15. Savants and Scholars in Jewish : A Reassessment

Shlomo Simonsohn1

Alas, half a century has passed since the appearance of my History of the Jews in the of Mantua. It was written in the post-war years, in the early 1950s. Since then numerous publications, books, and articles have appeared on the Jews in Mantua, their lives, and their achievements. I flatter myself that my own book had at least a little to do with that although, naturally, I have no claim to the discovery of Jewish Mantua and its place in Jewish history, particularly in Italy. That accolade should be awarded to Vittore Colorni, my dear and lamented friend, scion of an old Mantuan family and custodian of its heritage. The present conference is the latest link in the continuing interest of scholars in the history of Jewish Mantua. So it is only fit- ting that I attempt a summing up of some aspects of the achievements of the last fifty years or so and, obviously, this has to be selective, not comprehensive. I also propose to deal with one or two problems and make several comments.2 At this point, I should like to underline something that struck me fifty years ago and has lost nothing of its force in the meantime. On the contrary, I am more convinced than ever that Jewish Mantua’s contribution to learning and the arts, to the sciences and literature and to most other fields of cultural interest, was overwhelming in com- parison to that of most other Jewish communities in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern times, even if I set aside my personal fondness for this subject. I am not sure that most people are aware that during the heyday of Mantuan Jewry and its culture, which lasted for some three centuries, the number of Jews in the capital never exceeded two

1 this text constitutes the version of the lecture delivered at the symposium with only a small number of essential notes. The reader is referred to the complete list of publications of the author. 2 See my History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 2 vols. ( Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1962–4) (English edition. New York: Ktav, 1977) and the six annotated bibliographies published between 1954 and 2007 by Attilio Milano, Aldo Luzzato, Moshe Moldavi, Daniele Carpi, Manuela Consonni, and the present writer. 300 shlomo simonsohn thousand or so, and in the Mantovano a few hundred. For most of the time, the numbers were smaller. If we leave out the early history of Jewish Mantua in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the first two or three generations of Jewish resettlement of Mantua by the bankers starting late in the fourteenth century, then the beginnings of Jewish Mantua as a cultural center go back to the second half of the fifteenth century. Yet in 1500, the number of Jews in the capital was still only 150–200, reaching its maximum of just over two thousand in 1612. Compared to other Jewish Italian communities, the contrast is striking. Sicilian Jewry, which numbered between 25,000 and 30,000 on the eve of the expulsion, or twenty to thirty times the figure for Mantua, did not produce over the millennium of its existence a fraction of the cultural treasure that Mantuan Jewry did. Even if set against the achievements of Italian communities from Rome to the North—Rome itself, Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, and —Mantua’s share is stu- pendous. Of the 1,000–2000 Mantuan Jews, half were women who, in that age, played a minor role in a male society (although there were a few noteworthy exceptions, such as Madama Europa). So the active Jewish element in any of the branches of learning and creative art consisted of a relatively large percentage of the total, perhaps one of the largest ever. Even many of those who were not themselves creators or originators participated in some of the activities set in motion by the latter. The theatre companies of the community are as good an example as any.3 So what is the explanation? Admittedly, there was the melting pot syndrome. Meeting at a kind of confluence in Mantua were two of the three Jewish migratory currents that flowed through central and at the end of the Middle Ages: Italians moving north from Rome, and the German current from across the Alps (there were also a few French Jews and fewer Spaniards). But that explanation does not appear good enough, at least to my mind. Take again the Sicilian parallel, which (as pointed out) did not produce anything com- parable to the Mantuan achievements despite the much greater size of its Jewry. Jews from all over the Mediterranean flocked there, chiefly from mainland Italy, Spain, North Africa, and so forth. In , there

3 Simonsohn, History of the Jews, 190f. On Vittore Volorni, see Una Manna Buona per Mantova. Man ov le-Man ovah. Studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92o compleanno, ed. Mauro Perani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2004).