{"id":150,"date":"2017-05-27T10:23:19","date_gmt":"2017-05-27T09:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/?p=150"},"modified":"2017-06-18T19:56:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-18T18:56:15","slug":"jews-in-the-italian-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/2017\/05\/27\/jews-in-the-italian-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Jews on the Move"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent quincentenary of the foundation of Venetian ghetto\u00a0<\/span>has been marked by a number of conferences<\/a>\u00a0and other events<\/a>. The ghetto was initially populated by many Jews who had fled from Venice\u2019s mainland empire, where they had long been settled, as a result of the dislocation of the wars from 1509 onwards. In this respect, their experience of war was not dissimilar to that of other Venetian subjects caught in the path of war. <\/span>One Venetian chronicler observing this stream of refugees to the metropole at this time took the opportunity to evoke the Venetian foundation myth. They came to Venice, he wrote, like sons seeking the protection of their mother or chicks sheltering under the wings of their mother \u2013 just as in the time of Attila when this \u2018scourge of God\u2019 had persecuted Christians and they had fled the mainland for the lagoon and founded Venice.[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> The chronicler went on to describe how no humane person (\u2018persona humana\u2019) seeing such a mournful spectacle could not fail to provide shelter out of pity for such desperation. Some Venetians, he claimed, sheltered ten refugees, some twenty, some thirty, some forty, and many were placed in churches, hospitals and even in the newly-built but uninhabited warehouse-residence for the German community, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (now a flashy shopping centre<\/a>) by the Rialto bridge.<\/span><\/a><\/span>[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

However, the experience of mainland Jews did differ in some respects from that of their Christian neighbours. When Brescia passed from Venetian to French control in 1509 the Brescians marked the change in authority by pillaging Venetian property in the form of the Jews. This pillaging has been presented as a ritual event by the Bologna Seminar coordinated by Carlo Ginzburg, but the theft or destruction of Jewish stores of pledges and lists of debtors by Brescians and French troops in the mini-sack which accompanied their arrival in 1509 was also highly opportunistic. According to the Jews who reached Venice a few days later they had lost as much as thirty thousand ducats. King Louis XII conceded the Brescian request ‘pro veneratione Religionis Christiane’ to prohibit Jews from living in the city and from lending money in the surrounding district. However, subsequent attempts on the part of the council and the new royal government to trace the pledges lost in 1509, to reconstitute the list of debtors and even to extend some protection to the remaining Jews failed or were rejected and it seems as if the Jews gave up on Brescia and like many other Jews in the terraferma<\/i> moved permanently to Venice.<\/span><\/a><\/span>[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The suspicion that the Jews were intent on revenge and enrichment because of such experiences helps to explain the anti-Jewish theme which ran through the vivid account of the bloody sack of Brescia in 1512 written by Marco Negro. He calls the French the ‘enemies of God and of humanity, bloodsuckers, and people without laws or faith, not worthy of being called Christian.’ It was reported that Jews stole some of the funds of the monte di piet\u00e0<\/i> and that this money ended up in the hands of some Milanese Jews together with the communal archive. Negro went much further than this and in an echo of the blood libel (that Jews killed Christian children and consumed their blood) he described a massacre in the Brescian duomo with Jews filled with lust for Christian blood among the French attackers. Negro alleged that the French commander Gaston de Foix himself led Jews in cruel raids on regular clergy and friars and looted holy objects. The king of France was characterized by Negro as the ‘most greedy, cruel and unjust supporter of thieves, libertines and Jews.’<\/a><\/span>[4]\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As might be expected the entry of troops into Italian towns during the Italian Wars was often characterised by violence and the looting of Jewish property. A chronicler in Modena recorded the sacking of some Jews by the Swiss in Rome in January 1495.[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> In anticipation of regime change with the approach of the French the Neapolitans sacked very rich Jews in the city who had fled there from persecution in Spain. Even those who escaped from the Jewish quarter to the safety of the castle were sacked.[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> The local chronicler Giuliano Passero estimated the sack to amount to two thousand ducats.[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> The news from Naples passed on to Ludovico Sforza in Milan in February 1495 included a note to the effect that the Jews and \u2018Maranni\u2019 (crypto-Jews) had been pillaged and that while the latter had been saved in ships the Jews had been \u2018cut to pieces\u2019.[8]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> From Bari it was reported a month later that all the Jews had been expelled by the local inhabitants and that a booty estimated at 16,000 ducats had been taken from them.[9]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Similar examples of such looting and violence were reported throughout the Italian Wars.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems that these troubles could contribute to both Jewish and Christian concerns about divine intentions for men and women. Some Jews followed kabbalistic calculations that 1490 marked the year of Jewish deliverance, while for others the year 1495 with the pope\u2019s flight before the advance of the French army (albeit only to the Castel Sant\u2019Angelo within the city of Rome) and Charles VIII\u2019s entry into Naples, where the Jews were sacked but quickly put under his protection, marked the beginning of years of suffering that preceded deliverance.[10]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> In Christian eschatology, of course, the final conversion of all the remaining Jews was one of the signs of the Apocalypse. It is probably in this sense that we should understand the presence in Marin Sanudo\u2019s compilation of verses about the arrival of Charles VIII in Italy\u00a0<\/span>of a poem about the conversion of the Jews.[11]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The providential hopes and fears of Italians were widely stirred by the arrival of Charles VIII, a man judged very ugly by many Italian witnesses (judge for yourself here<\/a>) and acclaimed by others as the ‘king of fierce countenance’ foretold in the Book of Daniel (8: 23); indeed, the rise to power of the friar Girolamo Savonarola in Florence drew strength from this eschatological sentiment. It is useful, though, to consider the fate of Jewish lives and goods as part of the social history of the Italian Wars. They were an especially vulnerable group during the sacks of cities given their stores of pledges or lists of Christian debtors; but they were also a resented local presence because they fell under the direct protection of higher authorities such as the Neapolitan king or the Venetian doge rather than the local powers. When royal or republican protection failed they were forced to flee – forming another episode in the long history of Jewish mobility, the subject of a conference in Edinburgh in July<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/p>\n

Primary Sources<\/span><\/p>\n

Manuscript<\/span><\/p>\n

Milan, Archivio di Stato, Carteggio Viscontea-Sforzesco, potenze estere, 252, 253<\/span><\/p>\n

Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, It.VII.323 (8646). Don\u00e0, Tommaso (attr.). \u2018Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1528\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

— It.IX.363. Marin Sanudo (comp.), \u2018Composizioni poetiche volgari e latine intorno le cose d\u2019Italia sul finire del sc. XV\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Printed<\/span><\/p>\n

Coniger, Antonello. \u2018Recoglimento de\u2019 pi\u00f9 scartafi\u2019. <\/span>In K. Pelliccia (ed.), Raccolta di varie croniche, diarj ed altri opuscoli, cos\u00ec Italiani, come Latini, appartenenti alla storia del Regno di Napoli<\/i>, <\/i>5: 5-54 (second pagination). Naples: Bernardo Perger, 1782<\/span><\/p>\n

De\u2019 Bianchi detto de\u2019 Lancellotti, Tommasino. Cronaca Modenese<\/i>. 2 vols. Parma: Pietro Fiaccadori, 1862-5<\/span><\/p>\n

Dei Conti, Sigismondo. Le Storie de\u2019 suoi tempi dal 1475 al 1510<\/i>. 2 vols. Rome, 1883. Facsimile reprint. Foligno: Accademia Fulginia di Lettere Scienze e Arti, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

Passero, Giuliano. Storie in forma di Giornali<\/i>. Ed. Vincenzo Maria Altobelli. Naples: Vincenzo Orsino, 1785<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondary Sources<\/span><\/p>\n

Bowd, Stephen D. <\/span>Venice\u2019s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia<\/span><\/i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Krauss, Samuel. \u2018Le roi de France Charles VIII et les esp\u00e9rances messianiques.\u2019 Revue des Etudes Juives<\/i>, 51 (1906): 87-96<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Tommaso Don\u00e0 (attr.), \u2018Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1528\u2019, Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, It.VII.323 (8646), fols. 223r, 223v. See also ibid., fol. 244v for a similar use of the example of Attila.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Tommaso Don\u00e0 (attr.), \u2018Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1528\u2019, Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, It.VII.323 (8646), fol. 223v.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Bowd, Venice\u2019s<\/i>, 199-200.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid., 200-05.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> De\u2019 Bianchi, Cronaca<\/i>, 1: 129.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Dei Conti, Storie<\/i>, 2: 106; Coniger, \u2018Recoglimento\u2019, 30, 31.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Passero, Storie<\/i>, 66-7.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[8]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> \u2018Li Iudei et Marani\u00a0 sono stati pigliati. Li Judei sono stati tagliati a peze et li Marani sono salvati in Nave.\u2019 \u2018Novelle arrivate de presente da Napoli scripte in lo dicto loco \u00e0 20 di e altre novelle \u00e0 21 de Febraro\u2019, in Milan, Archivio di Stato, Carteggio Viscontea-Sforzesco, potenze estere, 252<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[9]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Letter dated at Bari on 22 March 1495 to the Duke of Milan, in Milan, Archivio di Stato, Carteggio Viscontea-Sforzesco, potenze estere, 253.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[10]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Krauss, \u2018Roi di France\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[11]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Marin Sanudo (comp.), \u2018Composizioni poetiche volgari e latine intorno le cose d\u2019Italia sul finire del sc. XV\u2019, in Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, It.IX.363, fol. 58v.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent quincentenary of the foundation of Venetian ghetto\u00a0has been marked by a number of conferences\u00a0and other events. The ghetto was initially populated by many Jews who had fled from Venice\u2019s mainland empire, where they had long been settled, as a result of the dislocation of the wars from 1509 onwards. In this respect, their … Continue reading “Jews on the Move”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,31,32],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-ghetto","tag-jews","tag-looting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shca.ed.ac.uk\/mass-murder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}