Biondi notes in his article ‘Gli ebrei e l’Inquisizione negli stati Estensi’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 265–85, 280, that in the seven buste of the ASMo, entitled Causae Hebreorum, there are 195 booklets of proceedings against Jews from 1599 to 1670. In fact on my count there were 194, of which four were either against Christians or specifically against neophytes, in which no professing Jews appeared – ASMoFICH 245 f.64; ASMoFICH 245 f.66; ASMoFICH 246 f.1; and ASMoFICH 247 f.20. The Italian term processo does not always mean a trial in the English sense; it was rather an inquiry which resulted in a court drawing up a dossier. Some processi consist of little more than a denunciation and one or two witness statements, while others are very large collections of documents which include formal accusations, defence pleadings and sentences. For a survey of the number of trials against Jews in other areas, see William Monter and John Tedeschi, ‘Towards a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions’, in Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi in association with Charles Amiel (eds.), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe. Studies on Sources and Methods (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), p. 136. The Holy Office in Reggio was abolished in 1780. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 12 JEWS ON TRIAL 4 See Andrea del Col, ‘I documenti del Sant’Uffizio come fonti per la storia istituzionale e la storia degli inquisiti’, Cromohs: Cyber Review of Modern Historiography, 10, 2005 unpaginated at www.cromohs.unifi.it; Andrea del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), 776, 782; and Christopher F. Black, The Italian Inquisition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 135. 5 See Mary O’Neil, ‘Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena’, in Stephen Haliczer (ed.), Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 88–113; and William Monter, ‘Women and the Italian Inquisitions’, in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Literary and Historical Perspectives (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 73–87. 6 The perception of space and identity for Jews was very different in a pre-ghetto society. Once the ghetto was erected, it became not only the enclosure and living space of the Jews but also their place of work, recreation and refreshment. 7 The Portuguese historian H.P. Salomon emphasizes that the monarchy was continually a moving force of the Inquisition during its 185 years from 1536 to 1721. See Herman Prins Salomon, ‘New Light on the Portuguese Inquisition: The Second Reply to the Archbishop of Cranganor’ Studia Rosenthaliana, 5 (1971), 178–86. See also Robert Rowland, ‘L’Inquisizione Portoghese e gli Ebrei’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 47–66, in particular 55–7; and Edouard Roditi ‘The Making of Jews, or the Inquisition in Portugal’, Judaism, 19 (1970), 435–43. 8 Studies of heresy trials include Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ’500 (Torino: Einaudi, 1976); John Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Henry Ansgar Kelly, ‘Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses’, Church History, 58 (1989), 439–51. Works on judaizing trials include that of Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, who has published 14 volumes of mainly converso trials executed by the Venetian Inquisition in Processi del S. Uffizio diVenezia contro ebrei e giudaizzanti (Florence: Olschiki, 1980–99). Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition ofVenice 1550–1670 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983) has evaluated these trials synthetically. See also Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini (ed.), L’Identità dissimulata. Giudaizzanti iberici nell’Europa Cristiana dell’età moderna (Florence: Olschki, 2000); and Peter Mazur, ‘Negotiating with the Inquisition. Conversos, the Holy Office and the Viceroy of Naples, 1569–1582,’ Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, 20 (2007), 41–56. For studies on witchcraft trials, see Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture 1300–1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles, Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma (Florence: Sansoni, 1990); See also Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1650 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Witchcraft and Popular Piety: Notes on a Modenese Trial of 1519’, in Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 165–70. On the confiscation of Jewish books, see Mauro Perani, ‘Confisca e censura di libri ebraici a Modena fra Cinque e Seicento’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 287–320. On the confiscation of heretical books see Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); and John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991) Chapters 8–11; Federica Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings in Early-Modern Modena: Negotiating Jewish Culture in an Italian Key’, in Joseph Hacker and Adam Shear (eds), The Jewish Books: Material Texts and Comparative Contexts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2010); and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 52. 9 François Bethencourt, L’Inquisition à l’époque moderne: Espagne, Italie, Portugal XV–XIX siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1995), p. 198. His work has now been translated into English and includes Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INTRODUCTION 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 13 a new introduction outlining some of the historiographical developments since the book was first published. See Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione: verso una nuova immagine?’, Critica Storica, 25 (1988), 119–45; Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1996); and Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’inquisitore come confessore’, in Paolo Prodi (ed.), Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna: Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico. Quaderno 40 (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino,1994), pp. 187–224. del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Black, Italian Inquisition. Adriano Prosperi, Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi (eds), Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2010). Michele Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia (Rome: Laterza, 1994). One of the papers, that by Robert Rowland, addressed the question of the Portuguese Inquisition and the Jews, see ‘L’Inquisizione portoghese e gli ebrei’, in Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione, pp. 47–66. See also Stephan Wendehorst’s article, ‘The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Sources and Perspectives for Research’, Jewish History, 17 (2003), pp. 55–76. Giuseppe Galasso (ed.), Le Inquisizioni cristiane e gli ebrei: tavola rotonda nell’ambito della Conferenza annuale di ricerca, Roma, 20–21 Dicembre 2001 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2003). Marina Caffiero, Battesimi forzati: Storie di ebrei, cristiani e convertiti nella Roma dei papi (Rome: Viella, 2004). Andrea Balletti, Gli Ebrei e gli Estensi (Reggio-Emilia: Anonima Poligrafica, 1930). See Biondi, ‘Gli ebrei e l’Inquisizione’. See Romano Canosa, ‘L’Inquisizione e gli Ebrei’, in Storia dell’Inquisizione in Italia dalla metà del Cinquecento alla fine del Settecento, vol. I, Modena (Rome: Sapere 2000, 1986), pp. 34–57. See also Romano Canosa’s descriptions of trials against Jews in different states in Storia dell’Inquisizione in Italia dalla metà del Cinquecento alla fine del Settecento, vol. I–V (Rome: Sapere 2000, 1987–90). In three of the five volumes there is at least one chapter dealing with various Inquisitorial trials of Jews. See vol. I (Modena), 132–7; vol. II (Venice), 86–98, and vol. III (Turin and Genoa), 157–71. Perani, ‘Confisca e censura’, pp. 287–320, and Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings’. Maria Pia Balboni, Gli Ebrei del Finale Emilia nel Cinquecento e nel Seicento (Florence: Giuntina, 2005). See John A. Tedeschi (ed.), The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature, ca.1750–1997 (Ferrara: Strumenti (Istituto di studi rinascimentali), 2000); Johan Tollebeek’s recent work: Writing the Inquisition in Europe and America: The Correspondence between Henry Charles Lea and Paul Fredericq (1888– 1908) (Brussels: Koninklijke Commissie Voor Geschiedenis, 2004); and Bethencourt’s new introduction in Inquisition, pp. 7–16. See, for example, the work of the Spaniard Juan Antonio Llorente, who in 1813 wrote his most celebrated work Historia critica de la Inquisición española (Madrid, 1822) .The American historian William Prescott in his History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), originally published in 1837 followed Llorente’s line of argument by drawing attention to the repressive actions of the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg, I Benandanti: ricerche sulla stregoneria e sui culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1966); and Il formaggio e i vermi; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Village Occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975); Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions:Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987) and Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity and Legal Culture in Marseilles 1264–1423 (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2003). Excellent more recent examples are Richard L. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 14 JEWS ON TRIAL 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Sara T. Nalle, Mad for God: Bartolomé Sánchez:The Secret Messiah of Cardenete (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001). See Andrea del Col, ‘I criteri dello storico nell’uso delle fonti inquisitoriali moderne’, in L’Inquisizione romana: metodologia delle fonti e storia istituzionale. Atti del Seminario internazionale, Montereale Valcellina, Circolo culturale Menocchio, 23–24 settembre 1999, a cura di A. del Col and G. Paolin (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2000), pp. 51–72; and del Col, ‘I documenti del Sant’Uffizio’. Mario Sbriccoli, ‘Fonti giudiziarie e fonti giuridiche. Riflessioni sulla fase attuale degli studi di storia del crimine e della giustizia criminale’, Quaderni Storici, 99 (1998), 491–501; and Eduardo Grendi, ‘Sulla “storia criminale”: risposta a Mario Sbriccoli’, Quarderni storici, 73 (1990), 267–75. Andrea del Col, ‘I processi dell’Inquisizione come fonte: considerazioni diplomatiche e storiche’, Annuario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 35–6 (1983– 84), 29–49. For a discussion of the problems, see John Tedeschi, ‘Inquisitorial Sources and Their Uses’, in The Prosecution of Heresy, pp. 47–88; and Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (eds.), History from Crime (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. vii–xviii. The person who denounced an offence to the Inquisition was not technically an accuser but a delator. The delator did not personally undertake to prove the case and suffer penalties if he or she failed, but handed over the case to the Inquisition, which then decided whether to act on it. The delator was almost always protected by anonymity. On the importance of memory and memory loss see Daniel Schachter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996). On Rabbi Yishmael Hanina, see Aaron Jellinek, ‘Investigations on Christian Matters and Answers Concerning the Abuses of the Neophyte Alesandro di Foligno in November 1568 by Rabbi Ishmael Haninah da Valmontone’, HaShahar, 2 (1871), 17–23 (in Hebrew); and David Ruderman, ‘A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth-Century Bologna’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 50 (1979), 254–5. On Benjamin Ben Elnatan of Civitanova, see Isaiaha Sonne, From Paul IV to PiusV (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1954), pp. 71–6. Elnatan provides us with a rich commentary on life in an Inquisitorial prison, the number of rooms, the courtyards, the number of prisoners and the behaviour of the guards. See James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (Medieval World) (London: Longman, 1995), pp. 71 and 75. See Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza; Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia: Dal pluralismo dei fori al moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000); and Wietse de Boer, ‘Social discipline in Italy: Peregrinations of a Historical Paradigm’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History, 94 (2003), 294–307. See ASMoFIP 1 f.9.The first Christian heretic to be condemned to death but not executed was Mario Magnavacca in 1566, while the Inquisition in Modena was still a vicariate. See ASMoFIP 201 f.8. The last time the death penalty was enforced was in 1727, on the spinner Vincenzo Pellicciari, who was executed for sacrilegious acts and uttering heretical statements. Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 59. Jews were not allowed to own or farm land in these smaller areas. For details regarding the Jewish bankers who lived in each of the small principalities, see Balletti, Gli Ebrei, pp. 66–7. See for example the case of Finale, in Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 210. Jews were not ghettoized here until 1736. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Part I The Inquisition and disciplining Jews Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 1 Jews, Papal Inquisitors and the Estense dukes In 1598, the year that Duke Cesare d’Este (1562–1628) lost Ferrara to Papal forces and moved the capital of his duchy to Modena, the Papal Inquisition in Modena was elevated from vicariate to full Inquisitorial status. Despite initial clashes with the Duke, the Inquisition began to prosecute not only heretics and blasphemers, but also professing Jews. Such a policy towards infidels by an organization appointed to enquire into heresy (inquisitio haereticae pravitatis) was unusual. In order to understand this process this chapter studies the political situation in Modena, the socio-religious predicament of Modenese Jews, how the Roman Inquisition in Modena was established despite ducal restrictions and finally the steps taken by the Holy Office to gain jurisdiction over professing Jews. It argues that in Modena, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Holy Office, directly empowered by popes to try Jews who violated canons, was taking unprecedented judicial actions against them. Modena, a small city on the south side of the Po Valley, seventy miles west of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, originated as the Roman town of Mutina, but after centuries of destruction and renewal it evolved as a market town and as a busy commercial centre of a fertile countryside. It was built around a Romanesque cathedral and the Ghirlandina tower, intersected by canals and cut through by the Via Aemilia, the ancient Roman highway from Piacenza to Rimini. It was part of the duchy ruled by the Este family, who originated in Este, to the south of the Euganean hills, and the territories it ruled at their greatest extent stretched from the Adriatic coast across the Po Valley and up into the Apennines beyond Modena and Reggio, as well as north of the Po into the Polesine region. Most of this territory, the alluvial plain of the Po river, was very flat and extremely fertile. The Este was the only Italian ruling family to have continuous sovereignty over at least part of their territories from the mid-thirteenth until the nineteenth century. In 1597, when the Este dynasty failed in the legitimate male line, Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605), acting as a temporal sovereign and feudal overlord Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 18 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS claiming his rights and thereby promoting the papacy’s direct rule over another important part of the Papal States, invaded the Este capital in Ferrara.1 Backed by a powerful army, he used spiritual weapons of excommunication against Duke Cesare d’Este (1562–1628), the illegitimate son of Alfonso d’Este, for the expansion of the Papal State.2 According to the chronicler Muratori, on 30 December 1597 the Pope sent two ecclesiastics disguised as laymen, to bring a copy of the excommunication edict to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the commander of the Papal forces, who the following day affixed the bull to the door of the cathedral, thereby excommunicating the new ruler. After a hastily concluded treaty of Faenza on 7 January 1598 whereby Duke Cesare conceded Ferrara to the Pope in return for the censure being lifted, Cesare, no longer a direct vassal of the Pope, quickly relocated his ducal capital to Modena, half the size of Ferrara, which had been the Estense capital for more than three centuries, and much less attractive, in a now diminished Este duchy (consisting of Modena, Reggio and many smaller communities including Carpi, Guastalla, Novellara, Sassuolo, Correggio, Mirandola, Spilamberto and Vignola).3 Although the hope of recapturing Ferrara never left the Este family, they sought to establish themselves in Modena through the introduction of a number of urban projects meant to recall their earlier glory. The Duke succeeded in gaining visible control of the city by building a large palace and fortress. Although the fortified walls were surveyed in 1598 with the intention of enlarging the city, the existing enclosure was maintained, and the construction of the pentagonal fortress began, simultaneously with the ducal palace, in the early 1630s, located to the right of San Domenico, where the Holy Office was situated. Streets were paved, churches built, and public hygiene regulated through ducal edicts. The first years of Cesare’s rule were troublesome. Disillusioned by Papal censure, located in an inadequate residence, the Duke faced several problems: quarrels between the Modenese and Ferrarese nobles who had chosen to relocate with him, ruthless defiance of the law by feudal vassals in the countryside surrounding Modena, a continuing quarrel with Lucca over the possession of Garfagnana, and the economic impoverishment caused by the loss of the duchy’s prosperous woollen and silk industries. Deeply religious, and surrounded by the continuing attempts at moral and religious reform promulgated by the postTridentine church – with the politically acute jurist Giovan Battista Laderchi, known as Imola, at his side – Cesare proclaimed a series of edicts to control social and religious behaviour in the duchy, including blasphemy, gambling and lustful behaviour.4 He was also plagued by his own inability to regain Papal favour and according to some chronicles went to Rimini on 7 May 1598, to render homage to Pope Clement VIII.5 Welcoming the Duke’s advances, in March 1599 the Pope raised Cesare’s half-brother, Alessandro d’Este (1568–1624), to the position of cardinal, a politically important move on the side of the papacy and for the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 19 Este family too, who would hope for Papal support on future familial issues. Alessandro was eventually elected bishop of Reggio Emilia on 13 October 1621. Alessandro was active until his death, in establishing new religious institutions in the Modenese capital. In February 1607 he laid the first stone of the church of San Bartolomeo that was to house the Jesuits from 1614, paid for by the Sanguinetti family.6 The Confraternity of the Stigmata, which housed pilgrims, was established in 1606, the Church of St Vincenzo was built in 1609, and in 1611 the monastery of Santa Orsola was opened. In 1612 the Congregation of Secular Priests was transferred to the Beata Vergine and San Carlo Church. These moves to organize more central places of worship for the faithful in Modena showed Alessandro’s concern as well as the support of his brother for post-Tridentine reform and revival. When Cesare died in 1628, local chronicles recorded the grief of the inhabitants in the city, who eulogized Cesare as a duke who had secured and built up the new capital during an era of relative peace.7 Cesare was replaced by his eldest son, Alfonso III d’Este (1591–1644), who showed himself a determined and warlike ruler, but only for an extremely short period, since in July 1629 he took orders to become a Capuchin monk, taking the name Giovanni Battista da Modena but continuing to mediate in political matters whenever he could, often receiving ambassadors and diplomats in his monastic cell.8 He abdicated his position to his nineteen-year-old son Francesco, who become Francesco I d’Este (1610–58) and within a year was facing a plague that annihilated half of the duchy’s population.9 He chose to abandon the capital, taking refuge with his immediate family and nobles in his villa in Rivalta, 5 kilometres from Reggio, an action that local chroniclers viewed with disillusion and despair.10 City officials fought on alone against the plague, dealing with insufficient space in cemeteries for the dead, robbers who plundered empty houses, and insufficient food for survivors.11 He returned to Modena later in the year and by the end of his reign had restored the city to its pre-plague predominance, with its flurry of markets, religious festivals, processions in the piazze, its comings and goings of nobility, foreigners and traders who by this time had adapted well to Modena’s change from a provincial city to the residence of a princely court. Jews in the Duchy of Modena By the sixteenth century, Jews had been expelled from nearly every state in Western Europe except northern Italy; and even there expulsions occurred, like those of the Duchy of Milan and Naples as well as individual cities like Bologna, Brescia and Udine. Jewish life continued principally in Venice, Ferrara, Mantua, Modena and Tuscany, although the greatest concentration of Jews was in the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 20 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS Papal State, and the largest Jewish community was that of Rome. The presence of Jews in the duchy of Modena can be traced back to 1025.12 Three centuries later, in 1336, when the city came under the rule of the Estense dukes based in Ferrara, Duke Borso I d’Este (1450–71) granted the Modenese Jews privileges which entitled them to maintain religious institutions and to lend money at moderate interest.13 The Modenese Jewish community increased and prospered, and began to be called the Università Israelitica or Nazione Ebraica, indicating a certain independent religious and administrative autonomy, possessing, almost like an early modern Christian confraternity or guild, its own prayer congregations, scuole and welfare institutions.14 During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Modena proved to be a safe haven for Jewish difference. The Jews were not part of the community of citizens, with its palpable embodiment of cultural principles, beliefs and rituals, but were mostly free from religious and socio-political persecution and indeed able to address the Duke directly when they bargained with him regarding their condotte, or sent him individual requests for tax exemptions from the decime imposed on an annual basis or requests for protection from specific court proceedings.15 The Duke never responded directly to the Jews, but relied on local officials who formed part of the ducal bureaucracy to furnish the Jews’ needs.16 Towards the end of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth century, a flow of immigrants arrived in the Estense duchy, German Jews from the north, Italian Jews from the south, and Spanish and Portuguese Jews from the west who came in two main waves of immigrations. The first wave was a result of the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492 and lasted until 1505, and the second followed the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536, which caused many conversos to leave.17 In accordance with the privilege granted them by Duke Ercole II d’Este in 1538, renewed and refined in 1555, the Portuguese had to declare on their arrival in the duchy whether they were Jewish or Christian, and were subsequently obliged to maintain their chosen religious status.18 If they declared themselves to be Jews, they were guaranteed the right to live according to the laws of Judaism, and any legal action against them for apostasy was forbidden, even if they had previously lived as Christians.19 In reality, these Sefardim did not constitute a community or even a real presence in Modena, equal to that of Ferrara or Venice. It was the prominent Ashkenazi banking families, as the work of Federica Francesconi has demonstrated, who came to dominate the political, social and cultural life of the Jewish community.20 In 1598, Jews who had previously lived in Ferrara followed Duke Cesare d’Este, attracted to Modena because they preferred the relative tolerance of the Estense family to the harsh and often unpredictable policies of the papacy.21 The Jewish population in the city increased, reaching 750 in December 1638 on the eve of the creation of the ghetto, almost the same number (700) as had entered Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 21 the Venetian ghetto in 1516.22 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there were in all five synagogues (premises which served equally as houses of prayer, places of study and community centres) in the city, two public ones – one near the Servi run by the Sanguinetti family, and the other the Usiglio synagogue housed in the Palazzo Levi, a synagogue of the poor (la sinagoga de’ Poveri) in Via Trivellati – and two private oratories in the San Giorgio district, one belonging to the de Modena family and the other to the Sanguinetti.23 Most Jews resided in the San Bartolomeo area of Modena, in the Cervetta quarter which from 1622 was nicknamed the Contrada Sanguinetti: the Via del Sole, Via dei Coltellini and Rua del Muro. Some resided until 1616 in the Contrada de Servi, but had to surrender their homes and shops, as a result of the Jesuits establishing their church and college there.24 Jewish shops were situated under the porches of the Via Maestra (now Via Emilia) even though at times this disturbed their Christian neighbours.25 Important Jewish scholars who resided in Modena included Isaaco Alatrini, Aaron Berechiah de Modena, Moisè Brunetta, Joseph Jedidiah Carmi, Leone Poggetti, David della Rocca and Natanael Trabotti. Jews in Modena were not excluded from normal occupations or commercial activities.26 Since their arrival in 1492, the Spanish Jews had been allowed to practise all sorts of arts and trades including medicine as did the Ashkenazi Jews.27 However, the Spanish Jews and then the Portuguese were absolutely forbidden to act as pawnbrokers, and to trade in second-hand goods, these occupations, as elsewhere in Italy, being reserved for Italian and German Jews.28 The functioning of the Jews’ banks was regulated by the particular rules or statutes of the Duke, which were often revised. In 1494 a Monte di Pietà (a charitable credit institution that issued loans against pledges under either municipal or ecclesiastical supervision) was established in the city and reinstated in 1555, but despite its presence Jews were still able to provide cash loans and often more adequate capital, usually on reasonable terms, that is until their ghettoization.29 The Jews’ connections with a wide range of occupations, varying from wealthy bankers and influential merchants to petty retailers and distillers of acquavite (brandy), diamonds, glass, silk and silver perpetuated a specific sense of place, rhythm and participation in the daily life of the community.30 Some Jews were affluent and large operators of these materials, but most of the merchants in Modena were shopkeepers, even pedlars who sold the necessities of daily life in their stores, with time and opportunity to fraternize with Christians in this business environment.31 There was a network of relationships between Jews and Christians, based on curiosity and comradeship as well as mockery and imitation. As the processi reveal, not only did Jews and Christians dine together and attend each other’s parties, but sexual relations did occur, especially between Jews and Christian prostitutes.32 Jews would meet Christians in shops, markets and piazze, where their business contacts ranged from business agreements to Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 22 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS individual contracts with Christian shopkeepers, pedlars, servants, laundresses and wetnurses. Some Jews even secretly offered occult services to Christians including palm reading, alchemy, spells and the acquisition of magnets, which when baptized by priests were considered useful instruments for love magic.33 Because the Duke allowed the Jews to participate in a variety of different professions, there was a steady growth in activity and relative prosperity. Jews secured a permanent position in the commercial economy, which at this time lacked a solid entrepreneurial middle class. At the same time, Jews were expected to enter the artisan guilds and commercial corporations of the city, although this was no more than titular membership, since they were not expected to take an active role in the running of Christian guilds.34 The Jews’ versatility is particularly shown by the Formiggini family, who established extensive commercial links in Modena by not only participating in trading and banking, but also acting as silversmiths and court jewellers to the Este dukes.35 Other influential Modenese Jewish families included the Sanguinetti, Modena and Norsa – all three involved in banking activities before the creation of the Modenese ghetto in 1638 – as well as the Levi, Rovigo, Usiglio and Fano. Behind this façade of acceptance, relative prosperity and cooperation loomed the continual threat of exceptional and isolated cases of anti-Judaism and Counter-Reformation moves by the Catholic Church to further its own control and monitoring of Jewish communities. These policies were sometimes put into practice, and at other times ignored by Estense Dukes, keen to maintain a certain level of autonomy from Papal demands. Ferrara had been the home of the notary and ducal book-keeper Fino Fini, who before his death in 1519 had written In Judaeos flagellum ex sacris scripturis excerptum, a 1,200–page treatise which condemned the wickedness of the Talmud, and encouraged his readers to see Jews as heretics deviating from the truth of their scriptures.36 This contributed substantially to the anti-Judaic polemic of the period, as did other secular Italian literature of the late sixteenth century, which showed increasing mockery and aggression toward the Jewish inhabitants of Italian cities.37 Although the Dukes had kept Observant Franciscan preaching at bay since it gave rise to periodic social disorder, the Papal burning of the Talmud in 1553 was immediately adopted by Duke Ercole II, who ordered all copies of the prohibited book to be burnt.38 In 1570 Duke Alfonso II published a grida (proclamation) that in particular demanded that Jews wear a distinguishing sign upon their clothing – as had Pope Paul IV, fifteen years earlier in his bull Cum nimis absurdum, which reinitiated this medieval ruling – as a means of visual discrimination.39 The grida also stated that besides Jewish men wearing a special hat, and women a badge on their clothing, Jews were not allowed to let Christian servants stay in their homes. There is little indication that these rulings were enforced, and the same edict was renewed in 1602 and again in 1620.40 On 31 January 1598, a few Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 23 months before the Estense duchy moved its capital to Modena, during Carnival on the festival of Saint Gemignano, Giovan Battista Spaccini, the Modenese chronicler, reports how the crowds rowdily demanded the expulsion of local Jews.41 Although a petition for their expulsion from the city was handed on 3 February to Duke Cesare by the custodians of the city and representatives of the guilds, he ignored the matter.42 The chronicler Spaccini also describes in detail a visit of the popular Franciscan preacher Brother Bartolomeo Campi da Saluzzo, who came to Modena on 24 July 1602.43 During this time he took the opportunity to denounce, among other excesses, the privileges given to the Jews of the duchy.44 There was, however, no violent reaction by the people against the Jews as there was in Mantua.45 The first three decades of the seventeenth century, after the influx of Jews and other inhabitants of Ferrara to the city of Modena, were a transitional stage, in which the interaction between Jews and Christians suggests a balance between tolerance and exclusion, protection and suspicion. Historians can still sense the double nature of the Jews’ position as both insiders and outsiders, participating in commercial activities and interactions with Christians, while at the same time facing occasional outbursts of hostility from both secular and religious leaders as well as the people. Nor was there daunting pressure from a local Opera Pia dei Catecumeni in Modena at this time, since the house was established by the Inquisition only in 1700.46 The decision to build a ghetto was made in 1618 by Duke Cesare d’Este partly out of religious piety, partly in response to pressure from the local guilds and Capuchin preachers (in particular Bartolomeo Campi da Saluzzo, who returned to preach in 1618), and partly out of obligation to the Papacy, whose own policy of ghettoization had been initiated in Rome in 1555.47 Cum nimis absurdum (1555) had demanded that Jews be separated from Christians and compelled to live in an enclosed quarter, enforcing restraint on Jewish freedom to associate with Christians. Nonetheless, the creation of the enclosure was delayed for another twenty years due to disagreements between appointed delegates as to the exact location and size of the ghetto as well as who should finance the project.48 With the accession of Francesco I in 1630, the project was bolstered by a Duke particularly keen on monitoring local Jews more stringently and imposing further restrictions. However, the arrival of the plague in 1630 deferred the project for a few more years, but still brought an intensification of secular and ecclesiastical disapproval of local Jews. Jewish bankers in particular were blamed for keeping large quantities of gold and silver received in pawn from many people who had died in the plague.49 Duke Francesco I ordered all the homes of Jews to be checked, an inventory made of all their movable and immovable assets as a result of the plague, and the confiscation of the personal properties of those Jews who had perished in the epidemic.50 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 24 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS From 1631, the position of Modenese bankers as the most influential Jews came to an end, the banks were sold and communal authority was passed over to the massari (lay leaders) and the Università itself.51 In 1635 the Jews were ordered by Francesco to attend weekly conversionary sermons, a policy which acknowledged Pope Gregory XIII’s 1584 bull Sancta mater ecclesia, which introduced this ruling.52 The Jewish community wrote a letter of complaint to the Duke, saying they were unwilling to obey this command and asking permission instead to attend only once a month with not all members of the family, but just one representative from each.53 This request was granted. Archival sources do not suggest that the presence of the Holy Office in Modena affected or influenced the establishment of the ghetto in 1638, although it had remained a buffer between Jews and Christians in the city. Instead, the bishop’s court orchestrated the move on behalf of the Papacy, promoting the project and offering full assistance to the Duke.54 Certainly, once the physical walls were built around the area where most of the Jews had lived previously, they became more estranged from their surrounding society.55 Jews were assigned homes according to the size of families, work areas according to their profession, and spaces for synagogues according to detailed arrangements with ducal officials. All five synagogues were relocated inside the ghetto area and were not visible from the outside walls.56 However, the Podestà Andrea Codebò allowed the Jews to retain certain shops outside the enclosure, because they could not be accommodated inside the assigned area of the ghetto, and in 1643 the Jews were allowed to construct additional places of worship within the ghetto.57 The enclosed space was enlarged in 1702 and then again in 1783, incorporating facing houses on the Via Torre and Via Squallore. Interestingly enough, no effort was made to incorporate those Jews who lived elsewhere in the duchy in either their own or the main ghetto of the city. As Robert Bonfil has demonstrated, it was this period of ghettoization which brought a certain degree of impoverishment, but also enabled the Jews to create a far more dynamic and gratifying Jewish existence, hidden within the walls of their own sacred space in what Anna Foa has described as a ‘confinement where a community’s reaction to external pressure naturally tends to reinforce rather than fragment cohesiveness’.58 The Jewish community became stronger and more self-sufficient, widened its intellectual activity, and furthered its cultural development as well as improving its own welfare organizations.59 The creation of the Inquisition in Modena Before the fifteenth century it is impossible to speak of a medieval Inquisition as a universal church institution. Instead, individual or groups of Inquisitors, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 25 usually mendicant friars with some training in canon law, were sent by popes to deal with outbreaks of heresy when they surfaced in Sicily, Southern Italy, Armenia, Morocco and Norway.60 In Italy in the 1230s temporary Inquisitorial courts were set up to deal with deviant communities of monks and nuns, and to attack Cathar heretics who had gathered in south-western France.61 Inquisitors had the authority to proceed against suspected heretics ex officio (by virtue of their office) and to investigate and prosecute heresy by themselves.62 Borrowing legal practices from Roman law, they did not rely on formal delation or accusation, nor were suspects offered legal counsel. Inquisitors did not particularly inspire confidence or popularity and on occasion they were assassinated.63 By the beginning of the fourteenth century, a change in standard Inquisitorial procedure demanded that before the tribunal could move from a preliminary inquiry to a full trial the suspect had to be formally accused. This certainly helped their professional reputation.64 Whereas these medieval Inquisitions were essentially ecclesiastical institutions, the Spanish Inquisition, authorized by a Papal bull in 1478, was controlled by the Spanish Crown.65 Dominican friars acted as the first Inquisitors General in Spain but were soon replaced by trained canon lawyers, men who had often been bishops or archbishops, and who possessed more serious academic and professional qualifications.66 The Inquisition was set up to attack the politicoreligious problem of conversos, and by 1493 autonomous courts were functioning in twenty-three different cities, reduced to eighteen more centralized institutions (twelve in Castile and six in Aragon) in 1505 to lower costs.67 From the mid-1530s the institution turned to lesser offences in Spain, such as blasphemous speech, abuse of the sacraments and superstitious rituals, keen to instruct Spaniards on matters of morality and faith in accordance with the recommendations of the Council of Trent (1545–63). Another Inquisition in Portugal, established in 1536, was never free of the converso problem, dealing consistently with offences related to judaizing throughout its history.68 Two more tribunals – in Sardinia (1492) and Sicily (1487) – could be found in those islands off southern Italy then under Spanish rule, and these tribunals were controlled by the Spanish Inquisition dealing primarily with judaizing and then lesser offences.69 The first Inquisition in Spain’s American colonies was set up in Lima in 1570, and was soon followed by tribunals in Mexico City and Cartagena. At first the Inquisition in the New World concentrated on heresy and began rooting out unbelief and superstition among the Indians, but the Inquisitors quickly realized that the inability of American Indians to absorb European religious concepts called for intensive missionary work rather than prosecution. On 21 July 1542, Paul III (1534–49), inspired by Cardinal Carafa, who had been impressed by the efficiency of the Spanish Inquisition when he had served as Papal nuncio in Spain, and concerned about the state of non-conformity Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 26 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS particularly in Modena, Lucca and Naples, issued the bull Licet ab initio re-establishing the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in Italy.70 This time the Inquisition was to be an inter-state institution with a mission to bring about religious unification and deal with Christian heretics who tended to Protestantism throughout the Italian peninsula, and not Judaizers – at least in the beginning. In this respect it was fundamentally different from the Spanish and Portuguese tribunals. Six cardinals who in 1542 formed the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office were empowered to proceed against heretics and given the right to nominate delegates. Appointments of Inquisitors as well as overall supervision of procedures were the responsibility of the Congregation, and their tribunals were empowered by the Papacy to proceed independently of existing clerical and lay authorities against anyone, regardless of rank. The central figure of the Congregation was the cardinal secretary, who had the responsibility for keeping in efficient and constant communication with the Inquisitors serving in the peninsula. By the late 1580s, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office had authority over forty-two Inquisitorial tribunals and these tribunals had to send regular updates and copies of proceedings to Rome, and to await in return verdicts or orders as to how to proceed.71 Through such industrious contact, the Congregation hoped to bring about a uniform Inquisitorial process throughout the peninsula. Roman Inquisitorial tribunals spread throughout Northern Italy, becoming important arbiters of religious conformity, dealing initially with Lutherans and Anabaptists, but by the 1580s they had begun to prosecute lesser offences such as magic and sorcery (often misleadingly termed witchcraft, a term which ought to be reserved for satanic practices).72 It was a way for the papacy to ensure tighter religious control of neighbouring Catholic states. However, what the local tribunals were able to achieve depended on the co-operation of secular rulers and the ecclesiastical organs already in existence in a given state.73 Several of the Italian states, such as the republics of Venice, Genoa and Lucca, established their own courts dedicated to eradicating heresy and insisted that the Inquisition not interfere. In duchies such as Mantua and Modena, Inquisitors had to accept that ruling dukes tolerated the heretical tendencies of some of the leading members of their courts, sometimes to the point of shielding them from prosecution. It is therefore inappropriate to speak of a single Papal institution or a uniform organizational structure. In Modena, the Inquisitorial vicariate established in August 1542, subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition of Ferrara, was determined, since Modena in the 1540s was considered a terrible hotbed of Lutheranism in Italy, to rid the Catholic population of numerous Protestant and Calvinist tendencies.74 Despite Giovanni Romano’s argument that creation of the Papal Inquisition in 1542 did not particularly increase the productivity of Inquisitors, by 1568 the Modenese Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 27 Inquisitorial vicariate had managed to eradicate successfully not only Protestantism but also witchcraft from the valley of Panaro, the area near Castelnuovo, the territories of Campogalliano-Lesignano and S. Felice, Finale Emilia, and S. Biagio in Padule.75 The elevation of the Modenese Inquisitorial tribunal from vicariate to full Inquisitorial status, by Pope Clement VIII on 8 April 1598, brought little reaction or comment in the new Estense capital. Three Inquisitorial tribunals now existed in their own right – in Ferrara, Reggio and Modena, strategically placed in these areas of intellectual activity to obstruct Protestant infiltration.76 In reality, the new Modenese Inquisition had on the one hand no political or civil influence in the city, and on the other no secular official sitting on its tribunal. Yet it became one of the most active Inquisitions in Italy.77 That the Papacy was keen to establish an Inquisitorial tribunal in Modena at this potentially explosive time, with the Duke recently excommunicated and still mortified over the loss of Ferrara, reveals the Papal intention to meticulously monitor the new Estense capital.78 The nine Inquisitors General who served as heads of the Modenese tribunals between 1598 and 1638 were all professionally trained canon lawyers, who were often involved in local religious politics, hampered by local ecclesiastical controversies and arguments that threatened their ability to operate efficiently.Yet they were equally determined to eradicate heresy, dealing with a variety of different offences during their terms of office. The range of offences they prosecuted included heretical blasphemy, superstition, magical offences involving sorcery, maleficio, witchcraft, divination, sacrilege and astrology, the possession of prohibited books, abuse of the sacraments, participation in Jewish and Muslim rites, breaches of ecclesiastical regulations, and impeding or opposing the work of the Holy Office. From approximately 1622, the offence of eating meat, eggs and milk products on forbidden days was also prosecuted, as well as priests or secular clergy living with women in concubinage.79 Having received his investiture from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in March 1598, the first Inquisitor General, Father Giovanni da Montefalcone, served in Modena from December 1598 until his death in October 1599.80 Biondi describes his first encounter with Duke Cesare and Bishop Gaspare Silingardi (1593–1607), both of whom offered their services to the Inquisition.81 Montefalcone, in his short term of office, managed approximately eighteen investigations (none of them against Jews), for blasphemy and witchcraft, although he carried out far fewer proceedings than his successors, since he was impeded by the technical problems of a new tribunal.82 He also tried to gain jurisdiction over surrounding territories, in particular the towns of Carpi, Nonantola and Brescello.83 He was followed by Brother Angelo Brissio, who held office from November 1599 until May 1600, conducting approximately thirty- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 28 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS four investigations (only one against a Jew for holding prohibited books),84 facing at the same time much criticism and aggression from the secular power to the extent that the local chronicler Spaccini believed that he was relieved of his generalship because of this.85 He continued his predecessor’s prosecution of heretical blasphemy as well as witchcraft and magical offences, and made the Inquisition much more visible in the city state as it prosecuted prominent noblemen for heretical tendencies. Father Archangelo Calbetti de Recanati – whose term lasted significantly longer than his predecessors’, from November 1600 to April 1607 – conducted 341 investigations (32 of Jews), approximately forty-nine a year; he too concentrated on the offences of heretical blasphemy and superstition. He also concerned himself with the Inquisition’s public image, determined to improve the tribunal’s relationship with the Duke, as well as with other religious orders.86 He maintained a far closer contact with other northern Italian tribunals such as those in Bologna, Ferrara, Parma, Mantua and Milan.87 When he moved to Piacenza, in 1607, to take over the generalship from Eliseo Masini of the Inquisition there, he was replaced by Serafino Borra, who conducted approximately fifty-nine trial investigations (four of Jews) before passing the generalship to Michelangelo Lerri in 1608. Lerri again concentrated on processi for heretical blasphemy and superstition, and he was famous for writing a comprehensive Inquisitorial manual intended to assist Inquisitors to conduct trial proceedings more accurately, which was distributed among other tribunals in the peninsula. He carried out 219 trial investigations (seventeen of Jews), approximately twenty-seven a year. His successor, Massimo Guazzoni (1616–18), concentrated on trials of Christians who failed in their religious observances, and held fortyeight trials (six of Jews), twenty-four a year. Tommaso Novato, who replaced him for two years (1618–20), returned again to issues of blasphemy and superstition, conducting approximately seventy investigations (seven of Jews), thirty-five a year. Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza became Inquisitor General in 1620 and held the office for six years, during which he conducted 487 investigations (thirty-four of Jews) approximately eighty-one a year, many for holding prohibited books. The final Inquisitor General in our period was Giacomo Tinti di Lodi, who held the position from 1626 to 1647. During the first twelve years of his term in office he conducted 402 trials (eighty-five against Jews), approximately thirty-four a year with a larger proportion of trials against practising Jews, between 1630 and 1640, for possessing prohibited books.88 The amount of energy invested by these Inquisitors General in the prosecution of Jews therefore varied.89 Although there is documentary evidence of a domus Inquisitionis existing in Modena since 1299 in the garden of San Domenico, a physical space where trials were held and prisoners incarcerated and tortured, the Inquisitorial Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 29 vicar, Antonio da Brescia, had a new building constructed in 1517 to replace the ramshackle tower.90 Even so, Giovanni da Montefalcone, the first Inquisitor-General in 1598, commented on the austerity of his accommodation upon arrival: As to the property of our office, there is nothing except one cell, in a dormitory with the other monks, with a bedstead, a bed and a mattress, without sheets or covers and stripped of all religious furniture.91 During the first five years of the Inquisition’s existence, interrogations of male suspects were carried out in a side room in the San Domenico church, women were interrogated in the chapel of Santa Caterina di Siena, and prisoners in general were taken to the bishop’s palace to be tortured.92 There was only one prison cell that the Holy Office could use in the monastery. Sufficient money was raised by the Inquisition through fines imposed on offenders, particularly Jews, to erect a new building by 1604.93 On his retirement in 1607, Calbetti described in detail, and with pride, the new building: the building of the new Inquisition is a building with a large staircase with two flights of 27 terracotta stairs which lead to a room for the notary and one for the caretaker, and to a council chamber, behind the fireplace of which is a torture room, with two doors that open into the chamber and two windows which look out over the tiles. In the torture room are the fornimenti [namely the instruments of torture]. Adjacent to the torture room … there are three rooms, where the Inquisitor usually lives. On this floor there are four new prisons which have been added to the two old prisons already built in times past by the Confraternity of the Cross, which are situated on the ground floor, near the cellar.94 Besides the Inquisitor General and his vicar, twelve consultori (four theologians, four canonists and four jurisconsults), eight ministri and twelve famigliari made up the workforce of the Inquisition.95 The famigliari were not employees, but amateur officers who had a general duty to personally protect the Inquisitor and assist the Holy Office by spying on local inhabitants and looking out for heretical, superstitious or blasphemous behaviour, in return for privileges in the court, fiscal exemptions and the right to carry prohibited weapons.96 They played a role in the Papal Inquisitions not only in Modena, but also in Milan, Como, Cremona, Pavia, Rimini, Faenza, Imola and Florence, and occasionally brought about the conviction of Jews.97 In 1622 the number of people employed increased to at least 154, and their names and positions were registered in a ‘catalogue’ in the Inquisitorial vicariates in the Estense region. This catalogue subdivided into 40 congregations the territories of Modena, Carpi, Nonantola, Frignano and Garfagnana, with each congregation manned by at least three people: a vicar of the Holy Office (who was usually a Dominican friar and an influential parish priest) often put in charge of ‘Inquisitorial subdistricts’, a notary, and an Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 30 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS agent or nuncio of the Inquisitor.98 As Andrea del Col shows, the reinforcement of such vicariates as decentralized structures, which were dispersed through the rural territories of the dioceses utilizing the already existing structure of the episcopal courts, ensured that the jurisdiction of the Holy Office reached all areas of the duchy.99 Although the vicars had limited autonomy to carry out actual proceedings, their duty was to transfer the reports of initial investigations and delations to the central office in Modena.100 The number of employees of the Inquisition multiplied in the eighteenth century when positions such as fiscal procurators, registrars, trustees, surgeons, barbers, pharmacists, printers, domestic servants, a controller of the port and an inspector of the ghettos were added to the list of Inquisitorial officers.101 That the Inquisition had power over the bishop and other ecclesiastical dignitaries in matters of heresy caused initial problems in 1598, as it did elsewhere, and as Christopher Black has shown that such interaction could turn violent.102 The association of bishops with proceedings of the Holy Office already had a Machiavellian history in Modena at that time. Not only had the city of Modena been immersed in a state of nonconformity between 1520 and 1550, the sixteenth century had seen the traumatic proceedings against the beloved bishop of the city Giovanni Gerolamo Morone (1529–50 and 1564–71), an influential member of the Council of Trent, who had been prosecuted by the Holy Office in Rome, originally for temporizing Protestant reformers in Modena, particularly in his contact with members of the well-known Accademia of the city, but then eventually charged for Lutheran heresy. Although he was prosecuted in 1557, the Cardinals of the Congregation could not find grounds for any of the charges against him, but he stubbornly refused to leave prison unless Pope Paul IV, a former Inquisitor, and one who believed in the infallibility of the tribunal, would admit his error. Pope Paul IV refused, leaving the bishop to languish in prison until the Pope’s death on 18 August 1559.103 Relations between Inquisitors and bishops began on shaky ground, and Bishop Gasparo Silingardi (1593–1607) in particular resented the Inquisition’s intrusion on his jurisdiction, which reduced his income.104 The Tridentine bishops had their own reformist agenda, which they were keen to enforce with little interference: in particular, policies to restructure religious faith and practice. Bishops in the latter half of the sixteenth centuries busied themselves with the foundation of the first episcopal seminaries and annual pastoral visits to congregations in the many dioceses of the duchy to maintain the morality of the clergy, instill orthodox doctrine, eliminate all traces of heresy, and spread new important liturgical books.105 In 1598, Silingardi in frustration refused to subsidize the local tribunal, which was forced to apply to the Bolognese Inquisition, and from time to time to the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome, for subsidy.106 As a result of this lack of support, Montefalcone decided to circumvent Silin- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 31 gardi, refusing to inform him of Inquisitorial proceedings.107 The Congregation in Rome, displeased by the lack of cooperation between the two, interceded and ordered the Inquisition to collaborate with the bishop on all matters.108 But the bishops themselves still refused to concede. When Giovanni Battista Galizia was released from the prison of the bishop’s court in 1600 after charges of heresy had been dropped, Silingardi failed to give notice to the Inquisition.109 By the 1620s, Bishop Pellegrino Bertacchi (1610–27), who was keen to endorse better relations, showed himself more ready to support the Inquisition, and on occasions helped the tribunal by mediating between it and the Duke.110 By this time, too, bishops were more willing to take a back seat in the pursuit of heresy and concentrate purely on ecclesiastical discipline and popular devotion, ridding the church of internal tensions and moving towards a healthier and stronger postTridentine church.111 Although Inquisitors became the predominant judicial figure in the church hierarchy in the peninsula, this did not stop bishops from wanting to maintain some role in Inquisitorial proceedings. In 1635, Pope Urban VIII (1623– 44) ordered Inquisitors to transfer to the palace of the bishop any interrogations in which the bishop wanted to be involved in personally.112 The Inquisition aimed to obtain a level of cooperation and aid from the surrounding Christian community. As a result of Tridentine reforms, put into practice particularly by local bishops in Modena, the parish church emerged in the beginning of the seventeenth century as the central place of worship. Every Sunday, at mass, parish priests would preach against heresy in sermons, and twice a year, on the first Sunday of Advent and then Lent, Inquisitorial edicts listing all possible forms of error in detail and requesting the congregation to denounce all suspects were read aloud.113 All Christians had a moral and religious responsibility for their own conduct and for that of their family and neighbours. Because congregations were expected to participate fully, failure to comply or attend confession was easily discovered and had to be reported at first to a confessor and then to the Inquisition. In 1559 Pope Paul IV had ordered that, during confession, confessors were to ask penitents if they themselves or anyone they knew read prohibited books, engaged in sorcery or magic, or propagated unorthodox ideas. Refusal of sacramental absolution became standard for those who revealed heretical behaviour of themselves or others unless the confessant appeared before the Inquisitor. As Adriano Prosperi has shown, transgressions were thereby turned into matters of conscience.114 If the penitent admitted to any of these offences, he or she was told that the only way to obtain absolution was by reporting the offence ‘voluntarily’ to the Holy Office.115 This system enabled offenders to demonstrate their penitence, and denounce their accomplices. Confessors clearly ceded powers to the Holy Office when matters of heresy or other major ecclesiastical or moral offences were involved.116 At the same time, the Inquisition was in fact assuming functions which, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 32 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS in theory, had in the past been in the hands of local officials, lay and ecclesiastic. Conflict with the ducal house The efficiency of the Holy Office in Italy was often impaired by the tribunals’ unstable relations with local secular authorities. Initial uncertainties, conflicts with secular rulers and other prosecuting bodies, necessary strategies of adjustment, and judicial allocations affected the rise of the Inquisition in many cities. There were also cases in the latter half of the sixteenth century, like those of the republics of Lucca and Siena, where the governments refused to accept Inquisitorial tribunals, and its secular courts continued to prosecute offences of heresy, magic and witchcraft without Papal interference.117 In Modena, the timing of the arrival of an Inquisitor General in 1598 to head the new branch of the Inquisition was potentially difficult. Duke Cesare d’Este, spurred by resentment towards the Roman Curia, and especially towards Pope Clement VIII for reclaiming Ferrara and imposing an interdict, was hardly ready to accept a Papal Inquisition with open arms.118 A deeper anti-Papal attitude also existed in Modena, since fifty years earlier the Duke had resented Papal intrusion in bringing to trial seventy of the dissident Modenese citizens of the Accademia, in what was considered an affair of state.119 With the Pope revealing himself as a temporal aggressor in 1598, it was also hard for the Duke to accept the Pope’s new tribunal, which demanded increasing jurisdiction over religious discipline including blasphemy and heresy, previously reserved for local secular courts which in Modena consisted of the Tribunale Camerale and the Giudici del Maleficio. The pressure on the Inquisition to show immediate results and therefore justify its existence was real. Although Inquisitor-Generals were appointed directly by the Pope, with approval of the Duke of Modena, the first Inquisitor General worked quietly behind the scenes to become established. The second, Angelo Brissio of Cesena, who remained in Modena for less than a year, was unpopular for his rigidity and had many personal clashes with the ducal house, in particular regarding the expurgation and removal of prohibited books in the possession of Jews, which the secular courts refused to allow the Inquisition to execute effectively.120 Eventually he was removed from office, and Spaccini believes that the Duke was wholly responsible for this. The local chronicler was pleased to see him removed, emphasizing at the same time his bitterness towards the Inquisition and his own suspicion that Brissio would try to take away goods that belonged to the church: The prince has taken much trouble to have the Dominican inquisitor removed from his post, fearing that if he carried out his duties with his customary strictness something might arise which they [the Inquisitors] claimed as their own, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 33 because they think of nothing but creating opportunities to appropriate goods for the Church.121 The next Inquisitor-General, Archangelo Calbetti de Recanati, who succeeded Brissio in 1600, was determined to improve relations with the Duke. Calbetti asked the Inquisitors General in Parma and Mantua to advise him how to proceed. He was urged to approach the Duke personally, to confirm that the tribunal intended to aid the state and was most interested in collaboration with the secular courts in dealing with wrongdoers whom the Duke also condemned in his edicts.122 The Holy Office worked cautiously, trying not to anger the Duke’s court and accepting that a third of the confiscated goods of condemned heretics would go to the ducal treasury, while the Inquisition itself would receive no subsidy from the duchy.123 Cesare d’Este was not in a strong enough position to assert further demands upon the Inquisition.124 He tried in vain to argue, under the influence of his minister Giovan Battista Laderchi (known as Imola), that representatives of the secular power should sit on the Inquisitorial tribunal, as they did in Venice where three secular officials, or Tre Savii sopra Eresia as they were known, existed to make the Inquisition more effective by adding the state’s power to that of the Church.125 The civil magistrates in Modena had had their own methods of dealing with offences such as heresy, considered within the jurisdiction of secular courts, since such offences disturbed the political as well as the religious body of the state. Regarding blasphemy and witchcraft proceedings, the ducal court in Modena continually argued with the Inquisition that it was able to deal with the simpler forms of blasphemy, which did not involve heretical propositions.126 The Duke also preferred that cases of well-known and respected citizens and nobles should come within the secular jurisdiction.127 In the particular case of Curzio Azzi di Ferrara – the Duke’s capitano delle lance spezzate, in 1600 accused of heretical blasphemy and having sex with a prostitute – the Duke argued in vain that these offences fell within the jurisdiction of the Giudici del Maleficio, and that the trial be conducted under his jurisdiction.128 Another case that fell between the courts was that of Elisabetta Noliani di Viadana, who was accused of trying to kill the wife of her lover by witchcraft in 1615. The Inquisition argued that witchcraft was a crime which might involve both apostasy and the infliction of physical harm, and was therefore a crimen mixti fori, that is one that could be judged by both religious and secular tribunals. In the end the Inquisition successfully asserted its jurisdiction and prosecuted both cases.129 From 1600, Duke Cesare, trying to assert his authority again, demanded that he be told the names of all suspects and the dates of their trials. The Inquisitor appealed to the Congregation of the Holy Office, and correspondence between the two institutions on this issue continued for the next nine years. In 1609 the papacy lost patience and ordered Michelangelo Lerri, Inquisitor Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 34 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS General between 1608 and 1616, to ensure that only when a trial was conducted against someone from his household would the Inquisition inform the Duke: not out of obligation, but out of courtesy, you should notify the most serene Duke only when the Holy Office has to proceed against members of his household.130 Nevertheless there were some occasions when the Inquisitor conceded and provided the Duke, when deemed necessary by the Congregation of the Holy Office, with information regarding the prosecutions of members of his court.131 Inquisitorial action against the Jewish community was also fraught with political implications. Jews in Modena, as in other states, were above all subjects of the secular authorities and answerable to the Giudici Ordinarii, the Ducale Camerale, the Tribunale dei Dodici Savi and the Giudici del Maleficio, which dealt specifically with heresy and blasphemy, if they committed crimes, and the Magistrati delle Artii regarding guild issues.132 These courts were entitled to try Jews for offences against Christianity, such as lodging Christian servants in their houses, and having intimate contact with Christians.133 The Inquisition had to adapt its policies and take account of the relationship which bound the Jews to the Duke. As the trial proceedings reveal, this often resulted in the Inquisition’s authority over Jews being circumscribed. The more acute phase of quarrels between the Inquisitorial power and the civil power was over by 1620 and conflicts were minimized after that. The relationship between Inquisition and Duke stabilized, and with few exceptions remained peaceful until its abolition in 1785.134 The business of the tribunal continued with an effectiveness that would have been impossible without the practical support provided by representatives of lay authority, particularly with the execution of arrests and punishments that involved the shedding of blood, a task that had been canonically forbidden to church courts since medieval times.135 The Inquisition and professing Jews How could the Roman Inquisition, an organization appointed to inquire into heresy (inquisitio haereticae pravitatis), be entitled to prosecute Jews who had never been baptized, and for that reason appeared to be incapable of Christian heresy? When Pope Paul III instituted the Holy Office of the Papal Inquisition in 1542, there was no mention in his bull of practising Jews as offenders or that the Inquisition was to have direct jurisdiction over them. It was not until thirty-nine years later, when Inquisitorial tribunals had already been established in many states across northern Italy, that Pope Gregory XIII’s bull Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas of 1 July 1581, building on policies and stances of Pius V, authorized Inquisitorial supervision of practising Jews.136 Clause 12 of this bull stated: Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 35 In these cases both general and particular of every aforesaid wickedness we assign as Inquisitors for every kingdom, province, state, dominion and place in the whole Christian world, judges for all time, each in his own area, to diligently make enquiries and institute proceedings about these matters against the Jews and any other heathens [italics added], together or separately, in the cause of the faith, according to the plan of the holy canons and the constitution of the Office of the Inquisition, and those whom they find guilty of any of these crimes let them sentence according to their culpability, the number and frequency of their offences and their habitual offending, to whipping, the galleys, even permanent exile and other harsher punishments, which should be made public to provide an example to others and deter criminals from that sort of crime in the future.137 This statement clarified not only that the Inquisitorial court was able to prosecute Jews for certain offences, but that it had the right to bring about corporal punishments or even ‘harsher punishments’ of Jews. Gregory XIII’s determination to fully prosecute and punish Jews is set out further in clause 15, where he rendered superfluous the citation of early Papal pronouncements supporting the position of Jews or protecting them: [We recognize that there are] apostolic statutes and orders, and exemptions, privileges, immunities, and supplies at the public expense [enjoyed by] the aforementioned Jews and other heathens, Marranos and apostates, whether in the dominions, lands and places ruled directly or indirectly by us and the Holy See. [This applies whether they] abide in any other kingdoms, provinces and dominions, people and places, or in any other kingdoms and regions, whether of the faithful or of heathens, and their judges, advocates and defenders, by whatever authority, power or dignity they hold office, even though it be at the instance of the emperor, kings, dukes or any other rulers, even through Paul III of blessed memory on February 20 and Julius III on December 5 each in the third year of his pontificate, but also all the other Roman pontiffs both past and future and ourselves and the Holy See and its envoys and the Apostolic Chamber. In whatever forms, and with whatever edicts and decrees, whether issued in the proper fashion or in any other way, granted, confirmed and renewed, or due to be granted, confirmed and renewed in the future [these are], all of them we particularly and expressly revoke, abrogate and completely abolish, no matter who opposes us, even if there is special, specific, express and individual mention of them and all their implications … .138 To ensure that his orders would be understood and acted upon, the bull demanded that: these presents be published in the usual places in the city and copies of them, authenticated by the hand of the public notary and the seal of the holy Roman and universal Inquisition or supplied with the authority of an ecclesiastical dignitary, be straightway published not only in the jurisdiction of the faith but also beyond it … .139 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 36 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS The content of the bull was not original. Since the Middle Ages there had been a general belief among theologians that the papacy could punish Jews. Instead, the bull represented an attempt to bring together, even to codify a good deal of medieval canon law.140 What was new was the fact that the papacy was actively encouraging its recently created Holy Office to directly prosecute practising Jews for these particular offences. Before the thirteenth century, Jews’ position in Catholic society had been seen as one of perpetua servitas (perpetual servitude) as defined in Innocent III’s 1205 Papal bull Etsi iudaeos, which sanctioned the boundaries of an essentially stable juridical status.141 If Jews violated a church regulation, such as not wearing their badge or treating a cleric with disrespect, ecclesiastical authorities, before the establishment of the medieval Inquisition, were to ask local secular rulers to punish them.142 If they refused, the church would often resort to ‘indirect punishment’, in which case the Christian who refused to stop economic and social contact with the offending Jew was excommunicated.143 According to Grayzel, this method was known as judicium Judaeorum and encouraged the popes of the thirteenth century, in particular Pope Innocent IV, to recognize that the Church had to have direct authority over Jews if they violated laws of nature, for example by cohabiting with Christians or blaspheming against their own God. When canon law was codified first in Gratian’s Decretum around 1140, and then in 1234 when Pope Gregory IX (1227–41) promulgated the Liber extra, which became an integral part of the Corpus iuris canonici, the theological doctrine of servitas judeorum was incorporated into Papal legislation.144 This occurred at about the same time as the papacy set up medieval Inquisitorial courts to fight outbreaks of heresy. Due to the worsening economic position of the Jews at this time and the penetration of the mendicant friars’ anti-Judaic propaganda in towns and cities of Western Europe, the status of Jews fell increasingly under Church scrutiny. The real change came in 1245 in Innocent IV’s Apparatus to the Decretals of Gregory IX. Pope Innocent asserted jurisdiction over all, including the right to judge Jews, but only if they acted against the laws of morality as defined by the popes, and were not punished by their own courts. The bull Turbato corde (1267), promulgated by Clement IV and twice reissued later in the thirteenth century, also placed those Christians who had converted to Judaism, and Christians and Jews who merely facilitated the return of any convert to Judaism, under the jurisdiction of the medieval Inquisitors.145 Another category of Jewish offenders named in this bull were Jews who retained copies of the Talmud and therefore laid themselves open to the offence of blasphemy, which eventually led to the occasional confiscation and destruction of Hebrew books by Inquisitors in France and Spain. In 1274, Pope Gregory X added those converted Jews who returned to Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 37 practise the religion of their fathers. This was followed by the ‘famous bull of protection’, Sicut judeis, which Martin IV re-issued in 1281, to the effect that Jews could not be subjected to Inquisitorial proceedings unless they undertook actions aimed at undermining the Christian faith.146 More than merely confirming it, Martin was keen to clarify the Papal position on this matter, and to limit Inquisitorial authority over the Jews. In particular he demanded that witnesses testifying against Jews take an oath that they were speaking the truth; if not, they would face the fate that the Jewish suspects would have suffered if they had been found guilty. In 1299, Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) possibly reacting to events of the previous year, when Elias de Pomis, an influential figure in the Jewish, community was burned at the stake for supposedly supporting the Patrician Colonna family who opposed Pope Boniface VIII, issued his own bull in which he permitted the Jews of Rome to demand that Inquisitors reveal the names of witnesses who testified against them. Although details regarding his offence are fragmentary, the line medieval Inquisitors had to follow if they wished to prosecute Jews as infidels and not heretics, in order to prevent violations of law and procedure, was extremely fine. The next mention of Inquisitorial jurisdiction over Jews was in Inquisitorial manuals widely circulated in manuscript and printed form in later centuries. In 1323 or 1324 the Inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui, produced the ‘most famous Inquisitorial manual’, the Practica officii inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, an elaborate work consisting of five books, summing up half a century of Inquisitorial experience. Its intention was to serve as a guide for Inquisitors in their future course of duty.147 Gui, for the first time, specified that apart from matters concerning heresy, his competence with respect to Jews extended to their blasphemies in Jewish literature and their magic. In Book Two, Gui suggested several procedures that should be carried out when prosecuting practising Jews. He drew up a form ‘for releasing any Jew from prison to which he has been sentenced for acts committed against the Faith’, in particular influencing a Jewish convert to return to Judaism.148 The Jew was to be punished with imprisonment, although he noted that further penances would be problematic: We do not wish to compel the aforementioned Jews, enemies of the cross of Christ, to wear crosses of cloth [on their garments], to construct basilicas, to visit holy places, or to perform the other pious works which are customarily imposed upon guilty persons and penitents for the crime of heretical depravity.149 Gui had the solution: Upon the counsel of good men we impose some monetary penalty, to be expended on the investigation and capture of heretics, fugitives, and apostates, or for some other pious use which seems advisable to us.150 At the end of the form, Gui formulated a declaration that Inquisitors were able Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 38 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS to reduce or increase the fine and arrest and imprison the Jew at any time in the future. By standardizing these types of punishment Gui was setting a precedent which was to be followed by the Papal Inquisition in Italy in the seventeenth century. He also suggests in his manual a suitable form of abjuration for Jews accused of proselytizing. An oath should be taken ‘on the law of Moses placed in front of me and touched by my hand and kissed’ (super legem moysi coram me positam et manu mea tactam et osculatam) to the effect that the Jew would not offend nor blaspheme against Christianity again. The fifth and final part of the treatise describes the types of heretics that the Inquisitors in Languedoc encountered, including Jewish converts to Christianity who had returned to Judaism.151 As Yerushalmi states, what Gui really failed to do in his manual was provide ‘a systematic presentation of the various causes for which even Jews who had never been baptized could and did come within the competence of the Inquisitors’.152 Gui’s comments should probably be taken as proscriptive and not descriptive of what often or truly occurred. It is unlikely as was noted above with the Elias de Pomis case, that medieval Inquisitors who judged Jews remained faithful to Papal mandate or to the changing demands of Inquisitorial manuals. Solomon Grayzel reports how, in the late thirteenth century, Charles I (1226–85), the king of the Two Sicilies and Duke of several provinces in western and southeastern France, had in 1276 defended his Jews in Provence against the moves of Inquisitors who tried to imprison, fine and even torture them.153 In Southern Italy in the 1290s, Inquisitors had, in league with King Charles II of Anjou (1254–1309), forced at least half of the region’s Jews to convert, as a result of a blood libel riot inspired by mendicant friars. There was also at least one episode involving Jews and magic in the early fourteenth century. One Bernard Jourdain of Toulouse was accused in 1324, along with lepers, of poisoning wells in southern France. In 1376, the Aragonese Inquisitor Nicolau Eymeric wrote a manual, the Directorium inquisitorum, which was to be used by Inquisitors during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.154 Whether this was directly connected to a request of the Jews of Barcelona who in 1374 had insisted that King Pere IV of Aragon write to the Pope, requesting him to define the Inquisition’s legitimate realm of authority in its dealings with Jews, is not clear.155 Eymeric gave the Inquisition further authority over Jewish action by arguing that the Inquisition could prosecute Jews if they offended their religion in word or action, defining them as heretics to their own faith, and therefore subject to the Papal Inquisition since the Pope, as vicar of Christ and heir to St Peter, had power over all infidels.156 Quoting Thomas Aquinas, Eymeric argued that even though the Church could not inflict spiritual punishment on infidels, it could still judge Jews and demand worldly punishment from secular authorities, since it was up to the Church to Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 39 isolate Christians from contact with infidels.157 However, Eymeric’s manual, like Francesco Peña’s commentary on it in 1578, concentrated on the Inquisition’s right to punish Jewish action, and there is little suggestion that Eymeric’s revolutionary ideas were acted upon.158 Regrettably we have little information on medieval Inquisitors who took matters into their own hands and chose to prosecute practising Jews in their own tribunals. David Jacoby has uncovered the trial proceedings against a Jew in Crete, one Sambati or Šabbetay, who in 1314 was charged by the medieval Inquisitor, the Franciscan Andreas Doto, with fraudulently claiming to be the messeta or missetarius in charge of the collection of a tax levied in Venice and her territories overseas on all commercial transactions.159 The Inquisitor prosecuted him, but the Venetian government intervened and argued, through secular jurists, that only the Doge and his delegates were entitled to prosecute and punish Jews, not the Inquisition. The move by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions to prosecute conversos predates the Roman Inquisition and its prosecution of Jews by almost a century. It invites us to speculate whether the establishment of these Inquisitions that prosecuted forcibly baptized Jews enabled the Church to consider practising Jews not merely as stubborn dissenters, but as people who tempted baptized Jews to return to Judaism and thereby commit what in the eyes of Christians was an act of apostasy.These Inquisitors believed that their victims were practising Judaism, especially in Portugal, where from its establishment in 1536 Inquisitorial tribunals dealt with whole communities of Jews who had been forcibly converted en masse between 1496 and 1499. But it also enabled the Inquisition to move one step closer to bringing practising Jews into their immediate realm of jurisdiction, which medieval theologians had already been suggesting for centuries.160 That professing Jews were not identified as potential offenders in the bull Licet ab initio is important. It suggests that at the stage when the Inquisition was re-established there had been no need to incorporate Jewish offences into its jurisdiction. Instead, Pope Paul IV (1555–59) insisted in a Papal bull of 1555, Cum nimis absurdum, that Jews throughout the Italian peninsula be separated from Christians by being forced to live in ghettos. In the course of the three sessions of the Council of Trent (1545–48, 1551–52, 1562–63), no new canons were issued on Inquisitorial authority over or procedure against Jews. But during the 1550s Marquardus de Susannis, the Udinese jurist, wrote De iudaeis et aliis infidelibus, composed during the first three years of Paul IV’s pontificate, and published in 1558, which was intended to serve, as Kenneth Stow has argued, as a manual of civil and canon law to enforce the restrictions imposed by Cum nimis – a judge’s handbook for matters pertaining to Jews and other infidels. It confirmed that Jews had to remain ‘in a state of punishment’ in Catholic society, and that if they committed serious crimes they should be expelled.161 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 40 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS De Susannis listed offences that Jews committed, but made no mention of the Inquisition being given jurisdiction over these matters. By 1581, the time of the promulgation of Pope Gregory XIII’s Antiqua bull, most Italian states had still not established their ghettos and expulsion was now abandoned as a potential solution to the Jewish problem. In addition, most Italian rulers who had Jews living in their territories had by this stage decided to keep them, because of the economic benefits they provided. The Inquisition was authorized to judge Jews for ten offences, including offences against common beliefs shared by Christians and Jews. They were, in order as they appear in the bull, denying belief in one God, sacrificing to demons or causing Christians to dabble in diabolism, devil worship, blaspheming Christ and the Virgin, proselytizing Christians or neophytes, dissuading or abusing potential converts from baptism, sheltering heretics, possessing blasphemous books, mocking Christians, Christ or the Cross, and finally housing Christian wetnurses in their homes. The Papal move to bring Jews within Inquisitorial jurisdiction and to monitor them closely incorporated them within the very institutionalization of social and religious disciplining that was so important to the post-Tridentine church.162 It also paradoxically achieved their permanent presence within the very reformed Catholic culture that the papacy had originally intended to remove the Jews from. Although Jews would not be forced to confess themselves on a regular basis, they would be forced to explain any specific or devious interaction they had with Christians. After 1581 the provisions of Gregory’s bull were reiterated in nearly every Inquisitorial manual and legal textbook dealing with Jews.163 Jews were required to publish in their synagogues Inquisitorial edicts that clarified Inquisitorial rules and regulations.164 Was it really surprising then that Giacomo Tinti di Lodi, Inquisitor General of Modena from 1626 to 1647 – in a moment of compassion towards a Jew, Matthias Donato, who had chosen to denounce himself for hiring Christian servants in 1636 – ordered that instead of a punishment, the Jew was to be given a penance (in penitentia) of abstaining from attending synagogue prayers for a period of two months?165 Was Inquisitor Tinti not confusing in his mind the type of defendant he was dealing with, implying perhaps that the Inquisition in its attempts to be merciful had almost come to believe itself capable of forgiving infidels as well and bringing salvation to their souls – a privilege that canon law prescribed could be bestowed only on Christians? In the early seventeenth century the Inquisition in Modena evolved into a court which primarily judged deviants from the standard moral code, whether they were practising Catholics or Jews.This prosecution of Jews should be understood as a new policy to impose social and religious discipline on the Christian community and to disarm the Jewish threat to Christians, as well as ensuring the correct behaviour of all its inhabitants. The Inquisition was interested in Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 41 practising Jews, not as potential converts to Christianity, but as individual Jews who were problem-makers, and as permanent members of certain states recently integrated into Papal jurisdiction in northern Italy that had to be supervised, monitored and punished. Ironically, then, the result of the Inquisition’s actions may well have been even greater contact between the two communities with heightened mutual curiosity, fascination and interest. Notes 1 See Jan Fiar Bestor, ‘Bastardy and Legitimacy in the Formation of a Regional State in Italy: The Estense Succession’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38/3 (July 1996), pp. 549–85. On the position of the Pope in early modern Europe see the excellent work of Paolo Prodi in The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls:The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See also the work of Anthony Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution 1564–1789 (Harlow: Longman Press, 2000), which takes issue with Prodi’s ideas. 2 See Lodovico Antonio Muratori in Annali d’Italia dal principio dell’era volgare sino all’anno 1750 (Milan: Giambattista Pasquali, 1753), vol. XV, pp. 94, 95, 119–20. Lodovico Antonio Muratori was a librarian, priest and scholar who lived in Modena from 1672 to 1750. Cesare’s father Alfonso d’Este (1476–1534) was the Marquis of Montecchio. 3 See Ernesto Milano, ‘Gli Estensi: La corte di Modena’, in Mauro Bini (ed.), Gli Estensi: seconda parte, La Corte di Modena (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 9–60, p. 13.The population of Modena at this time was approximately 18,000. Also Giovan Battista Spaccini, Cronaca di Modena anni 1588–1602, ed. Albano Biondi, Rolando Bussi and Carlo Giovannini (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1993), pp. 105–7 records the details of the agreement between Pope and Duke. 4 See for example his proclamation, Proclamation and Decrees Concerning Profanity, the Observance of Festivals, Gaming and Concubinage (Grida et ordini sopra la Bestemmia, osservar le Feste, Giuoco, et Concubine). ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. A copy of this edict can also be found in Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 129–30. 5 See Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 119, and Milano, ‘Gli Estensi: La corte di Modena’, p. 14. 6 Federica Francesconi, Jewish Families in Modena from the Renaissance to the Napoleonic Emancipation (1600–1810), a PhD thesis presented to the University of Haifa, May 2006, p. 200. 7 Ernesto Milano, ‘Gli Estensi: La corte di Modena’, p. 25. 8 Ibid., 29. Balletti notes in Gli Ebrei, p. 208, that from there he promoted the conversion of the Jews, in particular helping with the establishment of the Casa dei Catecumeni in Reggio, established in 1632. 9 In 1642, more than ten years after the plague, the population numbered 11,000 compared to 20,000 in 1620. 10 Milano, ‘Gli Estensi’, pp. 31–2. 11 See Giovanni Siera, La peste dell anno 1630 nel Ducato de Modena (Modena, 1960) and Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 122–3. 12 See Antonella Campanini, ‘Tracce documentarie della presenza ebraica a Modena nel medioevo’, in Franco Bonilauri and Vincenza Maugeri (eds), Le comunità ebraiche a Modena e a Carpi, dal medioevo all’età contemporanea (Florence: Giuntina, 1999), pp. 35–40. 13 Aron de Leone Leoni, ‘La posizione giuridica degli ebrei italiani, tedeschi, spagnoli e portughesi negli Stati Estensi nel Cinquecento’, in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Antonio Samaritani and Paolo Ravenna (eds), Gli Ebrei a Cento e Pieve di Cento fra medioevo ed età moderna, atti del convegno di studi storici Cento – 22 April 1993 (Cento: Fondazione Cassa di risparmio di Cento, 1994), pp. 51–61, p. 56, notes that, besides the above privileges, Jews were allowed to have their own cemetery and ritually slaughter animals according to the Jewish rite, and after 1454 were allowed to appear before the Tribunale dei Dodici Savi if they had felt that these privileges were being abused. 14 For a study of early modern Italian confraternities and their activities, see the monumental Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 42 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS work of Brian S. Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) and that of Christopher F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). See Attilio Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia (Torino: Einaudi, 1963), p. 302. The Duke subjected them to taxation, viewing them as nazioni forestieri. Condotte were repeatedly issued at intervals of ten years confirming their right to live in the duchy. For documents regarding taxation, see ACEMo filza 2.72. They show that the Jews were taxed to pay for among other things the maintenance of soldiers in fortresses. Also in the ACEMo are meticulous copies of all the contracts of the Jewish community with the ducal officers. Modena, being the largest Jewish community in the Estense duchy, was also responsible for the smaller Jewish communities in Reggio, Finale, Carpi, Correggio, Novellara and Scandiano, and as such kept records of demands made on these smaller communities by the ducal treasury. See in particular ACEMo filza 2.47 N ‘Memoriali e serenissimi Padroni e ad altri Supremi Tribunali e loro rispettivi rescritti 1638–1761’. Regarding the tax that Jews had to pay, see ASMoAME, busta 15. This tax was increased when the situation demanded it. For examples of petitions sent to the Duke see the collection of documents kept at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) located in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, files: R8/I – 4a, RHM 8/1 – 4 (Modena, Ebrei) and R8/I-4. Aron de Leon Leoni, La nazione ebraica spagnola e portoghese negli stati estensi (Rimini: Luis, 1992), p. 175. A later migration occurred in 1652–53 as a result of an invitation to sixty Sephardi merchant families by Francesco I, intent on competing with the success of Sephardi trading in Livorno which had offered these Jews unprecedented conditions of residence and trading. See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘Ferrara, ovvero un porto placido e sicuro tra XV e XVI secolo’, in Euride Fregni and Mauro Perani (eds), Vita e cultura ebraica nello stato estense, atti del 1° convegno internazionale di studi, Nonantola 15–16–17 maggio 1992 (Nonantola, Bologna: Commune di Nonantola, Fattoadarte, 1993), pp. 235–57. Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death, trans. Andrea Grover (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 166. Foa brings to our attention the interesting case of Joseph Saralvo, a Portuguese who had reverted to Judaism and secretly performed circumcisions in Ferrara and Venice for thirty years. Saralvo was taken to Rome and burned alive in the Campo di Fiori in 1583. According to Foa, it was because of this case that the Duke set such standards in Ferrara in the 1580s, at exactly the time when the Venetians became less concerned with the problem of Marranos in the Republic. Sefardim in general appear much less frequently in Inquisitorial proceedings of the city capital and its surrounding communities. The Papal’s shift in policy towards the Jews is discussed in Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555–1593 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977) and Robert Bonfil’s study on this period, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Pius V (1566–72) expelled the Jews from most Papal states except Rome and Ancona, which consisted of some eighty communities, with 108 synagogues, and forced the emigration of thousands of Jews, including the expulsion of some Jews from Bologna. According to A. Faustini, Aggiunta alle historie del Signor Gasparo Sardi nuovamente composte dal Sig. dott. Agostino Faustini Ferrarese Libro III, in Libro delle Historie Ferraresi del Sig. Gasparo Sardi (Ferrara, 1649), p. 104, the Papal legate tried to encourage the Jews to stay, and to prevent an exodus of capital from the duchy. See Federica Francesconi and Luisa Levi D’Ancona, Vita e società ebraica di Modena e Reggio Emilia: L’età dei ghetti (Modena: Edizioni Panini, 2007) pp. 10–11. In 1767, it was recorded that the number of Jews was 1,262 out of a total of 21,000 inhabitants. See Euride Fregni, ‘La comunità ebraica di Modena nelle carte del suo archivio storico (secc. XVII–XVIII)’, in Fregni and Perani (eds), Vita e cultura ebraica nello stato estense, pp. 299–316 takes this figure from the ACEMo filza 15 D, ‘Denunzie delle anime all’Uffizio dell’abbondanza’, 1766–94. See also Alan C. Harris, ‘La demografia del ghetto in Italia (1516–1797 circa)’, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 33 (1967), pp. 1–15, p. 11. Harris notes that the Jews made up approximately 5% of the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 43 Modenese inhabitants. This contradicts Francesconi and Fregni, who suggest closer to 10%. 23 The de Modena family Italian synagogue is in fact the first synagogue that was built in Modena during the fifteenth century. See Dora Liscia Bemporad and Federica Francesconi, L’ebraismo e l’arte: gli argenti sinagogali (Modena: Comunità ebraica di Modena e Reggio Emilia, 2003), p. 9. Francesconi and Levi D’Ancona, Vita e società ebraica, p. 17. 24 Francesconi, Jewish Families, p. 220, and Donatella Calabi, ‘Dal quartiere ebraico alla costituzione del ghetto in Italia: il caso di Modena’, in Bonilauri and Maugeri, Le comunità ebraiche, pp. 87–93, p. 87. 25 Francesconi, Jewish Families, p. 220. 26 See Leoni, ‘La posizione giuridica’, p. 56. 27 On details regarding Jewish doctors in the Estense duchy, see Stefano Arieti and Giovanni Gennuso, ‘Medici ebrei nello stato estense: Cultura e attività’, in Fregni and Perani (eds), Vita e cultura ebraica nello stato estense, pp. 275–83. 28 See Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia, p. 302. 29 See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘La relazione cristiano-ebraica nelle città emiliane fra basso medievo e prima età moderna: l’opportunità di una comparazione’, in Bonilauri and Maugeri, Le comunità ebraiche, pp. 23–33. 30 On the manufacturing of acquavite by the Jews, see ASMoFIP 103 f.8, the processo of Matthias Donato in 1636. 31 Ibid. Matthias admits that he would go to the shops of Christians, in particular Domenico Montanari, to play backgammon with him and others. 32 On Jews and Christians attending the same balls, see ASMoFIP 65 f.4; ASMoFIP 67 f.21; ASMoFIP 95 f.1; ASMoFICH 245 f.40, ASMoFICH 246 f.6. On the issue of Jews and Christian prostitutes see ASMoFICH 245 f.44, ASMoFICH 245 f.45 and ASMoFIP 57 f.17. 33 See ASMoFIP 17 f.8 and ASMoFICH 244 f.31. In this second processo, against Isaaco Sanguinetti, Abraam Sacerdote and Abraam Pasiglio, who were accused of meddling in maleficio, it was alleged that they had provided their Christian friends with magnets (although they continually argued that these magnets were not illicitly baptized) and Venetian gold ducats (zecchini) to aid their attempts to bring harm to their enemies and attract the attention of the woman whom one Christian, Signor Camillo Valentino, admired. The spells of Isaaco Sanguinetti were so serious, touching on diabolical witchcraft, that the Inquisition banished him from Modena. On the use of such magnets see Jeffrey R. Watt, The Scourge of Demons: Possession, Lust and Witchcraft in a Seventeenth-Century Italian Convent (Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), p. 89. 34 Francesconi and Levi D’Ancona, Vita e società ebraica, p. 34. 35 Ibid., pp. 32–3. 36 Fino Fini, In Judaeos flagellum ex sacris scripturis excerptum (Venice: Pietro de Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, 1538). 37 Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione Romana’; Luzzati, L’Inquisizione, pp. 67–120, p. 78. 38 In the sixteenth century, anti-Judaic propaganda initiated in 1483 with the preachings of Bernardino da Feltre had intensified in Ferrara and its surroundings. On 18 March 1508 the Duke had ordered his soldiers to punish those who incited priests to preach against the Jews. Such turbulence was usually momentary and often not tolerated in other Italian states, particularly Venice. For the burning of the Talmud in Venice, see Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 92; Perani ‘Confisca e censura’, 289. 39 ASMoAME Grida a stampa e ms. di facc. The edict of Alfonso II, 19 March 1570. 40 Ibid. The edict also specified that Christian servants hired by Jews were not allowed to stay overnight in the Jews’ homes. For the 1602 edict see ASMoAME 11, Grida a stampa e ms. di facc and the 1620 edict, ASMoAME 14a, Grida sopra gli Hebrei, 1620. 41 Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 97. 42 Ibid., p. 98. 43 Ibid., pp. 577–81. 44 Ibid. p. 580. Spaccini recorded da Saluzzo’s words: ‘Do you not say, brother Jews, that your God Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS is all-powerful? You will tell me, then, why could he not cause his only-begotten son, whom you killed, to be born of the Virgin? This concerns your souls, brothers, and is a matter of [great] importance. I now urge you to put aside all passionate feelings, to throw yourselves at the feet of your God and ask him for the grace which will enlighten you, reveal the truth, and then inspire you. I am amazed that you should enjoy so many favours.You wear no badge, you associate with Christians, you eat and sleep with them. For shame! This is the way to hell!’ Ibid., pp. 584–5. On this subject see the work of Lance Gabriel Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 99–124 and Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 18. On the Casa dei Catecumeni in Modena, see Andrea Zanardo ‘Catecumeni e neofiti a Modena alle fine dell’Antico Regime’, in Bonilauri and Maugeri, Le comunità ebraiche, pp. 121–39. See ACEMO 2.19 ‘Ghetto, Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante la stessa’ 1627–1794, which consists of documents relating to the ghetto from its inception through most of its history. See also Oriana Baracchi and Clara Ghelfi, La comunità ebraica a Modena (Modena: Comune di Modena, Centro stampa, 1995), p. 9. Baracchi and Ghelfi report that innkeepers, bakers, furriers, dressmakers and spicesellers were just some of the guilds involved in demanding a separate enclosure for the Jews. See also Lodovico Vedriani, Historia dell’antichissima città di Modena (Modena, 1667), vol. II, who states that the first plan of the ghetto was created by the artisan guilds. In Lodovico Vedriani’s Historia dell’antichissima città di Modena, vol. II, p. 275, the event was registered: ‘This year his highness the Duke … knowing of the inconvenience that the Jews had caused by mingling with Christians in many respects, reduced their living quarters to two areas. … Upon one entrance was inscribed “Franciscus I Mutinae Dux VIII Christianae pietatis studio Hebraeos inter huius regionis septa conclusit.” Upon the other: “Optimo Principi quod a Christianis Iudaeos segregavit anno 1638.” Also see Archivio Storico Comunale, Memoriali dei Consigli dei Conservatori, in Ex Actis, Miscellanea di ragioneria (il n. 389 – Scritture del ghetto, 1638). See also ACEMo 2.16, ‘Ghetto. Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante il medesimo ed il jus di cazacà 1627–1794’, and Donatella Calabi, ‘Dal quartiere ebraico alla costituzione del ghetto in Italia’, p. 88. ASCM, Memoriali del Consiglio dei Conservatori, Gridario 1566–1760, April 1630. See Stefano Arieti, ‘Assistenza e strutture sanitarie nella comunità di Modena tra XVII e XIX secolo’, in Bonilauri and Maugeri, Le comunità ebraiche, pp. 95–101, pp. 95–6. Stefano Arieti argues that 217 Jews died in the plague, 43% of the Jewish population: similar, or so he argues, to the percentage of Jews who died in other cities during the same epidemic. Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 123–4. To sense this loss of autonomy by Jewish bankers, see the documents in ASMoAME Processi, busta 4, between the years 1627 and 1638. Stow in Theater, p. 42, notes that demanding that Jews attend conversionary sermons was a violation of canon law. ASMoAME, busta 15, folio 12. See Donatella Calabi, ‘Dal quartiere ebraico alla costituzione del ghetto in Italia, pp. 87–93, p. 89. Calabi notes that only 43 Jewish families were living outside this area.The ghetto was located in the narrow streets in the area of the Piazza Mazzini in the Coltellini quarter. There were four gates of the ghetto, located at the corners of Via Torre and Via Emilia, Via Taglio and Via Cesar Battisti, Vicolo Squallore and Via Emilia, and between Via Blasia and Via Emilia. ACEMo 2.19, ‘Ghetto. Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante la stessa (1627–1794)’, fasciolo Permessi per le sinagoghe tedesca e spagnola. See also Francesconi and Levi D’Ancona, Vita e società ebraica, p. 24. See ACEMo, 2.16, ‘Ghetto. Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante il medesimo ed il jus di cazacà 1627–1794’, in particular ASCM, Camera Segreta, Recapiti dell’Arte de’Orefici secc. XVI–XVIII, document s.d., informazioni sugli ebrei ubbidienti all’Arte. This was forbidden in Rome. See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 24. Anna Foa, ‘The Difficult Apprenticeship of Diversity’, in Philip A. Cunningham, Norbert J. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 45 Hoffman and S.D.B. Joseph Sievers (eds), The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome (NewYork, Fordham University Press, 2007), pp. 41–53, p. 48. See also Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, and ‘Changing Mentalities of Italian Jews between the Period of the Renaissance and the Baroque’, Italia 11 (1994), pp. 67–141. On the impoverishment of the Jewish community after ghettoziation, see Euride Fregni, ‘La comunità ebraica di Modena’, pp. 308–9. Fregni argues that out of a population of 1,221 in the ghetto in 1775, 30% of the population was being subsidized. Also, in ‘Assistenza e strutture sanitarie nella comunità di Modena’, pp. 95–6, Arieti argues that ghettoization led to an increase of sanitation and hygiene problems for the Jews. See Stow, Theater. Here Stow shows how Roman Jews within the ghetto created their own sense of space and purpose enclosed within, but not always separated from, Christian society. See James Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 191. See del Col, L’Inquisizione, pp. 29–127. Ibid., p. 15. Solomon Grayzel, ‘Popes, Jews and Inquisition from “Sicut” to “Turbato”’, in Abraham I. Katsh and Leon Nernoy (eds), Essays on the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the Dropsie University (1909–1979) (Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie University Press, 1979), pp. 151–88, pp. 167–8. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, p. 93. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). On the development of canon law as an academic study see Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 445. See also Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), p. xxiii. Ibid., p. xix. See Rubens R. Camera, ‘A Portuguese Inquisition Document’, Avotaynu 17, 4 (2001), pp. 25–8; Howard W. Norton, ‘An Analysis of a Sermon Preached Against the Jews at the Portuguese Inquisiton (1746)’, in Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro and Anita Waingort Novinsky (eds), Inquisicao, ensaios sobre mentalidad, heresies e arte (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro: EDUSP, Expressão e Cultura, 1992) pp. 503–11; Edouard Roditi, ‘The Making of Jews, or the Inquisition in Portugal’, Judaism, 19 (1970), pp. 435–43; Herman Prins Salomon, ‘New Light on the Portuguese Inquisition: The Second Reply to the Archbishop of Cranganor’, Studia Rosenthaliana, 5 (1971), pp. 178–86; Helen A. Shepard, ‘Camilo Castelo Branco and the Portuguese Inquisition’, New Horizons in Sephardic Studies (1993), pp. 153–60. On Sardinia see Agostino Borromeo, ‘Inquisizione e “Conversos” nella Sardegna Spagnola’, in Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione, pp. 197–216. The Spanish Inquisition was established in Sicily in 1487, but Nadia Zeldes argues that the ‘effective birth’ of the Inquisition was June 1500. See Nadia Zeldes, ‘The Former Jews of This Kingdom’: Sicilian Converts after the Expulsion, 1492–1516 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 127–8. See Niccolò Del Re, La Curia romana: lineamenti storico-giuridici (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970) 89–101; del Col, L’Inquisizione, pp. 292–303; Prosperi, Tribunali, p. 39. See also the work of Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento, vol. II of G. De Rosa, T. Gregory and A. Vauchez, Storia dell’Italia religiosa (Bari: Laterza, 1994); and Romeo, Inquisitori, pp. 3–4. For a comprehensive list of these tribunals see Andrea Del Col, ‘Strumenti di recerca per le fonti inquisitoriali in Italia nell’età moderna’, Società e storia, 20 (1997), pp. 143–67, pp. 417–24, p. 153. See also Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo, p. 296; Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 27. See Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies; O’Neil, ‘Magical Healing’; Henry Ansgar Kelly, ‘Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses’, Church History, 58 (1989), pp. 439–51; Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 28. See Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione romana’, p. 71 and Tribunali, pp. 59–60; Tedeschi, The Prosecution Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 46 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS of Heresy, p. 69. See also Andrea del Col and Giovanna Paolin (eds), L’Inquisizione romana in Italia nell’età moderna: Archivi, problemi di metodo e nuove ricerche. Atti del seminario internazionale, Trieste, 18–20 maggio 1988 (Roma, 1991), p. 23. Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy 1474–1527 (Leiden, Brill, 2007), p. 33 notes that, even before the establishment of the Inquisitorial tribunal, there is documentation of the medieval Inquisition working in Modena from 1474 to 1527. On heresy in Modena, see also the chronicle of Tommasino di Bianchi, called Lancellotto, Cronaca Modenese, 12 vols, Monumenta di storia patria delle provincie modenesi: Serie delle cronache (Parma: Pietro Fiaccadori, 1862–84) vol VII, p. 27. On the heretical movements in Modena, see Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi nel Cinquecento modenese.Tensioni religiose e vita cittadina ai tempi di Giovanni Morone (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995); Massimo Firpo, Inquisizione romana e controriforma: Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’eresia (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005). Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 438. See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295 folio III, n. 2. A note here of the Inventario delle robbe del Sant’ Officio dell’Inquisitione di Modena of 1600, states ‘On the occasion Clement VIII, of blessed memory took possession of the city of Ferrara … of the Inquisition of Ferrara, where resided the Inquisitor General of all the states of the signor duchy of Ferrara, except Garfagnana, was made three Inquisitions, that of Ferrara, that of Reggio and that of Modena.’ On the important role played by the Dominican and Franciscan orders in the running of the Inquisition, see Giovanna Paolin, ‘Gli ordini religiosi e l’Inquisizione: analisi di un rapporto’, in Andrea Del Col and Giovanna Paolin (eds) L’Inquisizione romana: metodologia delle fonti e storia istituzionale. Atti del seminario internazionale (Montereale: Valcellina, 2000), pp. 169–85. See Albano Biondi, ‘“La Nuova Inquisizione” a Modena: tre Inquisitori (1589–1607)’, in Città Italiane del ’500 tra Riforma e Controriforma: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Lucca 13–15 Ottobre 1983 (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1988), pp. 61–76, p. 68. Here Biondi notes that the third Inquisitor General, Calbetti, wrote, reflecting on his work in 1602, ‘when I, two years ago, came to Modena, as Inquisitor, I found the whole city raised against the Holy Office, for the affairs occurring under the Father Inquisitor, my predecessor, and this most serene Prince who was most disgusted [with the Inquisition]’. See also Maria Pia Fantoni, ‘Saggio per un catalogo bibliografico dai processi dell’Inquisizione: orazioni, scongiuri, libri di secreti (Modena 1571–1608)’, Annali dell’Instituto storico Italogermanico in Trento, 25 (1999), pp. 587–668. Montefalcone was also prior of the convent of San Domenico in the city capital. See ASMoFI, busta 279, Patentati 1600–1785, and ASMoFI, busta 287, Carteggi diversi 1600–1761, and in particular the Catalogo de Patentati del S. Officio di Modena mandato a Roma il 9 Aprile 1622. Biondi discusses Montefalcone’s policies in ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione nel territorio di un ufficio dell’Inquisizione: il ‘Sacro Tribunale’ a Modena (1292–1785)’, Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento, 8 (1982), pp. 73–90, esp. p. 88. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 63. See ASMoFI, busta 295, Miscellanea 1620–40, Lettere de Padri Inquisitori alla Sacra Congregazione del 1598, 1599, 1600 … usque ad annum 1624 for Montefalcone’s correspondence with Giulio Antonio Santorio, Cardinal of Santa Severina. There are 21 letters from 8 April 1598 to 28 July 1599. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 63. See ASMoFIP 12 f.9 against Moisè de Graziadio of Modena. Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 299 reports on 12 December 1599 that ‘there is now a new Inquisitor and to show that he is doing something, he means to deal with these witches’. On these types of trials in Modena, see O’Neil, ‘Magical Healing’, and Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 67. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’ p. 70. Calbetti argued with the Archpriest of Carpi over the issues of autonomy of the Inquisition. Ibid., p. 68. See Mauro Perani, ‘Frammenti di manoscritti ebraici nell’area Modenese’, in Fregni and Perani (eds), Vita e cultura ebraica nello state estense, pp. 64–79, pp. 72–3. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 47 89 Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione Romana’, p. 106, notes the particular case of Brother Agostino Giorgi, the Inquisitor of Pisa, who in 1686 was accused of protecting local Jewish suspects rather than prosecuting them. The accusations were such that the Congregation of the Holy Office intervened, finding that this was probably a case of internal conflict between Franciscan Friars of Pisa and Giorgi himself, who was an Augustinian. 90 Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione nel territorio di un Ufficio dell’Inquisizione: Il “Sacro Tribunale” a Modena (1292–1785)’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 8 (1982): pp. 73–90, p. 74. On the details of the building of the Inquisition, see ASMoFI Libri di Spesa (Libro della fabrica del S. Uffizio), busta 282. 91 Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione’, p. 81. 92 Ibid. See also Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 63. 93 ASMoFI Libri di Spesa, Libro della fabrica dell Santo Officio di Modena, busta 282. In this account book, there is a clear indication of the Jews’ contribution to the building of the Inquisition, both through fines as a result of their trials, and also from occasional loans that they granted the Inquisition without interest. Perani, ‘Confisca e censura’, p. 293, also indicates that money collected as a result of the expurgation of Jewish books in Reggio in 1602 provided funds to complete the Inquisitorial building in 1604. See also ASMoFI Libri di Spesa, Libro della fabrica dell Santo Officio di Modena, busta 283. This document, entitled Condennationi e commutationi pecuniarie fatte nel S. Officio di Modena dall’anno 1600, decembre sino al l’anno 1604, maggio, lists the date, offence and the fine Jews faced and gives some indication of the sum the Inquisition collected from them. 94 Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione’, pp. 81–2. 95 On famigliari, see Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 119. 96 See Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (New York: Macmillan,1906), vol. II, pp. 272–4 and Romeo, L’Inquisizione, p. 71. 97 No historian has as yet done extensive research on the immunities and privileges of the patentati in Modena. They are discussed as a general problem in Irene Fosi, La giustizia del Papa: Sudditi e tribunali nello Stato Pontificio in età moderna (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2007). 98 Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, p. 28. On the roles of Inquisitorial vicars in Italy in comparison to Spain, see Bethencourt, L’Inquisition, p. 69. 99 Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 519. 100 Romeo, L’Inquisizione, p. 68; Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 746. 101 See Trenti, I Processi, p. 16. 102 Black, Italian Inquisition, pp. 110–11. 103 See Matteo Al Kalak, Storia della Chiesa di Modena: dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea. Profili di vescovi modenesi dal IX al XVIII secolo (Modena: Poligrafico Mucchi, 2006) and La città di tutte l’heresie: attuazione e divulgazione del Concilio di Trento a Modena (1563–1627) (Modena: Poligrafico Mucchi, 2005). 104 See Michelle M. Fontaine, ‘For the Good of the City: The Bishop and the Ruling Elite in Tridentine Modena’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 28/1 (1997), pp. 29–43. There was no bishop resident in the first half of the sixteenth century. Bishop Egidio Foscarari arrived in 1550. 105 See Biondi,‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione’, p. 81. Perhaps the situation should be compared to Rome where, as Prosperi has shown, the episcopal vicar retained his own tribunal and his own system of control separate from the Inquisition. See Prosperi, ‘L’inquisitore come confessore’, pp. 187–224, p. 203 and p. 211. Here Prosperi records two events in Rome in which the bishop had himself secretly absolved penitent heretics rather than handing them over to the Inquisition. 106 Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione’, p. 81; see also Biondi, ‘Le lettere’ pp. 105–6. 107 The bishop was still happy to give his backing to trials against the Sanguinetti bankers for holding prohibited Hebrew books. See ASMoFIP 15 f.3. The sentence is pronounced in the name of both the Inquisitor and the Bishop. 108 Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, p. 103. 109 Ibid. 110 See Al Kalak, Storia della Chiesa, pp. 315–34. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 48 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS 111 See Al Kalak, La città, pp. 41–2 and Storia della Chiesa, p. 361. 112 Letter of 6 October, 1635. See Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, p. 103. 113 Schutte, Aspiring Saints, p. 37 and see ASMoFI Carteggi diversi, busta 286. Here there are many printed letters sent by the Inquisitor Giacomo Tinti on 7 March 1628, criticizing vicars, rectors and priests in the duchy of Modena for not following the rules of the Inquisition on this matter. See also O’Neil, ‘Magical Healing’, p. 91. 114 It is above all Adriano Prosperi who has developed the implications of the point about confessors collaborating with the Inquisition by refusing their penitents absolution. See his Tribunali, pp. 219–57 and in particular his preface in the new edition of his Tribunali: Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari, new edition (Turin: Einaudi, 2009), pp. ix–xxxv. 115 Schutte, Aspiring Saints, p. 37. 116 See Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisitore come confessore’, p. 215. See also Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 382–7, p. 386. Here reprinted is the Modenese Inquisition’s edict of 1600, which had a specific section addressed to local confessors: ‘All the father confessors shall ensure that they keep by them a copy of these our edicts, using sensible and reasonable diligence in questioning penitents concerning the aforesaid matters as they judge expedient, and when they find anyone guilty of committing any of the aforesaid crimes or of failing to denounce the criminals they must not absolve him unless he has first satisfied the Holy Office, on pain of the confessor being suspended from hearing confessions, a penalty which he shall automatically incur.’ 117 Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 748. 118 Biondi, ‘Gli ebrei e l’Inquisizione’, pp. 287–9; Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 322. 119 Al Kalak, La città, pp. 275–6. 120 See Perani, ‘Confisca e censura’, pp. 291–2. Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition, p. 49 notes that at this time the Venetian government and the papacy were also arguing about the right of the Inquisition to enforce the prosecution of heretical books. 121 Spaccini’s wording is a little obscure. See Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 408: ‘l’inquisitore di S. Domenico, il principe ha fatto tanto che lo ha levato di questo officio, dobitando che seguitando l’officio con questa sua rigorosità non v’inscontrasse poi qualche cosa che poi dicessero che fosse stato lui, perché ad altro non amirano che in far nascere occasione di torgi li beni che sono su la Chiesa.’ 122 Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 68. 123 Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione’, p. 79. 124 Ibid. See also Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, pp. 104–5. 125 See Paul Grendler, ‘The Tre Savii sopra Eresia 1547–1605: A Prosopographical Study’, Studi Veneziani, n.s. 3 (1979), pp. 283–340 and The Roman Inquisition, p. 36. 126 See Canosa, Storia, vol. I, pp. 126–40. 127 See Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, p. 104. 128 ASMoFI Miscellanea, 1620–40, busta 295. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 67, and ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione 1609–1621, busta 252. See the letter regarding this subject, sent from Rome dated 11 April 1609. See also ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–1621, busta 252. See also Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, p. 104. 129 This case is documented in the ASMo in the tesi di laurea of C. F. Fantuzzi, Atti dei Processi celebrati dalla Santa Inquisizione di Modena negli anni 1613–1616, Master of Arts thesis at the University of Bologna under the supervision of Professor B. Nicolini (1972–73), pp. 72–5. 130 Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, pp. 104–5. 131 See ASMoFIP 239, f.3 regarding the case of the soldier Maschera Francesco of Mirandola. See also Biondi, ‘Le lettere’, p. 105. In 1770, Francesco Maschera, a soldier in the fortress of Ferrara, was investigated for blasphemy. The Inquisitor was also told by the Congregation to reveal the place where Maschera would be prosecuted to the Duke. 132 See ASMoAME Processi 1600–1609, busta 4. Also in CAHJP there are microfilms available of all the processi before the Ducale Camerale. This court in particular dealt with personal issues that Jews had, such as altercations with Christians and fellow religionists, debts, inheritances, dowry arrangements, credit, damages, confirmation of loans, banking rights, property issues, and smuggling as well as pleas from the whole Università. See ACEMo, 2.4 ‘Atti giudiziali e Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access JEWS, INQUISITORS AND THE ESTENSE DUKES 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 49 privati davanti diversi tribunali 1642–1778’. See also ASMo Camera Ducale – Maleficio, Libri dei Malefici delle Condanne, dei Ribelli (atti giudiziari), filza from 1307 to 1721. In filza 55, titled ‘Condanne 1610’, there appears the names of two Jews condemned for maleficio, Vita di Vita in 1613 and Lià Rabeni di Lazar in 1619, both of whom were given monetary fines as punishment, 100 and 60 scudi respectively. On the Magistrati delle Artii see ACEMo 2.56, ‘Polizie ed Ordini di diversi Tribunali, Suprema, Ministri, Giudici dal anno 1685’. See the Duke’s 1620 edict of the Jews in ASMoAME ‘Grida sopra gli Hebrei’, 1620, busta 14a. See Canosa, Storia, vol. I, pp. 6–7. Emil Friedberg (ed.), Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2nd edition, 2 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), X.3,50,5; and 4 Lat. (1215) X.3,50,9. Sebastiani Franco and Henrico Dalmazzo (eds), Bullarium Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum (Augustae Taurinorum, 1857–72), vol.VIII, pp. 378–9. For commentary and a summary of the bull see Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 33–4. Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 33–4. Ibid. Ibid. See Benjamin Z. Kedar, ‘Canon Law and the Burning of the Talmud’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 9 (1979), pp. 79–82, p. 81; and also Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui’, Harvard Theological Review, 63 (1970), pp. 317–76. See Guido Kisch, ‘The Jewry-Law of the Medieval German Law-Books. Part II: The Legal Status of the Jews’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 10 (1940), pp. 99–184, p. 161. The term perpetua servitas makes its first appearance in the official documents of the church in the epistles of Innocent III. In the decree of that pope to the Archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Paris of 15 July 1205, the expression is used repeatedly – the servitude of the Jews is most sharply emphasized and seen as atonement for their guilt for Christ’s death. A historian who has discussed the question of the rights of Jews before ecclesiastical courts in the Middle Ages is Guido Kisch in ‘The Jewry-Law of the Medieval German Law Books’, Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 7 (1936), pp. 61–145, and Part II in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 10 (1940), p. 99–184. According to the teachings of medieval canon and civil lawyers, non-Christians and especially Jews bore several disabilities whenever they set foot in a Christian court, whether it be a secular court or an ecclesiastical one. Jewish testimony, accepted by some twelfth-century lawyers, was rejected by almost all canonists during the thirteenth century. Other historians have looked at the question of Jews’ rights in secular courts; see, for example, Maria R. Boes, ‘Jews in the Criminal-Justice System of Early Modern Germany’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 33 (winter 1999), pp. 407–35 and Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, trans. Elisabeth Neu (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Regarding the oath that Jews were expected to take whenever they gave testimony, seeYerushalmi ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the time of Bernard Gui’, p. 346. Isaiah Shachar, in his work on the Judensau – The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and its History (London: Warburg Institute, 1974) – draws attention to the coincidence that in the thirteenth century not only was the Judensau image created but a specific ceremony involving both Jews and the pig, the Judeneid or Jewish oath, was also codified, although this was probably in secular courts and not ecclesiastical ones. Grayzel, ‘Popes’, pp. 167–8. Gregory IX’s Liber Extra of 1234 contained several Papal letters from the twelfth century that recognize this. See Friedberg (ed.), Corpus Iuris Canonici, X.3,16,1; X,5,41,6. Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century, vol. II, 1254–1314, ed. Kenneth R. Stow (Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1989), vol. II, doc. 26. See ibid., p. 241. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, p. 46. See C. Douais, Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, book II: 1 and see also Yerushalmi, ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui’, p. 348. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 50 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS 149 Yerushalmi’s translation, in ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui’, p. 349. 150 Ibid. 151 The first two sections give precise information to the Inquisitor on how to prepare various official documents. The third section explains how to prepare public sermons at autos-da-fé. The fourth part, modelled to a large extent on an earlier work, the De auctoritate et forma Inquisitionis (composed in Italy probably some time between 1280 and 1292), is a discussion of the powers, rights, and privileges of the Inquisitors. 152 Yerushalmi, ‘The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui’, 337. 153 Grayzel, ‘Popes’, p. 183. 154 See Nicolau Eymeric, Directorium Inquisitorum, cum scholiis seu annotationibus eruditissimis d. Francisci Pegnae Hispani, S.Theologiae et Iuris Utriusque Doctoris (Rome, 1578). See also Agostino Borromeo’s important article: ‘A proposito del Directorium inquisitorum di Nicolas Eymerich e delle sue edizioni cinquecentesche’, Critica storica, 20 (1983), pp. 499–547. 155 Grayzel, The Church, vol. II, p. 21. 156 See Anna Foa, ‘The Witch and the Jew: Two Alikes that were not the Same’, in Jeremy Cohen (ed.), From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996), pp. 361–74. Foa brings to light an earlier tract of the Dominican Zanchino Ugolini, written in 1330 to serve the needs of Donato di St Agata, an Inquisitor in Emilia-Romagna. The tract discusses magic and witchcraft and in particular their heretical aspects. Foa believes that Zanchino’s concept of the heretic is most innovative, since it includes pagans, Jews and schismatics, and all those presently in a state of excommunication, on the grounds that a heretic is anybody who disobeys the Decretals or denies the Sacraments. Foa continues, ‘Yet, turning to the practical reasons why an Inquisitor might proceed against a Jew, Zanchino adopted an essentially cautious, if not conservative, position, making no mention of magic or witchcraft whatsoever. The status of the Jews may have been approaching that of heretics, as far as certain Inquisitors were concerned, yet it was still quite far from crossing this dangerous line.’ 157 See Nicolau Eymeric, Directorium Inquisitorum, Directorii. 221. 158 See Edward Peters, ‘Editing Inquisitors’ Manuals in the 16th Century: Francesco Peña and the Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicholas Eymeric’, The Library Chronicle, 40 (1974), pp. 95–107. 159 See David Jacoby, ‘Venice, the Inquisition and the Jewish Communities of Crete in the Early 14th Century’, Studi Veneziani, 12 (1970), pp. 124–44. 160 See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 17. Caffiero argues slightly differently to my thesis, maintaining that Jews at this time were increasingly ‘assimilating’ towards being seen as heretics rather than infidels. See also p. 18, where she argues that in the offence of holding prohibited books, Jews were equated with the ‘errors of heretics’ in Clement VIII’s bull of 1593, Cum Hebraeorum malitia. 161 See Solomon Grayzel, ‘Jews and the Ecumenical Councils’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 57 (1967), pp. 287–311, pp. 308–9. Marquardus de Susannis’s manual is comprehensively analysed by Stow in Catholic Thought. 162 See Wietse de Boer, ‘Social Discipline in Italy: Peregrinations of a Historical Paradigm’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte / Archive for Reformation History, 94 (2003), pp. 294–307. Wietse de Boer’s important article questions the effectiveness of post-Tridentine social discipline, and whether scholars are correct in assuming a top-down notion of discipline. If Boer is arguing that social discipline ushered in a civilizing process, should we not question whether the attempts at social discipline ushered in a new conceptualization of the Jew within the reformed Christian society? 163 See Bethencourt, L’Inquisition, p. 198. 164 Unfortunately none of these edicts were found in the Jewish community archives in Modena, whose records do not really predate the seventeenth century. 165 ASMoFIP 103 f.8. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 2 Procedure and reaction This chapter studies the procedure adapted by Modenese Inquisitors in their trial proceedings against Jews, and the Jews’ reactions to the expanding jurisdiction of this court. It begins with a comparison of the tribunal’s treatment of Jews with that of other Inquisitorial courts in Italy in the early modern period, and then examines the judicial procedure to reveal what was distinctive about the Holy Office’s prosecution of Jews in contrast to Christians. The Inquisition’s policy of expurgation and removal of prohibited books in the possession of Jews, a particular course of action which brought the tribunal into direct contact with the Jewish community, is also analysed. Finally, the role of the Holy Office in Jewish life and the reaction of the Modenese Jewish community to their proceedings are discussed. Although there was a uniform theoretical perspective on the part of the Congregation of the Holy Office towards the prosecution of Jews, tribunals in northern Italy were not able to exercise a standardized practical approach. Jews had varied juridical rights and living arrangements in each territory, established by secular governments, as well as being answerable to different judicial bodies.1 This affected the extent to which the Holy Office could impose its control. In Venice, where the Inquisition was established in 1548, Jews were already ghettoized and remained part of a tightly organized structure. The tribunal was prevented from prosecuting large numbers of Jews, since the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia and the Ufficiali al Cattaver monitored them closely.2 In Rome, the Papacy had exclusive legal authority over Jews, and the latter were subject to the Papal vicar, the Tribunale criminale del Governatore and the Senatore.3 In Livorno and Pisa, Jews were protected from Inquisiorial jurisdiction by tightly maintained regulations of the ruler – the Grand Duke of Tuscany – who prevented almost all professing Jews from being prosecuted by the Holy Office in the early modern period.4 Nor was the composition of Holy Office tribunals the same in each state. Variations clearly reflected the type of jurisdiction exercised, its level Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 52 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS of encroachment on local judicial policy, and the manpower available to it to carry out the pursuit, investigation and punishment of offenders. The level of support of the secular arm affected the tribunal’s ability to prosecute Jews as well as other offenders at the local level. Another consequence of the variation between Inquisitorial tribunals was the differing intensities of trial procedure and punishment, from harsh policies of incarceration and intense interrogations to those proceedings which allowed Jews to remain at home and sometimes negotiate the outcome of their trials. There were also some cases where the Holy Office decided not to bother to arrest Jewish suspects after they had been denounced, preferring instead to drop investigations.5 Tribunals had only a restricted number of officials who could carry out investigations, as well as a limited amount of time. The prosecution of a Lutheran heretic whose alarming heresy had been confirmed by a string of witnesses would take priority over investigation into the suspicious actions of an errant Jew. No professing Jew was burned at the stake in Italy as a result of early modern Inquisitorial prosecution.6 The influential sixteenth-century canonist Jacopo Simancas unequivocally insisted in his manual Enchiridion of 1573 that only a baptized Jew who returned to Judaic practices, or a Christian who embraced the Jewish faith, could be turned over to the secular arm as relapsed and unrepentant heretics, the two principal requisites that in Inquisitorial legal theory might lead to the stake.7 Other types of punishments of convicted Jews varied from state to state. In Aquileia and Concordia, according to Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, there are 2,000 extant trials between 1648 and 1748, and only one directly involved a Jewish banker, Mosè Belgrado, who was charged with apostasy in 1611. However, his case was transferred to the Holy Office in Bologna, after he moved to Cento, and in 1616 he was punished with a large fine.8 In Rome, although, as Marina Caffiero has shown, Jews were summoned before the Holy Office, the loss of processi makes it impossible to quantify the number of trials.9 Antje Bracker argues that the tribunal in Rome focused its efforts more upon the annual censoring of Hebrew books, the number and size of synagogues in the Papal States as well as the supervision of Jewish cemeteries. At the same time, she found evidence that the Holy Office heard the pleas of poor Jews who accused their richer counterparts of overcharging them on the rent of their ghetto apartments.10 In Naples, nine Jews were tried by the Inquisition during the years 1627–29.11 In Bologna, immediately before the Jews’ expulsion in 1569, a small number of wealthy Jewish bankers were forced to appear before Papal Inquisitors dispatched on a special mission by the Pope himself, in an effort to ruin the Jews financially and confiscate all of their property held illegally before they left. Some of the more prominent Jews were assaulted, imprisoned and even tortured.12 The main organizer of this intense period of prosecution was a Jewish convert to Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 53 Christianity named Alessandro, and David Ruderman has made a salient attempt to identify him.13 In Ferrara, Jews were prosecuted by the Inquisitorial vicar before the establishment of a full Inquisition there in 1632. Documents kept in the archive of the Archibishop’s curia (since the city has no official Inquisitorial archive) suggest that the Inquisitorial vicar busied himself more with the commercial activities of the Jews – including rent owed to them by churchmen, and the Jews’ production of acquavita, gun powder, leather and tobacco before the establishment of the ghetto in 1624 – rather than breaches of ecclesiastical regulations mentioned in Antiqua. In Pesaro, Andrea del Col has confirmed the existence of several dozens of proceedings of practising Jews, less for breach of ecclesiastical regulations than for social and sexual interaction with Christians in the late sixteenth century, particularly between 1557 and 1581, conducted by the vicar general and the bishop rather than the Inquisitor himself.14 In the Venetian Republic, the Inquisition proceeded against practising Jews on only twenty-five occasions during 186 years of activity (1548–1734).15 Most of these were conducted between 1579 and 1584, and were short investigations rather than full-dress trials.16 In the thirteen trial proceedings which were completed, two Jewish physicians (in the same processo) were banished for life for secretly practising circumcision on Christians, three Jews were fined, and nine suspects were released without punishment. The offences purportedly committed by Venetian Jews include proselytizing Christians by circumcising them, having sexual intercourse with Christian women, attacking Christian porters, exorcising Christians, insulting Jews who converted to Christianity, insulting Christian preachers, publishing and holding prohibited books, committing sorcery, and blaspheming Christ and the Virgin.17 There were a few extraordinary cases which fell into the hands of the Holy Office simply because the delator had chosen to address his or her denunciation to that court and the tribunal decided to investigate the allegations, although these processi were often discontinued. These included Jews owning black slaves, an accusation that Jews had exhumed the corpse of a judaizing woman in order to send her body to Safed, and a proceeding against Jews for living outside the ghetto on the island of Murano.18 Whether they were passed on to other more appropriate judicial bodies is not always clear. These twenty-five processi overall reveal a mild and lenient approach by the Inquisition towards Venetian Jews. The tribunal was hindered by legal constrictions imposed by the Serenissima, and lacked the kind of lay auxiliary force that Inquisitors had been able to muster in other Italian cities. No famigliari were posted around the city to keep a watch and report on interaction between Jews and Christians.19 The Inquisition’s willingness to ignore denunciations and drop investigations makes it impossible to accuse the tribunal of adopting a systematic programme of prosecution of Venetian Jews. At the same time, one cannot sense Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 54 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS any real fear of the Inquisition on the part of those few Jews who appeared before it. Rabbi Matthias Bassano, a Jew in Verona, even used the Inquisition to gain advantages for himself, denouncing fellow Jews to evade his own prosecution, accusing them of arranging the secret passage of Judaizers to Turkey.20 In the Modenese duchy, Jews involved in civil and criminal proceedings were subject to the Duke’s Giudici del Maleficio, the Giudici Ordinarii or the Tribunale dei Dodici Savi, and, prior to the elevation of the Holy Office in 1598, the episcopal court.21 Jews living in the duchy were not necessarily registered or concentrated in one particular town or city but spread throughout many places, nor were they always in constant contact with larger Jewish communities within the duchy or elsewhere, unless they needed assistance in a particular matter. Duke Cesare had tried to monitor the movements of Jews more closely after he arrived, as he had those of other citizens in the duchy. In 1598, he published an edict titled Grida contro li mendicanti, vagabondi, et simili, et altri, per causa di Sanità, one small clause in which was directed at the Jews of the duchy: Jews are not allowed to lodge in their houses any foreign Jew without a licence of the Signori, unless they have previously reported him to the office, and furthermore in each case the head of the family must give notice of how many people there are in his household to the said office under the threat of the same punishment.22 Prior to ghettoization, Jews were not necessarily aware of the rulings of Inquisitorial edicts, and trial proceedings reveal this ignorance rather than an intention to offend. Yet, as has been noted, the number of processi against Jews in Modena far outnumber those of other states. The Inquisition’s power to prosecute and punish reflected its policy to severely restrict Jewish behaviour by disarming the Jewish threat to Christians and by keeping the two apart. Judaism was seen as a dangerous and inferior doctrine of devotional ceremonies, constituting an insult to Christianity, from which it needed to be isolated. The tribunal’s disciplining methods included repeated edicts demanding separation of the two communities, the expurgation and removal of prohibited books in the possession of Jews, and most importantly the meticulous prosecution of individual or groups of Jews.23 As the repetition of edicts and the trials themselves reveal, these policies were not particularly successful. Instead, the Inquisition had the effect of emphasizing the social, cultural and religious differences between Jews and Christians, enticing the latter even more to interact with the former through curiosity.24 The first Inquisitor General, the Dominican Giovanni da Montefalcone, in one of the earliest edicts issued by the Holy Office in Modena, on 30 July 1600, described the Inquisition’s purpose. Here he was already referring to those Jews who offended Christians in his jurisdiction: for the extirpation of heresy and infidelity, and for the conversion or castigation Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 55 of heretics and other infidels, with every possible diligence fitting our office, we desire to conserve the unity of the Holy Catholic faith in the said city and dioceses with the aid of others to keep every Christian away from heretics and any other infection.25 Clause eight of the edict went on to state: 8˚ If anyone knows of any Christian, whether born of Christian parents, or baptized Jews, who have left the faith of Christ and returned to Judaism, or have lived according to the custom of the Jews, believing that circumcision and their other ceremonies and superstitions are good, or of any Jew who has induced or tried to lead any Christian to Judaism and reclaim him from the Holy Christian faith, or has dissuaded another Jew, or in some way discouraged and impeded another Jew, or indeed another infidel (inspired by God to come to the Holy faith of Christ) from receiving baptism after this Jew or infidel has declared by deeds, words or gestures that he wants to be baptized and come towards the Christian faith, or of any Jew who is keeping Talmudic, heretical or other prohibited works …26 All inhabitants of the duchy were expected to report such cases to the Inquisition. On 21 June 1603, three years later, the Modenese tribunal published a second edict that targeted Christians’ relations with Jews, called Contra gli abusi del conversare de Christiani con Hebrei.27 This edict, which was directed at both Jews and Christians in equal measure, reiterated canon law prohibitions, such as the ban on Christians attending Jewish weddings, festive meals, circumcisions, religious sermons and ceremonies. Jews were also forbidden to receive Christian religious objects in pawn. Other prohibitions repeated from the Antiqua bull indicate the Holy Office’s frustration that its policies of prosecuting Jews had been ineffective in keeping Jews and Christians apart. An added incentive for Christians to report these offences to the Holy Office was that any Christian who denounced a Jew would receive a quarter of the fine imposed.28 After listing the prohibitions of contact, the edict stated that offending Jews would incur: upon themselves the same pecuniary or corporal punishment which is ordered on the Christian transgressors,29 bringing the status of the Jewish offender closer to that of a Christian offender and making him or her equally liable to punishment. The edict was to be posted in both local churches and synagogues throughout Modena. When the Inquisitor General Michelangelo Lerri published his own manual in 1608, he did not explicitly mention Jews as one of the five types of people tried by the tribunal (heretics, sorcerers, witches, blasphemers, and opponents of the Inquisition).30 It was only in a later section, entitled, De gli hebrei, e altri Infedeli, that Lerri reiterated the offences listed in the Antiqua bull to remind prosecutors of the precise jurisdiction that Inquisitors held over professing Jews.31 As Table 1 shows, the Inquisition generally confined itself to offences listed Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 56 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS Table 1 Types of offence for which professing Jews were prosecuted by the Modenese Inquisition in 1598–1638 Type of offencea Employing Christian servants Blasphemyb Dissuading others from being baptized Possessing prohibited books Fraternizing/dining with Christians Desecrating Christian images Proselytizing Obstructing work of the Holy Office Employing Christian wetnurses Building a new synagogue without licences Sexual relations with Christiansc Employing Christian gravediggers Abuse of Christian sacrament Threatening neophytes Disturbing Christian ceremonies or services Maleficio Astrologyd Divination TOTAL Number of Processi between 1598 and 1638 52 22 18 17 14 12 12 10 5 4 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 186 Notes: a. On occasions, the type of offence changes from the offence testified by the delator to that discovered by the Inquisitor. If there was a change in offence, I have used the offence listed in the sentencing and not the delation. b. On the Inquisition’s terminology of blasphemy and heretical blasphemy and its application to Jewish offences, see Chapter 3. c. The offence of sexual intercourse with a Christian had originally been discussed in the 1267 bull Turbato corde, reissued twice by later pontiffs in the course of the thirteenth century. See Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, Vol. 2, p. 15. Marquardus de Susannis wrote of sexual contact between a Christian and Jew endangering ‘the entirety of Christian society, not only the individual offender’. See Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 105–6. d. See ASMoFIP 17 f.8, for the 1601 trial against Allegra, wife of Abraam de Vita charged with indulging in astrology and palm reading. She was sentenced to pay 12 scudi. in the Antiqua bull or in previous canon law rulings. Although Antiqua did not mention Jews obstructing the work of the Holy Office, such an offence was listed in general edicts that had been addressed to Jews living in the duchy.32 Regarding the building of synagogues without licences, not specifically mentioned in Antiqua, the Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum of 1555 had prohibited Jews from building additional synagogues, and it is not surprising that the Inquisition would have assumed jurisdiction regarding this offence.33 The prohibition against the Jews’ use of Christian gravediggers who helped the Jews bury their dead Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 57 during the plague, referred indirectly to clause six of Antiqua, which ordered that Christians were forbidden to go ‘to the rites, ceremonies, superstitions, or unholy services of the Jews’.34 Although it was eager to monitor Jewish actions closely, and sometimes did so forcefully, the Inquisition observed legal limits in the courtroom, a point research on the Holy Office has affirmed time and again. The trials Although proceedings conducted against Jews and Christians were similar, close study of the Inquisitorial processi reveals in detail the procedural adjustments made by the Holy Office in its treatment of Jews. These processi were recorded by the same Modenese notaries who recorded the processi of Christians: the clerics Tomasso Panini da Florano, Domenico de Cesena, Vincenzo de Recanato, Stephano de Friganzio, Marco de Verona, Nicholai de Finali and Virgino de Modena. During interrogations, the notaries probably took down the trial proceedings in shorthand, writing them up in full later, recording testimonies, including dates and often times of day of the interrogations, and a list of who was present at each.35 Jewish suspects were always clearly identified as such (ebrei or ebrea) on the cover of the Inquisitorial dossier and baptized Jews were listed as neophyti, which suggests that conversion was not considered a sufficient social equalizer and did not wipe out all memory of their Jewish past. The notary reproduced the precise words of delators, suspects and witnesses, even with their varied dialects, as well as the exclamations of fear, frustration and pain during torture.36 Although the Inquisitor probably questioned the witness or suspect in Italian, until around 1660 the questions in trial dossiers were always recorded in Latin whereas the replies were in Italian. Delators, suspects and witnesses were ordered to write their names (or make the sign of a cross if they were illiterate) at the end of the notary’s record of their interrogation, to confirm their statement.37 Most literate Jews interrogated by the Holy Office signed their names in Italian; some of them occasionally signed in Hebrew, and if illiterate just made a scribble or a small circle.38 The interrogations were conducted either by the Inquisitor General, or if he was unavailable by an Inquisitorial vicar, who often substituted for the Inquisitor in performing judicial functions such as ordering detentions, interrogating suspects and taking evidence from witnesses.39 These men were trained in theology or canon law or both, and were also guided by procedural manuals, in particular the 1608 manual of Michelangelo Lerri, Breve informatione del modo di trattare le cause del S. Officio, and later the popular, widely used and regularly updated 1621 Sacro Arsenale, overo prattica dell’Officio della Santa Inquisizione of the Genoese Inquisitor Eliseo Masini. Inquisitors were also directed by punctil- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 58 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS ious instruction from the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome (which met up to three times a week) as how to proceed in exceptional cases.40 Testimonies were sometimes interrupted by the judge’s enquiries and sometimes they flowed freely after routine introductory questions. Inquisitorial trial proceedings can be divided into two parts. The first was a preliminary investigation, which commenced usually with a denunciation by a delator, followed by the interrogation of any witnesses named by the delator. These witnesses were the most important people in the proceedings at this stage because their testimony might or might not give the Inquisitor sufficient evidence to continue the investigation. The second part of the trial, the full processo, involved the interrogation, and sometimes the imprisonment, sentencing or absolution of the suspect. The preliminary investigation Proceedings against Christians and Jews usually began with a denunciation made by an Inquisitorial officer, a neophyte, a neighbouring Jew or more probably a Christian delator who, as the notary reported, often appeared ‘spontaneously’ wanting to ‘unburden his/her conscience’. Although this might have sounded voluntary, such action was in fact obligatory, enforced as we have seen above by confessors or parish priests, who refrained from absolving the sins of their congregants unless they delated the sins of others (as well as their own) before the Holy Office.41 Prosperi argues that the mechanism of linking absolution for ordinary sins to informant testimony generated hundreds of denunciations technically classified as sponte comparantes missi a confessione, the majority of which clustered in Advent and Lent as people prepared to receive communion at Christmas or Easter. He notes that in Modena, Venice and Pisa ‘spontaneous confessions’ gave rise to most of the work of the tribunal. The increase in the number of spontaneous appearances was effective, leading to a rise in prosecutions.42 Delation was used less frequently by Christians as a means to exercise power over Jews whom they knew personally, despite the fact that there was sufficient opportunity to do so. Modena was a crowded city, with different social classes living in very close proximity, often next door, and neighbours were able to spy on each other. The threat of delation was certainly made often, but in reality it rarely reached Inquisitorial ears. It was not the Christians who had both business and social dealings with the Jews who denounced them, but those who had less intimate and regular contact with them. On two occasions, Jews, like Christians, volunteered to appear before the Holy Office to save themselves from Inquisitorial prosecution. In 1607 Abraham Sacerdote appeared before the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 59 court to testify that someone had affixed an image of Christ’s crucifixion on the door of his shop.43 It was the most sensible move in this situation, since if he had removed it himself he would have been charged with contempt of holy images. As a result of his testimony, an Inquisitorial vicar was sent to remove the image and Abraham was not charged. In 1636, Matthias Donato came before the Inquisition to confess his activities – or, as he noted, to unburden his own conscience (per scaricare la mia conscienza) – which included hiring Christians servants and playing backgammon with Christian friends.44 This astute move won the sympathy of the Inquisitor, Giacomo Tinti di Lodi, who not only praised Donato for his action but ordered that instead of a punishment the Jew was to be given a penance (‘in penitentia’) of abstaining from attending synagogue prayers for a period of two months!45 The key purpose of an Inquisitorial trial was to obtain proof of an offence, either through confession by the suspect, or by finding two respectable eyewitnesses. Delators were not accusers in the real sense of the word, nor did they have to prove their delation against the accused, but they were expected to provide a genuine denunciation with exact times and places where they had witnessed the offence and the names of two witnesses, which in processi against Jews were usually Christians but occasionally Jews, to establish the authenticity of the delation.46 The motive behind the delation was invariably sought. The Inquisitor asked whether delators had quarrelled with the people they were denouncing, or bore them ill will. At the same time, the Inquisitor guaranteed the protection of the delator. An Inquisitorial edict of 1601 ordered parish priests to tell their congregants: Be assured that delators and witnesses will be protected by strict secrecy, nor will their names be revealed. Tell them that they are not obliged to prove the crime that they denounce. … it is enough to report the pure truth.47 Occasionally delators might be called to confirm their statement and invited to add anything that had come to mind since it was first made. The delation document was then discussed at the next meeting of the tribunal, and a decision made whether to pursue the case. No transcripts of the deliberations or decisions of these sessions survive. But many of the denunciations of Jews were not followed up, either because they lacked names of witnesses or other evidence, or because the Inquisitors decided that the delations were simply malicious. When investigations were dropped, proceedings were terminated at this point. The next stage was the interrogation of the witnesses named by the delator. In most trials of Jews, Christian witnesses were summoned and interrogated before Jewish ones. Even though the testimony of a Jewish witness was accepted, the Holy Office, not surprisingly, preferred to rely on Christians.48 The Christian witnesses were expected to establish their Christian character and Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 60 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS reputation, as they did in trials of Christian suspects. At the outset, they were asked how regularly they attended mass, and when they had last confessed and taken communion. If the Inquisitor was satisfied with the witness’s answers, the interrogation began. The Inquisition was zealous in finding two necessary witnesses who could confirm allegations against suspects and enable them to be tried. However, there was no guideline as to how many witnesses could be heard, and the number varied. The Christian witnesses were asked whether they knew the suspect, and if so for how long, and whether they were aware of anything that the suspect had done against the Christian faith. Alternatively, they might be asked simply whether they knew any Jews in their neighbourhood whose behaviour was suspect. At this stage in the trials, the Inquisitor was also able to gather additional information of inappropriate contact between Jews and Christians by the very testimony reported by the witness. This often led to new investigations. In these interrogations, the Inquisitor was careful to establish whether the witnesses had any first-hand evidence, or were just repeating neighbourhood gossip or what the delator had said to them. If ample evidence was found to warrant a full-scale processo and two witnesses had confirmed the offence reported by the delator, the Inquisition would arrest and imprison the suspect. In some instances one witness’s testimony or even the denunciation was sufficient, if it was combined with strong evidence against the suspect. Unlike Christian trial proceedings, where local parish priests were sometimes summoned to describe the suspects’ religious behaviour, Inquisitors did not summon local rabbis or fellow religionists of the Jewish suspect to act as character witnesses. A Jew’s reputation, social kudos or standing in the Jewish community was not considered relevant. The full processo Often on the same day as the delation, the suspect was arrested by the barigello, a local guard of the Inquisition, or a constable of the Duke.49 Unlike the procedures of the Spanish and Sicilian Inquisitions where the suspect’s property was seized at this point, this did not happen at any stage of the proceedings by the tribunal.50 When brought to San Domenico, Jews and Christians were sometimes imprisoned during their trials. In the 186 processi in our period, only seventyone (38%) of the trial proceedings incarcerated the Jewish suspect or suspects involved. This number includes a few female suspects who were also incarcerated during their trials. If space in the prison was unavailable or the health of the suspect frail, they might be released on bail, so long as a fellow religionist was prepared to stand surety that they would not leave the city, and would appear Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 61 for all future interrogations. Requests that they be allowed home on the grounds of ill health made by family members or doctors, or pressing business concerns were usually treated positively by the Inquisitor.51 The situation was the same for Christian suspects. It is likely that Jewish suspects had to pay their own expenses during their stay in the Inquisitorial prison if they could afford it.52 Suspects were probably able to bring their own bedding, sheets and clothes to prison. Prisoners were able to bathe, but the presence of a pharmacist, doctor and barber, to offer their services to prisoners, is only listed in Inquisitorial records from the middle of the seventeenth century.53 The suspect was brought before the Inquisitor or his vicar for initial questioning in the interrogation room.The Jew was told to swear on the Hebrew Bible or the Psalms of David to tell the truth, while Christian suspects obviously took oaths on the New Testament.54 Interrogations began either with an intimidating warning speech, in which the Inquisitor would make no specific reference to the type of offence, or instead with intensive questioning. The Inquisitor asked whether the suspect knew why he or she had been detained in prison, and hoped that they would confess. If this did not work, suspects were asked if they knew anyone who was guilty of offending Catholicism and finally if they themselves had committed an offence. Most Jewish and Christian suspects pleaded ignorance of their offences and maintained this stance for most of their trial. According to standard Inquisitorial practice, the names of the delator and witnesses were not revealed. In processi of both Jews and Christians, witnesses were sometimes given false names to ensure complete anonymity, since Inquisitors were well aware that what was said in court was often repeated in the city at large.55 The suspect often shared a cell with other prisoners and, because of their comings and goings, managed to pass on and obtain information from beyond the prison walls.56 Because suspects rarely admitted to the substance of the denunciation made against them, the Inquisitor worked patiently, in trials of both Jews and Christians, conducting short and sporadic interrogations that continued over several sessions, separated by days, weeks or even months. According to Inquisitorial law, each suspect had to face at least three such interrogations.57 The questions put by the Inquisitor would focus increasingly on the offence of which the suspect had been accused. The Inquisitor wanted to understand what exactly the suspects had done, what they had intended or believed, with the ultimate aim of obtaining full confession. Unlike Christians, Jews were rarely expected to explain the motive behind their offences. Every new interrogation of suspects began with the Inquisitor or vicar asking them whether they were ready to tell the truth, in the hope that several days in prison might have persuaded them to confess. The Inquisitors would Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 62 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS encourage the suspect by promising that greater lenience and mercy would be shown to those who confessed (and in the case of the Christian suspect, penitence for their errors) and that much time and suffering would be avoided if a full and ready confession was made. If the suspects remained recalcitrant, extracts from witness testimonies describing the alleged offence were read in an effort to convince the suspects that the Inquisition had strong evidence against them.58 During the course of the processo, further witnesses might be examined. In the trials of Jews who were accused of offences committed in their homes, other members of their families were brought in for interrogation. However, for crimes such as profane swearing, when the Jews were accused of cursing in the public street, their wives and other members of their families were not interrogated. As in trials of Christians, the scene of the offence determined the type of witnesses called. On occasions, when the suspects had not confessed, the Inquisitor would have to admit that he was unable to gather further evidence, and had no option but to close the case. At this point, both Jews and Christians were offered the chance to hire legal counsel, meaning professional lawyers trained in canon law, who would defend them before the Inquisitorial consultori – the permanent advisory committee of the Inquisition. The consultori were a group of twelve men, which in Modena included the Inquisitor General himself, the vicar of the Holy Office, the provost of the Cathedral, the prior of San Domenico, theologians drawn from the Franciscan Observant, theologians of the Cathedral and lay doctors of canon law.59 Most Jewish suspects placed themselves without defence at the mercy of the Inquisitorial court for sentencing. The Jew usually argued that he trusted the benevolence and fairness of the Inquisitorial court, and felt that legal counsel was unnecessary.60 Jews clearly did not encourage one another to accept legal counsel or thought that defence was a good option. If, however, they did choose legal counsel, a lawyer of canon law entitled to plead in ecclesiastical courts was given a copy of interrogations held by the Inquisitor with the names of the delator and witnesses deleted, and handed it to the defence advocate.61 The defence advocate then prepared the defence document, using legal and theological arguments that might sway the tribunal, manipulating the rules for the Jew’s advantage. Points were argued one by one and the advocate included references to Inquisitorial guides and manuals in an attempt to lessen the gravity of the supposed crime and the severity of the sentence. Besides producing a defence document, an additional method adopted by the legal counsel was to call the friends or business associates (but not relatives) of the suspect who were willing to testify before the Holy Office to their good character.62 The Inquisitorial consultori then had to decide if the defence had provided sufficient information to refute all the charges. If this was Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 63 the case, the suspect was freed without punishment. In the event that the defendant refused legal counsel and placed himself or herself in the hands of the Holy Office, the tribunal could elect to use torture as a last resort against Jews, as they would in the same circumstances against Christians, to obtain the confession that was so important.63 The threat of torture (rigore) during interrogation would be made several times beforehand, since it was hoped that the threat or indeed the sight of the torture chamber might be sufficient to induce the suspect to confess. Edward Peters contends that from the second half of the thirteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, torture was used in both criminal and ecclesiastical courts in most of the states of Europe, as a method to obtain a confession if the person under investigation was contradicting himself or herself and making inconsistent statements, or if a case was partially but not fully proved.64 (Full proof required two impeccable witnesses who had no obvious grudges against the prisoner or a confession of the suspect, which in Roman canon law was the desired outcome of trial proceedings.) The suspect who confessed under torture, however, had to repeat his or her confession in the interrogation room, without torture, within the first twenty-four hours. The paradox remained, as Gretchen Starr-Le Beau has pointed out, that torture which provided the testimony Inquisitors were looking for, was at the same time doubted because it had been obtained under duress.65 Torture was applied only to able-bodied Jewish and Christian suspects and people believed to have a chance of withstanding the physical hardship.66 Modenese figures show that 305 Christians (18% of Christian defendants) were tortured by the Inquisition between 1598 and 1638, as were sixteen Jews (13% of Jewish defendants) but no Jewish women.67 What motivated the court to resort to torture is not always obvious; some of the more serious Jewish offenders were not tortured, while others charged with relatively less serious offences were.68 From 1591, torture was only used if it had been authorized by the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome, and its usage depended not on the seriousness of the offence but on the nature of the evidence, whether or not the case could be proved without it.69 What is clear though is that a large proportion of torture sessions were carried out by Inquisitor General Calbetti during his term of office, an indication that either the Cardinal Secretary serving at this time authorized it more often, or Calbetti himself tried to endorse it as often as he could.70 Being personally responsible for the establishment of the new building and its torture facilities might well have inspired Calbetti to request the use of these resources as often as possible. Calbetti tortured ninety-three Christian suspects during their trials, 27% of those investigated during his term of office, and six Jews, 18% of those investigated. There is no suggestion that Jews were subjected to harsher tortures than Christians by the Inquisition, as has been shown to be the case in criminal courts Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 64 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS in Germany.71 Jews were subject to the same tortures as Christians, and for the same periods. The two main types of torture equipment were the strappado (or corda as it was also called) and the wooden rack kept in San Domenico and used on both Jews and Christians. The strappado was the most common form of torture administered in both ecclesiastical and secular courts; the suspect’s hands were bound behind his or her back and he or she was lifted by a rope tied to the wrists, which was then attached to a beam on the ceiling.72 The suspect was left to hang for a while and then let down, then raised again, suffering wrenching and occasionally dislocation of the shoulders.73 The ordeal generally lasted no longer than half an hour, which involved being raised twice.74 Occasionally Jews, like Christians, were tortured on a wooden rack.75 The suspect was bound to the rack by cords, which were then tightened. The usual period for the rack was about ten minutes. In both these tortures it was the rule to strip the victims first. Although Christopher Black argues that doctors were supposed to be present during torture to ensure that it was not excessive, their presence is not recorded in the torture sessions of Jewish suspects.76 None of the Jews tortured in the trials confessed to their crimes; indeed, it is doubtful whether torture ever induced victims to change their testimony.77 According to Inquisitorial law, once a suspect had withstood torture and still refused to confess, he or she had to be released without punishment unless new incriminating evidence was subsequently discovered. The suspects were said to have purged the indicia or charges against them. Once the interrogations were complete, and if the suspect was not tortured, the group of consultori would meet to decide the verdict. The trial transcripts do not include a summary of the discussions held at these meetings, but only the final opinion (voto) of each of the delegates there. The consultori would also confer with the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome by sending it a copy of the trial proceedings.78 The cardinals would then decide on how the trial should be concluded.79 During this period, if the Holy Office was waiting for instruction from Rome, Christian suspects were usually detained in prison, whereas Jews were either also detained or sent home pending punishment.When instruction arrived from Rome, trial sentences against Christians were usually recited on the cathedral steps, or inside the church during services before a full congregation and in the presence of the bishop, unless they were sentenced to abjure lightly, in which case this occurred in a private ceremony.80 Ann Jacobson Schutte contends that in Venice the Christian defendant’s movements, as he or she went from the prison to the courtroom to hear the verdict, ‘resembled processions, during which the suspect was observed and commented on’.81 By contrast, trial sentences against Jews seem to have been read privately, without any audience outside, by the Inquisitor in the presence of his vicar in the interrogation room.82 The difference Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 65 indicates that the tribunal preferred to maintain a level of privacy regarding the Jews it prosecuted, and keep details from other secular authorities. Sentencing was not for public ears. The notary always reports that the Inquisitor read the sentence in a clear voice, emphasizing that it was an important moment not only for the Jew who nervously awaited punishment, but also for the message contained in the text of the verdict. Christians were usually given spiritual penalties, known as ‘salutary penances’, a detailed regimen of penance (confession), fasts, prayers, public shaming and attendance at religious services.83 More serious offences resulted in galley service, prison sentences, banishments and capital punishment, although the use of such measures in Italy was rare.84 Christopher Black reports a single case of capital punishment in Modena, that of Marco Magnavacca in 1568, who had committed anti-clericalism and anti-trinitarianism, and was strangled in his prison cell at night to avoid undue attention.85 The intention of these relatively mild punishments was to forgive the sinners and re-educate them morally and religiously so that they might be re-integrated into society and bring salvation to their souls, and not financial ruin to their families. Jews found guilty by the Holy Office were generally given fines if they could pay or otherwise public shamings, light prison sentences, whipping in the piazza or banishment from the city.86 Public shamings meant being paraded in a public place with a notice for all to see. Jews and Christians were ordered to stand on a Sunday morning in front of the Inquisitorial building at San Domenico, or in a public piazza, or local church (or synagogue for Jews) if they were from outside the city capital. There was a larger audience on Sundays, and the convicted offenders were expected to stand for a set period of time usually with a large placard around their neck denoting the offence and sometimes holding a candle.87 It is unlikely that Jews were expected to wear a penitential tunic (abitello) as Christians were.88 Public shamings often exposed the offender to mockery or stoning. When Angelo da Rubiera was sentenced to public shaming on 19 October 1602, the Congregation in Rome ordered that he: be made to stand at the columns before the Church of San Domenico with his hands tied behind his back, for the time you judge suitable, forbidding the crowd to insult or to hurt him while he is bound, as often happens.89 In December 1605 Cardinal Pompeo Arigoni (1605–12) ordered a change in the place where Jews were to be shamed in Modena. Instead of the Church and Inquisitorial building, Jews were to stand outside their synagogue or in a public piazza because: the penance of standing before the door of a church shall be imposed only upon Christians and not upon Jews.90 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 66 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS Was Arigoni’s change of policy an allusion to his concerns for the safety of Jewish offenders? In 1610, Inquisitor Lerri had to postpone the public shaming of Ezechiele Finzi, concerned that such a spectacle placed the Jew in mortal danger, not so much from children throwing stones, but from angry Christian congregants.91 Lerri’s fear was shortlived. In 1635, the Jew Eligio de Modena was made to stand not just for an hour but for a whole day outside the church doors with a placard around his neck.92 The fine of the Jew became almost a standardized penalty, a punishment for bad behaviour and a form of retribution that meant financial benefit for the Holy Office, which used these fines to help construct and then maintain the Inquisitorial headquarters and prison in the city.93 The Jewish offender was hence transformed into a debtor without any costly sanctions needing to be applied, or the involvement of the secular arm in the Jew’s punishment. It seems probable that wealthy offenders or culprits of high social standing requested that their punishments be commuted into fines, instead of physical and shaming hardships, even though there is no recording of such requests in the processi themselves. Jews who had little money or were of low social status usually faced physical punishments, but even they could be given an extended period to borrow or collect funds, and commute their punishment to a fine. The punishment of the Jew Mosè Tedeschi for dissuading another from being baptized was amended from a five-year galley service to a large fine, when it was discovered that he could afford to pay.94 In 1621, Abraam Pasiglio, a Jew of Modena, was condemned by the Inquisition to pay a 100–scudi fine but was only able to pay 25 of it, and his request to be given a year to pay the rest was granted.95 What should be recognized is that punishments meted out to Jews by the Modenese Inquisition were discretionary and not consistent.96 Inquisitors reduced or increased penalties according to the circumstances of the crime and the quality or financial position of the Jews involved. In 1608, at the conclusion of his Inquisitorial manual, Michelangelo Lerri advised that individual Inquisitors should no longer be allowed to apply fines without first notifying the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome.97 From that time, the Congregation tried to regulate the Holy Office’s arbitrary pecuniary verdicts, but did not always succeed. On many occasions the guilt of the offender could not be proved and the Inquisition discontinued trials or absolved both Jewish and Christian suspects. Table 2 gives a breakdown of the various outcomes of the trials. Of the 186 processi, eighty-three (45%) were discontinued and thirty-five (19%) ended with the acquittal of Jews or the Jewish suspects being publicly absolved without punishment.98 These statistics are taken from the sentences noted at the end of the dossiers, but it is not always possible to be certain that they were not changed as a result of petitions or practical realities mitigating the punishment. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 67 Table 2 Lists of outcomes for processi of Jews in 1598–1638 Outcomes Trials discontinued Finesa Acquittals Public shamings 6–month imprisonment 4–month imprisonment 1–month imprisonment House arrest Whipping 3–month imprisonment 1–year imprisonment Exile TOTAL Number of processi 83 40 35 11 5 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 186 Number of defendants 114 93 73 17 5 8 3 3 2 3 2 2 325 Note: a. I have not specified the exact fines because these varied. As Elizabeth Horodowich has pointed out in ‘Civic Identity and the Control of Blasphemy in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Past and Present 181 (2003), 3–33, 6 there were huge currency debasements at this time, and more than one kind of currency. According to the dossiers, the types of punishments meted out to the Jews show that of the 325 Jews prosecuted, 138 Jews (42%) were punished by the Inquisition at the end of their trials, ninety-three (29%) being given pecuniary punishments and seventeen (5%) public shamings. Jewish women were sometimes given house arrest as a punishment for hiring Christian servants, which corresponded to the periods of imprisonment meted out to their husbands.99 This was probably due to the lack of space in the Inquisitorial prisons and the Inquisitors’ preference, for moral reasons and the protection of feminine honour, to keep women out of prisons.100 A study of trial procedure of Jews in the light of what occurred in trials of Christians confirms the genuine attempt of the Holy Office to establish a Jew’s guilt, but also uncovers its restraint in its authority over Jews – a combination of its own legalism and its position vis à vis the secular power which prevented it from assuming full jurisdiction over the community. Whereas for Christians Inquisitorial procedure seemed more didactic, with the intention of providing the Christian with tools to re-enter Christian society at large, for Jews the process remained a disciplining one to ensure that they would be wary of breaking social and religious barriers between the two communities in the future. Moreover, the flexibility of its discretionary punishments enabled the Jews, more than the Christians perhaps, to influence the outcome of their trials. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 68 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS The Inquisition was concerned not only with conducting inquiries and trials, but also with supervising the censorship of books, including any books in the possession of Jews which were believed to insult Christianity. A short study of this activity is necessary in order to provide a complete picture of the Inquisition’s interaction with the Jewish community and the role of neophytes who were enlisted as helpers by the Inquisition in this endeavour. The holding of prohibited books A study of Inquisitorial policy regarding the expurgation and removal of prohibited books in the possession of Jews provides a deeper insight into its control over the Modenese Jewish community. The creation of a Congregation of the Index in 1572 had increased the work of the Holy Office tribunals in Northern Italy.101 The papacy in the second half of the sixteenth century issued edicts restricting the production, distribution and reading of books such as works by heretics on religion, lascivious and obscene topics, astrology, divination and occult arts. Jews in Modena faced prosecution almost as much as their Christian counterparts, some of whom in the first half of the previous century had, through the local Accademia, circulated Lutheran works in the city.102 By the end of the sixteenth century, the Congregation of the Index in Rome expected the Papal Inquisition, with the help of the episcopal court, to take care of the expurgation and removal of prohibited Hebrew literature in the Modenese duchy. Pope Julius III (1550–55) had in 1553 declared the Talmud and all Hebrew books prohibited, and copies of the Talmud had been burned in Rome as well as in other states in northern Italy. In the following year, the same Pope, with his bull Cum sicut nuper of 1554, changed his position slightly, and no longer confiscated books randomly, but permitted non-blasphemous Hebrew books to be circulated, and ordered that Jews were not to be molested without reason.When Cardinal Carafa came to the Papal throne as Paul IV he returned to the stringent Papal policy of 1553 and prohibited all Hebrew books except the Hebrew Bible. This policy was again upturned by Pope Pius IV (1559–65), who in 1564 permitted the Talmud with all its commentaries as long as it was free of Christian blasphemies and appeared without a title. In 1581, Gregory XIII ordered again the confiscation of all Hebrew books but his policies were overturned by his successor Sixtus V (1585–90), whose own policy towards the Jews was one of significant moderation, readmitting them into the Papal States and allowing them to keep books once they had been expurgated. Clement VIII, in a letter to the Inquisition of 1592 and with the bull Cum hebraeorum malitia of 1593, again enforced the ban on all Hebrew books except the bible. In an edict entitled De correctione librorum he ordered bishops and Inquisitors to choose scholarly men Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 69 to expurgate the books listed in the Index. The papacy had finally consolidated its censorial rules regarding prohibited books. At the same time, copies of the Talmud could still be found in parts of Italy, particularly small towns which remained beyond the reach of centralized Holy Office tribunals.103 Although it has been argued that, because Christians were reading Jewish literature, censorship was necessary for Jewish works, Nicolau Eymeric had stated much earlier in his manual that Jews should not read their own blasphemous books, such as the Talmud, which Christianity rejected, for two reasons.104 First, reading such books, he argued, prevented Jews from converting to Christianity and, second, these dangerous works – which included blasphemies against God, Jesus and Mary – encouraged Christians to become Jews and therefore heretics.105 As opposed to the situation in Venice, where as Grendler has shown that an efficient enforcement of the Index of Prohibited Books existed between 1550 and 1571, thanks to the support of the Venetian Patriarchate, the Modenese Inquisition seems to have suffered from the contradictory directives by competing jurisdictions regarding the censorship of Jewish books. Modena, unlike Venice, never became a centre for Hebrew publishing.106 It seems that even if the Inquisitors had advocated continuous and repetitive expurgation of Jewish books, they would not have had sufficient funds to carry this out. Nor as we know did they have the continuous support of the bishop, who often took independent action in this matter himself.107 The Inquisition made efforts at intervals to regulate the expurgation and removal of prohibited books as was normal practice in various states in northern Italy.108 Trial proceedings of individual or groups of Jews for holding prohibited books, usually denounced by neophytes, were carried out intermittently during the first thirty years of the seventeenth century.109 Between 1598 and 1638, there were forty-three processi against Christians for holding prohibited books and seventeen against Jews. Mauro Perani has argued that official expurgations of Jewish works occurred in 1599, 1621 and 1637, but it is unclear how effective any of these were. 110 After much indecision on the part of the Inquisition as to how to deal with the expurgation of prohibited books in the possession of Jews, in 1636 Jews were ordered to bring books that had appeared on previous indexes or already undergone expurgation and leave them in the building of the Holy Office. This process had not occurred before. At the same time, no book burnings were ordered by Rome and none were carried out at the whim of an Inquisitor. The seventeen processi against the Jews reveal the activities of educated but not particularly competent neophytes, not just as official censors of Hebrew books, employed by the Holy Office and paid by the Jewish community, but also as ardent delators of their former co-religionists. Their linguistic competence in Hebrew and impressive familiarity with Jewish writings helped them remember Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 70 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS details of these people’s collections. Robert Bonfil’s study of the list of books confiscated by the Inquisition in Mantua in 1595 and 1605 shows that 98% of the books held by Jews at this time, in their libraries at home and synagogue, were Hebrew copies of sacred texts.111 It was these books that concerned the Holy Office. Inquisitors kept an updated list of neophytes who had proved willing to help the tribunal in expurgating forbidden Hebrew books.112 Delations of Jews were submitted by neophytes such as Francesco de Tesu in 1622 and Francesco Maria Giacinti, who on 28 November 1636 appeared spontaneously before Inquisitor Tinti and admitted that, when he had been a Jew and attended the Sanguinetti synagogue in Modena, he had seen prohibited books belonging to the massari of the Jewish community – Michele Modena, Salomone Usiglio and Pellegrino Sanguinetti – as well as its most prestigious rabbis, Rabbi Aaron de Modena, his brother Rabbi Salomon de Modena, and Leone Poggetti.113 Giacinti, under the protection of and with the assistance of the Inquisitorial vicar, enthusiastically rushed to the synagogue on the same day to search the premises. Over fifty books were seized. The delegation then moved first to the house of Aaron de Modena and then to that of Salomon de Modena, from which they removed more books, and finally to the house of Rabbi Natanael Trabotti, who had been paid by the Inquisition on occasions to carry out the expurgation of books. Here they found numerous books ‘placed in a case and nailed down and sealed in three places with three seals each’.114 When on 9 December the delegation was ordered to visit the house of Leone Poggetti, thirty more suspect books were found. Another well-known neophyte who served the Inquisition as censor was Ciro Jaghel de Correggio, son of Camillo (censor, physician and also a neophyte, who maintained a close relationship with the Jewish community and was prosecuted for holding prohibited books in 1614 and 1620).115 Ciro was described as a ‘young man of much learning, doctor in medicine and philosophy, who possesses a perfect understanding of the Hebrew language, Chaldean, Syriac, and Latin and moderate one of Greek and is thought to have an outstanding and all-embracing intellect’.116 His reputation as a scholar (he had earned a degree in medicine and philosophy from the University of Ferrara in 1618) and as a successful Inquisitorial expurgator did not save him from the judicial clutches of the Inquisition, who realized that rather than submitting forbidden books to them he was storing them in his home. In 1621, he, like his father, was denounced for possessing prohibited books, including works of astrology, law, chiromancy and geometry.117 He argued in his own defence that as an official corrector of books he had to keep prohibited books in order to know what was prohibited. The Inquisitor General at the time, Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza, clearly swayed in favour of the dynamic young man, decided to offer him clemency, since he Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 71 had impressed him with his spiritual yearnings to become a Capuchin after the death of his Jewish father (he actually became a Jesuit towards the end of his life).118 Rome was not so forgiving. Cardinal Millino, in a letter of 2 April 1621, ordered Jaghel to be exiled.119 Ten years later, however, Jaghel was again serving the Inquisitor of Modena, Giacomo Tinti, as an expurgator, in collaboration with Rabbi Natanael Trabotti, the Jewish corrector, which suggests that the Inquisitor had not heeded Millino’s instructions or Jaghel had served his time in exile and done something to redeem himself.120 That neophyte expurgators and Jewish correctors did not always do their job as ordered is clear.121 Brother Luigi, employed by the Inquisition to expurgate books in the 1600s, tried to resign his position after the untimely death of the Inquisitor General Giovanni de Montefalcone in October 1599 and left the city. Rabbi Natanael Trabotti of Ascoli, who had moved to Modena in 1593, following the expulsion of Jews from his native city, was ordered by Luigi to remove offending sections of expurgated books by obliterating them with ink.122 Trabotti, however, soon got himself into trouble with the Inquisition, not for following Luigi’s instructions, but rather for leaving Modena at a time when he was needed to correct books.123 When accused by the Holy Office of leaving the city without a licence and therefore impeding the work of the tribunal, he argued that he had left the city when Inquisitor Brissio had been dismissed in May 1600, on the assumption that he was no longer needed. He was given a punishment of one year’s imprisonment.124 Even though instruction from Rome was consistent on expurgation, trials remained sporadic.125 It was easier to react to new denunciations of Jews reading forbidden literature than to initiate fully planned expurgations, which were costly and clearly not very effective. The Inquisition felt threatened by Jewish literature only when it seemed to carry a potentially dangerous message to Christians. This happened in 1605, when three Jews – Bonaiuto, Raffaele da Lazzaro (or Lazzarino) of Ancona, and Lelio, son of Emanuele Ravà, living in Carpi – were accused of holding a well-known Hebrew book called the L’Abensirà or more precisely L’Alfabeto di Ben Sira, a narrative work of satirical characters probably written in the Orient during the Gaonic period (seventh to eleventh century).126 This book had, according to the delator, Giovanni of Carpi, a Capuchin, caused an uproar in Finale, upsetting not only Jews but also Christians, due to its outrageous theories that Jeremiah had caused the pregnancy of his daughter by bathing in the same pool of water. After some investigation it became clear that even though this work had supposedly been expurgated by Brother Luigi, it was still being read in its original form. Inquisitor Calbetti, highly irritated that Jewish literature had caused such scandal, refused to listen to the Jews’ arguments and decided to punish them by publicly shaming them. All three were ordered to spend an hour of the morning standing at the main Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 72 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS door of the church of San Domenico, with the Abensirà ‘attached to your neck with the intention that your error be manifested’.127 Two of the processi against Jews for holding prohibited books ended with public shaming, three with fines. Of the other twelve, one trial was transferred to a different city, seven ended with the acquittal of the Jew, and four were left incomplete. Those Jews given fines included Abramo Rubieri in January 1600, who was found guilty of making copies of a book of diabolical spells and fined 25 scudi for the offence.128 Isaaco Sanguinetti, a 34–year-old member of the large Sanguinetti banking family, was charged with possessing prohibited Hebrew books and received the same punishment, although he was imprisoned for a few months during his trial from 3 December 1599 to 18 August 1600.129 In 1631, Isaaco Vita, a Jew of Finale, was denounced by his nephew Simone Vita for hiring Christian wetnurses, although it soon became clear that Isaaco was holding prohibited books in his home in Sermide, in the province of Mantua.130 Isaaco was imprisoned but on 24 February was released after paying a fine of 30 denari of silver.131 The most important official expurgations occurred in 1621 and 1637. In 1621 the Jews were told to oversee their own expurgation. It seems that the Inquisition wanted the Jews to finance the proceedings as well as ensure that it was done to an acceptable standard.132 The Jews of Modena turned to the Duke, requesting his aid in this matter since they were fearful that they would not be able to meet the standard demanded by Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza, the Inquisitor General.133 At the same time Pellegrino Sanguinetti contacted Tranquillo Corcos of the Jewish community in Rome, to ask how the expurgations were carried out there. Corcos confirmed that the Jews had always used a neophyte expurgator. Sanguinetti then turned to the Inquisitor, with the Duke’s backing, to ask that a Christian or neophyte expurgator aid them in their task so as to avoid any mistakes.134 Reghezza turned directly to Rome, on 18 December presenting the petition of the Jews and at the same time criticizing them harshly for seeking ducal support behind the Inquisitor’s back. Cardinal Millino replied with a letter of 18 January, and expressed himself equally annoyed, in the name of the Congregation of the Holy Office, that the Jews had involved the Duke in a purely Inquisitorial matter. The third expurgation, under Inquisitor Tinti, was the most serious, since the attack was directed against the entire Jewish community. Tinti published a drastic edict on 6 June 1637 in which he ordered that within eight days Modenese Jews had to deliver to the Holy Office all books included in an enclosed list. This consisted of 69 titles of impious Hebrew books ‘containing errors, heresy, malediction, and impiety against the Holy Christian faith’.135 The decrees were sent to the two public synagogues of Modena, where they were to be read from the pulpit to all the Jews present. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 73 The Holy Office collected hundreds of volumes, many of which had been corrected twice already by other censors.136 But despite Tinti’s determination to house all the Jews’ books in San Domenico, the plan remained unrealistic. Two days later, on 8 June, Tinti was forced to annul the decree and ordered instead that only books that had been on the Roman Indexes at any time were to be brought to the Holy Office.137 The response of the massari was resilient and relentless. Michele Modena, Salomone Usiglio and Pellegrino Sanguinetti agreed to submit their books to a new correction as long as they were returned to them afterwards. The Inquisition agreed to these terms.138 After the expurgation in 1637, the offence rarely surfaced in the Inquisitorial courtroom for the next thirty years. Yet these events confirmed a new Inquisitorial awareness of the Jews and their culture. Nor did it stop Jewish intellectual development and writing, which was actually intensified with a consciousness and exposure to the Christian world and its ideas. The trafficking of Hebrew books continued in and out of Modena, across the Italian peninsula, by way of France, the Low Countries, Germany and Holland, places which remained beyond the reach of the Catholic Index. The Jews’ response Finally we turn to the role of the Modenese Inquisition in Jewish life and show how its increasingly wide jurisdiction affected Jews in the early modern period. It is impossible, by looking only at the trials, to understand how Modenese Jewry perceived or reacted to the Holy Office. Jewish suspects and witnesses throughout hide any animosity they may have felt towards the Inquisition or their own emotions concerning an offence. The suspects’ concern was to behave in a way that might bring an end to their prosecution with limited damage as soon as possible. At the same time, the trials indicate a certain confidence among the Jews, an ability to learn quickly how to defend themselves, a refusal to be subjected to and burdened by the tedious and expensive licences that the Inquisition demanded, and a belief that their legal rights would be observed.139 When the Solieran banker Davide Diena stood before Inquisitor Reghezza in 1625, he openly declared his dismay that Inquisitorial restrictions were detrimental not only to his Christian servants, but also to his own requirements: I appealed at the time, when the injunction was made to your Reverence, since I was distressed that I, as a public figure in Soliera, and a banker had to prevent or stop any Christian who was seeking my services, let alone offering to perform services for me. I appealed to your Reverence to change the injunction so that I could obey the rulings of the Holy Office and also satisfy my needs.140 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 74 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS Three Jews – Isaaco Sacerdote, Giuseppe Melli and Abraamo de Collaris – refused to appear in the Inquisitorial court on a Saturday, even though the Holy Office ordered them to do so against the canons.141 Others refused to sign their names during their interrogations carried out on the Sabbath.142 In the trial of Simone Sanguinetti of Spilamberto in 1635, the Jew failed to bring his son Alessandro for interrogation, arguing that he had already suffered sufficient incarceration in the ducal prisons and was no longer in the vicinity.143 One may surmise that the Jewish community carefully monitored those Jews who were summoned before the Holy Office and on what charges. Certain wealthy Jews on occasion provided the necessary funds to pay fines imposed on individual Jews, and the establishment of the official position of massaro (lay leader) of the community in 1618 created a ruling oligarchy that demonstrated pioneering levels of leadership and responsibility over the larger community.144 In 1624, when a group of middle-class Jewish women – Angela Carmini, Anna Livieni, Pellegrina Camerini, Marianna Modena and Smeralda Pontassi – as well as Salomone Bondi were tried for hiring Christian servants in breach of ecclesiastical regulations, the massari Pellegrino Sanguinetti and Elia Melachim Modena negotiated a compromise punishment of 15 scudi per family.145 They pleaded before Inquisitor Tinti: The Jewish nation of Modena serves His Reverence with much humility. But it has been brought to our attention, that some of our nation have been indicted by your Reverence for employing Christian women in their homes, carrying out services that are not permitted … On behalf of those indicted, in the name of our Jewish nation, we beseech that you stop this investigation, in order that these Jews do not incur any damages for this error.146 When Rabbi Isaaco Sacerdote was prosecuted in 1631 for using the herem (excommunication) in his synagogue in Finale, he argued with the support of the massari in Modena that the ban had the authority of the Duke but did not need the authority of the Inquisition. The charges against him were dropped.147 How much the actions of these massari were influenced by the work of the Matthir Asurim (Liberi i prigionieri), a confraternity based in Rome which supported prisoners and paid their bail or fines to obtain their freedom, can only be suggested.148 In Modena, it seems that prominent Jews worked behind the scenes to raise money without establishing an official confraternity for such a task, perhaps to hide their anonymity from the Inquisitorial authority. This kind of assistance was in stark contrast to the kind of justice that the Holy Office was seeking to promote. The Dukes and his counsellors were also known to have intervened on behalf of Jews during their trials. The Duke’s secretary, Giovan Battista Laderchi (d’Imola), was often accused of showing favouritism towards Jews.149 In 1617, Davide Diena, Samuel Sanguinetti, Moisè de Modena and Giuseppe Fiorentino Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 75 appealed to the Duke to assist them in a processo against Simone Sanguinetti, who was wrongfully accused by co-religionists of desecrating Christian images. Doctor Camillo Jaghel da Correggio, a neophyte and corrector of Hebrew books, willingly agreed to act as the spokesperson for these lay leaders of the Università and appeared before the Inquisition after gaining the support of Laderchi. The Inquisition rapidly dropped the case.150 In 1620, Isaaco Sacerdote (the future rabbi of Finale), Giuseppe Melli and Abramo Collorni were accused of showing contempt of holy images being sold by a local vendor in a Finale piazza, in particular a drawing that depicted Jesus being crowned with a crown of thorns. The three Jews were quickly imprisoned and interrogated in Modena, but their sentence of a year’s imprisonment seems to have been commuted to a fine, due to the aid of ducal officials who accepted the plea of Isaaco’s father, Salomone.151 Certain Jews may also have provided information and assistance to erect a barrier to repel the pressures, both psychological and physical, to which the Jews were exposed in an interrogation. After a few years there was a fair number of Jews who had experienced Inquisitorial trial procedure. Many were arrested and imprisoned more than once by the Inquisition.152 A level of understanding of the workings of the Holy Office was possible, and the trials suggest that the Jews were increasingly prepared for the kind of interrogations they faced.153 The community might certainly have got hold of an Inquisitorial manual, which demonstrated how the Inquisition interrogated suspects and directed their questions according to a specific pattern. Thirty years after his ordeal in 1598, RabbiYishmael Hanina wrote down his experiences of his torture by the Holy Office in Bologna. Although his ability to manipulate the Inquisitor is probably exaggerated, his knowledge of Inquisitorial procedure and the torture process is real: When the Inquisitor interrogated me about this, he brought me to a place where royal prisoners suffer rope torture.They bound my hands with cords and began to draw me with the rope. Then I said, ‘Let me down’, and the face of the Inquisitor grew bright, as he thought that I too wanted to confess. Once cut down, however, I refused to confess and stated that repeated torture would yield the same result. Should I break down and confess under torture, I would at the first opportunity declare my confession invalid, because it had been gained under duress [italics added]. The Inquisitor on hearing this, steamed with rage and anger burned within him. He reviled and cursed me bitterly and ordered his servants to cast me into a prison more evil and vile than the first, a cramped place with no room for one who is standing to stretch himself to his full height or for one who is sitting to stand. There I remained for three weeks, but he did not continue to interrogate me anymore.154 Unfortunately, besides the writings of Rabbi Yishmael Hanina and the descriptions of the Inquisition’s prison in Rome by Benjamin Ben Elnatan of Civitanova – which provide us with a rich commentary on life in an Inquisitorial Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 76 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS prison, the number of rooms, the courtyards, the number of prisoners and the interaction between them, and the behaviour of the guards – no Jewish record of an Inquisitorial trial has as yet been discovered.155 As noted above, the proceedings were not always veiled in secrecy.156 That a denunciation had been made to the Holy Office, or was about to be, was very often common knowledge within the Jewish community. Often Christians had threatened that they were denouncing Jewish enemies to the Inquisition, so the Jew would have a sense that he or she would be summoned and would be able to prepare for interrogations. By the time Cesare de Norsa was summoned to the Inquisition in April 1617 on an accusation that he had tried to dissuade his sister Laura from being baptized, it had already been two months since the trial had been opened, and many Christian witnesses had already been interrogated. Cesare had sufficient time to prepare himself and provided proof that he had removed his sister from his house not because he wanted to prevent her baptism, but because her assistance was needed by a sick cousin in Carpi.157 In general, we must treat with caution any assumption that the Holy Office seriously affected Jewish life. When Isaaco Sanguinetti was summoned before the Inquisitor in 1600 on a charge of possessing prohibited books, he testified: ‘we Jews are filled with fear when we hear the name of the Holy Office’,158 which probably reflects more his need to gratify the Holy Office than actual fact. In the early seventeenth century, the ecclesiastical trial dossier of a Jew no longer attempted by the prosecutor to prove the Jew’s diabolical or stereotypical behaviour, as the Podestà Giovanni de Salis of Brescia had done in the Trent blood libel of 1475.159 Instead, the dossiers uncover a realism in the Inquisitor’s attitude towards the Jew and his offence, a tendency to discipline the Jew according to legal principles based on proof rather than religious discrimination. Perhaps at the same time, the tribunal’s regulation of Jewish life created a paradox. Anxious that Jews should remain separate from Christians and neophytes, it inadvertently helped to protect Jewish culture by urging them to dissociate themselves from Christian society and move away from an acculturation, knowledge and acceptance of Christianity. Notes 1 As Bonfil has demonstrated, some Jews were able to arbitrate their own legal claims in certain states and not in others. See Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993), pp. 208–30. 2 See Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 79, 85–6. 3 See for example the unique juridical position of Jews in Rome as described by Kenneth Stow, The Jews in Rome vol. I, 1536–1551, (Leiden: Brill, 1995), p. xxxv, and the recent work of Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 12–15. Irene Fosi has shown how Roman Jews appealed to the Tribunale of the Governatore, which in the sixteenth century had become the main authority in criminal cases for the city and district of Rome. See Irene Fosi, ‘Criminalità ebraica a Roma fra Cinquecento e Seicento: Autorappresentazione e realtà’, Quaderni Storici 99 (1998), 553–73. See also Simone Feci, who in ‘The Death of a Miller: A Trial contra hebreos in Baroque Rome’, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 77 Jewish History 7/2 (1993), 9–26, uncovered the only homicide trial of a Jew during the years 1619–39 in the records of this archive. Del Col, L’Inquisizione, pp. 462 and 525. See in particular the trials against Jews in Venice recorded in Ioly Zorattini’s Processi. Monter and Tedeschi, ‘Statistical Profile’, p. 136 notes one case of a ‘Jewish woman’ executed for judaizing in Sicily in 1549. Jacobus Simancas, Enchiridion iudicum violatae religionis, ad extirpandas haereses, theoricen et praxim summa breuitate complectens, etc (Antwerp, 1573). Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, ‘The Jews and the Inquisition of Aquileia and Concordia’, in Yosef Kaplan (ed.), Jews and Conversos, Studies in Society and the Inquisition (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies / Magnes Press, 1985), pp. 225–36. See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 17–20 and Claus Arnold, ‘The Archive of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ACDF): An Initial Overview of its Holdings and Scholarships to Date’, in Wendehorst, Roman Inquisition, pp. 155–68; and Antje Bräcker Trier’s article ‘The Series “Stanza Storica” of the Sanctum Officium in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as a Source for the History of the Jews’, in Wendehorst, Roman Inquisition, pp. 169–76. Trier, ‘The Series “Stanza Storica” of the Sanctum Officium’, p. 171. See Monter and Tedeschi, ‘Statistical Profile’, p. 136 and note 34. On Naples see the recent inventory prepared by Giovanni Romeo, ‘Il fondo Sant’Ufficio dell’Archivio Storico Diocesano di Napoli, Inventario (1549–1647)’, Campania Sacra: studi e documenti 34 (2003), which supersedes the older inventory in Giuseppe Galasso and Carlo Russo (eds), L’Archivio Storico Diocesano di Napoli (Naples: Guida Editori, 1978). David Ruderman, ‘A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth Century Bologna’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 50 (1979), 253–76. Ibid., 254–9. Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 462 and Renato Segre, ‘Gli ebrei nelle carte dell’Inquisizione di Pesaro’, in Galasso, Inquisizioni cristiane, pp. 232–52. Unfortunately, since part of the archive is missing, there are some years for which trial proceedings have been lost. See Tedeschi, ‘The Dispersed Archives’, pp. 13–32. Ioly Zorattini’s Processi contain 114 trials. Of these, only 25 were of practising Jews who lived in the ghetto. See Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 58 and Kenneth R. Stow, ‘Zorattini’s Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia’, Jewish Quarterly Review 74 (1983–84), 88–90. On Jews circumcizing Christians, see Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 78. On sexual intercourse between Jews and Christians see the same volume, p. 104. See also the trial of Francesco Olivier in Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. I, pp. 79–91. On the attack on Christian porters, see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. IV, pp. 43–6. On exorcizing Christians see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol.VI, pp. 153–6, 1584. On publishing and holding prohibited books see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. II, pp. 49–66, Samuel detto Ventura 1565, and again pp. 139–53, Samuel detto Ventura, 1566, 10 December 1565–5 February 1566. On sorcery see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. X, pp. 97–8, Beniamino Abendana, 1634 and anonymous delations of 15 February and 31 May 1650, and Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 89–90, for the 1658–61 inquiry into the conduct of Isaac Levi, rabbi and preacher of the Italian synagogue. Finally, on blasphemy see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. I, p. 97, Francesco Colonna, 28 November 1553 and Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. II, pp. 31–46, Aaron and Asser, May 1563. On owning black slaves, see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. IV, Ebrei, 1579, pp. 101–7. On exhuming a corpse to Safed, see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VII, pp. 145–50. For living outside the ghetto, see Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 59–61, Mair Lombroso, 1583. Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 100. Ibid., p. 86. The trial dossier was passed to the court of the lay governors of Verona who exiled two of the Jews and demanded monetary payments from another four Jewish offenders. ASMoAME 14a. In the ducal edict of 1620, Grida sopra gli hebrei, it was stated that that any offenders were answerable to the Giudici court (che gli inditii e prove siano arbitrarie de Giudici sì nel procedure, e dar fine come nel condemnare). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 78 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS 22 Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 165–7, 166. 23 For a discussion of the general Inquisitorial edicts published by the Roman Inquisition, see del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 765. 24 See the chronicle of Tommasino di Bianchi, known also as Lancelloti, Cronaca Modenese, 12 vols, Monumenta di storia patria delle provincie modenesi: Serie delle cronache (Parma: Pietro Fiaccadori, 1862–84). Although particularly critical of the Jews’ presence in Modena, Lancelloti is able to provide ample information regarding the wealthy Jewish families, in particular their family events, such as births and deaths, which suggests sufficient contact between the two. 25 The edict was transcribed in the chronicle of Giovan Battista Spaccini, see Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 382–7, 382–4. 26 Ibid. 27 ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. This edict is also transcribed in Albano Biondi, ‘Gli Ebrei e l’Inquisizione’, pp. 270–2. 28 See the Inquisitorial manual of Michelangelo Lerri, ‘Breve informatione del modo di trattare le cause del S. Officio per li molto Reverendi Vicarii della Santa Inquisitione, instituti nelle Diocesi di Modena, di Carpi, di Nonantola e della Garfagnana’, in Giovanni Pasti, La Famigerata Inquisizione (Modena: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1945), pp. 1–15. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 9. 31 Ibid., pp. 14–15. He noted at the beginning ‘Even though Jews, idolators, the Mohammedans, are not subject ordinarily to the justice of the Holy Inquisition, in what are many cases nevertheless, expressed in the bulls of the Holy Popes, can be punished by the Holy Office.’ 32 See Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 382–7, p. 386. Here reprinted is the Modenese Inquisition’s edict of 1600 which was addressed to the faithful, heretics and infidels. 33 For a transcription and translation of Cum nimis absurdum, see Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 291–8. De Susannis had also confirmed that because the Jews and their rites were tolerated, the Jews were allowed to maintain their old synagogues but were not allowed to erect new ones. This had been recorded in canon law. See Stow, Catholic Thought, 82 and P. Krueger and Th. Mommsen (eds), Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3 vols (Berolini: Apud Weidmannos, 1954), Book 1, Title 1. 34 See ASMoFICH 245 f.54 and f.65. 35 See del Col, ‘I documenti’. 36 Occasionally a notary might chose to add the physical description of a suspect. See for example ASMoFIP 225 f.5 and f.6. 37 Trenti, I Processi, p. 22 n.47. 38 ASMoFIP 20, f.14 (9r–v). Leone Thodesci, a Jewish witness in this trial against Abraham de Sacerdote, signed his name in Hebrew. 39 Inquisitorial vicars were nominated by the Inquisitor, but the Congregation of the Holy Office had to confirm their appointment. See Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, p. 130. See also Bethencourt, L’Inquisition, pp. 69 and 146. 40 See Trenti, I Processi, p. 20. Trenti provides a list of the Inquisitorial manuals used by the Holy Office from the seventeenth century onwards. Biondi notes in ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 72 that Lerri’s manual soon became an exemplary manual used by other Inquisitorial tribunals in Italy. On the activity of the Roman Congregation, see Black, Italian Inquisition, pp. 24–6. 41 See Prosperi, ‘L’inquisitore come confessore’, p. 204. See also Romeo, L’Inquisizione, pp. 45–6. These delators had to be free of any pending judicial proceedings themselves. 42 Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisitore come confessore’, p. 216. 43 ASMoFIP 29 f.19. 44 ASMoFIP 103 f.8. 45 Ibid. 46 See ASMoFICH 247 (unnumbered) ‘Contra Rulizza, hebrea’, 1640. Here one sees the Christian delator Christoforo double-checking that his companion Signor Ippolito Magnari, whom he was to name as a witness, had observed exactly what he had seen. He reported in his denunciation, ‘I noticed that Signor Ippolito observed and saw the same as me’. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 79 47 Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 385. 48 See in particular ASMoFICH 245 f.44, 1628. In this long processo, Leone Usilio was accused of having sexual relations with a Christian prostitute, but no Jewish witness was called, on the assumption that the Jews would not be able to give trustworthy evidence. See also Stow, Catholic Thought, 109. See also Guido Kisch, ‘The Jewry-Law of the Medieval German Law-Books. Part II: The Legal Status of the Jews’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 10 (1940), 99–184, 130. Kisch argues that it is unclear whether, in medieval times, Jews were excluded from being witnesses in trials against Christians. It only seems clear then that Jews were accepted as recognized witnesses in trials against Jews. 49 See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295. Here in two small manuals on the activity of the Inquisition, produced by local Inquisitors in the eighteenth century, it is noted in Modo et Gride che osservare il R. padre Inquisitore nell’essercitare il suo Officio nella città di Modona, that when the Father Inquisitor needs to call on the service of the sbirri he does not need a special licence from the Duke. ‘The Inquisitor may choose another officer and need not tell the Duke, because in activities which demand the use and service of officers, the Inquisitor has already been authorized by the Duke, since when he first took up office the Inquisitor had presented himself to him and sought aid, favour and force to enable him to do his duty, in a proper manner.’ 50 The Papal bull Licet ab initio is transcribed by Canosa in Storia, vol. I, pp. 151–3. At the end of clause three, it states that confiscation of the property of Christian heretics did not occur until the suspect was found guilty. At that point the Inquisition can ‘seize the possessions of those condemned by justice to the ultimate punishment’. On confiscations in Sicily, see Zeldes, Former Jews, pp. 162 and 193. The seizure of property occurred at the same time as the arrest of a suspect by the Spanish Inquisition. 51 See ASMoFICH 245 f.44. In this processo against Leone Usilio and Paris Bellintano in 1628, a doctor was summoned by the Inquisition on 9 August 1628 and testified that Bellintano was too sick to be kept in prison. 52 The Inquisition’s Libri di Spesa in ASMoFI buste 282 and 283 do not clearly specify this, nor does ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, Inventari, sec. XVII. 53 See Trenti, I Processi, p. 16. 54 In most of the trials, Jewish suspects were ordered to take an oath on the Hebrew Bible. Occasionally they were made to swear upon the Psalms of David. See ASMoFIP 62 f.10, and ASMoFICH 245 f.52. 55 See the trial of Moise de Modena in 1625. The Christian delator and his witnesses were given false names. ASMoFIP 77 f.4. 56 See Isaiah Sonne, From Paul IV to Pius V, pp. 71–6. Benjamin Ben Elnatan was falsely accused in 1558 of trying to convert a Franciscan friar, and kept in the Roman Inquisitorial prison for a period of thirty days. Elnatan gives a full report and indicates that prisoners had ample opportunities to discuss their cases. See also ASMoFICH 245 f.44, 1628. Here Paris Bellintano di Carpi admitted that, when in gaol, he had the opportunity to hear of other prisoners whom he knew. For an indication of what sort of conditions existed in Venetian Inquisitorial prisons see Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 135–8. For Rome, see Piero Barrera (ed.), Una Fuga dalle Prigioni del Sant’Uffizio 1693 (Verona: Mondadori, 1934). 57 See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295. See the eighteenth-century manual ‘Modo et ordine che osservia il R. Padri Inquisitori nell’essercitare il suo Officio nella città di Modena’. 58 See ASMoFICH 245 f.44. 59 In the early seventeenth century these men included Don Angelo Maria Rubini, provost of the Cathedral; Brother Serafino da Cagli, prior of San Domenico; Brother Raffaele, theologian of the Observant Minorites; Brother Pompilio da Bologna, lecturer of the Eremites; Don Fabrizio Manzoli, theologian of the Cathedral; and two laymen, doctors of law (eccellenti dottori), Ludovico Cattaneo and Annibale Spaccini (not the author of the Cronaca). 60 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (58r–v). 61 ASMoFIP 77 f.14, 24 March 1625, ‘Contra Moysen de Mut. Heb...’ (5–7r–v). Also see Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. II, doc. 75. In the bull Exhibita pro parte of 1299, Pope Boniface Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 80 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS VIII wrote that, in Inquisitorial trials, Jews were to know their accusers, since Jews were not considered ‘powerful persons’. Hence, it is interesting that this rule was ignored. Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, p. 136. Pope Innocent IV had sanctioned torture in his bull Ad extirpanda of 1252. See Peters, Torture (New York: B. Blackwell, 1985), p. 65. See also John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 15. Peters, Torture. Gretchen D. Starr-Le Beau, In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars and Conversos in Guadalupe, Spain (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 164. See Canosa, Storia, vol. I.The definition of able-bodied should be disputed, since Canosa points out that in the trial of Pellegrino Formiggine, in 1717, the Jew’s arm was so infirm that the corda could not be used and some form of fire torture was used instead. This is according to the inventory of offenders in Trenti, I Processi. Tellingly, in the proceedings of Leone Usilio, accused of having sexual relations with a Jewish prostitute, which one would assume would be considered one of the most serious offences, he was not tried or tortured by the Inquisition. See ASMoFICH 245 f.44, 1628. Ezechiele Finzi, who was accused of the less serious offence of blasphemy, was tortured during his trial. See ASMoFIP 38 f.16. Romeo, L’Inquisizione, p. 42. See Peters, Torture, pp. 70–1. Edwards argues that in general during this period the application of torture depended on the character of the judge and to what extent he advocated torture as a worthwhile and beneficial procedure. Maria R. Boes, ‘Jews in the Criminal-Justice System of Early Modern Germany’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33 (Winter, 1999), 407–35, 419, 430. See Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, p. 187, n. 124. On the use of this torture, see Thomas Cohen and Elizabeth Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 18. Also Peters, Torture, p. 68. Machiavelli suffered six drops of the strappado at the hands of his Florentine jailers in 1513, see Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. Cecil Grayson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 136. See the rope torture of Ezechiele Finzi, an eighteen-year-old, in ASMoFIP 36 f.2. On torture see Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 83. ASMoFIP 20 f.14. Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 85. John Tedeschi does make some suggestions as to why this was the case. See ‘The Organization and Procedures’, p. 195. See ASMoFI 251 Modena Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma. See Bethencourt, L’Inquisition, p. 69. Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, p. 49. See also Canosa, Storia, vol. IV, Milano e Firenze, pp. 37–45 for a concise explanation of the different types of sentences against Christians promulgated by the Roman Inquisition. See also del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 767, and Mazur, ‘Negotiating with the Inquisition’, p. 47. On light abjurations, see Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 88. Schutte, Aspiring Saints, p. 191. See Canosa, Storia, vol. IV, p. 243. Grendler, Roman Inquisition, p. 56, also confirms that the most frequent punishments meted out by the Inquisition were public humiliation and salutary penances. Christopher Black notes that the execution rate of offenders in Italy was between 1.6% and 2.4%. See Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 136.The punishment of galley service was a compromise which relieved the Inquisition in Italy of imposing sentences of death and mutilation on both Christians and, very occasionally, Jews. The punishment was authorized by the Congregation in Rome for sexual union between Christians and Jews in 1567, and ten years’ galley service became the standard punishment for Jews who slept with Christian prostitutes. See Nicholas Davidson, ‘The Inquisition and the Italian Jews’, in Stephen Haliczer (ed.), Inquisition and Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 81 Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Barnes and Noble, 1987), pp. 19–46. Such sentences at the oar could well imply a slow death from disease or exhaustion. On sentences of capital punishment issued by the Inquisition, see del Col, L’Inquisizione, pp. 773–4. Black, Italian Inquisition, p. 91. On the imprisonment of Jews, and the use of the prison as a form of punishment, see Stow, ‘Castigo’, p. 179. Stow confirms that in Rome poor Jews who could not pay debts were also imprisoned. See ASMoFIP 19 f.14. Processo against Giulia Dotti, Salvatore Formiggini, Jacobo Calabri, Angelo Stramazor and Emanuele Maroni. As punishment for blasphemy, Jacobo Calabri was ordered to stand outside San Domenico on the next Sunday, during the time that mass was being said, with his hands tied behind his back, and ‘…con una candela accesa in mani e con una scrittura al petto, che dica il tuo errore’. Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 767. ASMoFI 251 Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma. Ibid. See Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 58. Balboni transcribes Inquisitor Lerri’s letter to the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1610. ASMoFICH 245, f.50. See del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 467 and Vincenzo Lavenia, ‘Gli ebrei e il fisco dell’Inquisizione. Tributi, espropri e multe tra ’500 e ’600’, in Galasso, Inquisizioni cristiane, pp. 323–56. See also ASMoFI 283. This document, entitled Condennationi e commutationi pecuniarie fatte nel S. Officio di Modena dall’anno 1600, decembre sino al l’anno 1604, maggio, lists the date, offence and the fine the Jews faced, and gives some indication of the sum the Inquisition collected from the Jews. According to Biondi, ‘Gli Ebrei e l’Inquisizione’, 278, the Jews contributed 4,408 lire out of the 9,200 needed for the building. ASMoFIP 21 f.8. ASMoFI Modena: lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1621–1628, busta 253. I argue this despite the fact that John Tedeschi has consistently argued that punishments of offences committed by Christians issued by the Inquisition were not discretionary. See, for example, his Prosecution of Heresy, p. 153. Christopher Black, in his recent work on the Inquisition, confirms the theory that there was no unanimity on punishment. See his Italian Inquistion, p. 95. Lerri, Breve informatione, p. 56: ‘that the Inquisitors, or vicars in the future, are not able to apply [that is to assign] pecuniary punishments in the Holy Office, or in other places, without first notifying the Sacred Congregation.’ In discussion with Brian Pullan, he confirmed to me that this never happened in Venice, where trials were just discontinued. I thank him for this point. See ASMoFICH 246 f.11; ASMoFICH 246 f.15; ASMoFICH 247 f.24. See Mazur, ‘Negotiating with the Inquisition’, pp. 41–56, where he reiterates the fact that the Inquisition had an interest in keeping prisoners according to the standards of Catholic morality, and that separation of women and men was a priority. According to the relevant volumes of the standard edition by J.M. de Bujanda, Index des livres interdits (Quebec: Centre d’études de la Renaissance, Editions de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1984), vols VIII and IX, there were six Roman Indexes from (and including) 1557–59, 1564, 1590, 1593 and 1596. On the Congregation of the Index, see Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Reform, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 172–80. On the confiscation of Jewish books, see Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’. On the confiscation of heretical books see Grendler, Roman Inquisition, and Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, Chapters 8–11. Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, p. 52. See the articles by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘The Censor as Mediator: Printing, Censorship and the Shaping of Hebrew Literature’, pp. 34–57, 37; and Pier Van Boxel, ‘Cardinal Santoro and the Expurgation of Hebrew Literature’, both in Wendehorst, Roman Inquisition, pp. 19–34. Eymeric, Directorium Inquisitorum II. Pars Directorii, 187. The three areas attacked in Jewish Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 82 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS books were slander against Christianity, desire for destruction of the Christian world, and denial of the humanity of the nations of the world. Any term or passage that might be understood as harmful to Christianity had to be eliminated. Grendler, Roman Inquisition, pp. 57–9, 64 and 142. Inquisitors in Venice visited bookshops and storerooms, seizing and then burning books and fining publishers and book-sellers. See also Kenneth R. Stow ‘The Burning of the Talmud in 1553, In the Light of Sixteenth Century Catholic Attitudes Toward the Talmud’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 34 (1972), 435–59. See Kalak, Storia della chiesa, p. 34. See also Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 298 and ASMoAME ‘Libri ebraici da espurgare’, busta 15, f.5. In 1624, when Inquisitors asked a fellow Inquisitor in Mantua about the success of their previous expurgations, they explained that despite the ruling that the Jews were to expurgate their books themselves, it was the local bishop who since 1595 had forced the Jews to bring all their books to the Inquisition to be checked from time to time. The bishop himself had set up a commission of reviewers, composed of three learned neophytes who oversaw the expurgation. See Romano Canosa’s chapter on ‘L’Inquisizione contro i libri ebraici’, in Storia, vol. IV, pp. 61–71. Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘The Censor’, p. 42. On the 1599 expurgation, see Perani ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 291. On the 1621 expurgation, see ASMoAME ‘Libri ebraici da espurgare’, busta 15, f.4 and f.13. Bonfil, Jewish Life, pp. 147–8. Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 297. ASMoFIP 69 f.8, 14 November 1622, Contra Hebreos Mut. for prohibited books.Tesu denounced books possessed by Leone Poggetti, rabbi of Modena and Aron Sacerdote. See also Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings’. The list is found in ASMoFICH 247 f.25. Also Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 307. ASMoFIP 56 f.1 and f.2, Cause contro diversi, 15 May 1620 (These proceedings finished only at the end of the following year.) For other data on Camillo and Ciro da Correggio see William Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (New York, 1899 [repr. New York: 1969]), index and Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 107–17. See also Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings’. Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 297. Ibid. See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, Lettere dei Padri Inquisitori alla Santa Congregazione dal 1598–1624. Also Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 299. See ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–21, busta 252, f.6, 1618–21 and ASMoFIP 56 f.2. ASMoFICH 245 f.55. The Index in Rome did not cease to demand that Jews expurgate their own prohibited works. See ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–21, busta 252, letter from Cardinal Millino in Rome, 12 June 1610. In 1624, the Inquisitor General Reghezza issued an edict that again instructed the Jews to expurgate their own prohibited books. See ASMoFI busta 270, Editti e decreti dal 1550 to 1729, published in Canosa, Storia, vol. 1, p. 164. ASMoFICH 244 f.6. Here, in a statement of Rabbi Natanael on 1 December 1600, he informed the Inquisition how he had corrected books by covering the blasphemous sections with black ink. Such Jewish correctors, although chosen by the Jewish community itself, were a result of the explicit orders of the Inquisition to appoint rabbis who could carry out expurgations. See Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, p. 90. ASMoFICH 244 f.4. Ibid. Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 293. In a letter of 19 January 1603, Inquisitor Calbetti asked the policy of the Holy Office at Rome. A letter of reply on 7 March noted ‘that he did not wish to be brought into correction and advised the Jews to keep the corrected and expurgated books and that investigations should proceed against those who disobeyed’. See also ASMoAME busta 15, f.17. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROCEDURE AND REACTION 83 126 See ASMoFIP 26, f.6, 1605 and Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, pp. 294–5. See also ASMoFICH 244 f.6, trial in 1605 of Isaaco de Norsa, who was punished for holding prohibited books and ordered to stand holding the L’Abensira for an hour under the main entrance of the San Domenico church. 127 Ibid. 128 ASMoFICH 244 f.1. 129 Ibid. 130 ASMoFICH 245 f.55. 131 Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 302. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 61–2. 132 See Fausto Parente, ‘The Index, The Holy Office, The Condemnation of the Talmud and Publication of Clement VIII’s Index’, in Fausto Parente (ed.) Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 163–93, p. 181. 133 ASMoAME busta 15, f.4. 134 Ibid., f.13. 135 Perani, ‘Confisca e Censura’, p. 310 (contengano errori, heresie, maledicenza et empietà contro la Sacra Cristiana Fede). 136 ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, 6 and 12 December 1636; 28 January and 4 February 1637. 137 ASMoFICH 247 f.25. ‘Since most of the said books are not found in the list of those prohibited, although some need rigorous correction, the Inquisitor is advised that he should not worry the Jews too much about presentation and consignment of all the aforesaid books. For these and other reasons he has decided to annul, and has in fact annulled, the abovementioned edict, by removing every obligation to consign all the books and each and every penalty in the said edict against transgressions of it as if it had not been published at all. He intends to issue another edict requiring the surrender of those of the said books which have been expressly prohibited, as will be stated in the forthcoming edict.’ 138 See Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings’. 139 See Chapter 3, page 90ff. 140 ASMoFIP 75 f.2 (20v). 141 See ASMoFICH 245, f.38. These three Jews argued that they were not willing to appear, and the Inquisitor made them promise under surety that they would appear the next day and not flee the city. The canons were clear about this: Jews were not to be summoned on the Sabbath. See Stow, Catholic Thought, 82. 142 See ASMoFICH 245 f.38, in particular the interrogations of Prospero Rava and Salvatore Modena. 143 See ASMoFICH 256 f.17. 144 See ASMoAME busta 15, memorial 104–96. Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 118–21. 145 Ibid., p. 121, and ASMoFIP 69 f.12. 146 Ibid., 17r–25v. See also Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 121–2. 147 See ASMoFIP 92 f.10. 148 In CAHJP, A.S.E. archivi per materie, Ebrei B4, Processi I–LXXXIII, 1600–1629, dated 21 March 1602, a letter addressed to the Ducale Camerale, which shows that the Jews Leone Fiorentini and his son Abramo paid 50 ducats to have Angelo Thodeschi released from the civil gaol. See also a document of the Ducale Camerale of 1622, where David de Modena, a banker of Nonantola, agrees to pay the fine of the Jew Camilla Bruna and her daughter Livia imposed by the ducal tribunal. On the subject of Matthir Asurim see Attilio Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), p. 504. See also the work of Francesconi, in Francesconi and Levi D’Ancona, Vita e Società ebraica, p. 14 for the description of Jewish confraternities established in Modena at this time. 149 Ibid., p. 117. 150 ASMoFICH 244 f.18. 151 ASMoFICH 244 f.29. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 55–6. 152 Jews who appeared more than once before the Inquisition include: Josef Arezzio in 1622 and 1623; Caliman Cantarini in 1744 and 1745; Davide Diena in 1622 and 1623; Pellegrino Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 84 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 THE INQUISITION AND DISCIPLINING JEWS Donati in 1705 and 1733; Isaaco Finzi in 1720 and 1747; Pelligrino Formiggini in 1639 and 1641; Elia Levi in 1638 and 1639; Abramo Maciucchu in 1662 and 1663; Isaaco Modena in 1750 and 1756; Girolamo Moretti in 1678 and 1680; Abramo Sacerdote in 1600 and 1602; Giacobbe Sanguinetti twice in 1746; Isaaco Sanguinetti in 1608 and twice in 1625; Lazzaro Sanguinetti in 1641 and again in 1696; Salomone Sanguinetti in 1701, 1702 and 1705; Samuele Sanguinetti in 1615 and 1623; Simone Sanguinetti in 1624, 1627 and 1629; Viviano Sanguinetti in 1600, 1602 and 1637; Leone Tesei twice in 1744; Israele Tigli twice in 1748. See Jellinek, ‘Investigations on Christian Matters’. See also Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 38–9 and Ruderman, ‘Jewish Apologetic’. Taken from Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 38–9. See also David Ruderman, ‘A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth-Century Bologna’, pp. 254–5. See Sonne, From Paul IV to Pius V, pp. 71–6. See Ibid., p. 73. Benjamin Ben Elnatan describes how prisoners were allowed to talk to each other, sharing their concerns and fears every evening in the prison of the Roman Inquisition. ASMoFICH 244 f.17. ASMoFICH 244 f.1, ‘Processo ad Isaaco Sanguinetti ed altri, costituto del 21 Aprile 1600’. Generally in Italy complaints that the Inquisition was feared were as common as charges that it was ineffective. See Prosperi, Tribunali, p. 90. See Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1992). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Part II A study of Jewish offences in different settings Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 3 The Jewish household: Jewish masters and Christian servants There are more Inquisitorial processi against Jews for hiring Christian servants than for any other breach of ecclesiastical regulations. It was an offence that alarmed Inquisitors, implying intimate contact between a Jewish master and a subordinate Christian behind closed doors, in the private space of a Jewish household, and as such representing an unknown level of promiscuity. When Christian servants entered Jewish households they became exposed to the Jewish family’s daily routine and the real risk of apostasy, or so the Inquisitors believed. These processi bear witness to the frequency of Christian servants working in Jewish households in this period. Although most of them worked for wealthy Jews, the practice of servant-keeping extended far down society; even poor Jews sometimes had servants and wetnurses, who occasionally stayed for long periods. At the same time, the relationship between a Christian wetnurse or servant and her Jewish master in seventeenth-century Modena constitutes an important motif for the historian. Primary issues include the alleged violations of canon law, the formal characteristics of the processi and the specific form of daily interaction within the Jewish household. Jews had to deal with the same commonplace concerns as their Christian counterparts, ensuring that their babies were sufficiently nourished with breast milk (there was no alternative at this time), that they had hot food to eat on their Sabbath and that their houses were kept clean. No evidence has yet come to light that Jewish wetnurses served in Christian households, or that the Holy Office was concerned with this issue. Although Jews hired Christian midwives as well, this issue will not be discussed since the position was transitory. What then were the duties of the Christian wetnurse or servant within the Jewish household? What was the level of contact? What can be learned about contracts between Jewish master and Christian servant? How did the padrona, the Jewish matron of the household, fit into the relationship between Jewish master and Christian servant? Interaction between Jews and Christians in the intimate, private space of a household, where others may not Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 88 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES enter without permission, is central to this study. Although there were fifty-two processi against Jews for hiring Christian servants in our period, only five concerned wetnurses. The positions of Christian wetnurses varied, and in each Jewish household different ages as well as different economic circumstances created diverse relationships between master and servant. Calman de Sanguinetti, a Jew prosecuted in one of these processi, had a large household of seventeen people. When a Christian wetnurse was employed and entered his house, she was treated differently from a Christian wetnurse who worked part-time in the house of Abraham de Sacerdote, another Jew prosecuted by the Inquisition for this offence. Further, there are two examples where the Jewish infant was taken to live in the Christian wetnurse’s home during the whole period of nursing. Therefore one must hesitate to make generalizations. This chapter is divided into four parts. The first deals with a history of the Church’s prohibition of Jews hiring Christian wetnurses and servants and the second presents a discussion of the licences issued by ecclesiastical and secular authorities in Modena to moderate Christian service in Jewish households. The third part deals with the wetnurse’s position in the Jewish household, using the processi as evidence of wider implications, the extent of contact and the form of contract between master and servant. The final part concentrates on the role of other Christian servants in Jewish households, the type of position assumed and levels of social interaction between Jew and Christian. Prohibitions From as early as the fifth century, the papacy prohibited Jews employing Christian wetnurses and servants.1 Later, in 770, Pope Stephen III (768–72) warned against excessive contact resulting from domestic service, and in 1179 the Third Lateran Council prohibited and condemned Christians who served Jews as domestics and wetnurses.2 The Council objected to the idea of Jews employing Christians because it ran contrary to the idea of a hierarchical relationship between the two. Christians, according to the Church’s idea of correct order, had to be superior to Jews and if a Jew employed a Christian as a servant – especially a living-in servant, subject to the authority of a Jewish head of household – the Christian placed himself or herself in an inferior state, which overturned the natural chain of authority.3 There is no indication that the Holy Office prosecuted Christians for employing Jews.4 Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) in his canon Etsi iudaeos – originally a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and absorbed into the 1234 Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (1227–41), as well as the Italian canonist Hostiensis Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 89 (1200–70) – specified another reason why Christian wetnurses were prohibited from living in Jewish houses.5 At the time of Easter, and after the Christian wetnurse had taken communion, the Jews allegedly disposed of the Christian wetnurse’s milk in a latrine for three consecutive days. The letter read: We have heard that the Jews… have become so insolent that whenever it happens at Easter that the Christian women who are the wetnurses of the Jews’ children receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ the Jews compel them, for three days thereafter, to spill their milk into the latrine, before they let them nurse again.6 Kenneth Stow believes that this statement was probably based on the medieval belief that breast milk was derived from the nursing mother’s blood. Stow argues that medieval Jews were ‘convinced that were their children to drink this milk following Communion they would become eucharistically tainted and idolatrously infested’.7 Stow bases his argument on the texts of Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi) (1040–1105) and Solomon ibn Adret (ca. 1233–1310), and later the sixteenth-century Shulhan Arukh of Josef Karo (1488–1535), which in Yoreh Deah 81:7 (especially the commentary of Moses Isserles) notes that ‘For the milk of idolators [including – indeed, especially for Isserles – Christians] makes the heart foolish and instils into the child a wicked disposition’.8 It is certainly questionable whether Jews believed the Eucharist to have magical powers, or whether this was a belief projected upon them from Christian society, particularly at this time when from the thirteenth century host-desecration tales had begun to emerge.9 In November 1286, a different reason why Jews were prohibited from employing Christian wetnurses or servants was recorded. A letter sent from the papacy to the Archbishop of Canterbury complained of sexual intermingling between Jew and Christian.10 Two centuries later, Pope Martin V (1417–31), in his re-issue of the bull Sicut judeis in 1422, probably also referring to sexual promiscuity, labelled ‘scandals’ between Jews and their Christian servants as a reason why such employment was prohibited. The Pope also noted that Jews were less inclined to convert if they were allowed to have authority over Christians and permitted to feel superior to them. He therefore threatened Christian servants who worked for Jews with excommunication.11 The prohibition remained in force from this period onwards and episcopal courts and later the Inquisition were put in charge of monitoring it. When, in July 1555, Pope Paul IV (1555–59) issued Cum nimis absurdum, which radically restructured the limits of Jewish life in the Papal State and restricted interaction between Jews and Christians, he reiterated the Papal prohibition for the same reasons.12 From its opening, the bull ranted angrily that Christians were not to be subject to Jews: It is profoundly absurd and intolerable that the Jews, who are bound by their guilt Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 90 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES to perpetual servitude, should show themselves ungrateful toward Christians; and with the pretext that Christian piety welcomes them by permitting them to dwell among Christians, they repay this favor with scorn, attempting to dominate the very people whose servants they should be.13 Cum nimis, in its long introduction, in particular mentioned the problem of Jews hiring Christian servants: ‘It is iniquitous that children of a free woman should serve the children of the maid servants’. Later, Clause Four decreed that: neither Jewish men nor Jewish women may have nurses or serving women or any other Christian serving them. Nor may they have their children wet-nursed or reared by Christian women.14 In 1583, Gregory XIII in his bull Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas reiterated the accusation that the Jews forced Christian wetnurses to dispose of their milk at Easter.15 Clause Eleven noted that the Inquisition had the power to proceed freely: If anyone has up to now kept Christian wetnurses, in contravention of the canon laws and the sanctions of different Roman pontiffs our predecessors, or still keeps them and forces them, on the day when they should be receiving the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, to pour out [waste] their milk on one or more days into latrines, drains or other places. Here, one must note the slight change in the tone of the prohibition. Although it remained a prohibition, the text hints clearly that the Pope knew that the prohibition was not adhered to and Jews were continuing to employ both servants and wetnurses, some of whom lived in casa, in their homes.16 Pope Gregory XIII demanded that the Inquisition use its power to regulate this offence, to close the gap between the canon law prohibition and the way it had been blatantly ignored. Licences Secular governments in late medieval Italy usually ignored the Papal prohibition and continued to permit Christian service, as long as servants did not live in Jewish homes for long periods of time. In the early modern period, dukes and governments accommodated the Jews’ need for Christian wetnurses and servants as well as midwives, which also had economic benefits for the Christian community.17 In fact, as Benjamin Ravid has shown, the condotte of Sephardi Jews in Livorno allowed Jews to house Christian wetnurses in their homes.18 The Jews’ ability to receive such services was part of a standard of living that they had come to expect. From the late sixteenth century, in an atmosphere of tighter Papal control Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 91 over Jewish affairs, dukes of Modena were pressurised by the popes to restrict this policy. In 1570, Duke Alfonso II d’Este (1559–97) had decreed that Jews could employ Christian wetnurses and servants to live in their homes in Modena only in urgent circumstances, after having secured a licence from the Giudice di Savii, the secular magistrate in the city. If the Jews failed to acquire such a licence, they would face pecuniary as well as corporal punishment. Alfonso’s decree read: no Jew may be permitted to keep in his service any Christian woman as servant or maid or in any other capacity, or to make use of her in his house, unless compelled to do so by childbirth19 or similar urgent needs. For this he needs to acquire a licence from the Giudice di Savii, the judge who has jurisdiction over them by right, and not through any other means on pain of a fine of 100 scudi to be applied, one third to the accuser and the rest to the treasury, and three hoists of the rope or more at the discretion of His Excellency.20 In 1602, Duke Cesare d’Este renewed the edict of his cousin. However, he stated explicitly that under no circumstances was the servant to live or eat in the Jew’s house: His Serenity further orders and commands that no Jew may be permitted to keep in his house in his service as servant or maid or for any other purpose, any Christian man or woman.21 It is only permitted that Jews use Christian women in childbirth, and Christian men in other similar urgent need with a licence from the Judges. The Judges shall give or withhold restricted licences as they see fit. As for other tasks [i.e. jobs other than domestic service – maintenance work on a house etc.], the Jews may make use of them freely and pay them due wages, so long as the workmen, craftsmen and others whom they employ do not eat or sleep with them [the Jew].22 Unlike the earlier edict, Duke Cesare’s referred to male servants, which suggests that the employment of Christian men in Jewish houses was widespread enough to demand ducal regulation.23 The Inquisition urged the Duke to prohibit Christian service completely but he was unwilling to comply.24 In 1620 the ducal edict Grida sopra gli hebrei proclaimed further restrictions under pressure. Jews were no longer able to employ Christians in their shops or work areas, nor hire in their homes Christian teachers or musicians, Christian spinsters or women under the age of 45, and finally these Christians were not allowed to be present in the Jews’ houses after sunset or before sunrise: His Highness further orders that no Jew may employ in his house, for his service, any servant or maid, or for any other purpose any Christian man or woman. Nor may he employ any Christian worker or craftsman to work with him in his house, in his shop, or elsewhere, nor give him food, cooked in the Jewish way, or according to the Jewish observances, unleavened bread, or similar food. Nor is the food to be distributed outside the home to Christian houses or Christians. The Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 92 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Jews may not bring into their houses to render any service any unmarried women or other Christian women under the age of forty-five. Nor may the Jews admit to their homes Christian men or women before sunrise in the morning, nor in the evening, after the third hour of the night,25 from the 1st October through to the end of April, and no later than the first hour of the night,26 from the 1st May to the end of September.27 Frustrated that the Duke had not issued an outright prohibition, the Inquisitor General, Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza, protested, complaining in his letter to the Congregation of the Holy Office that the Jews of the city had persuaded the Duke to maintain these concessions, despite persistent requests from the Holy Office.28 Cardinal Millino agreed, but was unsure how the Inquisition could assert its authority. The Duke continued to argue that he had full authority to concede licences to the Jews, and in this he was supported by his ministers.29 Moreover, his predecessors had done the same, and Papal proclamations on this matter were meant to be observed in their own territories, not in the duchy.30 These tensions at first prevented the Inquisition from any direct activity in monitoring the Jews’ hiring of Christian servants. Although there was one investigation against Vitale Alatrini, a Jew living in Nonantola, in 1603 for allowing his Christian servants Lucretia and Camilla to stay overnight in his house, the case was postponed in order to receive further direction from Rome.31 More confident of its position in Modenese society, in 1615 the Inquisition established its own clerk to produce licences and in 1618 began prosecutions under the new generalship of Tommaso Novato (1618–20). During the 1620s, under the generalships of Tommaso Novato and Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza (1620–27), eighteen of the fifty-two processi (35%) were executed. It was only with the accession in 1630 of Duke Francesco I – who heeded the advice of the bishop, Alessandro Rangoni, and did not renew the 1620 edict – that official jurisdiction was finally placed in the hands of Inquisitor General Giacomo Tinti, who began a more regulated monitoring, which continued after the establishment of the ghetto in1638.32 Inquisitorial licences were distributed only if the Jew could prove that, first, the Christian neither ate nor slept in the Jew’s house and, second, the Christians were still performing their religious duties, such as receiving the Eucharist and obeying the strict rules of Easter and Lent.33 These licences had to be renewed every three months, and the Jew had to pay for the privilege. In fact, regulations for hiring Christian wetnurses tightened as the century progressed. By 1630, the Inquisition would only issue licences for a Christian wetnurse to nurse a Jewish infant in the wetnurse’s home, on condition too that the nurse did not go into the home of her Jewish employer on any pretext.34 Such restrictions represented a victory for the Inquisition, since not only did they limit contact between the two groups, but they also forced the Jews into a situation where the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 93 parents had little if any supervision over their infant. Licences also became essential documents for Jews wishing to employ Christians in any capacity.35 But, in an atmosphere of competing jurisdictions, confusion lingered. When brought before the Inquisition, Jews often argued that they had secured secular licences from the Duke,36 but were not aware of the need to acquire Inquisitorial ones.37 There was even a third court, the episcopal one, which before the establishment of the Holy Office in 1598 had been responsible for regulating and issuing ecclesiastical licences on behalf of the Church. In fact, individual priests were slow to surrender this source of income to the Inquisition and continued to issue licences more willingly than the Holy Office to individual Jews.38 When in 1627 Beniamino Modena was denied a licence by the Inquisition for a Christian servant, he had turned to an episcopal vicar and received one.39 In 1636, Leone Poggetti, a Jewish doctor, and his wife Allegra testified before the Holy Office that they had done the same.40 There was a further problem for the Inquisition. Episcopal licences were often issued orally, sometimes without written verification in any inventories, and Inquisitors had no way of confirming their authenticity. When Calman de Sanguinetti, a Jewish banker, was prosecuted in 1601 for retaining a Christian wetnurse in his home, without an Inquisitorial licence, he testifed that he had a verbal licence from an episcopal vicar, which the Inquisition had no way of disproving.41 In his final interrogation on 4 June, Sanguinetti was forced to admit – however disingenuously – that he had ‘misunderstood’ what a ‘verbal’ licence permitted, and had therefore allowed his Christian wetnurse to stay in his house: I admit that the Father Inquisitor may have pointed out to me that he did not suppose that the nurse was to stay the night in my house. I now realise that, if I believed myself to have permission for the night as well, I misunderstood, and I ask your pardon for my error.42 Jews clearly manipulated and manoeuvred licences to their advantage. Calman de Sanguinetti did not want to be constricted by rules that would make the nursing of his child so much more complicated. Since he had other servants living in his household, it was much simpler to let Antonia enter his house and live among them as a domestic, available for nursing at all times. He had also fooled Antonia into believing that he held another ecclesiastical licence permitting her to break the dietary rules of Lent. This violation was an offence against ecclesiastical discipline and aroused suspicion of heretical tendencies.43 At the end of his second interrogation, Calman was forced to admit his deception to the Inquisitor: It is possible that I had said to the wetnurse that I had a licence from the Signor vicar permitting her to break Lent, not because I had asked or obtained a licence from the vicar because I had not asked for one. But it was possible I thought, that Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 94 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES her husband or someone else had secured it in my name.44 Perhaps Antonia in her naivety and ignorance had believed that a Jew could secure a licence for her to violate the rules of Lent. The Christian wetnurse or servant was not expected to be involved in securing licences.45 Moreover, since most of these women were illiterate, it is doubtful that they ever asked to see them, or thought that the Jews had failed to secure them.46 When the wetnurse Giovanna had been told by her Jewish master, Isaaco de Modena, that he had acquired a licence for her, she had believed him.47 In 1636, when Jacobo Donato and his wife Stella were discovered maintaining frequent contact with their Christian wetnurse Margherita in their own home, they argued that they had not really understood the implications of their licence since it had been written in Latin, a language they did not understand.48 Inquisitor Giacomo Tinti refused to accept their argument and sentenced Jacobo Donato to six months in prison. The increasing control that the Inquisition exercised on the issuing of licences allowed the tribunal a closer monitoring of the type of interaction and service that Christians provided their neighbouring Jews. The bestowing of licences upon Jews was also a perennial source of income that the Inquisition could benefit from. Tellingly, in 1658 the Inquisition began to employ special auditors to review the ‘excessive number of licences’ which its staff had issued over the years.49 Inquisitors were ordered to send to Rome a detailed list of all those who held licences, which were from then on only to be authorized by the Congregation of the Holy Office. Wetnursing Mercenary wetnursing has attracted considerable attention from social historians interested in family, childhood, fertility and cultural mores of the past.50 Some of these works even relate to the early modern Italian experience.51 Between 1400 and 1800, wetnursing was particularly widespread in Italy and represented a significant part of the domestic economy of poorer families in urban and rural areas. Common opinion, culture and socio-economic and medical factors contributed to a generalized rejection of maternal breastfeeding even among working-class people, and wetnursing, in Italian urban culture, became a major domestic industry.52 The main reason why wetnursing was so widespread, and so many women apparently did not suckle their own babies, was that it was thought dangerous for a husband and wife to have sexual intercourse while she was suckling a child, lest the wife get pregnant. If she did, her milk/blood would be diverted to nurturing the foetus, and this development was considered detrimental, even fatal, to the health of the child at the breast.53 Husbands were not expected to abstain from sex for a year or more while his wife was breastfeeding Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 95 – so, to keep the man faithful to the marriage bed, the couple often employed a wetnurse. Parenthood thus began with the social and economic pressure of finding an alternative provider for a newborn infant, turning over the significant role of nursing to a carefully chosen and paid employee. Good wetnurses were supposed to be not only healthy but of sterling character (since moral qualities were transmitted with milk). Parents often sent infants to board with nurses who lived in the countryside where they remained for periods of up to two years, until they were weaned. These country wetnurses were believed to be stronger and healthier and to provide better milk.54 How often Jewish mothers hired wetnurses in early modern Italy is harder to ascertain. Whether it was the norm for Jewish mothers to breastfeed their own children if they could, or whether the majority subscribed to the use of wetnurses, as did their Italian Christian counterparts at this time, needs clarification. Ancient Jewish law had specified in the Babylonian Talmud that it was a mother’s duty to breastfeed, and that a mother should naturally choose to do so.55 In the Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 59–60 stated: ‘She [the mother] must nurse until the child is two years.’ Ketubot 61 stated, however, that if a husband forbade his wife to nurse her infant: she had a legal right to make her own decision, since the labour and trouble would be hers alone. If however, the wife wished not to nurse, the decision was made according to the custom in that particular family. Obviously, some Jewish women could not nurse their own children, especially mothers who had engorged breasts, or suffered from maternal rickets after labour or even had puerperal or milk fevers.56 However, a wetnurse is only referred to in Tosefta Niddah 2: 4–5, where it specified that if twins were delivered, then one was to be fed by a wetnurse. Elisheva Baumgarten’s recent book, and first full-scale study of mothers and children in medieval Ashkenaz (Franco-Germany), was unable to confirm whether Jewish mothers hired wetnurses because they preferred not to nurse and could comfortably afford wetnurses, or whether wetnurses were employed principally by women who were physically unable to nurse.57 She argues that Jewish mothers probably employed Jewish wetnurses when available, and Christian ones were taken only when Jewish ones could not be found. It must have been difficult for Jewish parents to find a sufficient number within the relatively small ‘pool’ of such women provided by the Jewish population, especially in small Jewish communities. Sometimes Jewish infants were nursed in the Jew’s home and sometimes in that of the wetnurse. Although she hints that this did happen, Baumgarten could find no case where Jews left their children in the Christian’s care overnight unattended by a Jewish relative. It seems clear that to hire a Christian wetnurse was a compromise for Jews in need of the nurse’s Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 96 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES service.58 Many Papal concessions were granted, in particular by Pope Clement VII (1523–34), to allow Jewish communities, for example in Bologna, Piedmont, Ferno and Montegiorgio, as well as individual prominent Jews, to hire Christian wetnurses.59 Stefanie Siegmund, in her study of Jewish life in the Florentine ghetto, believes that prior to ghettoization in 1570 some of the wealthiest Tuscan families hired Christian wetnurses, and this continued until it was forbidden by the Synod of 1573.60 Julia Lieberman, studying the discourses and sermons of the Los Sitibundos, a seventeenth-century Jewish literary academy established by Sephardi Jews in Livorno, has found a particular sermon by José Penso de la Verga, a merchant and a prolific writer, entitled ‘Moral and Sacred Academic Discourse’ (Discurso Académico Morale y Sagrado), which was divided into six parts, three devoted to the ‘obligation of women to wetnurse their children’, a clear indication that a large proportion of Jewish mothers were not following this practice, which Lieberman interprets as refusal to endure the physical hardships of nursing.61 Tellingly, these sermons make no reference to the employment of Christian wetnurses, even as a prohibited practice. Evidence from processi of the Papal Inquisition confirms that Jews employed Christian wetnurses in Modena. There were five specific processi during the period 1598–1638, although this practice is often referred to in other trials.62 Moreover these processi often provide more than one specific case of an individual Jewish master hiring a Christian wetnurse. The first processo, in October 1600, was against Isaaco de Modena, a Jewish banker living in Vignola, accused of employing in his house and allowing to stay overnight a twenty-yearold Christian wetnurse, Giovanna, who had nursed Sabbadia, his grandson (the son of his son Benjamin). Giovanna had been nursing the child for a year and had during this period slept in the Jew’s house when the infant or his parents had been unwell. Isaaco was brought to Modena on 10 October 1600 for interrogation but argued that he had not known that he had to acquire a licence or that it was forbidden for a Christian nurse to stay in his house.63 Neither Isaaco nor Benjamin was imprisoned during the investigation, but Isaaco was fined 25 ducats for allowing Giovanna to stay overnight in his house and failing to acquire an Inquisitorial licence. The next fascicle to deal with wetnursing involved two separate processi within the same file, that of Calman de Sanguinetti, a wealthy banker, and Abraham de Sacerdote, whose profession remains unknown.64 It opened with a denunciation made in 1602 by a Christian prostitute, Julia Maola da Centro.65 Maola denounced a Christian wetnurse, Leonora, to the Modenese Inquisition for working in Calman de Sanguinetti’s house when in fact she was working in Abraham de Sacerdote’s. Calman de Sanguinetti’s trial opened on 27 April 1602 and ended less than two months later, on 4 June 1602.66 The Christian wetnurse, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 97 Antonia Ferrarino de Nonantula, the wife of a local fisherman, lived locally in the parish of San Bartolomeo and served and stayed in the Sanguinetti house in casa for a period of four months. Calman de Sanguinetti was accused of failing to secure an Inquisitorial licence, of bringing the Christian to live in his household and of causing his wetnurse, who had remained in his house during Easter week, to violate the Lenten prohibition on eating meat. He was found guilty and fined 25 scudi (125 lire).This, the Inquisitor General Archangelo Calbetti argued, was to act as a warning to other Jews of what would happen if they failed to obey Inquisitorial regulations regarding the employment of Christians.67 Half of Calman’s fine was paid to the Holy Office and half to charities or other religious institutions (such as hospitals or confraternities) in the city of Modena. In the same fascicle is the processo of Abraham de Sacerdote, which opened on 2 July 1602, and was dropped on 16 July, fourteen days later.68 The Christian wetnurse involved was Leonora, wife of Sabbione, who lived behind the Bentivoglio palazzo in Modena. Leonora went every day to serve in Abraham’s house. Abraham de Sacerdote argued that he had done all in his power to employ a Christian wetnurse within the framework of Roman and canon law and brought with him a medical certificate, handwritten by Casandrio, a Jewish doctor, which proved that his wife had not been able to nurse and his need for a nurse had been urgent. He had also obtained a verbal episcopal licence for his Christian wetnurse to suckle his child. However, he tried to explain that it was during the night that his child particularly needed nursing and therefore the wetnurse had come and gone also during the night. He told the Inquisitor: The vicar, having read the certificate and heard from me about the needs of my child and the danger he was in, agreed and granted me a licence to have the child suckled by a Christian wetnurse, so long as she did not eat or sleep at night in my house. I replied that it was more often at night than by day that my son needed a wetnurse. The said Signore Vicar replied to me that if at night I needed a wetnurse, I could send and call for her to come to my home, when and how many times I wanted. He said that he would be content as long as she came and did not sleep in my house and I respected what was ordered and she never ate nor slept in my house.69 None of the above three suspects was imprisoned during investigations, possibly because there was no room for them in the limited space that the Inquisition used as a prison in the convent at that time.70 They were free to remain in their homes, but ordered to appear in court whenever they were summoned. Nor were the Christian women for their part imprisoned, punished or threatened with excommunication or refusal of Christian burial.71 Another investigation into this offence did not occur until 1633. When Abraham Bonighi and his son Isaaco were prosecuted for this offence, it soon became clear that the Christians involved had been serving the Jews in their Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 98 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES home but not wetnursing.72 Smeralda, the wife of Abraham Bonighi, even testified that she did not know of any Christian women who nursed Jewish children, probably with the intention of protecting her co-religionists from prosecution. In September 1636 three Jewish couples were prosecuted for hiring Christian wetnurses.73 All six were interrogated – imprisoned during the investigations, which lasted from September to January 1637 – and were found guilty of not being meticulous enough in confining themselves to the Inquisitorial restrictions regarding the employment of Christian wetnurses demanded in their licences. Although these women had not lived in casa nor slept overnight in the Jews’ houses, they had still maintained frequent contact with their Jewish masters and padrone during the period of nursing. The two Christian wetnurses involved, Margherita de Pavarotti and Juliana de Christiani (two of the three couples had employed the same Christian wetnurse, Juliana, at different times), had visited the households of their employers on many occasions, holding prolonged conversations with the Jews and sometimes eating in the Jews’ houses.74 The two Christian wetnurses were also imprisoned during investigations. The banker, Jacobo Donato, and his wife Stella received the heaviest punishment for not only allowing their wetnurse into their home on many occasions but also having carelessly allowed her to be seen by Christians taking part in the Feast of the Holy Rosary procession that had passed under the windows of the Jew’s house while she was holding her ward in her arms.75 Jacobo was sentenced to six months imprisonment and his wife to a six-month house arrest in her home. Salamon Sacerdote, whose profession remains unknown, and his wife Isotta had often provided their wetnurse with nourishment when she visited the Sacerdote household, and for this Sacerdote was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and Isotta to a three-month house arrest. The third couple, Doctor Morensi, alias Leone Poggetti, and his wife Allegra, who had handed one of their twins (the daughter as opposed to the son) over to Juliana after she had finished nursing the Sacerdote infant, had also maintained familiarity and contact with their Christian wetnurse and were also punished. Leone Poggetti was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and Allegra to house arrest for the same period. Margherita was given a punishment of a month’s house arrest and Juliana was absolved. The fifth and final processo for wetnursing was against Emanuele Sanguinetti in the same year.76 Emanuele, a poor Jew, testified to the Inquisitor that his wife had been too ill to nurse their child, and after having acquired a licence from the Inquisitor had employed Giovanna de Menopi, a Christian wetnurse and a widow who had remarried Lorenzo Menopi. This wetnurse had come to his shop to nurse for the period of a year. The Jew testified that Giovanna never came to his house unless to collect the infant and only on one occasion had collected some bread which she had then taken home to eat. Inquisitor General Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 99 Giacomo Tinti dropped the case and the Jew was dismissed with a warning. Paid nursing seems to have been a distinctive and prestigious sign of wellto-do Jews, as of Christian upper-class merchants or nobles at this time; as Klapisch-Zuber noted it ‘flattered the vanity of the husbands, to be sure, but also enhanced the woman’s status as a fertile and prolific wife’.77 The wealthy banker Jacobo Donato actually admitted in his testimony in 1636 that his wife Stella had elected not to nurse her children.78 This seems to have been the practice of many wealthy Jewish mothers at this time, although not all wealthy women had nurses.79 In general, though, hiring a Christian wetnurse was not an optimal choice. Jews only turned to hiring Christians because of the shortage and difficulty of finding enough wetnurses of their own religion, and it is doubtful that they would have entrusted their children to Christians if it could have been avoided. Abraham de Sacerdote, Jacobo Donato and Leone Poggetti told the Inquisition that they had not been able to find a Jewish wetnurse and, as a result, had had to employ a Christian one. The wealthy banker Calman de Sanguinetti had a Jewish wetnurse, Laura, who was nursing his son before Antonia and living in his home. It was only because Laura became pregnant that she had stopped nursing. Calman testified: The Jewish wetnurse Laura had not been able to suckle the infant since she discovered that she was pregnant. I was not able to find another Jewish woman.80 Laura clearly forced her master into the unpleasant task of finding and then training a new employee. Most of the Jews’ Christian wetnurses were poor women, as noted by the Inquisitor: wives of artisans, labourers and peasant farmers, who desperately needed to supplement their family income.81 Giovanna de Menopi told the Inquisitor in 1636, ‘I am a poor woman and procured to earn a living in whatever way I can’.82 There was also a range of ages. Leonora, Antonia and Giovanna de Menopi were approximately forty years old.83 However, Giovanna, Isaaco de Modena’s wetnurse, was much younger, twenty-five, and Margherita de Pavarotti and Juliana de Christiani both told the Inquisitor that they were twenty.84 One can suggest that Jews were probably willing to accept any wetnurse they could find whatever her age. Jewish law demanded that Jews who employed Christian wetnurses allow them to nurse their children in their own houses rather than in the wetnurses’ houses.85 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Calman’s Christian wetnurse spent most of her day and night with the Jewish infant in his house, under the supervision of the Sanguinettis. Whether this was arranged because Calman did not trust the Christian with his child, or feared that she might baptize the child or purely out of convenience cannot be confirmed.86 Andrea Balletti describes two cases – albeit one much later – where Christian wetnurses Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 100 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES had taken Jewish children into their homes in Modena and baptized them. One occurred in 1587, the other in 1844.87 But in fact Calman de Sanguinetti actually allowed his wetnurse to take his child to her home once the Inquisition had forbidden Antonia’s residence in his house,88 and there is further evidence of Christian wetnurses taking Jewish infants home with them at night in other parts of Italy.89 Furthermore a new ruling, on 2 July 1673, by the Duke of Savoy ordered that Christians suckle Jewish infants only in the Christians’ own homes and only in very special cases.90 In Modena, the Inquisition had by 1630 enforced this restriction for Jews of Modena too. Jews were only allowed to hire Christian women who took their wards into their own houses to nurse and keep them there, or as in Emanuele Sanguinetti’s case had an alternative location – his shop – to have his child suckled. The intention was to prevent the Christian from spending any period of time in the Jewish household. But in reality having one’s child nursed in an alternative household left the fate of the Jewish master’s child to that of his Christian wetnurse, and it says much about the Jews’ trust of local Christians, which resonates through the processi, that they were in general willing to let these poor Christian women rear their children during the period of nursing in their homes. The demands the Jews made upon Christian wetnurses differed according to financial circumstances. Giovanna, Leonora, Juliana, and Giovanna de Menopi provided their services for poorer Jewish families, particularly for Jewish mothers who could not nurse their own infants, and as a consequence were able to continue nursing their own infants at the same time.91 In wealthy Christian households, it was unusual for a wetnurse to suckle more than one child.92 These Christians employed wetnurses in their homes if the nurses had finished suckling their own children, or had put their own children out to nurse, or their children had died. Moreover, Jewish law forbade Jewish wetnurses to suckle more than one child.93 But the Jews who employed these Christian women had no choice, not having the finances to hire a woman who could suckle their infants exclusively. They were probably ready to take the first available woman who was physically able to nurse their children. During the time Leonora was nursing Sacerdote’s child and Giovanna de Menopi Emanuele Sanguinetti’s child, the Christian wetnurses continued to live in their homes but ran back and forth to the Jews’ house or shop respectively, as required. Whether at night these women came back and forward as often as they testified is doubtful. Nursing at night could be constant, a fact that Inquisitors were probably unfamiliar with. Antonia was expected to live in the wealthy Jewish household of the Sanguinettis, suckle the Jewish infant exclusively and take explicit orders regarding her diet from the padrona of the household. Antonia’s own home was in the same Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 101 area of Modena as that of the Sanguinettis, in the sestiere of San Bartolomeo, but she was still expected to live in casa while nursing the Jewish child. For her it was a well-rewarded occupation, in which her health was carefully monitored. She received plenty of rest and a good diet, did little housework, and enjoyed the luxury of comfortable accommodation to which no one of her background and circumstances would ordinarily be accustomed. As Dennis Romano has confirmed, these women, because of their matronly status, were respected by their masters and given precedence above other household servants.94 In Italy, employing a wetnurse in casa was the most expensive method and was common only among families of fairly high economic and social status who had money and space to keep a nurse. It was often used only for the eldest child of wealthy families, but in Calman’s and Isaaco de Modena’s cases the infant boys being nursed were not their first-born.95 Calman hinted at the enormous expense of this service: I continued (to look for a Jewish wetnurse) as I did and I do all the time because this Christian one is very expensive.96 Due to Inquisitorial restrictions in the 1630s, the Jews who hired Margherita de Pavarotti and Juliana de Christiani were not able to employ Christian wetnurses in casa. Yet they did their best to maintain as much contact as they could with their Christian wetnurses. Jacobo and Stella Donato took a meticulous interest in their child’s development, diet and health, visiting their infant often in the wetnurse’s home and opening their doors to the wetnurse and her ward whenever she appeared.97 When Stella Donato went by herself to Margherita’s home, she told the Inquisitor that she was always accompanied by one of her servants.98 Stella also testified to her frequent personal contact with Margherita and the trust she had in the wetnurse’s rearing of her child during the two years of nursing. At the same time, the Christian wetnurses fully complied with the demands of their Jewish employers and showed a disciplined allegiance to them. Their deference was probably a compound of their temporary dependency and good salaries. Antonia even referred to Calman in her testimony as monsignor, the honorific title that the Papal bull Cum nimis had forbidden.99 How much direct contact Calman de Sanguinetti actually had with his wetnurse who lived in casa is not clear and cannot be satisfactorily deduced. His household was large, consisting of at least sixteen or seventeen people including as Calman testified, ‘housemaids, stewards, teachers, maids, wetnurses and servants’. The relations between people, especially master and servants, were probably impersonal.100 It is unlikely that Calman and the wetnurse would have seen each other daily, except perhaps when passing in a corridor. In fact all the Jewish masters who hired Christian wetnurses were unable to identify the first names of their Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 102 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES wetnurses, which suggests that the Jew preferred to show the Inquisitor that he had minimal contact with the Christian.101 ‘Balia’, the term that the Jewish masters used to describe their Christian wetnurses, was the wetnurse’s title and indicated that she was a respected servant. When Sanguinetti was asked in his second interrogation what food Antonia ate during Lent, he replied: In my house, one finds always fat and lean food, but I did not watch what food she ate because she ate separately either before or after me.102 Moreover, in Sanguinetti’s prestigious and large household it is unlikely that he would have eaten at the same table as any of his servants. The distinction between servant and master was always present. Beatrice Gottlieb has shown in her work on the European family that separate dining rooms for the family away from servants were becoming more and more common at this time.103 None of the Jews ate with their wetnurses, especially not with those wetnurses who were given additional food to eat on their visits to their masters’ homes. Not only did the wetnurse provide for the daily physical needs of the child, with nourishment on demand, but she was expected to help in the care of a child’s frequent illnesses.104 Isaaco de Modena, Calman de Sanguinetti, Abraham de Sacerdote and Jacobo Donato refer to their children being unwell at various stages and testify that their wetnurses had attended the infants constantly during this period.105 Isaaco also testified that it was not only the illness of Sabbadia that had caused Giovanna to stay overnight, but also the illness of the ward’s parents.106 Calman informed the Inquisition that Antonia had actually slept in the same room as the infant every night.107 Although the wetnurses who kept their wards in their own homes make no reference to the sleeping arrangements, from such intimate contact that they had with the infant, affection for the child was possible. Leonora and Antonia both hint that they had become attached to their charges. Leonora had returned at night to the Jew’s house and stayed there, even though she knew that was forbidden. Antonia too, even though she was explicitly ordered by Inquisitor Calbetti to stop nursing the child, after her interrogation returned to the Jew’s house and suckled the infant during his illness. She admitted to the Inquisitor: After I was examined the other time, I stayed three nights voluntarily in the house of Calman because his son was sick.108 Whether these wetnurses acted primarily out of attachment for the child, or the desire to protect their wages and ensure the maintenance of their milk supply cannot be confirmed. The loss of their milk supply by an abrupt stop to nursing, which Inquisitor General Calbetti had demanded, would have had profound consequences for their professions as well. None of the Christian wetnurses condemned their Jewish employers before Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 103 the Inquisition but one cannot know for certain if this was due to a genuine sense of concern. During Antonia’s second interrogation, when she was forced to admit that she had returned to Calman’s house against the orders of the Inquisition, she still did not lay the blame on him. She testified that she had misunderstood the Inquisitor and had thought he had told her to go back to Calman’s house. Perhaps the precariousness and difficulties of the nurse’s own position invited her to be dishonest. She stated: I in leaving asked if his Reverence wanted me to return there, or go home and his Reverence said to me ‘Alright go’, and I at the time thought that he meant that I should return to Monsignor Calman’s house.109 Perhaps too she wanted to maintain her position in his household. But even at this late stage of the investigation when she was no longer working in his house, she chose not to condemn her Jewish master. The processi thus indicate a mutuality of interest between the Jewish employer and the Christian servant, which derived from shared interest on both sides. The wetnurses’ positions were too important to the health of their children. These Jews were never asked if they had sexually exploited their Christian wetnurses and neither Jew nor Christian witnesses showed any suspicion that this might have been the case.110 Nor had the Jewish masters forced the wetnurses to dispose of their milk during Easter.111 Instead, the Christian wetnurses seem to have accepted their positions as employees of Jews with ease. Fifteenth-century Italian wetnursing contracts reveal that the position of a wetnurse usually lasted a period of thirty months, or until the infant was weaned.112 Merry Wiesner has uncovered a contract where one clause stated that the wetnurse and her husband had to agree to refrain from sexual relations during the period of contract.113 One cannot know if Jews demanded this of Christian wetnurses. By contrast, Stow’s notarial documents on Rome and Toaff’s on Umbria reveal some wetnursing contracts in the sixteenth century, but these were signed between Jews and Jewish wetnurses.114 They specify the wages, the period of time the wetnurse was to suckle, the fact that she was to live in the Jew’s home, that either party could break the contract during the first six months of nursing, and to whom the wages were to be paid. One can surmise that there was a written contract between Jew and Christian wetnurse, which granted a certain permanence, protection and financial security to the latter’s position, as well as a strongly legal character to the master–servant relationship.115 When Juliana is called to give testimony, she remembers with precision the day and month that she started nursing and exactly how long she had been suckling her ward.116 Calman testified in his interrogation what in fact his contract said: Since I dictate the ways of the household, I take care of all kinds of expenses. I Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 104 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES provide food and clothes for the wetnurse.117 Those Christian wetnurses who held their wards in their own homes were expected to appear before their Jewish masters not only each month to receive their wages but also whenever they were in need of food or clothing for the Jewish infant or for themselves. Contracts were made, not between the Jewish employer and the wetnurse, but between him and her husband, called in this case the balio.118 Calman de Sanguinetti, Abraham de Sacerdote, Jacobo Donato, Salomone Sacerdote and Leone Poggetti showed they were acquainted with the husbands of the wetnurses and knew their names.119 Apart from necessity, paid employment and economic activities outside of the family were largely the province of men. The husbands of wetnurses were permitting their wives to enter a foreign household or accumulate earnings by bringing an additional child into their own home. It was the father of the infant and the husband of the wetnurse who facilitated the work of the nursing woman, and yet it is interesting that none of them was called to testify before the Inquisition or reprimanded for allowing his wife to enter terms of employment under Jewish masters. It was Margherita, too, who was punished by the Inquisition and not her husband. Although it is clear that the Jewish padrona of the house played little or no role in the formal contract between Jewish master and Christian wetnurse, daily exchanges between her and the hired Christian wetnurse were probably frequent, especially if the Christian wetnurse lived in casa, and had intimate familiarity with the padrona, even if they were not always on friendly terms. A common concern linked the two and a mutual understanding and appreciation probably ensued. In her testimony, Flavia, the wife of Calman de Sanguinetti, indicates that the management of the wetnurse and the wetnurse’s diet within the household was very much in her hands. One can sense from both Flavia’s and Antonia’s testimony that Flavia had asserted her control over the wetnurse and kept her under her watchful eye. Flavia de Sanguinetti admitted to the Inquisitor: At times Antonia ate fish and at other times she ate beans. For half of Lent, because the boy was sick, she ate meat with a licence from the Monsignor episcopal vicar.120 There is much less evidence about the relationship that existed between the padrone of households who hired Christian wetnurses who took their wards into their own homes. None of these women could presume to exercise the same amount of control over their wetnurses. Furthermore some of these women were not padrone of the same social standing as Flavia de Sanguinetti and Stella Donato, nor did they run such a large household.121 When asked by the Inquisitor who administered food and sustenance to Leonora when she fed her son, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 105 Gentile Sacerdote replied: I left the care up to her. She provided herself with food, since she did not stay in our house except when she suckled my son.122 What contact these women had with their wetnurses during the year of nursing can only be suggested. In their testimonies they showed a desire to maintain close contact with these women, offering them food and charity consistently, trying to supervise the nursing routine of their infants, and sharing discussions over the development of their ward. Considering that these padrone spent twenty to twenty-five years rearing the family, being in charge of the day-to-day running of the household and their children’s needs, the fact that they demanded close contact with their wetnurses, despite the fact that this was against Inquisitorial regulations, is only to be expected.123 Other Christian servants In Italy, domestic servants were an integral part of all but the poorest households, but the profession did not generate a great deal of documentary evidence. All the same, several historians have begun to uncover details about domestic service. Dennis Romano has examined Venetian legislation concerning domestic servants from 1400 to 1600, analysing service as an integration of social and economic relationships between masters and servants as well as a ‘cultural metaphor’.124 He found that co-resident male and female servants were bound to their masters by contract for a maximum of ten years.125 He also argues that from the middle of the sixteenth century a new style of ‘aristocratic servant keeping’ developed, in particular an increase in the employment of male servants, and keeping more than one servant, both male and female, became the mark of noble living.126 Giovanna Da Molin has studied the household patterns in southern Italy between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and discovered that female servants of all ages served in nuclear family households.127 Finally, Christiane KlapischZuber has made initial speculations regarding the increase of the hiring of male servants from the late fifteenth century.128 Before ghettoization, wealthy Jews in Italy, like their Christian counterparts, tended to employ co-resident domestic servants, including housekeepers, maids, servants, tutors, slaughterers and stewards as a sign of prestige and social standing.129 These servants held both professional and apprentice positions in the Jewish household and played an important part in the daily routine of family life. Most of these positions were filled by Jews. Some historians have discussed this practice, and there are sufficient sources that can enlighten us further.130 Kenneth Stow’s notarial documents drawn up by rabbis, which trace twenty-one years of Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 106 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Jewish communal life from 1536 to 1557, two years after the establishment of the ghetto and the removal of Jews into an enclosed area, show a number of different contracts signed between Jewish household owners and the parents of Jewish maids.131 These positions provided advancement opportunities and a way to secure a dowry and a marriage partner, suggesting that service was a stage in the individual life-cycle, not a permanent occupation. Several documents show masters providing dowries for Jewish maids who remained in service until they were married.132 Occasionally there are contracts for male servants as well and for widows to serve as domestic servants.133 One woman, Stella, the widow of Angelino Signoretto di Segni, was taken in and given work in return for upkeep, which included food but no clothing.134 There is a suggestion too that these servants were paid their salaries only when their contract was finished, allowing the master the effective use of the money along the way but giving the servant a nice nest-egg at the end of the term.135 Salaries for female servants varied from 3 to 6 scudi a year, and for male servants from 6 to 7 scudi a year, compared to the Jewish wetnurses’ salary, which was 8.5 scudi for 6 months’ work.136 Certain Jewish servants may well have been relatives of their employers. The practice of Jews hiring Christian servants remains largely unexplored in our period. Prior to the Counter-Reformation, Jews were allowed to hire Christian servants, even managing to keep them in casa on occasions, as Shylock had Lancelot, the son of Old Gobbo in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.137 Jews in Savoy, and certain bankers in Cremona and Rivardo in particular, were issued with condotte by secular officials, which allowed them to keep Christian servants in their homes and granted absolution to the Christians who served them.138 In urban areas, such as Modena, this practice of allowing co-resident Christian servants stopped as a result of ducal edicts and increasing pressure from the episcopal court and the Inquisition to ban such practices. Instead, Jews hired older women or men, over the age of 40, who came to perform essential menial tasks during the week and to light fires and ovens and carry water from the well to the Jews’ house on the Sabbath, tasks forbidden by Jewish law to Jews, including Jewish servants.139 Despite these rulings in the city capital, there is evidence elsewhere of Jews maintaining co-resident Christian servants as late as 1685 in areas where Jews were not ghettoized. According to the memorial of Don Angelo Biagi, the archpriest of Fiumalbo, ‘two thousand’ Christian servants, spinsters and married women from Fiumalbo, the mountainous region of the Estense on the border with the republic of Lucca and the duchy of Tuscany, went in the winter months to work in Jewish houses in Livorno.140 When his memorial reached the Sacred Congregation in Rome, the cardinals immediately transmitted orders to the Inquisition in Modena to investigate, fearing that much damage had been done since these ignorant peasant women had spent a large part of the year in the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 107 service of wealthy Jews, had failed to frequent local churches and fulfil their Christian duties, and had had intimate contacts with the Jews, bringing back cloth, ornaments, strange customs and strange dialects.141 About twenty women from Fiumalbo were interrogated by the Inquisition for judaizing, in particular Giovanna Santi, Elisabetta Cappe and Maria Benucci. Under investigation these women maintained their ignorance of Jewish customs but were reprimanded for their actions, and given penances, as an example to others.142 The geographic mobility of these women is clear. Sixty-one years earlier, in 1624, Simone Sanguinetti, the local banker of Spilamberto, had also admitted that he had employed Christians from the mountainous regions surrounding the town, and that these women had lived in his home for long periods, attending to the various chores of running his household.143 Whether such movement was typical demands further research. In urban cities in northern Italy such as Venice, Milan, Mantua and Modena, Jews were allowed to hire Christian servants as long as they had acquired licences.144 Their servants had to be women of mature years, who came in from outside, and who did not stay overnight or eat or sleep in the Jewish household. In those areas where the Holy Office had sufficient authority, such as Modena, Genoa and Turin, Inquisitorial courts were instructed by the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome to take charge of monitoring this service.145 The first full processo in Modena against Jews for hiring Christian servants did not occur until 1618, twenty years after the establishment of the tribunal.146 The reason for the delay was the conflict of interest between the Duke and the Inquisition. Cesare d’Este, who had already instigated a licensing bureaucracy, was unwilling to concede power or share the task of monitoring the Jews with the Inquisition. Nonetheless, pressure was maintained, especially by the Congregation of the Holy Office, which consistently argued that the Inquisition should be monitoring this practice.147 Once the Duke had decreed in 1620 that Jews were not able to hire Christian women under the age of 45, the Inquisition enforced these regulations, taking advantage of the ducal restrictions to further its own authority and reasoning for executing meticulous investigations. If a Christian woman lied about her age before the Inquisition it was possible for the Holy Office to check it by referring to the local book of baptisms. Tellingly, of the fifty-two processi that took place in our period, thirty-three (64%) were conducted against Jews who lived outside the city, in rural areas or small towns such as Carpi, Finale, Formigine, Marano, Nonantola, San Felice, Soliera, Spezzano, Spilamberto and Vignola. Investigations opened with the delation usually of Christians before local Inquisitorial vicars, who then passed their reports to the Holy Office in Modena. It was in these small Jewish communities that individual families ignored the strict regulations regarding Christian service, and often pleaded before Inquisitorial vicars ignorance of restrictions or Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 108 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES a need for licences. In Finale, the Inquisitorial Rector, Don Baldassarre Passerini, found in 1623 that there was a standard salary for Christians who served Jews in the town of seven bolognini if servants worked in the houses on Fridays and Saturdays, and five bolognini if they served but also ate in the Jews’ homes.148 Twentyfour of the fifty-two processi (46%) ended without a conviction, either because the investigation was dropped or because the Jew was found to be employing servants according to the regulations sanctioned by the duke and the Inquisition. However, of the thirty-three processi against Jews in the rural areas or small towns, seventeen (51%) ended with punishments of the Jews for breach of regulations, compared to six (32%) of the nineteen trials of Jews living in Modena. The investigations of Jews in the capital were often instigated by the watchful eyes of spies or Inquisitorial officers who from the 1620s patrolled Jewish homes, making random visits to Jews’ houses. In January 1620 the Jew Alleluia was caught by Renaldo Romagnolo, an Inquisitorial officer, employing Catherina, a Christian servant in his house. In November of the same year, another Inquisitorial officer, Vincenzio Felloni, who delated Moise and Ventura Orsi, testified during his delation that he had found another eight Jews whom he knew hired Christians in their homes in Modena.149 In 1622, the processo against Angelo Resignari was initiated by an unnamed Inquisitorial officer who discovered that Anna de Renocchio was working in a Jewish household as well as eating there without a licence. De Renocchio told Inquisitor Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza that the officer had instructed her to confess her employment to the Inquisition. She had immediately complied.150 As the Inquisition’s workforce and influence grew during the 1620s, spies watched Jewish households more attentively, paying more frequent visits. There was clearly an assumption that if any Christian was seen carrying something out of a Jew’s house, he or she was probably working in the household. In 1645, a Jew, Rulizza, was tried for employing Christian servants because one Christian had seen another leaving the Jew’s house in the ghetto carrying a bucket of water.151 Punishments for this offence were discretionary, varying from fines of 10 to 100 scudi, to public shaming and sentences of up to six months’ imprisonment. In 1619, David, a Jew of Maranello, a small town 18 kilometres southwest of Modena, was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment for employing a Christian servant without an Inquisitorial licence, who had also eaten and drunk, as well as stayed overnight, in his house.152 In 1629, Moisè de Castelfranco and Mattesciani Levi also found guilty of hiring Christians in their homes on the Sabbath and festivals without licences, were able to pay fines and so requested that their sentences of a four-month imprisonment be commuted to a fine.153 In 1622, Angelo Resignari, a 65–year-old poor Jew living in Modena, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for failing to secure a licence for his Christian servant, and for allowing the servant’s son, a young Christian boy of Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 109 sixteen, to enter his house and carry out household tasks in place of his mother when she was sick.154 This was a particularly harsh punishment for an old man unable to pay a fine. In 1628, Josef Arezzio, who had lied to his Christian servant and told her that he held a licence for her to serve him, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.155 These processi often impeached more than one offender, and some Jews were prosecuted on more than one occasion. For example, three Jews – Josef Arezzio, Simone Sanguinetti and Benedetto Levi – were tried on two separate occasions for hiring servants, which confirms their failure to take Inquisitorial prosecution seriously.156 Of those prosecuted, eighty were men and nineteen were women, padrone who from the 1620s began to face investigation, imprisonment and punishment themselves for hiring servants, seen no longer as passive players in the household but as responsible for allocating duties and working schedules for their servants. Ventura Orsi was the first women to be prosecuted by the Inquisition, in 1620. Although she was not imprisoned during her trial she was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with her husband for employing an under-age Christian servant without a licence. Her sentence and that of her husband were commuted to a fine of 50 lire. In 1633 Mariana Sanguinetti was imprisoned during her investigation and was given a punishment of six months’ house arrest for employing Joanna Lavazza, an under-age servant, who for her part was publicly shamed before the San Domenico church in Modena.157 As the seventeenth century progressed, Christian servants began to be named on the cover of the trial pamphlets, seen not just as innocent women and men led astray, but as guilty parties who had committed an offence themselves.158 Many more Christian women were arraigned than men. As with wetnurses, these servants faced increasing spiritual penances and even imprisonment during investigation and punishment for failing to check the Jews’ licences and not refraining from eating and socializing in the Jews’ households. In 1622, Alessandro Spezzano was imprisoned during the interrogation against his master, Giuseppe Soliani, a Jewish banker, and received a series of penances himself for eating in the Jew’s home. He was ordered to stand in front of the church with an inscription of his offence tied around his neck.159 In 1637, Cesare Magnamini was even tortured during the investigation of his close contact with his master Abramino Sacerdote, but then released without punishment.160 The Inquisition’s intention was pedagogic, to instil in the Catholic community an understanding that such intimate contact behind closed doors was sinful and reprehensible, but there were also moments when the Holy Office went beyond the normal prohibitions, forcing Jews to stop employing Christians of any kind and on any terms. At the end of many processi, Jewish offenders were warned that they should not hire any Christians again. When in 1624 Inquisitor Reghezza carried out an investigation into the employment of Christian Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 110 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES servants by the four Jewish families living in Spilamberto, he barred the ten Christian servants involved from returning to their Jewish masters under any circumstance even though some of these women were above the age of 45 and had never eaten in the Jews’ households.161 Contact between these Christian servants and their Jewish employers was fundamentally different from that of wetnurses.The wetnurse provided an exclusive service and was paid well for it, as opposed to Christian domestic servants who at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Modena were no longer co-resident professional servants but older poor men or women, fogarole as they were called, desperately looking for additional earnings, and so willing to serve in Jewish households.162 The women were often widows who were forced to return to service, and frequently served more than one Jewish master.163 Maria di Verici, a widow aged forty-seven, and the servant of Elia Malachim, told the Inquisitor in 1622 that if she did not work for the six Jewish families she served, she would ‘starve to death’.164 When they could these women accepted the additional food that their Jewish employers gave them, as long as these actions could be hidden from Inquisitorial eyes. Although in 1622 Anna had only worked for Angelo Resignani for a period of eight months, some women worked for much longer periods in the same Jewish households, which indicates that they had found favourable terms of employment and reasonable masters. Lucia Righi, who served Gabriele Carpi in Modena, admitted to the Inquisitor in 1620 that she had already worked for him for three years, and in 1621 Santa Schedoni testified that she had worked for David de Arezzio for five years.165 Outside the city, Jews who hired Christians admitted in their testimonies that they had employed Christians for even longer periods. In 1628 Caterina Bianchi of Formigine told the Inquisitor that she had served the Jew Josef Arezzio for a period of ten years.166 That the situation of Christian servants differed outside the capital is clear. Here Jews more readily used Christian peasants, both men and women, to aid them in their daily routines and tasks. The distribution of Christian servants varied among these households and the average number of servants was closely linked to the wealth or social status of the head of household. Standing before Inquisitor Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza, Leone Ravenna of Carpi in 1620 sang the praises of his fattore Antonio Barbiano, whose practical intelligence had enabled him to settle all the credit payments of his late father, Salomone Ravenna, within one month of his death.167 Whether these servants signed up for multiple years of service or were contracted on a monthly or yearly basis is still not clear. In 1630, Benedetto Levi, an established banker in Formigine, had five Christian servants working for him – probably to increase the reputation and splendour of his household – and one in particular, Alfonso Molino, had held the position of official steward (fattore di campagna) for two years.168 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 111 The duties of Christian female servants were much the same whether they worked in the city or in the countryside. In the city, the Christian women in general did domestic tasks within the household, sweeping the floors, emptying the chamber pots, cleaning the brass and copper utensils in the canal, making the beds and warming them at night, helping with the cooking and in particular making bread, which was baked in a bread oven next to the open fire in the kitchen. One Christian servant, Saneta the daughter of Bartholomeo de Tassoni, told the Inquisitor in 1622, that she also served her master, the Jewish banker Giuseppe Soliani, at his table.169 Depending on the financial resources of the Jews, some preferred their servants to be available for the whole of the Sabbath. They were expected to arrive at sunset on Friday evenings, stay a few hours to help prepare and clear away the Sabbath meal, and then return again on the Saturday morning, to serve the Jews for the whole day in the household.170 On other occasions during the week they would come to sweep the house, make the beds and wash dishes. There is no suggestion that these women were expected to exclusively care for the children or serve as companions for their mistresses as Christian servants did in Christian households, although on occasion these women took care of the children for a few hours and were asked to escort them to the local synagogue.171 Outside the city, Christian women did the same type of domestic work but tasks sometimes included sweeping the yard and clearing it of dung. Male servants were obviously expected to perform the most strenuous tasks – Alfonso Molino’s included carrying timber and water, bringing firewood to burn, washing screens with a bucket, and feeding the geese and tending to the horses.172 It is difficult to discern the real extent of contact between Jewish master and Christian servant. Testimonies seem to suggest a pattern of contact based on propriety, acceptance and respect, but also the great dependence that the Jews had on their Christian servants. In Alleluia of Carpi’s interrogation, the Jew described his servant as ‘managing’ his whole household, confirming an integral relationship and frequent contact.173 There is no indication in the processi that the Jews of Modena ate with their servants. Outside the city, however, the situation was different. Christian servants ate the food that they helped prepare for the Jews, although they tried to convince the Inquisition that it was never at the same table.174 These Christian servants received a variety of food including meat, bread, soup and wine.175 Although there is no mention of a written contract between servant and master, the testimonies indicate that the servants shared with their masters an understanding that if they served the Jews continually and competently, they would be paid accordingly and treated well.176 Occasionally, servants reveal that they had done additional services to aid their masters. Giovanna Varra, the servant of Simone Sanguinetti of Spilamberto, admitted in 1629 that she had Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 112 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES stayed in the Jew’s house when one of his children was sick, and also during the time when his wife had given birth.177 Nor is there any hint of animosity between the two or any suggestion that Christian servants disliked working for the Jews or felt poorly treated. When, in 1636, Matteo Donato came to denounce himself to the Holy Office for hiring Christians, he argued that he had been in the wrong and the guilt rested on his shoulders and not the Christians whom he had hired. He made a good case to explain that he had hired two Christians because he had an infirm child and desperately needed additional pairs of hands to help him maintain his business of manufacturing acquavita.178 In discussing Christian domestic service in Jewish households, mention must be made of Christian laundresses and those Christians who assisted Jews in their shops. In Modena, Christian women were allowed to launder the clothes of Jews as long as they acquired licences to do so. But in 1624, when Inquisitor Reghezza carried out an investigation into the employment of Christian servants by Jews in Spilamberto, he uncovered the recurring practice of Jews hiring Christian laundresses who would come especially to the Jews’ homes every couple of months and stay for a period of two or three days to wash their linens and clothes. The laundry would be done in one room in the Jews’ home, where the laundresses would also be fed. In Ferrara the situation was, as Adriano Prosperi has shown, better controlled by both the bishop and the Inquisition. These women were provided with licences to wash the clothes of Jews as long as they were ‘honest women and of good reputation’.179 Laundresses had to fetch the bundles of dirty clothes and return the freshly laundered ones to the doorstep of the Jews’ houses, but were forbidden under any circumstances to enter their homes. Nor were they allowed to collect or return clothes on Christian festivals. Christians who were employed to work in the shops of Jews usually carried out domestic work there too.180 In 1629, a trial of Biondi Sanguinetti of Spilamberto revealed that the Jewish banker was employing Lorena Lamboni to sweep the floor and dust the surfaces of the furniture in his bank.181 Five years earlier, in 1624, it was uncovered that an under-age Ruggiero Mariani had continued to work in the shop of Mosè Sacerdote even though he was forbidden. Mosè argued that Mariani came against his will and there was nothing he could personally do to stop him. Mariani was given a punishment of public shaming and the Jew was absolved with a warning not to allow the Christian to continue working in his shop.182 A much more serious case was uncovered in 1632 when fifty Christians were discovered working as day labourers in a silk-spinning workshop in Spilamberto, a large industrial concentration by seventeenth-century standards.183 These Christians had been working for Simone Sanguinetti, a banker in Spilamberto and an important Jewish entrepreneur, who had bought a silk-spinning wheel workshop from a Marchese proprietor and nobleman, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 113 Baldassarre Rangoni, who after the Great Plague of 1630–31 had run out of money. Sanguinetti had probably left the workshop in Rangoni’s name to avoid publicising the fact that he was the new owner.184 When this activity was discovered, a priest of Spilamberto, Filippo Mossa, testified that not only had Simone Sanguinetti and his sons Alessandro, Raffaele and Buonaiuto run the workshop, but there was an image of the Madonna painted on the inside wall of the work room which had been covered over, to the disgust of his workers.185 Interrogations soon revealed that the Jew and his sons had in fact little direct contact with the Christian workers, since these workers were being managed by two Christian managers, Domenico Bonavi and Leonardo Costantini.186 Inquisitor Tinti immediately wrote to the Congregation of the Holy Office to request instructions on how to proceed, and on 18 December 1632 the Cardinals replied that the Inquisitor should pursue the matter with rigour.187 On 7 February 1633, after a full trial, Simone Sanguinetti was prohibited from employing any Christian spinners in the future, under the threat of a 50 scudi fine, and was forced to pay a fine of 60 scudi as punishment. Despite these rulings, the Inquisition did not have the power to close down an enterprise that was so important to the national economy. In 1644, Tinti re-opened the case, after evidence was adduced that Alessandro de Sanguinetti had prevented Christian workers from saying their prayers and had threatened to beat them. This time Alessandro was tortured, but then released without punishment. Christian testimonies in this processo vary and some are indeed full of resentment towards the Jewish proprietors, particularly Alessandro, who they argued prevented them carrying out their Christian duties. Other Christians employed by Jews included musicians who entertained guests at family celebrations or taught Jewish children instruments or dance despite ducal prohibitions, and gravediggers who had transported Jewish corpses on donkeys to the Jewish cemetery especially during the plague.188 In processi against Jews for hiring Christian musicians, it was often the musicians who were interrogated more intensely and punished before their Jewish employers, as was Francisco Maria, a priest of Carpi in 1618 who had led a group of Christian musicians into the home of Leone Ravà for the celebration of his son Moise Aron’s wedding two years earlier.189 Jews had continually used Christian servants and wetnurses in the late medieval and early modern period in Italy. It was a practice copied and adapted from their Christian neighbours, whose servants, the Jews saw, made their lives noticeably easier. This practice linked these servants to their masters, primarily through an economic arrangement which exchanged goods and services, but also in a social encounter that seemed to be neither naturally suspicious nor mutually hostile. But by the beginning of the seventeenth century competing ducal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions – the ducal court, the episcopal court and Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 114 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES the Inquisition – whose rules regarding the employment of Christian wetnurses and servants differed slightly, boded ill for the Jews caught in between. Although at first the Inquisition lacked authority to prohibit Jews employing Christian wetnurses or servants, it soon began to prosecute and punish them when it found they were breaking regulations sanctioned by the duke, or when they had failed to obtain Inquisitorial licences or if Christian servants had not upheld their religious duties. Throughout the seventeenth century, even after the establishment and their enclosure in the ghetto in 1638, Jews were frequently tried by the Inquisition for employing Christians and flouting the Inquisition’s rulings. Despite impoverishment and constraint within the ghetto walls, Jews continued to need these fogarole, and were unwilling to do without them. It can probably be deduced that the Jews’ employment of Christian wetnurses declined after ghettoization, forcing even the wealthier Jewish women to suckle their own children, find Jewish wetnurses or resolve to have their children sent away during the period of nursing to the home of their Christian wetnurses, a practice which troubled the Inquisition far less. The Inquisition eventually learned to impose its demands with greater effect, and by 1728 demanded that the massari of the Jewish community provide lists and details of all Jewish families who hired Christian servants as well as the names, ages and addresses of the Christian women who served them.190 Interestingly enough, the youngest Christian woman to work for Jews was Pasqua Sallino, who in 1771 was noted as being only seventeen years old. Hence, despite its opposition in principle and its many edicts on the subject, the Inquisition never succeeded in abolishing, or enforcing all its restrictions on, the Jews’ employment of Christian servants. Notes 1 See Solomon Grayzel, ‘Jews and Roman Law’, Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1968), 95–117. For later references to this prohibition, see Amnon Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 558. 2 See Kenneth R. Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Christian Encounter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 13 and Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century, vol. I (New York: Hermon Press, 1966), p. 107. 3 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews. In 1179 Pope Alexander III ordered that: ‘Jews are not permitted to have Christian servants in their homes, either under pretext of rearing their children, or for domestic service, or for any other reason whatsoever, but that those who presume to live with them shall be excommunicated, yet they do not hesitate to have Christian servants and nurses, with whom, at times, they work such abominations as are more fitting that you should punish than proper that we should specify.’ 4 The only evidence I have found of Jewish servants working in Christian households is in ASMoFIP 44 f.3 and in Balletti’s Gli Ebrei, p. 191. In this Inquisitorial processo against the Christian, Giovanni Antonio Balugani of Modena in 1615 was accused of dissuading Israel, a Jewish servant boy, from being baptized. Israel is reported to have made the fire in the home of the Christian Joannes de Jacobo. The young Jewish servant was imprisoned and later baptized on 25 March 1615 in the Church of San Domenico. Balletti mentions the Jewess Allegra Diena, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 115 who served in the home of Isabella d’Este and, through persuasion by her padrona, was also led to the baptism font. Stefanie Siegmund discusses the topic of Jewish servants in Christian houses in The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 296. She claims that Christians often hired Jews as servants in their households in Florence prior to ghettoization but not wetnurses. Friedberg, Corpus, X.5,6,13. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. I, p. 115. Stow, Jewish Dogs, p. 135. Ibid. p. 143. See Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999) and Robert Stacey, ‘From Ritual Crucifixion to Host Desecration: Jews and the Body of Christ’, Jewish History 12/1 (1998), 11–28. See Grayzel, Church and the Jews, vol. II, p. 158 (doc.50). Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc.614. See Bullarium Diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum Taurinensis editio locupletior facta collection novissima plurium brevium, epistolarum, decretorum actorumque S. Sedis a S. Leone Magno, usque ad praesens cura et studio collegii adlecti Romae virorum (Waltham, MA: Omnisys Corp., 1993), vol.VI, pp. 498–500. Clause 4 stated: ‘And they [the Jews] shall not have nurses or serving women or any other Christians serving them, of whatever sex. Nor shall they have their children suckled or reared by Christian women.’ Translated by Bonfil in Jewish Life, p. 67. For a transcription and full translation of Cum nimis see Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 291–8. See Gregory XIII’s bull Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas, which is reprinted in Bullarium, vol. VIII, pp. 378–80, clause 11. The term in casa, used by Christine Klapisch-Zuber, refers to a wetnurse who resided in her employer’s home. See Christine Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Blood Parents and Milk Parents: Wetnursing in Florence 1300–1530’, in Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1985), pp. 132–63, p. 143, and ‘Women Servants in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, in Barbara A. Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 56–80. See also Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 135. Baumgarten believes that this practice was also maintained in the medieval period. There was no prohibition in the Jews’ condotte or charters on hiring servants or wetnurses. In other Italian Jewish communities, particularly Piedmont, a series of ducal charters granted the local Jews permission to employ Christian wetnurses. See Renata Segre, The Jews in Piedmont (Jerusalem: Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanitites, 1986–90), 3 vols, docs 333, 1335, 1455, 1519, 1563. In Umbria, there is one document from 1517, which notes the employment of a Jewish wetnurse by a family in Perugia. See Ariel Toaff, The Jews of Umbria (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993) vol. I, 1245–1435, vol. III, doc 2308. Here the wetnurse nursed the Jewish child for a period of fourteen months. Benjamin Ravid, ‘A Tale of Three Cities and their Raison d’Etat: Ancona, Venice, Livorno, and the Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century’, Mediterranean Historical Review 4/2 ( 1991), 138–162, 157. See also Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc. 1335, where the Jews of Turin are granted permission to hire Christian wetnurses and servants for the duration of their new charter. This is a reference to the usage of Christian midwives. On the use of Christian midwives in medieval Germany and France see the work of Baumgarten, Mothers, pp. 43–54. ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. The edict of Alfonso II, of 19 March 1570. Although the edict does not mention wetnurses, one should assume that they were included in the general term ‘servant’. ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. The edict of Alfonso II, of 19 March 1570. See for example ASMoFICH 245 f.52. Here Benedetto Levi admitted openly that a Christian man worked in his house carrying wood and water into his house. See also ASMoFIP 62 f.10, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 116 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES against Angelino, who also hired a young Christian. 24 ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1629–1638, busta 254, letter of 10 December 1633 to the Signor Cardinal of Sant’Onofrio. 25 Meaning three hours after sunset. Italian time worked on two twelve-hour stints, starting approximately at six in the morning depending on when the sun rose. 26 Meaning one hour after sunset. 27 ASMoAME busta 14. 28 ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, Letter of the Inquisitor to Cardinal Millino, 18 September 1620.The Inquisitor of Modena wrote to Cardinal Millino that the ministers of the Duke had been pressurized to allow the Jews to be served by Christians ‘only in the lighting of fires for the sabbath’. 29 Ibid., Lettere dell’Inquisizione di Modena 30 Ottobre, 1621. There is even one processo conducted by the Ducale Camerale, against David Modena, a banker in Nonantola for hiring a Christian servant and launderess who was under the age of 45. See ASMoAME Processi, 1622, busta 4. 30 ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295. Risposta a S.A.S. del 6 Nov 1621 from Rome. See also ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma, busta 253, 23 January 1621, the Inquisitor wrote to Cardinal Millino that ‘this remains contrary to the sacred canons and constitutions’. 31 ASMoFIP 22 f.27. 32 ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, Letter of 10 December 1633 to Signor Cardinal St Onofrio: ‘I complained to the bishop and the bishop spoke to the Duke and the edict is no longer enforced.’ 33 See the processi against Calman de Sanguinetti and Abraham de Sacerdote in ASMoFIP 15, f.6, in 1601. The testimonies of the Jews show an understanding of the limited interaction allowed between Jew and Christian during Holy Week and Easter, even though ironically Sanguinetti’s wetnurse was living in Calman’s house at this time. They both stressed that their wetnurses had received the Eucharist. See ASMoFIP 15, f.6 (4r–v and 7r) . The wetnurses also reported to the Inquisitor that they had returned to their own homes to eat the customary Easter meal. 34 See ASMoFICH 247 f.24. In this fascicle in which three Jewish couples were tried for hiring Christian wetnurses, the licences that they held from the Inquisition to do this were attached to the back of the trial fascicle. 35 This included the hiring of Christian music teachers in Jewish households. See the trial of Benedetto Levi, a banker in Finale, whose music teacher, Francisco Grappo, told the Inquisitor that he had his own licence. ASMoFICH 245 f.52 1630 (9r). 36 In the processo against Elia Melachim in 1622, ASMoFIP 62 f.24, the Christian servant Maria di Verici argued that she herself had procured a licence from the Signor Podestà in the Duke’s court. I was not able to find any record of these licences in the ducal archive. The ASMoAME filza 23/B had some pleas and requests from Jews to the Duke to come to their aid regarding imprisonment and torture but no lists of licences procured. 37 It is important to note that in one of the wetnursing trials of Jews between 1598 and 1638, one Inquisitorial consultore, the Dominican archdeacon, Horatio Blanco, argued that the Papal bull, Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas, had not been sufficiently published in Modena, and it was unfair to prosecute Jews for this matter without clearer instructions as to the prohibitions. See ASMoFIP 15, f.6 (27v). 38 See Kalak, Storia della Chiesa, pp. 360–1, for a copy of an edict issued by Bishop Pellegrino Bertacchi on 9 October 1610, demanding that Jews who hired Christian wetnurses out of necessity needed to acquire a licence from the episcopal court. 39 ASMoFICH 245 f.35, 27 January 1627. He told the Inquisitor: ‘I asked for a licence from the Inquisitor, but since he did not want to give it to me, I asked the episcopal vicar, and he gave me one.’ 40 See ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (18r). See also ASMoFICH 247 f.32. In 1638 a panicked Michello Angelis,Tinti’s vicar general, complained to Tinti that local Jews had approached him asking for licences to allow Christians to make their unleavened bread on Passover, since neighbouring Jews in Mirandola had secured such licences from the Inquisitor in Reggio. To the relief of the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 117 Inquisitor this proved to be nothing but a baseless rumour. 41 ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (8r). ‘The vicar said that he would allow a wetnurse in the house out of necessity and on several other occasions that I asked him, he granted me a licence.’ 42 ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (19r). 43 In order to escape the Lenten prohibition on eating meat, Christians had to be equipped with a special ecclesiastical licence on medical grounds. For the importance attached to this prohibition see the case of the Venetian mercer Giovanni Zonca in 1582, see Valerio Rossato, ‘Religione e moralità in un merciaio veneziano del Cinquecento’, Studi Veneziani new series 13 (1987): 204–31, 204–5, 208–9, 212–13, 228–31. Another case is found in Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI (1582–85) pp. 71–9, when several local Christian musicians attended a wedding in the house of Cervo, a Jewish banker in Capodistria, during Lent. 44 ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (11v). 45 The Christian wetnurses themselves knew that episcopal licences were necessary so that they could work. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (2v) and (4v). 46 The Inquisitors always asked the Christian servants if they had a licence, and these women often responded that they had left it in the hands of the Jew to secure it. See ASMoFICH 245 f.42, the processo of Josef Arezzio, Jew of Formigine, and his son Benjamin, for hiring Christians servants. On 3 June 1628, the Christian servant Caterina Bianchi was asked if she knew if the Jew had secured a licence for her. She responded: ‘My husband said to me that the Jew had a licence and that if someone annoyed us, the Jews said he would tell them to get lost’ (‘Mio marito mi disse che l’hebreo aveva licenza e che se qualcuno ci molestera, l’ebreo disse di andargli inanzi con un par d’ovi’). Antonia and Leonora, two Christian wetnurses who worked in Sacerdote and Sanguinetti’s houses respectively, signed with a cross at the end of their interrogations, because, as the notary wrote, they were illiterate. On illiteracy of servants, see Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 112. 47 ASMoFICH 244 f.3 Trial of Isaaco de Modena 1600. 48 ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (5r). 49 Grazia Biondi, ‘Le Lettere’, p. 101. 50 See Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998); Valerie Fildes, Breast, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986); Idem, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York: B. Blackwell, 1988); Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London and NewYork: Longman, 1995); Linda A. Pollack, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Kirsten Hastrup, ‘A Question of Reason: Breastfeeding Patterns in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Iceland’, in Vanessa Maher (ed.), Anthropology of Breastfeeding, Natural Law or Social Construct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 91–108; Linda Campbell, ‘Wetnurses in Early Modern England: Some Evidence from the Townshend Archive’, Medical History 33 (1989), 360–70; David Kertzer, ‘Syphilis, Foundlings, and Wetnurses in Nineteenth Century Italy’, Journal of Social History 32/3 (Spring, 1999), 589–602; James R. Lehning, ‘Family Life and Wetnursing in a French Village’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12/4 (Spring, 1982), 645–56; Mary Lindemann, ‘Love for Hire: The Regulation of the Wet-Nursing Business in Eighteenth-Century Hamburg’, Journal of Family History 6 (1981), 379–95; Marylynn Salmon, ‘The Cultural Significance of Breastfeeding and Infant Care in Early Modern England and America’, Journal of Social History 28/2 (Winter, 1994), 247–69. 51 See Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Blood Parents’; James Bruce Ross’, ‘The Middle-Class Child in Urban Italy, Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century’, in Lloyd deMause (ed.), The History of Childhood (New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1974), pp. 183–228; Sandra Cavallo, ‘Strategie politiche familiari intorno al baliatico. Il monopolio dei bambini abbandonati nel Canavese tra Sei a Setticento’, Quaderni Storici 53/a/18 (1983), 391–420; Giuliano Pinto, ‘Personale, balie, e salariati dell’ospedale di San Gallo’, Ricerche Storiche 2 (1974), 113–68; Richard C. Trexler, ‘The Foundlings of Florence, 1395–1455’, History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1973), 259–84; Giuliana Albini, ‘I bambini nella società lombarda del Quattrocento: una realtà ignorata o protetta?’, La Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 118 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Famiglia e la vita quotidiana in Europa dal ’400 al ’600 (Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali. Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1986), 23–50; Leah L. Otis, ‘Municipal Wet Nurses in Fifteenth Century Montpellier’, in Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, pp. 83–113. See also Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). See Sarah F. Matthews Grieco, ‘Breastfeeding, Wet Nursing and Infant Mortality in Europe (1400–1800)’, in Sarah F. Matthews Grieco and Carlo A. Corsini (eds), Historical Perspectives on Breastfeeding (Florence: UNICEF International Child Development Centre 1991), 39–49. See Romano, Housecraft, p. 214 for a specific case of when a certain wetnurse, Madalena Trentina, was prosecuted in Venice by the Censori in 1579 for having sex during her term of contract. Unfortunately this practice sometimes proved fatal. See Yalom, History, p. 93, who notes that there was an extremely high infant mortality rate found in countries where infants were sent to be nursed in the homes of wetnurses. I thank Elisheva Baumgarten for showing me these various wetnursing texts in Jewish sources. See Baumgarten, Mothers, pp. 122–5. See the introduction by Pier Paolo Viazzo in Grieco and Corsini, Historical Perspectives, p. 24. See Baumgarten, Mothers. Ibid., pp. 133–44. See my review of Baumgarten’s book in Jewish History 20/3–4 (December 2006), 381–3. See Simonsohn’s Apostolic See, docs. 1319, 1333, 1423, 1545, 1576, 1577, 1587, 1740, 1834, 1987, 2707. Siegmund, The Medici, p. 325. Julia R. Lieberman ‘Between Tradition and Modernity: The Sephardim of Livorno’, in Stanislao G. Pugliese (ed.), The Most Ancient of Minorities: The Jews of Italy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), pp. 67–76. See for example ASMoFIP 17 f.8. When in 1601 Allegra, the wife of Abraam de Vita, a banker, is accused of practicing astrology, her delator, Julia Maola de Centro, accused her also of using the services of Caterina Levitana, a Christian wetnurse. See also ASMoFICH 244 f.27. In the processo against David Arezzo for hiring Christian servants, in 1621, testimony by Julia Paganella, a Christian servant confirmed that in the past the Jew had hired a Christian wetnurse who had slept in the Jew’s home. The investigation was dropped, and the Jew was not interrogated. ASMoFICH 244 f.3. The Sanguinetti family had arrived in Modena from Germany in 1560, when the brothers Simone, Emanuele, Moise and Calman de Sanguinetti managed a feneratizio (a loan bank). Before the establishment of the ghetto in 1638, the Sanguinetti owned all the buildings in Strada Cervetta in the area of San Bartolomeo at the centre of the city, nicknamed at that time Contrada Sanguinetti, the Sanguinetti quarter. They lived and worked in this area, as well as establishing two synagogues which were the main cultural centres for the Ashkenazi Jews and a private school. See Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 66–70, and Biondi’, La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 69. Julia Maola offered her services as a spy to the Modenese Inquisition after being tried for witchcraft. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 69. See also ASMoFI Miscellanae 1600–1609, busta 294. Here, in fact, the Inquisitor wrote a note in 1604 that Maola’s depositions were not to be trusted. The actual text stated: ‘nothing or very little is to be believed in the deposition of the prostitute Julia Maola. In fact this woman spontaneously came to serve the Holy Office as a secret delator and even though she said something true in her accusation, nonetheless she introduced many false things in the hope of earning money. For this reason the Inquisitor must be diligent and careful not to be deceived by her.’ Maola also denounced Allegra, wife of Abraam de Vita, for divination on 16 September 1601. See ASMoFIP 17 f.8. See ASMoFIP 15, f.6. His trial is recorded on 26 double pages of parchment. ASMoFIP 15, f.6 (22v–22r). The sentence reads: ‘Since you, Calman de Sanguinetti, a Jew of Modena, have, against the statutes of the holy Canons and the decrees of various supreme Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 119 pontiffs, and particularly against the letter and intent of the Bull of Pope Gregory XIII of happy memory, whose first words are Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas [The ancient wickedness of the Jews], kept in your house for the space of four months night and day one Antonia of Nonantola, a Christian wetnurse, so that she might suckle your own son, and especially on the day and night of the Easter Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, on which day the nurse had received holy communion, and for the whole of Holy Week during which the mysteries of the Passion of Our Lord are celebrated, as you have confessed in these proceedings [trying to mitigate] your crime with excuses, it is our wish to inflict on you punishment suited to the crime you have committed both so that you should henceforth take care and as an example to others.’ See ASMoFIP 15 f.6. His trial is recorded on eleven double pages of parchment. These two trials are in the same fascicle. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (24v–24r). See Chapter 1, page 29. See Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. I, p. 25. This was the punishment demanded by canon law for serving a Jewish master in casa. ASMoFICH 246 f.8. ASMoFICH 247 f.24. When looking for Christian wetnurses, Jews probably tried to employ Christian wetnurses who had already served fellow Jews. It was because of a good recommendation that Juliana received from Salomone and Isotta Sacerdote that she moved after a year of nursing to suckling the infant of Leone and Allegra Poggetti. ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (9v): Isotta reported in her interrogation: ‘I know that Poggetti came to me to ask me if she was a good wetnurse and I said yes.’ These processions were organised by the local company or confraternity of the Rosary, in which people walked through the streets reciting the Rosary or singing it in unison. Rosary companies, whose members made a practice of saying the Rosary at regular intervals, were first introduced into Italy about 1480. I thank Brian Pullan for this reference. ASMoFIP 98 f.10. See Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Blood Parents’, p. 159. ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (6v). See ASMoFIP 83 f.16 (16v) the processo against Simone Sanguinetti, the wealthy banker living in Modena in 1629 for allowing his Christian servant to bring his children into the synagogue. When his wife Stella was interrogated, she told the Inquisitor that she was in fact nursing her own child. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (5r). It is interesting to note that even though Laura was pregnant, she still remained in the Jew’s house. Dennis Romano, ‘The Regulation of Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice’, Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991), 661–80, p. 674, notes that in Venice wetnurses who lost their milk were often in debt to their masters and had to stay in service and work as a regular maid until the debt was paid. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (4r). ASMoFIP 98 f.10. Giovanna de Menopi’s testimony: (‘io sono povera donna et procura di quadagnarmi il vivere in qualche modo’). ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (3v). The notary notes this fact at the end of Leonora’s interrogation and at the end of Antonia’s interrogation (4r). For Giovanna’s age see ASMoFICH 244 f.3; for Margherita’s see ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (2v) and for Juliana’s see ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (14v). Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, p. 139. See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 203–4. Balletti, Gli Ebrei, pp. 203–4. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (9v) ‘for this reason sometimes the baby stayed in her house’. Moreover, according to one interpretation of Jewish law which may have been standard, Jewish children could only be nursed by Christian wetnurses in the Jews’ homes. A thirteenth-century text of Yaacov Chazan called ‘The Tree of Life’, stated that a Jewish child could only be nursed in Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 120 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES a Jewish house because of the fear that the Christian would kill the child in her own house: ‘A non-Jewish woman who delivers a Jewish woman’s baby and nurses the baby in the house of the Jewish woman will not kill the baby. And it seems to be the opinion of Rabbi Baruch Dafilo even if there is no Jewish presence in the house, as long as there is a Jewish presence in the city, she can nurse. But if all the Jews have left the city, it is forbidden.’ ‫ ונראה לרבנו ברוך דאפילו אין ישראל‬.‫ שלא הרג‬,‫)’ונכרית מילדת בת ישראל ומניקה בנה ברשותה‬ ’.‫ אבל אם הלכו כל היהודים חוץ לעיר אסור‬,‫בבית אם יש בעיר בית ישראל או יוצא ונכנס מותר‬ ‫ הלכות עבודה זרה‬,‫ תשכ’’ד‬,‫ כרך ב’ ירושלים‬,‫ בעריכת ישראל ברודי‬,‫ עץ חיים‬,‫ ר’ יעקב חזן‬:‫ראו‬ (.‫ עמ’ של’א‬,‫ פרק ד‬,‫וגרים‬ Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc. 1286, 1287 and 1288. See Ariel Toaff, Love,Work, and Death, Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, trans. Judith Landry (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), p. 249. See Segre, Jews of Piedmont, doc. 2348. See ASMoFICH 244 f.3, Giovanna confirms in her testimony that she had a one-year-old daughter whom she was also nursing. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Blood Parents’, p. 137. See Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 64. Romano, Housecraft, p. 200. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (8v). See also ASMoFICH 244 f.3, trial of Isaaco de Modena, who told the Inquisitor that he had a household of thirteen people including his sons, a daughter-in-law, servants, and a young Christian wetnurse. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (7r). On the cost of employing Christian wetnurses, see Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Women Servants’, p. 61; Otis, ‘Municipal Wetnurses’, p. 88. Kenneth Stow also argues that Jewish wetnurse salaries in 1554 were competitive with if not higher than those of men working in manual trades. See Stow, Jews in Rome, vol. II, doc. 1510. ASMoFICH 247 f.24. See Stella’s testimony (7v and 11r). Ibid. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (12r). See Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 291–8. Clause 11. ‘Nor may they permit the Christian poor (or any other Christian for that matter) to address them as master.’ ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (5r) Such large Jewish families do not seem to be the norm in other Italian cities. Stow in Jews in Rome, vol. I, p. xviii. On the size of families and the number of servants employed in Christian households in early modern Italy, see Giovanna Da Molin, ‘Family Forms and Domestic Service in Southern Italy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’, Journal of Family History 15 (1990), 503–527, 517. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (5r): Calman told the Inquisitor: ‘The other I believe is called Antonia or Francesca. I don’t know because I usually call them “wetnurse” and not by their name.’ (25v–25r) Abraham stated: ‘I do not know the name of the said wetnurse although she is the wife of one who is called Sabbione.’ ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (6r) Calman’s interrogation. Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 44. Marylynn Salmon, ‘The Cultural Significance of Breastfeeding’, p. 256, notes that medical literature of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries maintained that infants should be fed on demand, initially in small amounts. On childhood illnesses see Miriam Slater, Family Life in Seventeenth Century England:TheVerneys of Claydon House (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 111, 117, 127. See also Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World, p. 133. ASMoFICH 244 f.3, ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (7r–8v) and (29r). ASMoFICH 244 f.3. ASMoFIP 15, f.6 (6v) ‘she slept separately, with the baby’. Ibid. (11r). Ibid. (12v). Females in domestic service were generally considered vulnerable to sexual abuse, especially if they were naive young girls from the countryside leaving their families for the first time. The culprits were not necessarily the heads of the household – they could have been the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 121 sons of the house, adolescents getting their first sexual experiences with maidservants, or fellow servants. Beatrice Gottlieb believes that sexual intimacy between master and servant in any historical period was not common. See Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World, p. 42. However, Ariel Toaff notes one case of sexual intimacy between master and servant in Love, p. 8. The actual case is also cited in Toaff, History, doc. 1487. Euride Fregni argues that, in eighteenth-century Modena, there were cases of mutual relations between Christian servants and Jewish masters. See Fregni, ‘La Comunità’, p. 310. Howard Adelman provides other cases of Jews having sex with Christian maids in ‘Servants and Sexuality: Seduction, Surrogacy and Rape: Some Observations Concerning Class, Gender and Race in Early Modern Italy Jewish Families’, in Tamar Rudavsky (ed.), Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp. 81–97. For a case in which a Jewish master had sexual relations with a Jewish servant, see Carla Boccato, ‘Il caso di un neonato esposto nel Ghetto di Venezia alla fine del ’600’, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 44 (1978), 179–202. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (4v–4r). See Fildes, Wet Nursing, p. 44 and Romano, ‘Regulation’, p. 674. Wiesner, Women, p. 71. For examples of other Italian contracts signed between the balio and the father of the baby, see Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing, pp. 52–3. Stow, Jews in Rome, vol. I, doc. 952 and vol. II, doc. 1510. Toaff, Jews in Umbria, vol. III, doc. 2308 shows another contract from Perugia, 19 October 1517. For the reasons why contracts were drawn up between servants and employers, see Romano, ‘Regulation’, pp. 673–4. ASMoFICH 247 f.24 (14r) Juliana tells the Inquisitor: ‘On the 15th of this month, it will be six months that I have nursed this baby.’ ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (6v–6r). Louis Haas describes the term balio as ‘the masculinization of his wife’s title’. See Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence 1300–1600 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 107. See also Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Women Servants’, p. 143. ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (1r): Calman stated: ‘This wetnurse is the wife of Issepeto Ferrari de Nonantola’. Abraham also told the Inquisitor (25v–25r): ‘ I do not know the name of the said wetnurse although she is the wife of one who is called Sabbione.’ ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (17r). It should be noted that Flavia signed her name at the end of her interrogation and Gentile did not, which does perhaps suggest that Gentile was illiterate. ASMoFIP 62 f.24 (28r). On the number of years women spent rearing children, see Salmon, ‘Cultural Significance’, p. 253. Romano, Housecraft, p. xxi. Ibid., p. 49. See also Romano, ‘Regulation’, pp. 662–3. Romano, Housecraft, p. xx. Da Molin, ‘Family Forms’, pp. 503–27. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Women Servants’, pp. 56–80. Toaff, Love, p. 252. See also ASMoFIP 15 f.6 (5r). As Calman himself stated, his household was full of different servants, living as integrated members of his household. ‘There are also housemaids, stewards, teachers, maids, wetnurses and servants present in my house’ (‘Vi sono poi massare et fattori, e maestri, e donzelle, ballie et servatori’). On the subject of female and male servants see Adelman, ‘Servants’, pp. 81–97. Adelman uses rabbinic literature to create certain potential scenarios of sexual encounters between Jewish servants and their Jewish masters and mistresses. See also Elliott Horowitz, ‘Mondi giovanili ebraici in Europa 1300–1800’, in Giovanni Levi and Jean Claude Schmitt (eds), Storia dei Giovani, vol. I, Dall’antichità all’età moderna (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 101– 49, p. 129. Horowitz notes that, in early seventeenth-century Frankfurt, Rabbi Joseph Han Nordlingen devoted one section at the end of his Yosif Ometz, an influential work on Jewish law and custom, to the question of Jewish domestic servants. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 122 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES 131 Stow, Jews in Rome, docs 50, 1246, 1410, 1549. These girls were called apprentices, which likely means that they were a little better than simple servants. These documents relate to the hiring of Jewish servants before the establishment of the ghetto and the removal of Jews into the enclosed area. 132 Ibid., docs 369, 793, 1410, 1549. On the life cycle of servants see John Hajnal, ‘Two Kinds of Pre-Industrial Household Formation Systems’, in Richard Wall et al., Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 65–104 and Romano, Housecraft, pp. 155–6. 133 Stow, Jews in Rome, doc. 1386. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid., doc. 1549. This was also the case for Christian servants in Christian households. See Romano, Housecraft,p. 147. 136 Stow, Jews in Rome, doc. 1510. See Wiesner, Women, p. 85, who notes that at this time ‘the gendered notion of work meant that women’s work was always valued less and generally paid less than men’s’. 137 See also Toaff, Jews in Umbria, vol. III, 1484–1736, doc. 2243. 138 See also Simonsohn, Apostolic See, docs 1427, 1290 and 1640. 139 According to Jewish law, Jews are allowed to use the service of a non-Jew on the Sabbath without hesitation. See Jacob Katz, The ‘Shabbes Goy’: A Study in Halakhic Flexibility (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1989). See also Hayyim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ‘The Regulations concerning Sabbath Restrictions in Poland and their Economic and Social Significance’ (in Hebrew), Zion 21 (1956), 183–206. 140 See ASMoFI Carteggio con la Congregazione del S. Uffizio di Roma, busta 256. The text says 2,000 women, but this is probably an exaggeration. 141 Ibid. 142 ASMoFIP 170 f.10 and f.11. 143 ASMoFIP 70 f.13. On the geographic mobility of Christian servants in Italy, see Romano, Housecraft, pp. 122–35. 144 On Christian servants in Venice, see Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 556–7. In Venice it was the Ufficiali al Cattaver, the officials who had jurisdiction over the Jews, who issued licences to serve Jews. According to the charters of the Tedeschi Jews, from 1566, Christians were also forbidden to eat or sleep in the Jews homes, subject to a fine of 100 ducats and three years rowing in the galleys for the Jew and banishment from the city for the Christian. See clause 32 of the charter of 1624, published in Benjamin Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Background and Context of the Discorso of Simone Luzzatto (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1978), p. 119. Licences were usually only granted for the hiring of mature women and men. But, in general, Christians were occasionally licenced to help out at weddings or celebrations – to carry lights or heavy objects. On the hiring of Christian servants in Milan, see Shlomo Simonsohn, The Jews in the Duchy of Milan (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982–86), doc. 3663. On the hiring of Christian servants in Mantua see Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977), p. 110. 145 On Modena see ASMoFI Carteggio con la congregazione del Sant’ Uffizio di Roma (1568–1784), busta 256. These papers contain continuing orders from the Congregation of the Holy Office, that the Inquisition regulate the prohibitions regarding Jews hiring Christian servants. 146 I do not include a processo against Moisè de Modena, who in 1594 was accused of having offered his Christian servant meat on a fast day, since this was before the establishment of the full Inquisition. Moisè was given a punishment of three months’ incarceration, which was commuted to a fine. See ASMoFIP 8 f.23, 3 December 1594. On this processo, see also Francesconi, Jewish Families, p. 111. 147 See Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 155. The Congregation of the Holy Office tried to persuade the Modenese Ambassador in Rome that ‘this is a matter subject only to their authority, in which His Highness cannot interfere in any way’. 148 See Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 47. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEWISH HOUSEHOLD 123 149 See for example ASMoFIP 57 f.21. 150 ASMoFIP 62 f.10, 24 March 1622 (1v). ‘I came here because I was found by some people who I don’t know, who said to me that I should come here. These people found me coming out of the house of Angelino the Jew, and so I have come.’ 151 ASMoFICH 247 f.40. 152 ASMoFICH 244 f.22. 153 ASMoFICH 245 f.50. In another trial in ASMoFICH 245 f.51 (1629), Abraham de Rovigi’s sentence of four months’ imprisonment was also commuted to a 50–scudi fine. See Biondi, ‘Inquisizione ed ebrei a Modena nel Seicento’, in Fregni and Perani, Vita e cultura ebraica, pp. 259–73, p. 271. 154 ASMoFIP 62 f.23 (1r). In the 1622 trial, the Christian servant Anna was forced to admit that her son had also done the Jews some services, although she tried to imply that it had little to do with her. She told the Inquisitor, ‘I have a son of fifteen or sixteen years, who has trouble with one of his legs. He went three or four times to bring water to the house of those Jews. I do not know that he has done anything else. I know that he came home at times carrying money. And I asked him from where he got it and he said that Angelino had given it to him because he had brought him water.’ 155 ASMoFICH 245 f.42. 156 For processi against Josef Arezzio, see ASMoFIP 68 f.16, 1623 and ASMoFICH 245 f.43, 1628. For processi against Simone Sanguinetti see ASMoFIP 70 f.13, 1624 and ASMoFIP 88 f.10, 1629 and for Benedetto Levi see ASMoFICH 245 f.48, 1629, and ASMoFICH 245 f.52, 1630. 157 ASMoFICH 246 f.15. 158 The naming of Christian servants on the cover of trial dossiers occurred for the first time on the processo of ASMoFIP 62 f.23, 1622. 159 Ibid. 160 ASMoFIP 107 f.12. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 47–8. 161 ASMoFIP 70 f.13. 162 Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 153 uses the term fogarole. 163 See ASMoFIP 62 f.24. Maria de Verici, who worked in the home of Elia Menachem, also admitted to working for a whole list of Jews including Leone da Fanno, David Nemo, Madonna Telza and Pellegrino Sanguinetti. 164 See ASMoFIP 61 f.18. Maria de Verici’s testimony. 165 ASMoFICH 244 f.26 and ASMoFICH 244 f.27. 166 ASMoFICH 245 f.43. 167 ASMoFIP 53 f.4 (10v–r). 168 ASMoFICH 245 f.52. 169 ASMoFIP 62 f.23. 170 See ASMoFICH 244 f.26 Anna, the servant of Gabriele Sora reports that on Fridays she was busy ‘making the fire and performing services in the house, and I was there until three at night and on Saturday all day’. 171 For processi where Jews were accused of allowing their Christian servants to enter synagogues during services see, for example, ASMoFIP 83 f.16. 172 See the processo of Benedetto Levi in ASMoFICH 245 f.52 (66v). 173 See ASMoFICH 244 f.25. 174 ASMoFICH 245 f.52 (32v–33r) and also ASMoFIP 53 f.4 (6r). 175 See Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 47. 176 See ASMoFICH 244 f.21. Here Beniamino, a Jew of Vignola accused of hiring servants, admits that his servants were paid according to the work they did. The Jew was absolved as he was found to have kept to the rules. In 1610 he had appealed to the Ducale Camerale to ask that the Duke allow Jews to carry on using Christians especially on festivals and other times without interference from the Inquisition. There is no indication what the Duke answered him. See CAHJP, A.S.E. archivi per materie, ‘Ebrei’ B.4, Processi I-LXXXIII, 1600–1629. 177 ASMoFIP 88 f.10. 178 See ASMoFIP 103 f.8. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 124 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES 179 Prosperi,‘L’Inquisizione romana’, pp. 103–4 (‘di honesta vita e di buona fama’). See also Siegmund, Medici State, p. 187. 180 See ASMoFICH 247 f.22. 181 See ASMoFIP 88 f.10. 182 See ASMoFIP 73 f.8. 183 On spinning workshops see Wiesner, Women, p. 9. 184 For other examples when Jews carried out entrepreneurial activities illicitly, see del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 525. 185 ASMoFICH 256 f.17. 186 Ibid. (42r). 187 Ibid., and see also Canosa, Storia, vol. I, pp. 44–5.The Cardinals stated that ‘the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office was disgusted by the ruling that permits Christians to serve Jews, that your Reverence is to prohibit the Jews to make use of the building of the spinner of silk in Spilamberto and begin proceedings against them’. 188 ASMoFICH 245 f.54 and f.65. The second case revolved around a Jewish boy who had drowned while swimming with his friends in the river. The corpse was carried in a cart to the cemetery with the help of local Christians who were then reprimanded for their actions. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 50. A third case involved Alessandro Formigine and Salomone Castelfranco in 1637 (see ASMoFICH 247 f.29), who appeared before the Inquisitorial vicar in Finale, Fra Giacomo Ricci, to admit that they had been helped by a Christian to bury a Jewish woman since the Jewish gravedigger was too weak to do it alone. They asked the forgiveness of the Holy Office and were sentenced to a pecuniary punishment of 100 scudi. In Modena, Jews were given their own space to bury their dead, and after 1631 were allowed, instead of renting the land, to acquire it for the purpose of a new cemetery outside the Porta Bologna. 189 ASMoFIP 50 f.3. 190 See ACEMo filza 2.21 Instromenti e testamenti 1485, 1606–1783. See for example for 1728 and 1733, the ‘Censo francabile imposto dalla nostra unità e venduto al Tribunale della Inquisizione’. For the last decades of the eighteenth century, there are lists of Christian women who served in the ghetto, which the massari were to dispatch to the Holy Office. Also see ASMoFI, Lettere ed atti Inquisitoriali busta 290. Here there are lists of Christian women serving Jews from 1766 to 1782. These lists contain the name, address and age of the Christian, and the name of the Jewish family for which she worked. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 4 The piazza: verbal offences on the streets of Modena There were twenty-two processi in which Jews were prosecuted for blasphemy, heretical blasphemy and insults in our period. These offences were allegedly committed in public, in a street, shop or piazza where most daily contact between Jews and Christians took place. These processi are considered as legal narratives in the same genre and show the efforts of the Inquisition to control Jewish speech. One should not suggest that these narratives are static – quite the contrary: verbal offences respond to the religious, social and cultural pressures, threats and issues that surfaced in Modena during the first four decades of the seventeenth century. At the same time, these cases articulated the vision that the Inquisition had of itself as both a religious and a moral power, and its relationship with newly converted Christians and the Jewish community itself. These verbal offences are defined here as simple blasphemy – that is, words spoken in public that attribute offensive traits to God, Christ or the Virgin – or insults made to Christians, neophytes or even neighbouring Jews. The description of the offence on the cover of the processi varied, being bestemmia, bestemmia hereticale or ingiuria. Ingiuria, the notion that hostile speech could physically harm others, was, according to Thomas Kuehn, an ‘ambiguous’ legal term that intimated insult to ‘matters of personal honor and status’. 1 In order to understand the Inquisition’s interest in these verbal offences, and particularly in blasphemy, a wider perspective of the history of this crime is required. How did the Modenese Inquisition come to deal with a broad range of these cases and include Jews as potential offenders? Catholic and Protestant reformers throughout Europe advocated the monitoring of blasphemous speech, even though, as David Nash points out, it is still difficult to understand the criminal implications of the offence.2 Civil legislation in both Catholic and Protestant lands including Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Flanders and England explicitly and frequently enforced prosecution and punishment for blasphemy. However, as Francisca Loetz has shown, there was still no effort in the secular courts to define the offence.3 Its definition was Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 126 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES blurred by a secularizing process, whereby, as Michel Foucault has shown, rebellion against God was seen as disobedience to the state.4 Blasphemy, primarily a spiritual sin, developed into a civil crime, which on the basis of superstition and the need to control disruptive behaviour was seen as harmful to secular authority and became a civic obsession.5 It is not suprising then that accusations were laid before and prosecuted by both secular and ecclesiastical courts, since, as Elizabeth Horodowich suggests, legal theorists neglected to differentiate between anti-Catholic doctrines and casual blasphemy.6 In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, some Italian states, fearing that blasphemy was rampant, created special courts to monitor the offence. In Venice, the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia was set up in 1537 and in the republic of Lucca a specific magistratura, composed of three citizens elected annually, dealt with blasphemy from 1531 to 1700.7 In other states, dukes and governments issued edicts to prevent blasphemous speech.8 In 1598, Cesare d’Este published an edict entitled Proclamation and Decrees concerning Blasphemy, the observance of Festivals, Gaming and Concubinage (Grida e ordini sopra la Bestemmia, osservar le Feste, Giuoco, e Concubine), mentioned earlier.9 Bringing together a number of broad issues into one edict, the Duke echoed a tradition of political control over his duchy’s morality.10 But as he noted at the beginning of the decree: The Most Serene Signor Duke Cesare da Este, by the Grace of God, Duke of Modena, wishes that his most faithful subjects live like Christians, and refrain from those vices which provoke the anger of his Divine Majesty against the people…11 The Duke’s punishments for blasphemy varied according to the words said and the number of times the suspects were caught uttering them. According to the decree, the worst curses were those against God, Jesus and Mary. For these, fines varied from 30 scudi for saying the curses once, to 100 scudi for repeating them. A third offence would result in being made to stand before the cathedral door and having one’s tongue pierced, and the fourth in being sent to the strenuous and severe service on board the dreaded galleys.12 If offenders were caught uttering words against the holy apostles or the saints, these were fined from 15 to 30 scudi.13 From the twelfth century, the Church developed its own definition of blasphemy, and by the early seventeenth century this covered not only bestemmia hereticale in the real sense involving conscious intent, but also lesser offences such as profanity and various kinds of curses or oaths.14 This represented a technical adjustment, put in action particularly by the Modenese Inquisition, which prosecuted practising Jews under the umbrella terms of bestemmia or bestemmia hereticale. But to place this initiative in its proper perspective, it is necessary to consider how the papacy modified the terms to give the Inquisition jurisdiction over simple blasphemy. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 127 In medieval times, popes had authorized individual Inquisitors to prosecute offenders of heretical blasphemy. From the end of the fifteenth century, in Spain and in the Italian peninsula, trial proceedings for simple blasphemy as well as heretical blasphemy began to be conducted through Inquisitorial tribunals. Old Christians were brought before the Spanish Inquisition for committing blasphemy, for ignorant outbursts against the faith, for superstitious beliefs and for loose moral behaviour. The Inquisitor’s manual Repertorium inquisitorum, published in 1494 in Valencia, stated that those who cursed God or the Virgin were guilty of blasphemy but were not heretics if they did not query articles of faith.15 It was here declared that such cases should be prosecuted by civil courts, a clear suggestion that the Inquisitors were uncomfortable with the blurring of the definition of bestemmia hereticale. The Inquisition argued that it was only when the blasphemer attacked articles of faith that he or she be could be accused of heretical blasphemy and therefore fall into the hands of the tribunal.16 Given this clear categorization in Spain, even after the Council of Trent, and Pope Pius V’s decree in 1564 that blasphemers should be punished by public beating, exile, galley work and piercing of the tongue, jurisdiction over casual offenders did not normally fall into the hands of the Holy Office in Italy.17 In Venice, for example, only cases of bestemmia hereticale fell under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, while unintentional simple blasphemy was dealt with by civic magistrates and eventually the Esecutori.18 In Modena, the Holy Office insisted that its jurisdiction covered various forms of blasphemy, but also the more serious crime of heretical blasphemy. It pursued the offence vigorously and prosecuted offenders, arguing that many commonplace expletives had heretical implications, even though suspects who used them probably did not realize this. At the same time, there were often disputes with the secular courts over which authority should judge both types of blasphemy. In the case of Curzio Azzi di Ferrara, the Duke’s capitano delle lance spezzate, who in 1600 was accused of heretical blasphemy, the Duke ordered that he be brought before the Giudici del Maleficio since he argued that heretical blasphemy was relevant to the Holy Office only if the blasphemer had already received a warning or blasphemed habitually.19 In 1609 the Congregation of the Holy Office ordered the Inquisition to proceed and prosecute the captain anew for this offence. By 1621, the Inquisition’s jurisdiction over simple blasphemy was still unclear. When an inhabitant of Camporeggiano Garfagnana was denounced to the Holy Office, the Podestà of the town argued that since the accusation was that he had cursed in a moment of anger and not committed heretical blasphemy, the offence should be judged by him and not the Inquisition.20 Despite the confusion, the 1607 Inquisitorial manual of Michelangelo Lerri had tried to create a comprehensive definition of heretical blasphemers: Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 128 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES those who deny the titles given to God, those who deny God’s omnipotence, saying ‘in defiance of God’, ‘God’s a layabout’, … saying ‘God is a traitor’, ‘God is unfair’ … saying ‘God does not trouble himself about those little things’ or similar words … . saying ‘Whore of God’ or similar things; those who say words against the perpetual virginity of the most blessed Virgin such as whore of Our Lord or her holy motherhood; those who say words against the Holy Church and the most Holy Sacraments, like ‘I deny baptism’, ‘I deny the faith’, and against the glory of the canonized saints.21 It was in this area that Jews were prosecuted for bestemmia hereticale, despite the fact that the definition was inappropriate.22 Even though Jews could attack God, if they casually blasphemed Christianity they could be canonically accused only of using impious speech, or insult and not heresy.23 Tellingly, in 1550 the Udinese jurist Marquardus de Susannis wrote in his De Iudaeis et Aliis Infidelibus, that Jews were not to be allowed to insult Christianity,24 but earlier in the medieval period Jews had been subject to the Inquisition only if they actually blasphemed against Christianity or belief in God in their writings or prayers.25 Yet in the 1581 Papal bull Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas, Clause Five stated that Jews were to be punished if they: should suggest that our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was an impure man, or even a sinner, or that the mother of God was not a virgin, and other blasphemies of this sort, which heretics are accustomed to utter, to the shame, contempt and corruption of the Christian faith.26 The bull linked Jews and heretics together as potential offenders. This in many ways foreshadowed the Consultationes canonicae of the canonist Giacomo Pignatelli (1625–98), a text which labelled Jews as heretics in certain cases, for the convenience of prosecuting them: Although Jews are really infidels and not to be described as heretics, since one who is not baptized cannot be called a heretic nor can anyone who has never been in the church’s bosom be said to be divided from it, it cannot be denied that they [the Jews] can however incorrectly be called heretics and punished just as heretics are. It follows that although Inquisitors have no jurisdiction over Jews, like infidels in so far as they are such, they can be treated as heretics in certain cases.27 With this in mind, the association of Jews with the offence of bestemmia hereticale seems less radical, almost a natural ‘assimilation’ as Marina Caffiero suggests, allowing the inclusion of Jews in the Inquisition’s jurisdiction.28 The Inquisition published its own edict in July 1600, which called upon Modenese inhabitants to denounce to the Inquisition anyone who was heard profanely cursing.29 This demonstrated its assumption that Jews should be just as liable as Christians to prosecution for this offence. Congregants were told to report to the Inquisition: Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 129 If they know of anyone (even a Jew who lives among Christians) who has profanely cursed against Christ the True Messiah and Redeemer of the World, or against his most holy Mother Mary the Virgin, the Apostles, and other heavenly saints, the most holy sacraments, the holy gospel, the most holy Cross or the sacred images and ceremonies of the Holy Church, in disrespect or insult to the Holy Faith.30 Other edicts denouncing profane cursing (used here as a blanket term which included both ‘simple’ and ‘heretical’ blasphemy) were published in 1601, 1608 and 1622, but in these Jews were not specifically named as possible suspects.31 As a result of the 1600 edict, many spontaneous denunciations for simple blasphemy were made to the Inquisition at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Among the offences of which Jews were accused between 1598 and 1638, the second most frequent was verbal offences including bestemmia and bestemmia hereticale. There were 22 processi of Jews in these years.32 It is interesting to note that in 1602–03, during an intensive period of blasphemy trials for which Archangelo Calbetti was responsible, there were five processi of Jews for profane cursing, the highest number of processi per year recorded between 1598 and 1638.33 Three of these processi are described in this chapter. They represent three types of cases which recur at intervals throughout our fortyyear period – that is, simple blasphemy (mindless disrespect for sacred beings or things), heretical blasphemy (conscious insults to God or attacks on articles of Christian faith), and abuse of neophytes or Jews on the margins of society. They are good illustrations of the ways in which the Inquisition handled evidence, and of the ways in which delators appeared to be trying to use the Inquisition to settle personal scores. As the research of Ronald Surtz suggests, and as our statistics confirm, heretical blasphemy was mainly a male habit, since of the 22 processi only two were directed against Jewish women, in 1603 and 1612.34 The words and actions of men were far more visible on the piazze. In 1603 Bellina Formiggini was accused of speaking against Christ ‘like a man’ in the tavern which her husband owned.35 Denounced by a fellow Jew on 25 October, she faced imprisonment during her trial and was then sentenced on 16 May 1604 to public shaming. In 1612, Laudomia, the wife of Abraham Paselli, was accused of saying Puttana di Dio (whore of God), when arguing with another Jewish girl, and abusing the brother of the girl for converting and becoming a renegade dog. Laudomia was whipped in the Jews’ street where she had committed her offence.36 Jews were given a variety of punishments for this offence, including public whipping in the piazza, exile for one year, public shamings at the church door, and fines of 50–200 scudi.37 Table 3 shows the number of processi of Jewish and Christian men and women accused of verbal offences between 1598 and 1638. Of the total of 908 processi only twenty-two (2.4% of the total number) were of Jews. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 130 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Table 3 Processi 1598–1638 Year 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1612 1613 1614–15 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621 1622 1623 1624 1625 1626 1627 1628 1629 1630 1631 1632 1633 1634 1635 1636 1637 1638 TOTAL No. of processi No. of processi No. of processi No. of processi TOTAL processi of Christian of Christian of Jewish men of Jewish women for year men women 1 0 0 0 1 4 0 0 0 4 45 1 0 0 46 16 4 0 0 20 49 2 2 0 53 54 1 2 1 58 39 3 0 0 42 29 1 1 0 31 45 3 0 0 48 40 2 0 0 42 29 0 0 0 29 53 0 1 0 54 26 1 0 0 27 14 1 0 0 15 8 0 2 1 11 13 0 0 0 13 6 0 0 0 6 8 2 0 0 10 3 0 0 0 3 12 0 0 0 12 10 2 0 0 12 17 0 0 0 17 10 0 1 0 11 58 3 1 0 62 6 0 1 0 7 48 2 2 0 52 37 2 0 0 39 13 1 1 0 15 12 0 0 0 12 24 0 1 0 25 9 0 1 0 10 1 0 0 0 1 14 2 1 0 17 7 0 1 0 8 21 1 0 0 22 2 1 0 0 3 28 1 0 0 29 15 1 2 0 18 10 0 0 0 10 13 0 0 0 13 849 37 20 2 908 Note: ASMoFIP. 44 has 1614–1615 trials together in one busta. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 131 The three processi studied below, although quite different from each other, have several points in common. They suggest the degree to which poor Jews in Modena, as opposed to the wealthier classes, adopted the language of their Christian neighbours and provide a commentary on the social conflict produced by their public behaviour. Delators, suspects and witnesses all knew each other and came from the same social classes. From a broader perspective they also uncover the problems facing these types of Jews as a religious minority and the enforcement of Inquisitorial prosecution which targeted them for these offences. The work of Federica Francesconi has confirmed the sharp increase in the presence of poor Jews in Modena at the beginning of the seventeenth century, enforcing a change in policy and attitude of the wealthy Jewish families towards those in their community who were needy. In 1607 the house and synagogue of the Poveri was established in Via dei Trivellari, which enabled the Jewish poor to receive licences (in Hebrew) to beg; it also set up specific Jewish trustees, who were placed in charge of their welfare.38 The three trials are not presented chronologically, since certain themes demand that the first and third trials be grouped together. The first processo begins with a denunciation by an Inquisitorial spy who overheard Abraamo de Abramino uttering profane curses in the street. Abraamo was tried and convicted of bestemmia. In the other two trials, Jews accused fellow Jews of bestemmia hereticale and ingiurie before the Inquisition. The Jewish suspects were imprisoned during their trial, but not convicted. In the third trial, one Jew was prosecuted and imprisoned for cursing a neophyte and another two for verbally insulting a Jewish prostitute who had given up her child to be baptized. The trial proceedings were discontinued. The latter two proceedings suggest that the Modenese Inquisition was a tribunal to which Jews, on occasion, had recourse against fellow religionists. The various relations between the protagonists as portrayed in their testimonies provide an interesting extra dimension. The three processi The first processo39 Charge: Abraamo de Abramino de Camerini, cursed, using the words, ‘Puttana di Dio’ and ‘Puttana di Malachi’. Scene: The piazza in the Jewish area, July 1603. Delator: Domenico Manfredino – a Christian ‘famigliar’, delator, spy and guard of the Holy Office. Accused: Abraamo de Abramino. Witnesses: Hippolito Barozzi – a Christian; Dionisio de Nonantula – a Christian; Vitalis Maconai – a Jew. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 132 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES On 10 July 1607, Domenico Manfredino appeared before Archangelo Calbetti, the Inquisitor General, to present a carefully organized denunciation of Abraamo de Abramino, a fifty-year-old Jewish mattress-maker. He informed the Inquisitor General that on that specific day not only had de Abramino said ‘Puttana di Dio’ (Whore of God), but he had also heard the Jew utter a Judeo-Italian expression, Puttana di Malachi (Whore of angels) – malachi being a Hebrew word.40 Although he had heard this expression before, Manfredino only now realized that it was a profane curse. He did not state how he had found out about the meaning of the word, but only provided the names of two Christian witnesses. When Hippolito Barozzi, the first Christian witness, testified, he confirmed that de Abramino was often irritable and choleric, getting into a temper and blaspheming with both Puttana di Dio and Puttana di Malachi. The second witness,Vitalis Maconai, a Jew, also confirmed de Abramino’s habit of blaspheming, which he said was often done in front of his house and family.41 Calbetti, satisfied that he had two witness testimonies that confirmed the offence, ordered de Abramino to be imprisoned and brought to trial. On 11 and 13 July, de Abramino was summoned for interrogation from his prison cell but refused to confess. Calbetti, keen to have further confirmation of de Abramino’s offence and perhaps uncomfortable that one of his witnesses had been Jewish, decided to interrogate another Christian witness, Dionisio, son of Andrea de Nonantula, who worked closely with de Abramino. When asked if he had ever heard de Abramino curse, he replied: No sir. On the contrary, when he was accused before the Giudici del Maleficio, I was astonished, because I have never heard him blaspheme. Maybe he did blaspheme, but I know nothing of it.42 When de Abramino was brought for his third interrogation, he still refused to confess, rejected legal counsel and threw himself on the mercy of the Inquisition. The Inquisitorial council which sat to discuss his case unanimously decided that de Abramino should be publicly whipped in the piazza.43 That he was to be whipped rather than fined indicates that he could not afford to pay. Whipping was administered in a piazza on 15 July 1603 by Domenico Manfredino, although it is not clear from the dossier if it was done in the Jewish area where he lived, to humiliate him in front of his neighbours.44 Calbetti was able to prosecute, sentence and punish de Abramino quickly. The fact that the Jew continually refuted the charges did not delay the sentencing. The trial was concluded in five days, from the denunciation on 10 July 1603 to the administering of de Abramino’s punishment on 15 July. It reveals that Calbetti considered profane cursing (irrespective of whether Jews or Christians had committed the crime) as a mindless act of disrespect. The suspect was seen not as a dangerous heretical blasphemer – even though, given the words he used he could have been charged with heretical blasphemy – but as an individual who had been caught cursing in public and needed to be silenced. In fact, this trial Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 133 bears a strong resemblance to trials against Christians such as Joannes Dominico Ferrara de Gaiato,45 Bonetti di Nonantula,46 Joanne Jacobo Terreno Carbonario and Torquanto Benvenuto de Fanano,47 who were all accused in 1627 of cursing with the words Puttana di Dio and sentenced to be whipped in the piazza. The Inquisition was using the offence as a means to control Jewish behaviour as much as Christian. It is not clear if there was antagonism between de Abramino and the witnesses. De Abramino fails to show any aggression towards them in his interrogation, and they hide any hints of antagonism towards de Abramino. Yet de Nonantula’s testimony is more revealing. Of all the witnesses he had the most contact with the suspect, but he testified without restraint that he had never heard the Jew blaspheme, clearly refusing to incriminate him. De Abramino was evidently one of the less fortunate individuals who ended up being punished for saying what he and others – both Jews and Christians – often said with impunity. Alain Cabantous has shown how blasphemous words and expressions were very much part of colloquial language. They ‘punctuated sentences, added flourish to the end of dialogues, lent punch to convictions in a way that reflected medieval Christianity’s venerable and customary confusion between profane and sacred’.48 Surely, it was more a question of who would report the careless talk of others to air their own aggression towards them in court? Nor was Puttana di Dio a profane curse that de Abramino had fabricated. It was one of the most common curses in early modern Italy, which by its very frequent usage had clearly lost its shock value.49 In the trials against Christians for bestemmia hereticale conducted by the Inquisition in the year 1601, this was the most frequent curse uttered.50 Furthermore, 90% of the Jews accused of bestemmia hereticale between 1598 and 1638 were accused of using it. That Jews adopted expressions spoken by Christians was natural. They heard Christians swearing not only in the streets, but also in shops, taverns and particularly gaming halls, places which Jews frequented just as much as Christians.51 The Judeo-Italian term Puttana di Malachi suggests that Jews copied common curses as well as creating their own, allowing them to share a context of verbal exchange that could express their own outrage, shock and frustration, confirming too a level of their acculturation to Christian society. One Christian witness – Laura, the daughter of Petro Engoni – told the Inquisitor in a processo against the Jews Abramo Pasillo and Bellina Formigine for blasphemy in 1603 that although she heard Jews blaspheme in Hebrew, she had come to understand these curses, after many years of hearing the language.52 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 134 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES The second processo53 Charge: Abramino Sacerdote is accused of cursing with the phrases ‘Puttana di Dio’, ‘Al dispetto di Dio’ and ‘Dio Poltrone’. Scene: The Egg Market, October 1602. Accused: Abramino Sacerdote54 – Jewish shopkeeper of ‘diverse cose’,55 secondhand clothing. Delator: Angelo de Thodeschi – Jewish delator. Witnesses: Camillo de Thodeschi, Angelo’s son – a Jew; Bastiano Barado – a Christian; Leone de Thodeschi – a Jew, Abramino Sacerdote’s shop assistant; Lorenzo de Mirandola – a Christian. This dossier contains the first processo of a Jew accused of bestemmia hereticale after the establishment of the Modenese Inquisition in 1598. But there was no real difference between this type of offence and its prosecution and bestemmia, the offence listed in other blasphemy processi. On 16 October 1602, an illiterate Jew, Angelo de Thodeschi, whose profession remains unknown, appeared before Calbetti of his own accord to denounce a fellow Jew, Abramino Sacerdote, for profane curses that he had uttered a month earlier in public. Sacerdote was a forty-year-old shopkeeper dealing in second-hand clothing. De Thodeschi produced a calculated and well thought-out delation; he testified: Your Reverence should know that a month ago, I was outside the shop of Abramino Sacerdote, which is situated opposite the shop of the Lombard in the Egg Market. I heard Abramino get into an argument with another Jew called Leone de Thodeschi, because they had a difference of opinion over the sale of a cloak that Leone had reserved for Monaco. Leone wanted to make Abramino give it to him. But they did not agree at the time, and on this occasion Leone wanted one price and Abramino another and they shouted at each other. Abramino in anger said a few times, ‘God’s Whore’, ‘in defiance of God’, and ‘God’s a layabout’.56 Regarding witnesses, de Thodeschi replied that Leone de Thodeschi (not necessarily a relative of his) should be called, as well as his own son Camillo, whose cloak was being sold to Sacerdote at the time of the offence, and another two Christians, Bastiano Barado and Lorenzo de Mirandola, who were nearby. Ten days later, Calbetti interrogated de Thodeschi’s son Camillo before he examined the Christian witnesses, an unusual act that suggests that Calbetti thought that Camillo de Thodeschi, as the son of the delator, would be able to endorse his father’s delation and confirm Sacerdote’s cursing. However, Camillo did not provide any such evidence.57 His refusal to testify against Sacerdote is revealing. Either he did not witness the blasphemy or he refused to be involved in the petty squabbles of his father, even though his father had named him as a witness. Calbetti asked de Thodeschi if there were any other witnesses. He Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 135 replied that Leone de Thodeschi, Abramino’s assistant, was the only one he could remember being present at that time. When the two Christian witnesses, Bastiano Barado and Lorenzo de Mirandola, were called to give testimony on 28 October, neither provided evidence of Sacerdote’s blaspheming. Without any further Christian witnesses to rely upon, and confident perhaps that an interrogation of Sacerdote’s assistant Leone de Thodeschi would not bring new information against Sacerdote, the Inquisitor dropped the investigation. Yet two months later he reopened it with renewed enthusiasm, imprisoned Sacerdote, and carefully developed the proceedings into a formal trial even though he had no witness testimony. His reason for resuming the case was recorded at the end of the dossier, when he confirmed that he had believed that Sacerdote had shown obstinacy and intransigence, which he interpreted as guilt, even though at this stage the Jew had not been interrogated: You always denied that you had ever in your life uttered any sort of blasphemous expression and in particular that which was testified – such words as Puttana di Dio, Al dispetto di Dio, and Dio Poltrone. We noted your stubbornness, and your denial of the truth, and wanted to proceed further with your case.58 Sacerdote was kept in prison for nine days from 17 to 26 January 1603. Calbetti interrogated Sacerdote four times, on 18, 20, 21 and 23 January. These were short interrogations in which Sacerdote, although admitting that he had enemies who were probably eager to denounce him, kept calm and denied cursing.59 When asked who these were, he named a Christian, Vincenzo Cavasse, and one Giacintho, a neophyte, as well as Giacintho’s daughter Laura, a Jewess. Calbetti told Sacerdote that he did not believe that he was speaking the truth. In the second interrogation, Calbetti referred to the supposed argument Sacerdote had had with Thodeschi. Sacerdote testified that he did not remember the argument nor what it was about, and suggested that Calbetti interrogate Leone de Thodeschi, his assistant, or Domenico Monaco, who owned the cloak, to prove to Calbetti that he had not cursed. Sacerdote was clearly confident that de Thodeschi and Monaco would not testify against him. Calbetti acted upon part of Sacerdote’s suggestion. On the following day, Leone de Thodeschi was interrogated but refused to admit that Sacerdote had even shouted, let alone cursed on this occasion.60 In an interrogation on 23 January, Calbetti accused Sacerdote of foolishness and tried again to make him confess. Sacerdote maintained his own defence: I do not want to add anything. I know that I did not curse even though at times I have said, ‘stupid me’ [puttana di mio], and this perhaps has been misinterpreted by others as Puttana di Dio.61 As may be imagined, suspects often pleaded that they had said something slightly different from the blasphemous words they were accused of.62 On 23 January, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 136 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES during a council meeting held to discuss Sacerdote’s case, in the presence of eight Inquisitorial consultants, Fra Serafino argued that the case should be dropped since there was no hard proof of bestemmia hereticale.63 Two of the legal doctors, Domino Castalutio and Alfonso Lovolo, agreed with him. However, all the other five decided that Sacerdote should be tortured in a final attempt to make him confess. This readiness to endorse torture as the last resort appears frequently during Calbetti’s generalship.64 On 25 January, Sacerdote was tortured, and his arms and body were tied to a rack. Once the cords were tied around his body, the notary recorded his cries: ‘Oh my God, Oh my God. I am not able to say anything else. I have told the truth.’65 Sacerdote remained tied to the rack for eight minutes according to the notary’s record. Since Sacerdote had withstood the torture without confessing, Calbetti had no choice but to acquit him and set him free. Accordingly, on 25 January 1603 Sacerdote was officially absolved and released from prison, once he had heard an extensive explanation from the Inquisitor regarding the Inquisitorial procedure in his case. Here the latter hints at his disappointment that he had not extracted a confession from Sacerdote. The notary read the following declaration: You Abramino, son of the late Emmanuele Sacerdote, Jew from Cremona of around forty years old, were denounced to this Holy Office for having cursed using serious bestemmia hereticale. We considered that through the authority that we have by the Holy Apostolic See, we ought not to permit Jews to commit errors in matters common to Christians and to them and in particular by resorting to blasphemy … We therefore resolved to imprison you in the prison of the Holy Office, where you were held by us and canonically examined many times. You always denied that you had ever in your life uttered any sort of blasphemous expression and in particular that which was testified – such words as Puttana di Dio, Al dispetto di Dio and Dio Poltrone. We seeing your stubbornness, and your denying the truth, wanted to proceed further in your case. After we had offered you the chance to defend yourself, which you refused, you put yourself in the hands of the Holy Office. We discussed your case with our ordinary council of priests in Sacred Theology, who resolved that you ought to be tortured, to make you speak the truth. Torture was administered by us but did not result in any new information … We have decided to come to the judgement set out below. … You Abramino Sacerdote, Jew interrogated and tried on another occasion, have been arraigned before us in this place, and at the time chosen and assigned for you to hear this our decision. We say that we are not sentencing you. We declare that in the course of proceedings against you, nothing has been proven before us for which you could be punished, according to the laws and procedures of the Inquisition. We free you, absolve you and unconditionally release you.66 The Inquisitor General Calbetti had tried hard to convict Sacerdote of the kind of offence that was galling, a transgression against the type of ‘disciplined’ Catholic Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 137 community that was so important for churchmen of this epoch, but yet again the attempt of the Inquisitor General to extract a confession of blasphemy was foiled. Legal restraints were real and observed by the court, despite a minor irregularity, that of Calbetti ignoring the need for two witness testimonies to ensure Sacerdote’s arrest. Richard Kieckhefer has observed in his study of witchcraft trials that the Papal Inquisition was often used by neighbours, spurned lovers or disgruntled workers to denounce those with whom they had vindictive or petty squabbles.67 There is a background here of some hidden antagonism or deep internal dispute between the two Jews Thodeschi and Sacerdote.Thodeschi did not appear before the Inquisitor until 16 October 1602 to report Sacerdote’s cursing close to a full month earlier, in contrast to other trials where suspects were often denounced immediately.68 Furthermore, Camillo de Thodeschi and Leone de Thodeschi, who supposedly witnessed the cursing, refused to be involved in the incrimination of Sacerdote. When the two Christian witnesses presented their testimony, neither could nor would testify openly against the Jew. It is doubtful then that Thodeschi had collaborated with the Christians, or believed that they would testify in his favour against Sacerdote. Moreover, the fact that Sacerdote did not include Thodeschi in his list of enemies questions the deep-seated nature of any argument between them. Perhaps there was some sort of personal grievance on Thodeschi’s part or a quarrel over money? Perhaps, too, Thodeschi was a marginalized Jew who held grievances against many of his co-religionists. He willingly delated fellow Jews to the Holy Office on two other occasions. On 6 November 1602, he had denounced Salvatore Formiggini, Jacobo Calabri, Angelo Stramazor and Emanuele Maroni for blaspheming while they were gambling in a tavern, which led to their torture during investigation and punishment of public shaming.69 On 21 November 1605, Thodeschi delated two other Jews, Joseph Benedi and Jacobo Elias, for blasphemy, but they were absolved.70 Although the emotions and instincts of the suspect and delator remain inaccessible the question remains why a Jew would decide to denounce another Jew to the Holy Office. Thodeschi’s appearance before the Inquisition was always recorded as ‘spontaneous’ but this might well have hidden his need to denounce others either for his own gratification or because he had agreed to spy for the Inquisition. In Thodeschi’s case, unruly verbal exchanges could have been stylized into blasphemy to ridicule an opponent. But Thodeschi in general was not to be trusted, as the Inquisition discovered in August 1603 when Thodeschi was prosecuted and imprisoned for providing false information to the Inquisition, in his efforts to receive alms from the Jewish community.71 He was sentenced to a public shaming for damaging the reputation of the Inquisition, choosing it seems not to delate before the court again.72 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 138 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Thodeschi was not alone. It seems that at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as soon as Jews became potential offenders, certain Jews decided to use this ecclesiastical court to air personal grievances against their co-religionists. In 1603 a Jew Santorio accused Catchigia before the Modenese Inquisition of profanely cursing a neophyte and Abramino [no surname] and his daughter Esther of insulting a Jewish prostitute.73 Investigations were discontinued. Later in the same year, in a processo against Abramo Pasillo and Bellina Formigine for blasphemy, Santorio denounced Bellina, accusing her of uttering Puttana di Dio and Al dispetto Dio. Bellina was found guilty and sentenced to a public shaming. In August 1617, Michele Sanguinetti, a 37–year-old Jew, delated before Inquisitor General Massimo Guazzoni on two occasions, on 9 and 16 August, attacking in particular the elitist and wealthy bankers of the duchy, carrying on what seems to have been a personal vendetta against them.74 His first delation was against Simone Sanguinetti of Spilamberto, who he argued had broken a crucifix in front of him and his conspirators, Giuseppe Pontasso and Abramo the son of Calman de Sanguinetti, when they had gone to pledge money at his bank.75 These Jews were accused during a spontaneous appearance of the neophyte Doctor Camillo Jaghel da Correggio on 16 August 1617 ‘of most wicked infamy, considered as evil spies, throughout the whole city, more so by Jews than Christians’.76 Spaccini even mentions the Jews’ deception in his chronicle, exaggerating the story somewhat, but shocked at the same time that Jews would so openly trick their own kind.77 Michele Sanguinetti’s second fabricated delation involved Pellegrino Sanguinetti, Davide Diena, Benedetta wife of Davide and Anna, the mother of Benedetta Diena, for dissuasion of baptism.78 The Inquisitor handed these conspirators over to the secular arm but it is unclear what punishment they received.79 Was this perhaps the same Michele Sanguinetti who in October 1634 contemplated conversion himself?80 In 1627, Salomon Civita denounced Simone Sanguinetti for allowing his Christian servant to enter the synagogue on three occasions on the same morning to carry three of Sanguinetti’s children into the middle of the synagogue, which he said shocked the surrounding community.81 Whether Civita meant that it was shocking according to canon or Jewish law, that a Christian had walked into a synagogue during offices, he perhaps intentionally left ambiguous in his delation, ‘because in our synagogue under no pretext can a Christian enter’.82 Sanguinetti and his wife, although imprisoned during the investigation, were let off with a warning. In 1633, the Jew Lazarro Levi accused Rabbi Abraham Belgrado of using sorcery to cure him of an illness the previous year.The Rabbi was incarcerated for a month as a punishment.83 Of the sixteen proceedings between 1598 and 1638 that were initiated by Jewish delators, only six ended in the conviction of the Jewish suspects. Jewish delators did not, it seems, always structure their accusations according to the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 139 categorization of violations and offences listed by the Inquisition. In 1627, Abraham Sanguinetti, perhaps out of despair of being heard, had delated Isaaco Sanguinetti for taking a ring that belonged to him.84 The fact that Jewish delators denounced co-religionists, often on more than one occasion, is important.85 Their denunciations reveal instances in the Jewish community of altercations, brawls, verbal insults or vicious quarrels.86 To go outside the community, to resort to the Holy Office, was a potentially dangerous act that could cause difficulties for the community and indicates that Jewish courts of arbitration or the welfare schemes of the Università were not meeting the needs of individual Jews.87 Resort to ecclesiastical courts generally signified the Jewish delators’ considerable anger or the like, and no doubt people sometimes preferred self-interest to the interest of the larger community.88 Was this not then, as Caffiero suggests, a collaboration between ecclesiastical courts and individual Jews that bypassed the official autonomies of both communities, providing on the one hand a source for individual Jews to publicize their grievances, and on the other a chance for the Holy Office to investigate Jewish offences from the inside?89 It is not clear whether these events were isolated and unusual, or whether marginal Jews were systematically attempting to use external tribunals, outside the community, as ‘a sly substitute for personal violence’, as Brian Pullan suggests.90 The Jewish delator had the potential to bring imprisonment, torture, shame and dishonour upon his co-religionist. There are also examples of Jews denouncing other Jews before the Holy Office in other Italian cities. Carla Boccato has described an Inquisitorial case in Verona in November 1590, in which a Jew, Matio Bassani, denounced six other Jews to the local Inquisition for persuading several neophytes to return to Judaism.91 Mauro Perani found a case in November 1661, where Leone del Bene, a rabbi living in the ghetto of Ferrara, appeared before the Ferrarese Inquisitor spontaneously to denounce certain Jews of Finale for possessing prohibited Hebrew books.92 One should not then take the words of Leone del Bene, a Jewish witness who indicted Salvatore Formiggini, Jacobo Calabri, Angelo Stramazor, and Emanuele Maroni for blasphemy in 1602 too seriously, when he affirmed that he harboured no hatred or emnity towards the suspects, and insisted instead that these Jews were his friends and relatives. But he told the Inquisitor: ‘I love the truth more than my friends.’93 The third processo94 Charges: Two accusations of ingiuria: (a) Abramino [no surname] and his daughter Esther, were accused of insulting Hester Thodesca, a Jewish prostitute, with the term Meshumad (apostate); (b) Catchigia, a Jewish shoemaker, was accused of calling Giacintho, a neophyte, a Meshumad cano (renegade dog). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 140 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Scene: Piazzetta dei Servi, October 1603. Accused: Abramino and his daughter Esther; Catchigia, a Jewish shoemaker. Delator: Santorio, a Jew. Witnesses: Hester Thodesca – a Jewish prostitute; Giacintho de Bentivoli – a neophyte; Jacobo Monchino – a Christian; Francesca Diega – a Christian. This is a transcript not of a full trial, but of an investigation in the course of which three Jews were interrogated and imprisoned for a week. The only link between the two charges is the type of accusation (ingiuria) and, in particular, the use of the term Meshumad. Catchigia was charged with bestemmia hereticale and Abramino and Esther with insult. The Inquisitor went back and forth between the two cases and the transcript is frustrating because of this. Here the two stories will be told and analysed separately rather than in the precise order of the text. All the suspects were released without sentencing on 5 December 1603 and matters came to an end. The first altercation This processo is one of the very many examples recorded in the archives of verbal conflicts which concerned honour and superiority. These conflicts drew on common linguistic and social knowledge for purposes of provocation, alienation and the defining of social or cultural marginals, as nuisances and disruptive elements in society. The altercation pitting Hester Thodesca against Abramino and his daughter is complex and somewhat unusual, but it also gives vivid testimony to the religious uncertainty in Modena of many at this time who lived on the borders of Judaism and Christianity, the economic and psychological pressures they faced to convert and the unhinging implications it brought to relationships with co-religionists and the wider Jewish community. On 28 October 1603, a Jew, Santorio, appeared before the vicar of the Inquisition in Modena to denounce two incidents, which he recounted. The first: Around eight or nine days ago, I was in the Piazzetta dei Servi in Modena and I heard a quarrel between a young Jewess Esther, daughter of Abramino, who was imprisoned by the Holy Office on another occasion, and another Jewess called Hester Thodesca, who lives in the district of San Giorgio, concerning a daughter that she, the said Hester Thodesca, had given to be baptized.95 Among other words Esther, the daughter of Abramino, said publicly to this Hester Thodesca, shouting – ‘go and give your other girl to be made a Christian, go and sell the others as you did the first’, and she insulted her with the word Meshumad, which implies a Christian or a ‘damned soul’. Present were Jacobo Monchino at the corner of the Piazzetta dei Servi and one Francesca Diega. Hester Thodesca told me herself that the father of Esther, that is Abramino, had spoken similar words to her this summer.96 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 141 The Inquisitor asked Santorio if he had other incidents to report. The delator did not answer with yes or no, but replied with the comment: ‘I do not do this because of ill will, but because I promised the Father Inquisitor that I would do it.’97 Santorio’s statement suggests that either the Inquisition were paying him as a spy or he had been warned to report others after a reprimand by an Inquisitorial spy or famigliare. When Jacobo Monchino was interrogated the next day, he provided more information on the quarrel:98 I heard in particular what Esther said to that Todeschina. She said these words. ‘Go and sell your other child as you did with the one you sold in Ferrara’, and La Todeschina replied to her, ‘I will make you eat your words’. This event occurred around twelve days ago, and there were many people present and we did not think it was necessary to tell your Reverence, because we did not give it much consideration.99 Hester’s nickname, La Todeschina (the little Ashkenazi woman), was by no means particularly offensive, nor did it refer to her profession as a prostitute, but remained elusive.100 When on 30 October, Hester Thodesca was summoned, she seemed well prepared and ready to redress the insult she had received. She elaborated: I guess I have been summoned because I had frequent arguments with one Abramino, a Jew who lives next door to me. He said all kinds of nasty things but mostly I considered it insulting and offensive when he said at the top of his voice: ‘Go and sell your other daughter as you have sold the first’. He said to me that I was worse than a Meshumad, because I had sold my own child. On Saturday, eight days ago, it was his daughter who said to me similar words, and over and over again she has said these words.101 She gave the vicar the names of two Christians who, she said, had heard these words. One was Hippolito Barozzi, the vendor of brandy to the Jews, and the other Francesca Diega, whom Santorio reported in his delation.102 Hester Thodesca then added: Sometimes many people were present, which caused me much embarrassment … I remember also that Abramino and his daughter Esther have said to me, bullying me, ‘You have a daughter Sarza, are you also going to give her to Christians?’ What do they want from me? I did not give the child to Turks, nor to Marranos, but I have given her to good Christians, and they said to me, ‘You did this and it shows the type of person you are’. I confess the truth, that I would willingly have also given the child that I still have to Christians, but I did not have the spirit to put up with more insults of the kind I have suffered for the last four years.103 Hester’s argument did not really make sense. If she was already being insulted for giving her first child to Christians, it would hardly make a difference if she gave the second one away. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 142 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Hester could not provide specific times and places where such insults had been uttered. On 28 October, two days earlier, Abramino and his daughter Esther had been imprisoned. Their arrest was carried out before Hester Thodesca’s interrogation, which was again a slightly irregular move on the part of the Inquisition, which usually chose to imprison defendants after sufficient witness testimonies confirmed the offence. At her first interrogation, Esther was asked what she knew of the term Meshumad. She answered: ‘It is used by people outside one’s family both by Jews and by Christians, and people say it by way of provocation.’104 When the Inquisitor informed Esther that she was accused of saying such words to a ‘Jewess who gave her daughter to Christians in Ferrara’, Esther initially denied this.105 She then answered: I will tell you the truth, Father. On a day past, I do not remember when, I was at my window talking with Stella de Graziano and at the tavern of Christians, there was a young woman, called Hester who comes from so many places that no one can really say where she is from. But she is from somewhere and everywhere in Germany. I don’t know why she did it but she began to call me a layabout, a jealous cow, a streak of piss, a lousy bitch, and all sorts of rude things, and among other things she taunted me, ‘Look how your brother and sister are faring since they became Christians’.106 This seems to imply that Esther was a fine one to talk, because there were converts in her family too. The Inquisitor then asked Esther what she knew of Hester Thodesca. She answered: ‘Sir, she is not an honest person and you should speak to someone else, not to me, rather than that I should say things to her discredit.’107 The Inquisitor then turned to the subject of Hester Thodesca’s children. Esther said that she did not know how many children Hester Thodesca had. The Inquisitor began to lose his patience, questioning her ‘shameful and dishonourable insults’.108 Esther answered, with clear indication of aggression towards the prostitute: ‘I told her to mind her own business and that I did not want to get involved talking to her, since she was a whore.’109 When Abramino was interrogated by the Inquisitorial vicar on the same day, the vicar asked if he knew of any Jewish woman who had given a child to Christians. Abramino answered: It is said throughout Modena, that this Thodesca gave a daughter to Christians in Ferrara, and that she sold her in order that the child might become a Christian.110 On 3 November, Abramino was brought forward for his second interrogation. Showing greater readiness to cooperate, he began: I will tell you exactly what happened. One day, Hester the German whore had a row with my wife using every kind of insult as she called her Big Teeth, Fatty, Lousy, Shit, and saying that she had put two children to death. In the surround- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 143 ings of the house, I was told of this, and as I was at the door of my house, I heard her also before that tavern of Christians, saying dishonest words, and idling with other prostitutes. I said to Hester, ‘Is this the way to speak? Where are the children? Let it alone.’111 Abramino denied ever saying insulting words to Hester Thodesca, despite the repeated questions of the vicar. On 5 November, a Christian witness, Francesca Diega, who was named as a witness by both Santorio and Hester Thodesca in their testimonies, provided important testimony: During the past month I was present when some words were said by a German Jewish prostitute to Abramino the Jew when Abramino was coming from the synagogue.The said Jewess met him and said to him, ‘Abramino, tell your daughter to leave me alone. Otherwise she will make me do something crazy. Every day she does nothing but remind me that I gave my daughter to Christians. If I gave her away, I gave her to the Lord, and if I wanted to become a Christian myself, who would stop me?’ The said Abramino did not say anything, and after hearing this he left without saying anything.112 Diega was then asked if she had ever heard Esther herself condemn Hester Thodesca for giving her child to Christians. She said no. Nor could she provide witnesses who had heard either Abramino or Esther say such words. When Esther was called to her second interrogation, she was reminded that she was accused of saying Meshumad. She replied: Sir, I do not know what else to say. I did not insult her, nor say Meshumad, nor those other words about selling her child. She is a damned liar. She was expelled from Rome. She just wants to cause trouble for everyone.113 Esther was then told that her father, who had spoken truthfully to the Inquisitor, had already been freed, although there is no mention of this in the transcript. The Inquisitor tried a few more times to persuade her to confess but she refused. At this point the notary recorded that the examination was concluded. These words are in fact the last words recorded in the transcript of the trial. On the front cover, under a description of the offence, the word ‘incompletus’ indicates that the trial was discontinued. Abramino’s and Esther’s trial could have evolved into an investigation of a much more serious offence, hinging on the charge that the two Jews had attempted to block the baptism of Hester Thodesca’s second child.114 The Inquisitor and vicar tried to find out exactly what insulting words Abramino and Esther had said to the prostitute and whether they had harassed her for wanting to baptize her child, but the two Jews refuted the charges. Nor could the Inquisition find witnesses who could confirm that Abramino or Esther had used the term Meshumad against Hester Thodesca. Once Calbetti had interrogated Francesca Diega, whom Hester had named as a witness and who represented Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 144 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Hester as the aggressor instead of the victim, he dropped the case and released the defendants. Hester’s marginality – due to her low class, profession and decision to baptize her first child – seemed to be the source of continous friction between her and her Jewish neighbours.115 In general, the Università took care of Jewish children born out of wedlock, and the massari would, as Euride Fregni indicates, attempt to find the father, and make him admit paternity and pay the midwife.116 In a similar case in Venice, the Jewish community did all it could to prevent the baptism of an abandoned illegitimate child.117 But Hester Thodesca seems not to have taken advantage of these options, but had as she testified given her daughter to ‘good Christians’. This meant that the child, who would have immediately been baptized upon receipt, had been given to ecclesiastical authorities and relocated in a Christian environment. Perhaps it was placed in a Christian foundling hospital in Ferrara, or given charitable refuge in one of Ferrara’s Christian institutions or ‘sold’ to a Christian family, to serve in their household as a means of cheap labour.118 When in 1720 Rachel Carmi of Piedmont, a 24–year-old prostitute, gave up her child for baptism, she was expected to follow suit if she had any desire to bring up the child herself.119 Whatever the real background to the altercation between the Jews, whether both parties had lost or given children to be baptized, or whether these unbridled verbal insults were a result of the Jews’ profound poverty and the economic temptations to convert faced by individual Jews, this was essentially a case of petty bickering, in which Jews’ personal moves towards Christianity were judged and criticized by other Jews.120 The question remains why Hester would address her grievance to the Inquisition. Perhaps she had hoped to be treated well by the Holy Office and win sympathy against her Jewish neighbours – Santorio’s denunciation being an agreed move with her to revenge themselves upon neighbouring Jewish enemies. In fact, these two Jews collaborated against fellow Jews on another occasion. In 1604, Santorio denounced the Jewess Bellina for blasphemy.121 When Angelo de Thodeschi was called as a witness he testified that Santorio and Hester had had an argument with Bellina and her son Catchigia in Bellina’s tavern. That these same factions of Jews appear in several processi confirms the deep-seated antagonism between them. One Jewish suspect, Isaaco Sanguinetti, accused of maleficio in 1621, suggests in his testimony that poor Jews in particular were more exposed to altercations with their Jewish neighbours: ‘Everyone has enemies, especially if one is poor like me.’122 Perhaps Hester thought a denunciation by a prostitute would not be taken seriously by the Inquisition, despite the fact that women did regularly use law courts in Italy at this time.123 Although Hester is referred to as a prostitute by witnesses and defendants, this could be misleading, since, as Elizabeth Cohen states, ‘it was routine to disparage as a “whore” any woman Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 145 with whom one was on bad terms’.124 Because there were no official brothels in Italian cities at this time, anxious citizens and authorities often had difficulty establishing who was a prostitute or a fornicator or who merely enjoyed the company of men. The Inquisitorial vicar referred to Hester as a meretrice in his interrogation of Abramino. He asked Abramino: ‘Knowing that this prostitute had given a child to Christians, to be baptized, did you insult her for having done it?’125 The vicar’s reference to Hester Thodesca as a prostitute confirms that she was one, but in terms of the legal proceedings her profession is of negligible concern. It was certainly not illegal for her to be a prostitute as long as she confined her solicitation to Jews.126 The Inquisition would only interfere in a case where a Jewish prostitute had sexual intercourse with a Christian or a Christian prostitute with a Jew, or more generally when there were any sexual liaisons between Jews and Christians.127 Although the prostitute remains the central figure, little can be said about her with certainty. That she was a poor, unmarried immigrant and that she was driven to prostitution by poverty and destitution can be surmised from Esther’s testimony. In fact there is very limited information on Jewish prostitutes in Italy at this time.128 There seems to be no contemporary source, either Christian or Jewish, that suggests that civic authorities regularly monitored Jewish prostitutes. Ulinka Rublack has shown how, by the early seventeenth century, attitudes towards prostitutes had hardened in western Europe.129 Government policy alternated between tolerance and suppression of prostitutes, there were no civic brothels which housed Jewish or Christian prostitutes, and women were forced to solicit in private homes.130 They were seen as immoral and threatening to the existing social order and, as Rublack states, ‘the sight of a young wandering woman with a bastard child was meant to be a warning to all other women’.131 Simonsohn has cited a number of documents relating to specific dilemmas that the Mantuan Jewish community faced in dealing with Jewish prostitutes.132 In 1598, the Council and rabbis excommunicated all those found to be in contact with a certain Jewish prostitute, Nahla.133 In another document, Simonsohn reports efforts made by the Jewish community to marry off Gila, a Jewish prostitute, in 1603.134 After sluggish moves by the community, the Duke intervened, and ordered the Jews to contribute to a dowry for her. That the Jewish community was concerned about prostitutes and the damages they could cause is obvious. Our processo does provide some basic indication of the Jewish prostitute’s public behaviour. Hester Thodesca ‘idled’ with other prostitutes and spoke and shouted dishonest words in front of her neighbours. She challenged the existence of social norms which would explain Abramino and Esther’s disgust towards her in their testimony, not just as an enemy, but as an outcast. Had Hester been forced to migrate from Germany to avoid shame?135 Had patriarchy and partu- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 146 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES rition combined to punish this woman, through the actions of individual men, but also through the pervasive influence of patriarchal values, which affected attitudes towards her? Hester Thodesca was presented as a continuous cause of disturbance, a woman of shameless behaviour, left to her own devices, operating from streets and Christian taverns. But at the same time one senses evidence of personal, psychological and economic crises as she hovered on the margins of Judaism and Christianity. It is perhaps not surprising then that the Inquisition made no effort to evangelize Jewish prostitutes. The second altercation Santorio also denounced another incident in his delation: Giacintho, a neophyte, said to me [Santorio] this summer that one Catchigia, a Jew had said to him these Hebrew words while arguing with him, ‘Meshumad dog’, which means ‘destroyed’.136 On the next day, Giacintho de Bentivoli, the neophyte, was called to testify.137 De Bentivoli admitted that he knew Catchigia, and that when he had been a Jew he had lived in the home of Catchigia’s father, an innkeeper.138 The Inquisitor General then asked if Giacintho had ever argued with Catchigia. He replied: It was perhaps four or six months ago, that I quarrelled with the said Catchigia, because he took the soles off a pair of my shoes … The said Catchigia insulted me many times and also threatened me. Among other words, he said to me ‘Meshumad’, which means ‘destroyed’, or destruction of the soul, and I said to him, ‘you will pay for this. I will make you eat that word Meshumad’. A few days later, he sent his brother, a Capuchin and a convert, telling me that I should not do anything against Catchigia, so I did not. Some people were present during this conversation but I could not tell you [all their names], although Bellina, his mother was there and one of her daughters.139 On 28 October, Catchigia was arrested and imprisoned, after Calbetti had secured evidence from one witness besides the delator. Six days later, he was summoned for his first interrogation before the Inquisitor General. Calbetti then asked him if a particular Capuchin had mediated in an argument that he had had with a neophyte. Catchigia did not at first mention the neophyte Giacintho, but referred instead to a quarrel with Santorio: I asked my uncle, Brother Ruffino, a Capuchin, because I had a difference of opinion with Santorio, a Jew, to make Santorio let me be and let me attend to my shop. I was not annoying anyone. I do not know why we started arguing, unless it was because of my sister Capona, who was teasing him.140 Catchigia, it seems, had not severed all links with his Capuchin uncle, since he tried to use him as an intermediary to get himself out of trouble. The Inquisitor Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 147 General, refusing to be distracted by this story, asked Catchigia directly if he had quarrelled with a neophyte. Catchigia answered: I remember, Father, that I had a row with Giacintho the Ferrarese, a Jew who became Christian, living in Modena, but I do not remember why, perhaps because he wanted to take Santorio’s side. Father Ruffino made peace between us to stop him from bothering me, because he was pestering me on account of jealousy.141 When asked how many times Catchigia had called Giacintho a Meshumad, he answered confidently: ‘I have never said “Meshumad” to anyone. Rather, to Jews who become Christians, I say “neophyte”, which is the term used in Rome.’142 The Inquisitor General threatened Catchigia with torture if he did not speak the truth, but he refused to confess and was sent back to prison. On 5 November, Catchigia was brought before the Inquisitorial vicar for a second interrogation, but consistently denied that he had ever used the word Meshumad.143 The vicar pressed him again to admit the truth but Catchigia refused to confess. Proceedings were then brought to an end. The notary gives no indication when the Jew was released. Nor was Ruffino called to testify. The Inquisitorial notary was in general meticulous in his record-keeping. However, there is an unusual carelessness about the details of this altercation. There are gaps in the text, questions and answers do not always relate to each other, and, as noted above, defendants failed to sign the copies of their interrogations. Nonetheless, Catchigia’s offence was different from that of Esther and her father Abramino. Even though, according to Santorio’s delation, Abramino and his daughter Esther, as well as Catchigia, had used the term Meshumad, Catchigia was accused of profanely insulting a Christian.144 Seven years later, in a processo of 1610, the Inquisitor Michelangelo Lerri showed familiarity with this Hebrew term, describing it as: ‘a Hebrew word, an insult to Jews, [meaning] those who have adopted the Christian faith’.145 The term had in fact been discussed by Rabbi Ishmael Hanina da Valmontone in his report of his trial before the Bolognese Inquisition in 1568. Here he refuted the accusation regarding the abusive usage of the term Meshumad against Christians in Jewish literature, by arguing that the rabbis never had in mind Christians or Christianity when they used the word.146 He argued that the word corresponded to no known Hebrew grammatical construction, but was Aramaic in origin and meant ‘something that had been divorced from its roots’.147 In trials before the Modenese Inquisition, the Holy Office concentrated only on determining whether the term Meshumad had been used by Jewish suspects or punishing them for insulting neophytes if found guilty. None of the Christian witnesses in the trial admitted that they had heard the Hebrew word Meshumad. When in 1610 the neophyte Paolo de Buozzi denounced two Jews, David de Mantovano and his brother Isaaco, to the Modenese Inquisition for calling him a Meshumad, he Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 148 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES indicated to the Inquisitor General that the Hebrew word was not a known term among Christians: ‘This word [Meshumad] they said to me in Hebrew, so that the Christian workers would not understand it.’148 Perhaps it was a term which Jews could use to deride neophytes without being noticed by their Christian neighbours. When Francesco Cali, a neophyte, came to denounce the Jew Benedetto, a tailor in the Venetian ghetto, to the Venetian Inquisition in 1584 for calling him a Meshumad, or as he translated it a cano renegado (a renegade dog), he indicated that he saw the Inquisition as being responsible for protecting neophytes from such insults by Jews: This Benedetto said to me in Hebrew that because I have become a Christian, I have lost my soul. And I said to him, ‘What do you mean, I have lost my soul?’ He replied in French, ‘Go away you renegade dog’. And he put his hand on a knife and on a pair of scissors, to attack me and I in order to defend myself took a stone from the ground and threw it at him. I do not know if it hit him, because I saw only that he wanted to pull out the scissors. And he himself said to Gabriel, a broker, that he wanted to kill me with the scissors. And this was yesterday morning, near the church of San Bartolomeo and it seems to me that it is the duty of your Lordships to see to it that Jews who have become Christians are not driven crazy by Jews and treated like renegades.149 Despite the accusation against him in 1603, Catchigia refused to confess. Nor did the Inquisition secure witnesses who could testify that they had heard Catchigia call the neophyte a Meshumad. Giacintho’s position demands consideration of the mobility of neophytes, the wavering of their religious identity and about groups of families in which some members had converted, but others had not.150 Eleven processi (6% of the processi against professing Jews) between the years 1598 and 1638 were initiated by neophytes and these were not delations that their family members had made moves themselves towards conversion, as often happened in Rome at the Casa dei Catecumeni.151 Neophytes delated Jews for holding prohibited books, blasphemy, threatening neophytes, dining with Christians and hiring Christian servants. The processi where these neophytes appear –as suspects, delators or witnesses – reveal a whole underworld of Jews who converted to Christianity, in a non-ghetto society where the Inquisition had to work so much harder to keep converts away from Jews and the possibility of their relapse to Judaism after baptism. On no account would the Inquisition wish to admit that the Church’s campaign for conversion had created bad Christians. Neophytes who converted to Christianity in Modena in the early seventeenth century would have spent some time being catechized by priests in the homes of noble gentlemen or gentlewomen, supported and subsidized by either the Opera Calori or the Opera Venosa before conversion, since the local Casa dei Catecumeni was established only in 1700.152 Baptisms would normally be carried out in the Duomo in the evening Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 149 after Vespers, amidst pomp and ceremony, and all citizens of the city were expected to attend.153 During catechism and after conversion, these neophytes were required to keep far away from Jewish relatives, since conversion entailed cutting ties completely with the Jewish community.154 Neophytes, however, often got into trouble for returning to Judaism or associating with their former co-religionists, which exposed them to suspicion of heresy – all the more so because they could not claim that either they or their ancestors had been forced converts. Despite this, neophytes often maintained contact with Jewish relatives. Catchigia admitted that he had asked his uncle, a Capuchin monk, to intervene to try and dispel Giacintho’s anger against him. Some Jews risked the scorn of the Jewish community to maintain contact with neophyte relatives and on occasion relied upon them to help to assist in reconciling them with neighbours.155 In 1620, Isaaco Sacerdote, Giuseppe Mellis and Abraamo de Collaris, Jews living in Finale, were accused of being disrespectful to Christian images in public by provocatively turning their backs on a statue of the Virgin.156 During investigation, Isaaco, a 24–year-old, revealed that he had four sisters, one of whom, Joanna, had converted and married a Christian, Antonio Rialli.157 She had converted with her young son, Francesco, from a previous marriage with Abraamo Cuniami. When asked what contact Isaaco had with his sister and her family, he told the Inquisitor that he visited her often in her house, as well as using the services of her husband who was a Christian notary and procurator. Joanna also frequently visited Isaaco’s house with her son Francesco. However, contact did not include eating or drinking, or so Isaaco testifed, saying that the most he had ever eaten in their presence either in her or his home was some fruit and drink.158 When the Inquisitor General, Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza, pressed Isaaco to reveal the fact that they had eaten meals together, the Jew refused to confess. In 1638 the Inquisition also discovered that the neophyte Federico Benedicto often visited the home of his daughter Hester de Susanni, who had remained a Jew, and that the neophyte Alessandro Santoro often frequented the home of his Jewish mother to do domestic chores.159 In early seventeenth-century Modena, which housed neither a ghetto nor a Casa dei Catecumeni, there were few boundaries or areas which were prohibited to Jews, potential converts to Christianity, or neophytes.160 To date, there have been preliminary studies of continued business dealings, payments of debt, and even affectionate relationships between Jews and neophytes.161 Our altercation, like other processi in the archives, demonstrates a level of familial intimacy as well as unknown ambivalence and friction, and how this friction was manipulated, not only within a single family, but on an inter-family level. The argument between Catchigia and Giacintho, the neophyte, is hidden behind the various testimonies. Four to six months previously Catchigia, a young Jewish shoemaker, had an argument with Giacintho, a former lodger of his father. The two had argued Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 150 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES and Catchigia, or so he reports, had removed the sole of a pair of Giacintho’s shoes and called him a ‘Meshumad Cane’. The Jewish delator Santorio seemed to have joined forces with the neophyte Giacintho and often came to Catchigia’s shop to bother him or perhaps to flirt with his sister Capona. That Catchigia’s mother Bellina was also involved is confirmed in a processo of 1604 in which she too was also prosecuted for blasphemy. When Angelo de Thodeschi was called as a witness he confirmed that Catchigia and his mother Bellina had argued with Santorio and Hester in Bellina’s tavern, blaspheming as they did so.162 In our case, Catchigia’s uncle Ruffino, a neophyte Capuchin, had intervened on Catchigia’s behalf and one senses Giacintho being frightened off by the presence of Ruffino. Perhaps the source of the argument was related to debts that Giacintho had never paid Catchigia’s father when he lodged in his house. In another trial in May 1610 a neophyte, Paolo de Buozzi, appeared before the Inquisition to complain that he and his brother Simone had been branded Meshumadim by two Jews.163 During the investigations it became clear that they had both at one time been lodgers in the same house as the Jews. Simone testified: We lived for four years in the same house with David and his brother, and then they expelled me with evil words to the master of the house and he said ‘You horrible renegade!’164 When David de Mantovano, the accused, came to testify to the Inquisition he gave his version of the altercation: Simone was sent away because of his dirty habits. He believes that I drove him out, and that is why he is persecuting me. At Carnival he gave my brother a blow with a stick, and I think it was Simone because he said that he would do something bad to me. This he said at the synagogue of Samuel Sanguinetti in the presence of all the Jews. Simone lived with us for four years, but he never wanted to pay anything.165 It may be that in conditions of chronic poverty, the hope or expectation of escaping punishment for offences committed or debts unpaid, was an element prompting the conversion.166 But that there existed scorn, aggression and desire for vindication between neophyte and Jew is obvious. The processi in which neophytes denounce or testify against Jews also suggest hostility, violence, deception, personal vendettas and revenge. In 1631, the 28– year-old neophyte Anna Prati harboured much resentment towards her ex-husband, Simone Vita, whom she testified had condemned not only her but also Christianity. Her efforts to arraign Simone Vita failed and investigations were dropped.167 In 1643, Francesco Estense, who had recently converted with his wife and son, denounced Jews who, he said, had injured him and threatened him by saying ‘Watch out, you renegade, tomorrow they will break your neck’.168 Whether the neophyte also wished to use the Inquisition to voice his grievances Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 151 against the Jewish community that had rejected him, or whether he was driven by alienation and the anxiety of integration in his new social and religious community can only be surmised. Neophytes were often unpopular among Christians, who did not trust the sincerity of their conversions and assumed that they still maintained contact with their former co-religionists.169 It is probable that Santorio’s denunciation related to some prior animosity or specific quarrel between him and his fellow Jew Catchigia. Catchigia admitted to such a quarrel in his interrogation: ‘I had a difference of opinion with Santorio’.170 Some neophytes clearly hid their conduct and the real causes of altercations with former Jews.171 They informed upon the Jews to the Inquisition, denouncing them or testifying against them as suspects. By denouncing Jews, the neophyte constituted a real threat to the Jews and a perennial source of insecurity for the Jewish community. At the same time the Inquisition remained suspicious of neophytes – certain perhaps that they would maintain some contact with Jews and anxious to investigate those who did.172 Although the Inquisition tried to exploit the contact between neophytes and Jews, when it came to the prosecution of Jews for verbal offences the Inquisition enjoyed limited success. Most of the proceedings were discontinued, even though, on occasion, the Inquisitor had already made arrests. The offences of blasphemy and insult were in general more complicated to prosecute. Each side had a story, sometimes very different from the original delation, and it was often impossible for the Inquisition to know for sure who was telling the truth. Its use of Jews as spies or informers was not always reliable and often Inquisitors had to make arbitrary decisions to bring proceedings to an end. Yet, simultaneously, these processi provide a rare glimpse of those Jews who were most affected by contact with Christian society. They were not the communal leaders or the well-to-do, but Jews on the fringes of the community and the stratum of poor Jews so often hidden. The Jews’ adoption of swear words and curses that they heard from their Christian neighbours and their casual use of these profanities suggest that they did not feel the need to hide their public behaviour from surrounding Christians. They maintained connections, and communicated concerns with family members who converted, expecting a level of support in return. The appearance of a Jewish prostitute here questions whether the Counter-Reformation attempts to control sexuality led to an overwhelming stigmatization of illegitimacy and abandonment of children, which in turn affected the Jewish community too.173 The role of the poor neophyte in early modern Italy, rarely seen as successfully integrated into Christian society, assumes a new dimension, too, both qualitatively and quantitively. This casts doubt on the extent to which the presence of what appears to be many converts who crossed the Jewish/Christian border at will affected early modern Jewish life on a daily basis, and also in the long term. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 152 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES Finally, Inquisitorial processi for verbal offences have important implications for the issues of morality, discipline and communal conflict that were prevalent within the Jewish community. Although it is not surprising perhaps that Jewish communities, like their Christian counterparts, experienced internal discord and friction among its members, what is remarkable is that Jews, far from communal power, were clearly ready to perceive and use the Holy Office as a court they might turn to should they feel the Jewish community would not respond. Notes 1 See Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family and Women: Towards a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994), pp. 88, 97. 2 David Nash, ‘Analyzing the History of Religious Crime. Models of “Passive” and “Active” Blasphemy since the Medieval Period’, Journal of Social History 41/1 (Fall 2007), 5–29, 15. 3 Francisca Loetz, ‘How to do Things with God: Blasphemy in Early Modern Switzerland’, in Mary Lindemann (ed.), Ways of Knowing:Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, Studies in Central European Histories (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 137–51, p. 139. 4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). For an understanding of this process see Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia. 5 See the excellent study on blasphemy in early modern Venice by Elizabeth Horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On controlling superstition, also see Horodowich’s ‘Civic Identity and the Control of Blasphemy in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Past and Present 181 (2003), 3–33, 24. Horodowich emphasizes the belief that illness, pain, suffering and death as well as famine, plague and economic loss were connected to the utterance of blasphemy. On controlling disruptive behaviour, see Nash, ‘Analyzing the History of Religious Crime’, p. 11. For reasons why curses were so unacceptable and dangerous for Christians, see Lester K. Little, Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 90–3; and David Lawton, Blasphemy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 10–13. 6 Horodowich, Language, p. 70. 7 On Venice see Horodowich ‘Civic Identity’, p. 6. Offenders had been punished with prison sentences and fines. See also Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 82 and Renzo Derosas, ‘Moralità e giustizia a Venezia nel ’500–’600: Gli Esecutori contro la Bestemmia’, in Gaetano Cozzi (ed.), Stato, società e giustizia nella repubblica veneta (sec. XV–XVIII) (Rome: Jouvence, 1980), pp. 433–528. On Lucca see Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi, ‘La Magistratura delle Cause delegate nella Repubblica di Lucca: Eresia e Stregoneria (Secoli XVI– XVIII)’, in del Col and Paolin (eds), L’Inquisizione Romana, p. 277. 8 On 22 July 1492, the King of Spain proclaimed that any subject proven guilty of blasphemy was to be punished with a month’s incarceration for the first offence, and either a fine or six months’ exile for the second, while the sentence for a third offence would depend on the status of the guilty. If he was a noble, he would be fined and exiled, or, if a commoner, a nail would be hammered through his tongue. See Ronald E. Surtz, ‘Crimes of the Tongue: The Inquisitorial Trials of Cristóbal Duarte Ballester’, Medieval Encounters 12/3 (2006), 519–32, 523. Guido Kisch has shown how in Germany’s Reichs-Polizeiordnung of 1530, Emperor Charles V ordered the death penalty for blasphemy after two convictions. See Guido Kisch, ‘The Jewish Execution’, in Kisch (ed.), Forschungen zur Rechts-,Wirtschaft- und Sozialgeschichte der Juden in Deutschland während des Mittelalters (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1955), pp. 103–32, p. 131. In 1559 the Senate of Milan issued an edict against profane cursing, and a little later the Grand Duke of Tuscany did the same. See Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 102. 9 ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. A copy of this edict can also be found in Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 153 Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 129–30. 10 See Horodowich, Language, p. 80, where it is noted that the connection between gambling and blasphemy had already been established in medieval times. 11 Ibid., p. 129. 12 Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, p. 61. 13 Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 129. 14 In the twelfth century, according to Alain Cabantous, the Catholic Church classified two categories of blasphemy. The first was influenced by Augustine and later Peter Lombard, who interpreted blasphemy as ‘false things about God’. The second, promulgated by Aymon of Auxerre, was an offence or insult against God. See Alain Cabantous, Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, trans. Eric Rauth, European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia Press, 2002), p. 7. This then allowed a blurring of details which saw the inclusion of heresy, imprecation (prayers or curses invoking evil), foul language, swear words and sacrilege all included in the universal term of blasphemy. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas debated the philosophical meaning of blasphemy (see Surtz, ‘Crimes’, p. 524). Surtz argues that Thomas Aquinas ‘allowed for sacrilegious slips of the tongue derived from the imagination, writing that blasphemy could occur ‘unawares and without deliberation … by a man failing to advert to the blasphemous nature of his words and this may happen through his being moved suddenly by passion so as to break out into words sugested by his imagination, without heeding to the meaning of those words; this is a venial sin, and is not a blasphemy properly so called’ – see Thomas Acquinas, Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas, general editor Thomas Gilby (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), pt. I–II, q. 13, art. 2, 2:1231 – but it was not until the fifteenth century that three separate categories of blasphemy were underlined, the first two relating to impious speech and the third to heretical blasphemy. Francisca Loetz has shown that the first class of blasphemy – cursing – was defined as giving orders to God, for example ‘may God strike you down’, which implied that man was ordering God for his own purposes. The second category was swearing, for example ‘for God’s sake’, when you invoked God inappropriately. The third category was, according to Loetz, blasphemy as a heresy refuting the existence or omnipotence of God. 15 Surtz, ‘Crimes’, p. 524. In 1500 in Spain, Inquisitor General Diego de Deza warned Inquisitors not to try those who blasphemed in a moment of anger. 16 See ASMoFI Miscellanae 1620–40, busta 295. ‘Contra di quai persone proceda il Santo Officio della Inquisitione’, which confirms the tribunal’s position on this matter. 17 See Prosperi, Tribunali, p. 356. 18 Horodowich, ‘Civic Identity’, p. 12. See also Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 82 who shows that Jews too were punished by the Esecutori for blasphemy. 19 See ASMoFI Miscellanae 1620–40, busta 295. Also ASMoFI Lettere della Sacra Congregazione 1609–1621, busta 252. 20 See ASMoFIP 52 f.3, Registro di denunce della Garfagnana (1619–1623) con allegati. 21 See the Inquisitorial manual of Michelangelo Lerri, ‘Breve informatione del modo di trattare le cause del S. Officio’, p. 3. 22 See Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 80 who confirms that the Inquisition in Venice did not prosecute Jews for blasphemy, but only ‘former Jews with heretical blasphemy’. 23 Stow, Catholic Thought, p. xxv. From the time of the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes, the gravest offence a Jew could commit against Christianity was insult. 24 On the prohibition of Jews to insult Christianity, see ibid., p. 94. 25 Bernard Gui’s Inquisitorial manual of 1323–24, Practica Inquisitionis Hereticae Pravitatis, stated that Inquisitorial competence with respect to Jews included only actual blasphemy against Christianity in their prayers. See Guillaume Mollat (ed.), Bernard Gui, Manuel de L’Inquisiteur (Paris: Champion, 1927), 13 [4] ‘De Intolerabili blasfemia Judeorum contra Christum et fidem eius et populum Christianum.’ See Kedar, ‘Canon Law and the Burning of the Talmud’, pp. 79–82, where he refers to Pope Innocent IV’s Apparatus of 1245, which claimed for the Pope the right to judge Jews who are unpunished by their own authorities. Innocent referred Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 154 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES directly to the sin of blasphemy: ‘The Pope has jurisdiction and power over all. [Whence] he may judge Jews. [He may do so] if they act contrary to their law in issues of morality, and their own prelates do not punish them, and, equally, if they fall into heresy with respect to their own law.’ Nicolau Eymeric’s fourteenth-century Inquisitorial manual, titled Directorium Inquisitorium, stated that Jews denying God were heretics by their own law but they were also heretics according to Christian law, because Jews and Christians held the same opinon regarding: ‘faith in one God and the faith in a God creator of everything’. See Nicolau Eymeric, Directorium Inquisitorum, II. Pars Directorii.119. Bullarium vol. VIII, pp. 378–9. See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 17. Ibid. The edict is reprinted in Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 382–9. Ibid., p. 384, clause 9. For the 1601 edict, see ibid., p. 445, 11 March 1601; for the 1608 edict see ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. See the document titled ‘Editti a stampa Inquisitione 1601–1610. Editto Generale per il S. Officio di Modena noi frate Michel Angelo Lerri da Forli 28 Aprile 1608’. For the 1622 edict see ASMoFICH 244 f.34. See the document titled ‘Editto Generale per il S. Ufficio di Modena 24th January 1622’. Maria Pia Balboni has described some of these processi that occurred in Finale, but with limited analysis. See Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 56–7. See Biondi, ‘La Nuova Inquisizione’, pp. 68–9. Under the rule of Calbetti, the number of trials against Jews increased, particularly between December 1602 and May 1604. Surtz, ‘Crimes’, p. 526. See also Horodowich, Language, p. 85. See the testimony of Angelo de Thodeschi, in ASMoFIP 22 f.29. ASMoFICH 244 f.15. ASMoFIP 67 f.17, trial against Giuseppe Melli, a 65–year-old Jew of Finale in July 1622. Melli was given a fine of 50 scudi. See Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 104–6. ASMoFIP 29 f.17, 10 July 1603. Although this processo is held in Busta 29 with other processi from 1607, it seems clear from the notarial handwriting that these proceedings occurred in 1603. Numbers appearing in footnotes in this section in parenthesis refer to the folio pages of this trial. Ibid. (3r). One Jewish witness in the trial described the curse as ‘Puttana di Malachi, which means whore of the angel of God’. Ibid. Ibid. (5v). There were eleven present, six ecclesiastics and five doctors of law. The ecclesiastics were Archangelo Calbetti, the Inquisitor General; Doctor Ercole Simonello de Fingulo, the vicar general; Dominico de Papi, a vicar of the Holy Office; Don Angelo Maria Rubbini, Provost of the Cathedral; Don Fabrizio Manzoli, Theologian of the Cathedral; and Don Monsignor, Brother Archangelo of the Servite order. The doctors of law were Annibali Spaccini, Francesco Grattito, Lodovico Cattaneo, Jacopinos Leone and Don Alfonso Lovolo. It is not clear whether these canonists were clergy of any kind. Martin, Witchcraft, p. 220 notes that in Venice although whipping was rarely used as a punishment in the seventeenth century, it was usually carried out in the vicinity where the offender lived to ensure the greatest humilation for him or her. See ASMoFIP 83 f.10, 1627. Ibid., f.19. Ibid., f.20. Cabantous, Blasphemy, p. 191. See Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Religione, moralità e giustizia a Venezia: vicende della magistratura degli Esecutori contro la bestemmia (secoli XVI–XVII)’, Ateneo Veneto new series 29 (1991), 7–95, 27–8. Also see Burke, Historical Anthropology, p. 96. See, in the ASMo, Nerozzi’s I Denunziati, pp. 101–4. According to his research, Puttana di Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 155 Dio was cited forty-two times, Al Dispetto di Dio twenty-six times, Dio Poltrone ten times and Puttana della Madonna four times in the bestemmia hereticale trials of 1601. Nerozzi notes that curses against saints were rarely used. On blasphemy in gaming halls, see Prosperi, Tribunali, pp. 350–67. Also see ASMoFIP 22 f.29. One witness in this processo, the Jew Camillo de Thodeschi, interrogated on 21 January 1604, testified that when Jews gambled they often blasphemed. Ibid. ASMoFIP 20 f.14. Sacerdote (meaning Cohen or priest) was a common surname for both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in Modena. ASMoFIP 20 f.14 (5v); Abraham admits this in his own testimony. Ibid. (1v–1r). Ibid. (2v): ‘I know that a month ago or a little more, the said Abramino had an argument with his assistant over merchandise. I heard him cursing because he was angry, but I do not know what he blasphemed, or if he cursed in the Hebrew or the Christian language.’ Ibid. (12v). Ibid. (6r). Ibid. (8v). At this point Leone de Thodeschi signed his name in Hebrew. Ibid. (9r). See Cozzi, ‘Religione’, p. 46. In Venice, suspects argued before their judges that they had said ‘al cospetto di Dio’ (‘in the sight of God’) to avoid being charged with saying ‘al dispetto di Dio’, since one was harmless and the other blasphemy, but the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia passed a law saying that they would not accept this as an excuse. The ecclesiastics were Friar Serafino de Cagli, the vicar of the Holy Office who had helped Calbetti by holding some of the interrogations in this case; Dominico de Papi, a reader in theology; the Franciscan monk Lucio; and the Servite Friar Archangelo. The four legal doctors Annibali Spaccini, Don Lodovico Cattaneo, Domino Castalutio and Alfonso Lovolo. See Chapter 2, page 63. ASMoFIP 20 f.14 (11v). Ibid. (12v). Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, p. 79. ASMoFIP 20 f.14 (1v). Most denunciations for cursing were reported almost immediately afterwards, while the curses were still clear in the mind of the delator. See for example, Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 101–13, Trial against Benedetto, 1584. The delator Francesco Cali denounced the Jew a day after he had allegedly heard the Jew curse, as did the delators of the Christians Joannes Dominico Ferrara de Gaiato, Bonetti di Nonantula, Joanne Jacobo Terreno Carbonario and Torquanto Benvenuto de Fanano in 1627. See ASMoFIP 83 f.10, f.19 and f.20. See ASMoFIP 19 f.14. Thodeschi even appeared three more times in the proceedings to provide further evidence against the Jews. See ASMoFICH 244 f.7. See Francesconi, Jewish Families, p. 106. See ASMoFIP 24 f.15. ASMoFIP 23 f.9. See Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 113–15. ASMoFICH 244 f.18. Ibid. (7v). Spaccini, Cronaca, vol. IV 1617–1620 p. 342. See also Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 113–14. ASMoFICH 244 f.19. ASMoAME Processi I–LXXXIII 1600–1629, busta 4. ASMoFICH 246 f.16 for the processo against Samuel Levi for dissuading Michele Sanguinetti from being baptized. ASMoFIP 83 f.16 (1v). Ibid. (2r). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 156 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES 83 Ibid. 84 ASMoFICH 24 f.39. 85 There is a third Jew, Salvatore, who delated in 1603 and 1636. I cannot confirm, however, that this is the same person. 86 See Simone Feci, ‘Tra il tribunale e il ghetto: le magistrature, la comunità e gli individui di fronte ai reati degli ebrei romani nel Seicento’, Quaderni Storici 99 (1998), 575–99. 87 See Marina Caffiero,‘“Il pianto di Rachele”, Ebrei, neofiti e giudaizzanti a Roma in età moderna’, in L’Inquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2000), pp. 307–29, 311–12. Caffiero shows Jews of Rome approaching the Inquisition, but not to inform, rather to complain against unwarranted use of power, although once, in 1697, to ask that a case of bigamy be quashed or to have it stop a case of adultery. On Jewish arbitration, see Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, p. 239 and Stow, The Jews in Rome, docs. 40, 718, 1231, 1577 and 2001, in which cases of assault or brawls were arbitrated. 88 On the resortion of two Jews of Ferrara to the episcopal court there in 1605, see del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 524. 89 See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 30–1. 90 See Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 102–3. 91 See Carla Boccato, ‘Un Processo contro ebrei di Verona alla fine del Cinquecento’, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 40 (1974), 345–70. 92 Perani, ‘Confisca e censura’, pp. 313–14. 93 ASMoFIP 20 f.14. 94 This trial is found in ASMoFIP 23 f.9. Numbers appearing in footnotes in parenthesis now refer to the folio pages of this trial. 95 There is no indication in the archives that this Jew had been imprisoned before by the Holy Office. 96 ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (1v). This trial has its own page numbers written on the right corner of each double page. Obviously therefore I have used the notary’s pagination, and not my own. 97 Ibid. (2v). 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. (2r). 100 See Anton Block, Honour and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 162. Block infers that ugly nicknames ‘constitute in part a mocking of moral standards’ in society. He also notes (p. 167) that women did not normally receive nicknames, or if they did they were usually applied by women to women. 101 ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (4r). 102 Barozzi was also a witness in the first trial described in this chapter. His wife Antonia was a witness of Miriana Sanguinetti’s musings before her marriage to Michello Sanguinetti, as reported in Chapter 5. The Barozzi couple obviously had frequent contact with local Jews and relied on their patronage. 103 ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (5v). 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. (6r). 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. (7r). 109 Ibid. (8v). 110 Ibid. (9v). 111 Ibid. (11v–11r). 112 Ibid. (12v–12r). 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. The title page of the trial transcript summed up the offence as: ‘The trial of Ester the Jewess and Abramino, and certain other Jews of Modena, on the charge, as within, that they had insulted the said Hester because she had given a Jewish girl to the Christians to be baptized.’ (Processus sup. intentione facto inter Ester ebream et Abraminu, et alios quosdam ebreos Mutinenses prout Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 157 intus, eo quod quidam ipsius videbantur ingiuriae affecisse dictam Hester quia facerit Christianis eisdam dederit quandam ebream filiam baptizandam.) There is a similar case in the archives which again involved the use of the term Meshumad and aggressive action among Jews regarding family members who were converting. See ASMoFICH 244 f.15. In 1612, a Jewish girl Laudomia was denounced to the Holy Office for having said in a moment of anger to another Jewish girl whose family had argued with her own: ‘You God-forsaken brood, you know well that the devil came to take your brother to make him a Goi (Christian)’ (razza di rassegnati, tu sai bene che il diavolo è venuto a prendere tuo fratello per fartelo goi [cristiano]). Laudomia was arrested, and denied that she had ever said these words. Other Jewish witnesses confirmed the accusation. When one Jewish witness, Artemisia, was asked about the term ‘goi’, she replied that it meant ‘a Jew made Christian, and a renegade dog’. See Fregni, ‘La Comunità’, p. 310. Fregni notes that that one of the buste in the archive is titled ‘Rapes. Providences of similar cases’ and contains eighteenth-century documentation (ACEMo filza 71 S, 1743–88). Here were reported not merely rapes but also illegitimate births. The community was concerned for the economic welfare of the newborn and did all that it could to monitor such occurrences. See the account of work of the Università in Venice to secure the patrimony of an illegitimate Jewish baby and to prevent its baptism in Boccato, ‘Il caso’. Guido Ruggiero makes a brief reference to what happened to children ‘adopted’ in Venice. See Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 150–1. See also Siegmund, The Medici State, p. 341. Segre, Jews in Piedmont, doc. 2625, 20 August 1720. For examples of other such brawls between divided families see Simone Feci, ‘Tra il tribunale e il ghetto: le magistrature, la comunità e gli individui di fronte ai reati degli ebrei romani nel Seicento’, Quaderni Storici 99 (1998), 575–99, 587. See ASMoFIP 22 f.29, Trial against Abramo Pasillo and Bellina Formigine for blasphemy. Here Santorio delates these Jews for blaspheming in a tavern. ASMoFICH 244 f.31 (21r). Elizabeth Cohen has shown how prostitutes in Rome used law courts to conduct the ‘politics of their daily lives’. See Elizabeth S. Cohen, ‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (1992), 597–625, 610. See Elizabeth S. Cohen, ‘“Courtesans” and “Whores”: Words and Behaviour in Roman Streets’, Women’s Studies 19 (1991), 201–8, 204. ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (11r). Ephraim Kanarfogel, ‘Rabbinic Attitudes towards Non-observance’, in Jacob J. Schacter (ed.), Jewish Tradition and the Non-Traditional Jew (Northvale, NJ: J Aronson, 1992), pp. 17–26, pp. 24–5. Kanarfogel provides a list of several Italian rabbinic responsa that deal with Jewish prostitutes at the end of the fifteenth century. One mentioned is that of Rabbi Judah Mintz, Padua She’elot U Teshuvot (Cracow, 1882), no. 5, which states that there were Jews within the community of Padua who accepted the existence of Jewish prostitutes as a way of preventing men from committing adultery with married women, which was also a standard Christian argument. I have found one case of a Jew, Capitano Moise, who was accused of a sexual liason with a Christian prostitute, see ASMoFIP 57 f.17, 19 March 1621. The Jew was accused ex officio, without a delator, of frequenting the home of Giacoma Vanzina, one of four Christian prostitutes who lived together. Although no one could confirm that Moise had committed the offence, one witness Laura, daughter of Stephan de Marchis, said that she had seen Jews approach the home of the prostitutes. The processo is incomplete. Other law courts, such as the Avogadori di Commun in Venice, did interfere in cases where a Jewish prostitute had sexual intercourse with a Christian. See the case described by Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, p. 184 n.64. See ASMoFICH 245 f.44 for a case where a Jew, Leone Usilio, was accused of having sex with a Christian prostitute, Margarita Bellentario. See also ASMoFICH 248 f.23, in 1657 and Canosa, Storia, p. 50. A Christian prostitute was brought before the Inquisition for having sex with Jewish clients. The Jews were condemned to stand Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 158 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES before the synagogue for a period of time so that their offence would be observed by other Jews and warned that if they repeated this offence they would be sent to the galleys. On general cases where Jews and Christians had sexual relations, see the processo of 1661 in which Calman Sanguinetti was accused of having sexual relations with a Christian, Antonia Lipparini. Denounced by neighbours, both Jew and Christian admitted to having relations, although Calman argued that he had never known that the deed constituted an offence before the Inquisition and the Christian, when imprisoned, that she had been paid for the deed. In July 1735, ASMoFIP 209 f.14 and mentioned by Canosa, Storia, p. 50 (although with the wrong date) the Inquisitor of Modena, Marcolino Squarcioni condemned to the galley, then to seven years of prison, Abraham Latis, for having had sexual relations with a Christian women. The Jew was freed a year later. For the Italian rabbinic responsa on Jewish prostitution, see Simon Hurwitz, The Resposa of Solomon Luria (Maharshal) with Biographical Sketch, Notes, Index and Glossary (New York: Bloch, 1938); Moses Zacuto, She’elot U Teshuvot (Venice, 1761), no.5; Joseph Colon, She’elot u-teshuvot (Venice, 1519), no. 36; Maharam Padua, She’elot U Teshuvot (New York: Keren Michael, 1955), no. 19; Daniel Carpi, Il Libro delle minute del Consiglio della comunità Israelitica di Padova 1577–1603 (Jerusalem: Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1979), nos. 335–63;Yacov Boksenboim, Responsa of Rabbi Azriel Diena (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1977), no. 138. Three other sources on Jewish women who worked as prostitutes are, first, Luciano Allegra, Identità in bilico. Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento (Turin: Zamorani, 1996), p. 125, who notes an old woman, Consolina Segre, who solicited other men as a way of supposedly supporting herself and her husband; second, Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc. 2887, which warns against molesting Habraem Theutonici, a merchant of Rome and his daughter Richa, wife of Bonionuri Leuci, who had escaped from her husband’s house in Tivoli and taken refuge with her father, following her prostitution by Leuci and ‘exposure to other malpractices’; and, third, Elliott Horowitz’s article ‘Families and their Fortunes: The Jews of Early Modern Italy’, in David Biale (ed.), Culture of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 573–636, p. 599, where he mentions that thirty Jewish prostitutes were practising in Venice in the early sixteenth century. The number had decreased to three by 1620. Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). See Stephanie Siegmund, ‘La vita nei ghetti’, in Corrado Vivanti (ed.) Storia d’Italia Annali XI: Gli Ebrei in Italia, Vol. I (Turin: Guido Einaudi, 1996), pp. 845–92, p. 885. Rublack, The Crimes, p. 14. See also Merry Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, p. 100–3. Simonsohn, History, p. 543. Ibid., n.114. Ibid. See ibid., p. 187, where she claims, interestingly enough, that in Venice during the sixteenth century there was an increase of foreign prostitutes which the Council of Ten hastened to reduce by expelling them. ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (3v). Ibid. (1r). Ibid. Ibid. (3v–3r). Ibid. (9r–10v) (io prigai mio barba fratello Ruffino Capucino, che havendo dispari con un Santorio hebreo, facesse che me lasciasse stari e che mi lasciare attendei alla mia bottega, che me non do fastidio a nessuno, e non so perchè causa venissimo contrasto, se non Capona, mia sorella che li sgalio). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. (13v). For the use of the term Meshumad among Jews, see Jakob J. Petuchowski ‘The Mumar: A Study in Rabbinic Psychology’, Hebrew Union College Annual 30 (1959), 159–90; and Gerald J. Blidstein, ‘Who is a Jew?: The Medieval Discussion’, Israel Law Review 11 (1976), 369–90. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE PIAZZA 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 One of the offences for which the procurators of the Jewish community of Bologna, Angelo da Rieti, Daniele da Colonia and Isaaco Calabresi, were tried by the local Inquisition in 1567 arose from the allegation that rabbinic literature was replete with statements that profaned Christianity, including the term Meshumad. See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘Ebrei, Bologna e sovrano pontefice: la fine di una relazione tra verifiche, restrizioni e ripensamenti’, Verso l’epilogo di una convivenza. Gli ebrei a Bologna nel XVI secolo, a cura di Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Florence: Giuntina, 1996), pp. 19–53, p. 42. ASMoFICH 244 f.13 against David Mantuano and his brother Isaaco. See Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 289–90. On the meaning of the term Meshumad, see also Umberto Fortis, La parlata degli ebrei di Venezia e le parlate giudeo-italiane (Florence: Giuntina, 2006), pp. 338–9. The term was referred to in the processo against thirty-eight Jews in Lombardy, conducted by the secular court in 1488. Here these Jews were accused of blaspheming Christianity in their texts. See Anna Antoniazzi Villa, Un processo contro gli Ebrei nella Milano del 1488: Crescita e declino della comunità ebraica lombarda alla fine del Medioevo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1985), pp. 88, 90, 108. See Aaron Jellinek, ‘Investigations on Christian matters and answers concerning the abuses of the neophyte Alessandro di Foligno in November 1528 by Rabbi Ishmael Haninah da Valmontone’ (in Hebrew), HaShahar 2 (1871), 17–23. See also Ruderman, ‘A Jewish Apologetic’, pp. 253–76, and Guido Dall’Olio, ‘Ebrei, papi, vescovi e Inquisitori a Bologna alla metà del Cinquecento: Le premesse dell’espulsione del 1569’, Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento 25 (1999), 153–204. The report of the interrogators stated: ‘And meanwhile the Jews … continue in their blasphemy and infamy against Christianity and the Christian religion by using the term Mesciumadim, which means destroyed and refers to Jews who have converted to Christianity.’ ASMoFICH 244 f.13, 21 May 1610. The two Jews accused in this trial, David Mantovano and his brother Isaaco, were freed without punishment but were warned not to use such words again. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 101–13, pp. 101–2, Trial against Benedetto, 1584. On the mobility of converts see Kim Siebenhüner’s article ‘Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition in Italy around 1600’, Past and Present 200 (2008), 5–35. Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 111–12. In the ASMo Giuridizione Sovrana, buste 139 and 140, Opere Pie dei Catecumeni Modena, which runs from 1491 to 1796, does not register the names of specific neophytes who converted in our period. See Andrea Zanardo, ‘Catecumeni e neofiti alla fine dell’antico regime’, in Franco Bonilauri and E. Vincenza Maugeri (eds), Le comunità ebraiche a Modena e a Carpi (Florence: Giuntina, 1999), pp. 121–39, p. 122. Spaccini, Cronaca, records each occasion when a baptism of a Jew took place: see pp. 178, 217, 368. For a discussion of baptisms in seventeenth-century Finale, see Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 75–96. For a description of a baptism in eighteenth-century Modena, see Zanardo, ‘Catecumeni e neofiti alla fine dell’antico regime’, p. 123. See Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 282–3, on contact maintained between neophytes and Jews in Venice. On relations between neophytes and their Jewish families see Kenneth Stow, ‘A Tale of Uncertainties: Converts in the Roman Ghetto’, in Daniel Carpi, Moshe Gil, Yosef Gorni et al. (eds), Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume: Studies on the History of the Jews in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Period (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Humanities, Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, 1993), pp. 257–81; and also Giuseppe Sermoneta, ‘Il mestiere del neofita nella Roma del Settecento’, in the same volume, pp. 213–33. Sermoneta, in his study of Roman neophytes in the eighteenth century, shows that there was daily contact between neophytes and their families. ASMoFICH 244 f.29, 1620 against Jews of Finale, Isaaco Sacerdote, Giuseppe Melli and Abraamo de Collaris. Ibid. 11r–v. Ibid. 13r–v. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 160 A STUDY OF JEWISH OFFENCES 159 See ASMoFICH 247 f.31 and ASMoFIP 107 f.12. 160 Zanardo ‘Catecumeni’, p. 122. Zanardo notes that after the establishment of the Casa dei Catecumeni in 1700, a map was put up in the ghetto of the exact location of the Casa in Modena and a prohibition that Jews were not allowed in the vicinity of the house. See also Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 210, who notes that any Jew who came in the vicinity of the Casa to speak with potential converts was threatened with 200–scudi fines, whipping, galley service or exile. 161 On payments of debt see Stow, ‘A Tale’, p. 263. Stow shows that neophytes may have continued in the business of lending and also refers to the records of neophytes owing money to Jews. On the issue of affectionate relationships between neophytes and Jews, see Sermoneta, ‘Il mestiere’. 162 ASMoFIP 22 f.29, 1604. 163 ASMoFICH 244 f.13. 164 Ibid., 21 May 1610, deposizione di Simone de Anagi. 165 Ibid., 21 June 1610, deposizione di David. 166 As late as 1747 Pope Benedict XIV, commenting on the prevalence of poor Jews of a young age in the Casa dei Catecumeni in Rome, noted in a letter his suspicion that a large number of these Jews were actually escaping debts. See Attilio Milano, Il ghetto di Roma: Illustrazioni storiche (Rome: Staderini, 1964), p. 292, where he cites the Lettera della Santità di N.S. Benedetto Papa XIV a Monsignor Archivescovo di Tarso vicegerente sopra il Battesimo degli ebrei o infanti o adulti, Roma 28 Febbraio 1747. See also Zanardo, ‘Catecumeni’, p. 127. 167 ASMoFICH 245 f.60. 168 ASMoFICH 247 f.52 (guarda quel rinnegato, domani rompono suo collo). 169 Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 302. 170 ASMoFIP 23 f.9 (9r). 171 See ACEMo filza 2.52 N Neofiti: Recapit. Riguardanti i medesimi, 1570–1727. Here there are housed some papers that record information regarding the hereditary property of neophytes. The first four cases of neophytes were in 1570, 1615, 1625 and 1633. 172 Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, p. 213. Caffiero notes a seventeenth-century document which expressed strong reserve regarding the denunciation of former co-religionists by neophytes. On neophytes see also Pullan’s Jews of Europe, pp. 275–312. 173 On this subject see the work of David I. Kertzer on a slightly later period in Italy, Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Part III Micro-history Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 5 The Jew’s balcony: a tale of a Jewess’s flirtation 1 with Christianity Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father’s child! But though I am a daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners, O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise I shall end this strife, Become a Christian and thy loving wife. (Jessica in The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, Act II, Scene iii) In The Merchant of Venice, Jessica, the daughter of Shylock the Jew, fell in love with a Christian. With his assistance, she fled her father, her house and her faith. She displayed surprisingly little grief at leaving the world of her father, or robbing him of his riches. It is a similar story that we find in the Inquisitorial archives in Modena, though this tale is historical, not a fiction.2 It also finishes differently. Miriana Sanguinetti, the daughter of the wealthy Jewish banker Viviano Sanguinetti, although tempted to convert and marry her Christian admirer, Ludovico Mirandola, in the end remained a Jew and married her first cousin Michello Sanguinetti. This judicial proceeding is one of a number of tales in the archives that revolve around the accusation of dissuading others from being baptized. From 1598 to 1638 there were eighteen processi executed by the Inquisition in Modena against professing Jews for this offence. The tribunal, almost as a matter of course, brought charges of hindrance or dissuasion against the parents of any young person who had purportedly toyed with the idea of converting and had then experienced a change of heart.3 But it was not just parents of the potential convert who were arraigned; brothers, sisters, cousins and supposed friends or business acquaintances were also indicted. The clause regarding dissuasion of baptism in Gregory XIII’s Papal bull Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas was based upon the bull Turbato corde, issued by Pope Clement IV (1265–68) in 1267, intended to bring Jews who committed this offence under Inquisitorial jurisdiction. In medieval times this rarely occurred, but in seventeenth-century Modena Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 164 MICRO-HISTORY Jews were sentenced to various punishments for this offence including public shaming and fines of up to 250 scudi.4 This chapter opens with a survey of the eighteen proceedings in our period, followed by a micro-historical analysis of the trial against Viviano Sanguinetti, mentioned above, who was accused of dissuading his oldest daughter Miriana from being baptized in 1602.5 This processo in particular reveals invaluable information regarding the self-representation of a young, wealthy and engaged Jewish woman, as well as her behaviour and musings regarding baptism on the eve of the establishment of the ghetto in Modena. Such first-hand information is not recorded elsewhere.6 The Inquisition’s interrogation of protagonists and witnesses allows the micro-historian to view Miriana’s relationship with a Christian man as well as the intimate and indiscreet conversations that were had with Christian tradespeople and servants from neighbouring houses. As such the chapter questions the relationship between Miriana and Ludovico according to an analysis of the testimonies. Finally, the roles of neighbouring witnesses and Viviano Sanguinetti in this tale are assessed, as are Miriana’s ambivalent feelings towards her Jewish fiancé. Of the eighteen cases, eight involved the purported dissuasion of potential male converts, nine potential female converts, and one a neophyte who had actually been baptized already for two years by the time the Jews were indicted for having tried to dissuade him.7 Eleven of the eighteen cases involved the impeachment of a family member or a future spouse of the potential convert. In seventeen of the cases, the main suspects were men, although in two cases wives of the suspects were indicted with their husbands. In one processo, that of Mariana Mantuano of 1633, Mariana came to denounce herself, testifying that she had wanted to convert but had then changed her mind, clearly believing that this was the best way of defending herself and preventing further exposure to judicial proceedings.8 Although she was imprisoned, she was released without punishment. Of the eighteen processi, six ended with the fining of Jews, one with a public shaming, two with the acquittal of the suspect, while nine processi were discontinued. Ten of the processi opened with a delation by a Christian who had heard rumours that neighbouring Jews were contemplating conversion and contended that they were doing their Christian duty by denouncing those who obstructed their conversion. One processo opened with the delation of a Jew, Michele Sanguinetti, who in 1617 accused Gabriele Sora and Davide Diena, two prominent bankers in Modena, of dissuading their cousin Francesco Maria Novi, previously Rabbi Salomone Datti, a ‘maestro da scola degl’Hebrei’ in 1615 prior to conversion.9 Allegations were soon dropped when it became clear that the accusation was a ruthless attempt by fellow Jews to bring vengeance on co-religionists. The seven remaining processi had no specific delators but were opened ex officio.10 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 165 The eight potential male converts were of mixed ages, from teenage boys to middle-aged men. Four of the processi provide short accounts of single teenage boys, most of them poor, two of whom worked as apprentices in Jewish shops, attracted to conversion in order to advance their financial standing or escape familial confinement. All four investigations were discontinued for lack of evidence. Testimonies suggest that these teenagers independently sought out Christians to help them. In 1601, Stephano de Malvertio delated that he had been approached by Israel, the 15–year-old son of Davide Sacerdote, while visiting the latter’s tailoring shop in Vignola.11 Realising that the boy was considering baptism, he took him to the Archpriest of the Cathedral, who suggested that he go straight away to the Bishop. According to the testimony of de Malvertio, Bishop Gaspare Silingardi did not have a place to keep the boy during the day and requested that de Malvertio take him home. During this interval in de Malvertio’s home, the delator reported that Israel had taken flight and gone back to his father’s house. He believed that Israel’s father Davide Sacerdote was responsible for dissuading him. When Israel was interrogated he told the Inquisitor that he had only wanted to convert for a brief moment, an instant when he had been angry with his father. In 1609 Emmanuel de Corrigio, a teenager had come to Modena from Carpi and toyed with the idea of conversion after coming to the big city. He soon changed his mind, although his father Leone was indicted and imprisoned by the Holy Office. The trial was dropped due to lack of evidence.12 As Brian Pullan has shown, prisons could often be fertile grounds for Jewish prisoners to consider the idea and then convert to Christianity. Such a transition could bode well for a Jewish convict, especially if his sentence was lengthy.13 The attention and care of Christian protectors would certainly have been an incentive, although the Jewish prisoner Francesco Bono, dying of typhus in 1584 in a Venetian gaol, needed no incentive and chose to convert for what seems purely religious zeal.14 Two of the potential converts in the Modenese processi were themselves prisoners in the civil gaol of the city, Joseph de Cerra in 1600 and Angelo de Thodeschi in 1602, who was serving a sentence for possession of stolen goods. Joseph de Cerra had been visited in prison by several prominent Jews, who had discovered that he was waning in his faith. The Jews were punished for their interference with fines. In Angelo de Thodeschi’s case, it was his immediate family members who were indicted, since they had purportedly overheard him shouting from his cell that he wished to convert to Catholicism. According to witnesses, they had come five or six times a day to shout at him in Hebrew from the outside of his prison, causing a huge disturbance and clearly bringing attention upon themselves. When Angelo de Thodeschi was interrogated he denied that he had any intention to convert, although his family members were sentenced to pecuniary punishments ranging from 10 to 225 scudi.15 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 166 MICRO-HISTORY A study of the nine processi for dissuasion of Jewish women shows that although most of them were young, they came from different economic situations and circumstances. Like Miriana Sanguinetti, there were two other cases of wealthy, young unmarried girls, Laura de Norsa in 1617 and Sarza Levi in 1630 (both of whose ages are not given), who purportedly contemplated conversion.16 Like Miriana too, Sarza Levi had a Christian admirer, Francesco Grappi – her violin, clavichord and Spanish guitar teacher – who testified that he was ready to take charge of Sarza’s transition to Christianity, should she choose that path. Sarza Levi herself was never summoned to the Inquisition; nor is there any indication from Francesco Grappi, who had been persuaded to ‘court’ Sarza by two clergymen after hearing a rumour that Sarza was contemplating conversion, that there was any feeling on his side for Sarza.17 Sarza’s father, Benedetto Levi, was given a 50–scudi fine. Whether these women really pondered conversion must be doubted. Laura de Norsa’s brother Cesare de Norsa of Soliera was imprisoned, and argued that his delation was a conspiracy by neighbouring Christians, all of whom had recently clashed with him or his wife.18 In 1614, Cesare had been imprisoned by the ducal court, accused by Pietro Cavallo of raping the wife of an innkeeper in Carpi while her husband was away. Proceedings were suspended when it was discovered that there had been no violence behind the adultery.19 As aggressors of the Jew, then, these Christians testified that the young Jewess had toyed with the idea of conversion and disclosed her conviction to them, but was dissuaded from being baptized by her brother Cesare de Norsa with whom she lived. Ursolina Bonzaga, in particular, testified that Laura’s desire to be converted was based on her dejection and the ill treatment that she received in her brother’s house. Moreover, she reported that Laura was even beaten by Cesare.20 These witnesses argued before Inquisitor Tinti that Cesare had sent his sister away to Carpi to thwart her conversion, with the excuse that she was to attend the pregnant wife of his cousin, Donato Levi, who lived there. During his interrogation, Cesare brought a letter from Donato, confirming that this was the reason why Laura had gone.21 The real motive was probably to protect Laura from the clutches of the Inquisition. Laura herself was never summoned before the Inquisition, and de Norsa was absolved with a warning that if more information was uncovered against him he would be re-tried.22 Examples of poorer Jewish women who were potential converts included a young girl Brunetta, whose father Leone Montesanto had already begun the process of conversion with his younger daughters in 1605. Brunetta’s case was taken up by the wealthy Donato Donati of Finale, who had already suffered the loss of his niece to Christianity, and now offered Brunetta a dowry of 1,000 scudi as long as she remained a Jew.23 His plea was to no avail, since Brunetta decided to accept baptism with her whole family. The processo remained a preliminary Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 167 investigation and neither Brunetta nor Donato Donati was summoned to the Inquisition for investigation. Bribing poor young women to remain firm in their religion was certainly a ploy that was used on numerous occasions.24 Bella de Praga, a poor young Jewish woman, known as the ‘Tedeschina’ (whose profession is unclear), considered conversion in 1615 and came before the Inquisition to denounce not her father, but an old Jewish banker, Samuel de Sanguinetti, for dissuading her.25 She reported: ‘Samuel Sanguinetti said to me that if I did not convert he’d give me money.’26 When the Inquisitor asked her if she still wanted to convert, she said no and the trial was discontinued without the impeachment of Sanguinetti. Of the two ‘potential’ female converts who were married, neither showed any real interest in conversion. In 1634, Livia Leoni, the wife of Mattasia, who had already accepted baptism with the rest of his family, was approached in her convent by Rabbi Natanael Trabotti, among others, who attempted to dissuade her by forcing entry into the institution.27 Trabotti was not called to testify and Livia was ordered to leave the duchy, as a result of her supplication to Duke Francesco I to help her ensure that her dowry, the meagre sum of 40 scudi, be returned by her husband.28 In Modena, at best, Inquisitors were able to fine Jewish suspects found guilty of dissuading the baptism of others, rather than bring about the conversion of those who had been dissuaded.The Holy Office was not supported by any formal or organised methods to encourage conversion or by bureaucratic assistance from any other authorities, leaving conversion of Jews, as Andrea Zanardo has confirmed, to rely upon the public conscience (pietas) of individual citizens or ecclesiastics.29 In Modena, the Opera Pia del Neofiti was established as late as 1671, and the Casa dei Catecumeni, which was to be administered by the Inquisition, was not established until 1700, 157 years after its establishment in Rome in 1543 and 143 years after its establishment in Venice in 1557.30 The tribunal’s limited authority over those who impeded conversions in Modena was far different, then, from its position in Venice, where Brian Pullan has shown a link between the activities of the Holy Office and the Casa dei Catecumeni particularly during the 1580s, when the Casa worked to support the Inquisition in finding suspects who impeded the baptism of others, as well as monitoring gossip among neophytes.31 In Rome, too, as Marina Caffiero has confirmed, the cardinal vicar and the Casa dei Catecumeni assisted in the controversial cases of conversions and baptisms dealt with by the Holy Office.32 In 1749 Anna del Monte – a wealthy young Jewish girl living in the ghetto, the direct granddaughter of Angelo Zevi, one of the fattori (communal heads) of the Jewish community in Rome – was arrested and sent to the Casa dei Catecumeni, as a result of an allegation by Sabbato Coen, a neophyte, that she had promised to marry him.33 According to Sermoneta, the reason why Coen Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 168 MICRO-HISTORY had denounced her to the ecclesiastical authorities was a personal vendetta against her family, and not against herself. But her diary, which was discovered by Sermoneta, reveals the traumatic consequences that she faced as a result of his denunciation.34 During her thirteen days’ stay, she faced, according to Sermoneta, ‘fifty-four meetings, discussions and conversations with thirty-eight different people and was forced to listen to at least eighty consecutive hours of preaching’, as well as promises of riches and a ‘good marriage’.35 According to her diary, the priests who questioned del Monte accused her of having a relationship with Coen. She told her interrogators that she did not even know him: Believe me, Signore, that young men have never frequented our house, nor can anyone boast of having spoken to me, either in the house, or outside it, or of having seen me at the window talking to any living soul. For our custom is different from that of your Lords, since our maidens don’t go out before they are married. I have never been able to associate with anyone.36 Potential converts living in Rome and Venice who flirted with the idea of baptism were incarcerated in the Casa dei Catecumeni and induced to convert, on the testimony of the Christian witnesses alone.37 The differences between the situations in Rome and Venice and that in Modena are astounding. In Rome from 1577, Pope Gregory XIII had re-established the obligatory practice of Jews attending weekly proselytizing sermons, but in Modena the lack of conversionary tactics meant that Jews were not forced to attend conversionary sermons until 1637, on the eve of their enclosure in the ghetto.38 Tellingly, the Inquisition would have wanted to do more. In Miriana Sanguinetti’s case, in 1604, by the time the Inquisition opened investigations against Viviano Sanguinetti, Miriana had already been married for seven and a half months. Neither the episcopal vicar nor Dr Emilio, a secular priest and Miriana’s clavichord teacher, who had clearly tried to encourage her, had denounced Viviano to the Holy Office in the hope that, if he was imprisoned, Miriana might have the courage to convert. The conversion and baptism of a wealthy Sanguinetti would surely have been a major source of victory for the church, yet there was no official mechanism to bring this about. Here follows a skeletal outline of the trial proceedings of 1604. Dramatis personae of the processo of Viviano Sanguinetti Archangelo Calbetti de Recanati – Inquisitor General of Modena from 1600 to 1607. Viviano Sanguinetti – a Jewish banker. Miriana Sanguinetti – daughter of Viviano Sanguinetti. Ludovico Mirandola – Miriana’s Christian admirer. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 169 Alberto de Bassio – Miriana’s Christian tailor. Dr Paulo Emilio – Miriana’s Christian clavichord teacher. Caterina de Bonai – a Christian servant in a neighbouring house. Sebastiano de Ludignani – a 26–year-old Christian servant in a neighbouring house. Antonia Barozzi – a Christian and wife of the local vendor of brandy.39 Faustina – a Christian wetnurse in the Sanguinetti house. Giovanna de Alexandri – a 22–year-old Christian servant in a neighbouring house. Michello Sanguinetti – Miriana’s Jewish fiancé. 20 May 1602: Ludovico Mirandola recounted his relationship with Miriana and the arrangements that were to be made regarding her catechism and conversion. He told the Inquisitor that in the end she had changed her mind. Ludovico blamed Viviano for dissuading his daughter from baptism.40 22 May 1602: Alberto de Bassio informed the Inquisitor that he had spoken to Miriana on many occasions, that he had urged her to become a Christian, as was his duty, and that she had confirmed her love for Ludovico. He even admitted to informing Ludovico of Miriana’s feelings.41 Same day: Dr Paulo Emilio told the Inquisitor that he had taught Miriana the clavichord, once a week, every Thursday, for eighteen months prior to her wedding and that they had held various conversations. He confirmed that he knew of Miriana’s relationship with Ludovico and knew too of Miriana’s fear that Mirandola would abandon her after she had converted to Christianity. Same day: Caterina de Bonai admitted to being Ludovico’s messenger, sent to Miriana on a number of occasions to persuade her to convert. She also confirmed that Miriana did not trust Ludovico. However, Caterina was unable to confirm that Viviano had dissuaded his daughter from being baptized. Same day: Sebastiano de Ludignani confirmed that he had talked to Miriana, both at her window and inside her house, when he had accompanied his aunt Faustina, a Christian wetnurse, to Viviano’s house to nurse Viviano’s son. Sebastiano also said that Miriana had been unable to trust Ludovico. Sebastiano also testified that Viviano had dissuaded his daughter from being baptized. But such an accusation, he told the Inquisitor, was hearsay, since it came from his aunt and not directly from Miriana. Same day: Antonia Barozzi testified that Miriana had told her ‘twenty-five times’ that she wanted to convert and marry Ludovico.42 Same day: Faustina accused Viviano of dissuading his daughter from being baptized and even of threatening to kill Miriana. According to Faustina, Miriana had openly discussed Christianity with her, criticized Jewish ritual, and carried a ring engraved with the Madonna of Reggio. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 170 MICRO-HISTORY 23 May 1602: Viviano Sanguinetti was imprisoned, as a result of Faustina’s testimony the previous day. On the same day, a notary and vicar of the Inquisition called at Miriana’s new home, the home of Samuele Sanguinetti, Michello’s father, to interrogate her regarding her intention to convert and the role her father had played in that decision. Miriana admitted only that she had spoken on many occasions to Caterina and Antonia. Same day: Giovanna de Alexandri admitted to having two short conversations with Miriana in Miriana’s house. The first conversation had occurred when Giovanna had gone to style Miriana’s hair. She told the Inquisitor that although she had tried to persuade the young woman to convert, Miriana was continually doubtful whether she could trust any Christian and whether she could hurt her father. Giovanna told the Inquisitor that she could not testify who it was who had dissuaded Miriana from being baptized. 25 May 1602: Miriana was summoned before the Inquisition and admitted that she had been enamoured of Ludovico, and had said that she would convert. When asked if her father knew that she wanted to convert, she admitted not only that her father knew, but that she had obeyed him and stopped seeing Ludovico. However, she said that her father was not the reason why she had not converted. Same day: Viviano Sanguinetti was summoned from his prison cell. He admitted that he had discovered that his daughter was considering conversion, but did not state his source. He also admitted that he had begged his daughter not to convert. Once the examination was completed, Viviano petitioned the tribunal to release him from prison so that he might return to his family and his business. His petition was granted, on condition that he appear whenever summoned. 4 June 1602: An assembly of Inquisitorial consultori met to discuss Viviano’s case. Eight of the nine consultori believed that the trial was not complete and that Viviano should undergo further interrogation. 26 June 1602: Viviano was summoned for a second and final interrogation. At this point there was a fundamental shift in the trial and the Inquisitor tried to condemn him for uttering careless words against Christianity. He did not confess, refused legal counsel and was dismissed. 17 July 1602: Viviano Sanguinetti was fined 76 scudi for dissuading his daughter from being baptized. 21 July 1602: Viviano paid his fine. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 171 The problems of the processo Before analysis is possible in a trial of this nature, the historian must overcome two obstacles. The first is to determine the level of truth in the testimonies, given that some of the responses made by witnesses, in particular to probing questions, sound too well versed. These witnesses were keen to show the Inquisitor that they had done their Christian duty in persuading Miriana to convert, but none of them asserted that she had made a hard and fast statement of her intention to convert. They provided conjectures and suggestions but nothing concrete. Moreover, Miriana also presented her encounter with Christianity as a musing, an equivocation: It is true that my father Viviano was anxious and imagined that I was being courted by Signor Mirandola, and that I had said that I might become a Christian.43 The whole trial, then, hinged on this equivocation, and Miriana’s testimony remains hidden behind her determination to defend her father, her intimidation as she stood before her interrogator, and the heavy psychological pressure she feared she faced should she give any indication that she still held a genuine desire to convert.44 The second challenge of the trial is that the Inquisitor was seeking information about events that had taken place eleven to fifteen months earlier. Miriana had already been married for seven and a half months, and had moved away from her home to the household of her father-in-law Samuele Sanguinetti. Alberto the tailor testified that the ‘courtship’ between Miriana and Ludovico started three or four months before her wedding to Michello. Memories were already fading. On a more positive note trials of this kind have been used before by historians to reconstruct events or relationships that led to the denunciation of the suspect.45 Thomas Kuehn warns against historians doing this, arguing in response to Gene Brucker’s Giovanni and Lusanna that trial records should be used to reconstruct ‘not the history of a love-affair, but rather the history of a trial’.46 One may argue however that the testimony in Viviano’s processo does allow for some historical reconstruction with respect to the limits of Miriana’s temptation and the thoughts she held regarding Ludovico and conversion, although one can never truly know what she genuinely felt. The relationship Prior to ghettoization, the windows and balconies of Jewish houses looked out at other windows across alleyways and piazze, and it was from Miriana’s window, the quintessential liminal border between her Jewish world and that Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 172 MICRO-HISTORY of the Christian, that she conducted most of her conversation and relationship with Ludovico.47 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, depending on the economic status of the family, wealthy Jewish women spent most of their time in their own households, with which their social and economic identity was associated, either those of their parents before marriage, or their husband (or parentsin-law as was the case of Miriana) after their wedding. Respectable women had no reason for spending time in the local piazze or markets.48 Christian neighbours or their servants would see them at their balconies, as they passed through the piazze or, as often happened, when they entered the Jews’ homes.49 Ludovico Mirandola’s age, address and profession are not stated in the processo. That he lived locally can be assumed because of his familiarity with Antonia, Caterina and Alberto, and their frequent communication during his courtship with Miriana.50 There is also no written record of Miriana’s age at the time of the processo. But Miriana was Viviano’s oldest daughter and, to judge by customary marital ages of the time, she was probably in her late teens.51 Ludovico gives no indication in his testimony how his relationship with Miriana began. He told the Inquisitor: I was enamoured at one time of Miriana, a Jewess, the daughter of Viviano Sanguinetti of Modena and at that time was so taken with the young woman that I was inclined, seeing her good qualities to persuade her to become a Christian promising that I would marry her and take her as my wife so long as she received baptism rather than go to a Jewish husband.52 Nor did Ludovico mention how many times they met over their four-month ‘courtship’ prior to Miriana’s wedding. Ludovico does indicate that he had gone into Miriana’s house and on one occasion had met her outside her house, but there is no suggestion of clandestine meetings or sexual intimacy.53 What then did this ‘courting’ really mean? Miriana going to the window and seeing Ludovico does not provide real evidence that they met and spoke often.54 Ludovico testified that his relationship with Miriana took place mostly through intermediaries.55 One senses then a major flirtation rather than a full-blown relationship, an infatuation perhaps that led the young man into the false belief that he could enhance his personal and economic status and win a wealthy Jewish girl, and Miriana onto dangerous paths – so dangerous, in fact, that she herself pulled back, her father’s anger an important consideration but not the decisive motive. From an early stage of her ‘courtship’, Miriana was uncertain and doubtful that Ludovico would marry her and so had rejected the engagement rings that he had sent her.56 Ludovico might well have been a dubious character, with a reputation for seducing young women, a reputation Miriana would have probably known.57 Ludovico testified: Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 173 She [Miriana] replied to me at the time that she did not believe my words, fearing that when she had converted to Christianity, I would not marry her and wondering whether I was deceiving her. We went on like this for many months.58 Perhaps Miriana had particularly strong reasons for suspecting his intentions, because he proposed that when Miriana escaped her father’s house, she should go to his house and not a neutral place.59 He could have found some other safe house to lodge Miriana in before they got married. In fact, Miriana’s inability to trust Ludovico or ‘any Christian gentlemen’, as she allegedly told Giovanna, was no doubt real.60 At stake was the usual issue, documented over and over again, of young men courting, seducing and abandoning young women.61 Sebastiano also testified to this lack of trust of Ludovico by Miriana.62 Ludovico was keen to emphasize to the Inquisitor that he had done everything possible to win Miriana. He had gone out of his way to provide a variety of different rings to confirm his devotion, not the type of rings that lovers normally gave when they were betrothed, but rings with strong Christian motifs, a gold crucifix ring inscribed with the words domine peccavi and a ring sculpted with the Madonna of Reggio with the words quem genuit adoravit carved inside it, in token of the fact that he was trying to convert her, as well as promising her that his intentions were sincere.63 The main function of such a ring, according to Michael Carroll, would have been to protect the ring bearer from danger.64 It was certainly easier to blame Miriana for the arrangements of her catechism which she, according to Ludovico, had demanded. Ludovico testified: Finally she resolved to make herself a Christian and to become my wife, on two conditions. First, when she had fled her father’s house, she would come directly to my house, and I would arrange for her to be catechized and instructed in the faith. Second, a companion and I would go to Miriana’s house and accompany her for her security to my home. That is, we would meet up by means of another woman, Madonna Antonia Barozzi, the wife of the man who sells brandy in the district of the Jews.65 Was Miriana intelligent enough to realise that neither situation was attractive? If she placed herself in the hands of a dubious suitor she might be seduced and then abandoned. If, however, she chose to put herself in the care of a Christian gentlewoman, she feared that Ludovico would not fulfil his promise and this would lead to poverty after baptism, or so she told Caterina: ‘women who become Christian go begging’.66 Miriana’s fears regarding the poverty of Jewish women after conversion were well founded. A large number of Jewish women (as well as men) living in misery approached the ducal court to request stipends as well as licences to beg for alms in Modena as a result of conversion.67 Had Miriana seen these women from her window, or heard about them? Caterina had testified that Miriana had Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 174 MICRO-HISTORY told her ‘that all the Jews who had been baptized were poor’.68 Perhaps Miriana might have been more content to convert if she had known for certain that she could take her dowry with her or that her father would have been forced to give it to her.69 Did she speculate instead that any dowry that she would receive from Christian institutions, surmising that Ludovico could not provide one, would not have been equivalent to the dowry she knew was hers if she married her Jewish fiancé?70 Some of the Christian witnesses confirm that Miriana was unable to escape with her riches at this time since they had been locked up in preparation for her wedding and marriage. Ludovico in particular testified that ‘her parents had taken away all the keys of the chests as was customary for them to do a month before the wedding’.71 The Inquisitorial archives reveal another case of a Jewish woman, Sara Spagnola, who in 1623 had converted to Christianity and became Isabella Buzzali rather than marry her Jewish fiancé.72 (Whether she had a Christian suitor is not clear from the text.) Instead of Sara stealing her dowry, she stole precious items that her prospective Jewish husband had given her as wedding gifts. The Inquisitor described the case in a letter to the Congregation of the Holy Office: Sara Spagnola, a Modenese Jewess, was to be married to a Jew, who had given her precious things. She became a Christian and called herself Isabella (Buzzali). When she fled the house of her parents, she took these things away with her and was ill-treated by her mother-in-law to be and her fiancé. Without these goods, Isabella will be a derelict.73 Most women who converted did so out of desperation of finding a dowry and not at risk of losing one. In Luciano Allegra’s study of the ghetto in Turin, he notes that most of the Jewish girls in the ghetto who converted were girls who lacked dowries and had not been able to secure Jewish fiancés.74 In Rome at this time too, according to the research of Pier van Boxel, Jewish women considering conversion were given special treatment and offered dowries as incentives to convert.75 These dowries were double the amount usually given to Christian brides by charitable organizations.76 Thus conversion for Miriana was truly or, to be precise, would have been truly a matter of choice. But one should not hastily come to conclusions about the frequency of this happening. Miriana’s case was far different from the norm, if only because her origins were wealthy. She had room for pause and reflection, and certainly physical security. Her withdrawal from her ‘courtship’ with Ludovico was almost surely an act of her own initiative, a combination of her own hesitancy and inability to trust Ludovico and her fear of being a neophyta without support – financial or otherwise. The temptation to leave her Jewish surroundings was real for Miriana at the beginning – she was curious about the Christian world beyond her window – but it seems that the longer she contemplated conversion the more doubts and problems arose in her mind. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 175 The Christian witnesses Seven Christian men and women told the Inquisitor that Miriana Sanguinetti had spoken to them during her courtship with Ludovico. One assumes that if her circle of confidants had been bigger, the Inquisition would have found additional witnesses. These seven witnesses were servants, a teacher and an artisan either in Miriana’s household or in neighbouring ones, all of whom had had individual conversations with the Jewess. Almost all were people of lower status, who enjoyed a degree of social autonomy, moving freely in the streets and gossiping with their neighbours in the piazze and in the households where they worked. The servants were probably close to Miriana’s age and strong attachments might have developed.77 It is unlikely that she would have risked discussing her thoughts with family or Jewish friends, since any of them might have seen the need to report her or her plans to fellow religionists. Spatial and social closeness made gossip between these seven Christians inevitable. In fact, most of them confirmed that they had discussed and gossiped about Miriana’s predicament among themselves, which ultimately was the surest source of Inquisitorial information. To be involved in helping a potential convert move towards Christianity gave them a self-importance which was clearly reflected in their testimonies before the Inquisition. In the processo against Cesare de Norsa in 1617 for dissuading his sister from baptism, it was neighbouring Christians who furnished the information to start proceedings. Although it was found that they were personal enemies of Cesare, their intimate and frequent conversations with Laura showed a close connection between Jew and Christian, with Laura as a rather naive teenager freely discussing her unhappiness and thoughts of conversion in her brother’s home with these Christians. Ludovico himself had clearly discussed the matter with Caterina, Antonia, Dr Emilio and Alberto the tailor. Faustina discussed the matter with her nephew Sebastiano, and Antonia with Giovanna, the servant who styled Miriana’s hair. Antonia and Caterina proved themselves useful to Ludovico, secretly carrying messages and rings to Miriana. Some of the testimony of the Christian witnesses is similar if not identical. Antonia had related the incident of Miriana’s preference from the rings that Ludovico tried to offer her, for a gold crucifix ring rather than a ring sculpted with the Madonna of Reggio. Her testimony on 22 May stated: [Miriana] said to me while putting the ring with the figure of Christ upon her forefinger that it pleased her. I told her that this is our Lord who wants to convert you, and she said to me that I should return the ring to Signor Mirandola, because she feared that she could not keep them near her, lest her people find them. I added: ‘Are you not able to hide it in a chest?’ and she replied ‘My mother looks in all the chests and I would not want her to find the rings’.78 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 176 MICRO-HISTORY Caterina provided the same information, presumably as a result of discussing the event with Antonia: on one [ring] there was a Christ on a cross and that ring pleased her more. The ring on which was Christ on the cross, and not the other one where there was the Madonna of Reggio.79 Perhaps the Christian witnesses in gossiping with each other compared notes. According to Ludovico’s testimony, Miriana had supposedly sent him a message through Antonia or Caterina: Miriana sent me a message through Antonia or Caterina. She said that her father Viviano had found out that I had sent her rings and a message. That is, when Viviano knew that I had sent the rings to his daughter he shouted and said these words: ‘You want to be the cause of such dishonour to your father? It would be better that I take a dagger and kill you. Christians go to the house of the Devil but Jews go to paradiso because they have faith’ … One morning, after I had sent the rings, as I have said before, Antonia told me that Miriana sent her a message through a young girl. The message said that I should no longer step into her house because her father had discovered our agreements. He had said these words, as I have said above, that the Christians go to inferno. The whole house was full of noises.80 Ludovico, Alberto and Faustina all reported that Viviano had threatened to kill Miriana. Alberto and Faustina probably received their information from Ludovico. Perhaps Viviano did make the threat in anger, but the Christian witnesses might have been convinced from local gossip that Jewish fathers, rather than taking back baptized girls into their homes, preferred to kill them. This opinion was stated by a priest Agostino da Correggio, regarding a certain Jewish girl Esther Cabazza, who had converted to Christianity in 1626.81 Sebastiano, Alberto and Faustina told the Inquisitor that Miriana had used the term bestiale in her conversations, but Ludovico told the Inquisitor that he had only heard it from others and not Miriana: ‘It was repeated to me that she had said she would voluntarily leave that bestial life and become a Christian.’82 The local chronicler Spaccini used the same word in his description of Jews as they mourned the death of a local Jew Iseppo di Fano in November 1599: ‘I think these beasts will make a martyr of him, and honour his memory’,83 reflecting a belief that only Christians could be human. Perhaps then the term never originated from Miriana. Not only are there strange echoes in the language of The Merchant of Venice, in the references to Jews as ‘bestial’, since Shylock is called a dog, a cur and a wolf, but in sixteenth-century state legislative documents, such as the poor relief scheme of Cosimo de Medici, Duke of Florence, devised in 1542, poor beggars are described as ‘more like brute beasts than rational creatures, for they live without any knowledge of divine commandments and Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 177 good morals’, suggesting that people cannot be fully human unless they are Christians and observe the sacraments.84 It is clearly questionable how much contact these Christians really had with Miriana. Antonia, Caterina, Sebastiano and Giovanna were not servants in Miriana’s household, nor would their contact with Miriana have been frequent. The picture of Giovanna holding a conversation with Miriana while styling her hair reveals some level of concentrated interaction between a mistress and a neighbouring servant, but it is limited, as Giovanna herself admitted: ‘I was at most only twice in her house.’85 Whether Miriana truly relied upon these Christians is doubtful, but her need to confide in them must be noticed. Miriana might well have been airing her potential plans to discover what support she could expect from these Christians, if any. She had supposedly said to Sebastiano: ‘I don’t want anyone to know that I talk about these things.’86 Nevertheless, there remains discrepancy between the wetnurse Faustina’s testimony and that of the other six witnesses. Faustina probably had more contact with Miriana than other witnesses because she actually served in the Sanguinetti household as a wetnurse for the month prior to Miriana’s wedding. She testified that Miriana had kept a ring of the Madonna of Reggio with her, whereas Antonia, Caterina and Ludovico had all testified that Miriana had returned the ring to Ludovico. Furthermore, Sebastiano and Antonia stated that Miriana had considered taking her riches with her, but Faustina told the Inquisitor: ‘I heard that Miriana’s parents had taken away her things, the gold, silver and other precious items, fearing that she, Miriana, might flee.’87 That Faustina embellished her conversations with Miriana must be suggested. As she stood before the Inquisitor, she probably boasted and exaggerated her knowledge of the matter and what she had heard from Miriana. Faustina testified that Miriana said Christian prayers rather than Jewish ones, although this is probably Faustina’s exaggeration since it is doubtful that Miriana knew any. Faustina also invoked the image of Miriana disliking eating on a table-carpet or bathing in the Jewish ritual bath (bagno) once she was to be married.88 According to Peter Thornton, table-carpets during this period covered most of the tables in occupied houses, and a linen tablecloth would then be spread on top of it when eating.89 During the sixteenth century these table-carpets became more exotic, luxurious, colourful and showy, and clear evidence of the possessor’s wealth.Was Miriana really reacting to the use of a table-carpet without a linen cover or had Faustina misunderstood everything, particularly the exact terms of Miriana’s lament? Regarding the ritual bath, it is possible that Faustina was really referring to a negative comment that Miriana had made in regard to being a Jewish wife, and frequenting the mikveh.90 Alberto, Miriana’s tailor, reported her continuous weeping during his conversations with her and her explanation of why she was distressed: Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 178 MICRO-HISTORY Miriana told me many times that she knew the life of the Jews was a bestial life and that also when she was married, because at that time she was about to marry, she would be worse off and imagined she would be living in the house of the Devil.91 Whether this reticence about some Jewish practices, even admitting the accuracy of Faustina’s report, would have been enough to make Miriana desert family and everything else in her past is unlikely. Finally, there is Dr Emilio, Miriana’s clavichord teacher. Although he is described as a priest (sacerdote) there is no indication whether he was a secular or regular cleric. It seems most unusual that Viviano would have allowed a Christian priest to teach his daughter, but a lay Christian teaching Jewish girls music was a familiar practice in seventeenth-century Italy.92 Emilio clearly held a contractual position in the Sanguinetti household to teach Miriana the clavichord every Thursday, and this he had done for a period of eighteen months. That he and Miriana talked together is clear. He told the Inquisitor: At times when I questioned her and persuaded her to become a Christian, she replied to me that she knew it was an evil life being a Jew, but that she was not able to do what she wanted. I do believe that if the young woman had not been dissuaded by others, and held back, she would have become a Christian.93 He also admitted that he had been sent by the episcopal vicar to speak to Miriana on her wedding day. His intention was to ascertain whether she was still willing to convert, should Ludovico marry her. But there is also the possibility that he, as a priest, had tried to convert Miriana himself.94 Perhaps his last visit to Miriana was a final attempt to offer her his assistance in converting and marrying Ludovico. He told the Inquisitor: Father, yes, Monsignor Vicar Bascato sent me secretly to speak with Miriana, to ask her whether she would become a Christian, because Signor Mirandola would marry her. She replied, ‘Matters have gone too far ahead. I must marry today. I have no choice.’95 Perhaps his failure to win a tempted soul weighed heavily on him. But neither the episcopal vicar Bascato nor Dr Emilio had reported their finding to the Inquisition.96 In short, we must proceed with great caution. We can see that Jews and Christians had regular day-to-day contact, that these Christian servants and neighbours hovered, ready to provide the young vulnerable Jewish woman with a support system should she really make the transition, but we cannot easily infer from the texts any of its detail. The witnesses seem to be like stock figures in a Counter-Reformation play rather than real people, each trying to play his or her part in the drama in so far as they could discover what it was. Yet it is still possible to learn something about the Jews themselves as they figure in the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 179 processi. The ideal picture of behaviour painted by recent scholarship, the effects of discipline, here stand out clearly in a way that prescriptive evidence, or even the testimony at a trial of a Christian for heresy, with the witnesses possibly motivated by fear and anxiety, would never reveal. This is no small thing. Viviano Sanguinetti In the transcript, Viviano Sanguinetti, approximately 49 years old, remains the most elusive character, harder to decipher than Miriana, since we have no character witnesses.97 Paradoxically, then, there is less evidence on Sanguinetti, the suspect standing trial before the Inquisition, than any other character. Testimonies suggest that Miriana’s rejection of Ludovico in part responded to a sense of duty or obedience that she felt towards her father. Apparently Miriana told Giovanna that ‘she did not want to give such offence to her father because it would kill him’.98 But how do we judge Sanguinetti? Ludovico, Caterina, Antonia and Miriana all testified that Sanguinetti had ‘shouted’ at his daughter when he had discovered her courtship. Even Sanguinetti admitted to his anger in his testimony. [Ludovico] passed frequently under the window of my house where my daughter Miriana used to stand at times. Suspecting that my daughter might be courting this young man or he her, I admonished her saying that she should remember her duty to live according to Jewish Law, that she was a Jewess and had to live as a Jewess. More importantly, it was not permitted to court a Christian and she should remember to live as a Jewess all her life.99 That Sanguinetti intervened to stop Miriana’s and Ludovico’s courtship was normal. Sanguinetti wanted to protect his daughter, as he understood this. But even more, he surely wanted to safeguard his honour and the binding religious, social and legal restrictions that strengthened his family unity.100 Federica Francesconi has made a study of the Formiggini, de Modena and Sanguinetti families in Modena between 1600 and 1810. She argues that, when it came to marriage, these prominent and elitist Jewish families worked hard to maintain a familial network to ensure that dowries and inheritances were redistributed and transmitted within the patrimony of these families.101 In the records of the Ducale Camerale, there is clear indication that in 1613–14 the Sanguinetti family were keen to ensure that their large dowries and conditions of marriage as well as the wedding would be legally bound before the Duke’s court. Were these Jews ridden with arguments regarding the precise provisions and conditions of the 1,780–ducat dowry to be paid by Viviano Sanguinetti to the household of his brother Samuele, as another of their children was to be married, this time Esther the daughter of Viviano, and Simone, Samuele’s son?102 Should we surmise too Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 180 MICRO-HISTORY then that perhaps these pressures and antagonisms were already present when Miriana was to be married in 1602? Sanguinetti desired to prevent his daughter’s baptism, which to him was beyond doubt unthinkable, and his testimony depicts his own authoritarianism based on religious and legal intent: I suspected that my daughter had said she wanted to convert. I begged and pressed her not to convert, but persevere in the Jewish laws into which she was born. I told her to court only her intended, to whom she was promised, and no other.103 Moreover, according to the research of Roni Weinstein, the period between engagement and marriage was a time of intense supervision by fathers of young wealthy girls to ensure exemplary behaviour of the engaged couple at this fragile time when pre-marital sexual relations might lead to the man’s refusal of his bride.104 But what one senses here is almost a negligence on Viviano’s part. Miriana had already been involved in a form of ‘courtship’ with Ludovico for a few months before her father realised its serious nature. If Miriana had really wanted to escape, she could have arranged it with the aid of her Christian neighbours, without her father knowing. What may be proposed, therefore, is that if upper-class women like Miriana actually did convert, something weighty indeed was at stake. It was not disgrace, hers and her family’s alone, that was being put on the line, an added issue was that it mocked the Jewish community, as a community, as it faced ever growing conversionary and disciplinary pressures. The potential damage Ludovico could do to Sanguinetti and his family was huge. Sanguinetti would have also lost much money, since the Church would have forced him to give a substantial dowry, paying it off all at once, too. If, as Antonia stated, Sanguinetti locked up Miriana for three days, little explanation is needed.105 Miriana’s ambivalent feelings towards Michello Although the relationship between Michello and Miriana ought to be considered, one is frustrated by the fact that no testimony refers to it. At the point when Miriana met Ludovico, she was probably engaged but not betrothed, since she told the Inquisitor that she had not received a ring from her fiancé.106 Among Italian Jews, engagement was a pre-nuptial agreement (tena’im) drawn up between the families confirming the conditions of marriage. 107 Betrothal followed engagement any time from the engagement to immediately before the wedding and involved the giving of the ring by the groom and the acceptance of it by the bride.108 Courting practices between a Jewish couple during the period between engagement and betrothal varied from ‘polite and courtly’ interaction to ‘virtually sexual’, usually dependent on the status and economic position of the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 181 families involved and how much freedom the young couple were given.109 Roni Weinstein argues that, on the one hand, wealthy Jewish bankers and merchants in general did not allow their daughters to meet future husbands unless an adult chaperone was present. On the other, engaged Jews from lower classes usually met without restraint.110 But there is no indication in the trial records that Miriana and Michello wrote letters or sent gifts or even courted. Nor can one be sure whether Miriana had misgivings regarding Michello in particular as her future spouse, or was reacting against Jewish marriage in general. But could Miriana have broken her engagement without having to convert to Christianity? Did Jewish women have the right to reject the spouse proposed for them, or did their parents hold the unchallengeable authority to impose their selection on their children? From the sixteenth century daughters had the option to break an unwanted engagement according to Jewish law. Kenneth Stow reports: This had been achieved through the novel application of an ancient halachic rule which had extended to orphan girls under twelve a right known as ‘refusal’ (me’un), allowing them to dissolve not just an engagement but a full betrothal unilaterally, and without the need for a formal bill of divorce.111 In the Renaissance, the term metaphorically began to be applied to engagements as well as betrothals and the age limit in the case of engagements had begun to blur. Adolescent girls older than twelve, orphaned or not, were claiming – and winning – the right to terminate engagements just by saying they refused.112 Stow found twenty-three cases of broken engagements out of 560 (4.1%) registered by Jewish notaries in Rome during the years 1536–85.113 But it is not known how many of these cases involved a consanguineous marriage, nor who had been responsible for breaking them.114 Almost without exception, broken engagements in Rome are recorded as simply being annulled. No reason was provided, except for the one or two occasions where it was reported that ‘the match was not made in heaven’ or ‘the pair did not like each other or get along’.115 Whether one should accept these excuses as genuine is questionable. Stow believes that the broken engagement could have been the result either of the bride’s personal decision or of a change of heart by those who surrounded her. The texts do not allow one to speculate further.What is clear is that Miriana did have the possibility and legal loophole to extricate herself from her engagement.116 Whether the sense of duty to her parents and their choice of husband was too strong for her to challenge their authority can only be surmised. But were consanguineous marriages appealing to wealthy Jewish families or was it out of necessity that Jews married relatives because other suitable choices were unavailable?117 Miriana could well have been reacting to the Sanguinetti policy of marrying within the family. Unlike Catholicism, which granted special church dispensation to cousins who wanted to marry each other, Judaism Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 182 MICRO-HISTORY accepted cousin marriages without censure. Unfortunately, the testimonies give us no indication of an answer. The question remains whether Miriana’s case was really unique. If one looks further afield, it is still difficult to find similar cases of wealthy Jewish women who toyed with the idea of conversion. Luciano Allegra, after exploring the archives of the local Casa dei Catecumeni established in Turin in 1653, found only eighteen cases of Jewish women – mostly poor girls and young women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one – who, out of misery and failure to procure dowries that could entice Jewish husbands, had converted to marry Christians, but no cases of wealthy Jewish women who converted or had considered conversion but then recanted.118 Michele Luzzati has described a case of a Jewish woman, Clemenza, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker who on 22 June 1480 had married David de Guglielmo di Dattilo da Montalcino and, after consummating the marriage, ran off with a penniless Christian nobleman, Brancaleone di Giovanfrancesco da Piandimeleto.119 Clemenza was baptized ten days later and her father was forced to bestow a dowry of 1,000 ducats upon her. Luzzati stresses the exceptional nature of the case but the situation was far different from Miriana’s.120 Clemenza’s conversion broke a marriage bond, not an engagement. Even though the Church would have anulled Miriana’s marriage to Michello once she converted, she had to decide before her marriage if she wished to marry Ludovico, her Christian admirer, since he was willing to marry her ‘so long as she received baptism rather than go to a Jewish husband’.121 This chapter is best ended by returning to the start. Brian Pullan has speculated about the sources of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.122 Towards the end of the essay, he refers to the case of Giorgio Moreto, who had pressed his attentions upon a Jewish girl, Rachel the daughter of Isaac the Deaf, in the Venetian Ghetto in 1589, and was tried by the Inquisition.123 Moreto was charged with judaizing. He in defence said that he intended to convert her to Christianity and then marry her. But: because her family noticed, they barred the doors and balconies and engaged in a thousand intrigues and were determined to injure me.124 This was much, Pullan adds, as Shylock says to Jessica: Lock up my doors … Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze upon Christian fools125 The Inquisition did not interrogate Rachel, nor did it believe Moreto, who eventually served three years in the galleys. Rachel, Moreto’s hoped-for Jewish love, was saved because of his failings. Ludovico Mirandola’s somewhat better social position, despite his grey character, seems to have made it necessary for the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 183 Jews to defend themselves before the Inquisition. But the lack of conversionary support circumscribed Inquisitorial action at the beginning of the seventeenth century and saved Miriana from being taken off to a house of converts, as she would have been had her case been brought before the Inquisition one hundred years later. Yet in the very constraints and procedures which conditioned Miriana’s narrative before the Inquisition, as well as the artificiality of witness testimonies, one can hypothesize Miriana’s entanglement in a self-inflicted conflict between repressive familial restraints and personal escape as well as an underlying modesty and intelligence, which led her to conclude that the Christian world beyond her balcony could offer her no suitable future. She remained different from Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, who clearly preferred a Christian life, and was happy to be saved not so much by her own choice as by Lorenzo’s decision to marry her. Notes 1 This chapter is based on a previous article, ‘Miriana Sanguinetti’s Flirtation with Christianity’, in Michele Luzzati and Cristina Galasso (eds), Italia Judaica: Donne nella storia degli ebrei d’Italia (Florence: Giuntina 2007), pp. 179–206. 2 This trial is found in ASMoFIP 20 f.22. 3 See James Given, ‘The Inquisitors of Languedoc and the Medieval Technology of Power’, American Historical Review 94 (1989), 336–59; and Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. II, doc. 26. See also Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 384. Here reprinted is the Modenese Inquisition’s edict of 1600. The second part of clause 8 referred to the possibility: ‘that a Jew has dissuaded from baptism, or in some way pulled back and impeded another Jew, or indeed another infidel inspired by God to come to the Holy Faith of Christ after that Jew and infidel (so inspired by God) has declared with deeds or words or gestures that he wishes to be baptized and come to the Christian faith (or in truth any Jew who possesses Talmudic works, or other prohibited and heretical books).’ 4 See Stow, ‘Ebrei e Inquisitori 1250–1350’, pp. 3–18, p. 7. 5 Viviano Sanguinetti was the brother of Calman de Sanguinetti, who was prosecuted for hiring a Christian wetnurse in 1602. 6 If Miriana had converted, her name would probably have appeared on the list of neophytes kept in the archives of the Curia Reggiana, which contains the reports of investigations of neophytes in three registered files, Opere Pie: Catecumeni ed Ebrei, the first of which lists neophytes in Modena between 1511and 1725. See Balletti, Gli Ebrei, pp. 192–3. If she had chosen to revoke her engagement to her first cousin, this might well have been recorded in the Jewish community’s notarial archives. The fact that she did neither of these things means that, without this trial, her tale would not have been uncovered. 7 Interestingly there is one case, ASMoFIP 44 f.3 of 1615 which uncovers the unusual case of a Christian, Giovanni Antonio Balugani who had tried to dissuade a Jewish servant boy Israel from being baptized. According to the record, Israel was still baptized on 25 March 1615 in the church of San Domenico in Modena. I have chosen not to discuss the additional cases of dissuasions of baptism in Finale, revealed by the research of Balboni, Gli Ebrei, since these are not cases that related specifically to the Inquisition. See her chapter 4, ‘Le Conversioni nel corso del Seicento’, pp. 75–110. 8 ASMoFICH 246 f.10. 9 Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 114–15. 10 ‘Ex officio’ means that the Inquisitor did not need a delator to start the proceedings, but acted on the strength of a ‘common report’ and decided to investigate the matter himself. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 184 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 MICRO-HISTORY ASMoFICH 244 f.5. ASMoFICH 244 f.11. Pullan, Jews of Europe, p. 271. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 69–70; and Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 271, 296. See ASMoAME busta 4, Processi I–LXXXIII, 1600–1629, 21 March, 1602. Here two Jews, Leone Fiorentini and his son Abramo, pay the 50 ducats to have Angelo released. ASMoFICH 244 f.17 and ASMoFICH 245 f.52. ASMoFICH 245 f.52.The two clergymen were Ludovico Signorio de Picino, a Minorite Friar, and Brother Lorenzo de Tuccati, an Augustinian monk. ASMoFICH 244 f.17 (17v–20r). See ASMoAME busta 4, Processi I–LXXXIII 1600–1629, 7 September 1614. ASMoFICH 244 f.17 (5v). Ibid. See the letter of Donato’s at the beginning of the file. Ibid. ASMoFIP 26 f.9.The trial was discontinued due to lack of evidence. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, pp. 78–80. ASMoFICH 249 f.10. In 1662, Alessandro Sanguinetti and Mosè Sanguinetti were investigated for giving money to the Jew Lazzaro to stop him converting. I was not able to find any suggestion in the Jewish Community archives in Modena that there was a Jewish confraternity or grouping that tried to prevent conversions. In ACEMo filza 2.52 Neofiti: Recapiti riguardanti i medesimi 1570–1727, there is a copy of a ‘mendato’ of the government in Venice, which on 4 June 1585 recorded that ‘niuno personne dissuase alcuno delli figlie si senza volere del Padre, e madre sotto niun protesto, anco di battesimo, no meno niente di casa sua, di meno d’etta d’anni dodeci e desciendole tutto quelle si facesse nella persona di quella creature non sia di alcun valore’, but no suggestion that the Jewish Università acted upon this. ASMoFIP 44 f.44. The denunciation was made by Lerri Bartolomeo Bontempino, the guard of the Holy Office, on 8 January 1615. Ibid. ASMoFICH 246 f.13. ASMoAME busta 14/b, letter 163 January 1633 from Scipione Sacrati to the Giudice di Modena. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 93. Zanardo ‘Catecumeni’, p. 122.This situation changed in Modena once the Casa dei Catecumeni was established. See Balletti, Gli Ebrei, pp. 204–5. In 1735 Rachel, the daughter of Jacobo Tedeschi, fled from her home to the Casa. Giuditta, her mother, devastated, ran after her and pretended that she also wanted to convert. While in the house with her daughter, Giuditta tried hard to persuade Rachel to recant, even ordering her other children to come to the Casa to persuade Rachel to reconsider. When Giuditta told the Rector of the Casa that she wanted to return home, the case was referred to the Pope, who ordered that the woman be held in the House for forty days, separate from her children – the oldest three who were also to be held for the same period and the younger two who were to be forcibly baptized. In the end the whole family, including all five children, were converted. See ASMo Archivio del Magistrato, Giunta Suprema di Giurisdizione Sovrana, which contain documents of the Opera Pia Neofiti assisting converted Jews to Christianity. Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 272–4. See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 25–7. Caffiero provides interesting information regarding the intervention of the Holy Office in the abuses carried out by the rector of the Casa dei Catecumeni towards Jews around the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. See also Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord, p. 123. Lazar argues that the Casa dei Catecumeni in Rome provided bureaucratic and formal support for the new convert. Giuseppe B. Sermoneta, ‘Tredici giorni nella Casa dei Conversi; dal diario di una giovane ebrea del 18° secolo’, Michael 1 (1972), 261–315, 265. Ibid., p. 263. According to Sermoneta, an edict published in 1635 by Cardinal Antonio Barberini allowed for the removal to the Casa de Catecumeni of all close relatives of the neophyte, and those of his wife, a promised spouse, children or nephews. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 185 35 Girls and women were not allowed out of the Casa. See Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord, p. 117. 36 Sermoneta, ‘Tredici’, p. 301. 37 Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, pp. 210–40. See also Sermoneta, ‘Tredici’, p. 263. 38 The earliest document in Modena of Jews being forced to attend sermons is in 1635. ASMoAME busta 15, f.12. The Jewish community wrote a letter of complaint on this subject to the Duke, saying that they were unwilling to obey the recent ecclesiastical demands on this subject. They asked permission that instead they attend only once a month, that women would sit separately from men during the sermon and that not all the members of the family attend, but just one representative from each family. 39 Antonia was the wife of Hippolito Barozzi, who was a witness in the two of the blasphemy processi discussed in Chapter 4. There were clearly certain Christians who had ongoing relations with Jews, were somehow privy to what they said, and were thus sitting ducks for the Inquisitors to pester. 40 The processo was brought ex officio. See ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (1v). At the beginning of the trial, the notary Tomaso Panini merely reports: ‘When it came to the ears of the most Reverend Brother Archangelo Calbetti de Recanati, Inquisitor General of Modena, that Viviano Sanguinetti, a Jew of Modena, had discouraged and held back his own daughter from embracing the Christian faith as she had declared she wanted to, he [Calbetti] wishing to establish the facts in this court, as he wanted to proceed against the aforesaid in accordance with the intent of the Bull of Pope Gregory XIII, Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas, sent Reverend Brother Vincenzio de Zabia, a reader and vicar of the Holy Office to ascertain the abovementioned facts of the case, and to interrogate the woman on her own, to [decide] what should be done under the law, should the truth of the report be established.’ 41 Ibid. (6r). 42 Ibid. (19r). 43 Ibid. (28r). 44 It is interesting to note that Miriana did not sign the record of her two interrogations, either the one conducted in her father-in-law’s home on 23 May, or the one conducted in the Inquisitorial courtroom on 25 May. In her home, her husband Michello Sanguinetti signed, and after her second interrogation it was her uncle Calman who signed her interrogation for her. This does not necessarily imply that Miriana was illiterate. 45 Natalie Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Judith Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (NewYork and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Ruggiero, Binding Passions; and Kim Siebenhüner, ‘Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition in Italy around 1600’. 46 See Thomas Kuehn, ‘Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna’, Journal of Modern History 61 (1989), 532–3, 518. 47 In fact Ludovico, Miriana and Viviano testified that most of the courting took place while Miriana was standing at her window balcony and Ludovico in the street. See ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (31v); Viviano in particular testified in his interrogation: ‘he [Ludovico] passed frequently under the window of my house where my daughter Miriana was at times, and I feared she might court or be courted by him.’ 48 See Luisa Modena, ‘Note a margine della vita delle donne ebree modenesi all’epoca del ghetto’, in Bonilauri and Maugeri (eds), Le comunità ebraiche, pp. 143–56, p. 148. 49 See ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (28v). Miriana told the Inquisitor who came to her house, ‘I was familiar with many Christians who came on different occasions into my house’. 50 Ibid. (15v). Caterina told the Inquisition, ‘I recounted everything to Mirandola’. See also (6r) how Alberto told the Inquisitor, ‘I related the words of the young woman to Signor Mirandola’. 51 Ibid. (29r). Viviano reported, ‘I have five sons and daughters. My sons are called Samuele and Simone. My daughters are Miriana, Esther and Leah.’ On contemporary marital ages, see Roni Weinstein, Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 186 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 MICRO-HISTORY Italian Jews (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 63; and Kenneth Stow and Sandra Debenedetti Stow, ‘Donne ebree a Roma nell’età del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia’, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986), 66–97, 71–2, who state that Jewish girls in general were married between the ages of 14 and 18. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (2v). Ludovico indicates that he had stepped into Miriana’s house – see ibid. (5v): ‘Miriana sent me a message … that I should no longer step into her house.’ He also reports that he had seen her outside her house (3r): ‘I met her, in fact I saw her close by an area of her house.’ On clandestine meetings between young couples see Roger Chartier (ed.), A History of Private Life, vol. III, Passions of the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 1. On sexual intimacy between young couples see Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti, ‘Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800’, in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (eds), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 73–109. This study and the above stress the little opportunity that young courting couples had for privacy. Italian short stories and plays tell quite a few tales of young men falling in love with girls they have seen only at windows or balconies – Juliet is not alone. See also Nino Tamassia, La famiglia italiana nei secoli decimoquinto e decimosesto (Rome: Multigrafica, 1971), reprint of the Milan: Sandron, 1910 edition, and Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, p. 204. The testimony in this processo stands in interesting contrast to that in the processo of Giorgio Moreto, as transcribed by Brian Pullan in ‘The Trial of Giorgio Moreto before the Inquisition in Venice, 1589’, in Maureen Mulholland and Brian Pullan (eds), Judicial Tribunals in England and Europe, 1200–1700, The Trials in History, vol. 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 159–81. Moreto, a Christian sailor, had frequent contact with Rachel, the Jewess he fell in love with. He told his interrogator (p. 172): ‘I have been at many Jewish festivities and do not remember any in particular, but there was one in the house of the Jew Scocco, another in that of Abraham Boaf, and various others which were held at night, and I went to their banquets and ate with them, … and danced unmasked at their balls upon several occasions, and I danced with the Jewish women … both the wives and the maids, and they took me for a partner and I them.’ ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (2r–3v). Ludovico told the Inquisitor: ‘As a sign of my promise that I would take her as my wife, I sent her a gold ring that I had shown her. This ring was engraved with the words domine peccavi and upon it was sculpted a crucifix also of gold. I sent her the ring via Antonia and this was a Monday, which I believe was 22 October. Antonia brought the ring to Miriana. Miriana said to her that now I was sending the ring, as a sign of trust that I would marry her and that I was swearing to her by the God in whom we believe, who was sculpted upon the ring, she believed that I would keep my promise. Antonia gave her the ring, she accepted it and then returned it saying that she did not know where to hide it, because the people in her house had taken away all the keys of the boxes as was customary for them to do a month before the wedding. In the same evening, after I had heard this, I sent another ring together with the same ring that I had sent in the morning, which was engraved with the Madonna of Reggio, with the words quem genuit adoravit carved inside the ring, and I repeated my promise as above. I sent both rings with the same Antonia. Miriana sent a message, saying that gladly she would keep the ring with the crucifix, which she liked more than the other, but she did not know where to hide it. The following morning, I sent the two rings with the same Antonia with an additional ring, on which were set seven white stones with the same words as above. The young woman sent them back with the same reply.’ Viviano testified that he had believed Ludovico to be courting another woman rather than his own daughter Miriana. Ibid. (30v). He told the Inquisitor: ‘I heard that Signor Mirandola was courting the granddaughter of Signor Camillo de Levizzari.’ Ibid. (2v–2r). See Ibid. (13v–13r). Caterina testifed that Miriana feared that Ludovico would sexually exploit her and then abandon her without marrying her. She told the Inquisitor that Miriana had said: ‘These men when they have what they want, they abandon it, and women that become Chris- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 187 tian go begging.’ Miriana was perhaps right to be suspicious. Quite a few men were tried every year in secular courts for ‘seduction under promise of marriage’, which was treated as a kind of statutory rape; if arrested and found guilty, they could be compelled either to marry the girl or to provide her with a dowry which might enable her to marry somebody else. This sort of thing usually happened when the alleged promise had been made in secret, with no witnesses. Again there is a striking contrast to the testimony of Samson, son of Vital, a Jewish butcher regarding Moreto’s relationship with Rachel in Giorgio Moreto’s processo transcribed by Pullan in ‘The Trial’, p. 172. Here Samson reports that Moreto was even willing to convert to Judaism, if it meant that he would be able to marry Rachel. Samson testified: ‘Giorgio has told me on many occasions that he is courting her and that if he could lead her away he would, and if he cannot, then to have her he is willing to become a Jew.’ ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (26v–26r) ‘[Miriana] replied to me, if I put my trust in any of these gentlemen who say they really like me, I would become a Christian.’ Ecclesiastical and secular courts dealt with many cases. On cases in ecclesiastical courts, see Cavallo and Cerutti, ‘Female Honor’. Cavallo and Cerutti use the matrimonial lawsuits brought before local ecclesiastical authorities (either a judge of the Curia or before a delegated vicar) in Turin to analyse social and institutional attitudes towards extramarital sexual relationships. See also Guido Ruggiero, ‘Marriage, Love, Sex, and Renaissance Civic Morality’, p. 18; Ruggiero, ‘“Più che la vita caro”: onore, matrimonio e reputazione femminile nel Tardo Rinascimento’, Quaderni Storici 16 (1987), 753–75; Daniela Lombardi, ‘Interventions by Church and State in Marriage Disputes in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Florence’, in Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe (eds), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 142–56, 147. On cases in secular courts, see Joanne M. Ferraro, ‘The Power to Decide: Battered Wives in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 492–512, 495. See also Trevor Dean, ‘Fathers and Daughters: Marriage Laws and Marriage Disputes in Bologna and Italy 1200–1500’, in Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe (eds), Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650, pp. 85–106; Elizabeth Cohen, ‘No longer Virgins: Self-Presentation by Young Women in Late Renaissance Rome’, in Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (eds), Refiguring Women: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 169–91; and Beatrice Gottlieb, ‘The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage’, in Robert Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven (eds), Family and Sexuality in French History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), pp. 49–83, p. 62. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (17v): ‘From her words, I assumed that she would become a Christian if she had trusted Signor Mirandola.’ Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 33, records visitors coming to Modena to visit the miraculous pilgrimage site of the Madonna of Reggio. Michael Carroll, Madonnas that Maim: Popular Catholicism in Italy since the Fifteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 138, has shown how Italians worshipped a range of madonnas, especially those associated with the area in which they lived. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (2r). Ibid. (13v). See Zanardo ‘Catecumeni’, p. 122. Zanardo refers to potential converts in Modena being catechized by priests in the homes of noble gentlemen or gentlewomen, supported and subsidized by either the Opera Calori or the Opera Venosa before conversion. ASMo Giurisdizione Sovrana, 140, Opere Pie del Neofiti e dei Catecumeni di Modena e di Reggio (con un fascicolo sugli Ebrei), 1491–1796 includes supplications for alms from Cesare d’Este in 1617, Catrina in 1625, Joseph Calebreo in 1628, Isabella Francesconi in 1629 and Giullio de La Rosa in 1630. Also see Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 196. Here Balletti lists licences given by bishops to neophyte women without any financial means. Zanardo shows in ‘Catecumeni e neofiti alla fine dell’antico regime’, 134, that even after the establishment of the Casa dei Catecumeni in Modena in 1700 the donations awarded at baptism and the subsidies that were provided after baptism were insufficient to support the neophyte on a continuing basis. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it was the Opera Calori which gave initial income to the neophyte, and the Opera Venosa which tried to subsidize neophytes who stayed in Modena. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (15v). Perhaps this was an idea that Jewish parents placed in the heads of Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 188 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 MICRO-HISTORY their children in order to indoctrinate them against conversion. Some Jews in Venice also believed the same. See Pullan, Jews in Europe, p. 268. A dowry was a woman’s advance on her inheritance, which was given to her at her wedding, at the moment when she most needed it to start a new family. See Pullan, Jews in Europe, p. 252. Viviano Sanguinetti would have been compelled to provide a dowry for his daughter even if she converted. Paul III’s bull Cupientes iudaeos of 1542 specified that even those who had converted against their parents’ wishes had to be entitled to their share of the patrimony. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (19r). According to the testimony of Antonia, Miriana wanted to take her riches and give them to Ludovico. Antonia testified: ‘She [Miriana] said to me often that she wanted to escape with all those things, silver, gold and precious things, to flee and to give them to Signor Mirandola, who promised to take her as a wife if she became a Christian.’ ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (3v). On the use of furnishing chests see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600 (London: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), pp. 192 and 204. ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–21, busta 252, 17 June 1623, 1621–25. Ibid. Luciano Allegra, Identità in bilico: Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento (Turin: S. Zamorani, 1996), p. 120. See Pier van Boxel, ‘Dowry and the Conversion of the Jews in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Competition between the Church and the Jewish community’, in Dean and Lowe (eds), Marriage in Italy, pp. 116–27, p. 127. Sermoneta, ‘Il mestiere’, p. 216. Sermoneta, in his research on the neophytes of Rome in the eighteenth century, argues more generally that he never found a case of a Jew who converted due to religious or philosophical conviction, but only out of social or economic motives. On the role of gossiping in neighbourhoods, see Arnold. L. Epstein, ‘Gossip, Norms and Social Network’, in James C. Mitchell (ed.), Social Networks in Urban Situations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969), pp. 117–27. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (20r). Ibid. (14v). Caterina also acted as a messenger for Ludovico. This explains Ludovico’s uncertainty later in his testimony about who had acted as messenger on a particular occasion in his relationship with Miriana. He recorded: ‘Miriana sent me a message through Antonia or Caterina’, ibid. (4v). Ibid. (6r–v). See Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 203. Agostino da Correggio wrote: ‘Esther the Jewess who was in the hands of a certain Cabazza, the said Esther will die, because she will be killed.’ ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (5r). Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 280. See Brian Pullan, Poverty and Charity: Europe, Italy, Venice, 1400–1700 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), Item V, p. 194. See Horodowich, Language, p. 102 for a case when a Jew had used the term ‘beast’ in Hebrew to offend a recent neophyte in Venice. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (27v). Ibid. (17v). Ibid. (21r–22r). As Romano notes in Housecraft, p. 159, dowries were made up of a combination of both goods and money. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (23r). See Thornton, The Italian Renaissance, p. 216. Elliott Horowitz, in a lecture at Ben Gurion University, September 2000, entitled ‘The Price of Purity: Reflections on the Use and Abuse of the Ritual Bath’, (unpublished) argued that, in North Italy, Jewish women abhorred going to the Mikveh, because it was so filthy. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (7v). See Moses A. Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1973), p. 241. Information on Jewish teachers of music in this period is still limited, see Barbara Sparti, ‘Jewish Dancing Masters and “Jewish Dance” in Renaissance Italy’, in Pugliese (ed.) The Most Ancient of Minorities:The Jews of Italy, pp. 77–89. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access THE JEW’S BALCONY 189 93 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (10v). 94 Grazia Biondi in her article ‘Le Lettere’, p. 100, notes as above the case of Sara Spagnola, who was aided by the Inquisitor and the bishop in her conversion. See also Allegra, Identità in bilico, pp. 111–62, p. 113, which shows the involvement of a local vicar in the conversion of Isach Treves in 1768. 95 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (11v–11r). 96 See Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord, p. 123. Lazar notes different reactions of clerics to Jews’ conversions. 97 See ASMoFIP 15 f.3. In this trial of seven Jews for possessing prohibited books in 1601, Viviano Sanguinetti, who is one of the Sanguinetti suspects, is noted by the notary as being around 46 years old. 98 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (26r). 99 Ibid. (30v). 100 Brian Pullan, ‘The Conversion of the Jews: The Style of Italy’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 70 (1988), 53–70, 66. Pullan notes the tedious and long litigations instigated by Jews through different courts to quarrel over for example inheritances and dowries of family members who had converted. In Modena, such conflicts between the Jewish community and individual neophytes are recorded in the Jewish communal archives ACEMo, in the buste labelled Neofiti. 101 Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 82–5. 102 See CAHJP ASE Archivio per Materie (5407b) ‘Ebrei’, b4, Processi, I–LXXXIII, 1600–1629, 57–78, 100, 102–4, 194–6, 199–200, 204. See in particular ‘Copia fedele della scrittura ebraica accordata per lo sposalitio fra esser di Viviano Sanguineti e Simone di Samuele pur de Sanguineti.’ 103 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (29r). 104 See Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, p. 74 and p. 258. In rabbinical literature, the father is responsible for the marriage of his children. The father’s primary role in the matchmaking process in Italy is also confirmed by Bonfil, Jewish Life, p. 256. Also see Kenneth Stow, ‘The Knotty Problem of Shem Tov Soporto: Male Honor, Marital Initiation, and Disciplinary Structures in Mid-Sixteenth Century Jewish Rome’, Italia 13–15 (2001), 137–49, 138. Stow notes that disgruntled husbands arguing that their wives were not virgins could insist on a divorce. 105 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (20v). See Lieberman, ‘Between Tradition’, p. 69. In the sermons of José Penso de la Verga entitled ‘Moral and Sacred Academic Discourse’ (Discurso Académico Morale y Sagrado), Lieberman notes, Penso discusses ‘good parenting with the metaphor of the musician tuning his string instrument; the string should not be so lax as to be dissonant nor so tight that it will snap. Parental love should be a combination of affection and discipline, and the ideal father is, according to Penso, the one who knows how to discipline his children when necessary but who is not too strict with them.’ Also on parental discipline see Kathryn Sather, ‘Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Child-Rearing: A Matter of Discipline’, Journal of Social History 22/4 (1989), 735–43. Steven Ozment in When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) has reconstructed contemporary attitudes towards marriage and parenthood in Reformation Germany and Switzerland. See pp. 148–9 for the description of a similar sort of punishments inflicted on German children. 106 ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (28v). ‘I did not have, nor wear, any ring, because we Jews when we are young do not wear rings.’ 107 Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, p. 125. 108 Abraham Hayyim Freimann, Seder qiddushin ve-nissu’in ‘aharei hatimat ha Talmud (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1964), p. 46. 109 Kenneth Stow, ‘Marriages are Made in Heaven: Marriage and the Individual in the Roman Jewish Ghetto’, Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 445–91, 454; and Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, p. 319. 110 Ibid. 111 In fact the rabbinic authorities began to get involved in marital arrangements in the fourteenth century. Rabbinic responsa at the time confirm this. See Menachem Azariah da Fano, Sefer Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 190 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 MICRO-HISTORY she’elot ve-teshuvot, be’urim u-ferushim (Venice, 1599), p. 142. Stow, ‘Marriages’, p. 459. Ibid., p. 473. Ibid. Ibid., 475. See Stow, Theater, p. 84. Rabbi Menachem Azariah da Fano (1548–1620) authorized as an ‘intrinsic right the decision of a young woman to “refuse” and break an engagement.’ On the issue of consanguineous marriage, see Raul Merzario, ‘Land, Kinship, and Consanguineous Marriage in Italy from the Seventeenth to the Ninteenth Centuries’, Journal of Family History 15 (1990), 529–46, and Nancy Fix Anderson, ‘Cousin Marriage in Victorian England’, Journal of Family History 11 (1986), 285–301. Allegra, Identità in bilico, pp. 110–58. Michele Luzzati, ‘Matrimoni e apostasia di Clemenza di Vitale da Pisa’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.), La casa dell’ebreo saggi sugli Ebrei a Pisa e in Toscana nel Mediaevo e nel Rinascimento (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1985), pp. 61–106. Ibid., p. 77. ASMoFIP 20 f.22 (2v) (se pure si battezzava prima d’andare a marito hebreo). Brian Pullan,‘Shakespeare’s Shylock, Evidence fromVenice’, in Bernard Cooperman and Barbara Garvin (eds), The Jews of Italy, Memory and Identity (College Park: University of Maryland Press, 2000), pp. 193–208, esp. pp. 201–2. Pullan, ‘The Trial of Giorgio Moreto’, pp. 159–81. Ibid., p. 173. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene v. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 6 1 The pingolo : a locus for fantasy I have been here for 30 years and never did I hear anyone say or reflect upon the fact that Jews yelled or shouted in any way, especially at the said times, when they used to be withdrawn and modest. This year they did the worst.2 Like many micro-histories, this chapter, which studies the tension between Jews and Christians during the frequent clash of Passover and Easter, is based on one processo in 1604, which uncovers the boisterous and intrusive actions of a group of Jews in the home of Davide de Norsa, a Jewish banker in the small town of Soliera, 9 kilometres north of Modena. Six Jewish men were charged with two offences, mocking the Passion and disturbing Christian prayer from an apartment in a castello, located within both sight and earshot of the San Giovanni Battista church.3 Working on slippages between event and perception and thought, between thought and testimony, between testimony and narration, which allow micro-historians to see the discrepancies between what happened and what people perceived, and between what they perceived and what they said in court, an effort is made to decode and analyse the Jews’ disturbance in this small town, where Jews had seemingly more freedom away from the watchful eyes of Inquisitorial authority. Up in the attic of the castello, three young Jews, cooped up by Jewish exclusion from Easter, had with innocent fun, or so it seems, vented their spirits by swinging on a pingolo, singing mountebank songs of love, playing at selling perfumed balls and generally fooling around. It brings to mind the pioneering studies of Kenneth Stow,Thomas Cohen and Elliott Horowitz, who have explored Jewish social custom and comportment in Italy in the early modern period, and reflect upon these cultural norms as a direct result of acculturation with the surrounding Christian society.4 In his study of Roman Jewry, Stow argues that Jews often acted as if they were indeed Romans, having convinced themselves that they could act accordingly.5 Thomas Cohen contends that a group of Roman Jews accused by the local governor of pretending to be police officers of the Campidoglio had in 1551 ‘turned the tables, donning the robes of power’.6 But the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 192 MICRO-HISTORY Jews’ actions of 1604 suggest an alternative paradigm, and as a result a different raison d’être of Jewish acculturation. Here the Jews’ defiance is interpreted as imitation, not with the intention of challenging the norm, but as epitomizing their own desire for deeper inclusion in Christian society. The de Norsa family, originating from Norcia in the Papal States, had established themselves in the Estense territory from the end of the fifteenth century.7 Family members served as bankers in many different parts of the duchy besides the capital, in Soliera and Bondeno, as well as throughout the duchy of Mantua. De Norsa family members who had previously lived in Ferrara followed Duke Cesare to Modena. In 1598, Davide de Norsa sent a letter of supplication to the Duke, asking him to favour and safeguard his family in Soliera.8 In 1602, he established his own bank as well as a private synagogue, which served the few Jewish families living there.9 Often lacking the ten men needed for Jewish prayer services, the small community relied upon visitors to make up the quorum. In 1617, thirteen years later, Cesare de Norsa, Davide’s son, told Inquisitor Massimo Guazzoni that their synagogue was still only used for services on the main festivals.10 In medieval Spain, the proximity or clash of Passover and Easter had occasionally resulted in violence against Jews, since Christians celebrating the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross suspected Jews of doing the same out of mockery. David Nirenberg reports that in Segorbe Jews were indicted for moulding the crucified Jesus in bread dough and baking him in their ovens.11 In Zaragoza, Jews had purportedly built a tower over their home so that they could watch Holy Week services in a neighbouring church and throw meat bones onto it on Good Friday. Suspicious of Jewish reaction to their solemnities, ecclesiastical decrees imposed a curfew on the Jews during the four days of Holy Week from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.12 This curfew was in due course implemented in Italy by secular rulers in the fifteenth century.13 Jews were to remain locked and silent in their homes, removed from any contact with Christians, protected from the potential wrath of their neighbours as well as the accusations of ritual murder which were often levelled at this precarious time.14 This move enabled the annual stoning, or Sassaiola, instigated at the end of the Easter procession, in medieval Spain and then in Italy and France, to be controlled by the ruling authorities without, it seems, inciting broader violence.15 Here Christian children, in particular, threw stones against the doors and windows of Jews’ houses, frequently damaging shutters and blinds and leaving visible disarray but rarely harming the inhabitants.16 Complaints about Jews disturbing Christian services in adjacent churches or monasteries were voiced many times by ecclesiastical authorities during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, in Italy as well as elsewhere in Europe.17 A second processo in the Inquisitorial archives, against another Solieran banker, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 193 Davide Diena, in May 1623, records disturbances made from the Jews’ house just after the festival of Easter. Here Diena had held a party, attended by Christian servants and singers in particular Joannes Bernardino, who had disturbed neighbouring Christians at prayer.18 What bothered Inquisitor General Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza more than the disturbances was that local Christians had attended this celebration and danced and fraternized in the Jew’s house. Diena was fined 50 scudi and was ordered to attend a public shaming the following Sunday on 17 July, where he was forced to kneel for an hour with a candle in his hand and an inscription around his neck stating his offence. In medieval times, Jews were usually allowed to transfer their synagogues to other locations, since canon law recognized the right of the Jews to free worship.19 On occasions, local churches attempted to prevent the construction of new synagogues.20 Correspondence between the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and the Inquisition in Modena reveals the attempts by the Holy Office, after the de Norsa proceedings in 1604 to move his synagogue from the proximity of the San Giovanni Battista church, as mandated by the cardinals in Rome.21 Davide de Norsa had been sentenced to pay a fine of 70 ducats, 40 to the Inquisition building fund and 30 to Panini, and at the same time ordered to leave this habitation or change the location of his synagogue.22 Yet four months later, on 27 November, Cardinal Camillo Borghese (later Pope Paul V 1605–21) wrote to Calbetti, reiterating the Congregation of the Holy Office’s refusal to allow the Jews of Soliera to erect a new synagogue in the castello.23 The Holy Office was helpless to enforce the order, and instead the Duke allowed the Jews to build a new synagogue in the same castello next to the church.24 Almost four years later, in June 1608, Cardinal Arrigoni (1552–1616) ordered Inquisitor General Michelangelo Lerri, who had replaced Calbetti, to verify whether de Norsa was continuing to use the synagogue next to the church, whether he actually held a licence from the Duke, and if not to imprison and punish him.25 A denunciation was made immediately by the vicar general Ercole Agaggi, the rector of San Michele in Soliera, against de Norsa for re-erecting a synagogue in his house. The Jews were able to manipulate the Duke’s sovereignty over the issuing of synagogue licences to their advantage when facing Inquisitorial prosecution. Davide de Norsa was summoned in November 1608 and testified that six to seven years previously he had acquired a ducal licence to establish a synagogue in his house. When Inquisitor Lerri accused him of using the synagogue that should have been eliminated as a result of his prosecution in 1604, Davide argued that the Duke had re-issued him a licence, granting him permission to have a new synagogue in the castello, implying at the same time that he had refused to heed the Inquisitorial order as a result of his prosecution in 1604.26 Regarding this new synagogue, Davide testified that the Duke’s minister Giambattista Laderchi Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 194 MICRO-HISTORY de Imola had told him that the Duke, not the Pope, had the authority to authorize licences to build synagogues.27 The Inquisitor noted at the end of the investigation that the synagogue in Davide’s house had in fact been moved to a different room: This place which they use for a synagogue is in a more internal section of Davide’s house. And it is not the same place that it was the other time. They have surrounded it with a wall so that one cannot hear the voices.28 When De Norsa produced his licence, the Inquisition had no choice but to drop proceedings. That the Inquisition had little authority to eliminate or determine the status of synagogues in the duchy of Modena, despite Papal demands, is clear. When the Pope reminded Inquisitor Lerri in 1610 that the Duke was not allowed to provide licences for Jews to erect new synagogues, according to the canonical rulings of Pope Nicholas V in 1451, there was little reaction from the Holy Office.29 On the back of the letter from the Pope on 10 January 1610 it was noted [probably by Lerri] that the Duke had responded: that he did not think that the most Holy father the Pope would want to detract from the privileges already granted to his family by other pontiffs and that he would have his own laws promulgated.30 This case was not unique in our period. Collisions continued between the Duke on the one side and the Inquisition on the other, both keen to gain a position of supremacy on the matter. Generally contention was confined to the building of additional synagogues in the small but growing communities of Spilamberto, Spezzano and Finale Emilia on the peripheries of the city-capital, a policy which contradicted the Papal order underlined in Cum nimis absurdum, which had brought about the destruction of additional synagogues in the middle of the sixteenth century, by specifying no more than one synagogue for each location.31 The proceedings of the 1604 de Norsa disturbance are recorded on 73 folios. As one reads through them, it becomes clear that Inquisitorial accusations and investigations hoped to force the testimonies of the event into the mould of what was required or perceived to be required to designate the Jews’ offence as that of mocking the Passion. Some of the Christian testimonies remained fictitious. Witnesses and suspects spoke of hearing sounds and singing that resembled Christian worship. Sometimes they said that the Jews sounded like priests, or even that they were imitating priests in their offices. Finally, one Christian witness testified that amidst all the noise she heard the Jews mocking Christ and the Passion. All of this amounted instead to a charge of blasphemy. It was also grounds for pursuing the previous goal of keeping synagogues closed. But, as noted above, the Inquisition did not realize its aim. The witnesses never spoke with one voice, the Jews when interrogated and tortured denied all the charges, and the synagogue was never shut down.32 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 195 What follows is a description of the various testimonies in the processo, provided in response to leading questions of the Inquisitor, and in addition an interpretation of the Jews’ noise, defiance and commedia dell’arte during the clash of Easter and Passover in 1604. The processo Inquisitorial enquiry began with the appearance of the Inquisitorial Vicar Giovanni Battista Panini at the Modenese Holy Office on 26 April 1604 in order to denounce the Jews. It ended with the Jews’ sentencing three months later on 30 July. During the trial seventeen people were interrogated, nine Christians and eight Jews. The Inquisition moved swiftly to obtain sufficient proof from Christian witnesses before it imprisoned and began interrogating the Jews. A month after the investigation began, on 25 May, six Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned. There followed twenty-seven short, repetitive and intensive interrogations of these Jews (see Table 4). The Christians Giovanni Battista Panini The 70–year-old Inquisitorial vicar of Soliera, himself a witness and a prime mover in the proceedings, stressed in his interrogation on 26 April that the Jews made terrible noises on the night of Holy Thursday that were audible both from his house and from the sacristy of the church.33 At that time, three men were participating in the quarantore, a ritual to watch a consecrated host in the sacristy of the church for the forty hours that Christ, according to the New Testament, had been placed in his tomb.34 Panini complained that the Jews imitated Christian priests, singing in a high voice.35 The Jews also kept their windows open, disturbing the Christians at prayer and preventing young Christian boys from participating in the Sassaiola ceremony.36 Panini told the Inquisitor that he had heard the Jews make the most insolent confusion, yelling and shouting, almost intolerable, but we did not understand the words of their shouting, … and it seemed they were playing, … responding to each other in a form of dialogue.37 He added that the Jews had also thrown household waste from a window towards the church, ‘which was interpreted by everyone as a sign of contempt’.38 He was unable to provide specific information as to what the Jews were doing. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 196 MICRO-HISTORY Barbara Rubbiano A 34–year-old Christian neighbour, she was summoned next on the following day, 27 April. She confirmed the account of terrible noises that the Jews made, but added that the noises did not originate from the synagogue. She told the Inquisitor that she believed that the Jews had created some kind of theatrical recreation of the Passion, but could not provide witnesses who shared her opinion, since she had witnessed the disturbances alone in her home.39 Panini described her testimony in his letter: that when she was at home doing housework, she heard those Jews making loud noises and that they said these words: ‘hang the man’, ‘hit the man’, ‘the man is dead’ and ‘kill the man’, that these words or similar ones they uttered many, many times and she was greatly dismayed at hearing them, not knowing what they meant.40 Rubbiano clearly claimed to have been witness not to a saying but to a hearing of mysterious words through a window.41 Tellingly, she knew only five of the Jews personally, Davide de Norsa, one of his sons Cesare, Davide’s son-in-law Raffaele, Davide’s wife and one of his daughters.42 Yet living directly opposite the Jews’ house, she seemed to have a detailed knowledge of the apartment where the Jews lived and where different rooms, in particular the synagogue, were situated.43 She admitted that she had become accustomed to the voice of Cesare de Norsa, Davide’s son, and so could confirm that he was one of the people involved in the disturbance.44 She also believed that Davide’s guests had come to Soliera precisely at this time in order to disturb the Christians. She showed no knowledge that the Jews were celebrating Passover.45 Caterina Panini’s sister, interrogated next on the same day – told the Inquisition that she heard loud noises (strepito grande) on Holy Thursday.46 When asked to provide witnesses, she suggested her cousin Ludovico Rubbiano and the local barber, Bernardino di Florenzo.47 Genesio, son of the late Geminicani Capriani de Bastia Officer of the Podestà of Soliera, who had been sent by Panini to quieten the Jews on Holy Saturday, Genesio testified also on 27 April that he had already heard loud crashes on the evening of Holy Thursday, while he was attending services in the church, but it was not until the Saturday evening that Panini gave orders to silence the Jews, because they were insolently preventing the Sassaiola from taking place by refusing to shut the windows.48 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 197 Giulio Renini The Inquisitor then interrogated one of the three Christians who had stood watch over the Sacrament on the night of Holy Thursday. He told the Inquisitor: At night between Holy Thursday and Friday, I was keeping vigil at the Holy Sacrament, which was in the ‘tomb’, and I heard the Jews, who were in the house of Davide, the banker, at about 4 or 5 hours of the night, making deafening noises and shouting, singing festively, in the same way as our priests do, when they sing Vespers or the other offices.49 First a few people sang and then the others joined in, first one group singing and then the other. And while they sang, they twice threw a lot of household waste down from their windows towards the door of the Church. I could not see exactly where they threw it but I heard the waste hitting the ground and I can say for sure that it was thrown from the Jews’ windows.50 Renini’s testimony resembles that of the second Christian watcher, Balthasar Giosi, interrogated on 28 April. However, Giosi went further than Renini, suggesting that the Jews were imitating Christian singing: ‘They were heard clearly and they sang in such a way imitating our song and not in the Jewish way as I have heard at other times.’51 He testified that he believed that women were singing and not men.52 Paulo, son of Captain Herculis Cosatti of Modena The third Christian watching the sacrament was interrogated next, on 27 April. He testified that he believed that the Jews present in Davide’s house were foreigners (alcuni hebrei forestieri) and were involved in some kind of comedy:53 ‘I myself heard their cackling and between their songs they broke into laughter at times.’54 At this point the Inquisitor summoned the wife and daughter of Davide for interrogation, perhaps impatient and frustrated that no Christian could confirm Rubbiano’s testimony. Stella de Norsa The second wife of Davide admitted that three younger Jews had created their own entertainment during Passover, by making a pingolo – a swing, or plank of wood held on each side by a rope, which the youngsters attached to a roof beam inside the granary/attic of Davide’s house.55 Although confirming that the Jews would be ashamed to do something inappropriate, there is a hint in her testimony that the young Jews had acted rather carelessly.56 The young men made a swing, a toy, which is a rope attached to a beam by a wheel, and they swung on it, pulling each other back and forth. This they did for some enjoyment. I myself and my daughter stayed to watch them.57 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 198 MICRO-HISTORY Nonetheless she refused to admit that the Jews had said anything derogatory against Christianity. Sannucisa de Norsa The daughter of Davide was summoned and appeared immediately after her step-mother. After demonstrating fear as she stood before the Inquisitor, she managed to calm herself and admit: On Holy Thursday as you call it, which is our Passover, after dinner some Jews who were in our house, one Cesare a mercer, Cesare my brother and another called Simone da Carpi, made a game with some balls [pomanders] on a swing, a child’s plaything. I do not remember precisely the words they said, nor what they were doing from where they were, with their shouting and noise.58 She denied that she was aware of any orders to stop the disturbances, nor did she admit that the Jews had shouted any derogatory words. Antonio Fogliano The Captain of the Guard, and the eighth witness to be interrogated on 27 April, Fogliano testified that a certain baker had gone to warn the Jews to stop their disturbances, otherwise they would be ‘treated as they deserved’.59 At the end of his short interrogation, he added: ‘This was well known. All Soliera knows about it.’60 Bernardino de Florenzo A Christian barber, named as a witness by Panini’s sister Caterina, he confirmed that he heard noises, but was unable to testify as to what the Jews said. He then expressed his surprise that the Jews acted so stupidly, although with no sign of emotional transport: I was amazed that these Jews let themselves be brought to commit these acts of insolence, a thing that was not the custom in other years.61 He admitted that during this Holy Week he had lost patience with them and nearly came to blows because they would not close their windows.62 The Jewish suspects At this point in the trial pamphlet, the notary begins to record the interrogation of the six Jews, without a reference to their previous arrest or incarceration. Table 4 shows the dates and numbers of interrogations each Jew faced, as well as which Jews were tortured by the strappado. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 199 ThE PINGOLO Table 4 Dates and numbers of interrogations faced by Jews in Davide de Norsa’s trial of 1604 Name Number of Dates of interrogations interrogations Davide de Norsa 3 25 May, 1 June, 14 June Leone de San Felici 5 25 May, 31 May, 3 June, 10 June, 11 June Cesare de Norsa 4 25 May, 3 June, 8 June, 18 June Cesare de Comari 5 25 May, 31 May, 1 June, 8 June, 11 June Simone da Carpi 5 25 May, 31 May, 3 June, 4 June, 11 June Raffaele Finzi de 5 28 May, 31 May, 3 June, 10 June, Reggio 11 June TOTAL 27 Number of times tortured 1 (19 June) 1 (18 June) 1 (18 June) 3 The 70–year-old banker Davide de Norsa was released on 27 May, two days after his first interrogation, since his son Cesare petitioned Inquisitor Archangelo Calbetti to release his father due to ill health and old age. Davide was ordered to appear before the tribunal whenever he might be summoned for future interrogations. Below is a summary of their interrogations and torture sessions. Davide son of the late Angelo de Norsa He testified that during the festival of Passover his family and guests participated in celebrating the Seder – a festive evening meal which includes the recitation of the Haggadah, containing the Exodus story, through liturgy and song: after dinner, when people are jollier, the men and women sing together, and each has his own book [a Haggadah]. And before Easter [i.e. during Holy Week], while the bells are bound, we stay home and eat well and mind our own business. 63 Davide admitted to the Inquisition that he had refused to close his windows during this time, and testified that since he was deaf and in bed and never went up to the granary, he did not witness the young men’s activities. But he still hinted at maintaining some control over their actions. He testified that on the eighth day of Passover: young men amused themselves and returned to the swing. I made them stop at the time of your Holy Days. Then [on Wednesday] I did not want to stop their enjoyment.64 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 200 MICRO-HISTORY Regarding the throwing of household waste out of the castello, Davide argued that it did not signify disrespect, or an aggressive act by the Jews, but was thrown out every day, although he had ordered that on holy days, out of decency, they should not throw slops out on the public street but on a side street which David claimed to own, control or otherwise possess.65 But the waste thrown out of a window had still been heard from within the church. He also implied that Barbara Rubbiano had her own vendetta against the Jews.66 When the Inquisitor asked for more details, Davide told him of an altercation between his son-in-law Raffaele and Barbara. The precision of David’s comment is telling. He insinuates that Rubbiano, probably offended by Raffaele, had decided to retaliate against the Jews. David did not allege general untruth, but precisely transformation or substitution. A woman called Rubbiana, who lives right across from my windows … said to my son-in-law that it was necessary to do to us exactly what had been done to those other Jews in Mantua. My son-in-law said, ‘Get along with you! I don’t want to have an argument with you because you are a woman’. And she, once the window was up, began to shout loudly and this is why she took one thing and called it something else out of malice.67 Leone de San Felici An elderly Jew, he had been on his way to Cento, but had stopped and lodged at Davide’s house for Passover, fulfilling the request of the old Jew to do so.68 He denied having anything to do with the young men who had made the swing. In fact, he testified to having read a book during the entire event.69 He testified that he had refused to be associated with the young Jews’ actions, believing they were looking for attention which he refused to give them. He denied that he had heard any sort of blasphemous expressions from the young Jews on the pingolo.70 Cesare de Norsa The 16–year-old son of Davide explained that since the young men had nothing to do on Holy Thursday, they made a swing in the granary, as far away as possible from the church, participated in swinging and sang various kinds of Italian songs.71 He denied singing in the style of Christians. In fact the Jews were singing love songs, and stopped only when Captain Antonio reprimanded them.72 Cesare testified that the swing was made in the granary and not the synagogue, since he argued that their frivolous actions were not suitable for a house of worship.73 The young men went on the swing after they had finished reciting the Passover Haggadah.74 Cesare denied that when he and the other Jews were reciting the Haggadah in the kitchen or singing on the swing, they had been deliberately provocative in their actions and words. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 201 Cesare de Comari A young Jewish pedlar, who according to Davide often came with his wife to eat in Davide’s house because they were poor, he told the Inquisitor that at Passover he went ‘to [play] chess, and to swing from under the roof tiles, and Davide’s wife and daughter were there, laughing at what we did’.75 Cesare explained that due to curfew during the week of Easter [which that year coincided with Passover], the six Jews were ‘locked’ in Davide’s house and thus made the swing for diversion on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for an hour or two after dinner.76 When asked why Jews had gone on the swing the following Wednesday, he argued that it was no longer Easter, and the Jews had believed that they would not be disturbing their neighbours.77 Cesare also testified that Simone pretended to be a charlatan, to sell pomanders and ointment, and sang some Italian love songs, such as ‘This is the place where I lost my heart’.78 Simone da Carpi A young, unmarried servant, he had been working in Davide’s house since Carnival. He refused to confess that he had mocked the Passion. He confirmed, however, that he had taken on the role of a charlatan, pretending to sell pomanders of musk, garlic and ointment, but that he, Cesare the son of Davide, and Cesare de Comari had not imitated Christian singing. Raffaele Finzi de Reggio He told the Inquisitor that he spent the festival in Davide’s house ‘to be with my wife’, Davide’s daughter.79 He confirmed that he had nothing to do with the actions of the young Jews on the swing, which suggests that he did not socialize or fit in with these rather boisterous young men. He admitted that he saw the swing suspended from the ceiling of the granary, and also hinted that there was a sharp exchange between him and the young Jews.80 On 20 October, the six suspects were summoned to hear the verdict in their case – a verdict that Pope Clement VIII had issued at Rome and dispatched by Cardinal Camillo Borghese on 24 July.81 Interest and involvement by the Pope rather than just the Congregation of the Holy Office was unusual and occurred very infrequently. But Calbetti admitted that the consultori had not been able to prove that the Jews had mocked the Passion, nor that they had maliciously tried to disturb the offices in the Church, but were still found guilty of the lesser offence of disturbing Christian services. For this reason they were not altogether absolved and the consultori felt a need to consult with the Pope and his College of Cardinals. The Pope had decided that the Jews were Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 202 MICRO-HISTORY to receive an extraordinary punishment for the disturbances and the said deafening noises which caused great scandal and disturbance to the Christians in performing their ceremonies and offices … in the church. 82 In seventeenth-century legal systems, John Langbein has shown, an ‘extraordinary punishment’ (poena extraordinaria) was issued when evidence was insubstantial and guilt could not be established under Roman canons of proof, but the court remained convinced that the accused were still guilty.83 The punishment could signify too that the court was taking into account mitigating or aggravating factors enabling them to intensify the punishment. The Inquisition believed that the Jews had overstepped their place by disturbing Christian prayer. Moreover, even though according to Inquisitorial law the young Jews, after being subjected to torture which had not proven their guilt, should have been released without punishment, they still received a punishment, which Langbein confirms could occur in the ruling of poena extraordinaria.84 As noted above, Davide de Norsa was fined 70 ducats. Judicial issues Although initially the Inquisition was anxious to prosecute Jews for mocking the Passion, it soon found little evidence to substantiate the charge. Rubbiano’s testimony was far more extreme than that of the other Christian witnesses on three accounts. First, she conjectured that the Jews involved in the disturbances had come to Soliera precisely at that time in order to disturb the Christians.85 Second, she was the only one to testify that she had heard cries that sounded as though the Jews were hanging a man and putting him to death, inferring that the Jews were enacting some sort of blasphemous parody of the Passion. (In fact ‘the hanged one’ was a pejorative Jewish expression.86) Third, and directly related to the second reason, she was the only witness to associate the Jews’ actions in 1604 with a supposed blasphemous outburst by local Jews in Mantua two years earlier.87 It was this event, the visit of a Franciscan friar, Bartolomeo campi de Saluzzo, to Mantua on Saturday 7 August 1602 which had influenced her perception and thought. In 1602, de Saluzzo had preached at the cathedral and condemned the ‘malevolence’ of the local Jews.88 That evening, Jews in the courtyard of a Mantuan synagogue had, according to one Christian chronicler: made a performance and to be exact a pulpit, in their desire to imitate the aforesaid reverend father in order to mock him and make sport of our Lord Jesus Christ.89 The official record of the event, published by Duke Vincenzo of Mantua on 13 August 1602, and distributed all over the city of Mantua, was transcribed by the Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 203 Modenese chronicler, Giovan Battista Spaccini. It is in fact a far more detailed account of the event, and certain similarities can be noted between the alleged Jewish actions in Mantua and Rubbiano’s own testimony as to what she believed the Jews of Soliera had been doing. Spaccini recorded: Finding himself in the magnificent city of Mantua, Friar Bartolomeo Saluzzo of the order of the Minorites, of Saint Francis, came to preach with great spirit and fervour. Since there was a large number of people, he had to preach in the main square of the city. In a discourse, he expatiated on the malevolence of the Jews, since there were many of them in attendance. Subsequently the preacher had words about it with His Highness, Duke Vincenzo. On another day, in the said piazza, and speaking likewise on the subject of the Jews, he said: ‘Go to their synagogue. Out of wickedness and evil intention against our Holy Faith and the servants of God, you will find that they have made a figure. And because they are unable to vent their wickedness against the servants of God, they direct it against the said figure.’ Then the most illustrious bishop went immediately to the synagogue, and found those wicked Jews had attached that figure to the rope, and tormented it, inflicting insults and scorn upon it. Finding that the allegation was true, the most illustrious bishop told the Duke. He immediately closed the gates of the city, and took seven of the Jews, who were found to be the instigators of such a crime in contempt of the servants of God, and he had them hanged on Tuesday, 13th of the present month. The names of the Jews were: Giacobe Sacerdote, Salamone de Meli, Salamone Forlani, Luzio Soavi, Gioseffe de Nati, Moisé de Fano the son of Lazaro, and Rafaelle Franziosi. Apart from this [the Duke] banished from his city and dominions the wives, children, brothers and descendants [of those Jews].90 Condemnation and punishment seem to have happened very quickly – without the involvement of any Inquisition, within about six days, and at an unusual time of the year – in August, not around Easter. The document stated that the Jews had purportedly ‘attached’ a rope to an image or effigy, tormenting and scorning it. If it was an effigy, it bears a strong resemblance to what Rubbiano imagined that the Jews of Soliera had done, although she made no mention of a figure.91 This particular incident represents a strange throwback to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when certain Franciscans (particularly Observants, the founders of the Monte di Pietà) had been vociferous enemies of the Jews. They were often restrained by governments, both Florentine and Venetian, who objected to their rabble-rousing sermons, especially if they excited crowds to attack Jewish banks which were holding Christians’ property as pledges. Yet, at the same time, Spaccini transformed the story from being one of mockery and dire punishment to a tale of ritual murder by proxy. Such stories were not unusual, as can be seen from the ones David Nirenberg and Kenneth Stow have uncovered.92 Stow reports that in the tales told by Gonzalo de Berceo of thirteenth-century Toledo Jews persecuted Christ-like figures made out of wax Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 204 MICRO-HISTORY and crucified them.93 Rubbiano, for whatever reason, wanted to use the Mantua story and developed her theories into testimony. Her words probably resulted from the diffusion of popular beliefs and the persistence in her memory of this particular episode of Jewish accusation and execution.Was her allegation a result of personal grievances or malicious feelings she harboured towards her neighbouring Jews?94 Or was it something more generic, deep-seated in Christian society? As though suggesting an answer to this question, Davide implied that the Jews were subject to insult as a result of the events in Mantua: I do not know why, but inhabitants of the county and ordinary folk sometimes say to Jews that it would be necessary to do as was done in Mantua.95 Rubbiano did not succeed. The Modenese Inquisition had a clear sense of limitations, it made no effort to accept the Mantuan connection and was not willing to condemn the Jews for an offence for which it had no real proof. Instead, it preferred to have the disturbing synagogue moved and determine whether the unwelcome Jewish noise verged on mockery and blasphemy. How much worse the fate of the Jews in 1604 could have been! Jewish noise Certain kinds of noise were associated with organized disturbance or protest in seventeenth-century Italy. Important research has been done on the medieval mattinata and the early modern charivari, which was usually a disturbance created by nocturnal musicians whose intent was of both ‘a joyous and insulting variety’.96 But the noise that came from Davide’s house during Holy Week in 1604 was called a strepito – that is, loud yelling or shouting. Its Latin form strepitum, as well as the verb ululare, meaning to howl like dogs, was used regularly throughout the Middle Ages to describe Jewish prayer.97 King Henry III of England had referred to Jewish noise as ululare and strepitum in 1253, and Philip V of France used these terms in 1320 to justify his order that a local synagogue be removed ‘since its noise competed with the prayer of a nearby church’.98 Although this Jewish song and laughter was given the label strepitum in the trial proceedings, it was never proven that the noise was associated with Jewish prayer rather than Jewish disturbance. Barbara Rubbiano told the Inquisitor: Jewish people never shout the way we do, and I am judging from the way the voices sounded, because my house is close by and across the street.The Christians on that day would never have held such a big feast, and I knew that there were only Jews in that house.99 The Jews, the Christian witnesses argued, made the strepiti specifically when the Christians were attending offices in the local church. Furthermore, there was Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 205 ThE PINGOLO Table 5 Days when Christians reported hearing Jewish disturbances Name of witness Panini Rubbiano Caterina De Bastia Renini Giosi Cosatti Fogliano De Florenzo Holy Thursday Good Friday Holy Saturday n sh l s sh n sh s ns sl n sh n sh l s n s Following Wednesday s n sh s ns sl n sh n Note: s = singing, n=noises, sh= shouting, l =laughter according to testimonies. common knowledge among the Jews as to how they were supposed to behave even at the time when the two festivals coincided.100 Christians were also likely to take offence at any noise made by Jews at a time when they were supposed to be silent.101 This explains why there was no clear understanding by the Christian witnesses whether what they heard was the recitation of the Haggadah or the swinging on the pingolo. The Seder liturgy includes a large number of songs and the singing of prayers both before and after dinner. It terminates with the singing of traditional songs to well-known tunes, which invites boisterous participation.102 It is possible that the noise heard by the Christian witnesses on Thursday night was made by both the Jews singing the Haggadah in the kitchen (as Giosi and Renini testified) and the games in the granary (as the testimonies of Panini, Caterina, de Bastia, Cosatti, Fogliano and de Florenzo suggest), since according to Cesare de Norsa the first action followed the second. The Haggadah was read for the first three hours (from around seven to ten Italian time) of the night and then afterwards from about the fourth or fifth hour of the night (meaning eleven or twelve o’clock), the time when young men were on the pingolo. Yet none of the witnesses stated that they had heard the strepiti on exactly the same occasions as Rubbiano. There was no real agreement among the Christian witnesses as to what the noises were, as Table 5 shows. Only when the Christian witnesses were in the immediate vicinity of the church could they hear the strepiti. This was confirmed by Antonio Fogliano, Captain of the Guard, and the three watchers in the church who heard the strepiti only on Holy Thursday and Good Friday when they were actually in the church, guarding the sacrament.103 Nor was this the first time that Jews participating in a Seder had disturbed neighbouring Christians. In Umbria in 1485, despite the accusation that Jews Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 206 MICRO-HISTORY Plate 3 The Church of San Giovanni Battista in Soliera Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 207 Plate 4 The back left side view of the church Plate 5 The front left side view of the church Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 208 MICRO-HISTORY Plate 6 View of the back of the church with its surrounding modern buildings were attempting ritual murder, Jewish suspects confirmed in their testimony that the source of the noise they had made on Good Friday was their celebration of the Seder.104 In the Inquisitorial archives in Modena, two letters from Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Mellini (1608–27) of the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome, dated 8 April 1623 and 13 May 1626, refer to the problem of noise and scandal caused by the Jews of Vignola praying in their house during the festival of Passover.105 Jewish ‘noise’, therefore, was real. Whether it was what Christians believed it to be, however, is another story. The long history of this problem reveals that the Christians insisted that Jews remain completely silent or that no sound that the Jews made should be audible to them during Holy Week. Jewish prayer-noise was offensive by definition and particularly during this time. Jewish defiance From the descriptions in various testimonies, the actual location of the granary was dangerously close to the church, its windows facing it directly.106 One can speculate that the loud clashing noises occurred when the young Jews, Cesare de Norsa, Cesare de Comari and Simone da Carpi, swung as high as they could, shouting and singing and perhaps colliding with beams of wood which supported the roof in the attic. Tellingly, it was the three young men who were swinging. These men, cooped up in a house and forbidden to show themselves during the Christian Holy Week, would seek diversion and cause a disturbance, completely Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 209 forgetting that they could be heard outside.107 Cesare de Comari admitted to the Inquisitor that his purpose for going to Davide’s house at the time of Holy Week was not, as one would have thought, to observe the festival of Passover, but only to have spasso, a term implying ‘fun, delight, entertainment, or amusement’.108 Simone da Carpi, the Jewish servant, not afraid to join his contemporaries, also testified ‘that what we did, we did to have some enjoyment’, as did Cesare de Norsa.109 Raffaele Finzi de Reggio also used the term spasso in his reference to the young Jews’ actions on the swing.110 Its usage before the Inquisitor was to play down the Jews’ behaviour and prevent the Inquisition from being suspicious of their activities. At certain points in his interrogations, Davide also stressed that he had ordered the boys to stop their fun and games, and they had obeyed.111 But he implied that at other moments he had not restrained them: ‘I made them stop at the time of your Holy Days but at that time I did not want to stop their enjoyment.’112 Before the Inquisition, Davide would certainly do his best to excuse the young men for their actions. He referred to the young Jews as putti, which represented his effort to pass off their behaviour as boyish pranks that merited no serious consideration, much less retribution and penalties.113 But whether Davide had his own grievances against the Christian community cannot be confirmed. Had he failed to close his windows because he wanted to prevent the local Sassaiola from taking place? According to Panini’s testimony, Davide had told him that the Podestà had said that the boys would not be throwing stones at the house and this might explain why he had left his windows open.114 Did Davide want to ensure that this would not happen, whereas Panini had given orders to bring this about? Was this dispute not perhaps representative of a deeper struggle between the religious and secular powers as to who should take charge of the Jews during curfew? We can only speculate. In regard to the young men’s denials about offending Christians, denials they made insistently, even under torture, one should question how likely it was that they would have ever risked mocking the Passion.The calculated conformity of their testimony, their consistent argument during a series of interrogations and torture, suggests that they were at least telling a partial truth that was sufficient to cover up their ‘real’ rowdy behaviour. The Jews consistently argued that the point of their masquerade was only to imitate Christian vendors of ointments, herbs and unguents. Simone da Carpi testified: I swear as if I were before God, that I and the others, and I in particular pretended to sell pomanders of musk, garlic and ointment.115 The young Jews testified that their actions represented frivolous masquerading, but even by frivolous masquerading the Jews were flouting the Holy Week curfew imposed on them for many centuries.116 David Gentilcore has Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 210 MICRO-HISTORY drawn historians’ attention to the early modern Italian practice of charlatans or ‘mountebanks’ (monta’inbanch = mounting a platform), as they were called, who were permitted to sell their wares on the public piazze as long as they followed the necessary local licensing procedures.117 He records the existence of different types of ‘medical’ charlatans – some who used theatre more than others, posing as entertainers, inviting spectators and entertaining them from a stage, but at the same time collectively preventing the ‘professionalization of medicine’.118 Most of these mountebanks sold a ‘variety of fairly unglamorous specific remedies; a “conserve” of a powder for teeth, a plaster or an oil for “chill pains”, coral oil or powder for worms and an ointment for scabies’.119 Their success relied upon convincing their audience of the authenticity of their wares, and fraud was often thought to lie behind their selling technique. At this time too there was an established use of botanical plants and herbs as ingredients for these ointments that began to be brought from Crete, Cyprus and wherever they could be found.120 According to Peter Burke, these seventeenth-century Italian charlatans dealt not only with illnesses but also with other personal problems, from disappointment in love to the loss of valuables.121 An English visitor to Italy, Thomas Coryat, noted his own experiences of a charlatan in the Piazza San Marco in Venice in the early 1600s. The ‘amorous song sheets’ he referred to certainly matches the Jews’ actions. Coryat reported: Twice a day, that is, in the morning and in the afternoone, you may see five or sixe severall stages erected for them … . After the whole rabble of them is gotten up to the stage, whereof some weare visards being disguised like fooles in a play … the musicke begins. Sometimes vocall, sometimes instrumentall, and sometimes both together … after the musicke hath ceased, he [the leader] maketh an oration to the audience of halfe an houre long, or almost an houre. Wherein he doth most hyperbolically extoll the vertue of his drugs and confections … After the chiefest Mountebankes first speech is ended, he delivereth out his commodities by little and little, the jester still playing his part, and the musitians singing and playing upon their instruments. The principal things that they sell are oyles, soveraigne waters, amorous songs printed, Apothecary drugs, and a Commonweale of other trifles122 Another important aspect of these charlatans was their performance in the form of commedia dell’arte, derived from the medieval traditions of clowning, trickery and farce, offering laughter, fear, play and surprise and particularly escape.123 Often their most effective selling techniques were surprisingly dexterous gymnastic feats, acrobatic tricks and multifarious disguises. The grand finale was ‘a theatrical performance which, in the comic tradition, entertained the people for about two hours with revelry, laughter and amusement’.124 Interestingly enough, these performers were generally forbidden to perform on Church feast days or during Lent near the local church.125 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 211 So were the young Jews in fact parodying a common phenomenon? Was their singing an accompaniment for their staged rituals of healing?126 If so, why would they be interested in imitating Christian mountebanks? What did these Christian figures and therefore this local knowledge signify for the Jews? I would like to suggest that, when pieced together, the various stories present an allegory about community and about attempts to break boundaries, or erase lines people draw between themselves and their neighbours. The Jews during Lent were forbidden to watch any Christian processions in the street, the issue being that, by seeing or hearing Eucharistic processions, they defiled them.127 But at the same time, these Eucharistic Lenten processions were pageantry of sorts for the Christians and it could well be that the Jews felt the need to create their own imitation pageantry, in the form of entertainment and songs on the swing. Their imitation of the ciarlatano – a type they would have come across on the piazze of Italian cities – suggests imitation of an Italian Christian experience which they watched but were not expected to share.128 On a day-to-day basis, physical proximity to the surrounding Christian community had the effect of confirming the Jews’ cultural and religious otherness. And yet from within closed quarters Jews could sally forth, at least implicitly, imitating the Christians who enclosed them. Similar actions had already taken place in the Venetian ghetto. A Venetian Inquisitorial investigation of 1571 revealed that these Jews followed an annual ritual of pelting a baker’s assistants with bread and dirty brushes brought into the ghetto at Passover’s end.129 Here within the walls of the ghetto the Jews had become the Christians, in a ritual stoning of sorts, whereby Jewish children instead of Christian ones threw dirty brushes instead of stones at the Christian porters who brought them their bread when Passover was finished. Interestingly, both this and the Soliera case were reported as disturbances carried out by Jews in the years 1571 and 1604, when the festival of Easter coincided with the festival of Passover. Perhaps these Jewish outbursts served somehow to counter the impotence and frustration the Jews felt during enclosure. In the confines of the granary in Soliera in 1604, at an ‘extraordinary’ time, a theatrically encoded performance may have permitted these players, like the Venetian Jews, to create a locus for fantasy, to act by a process of amalgamation and illusion as though they themselves were the defiant insiders.130 Were their real audiences at this moment the Jewish women peering up at the pingolo or the Christians outside, purposely being disturbed in their Christian prayer? In reality, the Jewish nocturnal masquerade, however primitive, in the privacy of Davide de Norsa’s granary might well have been a call for inclusion in the wider Italian society. Their activity nested, contained, restrained and metamorphosized their essence of otherness into one of momentary belonging. However, the key word here is momentary, for when they were told to stop, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 212 MICRO-HISTORY they did. Nor did they do anything that implied blasphemy or the mockery of Christianity or the Christian clergy. Their imitation surely suggests then that desire for inclusion played a bigger part in Jewish cultural experience than has previously been thought. Notes 1 A pingolo is a makeshift swing. A plank of wood is held on each side by a rope attached to either an overhead beam or a tree. 2 Testimony of Giovanni Battista Panini, the Inquisitorial vicar of Soliera, in the trial against Davide de Norsa, 1604. This trial is found in ASMoFIP 25 f.6. (4r) (perchè sono da 30 anni ch’io sono qua, nè mai ho sentito nè sentito dire che facissero gli hebrei strepiti alcuni massime in detti tempi, che solevano stare tutti ritirati e modesti, e questo anno hanno fatto alla peggio). 3 The word castello suggests an enclosed place with only one entrance – public brothels were sometimes called castelli or castelletti for that reason. Moreover, the intention of having Davide live there may have been not so much to isolate the Jews, as to protect pledges in the hands of the banker against theft. The Church of San Giovanni Battista was built at the beginning of the eleventh century and still stands today. (See pictures on pages 206–8). It was originally used as a Benedictine monastery. 4 See the following articles by Elliott Horowitz, ‘Night Vigils in Jewish Tradition: Between Popular and Official Religion’, in B. Kedar (ed.), Studies in the History of Popular Culture [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1996), pp. 209–24; ‘Let the Respectable Poor be Members of Your Household: Charity, the Poor, and Social Control in the Jewish Communities of Europe Between the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times’, in M. Sasson (ed.), Religion and Economy [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1995), pp. 209–31; ‘The Jews of Europe and the Moment of Death in Medieval and Modern Times’, Judaism 44/3 (Summer, 1995), 271–81. 5 Stow, Theater, p. 4. 6 Thomas Cohen, ‘The Case of the Mysterious Coil of Rope: Street Life and Jewish Persona in Rome in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century’, Sixteenth Century Journal 19/2 (Summer, 1988), 209–21, 220. 7 Paolo Norsa, I Norsa (1350–1950). Contributo all storia di una famiglia di banchieri (Milano, 1951–59), Part I, p. 1. 8 Ibid., Part 2, p. 29. 9 Regarding his banking activities, Davide de Norsa again appears in local records in 1616, where a condotta (a charter) is granted to him to bank ‘cum solitis capitulis et taxis’ in Soliera. See Balletti, Gli Ebrei, p. 67. See also ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (70v). In the records of the punishment read to Davide, the notary confirms that he received a licence to open his synagogue in 1602. See also ASMoFI Modena – Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma, busta 251, 27 November 1604. 10 See the testimony of Fredianus de Biccochis, the rector of Soliera in 1617 in ASMoFICH 244 f.17. Cesare de Norsa, the suspect in this trial, accused of trying to dissuade his sister from being baptized, told the Inquisitor that his synagogue was only used for the main festivals. 11 See David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 220. 12 The first reference to a curfew in ecclesiastical documents appears in the Third Council of Orleans in 538. See Amnon Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 471. The first reference to the curfew in Papal sources was a letter from Pope Alexander III, who between 1159 and 1181 answered the query of the bishop of Marseilles whether Jews were supposed to keep their doors and windows shut on Good Friday. See also Simonsohn, Apostolic See, docs 48 and 79. During the reign of Clement IV (1265–68) the prohibition was incorporated into canon law. See Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc. 232. 13 See Toaff, Love, pp. 181–6. For the specific case of Modena see the Archivio Storico Communale, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 213 Memoriali del Consiglio dei Conservatori, Gridario 1566–1760. Here a grida of 8 March 1599 called ‘Ordine che non siano molestatis e offesi, particolamente nè giorni della settimana santa’ also declared that Jews were not to leave their homes during this period. For examples of documents concerning the curfew in Italy see Segre, Jews of Piedmont, docs 165, 2638, 2773; Toaff, Jews of Umbria, docs 841 and 1223. See Nirenberg, Communities, pp. 217–23; Ariel Toaff, Il vino e la carne (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), pp. 209–25. Cecil Roth, in an article of 1945, ‘The Eastertide Stoning of the Jews and its Liturgical Echoes’, The Jewish Quarterly Review new series 35/4 (April, 1945), 361–70, places the probable origin of the custom of stoning the Jews in Byzantium. Toaff, Love p. 185. In the sixth century, the reason given why Jews had to close their synagogue in Terracina was that their chanting offended the local Christians. See Simonsohn, Apostolic See, doc. 8. For other complaints see documents 3, 5 and 300. Grayzel, Church and the Jews, vol. I, doc. 14 and Simonsohn, Apostolic See docs 79 and 825. See also Simonsohn, Jews in the Duchy of Milan, doc. 3409. ASMoFIP 67 f.21. See Friedberg, Corpus, X.5,6,3. The 1222 Council of Oxford passed a resolution to this effect, as did the 1246 Council of Chichester and other English and continental councils. Cardinal Camillo Borghese sent Inquisitor Archangelo Calbetti a letter from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, instructing the synagogue in Davide’s house to be completely removed. This letter appears in its original form in ASMoFI Modena – Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1568–1608, busta 251. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (68r–69r); Davide de Norsa paid the fine immediately. The original letter is in ASMoFI Modena – Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1568–1608, busta 251. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (72v). The letter is almost illegible, but there are a few fragments that can be understood. Referring to the 1604 trial, Lerri wrote: ‘Not only then against our orders, but from the trial in the name of our Lord Clement VIII and of the Father Inquisitor General Archangelo Calbetti and of the episcopal vicar, that the aforesaid Davide de Norsa should destroy the synagogue. Now, I know and have information that the same Davide de Norsa has built in his house a new synagogue, which is already in use. But it is being reported that he has done it with a licence and under the authority of Alberto Soninero of the Signor Duke. Therefore I did not want to take any action and give him malicious satisfaction, … unless you give me instructions on what to do about it.’ ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1568–1608, busta 251. ASMoFICH 244 f.9. Ibid. ‘I built the synagogue with a licence from the Signor Duke. I have brought the licence with me. The Signor Imola told me that the Duke and not the Pope had the authority to give licences to build synagogues.’ ASMoFICH 244 f.9. See ASMoFI Modena – Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–1621, busta 252. See Biondi, ‘Le Lettere’, p. 105. ASMoFI busta 295, n. 2 Miscellanea, letter of Tinti to Cardinal Sant’Onofri, 24 May 1631. On disputes regarding the Finale synagogue see Balboni, Glie Ebrei, p. 9; ASMoAME Memoriale dei banchieri ebrei 1633, busta 8; ASMoFICH 245 f.67; ASMoFICH 246 f.14; ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1629–1638, busta 254, where there is much correspondence on the matter. See also ASMoFI busta 295, Letter of Inquisitor Tinti to the Sacred Congregation on 18 March 1634. It is interesting to note that in a processo against Cesare de Norsa in 1617 for dissuasion of his sister from baptism, one Christian witness, Herculio Agagio, the Inquisitorial vicar of Soliera in 1617, still referred to David’s synagogue in Soliera as a place where Jews gathered together and caused disturbance. See ASMoFICH 244 f.17. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (1v–1r). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 214 MICRO-HISTORY 34 The three men were probably members of the local parish confraternity of the Holy Sacrament. It was important that at Easter time the sacrament should not be left alone. The ritual would involve placing the host inside some sort of vessel or container which symbolized the tomb or sepulchre of Christ. The origins of this ritual have been traced by O.B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), p. 136, to Augsburg and the year 950. The Forty Hour ritual originated in the sixteenth century and is traced to one Father Joseph, a Capuchin of Milan who died in 1556. It could be practised at any time of the year, not just at Easter. For a description of the ritual see William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary Containing Some Account Of The Doctrine, Discipline, Rites, Ceremonies, Councils And Religious Orders Of The Catholic Church (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004). Note also Miri Rubin’s references to it, in Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 294 and 296. Under Catholic reform there was a move to restore proper reverence for the sacrament, of which this was part – the more so because Protestants were attacking the belief that it really was the body of Christ, and some were reducing the bread to a mere symbol. It may have seemed doubly shocking to the Christians of Soliera that the Jews should disturb such an important ritual (as Giulio Renini said they did). 35 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (1r). 36 Ariel Toaff and David Nirenberg have both written on the Sassaiola, in which Christian children threw stones against the doors and windows of Jews’ houses during Holy Week. The ritual originated in Spain in the Middle Ages (see Nirenberg, Communities, pp. 217–23; Toaff, Il vino, pp. 209–25). See also Toaff, Jews of Umbria, doc. 2321 and Idem, Mangiare alla giudia: La cucina ebraica in Italia dal Rinascimento all’età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), p. 143. 37 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (2r). 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. (7r). ‘I was alone in the house, and I don’t know whether other neighbours heard them, since they should all have been at the services or at their businesses.’ 40 Ibid. See Panini’s letter at the beginning of the dossier. 41 Ibid. (7r). In Barbara’s embellished testimony she also accused the Jews of shouting ‘gride tutti mena mena’. The word mena has a squiggle on top of it which denotes that the word has been shortened. Whether this is a reference to the Hebrew term minim or mumar, both implying that Jesus was an apostate, cannot be confirmed. On the Jews’ usage of these terms in their texts and the prosecution that resulted because of it, see Anna Antoniazzi Villa, Un processo contro gli ebrei nella Milano del 1488. Crescita e declino della comunità ebraica lombarda alla fine del Medioevo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1985), pp. 100 and 138. From Rubbiano’s repeating the word, it should be inferred that she did not know how to pronounce this Hebrew term or what its meaning was. Calbetti did not question Rubbiano on the term, nor was it mentioned by any of the other Christian witnesses. The Jews were not even interrogated specifically regarding it. It also remains unclear what the Inquisition knew about this word or whether the Jews understood the Inquisitor’s reference to it. 42 ASMoFIP 25 f.6. ‘I do not know any women in the house, except the wife of Davide and one of his daughters.’ 43 Ibid. (5v). Rubbiano reported to the Inquisitor ‘because they were not in the synagogue, since the synagogue is situated on another side of the house’. 44 Ibid. (7v). 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. (8r): ‘except that on Thursday evening, going towards my room, I heard a very loud shout and I went to the window. I heard the Jews shouting louder and louder – “ohi, ohi, ohi, ohi, ah, ah”. I could not make out anything else. I asked people who were passing by what the shouting was, and somebody or other said that it was the Jews.’ 47 There is no indication that Ludovico is the husband of Barbara. 48 Panini had mentioned Genesio in his letter to the Inquisition. See ASMoFIP 25 f.6, Panini’s letter at the beginning of the dossier. See (9v–r) and (46r) Cesare de Norsa later admits to the Inquisitor that it was not until Saturday night that they were ordered to stop by Captain Antonio. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 215 Ten or eleven o’clock at night. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (10r–11v). Ibid. (19v). Ibid. Ibid. (11r). Ibid. (io proprio sentii di chiesa il loro schiamazzo e tra cantione intromesse erano de i risi alle volte). Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family of the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 28 notes that it was common for the upstairs rooms of houses to be used for the storage of grain. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (13r). ‘We would be ashamed to do or say something that is improper and although we sometimes have a laugh among ourselves, this does not mean that we are doing wicked things.’ Ibid. (13v–r). (Questi giovani havevano fatto un pingolo o ninigatta che è una corda attaccata a un travo con un asse un andava sopra tirare l’altro spingendo in qua, e in là, per spasso, et io istessa e mia figlia stavamo a vederli). The term ‘ninigatta’ is probably the scribe’s personal abbreviation for something longer like ninigiocattolo, a child’s plaything. Ibid. (16v). Ibid. (17v). Ibid. Ibid. (18v). Ibid. Ibid. (21r). The bells did not ring during the forty hours when Christ was in his tomb. The ringing of the campanile bells symbolized in some cities, including Perugia and Milan, that the Holy Week curfew had ended. See Toaff, Jews of Umbria, doc. 841. Cecil Roth makes an interesting point in his article ‘The Eastertide Stoning of the Jews and its Liturgical Echoes’, pp. 366–7. Here he shows that ‘when Passover and Easter approximately coincided, as they so often did, Holy Thursday or one of the following days was termed by the Jews Yom Hesgeror the day of shutting in, and additions to prayers were made in the synagogue service referring to the occasion but converting the segregation from a token of contempt to one of distinction’. It almost seems as if the Jews had their own programme of activity for the duration of the curfew. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (22r). Ibid. Davide, as he tells the Inquisitor, would not have known the time, since during Holy Week the clock tower’s bells were tied. Although by this period more and more people were acquiring portable clocks to use in their homes, it would appear from his testimony that Davide did not yet have one. On such portable clocks, see Carlo M. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture 1300–1700 (London: Collins, 1967), pp. 40–55. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (35v). He testified: ‘Those words have never been said in my house, but is a malicious allegation by someone who quarreled with my son-in-law.’ Ibid. Ibid. (46r). Cesare de Comari described Leone disparagingly, as a ‘tramp’ (vagabondo), in his testimony. He is the only one to do so. Ibid. (24v). ‘The youngsters made the swing above in the granary, and I remained downstairs. I was reading a book and did not hear any of the said words. I obviously heard the loud noises, the singing and the racket, but I did not understand their words.’ Ibid. Ibid. (44v) and (60v). Ibid. (27r). ‘It is not true that we sang in the style of Christians, except for love songs. We did not know that it was forbidden until Captain Antonio came to scold us and we stopped.’ Ibid. (44r): ‘because such things are not done in the synagogue.’ Ibid. Cesare de Norsa’s statement as to how long the Jews were on the swing was also different. According to Simone da Carpi the three had stayed on the swing for an hour; according to Cesare de Comari, two to three hours. This, however, contradicts Leone de San Felici’s testimony. He maintained that the reciting of the Haggadah had taken approximately three hours. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 216 MICRO-HISTORY 75 Ibid. (26v). On seventeenth-century mercers, see Richard Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987). As Mackenney shows, the term ‘mercer’ covers everything from a pedlar to a prosperous draper to the keeper of a general store. 76 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (47v). This contradicts Simone da Carpi’s testimony, which specified that the swing lasted an hour. See 44r–v. 77 Ibid. (48v). 78 Ibid. (47v). 79 Ibid. (29r–30v). There is no mention in the trial of Raffaele’s wife’s name. 80 Ibid. (49r–50v). ‘Passing by, I saw the swing which was in the granary before the door that led to the synagogue and there was a rope attached to a beam … when I saw the swing, the young men were not there and I saw it only in passing.’ 81 Ibid. (67r–68v). 82 Ibid. (68r). 83 See Langbein, Torture, p. 45. 84 Ibid. p. 50. 85 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (7r–8v). 86 See Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 263; and Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 70. 87 Attilio Milano, Storia degli Ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), p. 303. 88 See Spaccini, Cronaca, p. 584. 89 See Simonsohn, History, p. 35. For a Jewish description of the event, see Kann Almbladh (ed.), Joseph Ha-Kohen Sefer Emeq Ha-Bakha (The Vale of Tears) with the Chronicle of the Anonymous Corrector (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1981), p. 122:7. See also Antonio Bertolotti, Martiri del libero pensiero e vittime della Santa Inquisizione nei secoli XVI, XVII, e XVIII (Rome, 1902), p. 116. In his list of martyrs of the Roman Inquisition, the only Jews whom Bertolotti mentions are these seven Jews who were hanged in 1602. The reason he gives is similar to the Christian chronicler: ‘because of the suspicion, or the truth, many Jews in their synagogue had ridiculed the fanaticism of the preacher, many were arrested and seven of them were hanged.’ The hanging of the Jews had little to do with the Mantuan Inquisition but was carried out by the Duke in collaboration with the bishop. 90 Spaccini, Cronaca, pp. 584–5. 91 In the medieval period, during the festival of Passover, Jews were often accused of enacting some sort of blasphemous parody of the Passion. See Horowitz, Reckless, pp. 151–62. See also Cecil Roth, ‘The Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusation’, Speculum 8 (1933), 520–6; and Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Desecrating the Cross: A Rare Medieval Accusation’ (in Hebrew), Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel 5 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973), pp. 159–73. 92 See Nirenberg, Communities, p. 220. 93 Stow, Jewish Dogs, pp. 27, 58, 238. 94 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (31v). Raffaele de Reggio told the Inquisitor that ‘what the woman said was out of maliciousness’. 95 Ibid. (36v). 96 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, ‘The “Mattinata” in Medieval Italy’, in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1985), pp. 261–82, p. 269. See, for example, the many articles written on the charivari, defined by John Cashmere in ‘The Social Uses of Violence in Ritual: Charivari or Religious Persecution?’, European History Quarterly 15 (1990), 289–319, as a popular ritual of ‘boisterous and noisy performances in Italy, France and England aimed against particular persons or families’. See also Nicole Belmont, ‘Fonction de la dérision et symbolisme du bruit dans le charivari’, in Jacques Le Goff and Jeane Claude Schmitt (eds), Le Charivari: Actes de la table ronde organisée a Paris [25–7 April 1977] (Paris and New York: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1981), pp. 15–21; Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Charivari, Honor and Community in Seventeenth- Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access ThE PINGOLO 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 217 Century Lyon and Geneva’, in John J. MacAloon (ed.), Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals towards a Theory of Cultural Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp. 42–57; and Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Charivari, associationi giovanili, caccia selvaggia’, Quaderni Storici 49 (1982), 164–77. See Stow, Jewish Dogs, p. 31. Ibid. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (6r). Ibid. (4r). Jews had to be careful all the time not to do anything that might disturb or offend Christians. The earliest text I have found that refers to Jewish noise is in Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages, doc. 477. For other texts see note 6. It is interesting that in Rome, when Jews were forced to race in the pallio, any Jew who in the middle of the race made a noise in front of a church or monastery had to pay a fine. See Martine Boiteux, ‘Carneval annexé: essai de lecture d’une fête romaine’, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 32 (1977), 356–80, 368. Papal decrees had specified that Jews must not disturb Christians. On the issue of Jewish noise, see Bonfil, Jewish Life, pp. 233–4. ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (50r). Raffaele de Reggio confirmed this: ‘We all sang the Haggadah in the kitchen where we ate near the church by the side of the small street and the courtyard. Nothing else was sung in the house, except the psalms of David, the Passover [Haggadah] and the benedictions at the table.’ See ibid. (16r) for Antonio Fogliano’s testimony: ‘On Holy Saturday, when the Holy Offices were recited, … They yelled and shouted so insolently, that I, being inside the church, a little behind the doors, heard this, and I believe that everyone in the church heard this, because they were shouting in the part of the house overlooking the church.’ See also 10r, 12v, 19r. See Toaff, Love, pp. 137–8. ASMoFI Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1621–1628, busta 253. Simone told the Inquisitor (42v) that this granary had two windows which looked out towards the public street from one window and the other faced the church. The point is also the proximity of the Jews to the church, even from the kitchen where they were holding the Seder. Ibid. (14v). Stella, Davide’s wife, hinted that the young Jews had acted rather carelessly: ‘Your Serenity knows well, that when there are lads around, they often play tricks, pulling a chair out from underneath somebody and similar things.’ Ibid. (26v). On a definition of spasso, see Elizabeth and Thomas Cohen, ‘Camilla: the Go-Between: the Politics of Gender in a Roman Household (1559)’, Continuity and Change 4 (1989): 53–77, 63. Ibid. (55r). Cesare de Norsa reports that the reason they made the pingolo was ‘to have some enjoyment’. Ibid. (80v). Ibid. (51r–v). Ibid. (22v). ‘I said to Captain Antonio Fogliano that they would not make the noises and immediately they [the lads] obeyed.’ Ibid. (22r). Ibid. (23r–24v). Ibid. (22v). ‘When they were throwing the stones at our windows and I had begged the Podestà to stop this disturbance, [he told me] that if I did not want them to throw stones, I should close the windows. I believe he did this to me as an order and it seemed to me that he did not have the authority to make such an order. I said that I did not want to close them, because it was not the custom and I had never done it during previous years when I closed the windows only at night.’ Ibid. (31v). Simonsohn has shown that the Jews in Mantua had by the beginning of the seventeenth century been disobeying the regulations of Holy Week curfew for a quarter of a century. See Simonsohn, History, p. 115. Toaff has identified a case in 1511, of Mosè, a Jew of Gualdo Todino, who was prosecuted in Perugia before the ducal court for mocking ecclesiastical ceremonies during Holy Week. See Toaff, Il vino, p. 225. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 218 MICRO-HISTORY 117 David Gentilcore, ‘“Charlatans, Mountebanks and other Similar People”: The Regulation and Role of Itinerant Practitioners in Early Modern Italy’, Social History 20/3 (1995), 297–316, 297–9. 118 John Henry, ‘Doctors and Healers: Popular Culture and the Medical Profession’, in Stephen Pumfrey, Paolo L. Rossi and Maurice Slawinski (eds), Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 191–221, 218. 119 Gentilcore, ‘Charlatans’, 303. 120 See Richard Palmer, ‘Pharmacy in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century’, in A. Wear, R.K. French and I.M. Lonie (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Humboldt University), pp. 100–17, 101. 121 Burke, Historical Anthropology, pp. 215–16. See also David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 96–124. 122 Burke, Historical Anthropology, 217. 123 See Winifred Smith, The Commedia dell’Arte: A Study in Popular Comedy (New York: 1912). 124 Gentilcore, Healers, p. 117. 125 Ibid., p. 119. 126 For musical accompaniment to these types of actions, see Burke, Historical Anthropology, pp. 214–15. 127 On such processions, see Edward Muir, ‘Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice’, American Historical Review 84 (1979), 16–52, 40. Portable platforms used in these processions were called solari. See also Stow, Catholic Thought, p. 70. Stow notes that from the early medieval period canons had forbidden Jews to watch Eucharist processions from their open windows, ‘suggesting that any Jewish contact, even visual, with the Eucharist was considered contaminating’. 128 ASMoFIP 25 f.6 (26v). Cesare de Comari admits that ‘Simone faciva il ciarlatano con fingere di venderi delli balli e delli unguento, e cantava qualche canzone’. 129 See Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. V, pp. 43–6. 130 Development of these ideas was helped greatly by reading Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 7 Proselytizing at Purim On 23 March 1625, five years before the Great Plague would come with fury to Modena and carry off almost half its population, the Jewish festival of Purim coincided with Palm Sunday. In the latter part of the morning, many poor Jews crowded the palazzo of the 73–year-old Jewish banker Moisè de Modena (‘that old hunchback’, as he was endearingly called by his Christian clients), who lived in Via San Giorgio in Modena, as well as those of other prosperous Jews, in anticipation of receiving il buon Purim, a monetary gift for the Jewish holiday.1 At this time, two Christian constables, officers of the Podestà, as well as a few other Christians visited the Jewish homes in the San Giorgio quarter and the Contrada Sanguinetti, collecting these gifts for themselves, calling it a buona manza, until they reached de Modena’s home.2 At this point testimonies differ. Vincenzio, son of Don Felloni, also nicknamed the Mantuan, a 38–year-old Christian constable and delator who denounced de Modena to the Holy Office the following day, testified that when he and his colleague, the 50–year-old Cristoforo Fornavelo, entered Moisè de Modena’s house, one they had visited before, the banker rejected their request, saying more than once,‘Become Jews, and I will give you the Good Purim’. 3 When Fornavelo gave testimony after his companion on the same day, his report was slightly different. According to him, Moisè de Modena had said, ‘if you want to become Jews, I will give you the good Purim’, turning a command into a suggestion.4 This he had heard the Jew utter only once, nor did he state, as had his companion, that the Jew had asked them to leave. When Moisè de Modena was summoned the next day he explained to Inquisitor General Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza that even though certain Christians had come to his house to receive the tip, he had refused to give it to any of them, since he had decided to give alms only to poor Jews at Purim, preferring to give the customary monetary gift to Christians once a year at Christmas. He told Inquisitor Reghezza he had said something like ‘You’re not Jews and this is not your festival, so I’m not giving you anything’. The Inquisitor accused the Jew of lying, and immediately charged him Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 220 MICRO-HISTORY with proselytizing. He was immediately thrown into the Inquisitorial prison, where he remained for ten days. On 4 April, de Modena petitioned the Inquisitor to be freed, since he was of an ‘advanced age’.5 He was released on bail but was not officially absolved of the offence until 29 October, 1626, nineteen months later, by Reghezza’s successor, Inquisitor Giacomo Tinti, essentially leaving the Jew as a prosecuted suspect for longer than normal. Using a micro-historical approach again to validate this exhaustive investigation, and further exploring the subject of Jewish/Christian tensions during festivals, this chapter examines this intriguing case, using it as a meaningful indicator of broader themes and aiming to put it into its wider historical context. The charge against Moisè de Modena was ‘procuring to exhort Christians to become Jews’, an offence for which the Inquisition was given judicial authority over Jews in the sixth clause of Antiqua iudaeorum improbitas: If through the exertions, help, advice or favour of any of them [the Jews] any Christian is converted from the faith which he has once asserted, or denies it, or goes or returns to the rites, ceremonies, superstitions, or unholy services of the Jews or other heathens, or falls into any heresy, or if any of them uses money, advice, assistance, or favour of any sort to persuade a Christian to deny his faith or commit any heresy.6 The papacy pronounced the transition of a Catholic to a Jew as an inversion of the conversionary act, a falsehood which equated to heresy.Twelve proceedings were brought against Jews for this offence between 1598 and 1638, ten of them being discontinued due to lack of evidence, suggesting that Jews rarely risked such dangerous behaviour.7 In most of the cases Jews were accused of proselytizing neophytes rather than ‘old’ Christians but were rarely sentenced because these neophytes refused to indict them.There was only one case, in March 1609, where the neophyte Prospero Brissigheli denounced Elia, son of Amadio Salomone of Finale, and the 18–year-old Ezechiele Finzi for trying to proselytize him. The young men had met Prospero while he was on his way to Ferrara from Finale, and struck up a conversation with him.8 Prospero’s testimony reflects an animate and exaggerative voice of a delator, determined to condemn his aggressors. He claimed that when he told the Jews that he had converted, Ezechiele had purportedly replied to him: ‘Although you have done badly, God will forgive you.’9 Prospero argued that he had retorted Ezechiele’s comment saying that he considered his action a good one, since Christ was the true Messiah. Ezechiele had allegedly replied that this was not true and that Christ was a man like anyone else. Although both Jews were tortured, Elia’s claim that Ezechiele had rebuked Prospero for becoming a Christian resulted in Ezechiele’s whipping in a public piazza of Modena.10 Some of these processi uncover last attempts by Jews to bring back lost neophyte relatives, as Rabbi Isaaco Alatrini did in 1603 when he tried to persuade Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 221 his newly converted 16–year-old daughter Francesca to return to Judaism.11 Giovanna, the wife of Antonio de Ricci of Finale, had in 1618 maintained contact with her father Salomone Sacerdote d’Este, and to the Inquisition’s dismay stayed in his house, entrusting him on occasions to watch her son from a previous marriage with a Jew, Abram Cuniani, since she argued that her father was well disposed towards Christians.12 In March 1638 the neophyte Alessandro Santoro decided to confess and admit that not only had he entered his mother’s house but he often went there to do domestic chores for her.13 Sometimes interaction between neophyte and Jew uncovered attempts by Jews to maintain contact with any lost Jewish soul. In 1623, Giovanna Ricci was reprimanded for failing to heed the Inquisitorial order, being accused with other Christians of fraternizing with Jews and attending a wedding in the house of the Jew Giuseppe Melli in the company of some twenty Christian friends.14 In this same category of offence, two Jews were accused of bringing Christians into their synagogues. Simone Sanguinetti admitted in 1627 that his wife had told their Christian servant Giulia, wife of Giovanni Lotti, to bring two of his four small children into the Sanguinetti synagogue in Modena. Although Simone and the Christian servant Giulia were imprisoned during the investigation, they both received only a warning and were absolved. On 26 March 1630, Diomedio Galini, a Christian, delated, in a moment of panic, that Joanna Parmesani, the daughter of Alfonso, had gone of her own accord into the synagogue in Finale. When the Inquisition discovered that Joanna was taking a Jewish child for her Jewish neighbour into the synagogue, the investigation was dropped and Joanna was given a warning not to enter the synagogue again.15 There were also cases where Jews appeared before the tribunal in order to prevent accusations of proselytizing, and denounced the neophytes who they claimed were bothering them. In June 1634 Giuseppe Tesceo came to denounce his nephew, alias Abraham Tesceo, a recent convert, who, he testified, was pestering him, demanding cash.16 In the same month, Emanuel, a Jew, denounced the neophyte Giuseppe Maria who had been fraternizing with his family and in particular frequenting his own sister’s house.17 Interestingly enough, Maria was never prosecuted, but it was safer on occasions for these Jews to denounce such incidents than face accusations of proselytizing. Although these processi uncover a whole gamut of social interaction between Jews and neophytes, the Inquisition, by deploying limited strategies to regulate this contact, was only really able to touch the surface. Tellingly, Moisè de Modena’s processo is strikingly different from these others in our period for two particular reasons. First, the dossier itself holds a collection of different documents rather than just a single copy of a processo. These documents include Inquisitor General Reghezza’s personal notes that he wrote in preparation for interrogations, the legal defence document prepared Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 222 MICRO-HISTORY by Moisè de Modena’s lawyers, a hastily scribbled copy of the trial given to the legal counsel with names of the protagonists changed and their ages hidden, documents written by Don Nicolai Grassetti, a magistrate in the office of the Giudici del Maleficio, confirming that the delator, the constable Vincenzio Felloni, had committed a theft in 1622, and an official document written by Antonio Coccapani, notary of the Ufficio dei Criminali of the Podestà, confirming that the two officers were serving as constables under the latter’s command.18 Second, these documents reflect a significant shift in effort and thought by the Jewish defendant in 1625. Moisè de Modena was one of the few Jewish suspects who decided early on in his trial to accept legal counsel and to mount a defence rather than throw himself, as had become standard, on the mercy of the Holy Office. When, in 1607, Grassino Parenti, who was accused of divination, had done the same, and had been assigned the Inquisitorial procurator Antonio Gualengi, the Jew was still found guilty and sentenced to a punishment of whipping.19 Such a calculated move on Moisè’s part inevitably reveals something of the liberties and limitations with which Jewish individual suspects who chose to defend themselves were able to handle their defence and work behind the scenes during Inquisitorial prosecution. As such, his processo reveals a sophisticated level of defence to ensure absolution by a suspect who refused to remain passive. That he had money to help prove his innocence probably helped substantially. He was able to acquire the assistance of his own personal advocate, to support the work of the Inquisitorial procurator granted to him, and more importantly perhaps the assistance of the ducal secretary and former Podestà of Carpi, Andrea Codebò, who equipped the Jews with a subpoena or precetto which ordered Christian witnesses needed for the Jew’s defence to approach the Inquisition and testify. Codebò, by issuing a subpoena at the request of Modena’s advocate, rather than the Inquisition, was merely granting the Jew his legal rights. The trial also raises questions about the process of gift-giving as a specific social practice between Jews and Christians during the Jews’ ‘carnivalesque’ Purim, which usually fell during the period of Lent or, as in this particular case, during Holy Week. It demands investigation into what was considered licit and illicit, transgressive or deviant in the Christian’s demands when he entered the Jew’s home. These issues will be discussed after a study of the trial’s operational procedures and the Jews’defence. Judicial procedures Any suspect who was not an impenitent heretic, whose Inquisitorial investigation reached the point of closure where Inquisitorial consultants were about to decide the outcome of the case, was offered the use of legal counsel. In Italy, as Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 223 in Spain, the Inquisition was supposed to subsidize payment for poor Jews who wanted legal assistance.20 But when Abraamo de Abramino, a poor Jew accused of blasphemy in 1603, was considering legal counsel, and had conferred with an Inquisitorial procurator, he told the Inquisitor that he had changed his mind about taking legal aid.21 Did this perhaps imply that the procurator had successfully persuaded the prisoner that his case was hopeless, in which case the Inquisition would not have to foot the bill?22 Henry Charles Lea argues that, in Spain, legal defence was a cunning move by the Inquisition to give the suspect the false impression that he or she had a real chance of refuting the charge.23 More recently historians such as Haim Beinhart and Renée Levine-Melammed show a more positive picture of the practice of defence counsel in Spain, although in reality its complicated modus operandi, which involved finding inimical witnesses who could invalidate the prosecution’s evidence and character witnesses who acted as compurgators for the suspect, rarely brought the acquittal of the suspect.24 The Papal Inquisition created a less multifarious procedure. Although, as in Spain, suspects were allowed to employ their own lawyers, after gaining licences from the court, and these advocates had to provide a questionnaire that character witnesses were subjected to, the main task of these men was to create an incontrovertible defence document which was presented to the Inquisitorial consultants for consideration.25 In the Venetian archives there is one case of a Jew, Mandolino or Mendlin da Muggia, the Jewish banker at the seaside township of Muggia, who in 1584 chose to defend himself with legal aid before the Holy Office after being accused of threatening a Franciscan preacher, warning that he would stop the allocation of his alms unless he ceased preaching against the Jews.26 These alms were not Purim tips, nor is it likely that the Jew was expected to provide alms for the preacher from his own pocket.27 The Jew was allocated the services of three canon lawyers in the Inquisitorial court who submitted a document in his defence, which argued its points by continually referring to Inquisitorial guides and legal manuals.28 The document concluded with a demand that the Jew should be absolved.29 The defence team also submitted, as part of their defence, copies of letters intended to strengthen the Jew’s position.30 Two of these letters had nothing directly to do with Mandolino’s case but proved that the secular authority wished to protect its Jews from local abuse. A third letter of 1584 from Petro Zane, the Podestà of Capodistria, confirmed his belief that Mandolino had not committed the offence and reiterated that he had already personally absolved the Jew of the same offence in his court.31 Mandolino was imprisoned for two and a half months, a rare event for a Jew before the Venetian Holy Office, and was sentenced to a fine of 25 ducats, despite legal representation. It seems then that in Italy, too, legal counsel did not ensure the acquittal of a suspect. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 224 MICRO-HISTORY In 1625, because of Moisè de Modena’s age, he was able to leave the prison (a concession not normally granted to those who accepted legal counsel) and help prepare a more convincing defence.32 When requesting legal counsel, a suspect was either assigned a canon law procurator – a delegate who represented the suspect before the Inquisition, elected by Inquisitorial consultants and who usually performed administrative functions – or could find his own advocate to take charge of his case. Although the Inquisition assigned de Modena the Inquisitorial procurator, Dottore Geminiaro Teggio, who was given a copy of the interrogations, Simone de Modena petitioned the Inquisition that they be allowed to use their own lawyer, one Andrea Ledazario, who had acquired a ducal licence to serve them.33 Ledazario compiled a defence document purely from the testimonies and documents that the Inquisition supplied to him.34 Legal counsel submitted their defence document to the tribunal on 8 June 1625. The document, like Mandolino’s, began by arguing that the Jew should be acquitted, since he had been done a grave injustice. Concentrating mainly on the infamy of the constables (here named as Salustio and Zorababeli to hide their identity from the defence), points were argued with more precise references than Mandolino’s to the specific case and with continuous reference to Eymeric’s Directorium Inquisitorum.35 First, the two Christians had given conflicting testimony, which proved that one of the testimonies was false. Second, the two officers’ word could not be trusted, since they were ‘villains’. Third, the Christian constables were criticized for requesting alms when as soldiers they received ample wages and were not in need of charity. Fourth, in view of the bad character of the constables, it was questioned whether it was likely that the Jew would have risked putting himself in danger by proselytizing them. Fifth, the document noted that since another Christian, Faustino (here called Gamaliel), had testified on 18 April that he had been present during the conversation and had heard the Jew say that he gave il buon Purim only to Jews on Purim, Felloni’s testimony must have been false. That Felloni was cheating and a known thief was reiterated. The document then concluded that the Christians had acted out of hatred and anger and had done a grave injustice to the Jew. Interestingly enough, no mention was made of the prohibitions in canon law on Christians approaching Jews when they celebrated their own festivals, or partaking in their festive gifts.36 Unlike Mandolino’s case, a final part of Moisè de Modena’s defence procedure involved the Jew being given a captiosi from the Inquisition demanding the appearance of two character witnesses willing without payment to testify in his favour.37 As close relatives were excluded, legal counsel attempted to show Moisè de Modena’s good reputation in the Christian community, by inviting not members of the noble or citizen class whose testimony could have probably revealed fraternization between the two, but rather men of the lower classes, those Christians who had borrowed money from the Jew. Don Lodovico Diato Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 225 and Giuseppe Baptista Guideri appeared on 17 April and both faced long and intense interrogations, according to the list of questions submitted by Moisè’s legal counsel. Diato told the Inquisitor that he had known Moisè de Modena for eighteen years and during that period had borrowed money from the Jew.38 He testified that Moisè de Modena had been ‘most cautious and precise’ in his dealings with him. But Inquisitor General Reghezza, anxious to discredit the witness, asked Diato how he could really give an accurate character description when it was doubtful that he had ever spent long periods of time with the Jew and did not know him ‘intimately’. At that point Diato conceded that he had indeed not spent sufficient time with the Jew to be sure as to his character. Turning to the offence at hand, the Inquisitor asked whether the witness knew what Moisè de Modena thought of Christians and the Christian religion or whether he had ever witnessed the Jew proselytizing other Christians. Capitulating, Diato admitted that he could not know if Moisè de Modena had committed a breach of ecclesiastical regulations.39 The second witness, Guideri, a 58–year-old Christian, was summoned the same day and faced a similar intensive interrogation. Guideri had known the Jew for thirty years and had continually borrowed money on pledge.40 At present he owed him 10 lire. He testified: Moisè has a very good reputation throughout the city and if he had wished to displease Christians over money transactions he could have done so. I have never heard him say anything against the Catholic religion.41 When the captiosi was read to him, he told the Inquisitor that Moisè de Modena was ‘more highly regarded than any other Jew in Modena’.42 Not only had the Jew gone out of his way to maintain amicable relations with Christians regarding money, but he had made peace with his enemies when he could have prosecuted them in the courts, which was ‘unusual’ for a Jew.43 Before he was dismissed, Guideri confirmed that no one was paying him to give evidence in favour of Moisè de Modena.44 Like Ziannuto, who travelled far and wide to assist his father Menocchio (the Friulian miller prosecuted for heresy by the Papal Inquisition in 1599), three of Moisè de Modena’s four sons (Angelo, Simone and Rabbi Salomon) worked efficiently and effectively to aid their father in his case.45 But in their efforts to succeed, they complicated matters by bringing to the Inquisition’s attention an unknown witness who had been present during the Purim incident. Although Cristoforo Fornavelo had mentioned the presence of another Christian in his testimony, Reghezza had failed to query this. One Faustino Bocello, a servant who lived in the home of Contessa Giulia Trotti, had in fact been in Moisè de Modena’s house in order to pawn a cloak on the morning of Purim, and had heard the conversation between the Jew and the constables. The Inquisitor demanded that the Jews bring in their pledge book to prove the presence of Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 226 MICRO-HISTORY Faustino (which might well have been how the Jews worked out in the first place that Faustino had witnessed the event). When Moisè de Modena showed Reghezza this book, it revealed that on 24 March (the day after), on folio 182, Signor Faustino Bocelli had pledged a black cloak for 40 lire that was then redeemed on 28 March. Moisè de Modena testified that in fact pledges made by Christians on Sundays were always reported as being done on the Monday to protect their Christian debtors from accusations of pawning goods on Sundays.46 On examining the book, the Inquisitor found no written records of Sunday activities for the months of February and March.47 Even though Jews were expected to respect Sundays and abstain from work on that day as well, the Jews had willingly supplied Christians with pawns, meeting their immediate needs for ready cash. Reghezza interrogated each of Moisè de Modena’s four sons again in the hope of discovering if any of them had concealed evidence from the Inquisition regarding Faustino’s presence. Simone, Moisè de Modena’s oldest son, took responsibility and was imprisoned for ten days from 26 June to 6 July and interrogated four times. In his third interrogation he admitted that he had deliberately concealed the fact that he had gone looking for Faustino during Holy Week to ask him to testify, as he wanted to use Faustino as a witness for the defence.48 Simone was forced to pay a 50–scudi fine for concealing information from the Inquisition.49 Simone de Modena had suppressed information regarding Faustino’s presence, probably because the de Modena family were unsure of the nature of Faustino’s testimony and whether the Christian would incriminate Moisè de Modena further. Yet once the Jews had checked with Faustino that he was favourably disposed to their father and his testimony would support his defence, Faustino himself changed his mind about providing testimony on Moisè’s behalf.50 At this point, Moisè de Modena’s sons quickly petitioned the ducal court and acquired a precetto from Signor Andrea Codebò, secretary of the Duke, ordering all those who needed to be examined in Moisè de Modena’s case to approach the Holy Office.51 No reference to this precetto was found in the ducal archive, but the procedure underlines the urgent tactics adopted by the Jews, and their expectation of ducal assistance.52 As a result a guard of the ducal court was sent to Faustino and ordered him in the name of the Duke to appear before the Inquisition. Was this a personal favour of Codebò, who in 1630 again helped a Jewish suspect before the Inquisition – this time Alessandro de Formigine of Finale, accused of showing irreverence to the sacrament – and managed to avert the Jew’s punishment from whipping to a fine?53 Perhaps Codebò’s actions reveal the venal nature of public officials in Modena, where certain individuals as part of the city’s court system of multiple noble-driven tribunals were able to provide summons to private hands. One can only speculate. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 227 When Faustino finally appeared before Reghezza on 5 July, the Inquisitor was forced according to Inquisitorial law to interrogate him as a witness presented by the defence, despite his late appearance in the proceedings.54 Here he confirmed that Moisè had refused the constables request with the following words: The words were these. When I was in the house of Monsignor Moisè, in a room where they have a fire, I was waiting for one of his sons, since Moisè had told me to wait for him and he would give me what I wanted. Then two constables arrived, and one of them was a large man nicknamed the Mantuan, who spoke to Monsignor Moisè and asked him for a tip, otherwise the Good Purim, and Monsignor Moisè replied that at Christmas he gave a tip to Christians, but the Good Purim was for Jews. The Mantuan replied, ‘Why don’t you want to give a tip? It’s the custom, you know’, or similar words, and Monsignor Moise said that he didn’t want to give it to him, and then the Mantuan went away grumbling, saying ‘Ahh, ahh!’55 De Modena’s money was also useful in providing the Inquisition with a letter written on 16 April, by Antonino Cavapani, a public notary in the secular court, which confirmed that both Cristoforo and Vincenzio had been in the service of Don Nicolai Grassetti and Vincenzio had committed a theft. When Grassetti appeared he confirmed that he had been sought out by a son of de Modena and had received payment from de Modena for coming to appear before the Inquisitor.56 He informed the Inquisitor that a few years previously Vincenzio had been in the service of the late Podestà and had been sent to a tavern in Modena to determine whether some gold coins in the possession of a merchant were authentic.57 Two of the coins had gone missing, and after a search were found in Vincenzio’s shoe. Don Nicolai Grassetti stated that all the witnesses of that incident were now dead. These unusual procedures reveal the expensive endeavours and the remarkable collaboration of the de Modena family together with the defence counsel and ducal minister to uncover witnesses and testimony in favour of Moisè de Modena. Not only did the ducal court supply the Jews with the legal right to force a Christian witness to testify in an ecclesiastical court, but as a result of ducal support of the Jew’s defence the Inquisition was forced to accept indisputable testimony that confirmed the innocence of the Jewish suspect. As a result, a very different type of processo was formulated. When the Inquisitorial consultori met on 29 October 1626 under the chairmanship of Inquisitor General Tinti, who had succeeded Reghezza a few months earlier, there was unanimous agreement among the eight churchmen present that the Jew should be absolved.Were the Inquisition’s hands tied because of the Jew’s favoured position in Modena, as well as his own independent financial liquidity? Inquisitorial officials faced the particular problem of prosecuting a well-organized, relatively wealthy group, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 228 MICRO-HISTORY who had the capacity to defend themselves vigorously, some of them exceptionally literate and well-educated who could clearly mount legal challenges aided by professional lawyers. Evidently it was only very rarely that Jews felt that such defence was necessary. Perhaps the involvement of legal counsel in Moisè de Modena’s case uncovers a deep dichotomy between the tensions produced by the local enforcement of canon law on the one hand and the growing strength of ducal jurisdiction and secular law on the other. Purim activities Elliott Horowitz’s recent book claims that Purim was intrinsically a time of ‘reckless violence’ for Jews. He argues that from the seventh to the nineteenth century Jews expressed outrage at their subjugation to Christians through ridicule, insults and on occasions even violence.58 It was the Purim holiday which inspired this behaviour since the story, recorded in the Book of Esther, described how in Babylon in 368 bc the villain Haman who had planned to destroy the Jews was hanged on monstrously high gallows, which itself emboldened Jews to defy their overlords.59 Moreover, an edict of the Theodosian code of 423–4 had set a precedent for the festival being connected to the mockery of the Christian faith, since it was believed that the Jews were not hanging Haman (as in the Book of Esther) but crucifying an image of him, which suggested that they were ridiculing Christ.60 Horowitz also argues that Jews in early modern Italy absorbed the ‘creative disrespect’ for the natural chain of authority that their Christian religionists demonstrated during their own Purim Carnival, creating a sense that Jews themselves, as a minority in society, could bring about their own ‘rough justice’, punishing according to David Gilmore’s words ‘deviants and wrongdoers’.61 But with few incidents to back his claims, Horowitz tends to rest his argument on the unconvincing historiography of this tradition rather than actual incidents themselves. Thomas Cohen has uncovered one episode of deviance during Purim in early modern Rome in 1551, where local Jews were prosecuted after drunkenly pestering and then stealing from a Christian in the street during the festival. Although these Jews were mistakenly identified by the Christian as the police of the Campidoglio, they were not wearing any particular costume. Nor can Cohen provide, as he admits, any evidence of a connection between the Jews’ activities and the festival of Purim: Neither the accused, who must have preferred not to nettle the Christian magistrates, nor the aggrieved Cesare [the Christian], … nor the court, which looked more to deeds than motives, mention Purim.62 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 229 And yet Cohen hypothesizes that the Jews’ boisterous activities on Purim were related to their feelings of freedom connected to the ancient Purim story and experienced during this festival. Interestingly enough, judicial courts in Modena rarely dealt with accusations of violence or ‘rough justice’ of Jews during Purim. In Inquisitorial sources the only real mention of Purim besides our case study occurs in a processo against Moisè Diena, a Jewish banker in Soliera, who in 1628 was accused of employing five Christians to play music and sing in his house during the festivities of Purim. When the Christians were interrogated they admitted not only to being hired by the Jew, but also to participating in the merriment of the festival, and dancing in the large room in the banker’s home.63 Two similar incidents were reported in Venice in 1584 and 1589. In 1584, the Inquisition ordered the Patriarch’s vicar general in Capodistria to examine allegations that several Christian musicians had played in the home of the Jewish banker Cervo ‘per occasione del loro carnivale’.64 Two of the Christians, Piero and Cristoforo Piranese, had also eaten eggs, meat and fats, forbidden foods during Lent. In 1589, Giorgio Moretto, a Christian sailor, was prosecuted for judaizing and also for eating ‘capons and roast meats’, forbidden to Christians in the ghetto during Purim.65 If evidence of aggression is missing in Modena and Venice during the festival of Purim, it can be suggested that Jews often celebrated this festival behind closed doors, being sensitive to the tense Lenten or Holy Week atmosphere. Even if Jews wore masks and put on plays within their homes and synagogues, as Shulvass suggests, there remains no real complaints of disturbances.66 Moisè de Modena’s processo shows Jews keeping their festival of Purim hidden from the austerities of the surrounding Christian population on Palm Sunday. No Christian delator or witness mentioned any Purim revelry in any of the homes that they entered. In reality the atmosphere in Moisè de Modena’s on Purim morning was far from festive. When his wife, Mariana, was summoned to the Inquisition, she described how on the day of Purim she had been looking after a sick daughterin-law whose newborn infant had died the previous day, and they were busy preparing the infant’s body for burial. She told the inquisitor: I do not know who was present because that morning there was a multitude of people, [when] the body was prepared for burial, besides which we had watched for eight or nine nights over the infant who died.67 Moisè de Modena too did not hesitate to imply that the coming and going of a large group of people had been trying for him. It is a day on which one must suffer the multitude of people that come to the house to take the Good Purim.68 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 230 MICRO-HISTORY According to Mariana, 400 Jews listed on the registry of the Università, out of a Jewish population of 750, had passed through de Modena’s home that morning to collect alms.69 Mourning practices prior to burial did not dispense Jews from the religious commandment of giving alms to the poor. Nevertheless, the narrative between the constables and Moisè de Modena still needs to be decoded. That the Jew probably never said the words that Vincenzio accused him of implies yet again that he was conscious of ecclesiastical regulations during this time. Yet what matters more is Vincenzio’s decision as to how he would treat Moisè de Modena’s refusal of the buona manza. His anger or frustration at being denied his tip prompted him to inflate the event into an offence on Moisè de Modena’s part. Perhaps, as both Thomas Cohen and David Nirenberg have confirmed, the intensity of emotion during the period of Lent and Holy Week, which was often construed by Christians as a time of aggression, particularly against Jews, affected the constables and spurred their sense of vengeance.70 Vincenzio, despite his own criminal record, turned to the Inquisition because it was here that he believed he could make an effective delation. He had himself served as an Inquisitorial constable in 1620–24 and had been responsible for the delation of Jews for offences such as blasphemy and the hiring of Christian servants.71 One Jewish suspect, Ruggiero Mariano, testified in 1624 that Vincenzio had arrested him.72 Vincenzio knew the mechanism of the Inquisition well enough, or so he thought, to successfully incriminate a practising Jew.73 Gifts and tips In our efforts to discover the status and meaning of Moisè de Modena’s rebuff of Vincenzio in 1625, we must begin with the partial information we have on our protagonists. Moisè de Modena, cousin of the famous Rabbi Leone de Modena of Venice, a member of one of the most influential Jewish families in the city, was a leading banker and an important patron of educational and philanthropic projects in the city capital.74 His family had arrived in the fifteenth century from France (probably Provence) and established the first Italian synagogue in Modena.75 In the seventeenth century the family expanded their economic pursuits from banking to skilled gold work and silk producing.76 Living in the sestiere of San Giorgio, where the Jews’ homes were scattered among those of Christians, Moisè de Modena housed in his palazzo not only one of the city’s five synagogues (a private oratory), but also a school and a library. Federica Francesconi sees this library as representing ‘a sort of cultural “encyclopedia” for the entire Jewish community’.77 Here he also maintained a loan bank in which three of his four sons worked as well as his wife, Mariana, providing loans of Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 231 various kinds, often on the security of pawns.78 Whether at the advanced age of 73 he still participated in the giving of loans cannot be confirmed, although his character witnesses implied that he was still well known and liked in the Christian community. In competition with the existing Monte di Pietà, which had been founded in Modena in 1494 and renewed in 1555, this particular Jew had established a good reputation as a banker who provided favourable conditions for those middle- to lower-class Christians needing to pawn privately with few questions asked.79 He died in 1630, at the age of seventy-eight. Vincenzio Felloni and Cristoforo Fornavelo were constables in the service of the local Podestà (or governor). Since no police institution existed in Italy prior to the nineteenth century, each local secular and ecclesiastical court had its own officers or constables under the control of a captain or bargello, executing the orders of the particular judiciary. Steven Hughes argues that most constables were conscripted from the criminal class, and were in general undisciplined, disreputable, poorly paid and corrupt.80 These constables acted aggressively and even violently against local inhabitants, including Jews, although there is no proof that their actions were particulary anti-judaic in character.81 Without uniform and identified only by badges, the constables usually patrolled local streets with an intimidating array of weapons.82 On their rounds, day and night, Hughes argues, these men would often pressurize local inhabitants to give them tips, gifts and honoraria.83 In fact, in Venice in the same year as our processo, a report of the Cattaveri, defending its jurisdiction over the Jewish community before the Collegio, noted that messengers or fanti of the Cattaveri had in previous years approached local Jews for tips on Purim, only to be reprimanded by the court for their actions and told that demanding such tips was forbidden.84 That Felloni and Fornavelo would try to capitalize on the Jews’ custom of giving alms to the poor was not unusual. Not only had they been in the homes of other Jews and been handed tips in 1625, they made it clear that in previous years Moisè de Modena himself had provided them with gifts as well as pledges when necessary.85 The custom of Jews giving non-Jews tips or protection money at Purim time had originated in medieval Ashkenaz (Franco-Germany), where Jews particularly gave presents to their own Christian nursemaids and servants, often in preference to the Jewish poor.86 This action was criticized by Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi), the eleventh-century biblical commentator, who argued that non-Jews should not be included in a Jewish religious ceremony.87 Despite this, the custom seems to have widened in the fifteenth century, when Dean Philip Bell found evidence in Nuremberg of Jews sending presents to their Christian neighbours on Purim.88 But gifts from Jews to Christians must be construed differently from those they bestowed on fellow religionists, which acknowledged the relationship of dependence between rich and poor within the same community. Gifts Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 232 MICRO-HISTORY or tips given to Christians could be construed as bribes, attempts to soften relationships or requests for protection, alliance or advancement, or perhaps even recognition of services rendered. Benjamin Ravid notes that in 1634 the Venetian Jews’ gift-giving on Purim to the ministri of the Sopraconsoli, although criticized, was understood as representing Jewish bribes to prevent these ministri from reporting the Jews’ commercial violations to the Venetian authorities.89 In 1625, was de Modena’s rebuff of the constables one of those ‘gifts gone wrong’, as Natalie Zemon Davis saliently calls them, gifts receivers believed they were entitled to but never received?90 Whether there was a personal grievance between the two cannot be confirmed. Simone de Modena testified that the reason he had come to learn of the nature of his father’s offence was because Vincenzio had been bragging publicly to other Jews that he had brought about his father’s imprisonment. It is here that one senses Vincenzio’s bullying nature: I have understood from various people that the Mantuan went round talking about it. He told some other Jews to take care not to defy them like my father, who was sent to prison for refusing to give them a tip.91 Yet Moisè de Modena did all he could to hide any personal animosity he held for Vincenzio, testifying that he did not know Vincenzio’s name nor was the rebuff personal, but represented a general decision he had made not to provide Christians with il buon Purim. It was obviously better to show the Inquisition that Jews tipped Christians only on their festival of Christmas, than suggest that they were invited to receive a gift from the Jew on his festival. Moisè de Modena testified: There came many Christians to ask me individually for the Good Purim and there also came the officer of the Holy Office. There were also the officers who serve the Signor Podestà, two of them, but I do not know their names. Likewise the ones who guard the [town] gate … Father I did not give them anything, because one makes them a gift at Christmas, and Purim is for the Jews.92 But what the processo does reveal is a fine sense of de Modena’s calibration of obligation, constraint and refusal. On Purim, Moisè de Modena was obligated to give charity to his own kind, reaffirming before the community who petitioned him his position as one of its leaders.93 Purim gift-giving was a conspicuous public statement despite the fact that it was within his home, a presentation and performance of social relationships which had its own system of rules, obligations and constraints. Vincenzio Felloni’s demand for the customary protection money, whether or not it came with a history of a grievance, was refused in order for Moisè de Modena to maintain his position of control over whom he chose to give to in his own home. In effect, this claim for territory contrasted with his obligation the rest of the year to provide pawns to any type of person who approached his bank. As a member of a community who often ignored Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 233 ecclesiastical regulations, who allowed Christians to enter his home on Purim as well as at other times, as guests, as hired helpers and as debtors, he was in fact confirming his authority over what the Christian could expect to receive in a Jew’s home.94 But, more so, Moisè de Modena’s rebuff of the constables asserted the internal mechanisms and modalities of his own society vis-à-vis the Christian one, imposing social regulations on the Christian in order to defend and maintain the Jews’ religious otherness, identity and isolation. Such action always had a price, and Moisè de Modena faced a long and costly trial as a result of Vincenzio’s delation. But just as he had refused to submit to the demands of the constables, Moisè de Modena maintained his independence and did the same in the Inquisitorial courtroom, using legal counsel effectively to refute the accusation against him. As a result of his firm and principled stand, the historian is able to appreciate in finer detail the tenuous legal hold the Inquisition retained over professing Jews in Modena. The tribunal’s belief that it could monitor the Jews in the ducal capital independently of the Duke was unrealistic. At the same time the historian uncovers levels of familiarity and contact between Jews and Christians during Purim that had not been suspected. Not only were Christians invited to Jews’ homes to participate in celebrations of the festival, but Jews were willing to provide Christians with immediate loans on Purim and even generally on Sundays and during Holy Week, concealing this activity in their pledge books from the watchful eyes of authority. Such support for the ‘other’ seemed to work both ways, and the willingness of Don Lodovico Diato and Giuseppe Baptista Guideri to provide character testimony on the Jew’s behalf in an ecclesiastical court shocked and angered Inquisitor General Reghezza, since it not only smacked of familiarity between Christians and Jews but represented the very breach of ecclesiastical regulations that the Holy Office was desperately trying to eradicate. Notes 1 Because this processo is made up of many different documents, folio numbers will refer to the main processo only. See ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (12r), the testimony of Don Lodovico Diato, who calls Moisè de Modena ‘quel vecchio gobo’. The notary also notes that Moisè is seventy-three years old (2v). Here Moisè de Modena testifies that he lives in the Jewish quarter in Via San Giorgio. 2 A ‘buona manza’ means a general tip rather than one connected specifically to the festival of Purim. 3 See ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (1r) (fattevi hebrei, ch’io vi darò Bon Purim). These Christians admit to the Inquisitor that they had been in the Jew’s home before. Vincenzio Felloni told the Inquisitor that he knew the name of the woman – Moisè’s wife or a member of his household – who received pledges and paid out cash against them. 4 Ibid. (2r) (Non ci fu detto altro, senon che Monsignor Moisè da Modena, quando gli dimandassimo il Bon Purim, che disse se vi volete far hebrei, vi darò il Bon Purim). 5 Ibid. (9r) (età grave). 6 Bullarium, vol. VIII, pp. 378–9. For commentary and a summary of the bull see, Stow, Catholic Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 234 MICRO-HISTORY Thought, pp. 33–4. 7 Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 460 describes the interesting but rare case of Leandro Tisanio of San Vito al Tagliamento, son of a shoemaker, who chose to convert from Catholicism to Judaism in 1610. It is not clear whether his change of religion was influenced by any personal contact with Jews. 8 See ASMoFIP 35 f.10 and ASMoFIP 38 f.16. 9 ASMoFIP 36 f.2 (1v) (Che Dio te lo perdoni, tu ha fatto male). 10 Ibid. See also Balboni, Gli Ebrei, p. 57. 11 ASMoFIP 77 f.14. 12 ASMoFIP 65 f.3. 13 ASMoFIP 107 f.12. 14 ASMoFIP 65 f.4. 15 ASMoFICH 245 f.56. 16 ASMoFIP 96 f.8. 17 ASMoFIP 96 f.17. 18 ASMoFIP 77 f.14. See the defence document held in this dossier and the hastily scribbled copy of the trial. The notary copied the interrogations, changing the names of the denouncer and his colleague and recording Moisè as being a thousand years old to hide his identity, but at the same time carelessly missing out certain details of the original recording. 19 See ASMoFIP 31 f.12. 20 See Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (New York: Macmillan, 1906), vol. III, p. 47. 21 ASMoFIP 29 f.17. 22 See Pullan, Jews of Europe, pp. 109–11. 23 Lea, A History, vol. III, p. 44. See also Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, ‘Mari Sánchez and Inéz González: Conflict and Cooperation among Crypto-Jews’, in Mary E. Giles, Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 19–41, pp. 30–2. Her study of Maria Sánchez’s trial before the Inquisition in Guadaloupe confirms the ineffectiveness of legal counsel there. 24 See Haim Beinart, Conversos on Trial: The Inquisition in Ciudad Real (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), pp. 151–84; and Renée Levine-Melammed, ‘Sixteenth-Century Justice in Action: The Case of Isabel Lòpez’, Revue des Études Juives 145/1–2 (January–June, 1986, 51–73. 25 In Spain, suspects were also allowed to choose from both advocates and procurators, see Lea, A History, vol. III, p. 43. 26 Trial of Mandolino da Muggia 1584, in Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 81–100. 27 Ibid., p. 85. Apparently Mandolino was successful in preventing the friar from giving sermons. 28 Ibid., p. 90. 29 Ibid., pp. 91–3. 30 Ibid., p. 94. These included a copy of a letter from Doge Andrea Gritti (1523–38), in 1538 to the local Podestà, Luca Giorgio, in favour of the Jews of Capodistria, overturning the local bishop’s ban on the Jews’ commercial activities, as well as a copy of a letter from Doge Pietro Lando, Gritti’s successor in 1539 (who ruled until 1545), who had ordered the local bishop not to molest the Jews but to allow them to live peacefully as their condotte demanded. 31 Ibid., pp. 95–6. 32 See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, ‘Modo et ordine che osserva il R. Padri Inquisitori nell’essercitare il suo Officio nella città di Modena’, which states that suspects ‘who defended their case were always kept in prison, to dispel any suspicion that they had been suborning witnesses’. 33 Ibid. This was standard procedure. The manual notes that any lawyer who served the suspect was expected to acquire a licence either from the Duke or one of his secular courts. 34 See ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (19v). 35 Ibid. See the first page of the defence document: ‘Reverend Father, I think that Moisè de Modena, charged by the most holy office of the Inquisition with persuading two Christians to become Jews if they would accept from him what was accustomed to be given at his home Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 235 at the time of the Jewish carnivals and called by another name (the good Purim), can in all conscience be absolved from the charge’. (Rev. pater, Moisèm de Mutina hebreu’ officio sanctissime Inquisitionis imputatu ut persuasserit duos Christianos ad facienda de hebreos, si ab eo vellent accipere domum solitum dare in tempore carnivalis hebreis alio nomine vocatum (il bon Porrim) esse in casu absolutionis tutta conscientia affirmari posse existimo.) Church sources as early as the Byzantine period (see Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages, p. 66) already forbade any Christian accepting festive gifts from Jews. The punishment for clergy was dispossession, for laymen excommunication. Then the Council of Laodicea in 956 (Linder, doc. 566) noted ‘on those who receive from heretics and Jews festive gifts. Now oporteat a iudaeis – that it should not be proper to receive from Jews and heretics the festive gifts that they send or to celebrate holidays with them’. This was repeated at the Council of Toledo IV (Linder, doc. 586) and at the Poenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori (Linder, doc. 602), where once again a punishment was stipulated. See ASMoFI Miscellanea 1620–40, busta 295, ‘Modo et ordine che osservia il R. Padri Inquisitori nell’essercitare il suo Officio nella città di Modena’, which describes such a document as a ‘cavillosi’ or a ‘captiosi’. It is a document that confirms the suspect’s good character, stating that he was honourable, and fair in his negotiations and dealings. See ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (12r). Lodovico Diato told the Inquisitor that he did not come spontaneously, but the previous evening he was in the Palazzo looking for Moisè de Modena, who had asked him whether he would be willing to give testimony voluntarily on his behalf. Lodovico had agreed. ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (12v). Ibid. (13v–14r). Ibid. (14v). Ibid. Ibid. (15v). Ibid. (16r) (ha fatto la pace a ch’l’amazzo amicabilamente se bene sapeva ch’erano statti et non volse procedere contro d’loro per giustitia, lo sò anco perchè quando ha havuto da fare con delli Christiani un occasione d’havere ed era andato con loro facendogli quelli a piaceri insoliti da Hebrei). Ibid. See Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 7. See also ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (6v): Aaron tells the Inquisitor in his interrogation on 1 April 1625 that he has no contact with his father. Note too, on 35v, that Moisè’s sons even left home during Holy Week curfew to further their defence. When Faustino was interrogated on 5 July, he admitted that one of Moisè’s sons had come to find him, ‘while the bells were tied’ – that is, during Holy Week. See Chapter 6, p. 215 n.63. ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (21r) ‘This is my way of doing things. If there are pledges on the Sunday, one never writes them down on the Sunday. That which is done on the Sunday is recorded the following Monday, as one is able to see throughout the whole book.’ Ibid. (Et cum fuerit facta perquisitio libri ab Reverendo Padre Inquisitore inventum est, quod in die domenica, non reperi aliqua partita scripta per totum mensem Martij. et Februarij.) Interestingly enough, in ASMoAME busta 15, a document of 31 December 1619 notes that from that date Jews were no longer allowed to write in Hebrew in their pledge books, but only in the Italian language, a ruling that was clearly adhered to. This confirmed the ruling in the Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum of 1555, which stipulated in Clause eight that they had to use the Italian language when recording loans. See Stow, Catholic Thought, pp. 33–4. Ibid. (31r). ‘Even though it is true that when I was examined I had known that the Signor Faustino was present when my father and the officers argued on the day of Purim, I did not say it because it was not the right time. I felt that it should be said only at the time of defence. It seemed to me that it was needed only at the time of defence.’ Ibid. (37r). Ibid. (36r). When Faustino was interrogated on 5 July, he told the Inquisitor that he had only come to give testimony because of an order from Signor Andrea Codebò. He elaborated: ‘Two or three days before the command, the sons of Moisè were looking for me, and I said what do they want. They would like me to go and be examined, but I don’t want to be examined, Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 236 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 MICRO-HISTORY because these words would have to be reported, and for that reason they had the command issued to me.’ Ibid. (8r). When asked how he expected to prove that the testimonies of the constables were false, Moisè de Modena hints in his testimony at the involvement of the duke in his affairs. ‘This will be easy to prove and I have the good fortune to prove these things because I have proven them also before the Signore Duke as a falsity.’ There was no record of this precetto, in any of the buste of the ducal archive in the Archivio di Stato such as the ASMo. Note in Archivio Storico Communale, Registri delle deliberazioni consiliari del Comune di Modena dal XIV al XVIII secolo, Vachette busta 192, 1625 Atti della comunità, Vachette busta 193, 1626 Atti della comunità. Also in the Vachette raccoglie le decisioni collegiali dei Sapientes poi Conservatori della comunità or in the Archivio per Materie. ASMoFICH 245 f.53. Inside this dossier is a letter from Signor Count Andrea Codebò in favour of the Jew ordering Inquisitor Lerri to change the punishment. ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (35v–37r). The Inquisitor questioned Faustino further. How close had he been standing to the protagonists when they had this conversation? Was it possible that he had missed some of the words that Moisè had uttered? Faustino confirmed that he was close enough to hear the whole conversation. Ibid. (70r). Ibid. (28r–v). Don Nicolai Grassetti told the Inquisitor: ‘credo che mi dasse mezzo talero in pagamento’. This ‘thaler’ was a German, Austrian or Swiss silver coin, which might have been used when lire, ducats or scudi were short. I thank Brian Pullan for this reference. Ibid. Horowitz, Reckless. On the celebration of Purim in Italy, see the work of Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, Una salvezza che viene da lontano: I Purim della comunità ebraica di Padova (Florence: Olschki Editore, 2000). See Timothy C.G. Thornton, ‘The Crucifixion of Haman and the Scandal of the Cross’, Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986), 419–26; and Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Desecrating the Cross: A Rare Medieval Accusation’ (in Hebrew), Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel 5 (1973), 159–73. See also Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages, p. 48. Here Athanasios of Emesa, a Byzantine lawyer, compiling a systematic selection of the Novels of Justinian, in his Epitome of the Novels, noted that ‘Jews should not put on fire the figure of the cross in the form of Haman, or they shall forfeit those religious matters that they were previously granted’. See also, Elliott Horowitz, ‘The Rite to be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Violence’, Poetics Today (1994), 9–54, 33 and 37. See also David Gilmore, Aggression and Community: Paradoxes of Andalusian Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 120–1. Cohen, ‘The Case’, p. 219. See also ASMoFIP 38 f.16. Here Baraldo de Viandere, a Christian, was denounced on 10 July 1610 for singing in the home of a Jew during festivals, although the statement does not clarify which festival it was. No investigation at all was carried out after this delation. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, vol. VI, pp. 71–9, p. 76. See Pullan, ‘The Trial of Giorgio Moreto’, pp. 159–81. Shulvass, The Jews, p. 176. ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (6r). Ibid. (20r). Ibid. (6r). ‘All those Jews who take charity from the Università, there has to be around 400 of them, go to all the other Jews who do not take alms and ask for the Good Purim.’ That the bestowing of Purim alms might have been a well regulated task, handled by the Università itself, can be suggested because of the records dating from 1660 of varied amounts according to the means of the giver and the needs of the recipient, that well-to-do Jews were to give poor Jews on Purim. See ACEMo filza 2.55 Note delle elemosine settimanali, regalie di Purim ed Azime dispensate dalla nostra università a poveri 1660–1791. Nirenberg, Communities, p. 220; and Cohen, ‘The Case’, p. 219. See ASMoFIP 57 f.21. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access PROSELYTIZING AT PURIM 237 72 ASMoFIP 73 f.8. Testimony of Ruggiero Mariano. 73 See ASMoFICH 244 f.32. In this processo against a Spanish Jew, Israel, for blasphemy, Felloni delated the offender, which led to a full-blown trial, imprisonment and a fine of 100 scudi. 74 On the family of Moisè de Modena, see Francesconi, Jewish Families, pp. 68–71. 75 See ASMoAME, busta 18B, carte 40–41 and busta 15, fasciolo n.8. 76 Ibid., busta 4, 1618 for records of Moisè de Modena’s credit arrangements with various Montè in the city. 77 See Federica Francesconi, ‘Dangerous Readings in Early Modern Modena: Negotiating Jewish Culture’ (forthcoming). 78 ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (1r). According to the testimony of Vincenzio Felloni in his delation, it is Mariana who gives cash to the Christians when they come to pledge. 79 See Brian Pullan, ‘Jewish Moneylending in Venice: from Private Enterprise to Public Service’, in Gaetano Cozzi, Gli Ebrei eVenezia: secoli XIV–XVIII: Atti del convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di Storia della società e dello Stato Veneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, 5–10 June 1983 (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1987), 671– 86, 682–3; Pullan, ‘Jewish Banks and Monti di Pietà’, in Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid (eds), The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 53–72; and Maristella Botticini, ‘A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments: Private Credit Markets, Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy’, Journal of Economic History 60/1 (March 2000), 164–89. 80 Steven C. Hughes, ‘Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome: The Papal Police in Perspective’, Journal of Social History 21 (1987), 97–116, 100. See also Irene Fosi, ‘Criminalità ebraica’, pp. 553–73. See also Steven Hughes’s most recent study, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) although, as the title suggests, this monograph concentrates more on policing in the nineteenth century. 81 See ASMoFIP 45 f.9. In September 1615, Mosè Anagnoli, a Jew among a group of five Christians, was interrogated by the Inquisition for throwing stones and trying to free a Christian whom a local constable had tried to arrest. Nor were such brawls confined to Modena. In Rome in 1611, one Benjamino Giuseppe Sereni argued that he had not been fairly treated by a local constable who had blamed him for an episode of violence, when he had clearly been the victim of the attack. See Archivio di Stato di Roma, Relazione dei Birri, busta 104, Rome, 20 January 1611. I thank Kenneth Stow for this reference. 82 Hughes, ‘Fear’, p. 97. 83 Ibid., p. 101. 84 See Benjamin Ravid, ‘An Introduction to the Charters of the Jewish Merchants of Venice’, in Elliott Horowitz and M. Orfali (eds), The Mediterranean and the Jews II: Society, Culture and Economy in Early Modern Times (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), pp. 203–46, p. 217; republished in B. Ravid, Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). I thank Benjamin Ravid for this reference. 85 ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (2r). Cristoforo Fornavelo testified that he and Vincenzio Felloni had also gone into other Jews’ houses besides Moisè de Modena’s: ‘Father yes. Yesterday I was in the house of many Jews, in order to go and collect the tip which they call the buon Purim, because they are celebrating their carnival and in particular we were in the house of Monsignor Pellegrino Sanguinetti, and Monsignor Samuel Sanguine and Monsignor Simone Sanguine, and Monsignor Moisè de Modena, banker and others.’ 86 See Israel Abraham, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961), p. 175; and Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish–Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 42. 87 See Baumgarten, Mothers, p. 132. 88 Dean Philip Bell, Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in Fifteenth-Century Germany (Boston, MA: Brill, 2001), p. 208. For discussion about this in Jewish legal texts, see Aharon Feldman and Aviel Orenstein (trans.), Mishnah Berurah:The Classic Commentary to Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim Comprising the Laws of Daily Jewish Conduct, Shulchan Aruch (Jerusalem: Pisgah Foundation, 1980), 694: 3. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 238 MICRO-HISTORY 89 I also thank Benjamin Ravid for this reference. See Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Senato, terra, filza 368, 29 December 1634. 90 Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). See also Barry Schwartz, ‘The Social Psychology of the Gift’, The American Journal of Sociology 73 (1967), 1–11. 91 ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (33r). 92 Ibid. (3r). 93 On Purim rituals, see Jeffrey Rubenstein, ‘Purim, Liminality and Communitas’, AJS Review 17/2 (1992), 247–77; Amitai Etzioni, ‘Towards a Theory of Public Ritual’, Sociological Theory 18/1 (March 2000), 44–59; Maurie Sacks, ‘Computing Community at Purim’, Journal of American Folklore 102 (1989), 275–91; Amy Shuman, ‘Food Gifts Ritual Exchange and the Production of Excess Meaning’, Journal of American Folklore 113 (2000), 495–508; and Susan Eckstein, ‘Community as Gift-Giving: Collectivistic Roots of Volunteerism’, American Sociological Review 66 (2001), 829–51. 94 Elliott Horowitz, ‘Family and their Fortunes: The Jews of Early Modern Italy’, in David Biale (ed.), Culture of the Jews, A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 573–636, 581, notes that in March 1580 at the time of Carnival, the Università of the Jewish community of Padua tried to prevent intimate contact between Jews and Christians. One of the complaints was that Christians danced with Jewish men and women in the Jews’ homes at this time. For examples of this in Modena, see ASMoFIP 67 f.21. Here, in 1623, Davide Diena, a banker in Soliera, was accused of inviting Christian guests to his family celebrations and hiring Christians to sing in his house as well as serve him food. See ASMoFIP 77 f.14 (3v). Even if the Jews were eating feasts of roasted meat, Moisè confirmed that he had refused the constable’s request for food when they approached him: ‘They showed a desire to have something to eat and I said to them that I did not want to break the orders of your Reverence.’ Interestingly enough, in Giorgio Moreto’s processo before the Holy Office in Venice in 1589 for judaizing (see Pullan, ‘The Trial of Giorgio Moreto’, p. 167), his anonymous delator condemned him for eating and enjoying merriment with the Jews during their Carnival and his Lent. His delator stated: ‘he eats and goes masked and makes merry in such a manner as to make no distinction between Lent and Carnival.’ Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Conclusion This book has highlighted one specific aspect of the history of the Jews in Italy: the trials of professing Jews before the Papal Inquisition at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Inquisitorial processi against professing Jews provide the earliest known evidence of a branch of the Papal Inquisition taking judicial actions against Jews on an unprecedented scale and attempting systematically to discipline a Jewish community, pursuing this aim for several centuries. Our purpose has been to deepen existing insights into the role of the Papal Inquisition in Jewish life, the intricacies of legal jurisdiction over Jews in the early modern period, and the daily interaction of Jews and Christians on the eve of ghettoization. Although the belief that the Inquisition could prosecute Jews had already been set out by theologians from medieval times, the papacy officially brought them under Inquisitorial jurisdiction in 1581. Enlarging its jurisdictional competence was a regular trait of the tribunal’s history, although in most cases the Inquisition was given authority to judge different types of heretics who seemed to threaten Catholic society at a particular moment, rather than members of an alien religion. As Andrea del Col has shown, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, witchcraft, magic, contempt for the ecclesiastical authorities and political opposition to the papacy became offences which could officially be prosecuted by the Inquisition. After the bull of Licet ab initio in 1542, and the re-establishment of the early modern Papal Inquisition, Protestantism, depicted in Inquisitorial terms as non-conformity to Catholicism, was officially labelled a heresy, just as Galilean science became one in the seventeenth century.1 Since Jews in Italy were considered part of the secular judicial system, and Roman law made no distinction between the punishment of offences between Jews and Christians, perhaps the inclusion of professing Jews in Inquisitorial jurisdiction made less of an impact upon existing secular rulers, theologians and theorists than one might have expected. At the same time, one senses the papacy’s expansion of authority, its Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 240 JEWS ON TRIAL politicization of ecclesiastical power, attempting to ensure its preservation by becoming the judicial voice of Catholic leadership in the peninsula. This represented a paradox, since the Church relied on the assistance of the state it was trying to control, to enforce its jurisdiction over Italian society.Was this artificial assimilation of Jews into the broad category of offenders not part of the papacy’s continual assertion of power, which it seemed to be losing through conflicts of jurisdiction with the early modern secular states? Papal control over professing Jews continued into the eighteenth century, particularly during the papacies of Benedict XIV (1724–30), Clement XII (1730–39) and Pius VI (1775–99), whose demands for severe restrictions on Jewish life and an increase in their conversions to Catholicism were felt by Jews not only in Rome, but throughout the peninsula.2 The Inquisition’s reputation for fairness was upheld in its prosecution of professing Jews. The tribunal showed itself as a court which focused on efforts to ascertain the truth by seventeenth-century standards, which meant distinguishing between innocence and guilt, and, within the category of guilt, recognizing the difference in degree of transgressions and framing the punishments of Jews according to those gradations alone. However questionable the nature of the offences it prosecuted, the Holy Office worked according to the criterion of a legal code that gave attention to the rights of Jewish defendants, and limited the use of torture, just as it did for Christians. As a result, Inquisitorial punishments against Jews in Modena remained relatively mild. Between 1598 and 1638, 45% of the processi were discontinued. Inquisitors seemed to be impartial on most matters, sometimes perplexed and uncertain how to proceed, and on occasions showed sympathy even towards the Jewish offender. There is no suggestion that punishments were affected by Inquisitors who wanted to use more aggressive penalties for Jewish offenders, a policy which remained in stark contrast to the type of justice the Congregation of the Holy Office was seeking to endorse. If sentenced, professing Jews were usually allowed to reintegrate into the Jewish community, being given fines, which transformed the offender into a debtor without any other costly sanctions needing to be applied or the involvement of the secular arm in the execution of the Jew’s punishment. Bernard Cooperman has recently argued that there is a shortage of criminal proceedings in Italy in general because these records were the first type of documents to be disposed of when space was lacking in judicial archives.3 Yet if trial procedure of the Jew before the Papal Inquisition is compared to similar activity in civil and criminal courts in other parts of western Europe, preliminary investigation suggests that the Inquisition’s conscious mitigation, its objectivity and fairness towards Jews, and its types of punishment were far milder than in secular courts. Here Jews were brought to trial for three categories Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access CONCLUSION 241 of offence, those against people, those against property and crimes against the church and/or the state.4 A late discretionary medieval procedure which Jews were subject to in secular courts, particularly in lawsuits with Christians, was to take a specific oath or Judeneid, by which they were forced to stand barefoot on the skin of a sow and promise that they were saying the truth. Both Eric Zafran, who found proof of this ceremony in an illustrated manuscript from Schwabenspiegel in Brussels, and Louis Finkelstein, who found written evidence of its usage in secular courts in Pesaro, link it to the fifteenth century.5 Whether this continued into our period is doubtful. But Maria Boes, in her study of Jews in the criminal justice system in Frankfurt am Main from 1562 to 1696, has highlighted the different form of capital punishment Jewish criminals were given. Sometimes they were hung upside down by their feet or drowned, both of which were forms of capital punishment rarely used on Christians.6 These examples suggest the interplay between theory and practice and how different jurisdictional regimes produced diverse permutations of trials and legal activities against Jews. The intention of these penal incongruities was, as Boes points out, not only to encourage these Jews to convert to Christianity before execution, but to publicize the Jews’ ‘stubborn’ and ‘bad nature’. Such discriminatory treatment was alleviated by the enlightened eighteenth century, when the prosecution of Jews was no longer conditioned by religious intolerance.7 To put this in perspective, Andrea del Col argues that criminal and civil courts in Italy which often judged the same offences as the Inquisition, such as blasphemy and witchcraft, were also more severe in their punishment of Christians.8 Torture and death sentences were administered more frequently, and offenders had less opportunity to plead their cases. Otto Ulbricht, who has worked on criminal courts in early modern Germany, argues in particular that sexual relations between Jews and Christians, which had been punishable by death in the medieval period, resulted in banishment in the early modern period for both Jews and Christians.9 Although some offences prosecuted by secular courts were the same as those in Inquisitorial courts, the fundamental difference remained. For the most part, secular courts dealt with criminal offences such as homicide and theft, the Inquisition being above all concerned with matters of faith and religious conformity, especially during our period. We must therefore remain circumspect about drawing conclusions as to the severity of procedure in criminal courts in comparison to Inquisitorial ones. Although the Inquisition in Modena was seen as a tribunal which was morally aligned to judge, and denunciation was institutionalized within society as a mechanism for propagating that ideology, there is no indication that Christians used delation against Jews on a regular basis. In general, Christians in Modena were not anxious to maintain visible distinctions between themselves and local Jews, nor did the socio-economic position of these Christians account for their Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 242 JEWS ON TRIAL delations. Seventy-seven or 41% of the 186 processi were opened ex officio so it is impossible to confirm how the Inquisition uncovered evidence regarding the purported Jewish offenders. Only fifty-three or 28% of the processi were opened by Christians who delated alleged Jewish offenders directly to the tribunal. It seems that it was not the Christians who had regular dealings with Jews, both business and social, who denounced them, but those who had less intimate and frequent contact with them.These delators were not personally acquainted with the Jews they denounced, nor did they always know their names. Moreover, twenty-nine or 16% of the processi were initiated by a delation of an Inquisitorial constable, a famigliaro or a clergyman. At a time when subjects were supposed to be declaring their religious allegiances, so the Church might supervise them effectively, it was still the clergy who imposed the distinctions between the Jews and their neighbouring Christians (who it seems often ignored these rulings). It was these men – confessors, preachers, local friars, priests or Inquisitorial constables, vicars and famigliari – who deliberately cultivated delations and were the prime movers behind particular investigations, more conscious of the ecclesiastical regulations demanded by the Holy Office, and keen that congregants apply these rulings at all times. It seems that few delations arose from individual prejudice; most proceeded from the top down rather than from the grassroots up. Sixteen or 9% of processi were initiated by Jewish delators who seemingly believed that the Holy Office was a suitable location for delations of fellow religionists and neophytes. Here delations were driven by intra-community tensions, anger, frustration or vengeance. Jews delated a variety of offences including blasphemy, desecration of images, possession of prohibited books, hiring of Christian servants and wetnurses, hampering the work of the Inquisition and the moves of neophytes towards Judaism. Some Jews even delated on more than one occasion. Although these delations were in general unreliable, since only five of the sixteen ended in conviction, their actions still speak of a certain mastery of the larger culture and a willingness to go against the wishes of the community, whose leaders were often powerless to maintain social discipline from within. Eleven processi (6%) were initiated by neophytes, male or female delators who usually appeared in these proceedings as marginal figures, who had failed to integrate into Christian society, but at the same time used the court to demonstrate scorn, aggression and desire for vindication against former religionists who aggravated or bothered them. Only three of the eleven delations ended in the conviction of the Jewish suspect, partly because the Inquisition was continually suspicious of new Christians. The processi where these neophytes appear, either as suspects, delators or even witnesses, reveal a whole underworld of Jews who converted to Christianity in a non-ghetto society, where the Inquisition had Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access CONCLUSION 243 to work so much harder to keep converts away from Jews and the possibility of their relapse to Judaism after baptism. Only two processi were opened by Jews who chose to delate themselves, preferring to save themselves further trouble with the Inquisition. The processi in general reveal a degree of deep porousness, a physical and social proximity between Christians and Jews in both the city capital and the smaller communities. The two lived closely together, often next door, and had networks of social relationships and an intimate understanding of each other’s daily existence. Fraternization took place in the homes of Jews and Christians during social gatherings, festivals, circumcisions or weddings as well as more casual interaction on the piazze, and in shops and taverns. Testimonies uncover a sophisticated network between the two communities, a series of relationships that tied the Christian to the Jew and vice versa, where ecclesiastically forbidden contact was seen as necessary and therefore, in practice, accepted. This interaction had its own rules, regulations and norms. Christian witnesses were able and willing to testify before the Inquisition on behalf of Jewish suspects. Others were able to produce testimony of the Jews’ daily existence and routine. The close social proximity of the two confirms the belief that it was easy for wavering Jews to attach themselves to Christians, should they choose to be lulled into an alternative existence when Jewish life was too stifling or unrewarding. Sometimes young Jewish women would try through their contacts with Christian neighbours to attach themselves to young Christian men, yet these relationships often remained artificial since the Christian ‘admirers’ frequently meant nothing to them personally but played a fundamental role in facilitating their escape. What this might suggest is a deep understanding between Jew and Christian of their relevant roles and of the needs of each to fulfil them for the other in society. What existed then was a viable underground subculture – a culture that was defined by a broad range of distinctive individual behaviour, a culture that went beyond explicitly Jewish Christian ritual, practice and thought, and not coincidentally a culture that played a role in bringing Jews and Christians together and in keeping them apart. The entrance of the Jews into the Christian world and the Christians into the Jewish world was something desired by both parties as long as it was through the back door, remained marginal, and they both returned to their own worlds after the interaction had been completed. Moreover, the frequency of proceedings against professing Jews fell sharply after the establishment of the ghetto in December 1638. From 1639 to the abolition of the Inquisition in 1785, there were only 207 processi against Jews, an average of 1.4 trials per year. Although one can argue that this fits in general with the drop in intensity of trial proceedings after 1640 as historians have argued, it is hardly a coincidence that the number of proceedings against Jews decreased Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 244 JEWS ON TRIAL after their enclosure in the ghetto. In 1639 and 1640 there were twelve and nine trials respectively against professing Jews for blasphemy, possessing prohibited books and the hiring of Christian servants, but the number did not rise to such levels again until 1733 and 1734, when in both years there were nine proceedings against Jews for similar offences, as well as a few cases of fraternization, and sexual relations with Christians.10 The sociological changes and restrictions brought about by ghettoization as well as the increasing marginal role played by the Inquisition in Jewish life accounted for the drop in proceedings after 1640. In her work on Florence, Stefanie Siegmund argues that enclosure brought a communal consciousness among Jews that had not existed previously, where Jews had not only lived in towns and villages throughout Tuscany, as they did in Modena, but had been scattered among Christians with whom they shared intense daily contact. Ghettoization brought about an abrupt change from loosely associated Jewish households to a tightly institutionalized religious community.11 Confraternities which furthered the Jews’ separation from neighbouring Christians were established quickly after 1638 in response to the demographic, social, economic and political needs that accompanied enclosure. Although, as noted above, the establishment of the massari (lay leaders) of the community had already occurred in 1618, this group of leaders were soon supported by a governing class and economic elite keen to ensure the future of the community and to increase and strengthen the social and religious bonds between Jews. In essence the Jews had established a physical and spatial community, similar to that of the Christian parishes that defined all other areas of the city capital and its adjoining towns and rural areas.12 Although the ghetto did not interrupt all Jewish–Christian contact (since Christians entered by day to have clothing repaired or to buy second-hand goods), this type of contact became anything but spontaneous. The interaction with Christians that had once been the norm now became irregular. As can be suggested by the small number of trials of Jews living in the Venetian ghetto as well as the drop in appearances of Modenese Jews in Inquisitorial dossiers after 1640, the ghetto walls might well have ensured a world of silence. After ghettoization, Inquisitors concentrated on the issuing of appropriate licences for Jews, especially regarding their use of domestic servants, and also began to implement the Papal policy of conversion through restriction. When in September 1667, an Inquisitorial edict, ‘Editto del Sant’ Ufficio in ordine à gli hebrei’, was promulgated in Ferrara by Inquisitor Giacinto Maria Granara de Genoa, it set a standard fine of 100 scudi for all offences originally mentioned in Antiqua, although the amount could be raised depending on the severity of the misdeed.13 The most important change, however, was an additional clause which addressed potential Jewish converts. Those interested in conversion were told to appear before the tribunal, where they would be offered not only physical security Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access CONCLUSION 245 but financial assistance and spiritual sanctuary. This new course of Inquisitorial action indicates that the papacy had moved beyond rules stipulated by Antiqua that saw Jews as a doctrinal challenge, an immediate social danger, a rival system of devotional acts and an inferior culture, whose adherents’ continuous contact with the dominant Christian society had to be isolated, to a particular policy of encouraging conversion to strengthen and revitalize Catholicism at a time when the growth of rationalism and freedom of conscience threatened the disintegration of the Roman Church.14 By the middle of the eighteenth century, the emergence of modern theories of tolerance and democratic plurality could no longer tolerate the maintenance of ecclesiastical courts, which saw the breach of ecclesiastical regulations as offences punishable by the church. The abolition of the Inquisition in Modena in 1785 was preceded in 1758 by the appointment by Duke Francesco III (1737– 80) of a secular magistrate of the Inquisitorial court, charged with ensuring that Inquisitorial prosecution firmly respected sovereign law.15 In 1772 the magistracy was enlarged to include a specific committee, entitled to take over the jurisdiction of all criminal proceedings being prosecuted by the ecclesiastical tribunals. When Duke Ercole III (1780–96) came to abolish the Holy Office in Modena on 6 September 1785 – the day that Giuseppe Maria Orlandi, the last Inquisitor General of Modena and Reggio, died – his execution of this act came with little justification. It seems that he had merely been waiting, out of gentlemanly cordiality, for the death of the Inquisitor to abolish the Holy Office in his capital, thereby finally following the pattern that had already occurred in other states in Italy. Inquisitorial jurisdiction was transferred to the bishop, while the rich archive of Holy Office proceedings and correspondence was passed to the Duke as a temporary provision, which in the end became permanent. Although measuring the efficacy of the Papal Inquisition throughout the Italian peninsula for different types of offences is still in progress, it has been suggested that specialized and micro-historical studies of proceedings help to clarify how effective the Inquisition was, not only in setting moral and religious regulations, but also in monitoring those who allegedly transgressed these regulations. It also enables us to surmise, perhaps as a last thought, that the Papal Inquisition might well have had a moderating effect on the persecution of Jews in Italy in the early modern period. Notes 1 Del Col, L’Inquisizione. 2 See Caffiero, Battesimi forzati. See also the ‘Editto sopra gli ebrei’, of Rome, 17 Jan 1793, hanging on the wall of the CAHJP in Jerusalem. This Inquisitorial edict demanded that Jews remain in their ghetto, particularly at night, and not sojourn in places outside, wear the distinguishing badge and have little contact with Christians. 3 This was mentioned by Bernard Cooperman during his lecture ‘The Formation of Community by Conversos and Sefardic Jews in Tuscany from the Middle of the 16th Century’, in the conference titled Expulsion and Forcible Exile Conversion: Their Aftermath in the Life of the Sefardi Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 246 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 JEWS ON TRIAL Refugees and their Children at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in January, 2009. In the various archives in Modena, there are few trials of Jews who were summoned before criminal or civil courts. See ASMo Camera Ducale – Maleficio. Libri dei Malefici, delle condanne, dei Ribelli (atti giudiziari) filza 1307–1721. I found two proceedings against practising Jews, Vita di Vita, fined 100 scudi in 1613, and Lià Raberi, fined 60 scudi in July 1619. Otto Ulbricht, ‘Criminality and Punishment of the Jews in the Early Modern Period’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press: 2002), pp. 49–70. See Eric Zafran, ‘Review of Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau, A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History (Warburg Institute Surveys, V)’, The Art Bulletin 58/1 (March, 1976), 123–4. See also Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self Government in the Middle Ages (New York: Feldheim, 1964), pp. 314–15 and Kisch, ‘The Jewry-Law’, p. 144. Boes, ‘Jews’. Ibid., p. 430. Del Col, L’Inquisizione, p. 734. Ulbricht, ‘Criminality’, p. 53. See Trenti, I Processi; and Carla Righi, ‘L’inquisizione ecclesiastica a Modena nel ’700’, in Albano Biondi (ed.), Formazione e controllo dell’opinione pubblica a Modena nel ’700 (Modena: Mucchi, 1986), pp. 51–95. Biondi notes too a significant decline in the number of charges from the 1750s, in the last twenty years of Inquisitorial activity (1766–85). During these years there were only seven registered proceedings. Siegmund, The Medici State, p. 405. Ibid., 411. ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. VII. See also the edict issued in Bologna on 6 June 1733, signed by Father de Andujar, the Dominican Inquisitor of Bologna, which listed dozens of restrictions on Jews, including a ban on hiring either male or female servants. Ariella Lang, ‘The Politics of Conversion: Jews and Inquisition Law in Nineteenth-century Italy’, in Wendehorst, Roman Inquisition, pp. 215–34, p. 221. Al Kalak, La Città, p. 136. Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Bibliography Manuscript sources Archivio di Stato di Modena, ASMo Fondo dell’Inquisizione Carteggio 1329–1601 Processi 1598–99 Processi 1600 Processi 1601 Processi 1602 Processi 1603 Processi 1604 Processi 1605 Processi 1606 Processi 1607 Processi 1608 Processi 1608–09 Processi 1610 Processi 1611 Processi 1612 Processi 1613–15 Processi 1615–16 Processi 1617–18 Processi 1619 Processi 1620 Processi 1621 Processi 1622 Processi 1623 Processi 1624 Processi 1625 Processi 1626 busta 1 busta 10 buste 11, 12, 13, 14 buste 15, 16, 17 buste 18, 19, 20, 21 buste 22, 23 buste 24, 25 busta 26 buste 27, 28 buste 29, 30, 31 buste 32, 33 buste 34, 35, 36 buste 37, 38 buste 39, 40 buste 41, 42 buste 43, 44 buste 45, 46 buste 47, 48 buste 49, 50, 51, 52 buste 53, 54 buste 55, 56, 57, 58 buste 59, 60, 61, 62 buste 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68 buste 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 buste 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 buste 81, 82 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY Processi 1627 buste 83, 84, 85 Processi 1628 buste 86, 87 Processi 1629–30 buste 88, 89, 90 Processi 1631 buste 91, 92 Processi 1632–33 buste 93, 94, 95 Processi 1644 busta 113 Causae Hebreorum 1599–1632 buste 244, 245 Causae Hebreorum 1633–59 buste 246, 247, 248 Causae Hebreorum 1660–70 buste 249, 250 Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1568–1608 Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1609–21 Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1621–28 Modena: Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma 1629–38 Carteggio con la Congregazione del S. Uffizio di Roma Editti e Decreti 1550–1670 Stato della Congregazione del S. Uffizio Regolamenti – Carteggi – Decisioni cause 1557–1766 Patentati 1600–1785 Privilegi ed altri doc. in pergamena 1275–1763 Libri di Spesa (Libro della fabbrica del S. Uffizio di Modena) Libri di Spesa (Diversi registri posti) Carteggi diversi 1600–1761 Lettere ed Atti Inquisitoriali 1589–1789 Invoglio di varie cause riunite 1611–1629 Miscellanea 1326–1599 Miscellanea 1600–09 Miscellanea 1620–40 Miscellanea 1640–99 busta 251 busta 252 busta 253 busta 254 busta 256 busta 270 buste 277, 278 buste 279, 280 busta 281 buste 282, 283 buste 284, 285 buste 286, 287, 288 buste 289, 290 buste 291, 292 busta 293 busta 294 busta 295 buste 296, 297 Camera segreta, Libri Decretorum et Privilegiorum, 1550–1630 Camera Ducale – Maleficio, Libri dei Malefici delle Condanne, dei Ribelli (atti giudiziari) filza, 1307–1721. Vachette, 1625 Atti della comunità Vachette, 1626 Atti della comunità Vachette raccoglie le decisioni collegiali dei Sapientes poi Conservatori della comunità. 362 registers, 1412–1796. Registri delle deliberazioni consiliari del Comune di Modena dal XIV al XVIII secolo, Libro Registro dei Decreti, filza VI Archivio per Materie, Banchi e banchieri Archivio per Materie, Ebrei, Archivio per Materie, Arti e mestieri, Stampe e stampatori Archivio per Materie, Arti e mestieri, busta 192 busta 193 buste 1A, IB, 2A, 2B buste 1–19 buste 23B, 36 buste 28/b, 34/b Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 Archivio del Magistrato, Giunta Suprema di Giurisdizione Sovrana Giurisdizione Sovrana, Opere Pie dei Catecumeni Modena Giurisdizione Sovrana, Opere Pie dei Neofiti e dei Catecumeni di Modena e di Reggio (con un fascicolo sugli ebrei) 1491–1796 Giurisdizione Sovrana, Nomine ai vescovi di Modena busta 139 busta 140 busta 260 Archivio Storico Comunale di Modena, ASCM Camera Segreta, Recapiti dell’Arte de’ Orefici sec. XVI–XVIII Memoriali del Consiglio dei Conservatori, Gridario 1566–1760 Memoriali del Consiglio dei Conservatori, Ex Actis Vacchette, Filze 1598–1638 Archivio della Comunità ebraica di Modena, ACEMo 2.4 Atti Giudiziali e privati davanti diversi tribunali 1642–1778 2.4 Bolle e brevi di diversi pontefici, 1429–1773 2.16 Ghetto. Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante il medesimo ed il jus di cazacà 1627–1794 2.19 Ghetto. Destinazione del recinto a tal uso e tutt’altro riguardante la stessa (1627– 1794) 2.21 Istromenti e testamenti (1485, 1606–1783) 2.50 Miscellanee (1413–1780) 2.52 Neofiti: Recapiti riguardanti i medesimi 1570–1727 2.55 Note delle elemosine settimanali, regalie di Purim ed Azime dispensate dalla nostra Università a poveri (1660–1791) 2.56 Polizie ed Ordini di diversi tribunali, suprema, ministeri, Giudizi dall’ anno 1685 2.58 Privilegi concessi da Serenissimi nostri sovrani alla nazione 1559, 1652–1780 2.59 Privilegi di diversi Sovrani esteri concessi alla nazione 1553–1789 2.70 Sentenze e decreti di diversi tribunali, giudici ed altri 1631–1789 2.72 Tasse, costituzione ossiano regole per i pagamenti de singoli alla cassella della nostra Università (1636–1755) 2.73 Tasse, costituzione ossiano regole di diverse Università estere per i pagamenti de loro singoli (1568–1736) 2.74 Tasse ossiano riparti delle spese pubbliche quotizzate ai singoli (1631–1741) Archivio di Stato di Venezia Senato, terra, filza 368 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem ASE archivi per Materie ‘ebrei’, Processi I–LXXXIII 1600–1629 pezzi n. 83, R8/I–4a, RHM 8/1–4 (Modena, Ebrei) and R8/I-4 busta 4 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary sources Almbladh, Kann (ed.), Joseph Ha-Kohen Sefer Emeq Ha-Bakha (The Vale of Tears) with the Chronicle of the Anonymous Corrector (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1981). 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Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access Index abjuration 38, 80n.80 abolition (of Inquisition) 7, 34, 243, 245 Abraamo, Abramino de 131–3, 223 Abramino, trial of 139–46 absolution 8, 31, 48n.114, 58, 106, 222 Al dispetto di Dio 134, 135, 136, 138 Aldobrandini, Pietro, Cardinal 18 Alexandri, Giovanna de 169–70, 173, 175, 177, 179 Antiqua Iudaeorum improbitas 34, 40, 53, 55, 56, 57, 90, 128, 163, 185n.40, 220, 244, 245 apostasy 20, 33, 35, 37, 39, 52, 87 aquavite 21, 43n.30, 53, 112 Aquinas, Thomas 7, 38, 153n.14 arbitration 8, 139, 156n.87 archbishops 25, 49n.141, 89 Arezzio, Josef 109, 110, 117n.46 arrests 34, 37, 52, 60, 67, 75, 79n.50, 98, 109, 137, 142, 146, 151, 157n.115, 167, 195, 198, 230 Ashkenazi Jews 20, 21, 118n.64, 141, 155n.54 astrology 4, 27, 56, 68, 70, 118n.62 Badge (Jewish) 22, 36, 245n.2 balconies 10, 171, 172, 182, 183, 185n.47, 186n.54 banishment see exile bankers, 8, 10, 11, 14n.37, 21, 23, 24, 52, 73, 93, 98, 99, 106, 107, 109, 110–12 138, 163, 164, 167, 168, 181, 182, 191, 192, 197, 199, 212, 219, 223, 229, 230, 231 banking 20, 21, 22, 48n.132, 72, 212n.9, 230 baptism 3, 40, 55, 76, 107, 128, 138, 143, 144, 148, 172, 173, 175, 180, 182, 187n.67, 213n.32, 243 dissuasion of 4, 10, 40, 56, 75, 138, 163 forced 3 Barozzi, Antonia (wife of Hippolito) 169, 170, 172, 173, 175–9, 180 Barozzi, Hippolito 131, 132, 141, 156n.102 Bassio, Alberto de 169, 171, 172, 175, 176, 177, 185n.50 Benedict XIV, Pope 240 Bentivoli, Giacintho de (a neophyte) 135, 139, 140, 146–50 Bertacchi, Bishop Pellegrino 31 Bianchi, Tommasino di (Lancelloti) 78n.24 bishops (in Modena) 25, 30–1, 53, 64, 68, 69, 82n.107, 92, 112, 165, 245 bishop’s court, see episcopal court blasphemy 9, 17, 18, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36, 55, 56, 69, 80n.68, 81n.87, 125–60, 194, 204, 211, 223, 230, 241, 244 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INDEX of Christ and the Virgin 40, 53, 69, 82n.122, 125–39 heretical 9, 28, 33, 125–32 Bocelli, Faustino 224–7, 235n.45, n.48, n.50, 236n.54 Bologna 19, 42n.21, 96 Inquisition in 11, 28, 30, 52, 75, 147 Bonai, Caterina de 196, 198, 205 Boniface VIII, Pope 37, 79n.61 books, censored 68 expurgations 68–73 prohibited 2, 4, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 40, 50n.160, 51, 53, 54, 56, 68–73, 139, 148, 183n.3, 189n.97, 244 Borghese, Cardinal Camillo 193, 201, 213n.21 Borra, Inquisitor General Serafino 28 Brissio, Inquisitor General Angelo 27, 32, 71 Calbetti, Inquisitor General Archangelo di Recanati 28, 29, 33, 46n.78, 63, 71, 82n.125, 97, 102, 129, 132, 134–5, 136, 144, 146, 154n.33, 168, 185n.40, 193, 199, 201 cano renegado (renegade dog) see Meshumad Cano canon law 7, 36, 39, 40, 44n.52, 45n.66, 55, 57, 62–3, 78n.33, 87, 90, 97, 193, 212n.12, 224, 228 lawyers 25, 27, 223 Capriani, Genesio 196, 205, 214n.48 captiosi 224–5, 235n.37 Capuchins 19, 23, 71, 146–7, 149, 150, 214n.34 cardinal secretary 26 cardinals 26, 30, 106, 127n.187, 193 college of 201 carnival 11, 23, 150, 202, 222, 228, 229 Carpi 11, 18, 27, 29, 42n.15, 76, 107, 113, 165, 166 Carpi, Simone da 198, 199, 201, 208, 209 271 Casa dei Catecumeni see Catecumeni Castelfranco 11, 27 Castelfranco, Moisè de 108 Catchigia 138, 139, 140–51 Catecumeni, Pia Casa de (house of converts) 23, 41n.8, 148, 160n.160, 167, 168, 182 cemetery (Jewish) 19, 41n.13, 113, 124n.188 Centro, Julia Maola de 96, 118n.65 ceremonies (Christian) 10, 54, 55, 56, 57, 129, 202, 217n.116, 220 charivari 204, 216n.96 charlatans (mountebanks) 201, 210–11 Christiani, Juliana de 98, 99, 101 churches 18, 19, 21, 29, 31, 55, 64, 65, 66, 72, 83n.126, 106, 109, 129, 148, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 200–2, 204–8, 210 San Giovanni Battista church 191, 193, 206–8, 212n.3 circumcision 42n.19, 53, 55, 243 Clement VII, Pope 96, 163 Clement VIII, Pope 17–18, 27, 32, 68, 201, 213n.24 Clement XII, Pope 240 Codebò, Andrea 24, 222, 226, 235n.50, 236n. 53 Collaris, Abraamo de 74, 149, 159n.156 Collaris, Joseph de 74 Collorni, Abramo 75 Comari, Cesare de 198, 201, 205, 208, 209 commedia dell’arte 195, 210 communion 31, 58, 60, 89, 118n.65 condotte 20, 90, 115n.17 confession 31, 48n.116, 59–63, 65, 75, 136, 137 confessors 31, 58, 60, 242 confiscation of heretical books 12n.8, 36, 68 of property 23, 79n.50 confraternities 20, 83n.148, 119n.75 consanguineous marriages 181, 190n. 117 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 272 INDEX consultori (of the Inquisition) 29, 62, 64 170, 201, 227 conversionary sermons 24, 44n.55, 168 conversos 1, 3, 20, 25, 39 Correggio 11, 18, 42n.15 Correggio, Camillo de 70, 82n.115, 75, 138 Correggio, Ciro Jaghel de 70, 82n.115 Cosatti, Paulo 197, 205 crucifixes, attacks upon 59 Cum hebraeorum malitia 50n.160, 68 Cum nimis absurdum 22, 23, 39, 56, 89, 101, 194, 235n.47 Cupientes iudaeos 188n.69 cursing see profane swearing delations (denunciations) 11n.3, 25, 30, 53, 56, 58–60, 70, 71, 76, 77n.17, 78n.46, 96, 107, 108, 129, 131, 132, 134, 138, 139, 141, 144, 146, 147, 148, 151, 154, 164, 166, 168, 193, 230, 237n.78, 241–2 delators 5–6, 8, 14n.30, 25, 30, 53, 56n.a, 57, 58–62, 69, 70, 71, 77n.17, 78n.41, 107, 108, 129, 131, 134, 137–41, 146–8, 150– 1, 164, 165, 166, 219, 220, 221, 222, 229, 230, 233, 241–3 demons, sacrificing to 40 denunciations see delations devil 40, 157n.115, 176, 178 devil worship 40 diabolism 40, 71 Diena, Davide 73, 74, 164, 238n.94 Dio Poltrone 134–6, 154n.50 divination 4, 27, 56, 68, 222 Dominican friars 25, 30, 32 Donati, Donato 166 Donato, Jacobo 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104 Donato, Matthias 40, 43n.30 and 31, 59 Donato, Stella (wife of Jacobo) 98, 99, 101, 104 dowries 48n.132, 106, 145, 166, 167, 174, 179–80, 182, 188n.69, 189n.100 ducal courts (secular courts) 7, 32, 33, 113 126, 226, 227, 240 constables (officers) 60, 79n.49 edicts 54, 91, 106, 126 Ducale Camerale 34, 83n.148 Easter 10, 58, 89, 90, 92, 97, 103, 116n.33, 191–3, 195, 199, 201, 203, 211, 214n.34, 215n.63 edicts (Inquisitorial) 31, 40, 54–5, 59, 72, 128–9, 183n.3, 244, 245n.2 Elnatan, Benjamin Ben 6, 75, 79n.56 Emilio, Dr. Paulo 168, 169, 175, 178 episcopal courts 24, 30, 54, 93, 116n.38 and n.39, 106, 113, 156n.88 vicars 93,178 Esecutori contro la Bestemmia 51 Este, Alessandro d’ (Cardinal) 18–19 Este, Alfonso d’ II, Duke of Modena 22, 91 Este, Alfonso d’ III, Duke of Modena 19 Este, Cesare d’, Duke of Modena 17, 18–19, 20, 23, 27, 32, 33, 54, 91, 107, 126, 192 Este, Ercole d’ II, Duke of Modena 20, 22 Este, Ercole d’ III, Duke of Modena 7, 245 Este, Francesco d’ I, Duke of Modena, 19, 23, 42n.17, 92, 167 Este, Francesco d’ III, Duke of Modena 245 Ester, daughter of Abramino 138, 139–46 Etsi iudaeos 36, 88 Eucharist see communion ex officio 25, 164, 183n.10, 185n.40, 242 excommunication 80, 50n.156, 74, 89, 97 exile (banishment) 35, 65, 67, 71, 122n.144, 127, 129, 241 exorcizing 53 expulsions of Jews 19, 23, 40 from Bologna 42n.21, 52–3 from Portugal 20 from Spain 20 Eymeric, Nicolau 7, 38, 224 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INDEX Faenza, treaty of 18 famigliari (of the Inquisition) 29, 47n.94, 53, 131, 141, 241, 242 Faustina, a Christian wetnurse 169–70, 175–9 Felloni, Vincenzio 108, 219, 222, 224, 227, 230, 231, 232, 233n.3, 237n.78 Feltre, Bernardino da 43n.38 Ferrara 3, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27, 32, 48n.131, 53, 70, 112, 139, 141, 142, 144, 220 Inquisition in, 26, 28 Ferrara, Curzio Azzi di 33, 127 Ferrarino, Antonia 93, 94, 96, 99–104 festivals (Jewish) 10, 108, 192, 205, 212n.10, 220, 224, 236n.63, 243 Finale Emilia 4, 11, 42n.15, 27, 71, 72, 75, 107, 139, 149, 194, 220 synagogue of 74, 221 Finali, Nicholai de 57 fines 7–8, 52, 65–7, 97, 126, 129, 132, 163, 165, 202, 223, 240 Finzi, Ezechiele 80n.74, 247 Finzi, Raffaele 196, 199, 200, 201, 209 Florenzo, Bernardino de 196, 198, 205 Fogliano, Antonio 198, 205 Formiggini, family of 22, 84n.152, 179 Formiggini, Bellina 129, 133, 138, 144– 6, 148, 150–1 Formiggini, Pellegrino 84n.152 Formigine 11, 117n.46, 107, 110 Fornavelo, Cristoforo 219, 225–7, 229, 231 Foscarini, Bishop Egidio 47n.104 Franciscans 23, 25, 38, 39, 46n.77, 62, 155n.63, 202, 203, 223 fraternization with Christians 4, 21, 56, 244 galleys (penal) 35, 65, 81n.84, 66, 126, 127, 182 gambling 18, 133, 153n.10, 155n.51, 137 273 ghetto in Ferrara 53, 139 in Florence 96, 114n.4 in Modena 2, 11, 20–4, 92, 44n.47 and n.55, 108, 114, 124n.190, 139, 149, 160n.160, 164, 168, 243 in Rome 23, 45n.59, 52, 105–6, 167, 245n.2 in Venice 21, 51, 53, 148, 182, 211, 223, 229, 244 ghettoization 7, 12n.6, 21, 39–40, 54, 105, 114, 171, 239, 244 Giudice di Savii 91 Giudici del Maleficio 32, 34, 54, 127, 132, 222 Giudici Ordinarii 34, 54 granaries 197, 199, 200, 201, 205, 208, 211 Grassetti, Don Nicolai 222, 227 gravediggers 56 Gregory X, Pope 36 Gregory XIII, Pope 24, 34, 35, 40, 68, 90, 118n.67, 163, 168, 184n.40 Guazzoni, Inquisitor General Massimo 28, 138, 192 Gui, Bernard 37–8, 153n.25 guilds 20, 22, 23, 34, 44n.47 Hanina, Rabbi Yishmael 6, 75, 147, 159n.147 heresy 3, 6, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 46n.74, 52, 72, 149, 179, 220 heretics 1, 17, 22, 26, 37, 52, 54, 55, 68, 69, 79n.50, 127, 128, 222, 239 sheltering of 40 Holy Week 10–11, 116n.33, 119n.67, 192, 198, 199, 204, 208–9, 214n.36, 215n.63 and n.65, 217n.116, 222, 226, 229, 230, 233, 235n.45 house arrests 67, 109 Images, desecration of Christian 7, 56, 59, 75 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 274 INDEX Imprisonment, see also prisons 37, 58, 67, 71, 75, 81n.86, 98, 108, 109, 116n.36, 123n.153, 129, 139, 147, 195, 223, 232, 237n.73 infidels 1, 7, 17, 37, 39, 40, 54, 55, 128 ingiuria 125, 139, 140 Innocent III, Pope 36, 88 Innocent IV, Pope 36, 80n.63 Inquisitors General 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 40, 46n.76 and 78, 54, 55, 57, 62, 63, 70, 71, 72, 82n.121, 92, 97, 98, 102, 132, 136, 137, 138, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153n.15, 154n.43, 168, 185n.40, 193, 213n.24, 219, 221, 225, 227, 233, 245 Jesuits 18, 21, 71 judaizing 2, 3, 4, 6, 12n.8, 25, 26, 53, 77n.6, 107, 182, 229, 238n.94 Judeneid 49n.142, 241 Judensau 49n.142 Julius III, Pope 35, 68 Laderchi, Giovan Battista 18, 33, 74, 75, 193 legal counsel 10, 25, 62–3, 132, 170, 222–5, 228, 233, 234n.23 lending, see pawnbroking Lent 10, 31, 58, 92, 93, 94, 97, 102, 104, 116n.33, 117n.43, 210, 211, 222, 229, 230, 238n.94 Lerri, Inquisitor General Michelangelo 28, 33, 55, 57, 66, 127, 147, 193, 194 Levi, Benedetto 115n.23, 116n.35, 109, 110, 166 licences 4, 54, 56, 71, 73, 79n.49, 88, 90–4, 96, 97, 98, 104, 107–9, 112, 114, 131, 173, 187n.67, 193–4, 223, 224, 234n.33, 244 Licet ab initio 7, 26, 39, 239 Livorno 4, 42n.17, 51, 90, 96 Lucca 18, 26, 32, 126 Ludignani, Sebastiano de 169, 173, 175, 176, 177–8 Lutheranism 26, 30, 52, 68 Maconai, Vitalis 131–2 Madonna of Reggio 169, 173, 175, 176–7 Magistrati delle Artii 34 malefic magic 3, 4, 6, 27, 28, 31, 32, 37, 38, 56, 144, 239 Manfredino, Domenico 131–2 Mantua 19, 23, 26, 72, 107, 145, 192, 200, 202–4 Inquisition in Mantua 28, 70 manuals 28, 37–40, 50n.158 and n.161, 52, 55, 57, 62, 66, 69, 75, 78n.28 and 127, 233, 234n.33 markets 19, 21, 172 Martin IV, Pope 36 Martin V, Pope 89 Masini, Eliseo 57 massari 24, 70, 73, 74, 114, 124n.190, 144, 244 medieval Inquisition 24–5, 26, 38–9 Melli, Giuseppe 75, 149, 221 Mendicant friars see Franciscans and Dominicans Menopi, Giovanna di 98–100, 104 merchants 21, 96, 99, 158n.128, 181, 227 Meshumad (renegade) 139–43, 146–8, 150 Meshumad cano (renegade dog) 129, 139, 148, 157n.155 Milan, duchy of 19, 10, 215n.63 Inquisition in 28 Millino, Cardinal 71, 72, 82n.121, 92 Mirandola 11, 18, 116n.40 Mirandola, Ludovico 163–4, 168–83 Modena, family of 22, 230 synagogue of 42n.23, 230 Modena, Rabbi Aaron de (son of Moisè) 70, 235n.45 Modena, Elia Melachim 74 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INDEX Modena, Isaaco de 94, 96, 99, 101, 102 Modena, Rabbi Leone de 230 Modena, Mariana (wife of Moisè de) 229–30 Modena, Michele 70, 73 Modena, Moisè de 10, 74, 219–33 Modena, Rabbi Salomon de 70, 225 Modena, Simone de (son of Moisè) 224, 225, 226, 232 Modena, Virgino de 57 Monte, Anna del 167 Monte di Pietà 21, 231 Montefalcone, Inquisitor General Giovanni de 27, 29, 54, 71 Morone, Bishop Giovanni Gerolamo 30 Naples, duchy of 19, 26, 52 neophytes 3, 4, 8, 11n.3, 40, 56, 58, 68– 73, 75, 76, 82n.107, 125, 129, 131, 135, 138, 139, 140, 146– 51, 164, 167, 174, 220–1, 242 as correctors of books 68–73 threatening of 56, 148 New Christians see conversos Nonantola 11, 27, 29, 83n.148, 92, 107 Norsa, Cesare de 76, 166, 175, 196, 198– 201, 205, 208, 209, 212n.10 Norsa, Davide de 191–212 Norsa, family of 22, 192 synagogue of see Soliera synagogue Norsa, Laura de 76, 166 Norsa, Sannucisa de 198 Norsa, Stella de 197, 217n.107 notaries, Inquisitorial 5, 6, 8, 30, 57, 58, 135, 143, 147, 170, 185n.40, 198 secular court 6, 35 Novato, Inquisitor General Tommaso 28, 92 Novi, Francesco Maria (a neophyte) 164 officers (of the Inquisition) 29, 30, 58, 79n.49, 108 Opera Calori 148, 187n.67 275 Opera Pia del Neofiti 167 OperaVenosa 148, 187n.67 Opere Pie dei Catecumeni see Casa dei Catecumeni Orsi, Moise 108 Orsi, Ventura 108, 109 Panini, Giovanni Battista 193, 195–6, 198, 205, 209 Papal states 18, 20, 52 parish priests 29, 31, 58, 59, 60 Parma, Inquisition in 28 Pasiglio, Abraam 43n.33 Pasillo, Abramo133, 138, 157n.121 Passelli, Laudomia (wife of Abraham) 129, 157n.115 Passion, mocking of 191, 194, 196, 201, 202, 209, 216n.91 Passover 10, 116n.40, 191, 192, 195, 196–201, 208, 209, 211 Paul III, Pope 25, 34, 35, 188n.69 Paul IV, Pope 22, 30, 31, 39, 68, 89 Pavarotti, Margherita de 94, 98, 99, 101 pawnbroking (lending) 20, 21, 23, 55, 160n.161, 243 Peña, Francesco 38 physicians 21, 70 piazze 9, 19, 21, 65, 75, 129, 132, 133, 140, 171–2, 175, 210–11, 220, 243 Pignatelli, Giacomo 128 Pingolo 191, 197, 200, 205, 211, 212n.1 Pisa 51, 58 Pius IV, Pope 68 Pius V, Pope 42n.21, 127 Pius VI, Pope 240 plague 19, 23, 44n.50, 57, 112, 113, 219 podestà 76, 116n.36, 127, 196, 209, 217n.114, 219, 222–3, 227, 231–2 poena extraordinaria 202 constables of 10, 60, 219, 222, 224, 225, 227, 230–3, 236n.51 Poggetti, Leone 21, 70, 93, 98, 99, 104 Pomis, Elias de 37, 38 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 276 INDEX Portugal, Inquisition in 2, 20, 26, 39 Poveri synagogue 131, 153 prayer, disturbance of Christian 4 precetto 222, 226, 236n.52 prisons, ducal 74 Inquisitorial 6, 30, 37, 52, 65, 66, 67, 75, 97, 136, 165, 220, 224 processions 19, 64, 119n.75, 211 profane swearing (cursing) 9, 62, 125–60 proselytizing 10, 38, 40, 53, 56 prostitutes, Christian 21, 33, 43n.32, 79n.48, 96 Jewish 8, 80n.68, 131, 138, 139–46 Protestantism 26, 27, 30, 239 public shamings 65, 67, 71, 72, 108, 112, 129, 137, 138, 164, 193 punishments 9, 34, 35, 52, 64, 112, 240 capital 65, 241 corporal 35, 55 Purim 10, 11, 219, 222–5, 227, 228–33 gifts/ tips 219, 223, 224, 230–2 il buon Purim 219, 224, 232 Puttana di Dio 129, 131, 132–6, 138 Puttana di Malachi 131–3, 154n.40 Rabbinic literature 121n.130, 157n.126 Rabbis 6, 14n.32, 54, 60, 70–1, 74, 75–6 105, 119n.88, 121n.130, 138, 139, 145, 147–8 157n.126, 159n.147, 164, 167, 220, 225, 230, 231 Reggio 1, 11n.3, 17, 18, 19, 42n.15, 27, 116n.40, 245 Reghezza, Inquisitor General Giovanni Vincenzo 28, 70, 72, 73, 82n.121, 92, 108, 109, 110, 112, 149, 193, 219–21, 225–7, 233 Renini, Giulio 197, 205, 214n.34 Renocchio Anna de 108 Resignari, Angelo 108, 109, 110 Ritual bath (mikveh or bagno) 177, 188n.92 Rome 3, 6, 20, 26, 42n.21, 47n.105, 51, 52, 64, 71, 72, 74, 75, 81n.86, 94, 103, 106, 168, 228, 231 Senatore 51 Tribunale criminale del Governatore 51 Rubbiano, Barbara 196–7, 200, 203–5 Sacerdote, Abraham de 78n.38, 88, 96–100, 104 Sacerdote, Abramino 134–9 Sacerdote, Gentile (wife of Abraham) de 104, 121n.121 Sacerdote, Rabbi Isaaco of Finale 74–5, 149 Sacerdote, Salomone 75, 98, 104 sacraments, abuse of 4, 27, 56 processions of 31 Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office 3, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 72, 92, 94, 106, 107, 124n.187, 127, 174, 193, 201, 208, 240 Saluzzo, Bartolomeo Campi da 23, 202–3 San Domenico monastery 27, 28–9, 46n.80, 60, 62, 64, 65, 72, 73, 109, 114n.4 San Felice 11, 27, 107 San Felice, Leone de 199, 200, 215n.68 and n.74 Sanguinetti, Alessandro of Spilamberto 74, 113 Sanguinetti, Calman de 88, 93, 96–104 Sanguinetti, Emanuele 98, 100 Sanguinetti, family of 19, 21, 22, 118n.64, 179,181 synagogue of 70, 118n.64, 138, 221 Sanguinetti, Flavia (wife of Calman de) 104–5 Sanguinetti, Isaaco 43n.33, 72, 76,144 Sanguinetti, Mariana 109 Sanguinetti, Michele 138–9, 155n.80, 164 Sanguinetti, Michello 156n.102, 163, 169, 170, 171, 180–2, 185n.44 Sanguinetti, Miriana 10, 163–83 Sanguinetti, Pellegrino 70, 72, 73, 74, 138 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access INDEX Sanguinetti, Samuel de 167 Sanguinetti, Samuele 74, 84n.152 Sanguinetti, Simone 75, 109, 138, 221 Sanguinetti, Simone of Spilamberto 74, 84n.152, 107, 111, 112, 138 Sanguinetti, Viviano 10, 84n.152, 163–83 Santorio 138, 140–51, 157n.121 Sassaiola (annual stoning) 192, 211 Sassuolo 11, 18 sbirri see ducal constables secular courts see ducal courts sentences (Inquisitorial) 7, 11n.3, 35, 37, 47n.107, 56, 58, 62, 64–6, 75, 94, 98, 108, 109, 123n.153, 124n.188, 129, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 152, 164, 165, 193, 195, 220, 222–3, 240–1 Sephardi Jews 42n.17, 90, 96, 155n.54 servants, Christian 4, 9, 22, 56, 59, 66, 74, 104–14, 148, 175, 178, 230, 243, 244 Contracts 22, 87, 88, 103–6, 110, 111, 118n.53, 121n.113, n.114, n.115, 178 Jewish 106, 114n.4, 201 male servants 91 sexual relations with Christians 4, 21, 53, 56, 79n.48, 80n.68, 82n.84, 103, 120n.110, 241, 244 shops 8, 9, 21, 24, 59, 91, 112, 125, 133, 165, 243 second-hand goods 21, 134, 244 Sicily 25, 77n.6 Inquisition in 60 Sicut judeis 36, 89 Silingardi, Bishop Gaspare 27, 30–1, 165 silk industry 18, 21, 124n.187, 230 Simancas, Jacopo 52 Sixtus V, Pope 68 Soliani, Giuseppe 109 Soliera 10, 11, 73, 107, 166, 191–3, 195–6, 198, 202–3, 206–8, 211, 219 synagogue 192–4, 196, 200, 202, 203, 277 204, 212n.4 and n.10, 213n.17, n.21, n.24, n.27, n.31, n.32, 214n.43 Sora, Gabriele 123n.170, 164 sorcery 3, 26, 31, 53, 55, 138 Spaccini, Giovan Battista 23, 28, 32, 138, 176 , 203 Spain, Inquisition in 2, 25, 39, 60 Spezzano 107, 194 Spezzano, Alessandro 109 spies 131, 137, 141, 151 Spilamberto 11, 18, 74, 107, 109, 111– 13, 138, 194 superstition 27, 28, 29, 55,126 Susannis, Marquardus de 39, 56n.c, 128 suspects 2, 5, 6, 8, 25, 29, 31, 33, 37, 46n.89, 52, 53, 57–64, 66, 70, 73, 75, 78n.36, 79n.50 and n.54, 97, 126–7, 129, 131–3, 135, 137–40, 144, 147, 149, 151, 155n.62, 164, 167, 171, 173, 179, 180, 189n.97, 192, 194, 198, 201, 208, 220, 222– 30, 233, 242–3 Synagogues 4, 42n.21, 52, 56, 70, 213n.17, 215n.63, 229 in Modena See also: synagogues under Finale, Modena, Poveri Sanguinetti and Soliera 21, 24, 40, 55, 59, 65, 72, 74, 111, 138, 143, 150, 221, 229, 230 Licenses to use 56, 78n.33, 192–4, 213n.24 Talmud 22, 36, 43n.38, 55, 69, 95 burning of 68 taverns 129, 133, 137, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150, 157n.122, 227, 243 taxation 42n.15 Teggio, Dottore Geminiaro 224 Tesu, Francesco de 70 Thodesca, Hester 139–46, 149, 150, 156n.114 Thodeschi, Angelo de 134–9, 144, 150, 154n.35, 155n.69, 165–6 Katherine Aron-Beller - 9781526151629 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 07/24/2020 05:56:27PM via free access 278 INDEX Thodeschi, Leone de 134–9, 155n.60 Tinti di Lodi, Inquisitor General Giacomo 28, 40, 59, 70, 71, 72–3, 92, 94, 98, 112, 113, 116n.40, 166, 213n.31, 220, 227 torture 6, 38, 53, 57, 63, 75, 109, 113, 135, 139, 147, 194, 199, 202, 209, 241 rack 64, 135, 136 room of 29 strappado (corda) 64, 198, 80n.73 Trabotti, Natanael 21, 70–1, 167 Trent, Council of 30, 39, 127 Tre Savii sopra Eresia 33 Tribunale Camerale 32 Tribunale dei Dodici Savi 34, 41n.13, 54 Turbato Corde 36, 56n.c, 163 Ufficiali al Cattaver 51 Università Israelitica 20, 24, 139, 157n.117, 230, 238n.94 Urban VIII, Pope 31 Usilio, Leone 79n.48 and 50, 80n.68 Usiglio, Salomone 70, 73 Venice 19, 20, 26, 33, 39, 43n.38, 51, 53, 58, 64, 69, 69, 107, 126, 127, 144, 146, 168, 187n.68, 230, 231 Inquisition in 12n.8, 53–4, 79n.56, 148, 211, 223 vicars (Inquisitorial) 29, 30, 53, 57, 59, 61, 64, 70, 78n.39, 81n.97, 97, 107, 116n.40, 140, 143, 144, 147, 170, 184n.40, 241 Vignola 11, 18, 96, 107, 165, 208 Vita, Abraam de 118n.62 and n.65 weddings (Jewish) 55, 113, 117n.43, 122n.44, 169, 171, 172, 174, 177–80, 186n.56, 188n.69, 221, 243 wetnurses, Christian 4, 9, 40, 56, 72, 87– 105, 177, 243 whipping 35, 65, 67, 129, 132, 133, 154n.44, 220, 222 witchcraft 2, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 43n.33, 46n.84, 55, 118n.65, 137, 239, 241 witnesses 5–6, 8, 11n.3, 37, 50n.156, 52, 57–63, 73, 76, 87, 103, 131–5, 137, 139, 140–3, 146–8, 150, 164–6, 168, 171, 174, 175–9, 183, 194–9, 202, 204, 205, 222–7, 229, 231, 242, 243 women 29, 30, 63, 67, 109, 110, 124n.190, 128, 129–30, 144, 156n.100, 166, 172, 173, 174, 185n.35, 180–2, 187n.67, 197, 211 Katherine Aron-Beller - 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