The Papal Enclosure and Its Jews

chapter 13 Ghettoization: The Papal Enclosure and Its Jews

Katherine Aron-Beller

Rome, Thursday, 14 July 1555. On this day, only three months after his elec- tion, Pope Paul IV (r.1555–59) issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum (For it is absurd and improper that Jews …), which forced the enclosure of Rome’s ap- proximately 3000 Jews, and transformed the structure of Jewish residence in the Eternal City. Whereas the Venetian ghetto was established in 1516 to allow Jews to settle officially on the island called Ghetto Nuovo (by then guarded and gated), historians argue that ghettoization in Rome was established to consoli- date the pontiff’s eschatological desires to expedite the Jews’ conversion and bring about a homogeneous Catholic society, thereby paving the way for the Second Coming.1 This forced enclosure of the oldest and largest Jewish community in Italy—known as the Università d’ebrei—ushered in a new period of its existence. Scholars have generally considered the Roman ghetto to be the paradigm for early modern Jewish segregation in Catholic society.2 In the 1960s, the Jewish Italian historian Attilio Milano pioneered and presented its history “from the inside” with a meticulous study of all aspects of ghetto life, including papal strategies of control and the defense mechanisms that enabled the community to survive.3 Since then, analysis has concentrated on two areas: the intrusive and hostile papal measures to monitor and control the Jewish population by means of three organs of government—the Apostolic Chamber, Court of the

1 For the bull’s translation, see Stow 1977, 291–98. See also S. De Benedetti Stow, “The etymol- ogy of ‘ghetto’: new evidence from Rome,” Jewish History 6 (1992), 79–85; M. Duneier, Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (New York, 2016), 6–7. When in 1516 Venice’s Jews were ordered to dwell in a restricted area, the location chosen was the site of a previous municipal copper foundry; this explains the derivation of the word “getto” (or “geto”) from “gettare” (to pour or cast metal). In Cum nimis absurdum, Paul IV called the Roman enclosure a “designandis vicis” (designated place). De Benedetti Stow identified the 1562 bull Dudum a felicis as the first use of “ghetto” in a Roman context. Within a few years, “ghetto” was applied to all Italian Jewish residential areas until the mid-19th century. 2 G. Todeschini, La banca e il ghetto: una storia italiana (Rome, 2016), argues that the institution of Jewish ghettoes reflects not merely the Christian obsession with purity/orthodoxy, but the desire to (re)claim control over that sine qua non of political hegemony—access to fiscal credit. 3 Milano 1964, xi.

Cardinal Vicar, and Holy Office (or Roman Inquisition); and how Jews fared under these harsh papal policies. To provide a judicious overview of the sera- glio degli ebrei (Jews’ enclosure), as it was originally named, this chapter ex- amines major contributions to the topic through these two perspectives and concludes with recent works that draw on these approaches as well as sugges- tions for future research.

1 Papal Control: Codifying Perpetual Servitude

Pioneering work on the complex, ambivalent relationship between popes and the Jews during the medieval and early modern periods conducted by Solomon Grayzel, Shlomo Simonsohn, and Kenneth Stow focused on canon law, papal pronouncements, notarial documents, and letters.4 Jews had lived in Rome since the 2nd century BC—the longest continuous history of any Jewish community in Europe—enjoying full citizenship under Roman law. Once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, Jews were tolerated, but closely monitored, heavily taxed, and increasingly deprived of civil rights. From the 13th century, their position in Catholic society was considered perpetua servitudo (perpetual servitude) as defined in Innocent III’s 1205 bull Etsi iudaeos, which sanctioned the boundaries of an essentially stable juridical status. The Jews’ perpetual servitude was harshly emphasized as a necessary atonement for their purported hereditary guilt for Christ’s death.5 In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council mandated that Jews be de- marcated by qualitate habitus (a difference in dress), without specifying what that qualitas might be.6 The Jews’ ambivalent position—on the one hand a recognized and legally protected component of Roman society, and on the other a minority to be despised and punished—was highlighted by the Jews’ distinct roles in two urban rituals. The first was the possesso (investiture procession) of new popes. In 1144, the repraesentatio legis (legal representation) ritual was initiated in

4 S. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: A Study of their Relations during the Years 1198–1254 based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period, ed. and notes K.R. Stow, 2 vols. (New York, 1989); S. Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 8 vols. (Toronto, 1988–91); and Stow 1977. 5 G. 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, esp. 161. 6 Grayzel 1989 (as in n.4), 61; cf. J. Gilchrist, “The Perception of Jews in the Canon Law in the Period of the First Two Crusades,” Jewish History 3 (1988), 9–24, argues that the Fourth Lateran Council was a not a decisive moment, but the culmination of rulings on this policy.