Jewish Life In Early Modern Rome

The essays in this second volume by Kenneth Stow explore the fate of Jews living in Rome, directly under the eye of the Pope. Most Roman Jews were not immigrants; some had been there before the time of Christ. Nor were they cultural strangers. They spoke (Roman) Italian, ate and dressed as did other Romans, and their marital practices reflected Roman noble usage. Rome's Jews were called cives, but unequal ones, and to resolve this anomaly, Paul IV closed them within ghetto walls in 1555; the rest of Europe would resolve this crux in the late eighteenth century, through civil Emancipation. In its essence, the ghetto was a limbo, from which only conversion, promoted through "disciplining" par excellence, offered an exit. Nonetheless, though increasingly impoverished, Rome's Jews preserved culture and reinforced family life, even many women's rights. A system of consensual arbitration enabled a modicum of self-governance. Yet Rome's Jews also came to realize that they had been expelled into the ghetto: nostro ghet, a document of divorce, as they called it. There they would remain, segregated, so long as they remained Jews. Such are the themes that the author examines in these essays.

A new investigation that shows how conversionary preaching to Jews was essential to the early modern Catholic Church and the Roman religious landscape Starting in the sixteenth century, Jews in Rome were forced, every Saturday, to attend a hostile sermon aimed at their conversion. Harshly policed, they were made to march en masse toward the sermon and sit through it, all the while scrutinized by local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts. In Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews, Emily Michelson demonstrates how this display was vital to the development of early modern Catholicism. Drawing from a trove of overlooked manuscripts, Michelson reconstructs the dynamics of weekly forced preaching in Rome. As the Catholic Church began to embark on worldwide missions, sermons to Jews offered a unique opportunity to define and defend its new triumphalist, global outlook. They became a point of prestige in Rome. The city’s most important organizations invested in maintaining these spectacles, and foreign tourists eagerly attended them. The title of “Preacher to the Jews” could make a man’s career. The presence of Christian spectators, Roman and foreign, was integral to these sermons, and preachers played to the gallery. Conversionary sermons also provided an intellectual veneer to mask ongoing anti-Jewish aggressions. In response, Jews mounted a campaign of resistance, using any means available. Examining the history and content of sermons to Jews over two and a half centuries, Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews argues that conversionary preaching to Jews played a fundamental role in forming early modern Catholic identity.

The essays in this second volume by Kenneth Stow explore the fate of Jews living in Rome, directly under the eye of the Pope. Most Roman Jews were not immigrants; some had been there before the time of Christ. Nor were they cultural strangers. They spoke (Roman) Italian, ate and dressed as did other Romans, and their marital practices reflected Roman noble usage. Rome's Jews were called cives, but unequal ones, and to resolve this anomaly, Paul IV closed them within ghetto walls in 1555; the rest of Europe would resolve this crux in the late eighteenth century, through civil Emancipation. In its essence, the ghetto was a limbo, from which only conversion, promoted through "disciplining" par excellence, offered an exit. Nonetheless, though increasingly impoverished, Rome's Jews preserved culture and reinforced family life, even many women's rights. A system of consensual arbitration enabled a modicum of self-governance. Yet Rome's Jews also came to realize that they had been expelled into the ghetto: nostro ghet, a document of divorce, as they called it. There they would remain, segregated, so long as they remained Jews. Such are the themes that the author examines in these essays.

An examination of groups and individuals in Rome who were not Roman Catholic, or not born so. It demonstrates how other religions had a lasting impact on early modern Catholic institutions in Rome.

The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology—and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews—certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books. Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in Christian-owned print shops, with Jews and Christians collaborating on the editorial and technical processes of book production. As this Jewish-Christian collaboration often took place under conditions of control by Christians (for example, the involvement of Christian typesetters and printers, expurgation and censorship of Hebrew texts, and state control of Hebrew printing), its study opens up an important set of questions about the role that Christians played in shaping Jewish culture. Presenting new research by an international group of scholars, this book represents a step toward a fuller understanding of Jewish book history. Individual essays focus on a range of issues related to the production and dissemination of Hebrew books as well as their audiences. Topics include the activities of scribes and printers, the creation of new types of literature and the transformation of canonical works in the era of print, the external and internal censorship of Hebrew books, and the reading interests of Jews. An introduction summarizes the state of scholarship in the field and offers an overview of the transition from manuscript to print in this period.

Challenging traditional historiographical approaches, this book offers a new history of Italian Jews in the early modern age. The fortunes of the Jewish communities of Italy in their various aspects – demographic, social, economic, cultural, and religious – can only be understood if these communities are integrated into the picture of a broader European, or better still, global system of Jewish communities and populations; and, that this history should be analyzed from within the dense web of relationships with the non-Jewish surroundings that enveloped the Italian communities. The book presents new approaches on such essential issues as ghettoization, antisemitism, the Inquisition, the history of conversion, and Jewish-Christian relations. It sheds light on the autonomous culture of the Jews in Italy, focusing on case studies of intellectual and cultural life using a micro-historical perspective. This book was first published in Italy in 2014 by one of the leading scholars on Italian Jewish history. This book will appeal to students and scholars alike studying and researching Jewish history, early modern Italy, early modern Jewish and Italian culture, and early modern society.

Jews in the Early Modern World presents a comparative and global history of the Jews for the early modern period, 1400-1700. It traces the remarkable demographic changes experienced by Jews around the globe and assesses the impact of those changes on Jewish communal and social structures, religious and cultural practices, and relations with non-Jews.

Winner of the 2011 Bainton Prize for Reference Works A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, is a unique multidisciplinary study offering innovative analyses of a wide range of topics. The 30 chapters critique past and recent scholarship and identify new avenues for research.