>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Roberta I Shaffer:
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
My name is Roberta Shaffer and
I have the privilege of serving
as the Law Librarian of Congress
and it is indeed my pleasure
to welcome you this afternoon
to our program marking
the 500th anniversary
of the establishment
of the Venice Ghetto.
It's quite appropriate
actually that the Library
of Congress be the venue
for this commemoration.
And as many of you already
know, Venice during the period
that it was a Ghetto,
so up until 1797
when that 20 something Napoleon
Bonaparte lifted the flood gates.
It was a flourishing
commercial publishing center.
Many, many arts and much
literature and music was created
and disseminated from
the Venice Ghetto
and it had quite a contribution to
the life of the Venetian Republic
and the life of the
whole region around it.
But probably the most important
reason for us to be the venue
to begin this commemoration
is the fact
that it was kind of a melting pot.
Now many of you know that
the word Ghetto is associated
at least originally by
many with the Venice Ghetto
as the first instance
of that term being used.
But there is I understand
some controversy
about the origin of the word.
This region which was
the confined community
that became the Venice Ghetto years
before had been the foundry works
of that region.
And I like to think that that's
the origin from the Italian word
because in many ways it really
signifies the melting pot
that the Venice Ghetto was.
And also that it was a place
that much culture and
commerce was forged.
So if you'll excuse my being
a bit punish this afternoon
that is why I prefer to think
that the term foundry was indeed
the reason for the creation.
And the Library of Congress
itself is a great melting pot
of intellectual creation.
As many of you, I hope, know we have
over 165 million items representing
over 420 languages, we
have maps, manuscripts,
movies and of course books
and many, many other artifacts
of intellectual creation
and the history of humanity.
So for all of these
reasons, we are delighted
to be hosting this commemoration
this afternoon and we welcome you
and we hop you will have
the opportunity at the end
of the program to view
a really small sampling
of the wonderful treasures
that are part of the library
of congress collections that
are relevant to the topic
that we will discuss today
and looking at the topic
through a very long lens of how
what our scholars will share
with us has relevance
to contemporary life.
So speaking of contemporary
life, it is indeed an honor
to welcome the new Ambassador
to Washington from Italy,
His Excellency Armando Varricchio,
who has had many, many post.
He served in Budapest, in Belgrade.
He's been in Brussels.
Served his own foreign
ministry as an equivalent
of an undersecretary very recently
and is coming back to Washington
for the second time he was
here a number of years ago
as the economic advisor
to the embassy of Italy.
He is marking this year his 30th
anniversary in civil service.
So although we're marking
a 500th anniversary today,
we're also marking
a 30th anniversary.
He came to civil service after a
brief stint in the private sector.
We are delighted by the
relationship that we have
through the cultural attaché Renato
Miracco with the embassy and we know
that our new ambassador
will continue the tradition.
He has a phenomenal
intellectual curiosity.
This is not his first trip even
though he just came to Washington
to the Library of Congress.
And so we are absolutely
honored that he is
with us this afternoon,
your Excellency.
[ Applause ]
>> Armando Varricchio:
Good afternoon.
Thank you very much Roberta
for this very, very warm
and friendly welcome here.
You're right.
This is not the first
time here had a privilege
to attend an event a few weeks ago.
And this shows importance
that I attach this
great institution,
the Library of Congress.
We are celebrating today
500 years great anniversary
when Leonardo Loredan, the
doge of Venice, ruler of Venice
and the Venetian Senate in
early spring day March 1516
and Venice decided that the Jewish
community had to be segregated
in an old part of the city close
to an area that we call Cannaregio.
They were not aware that
that decision was conducive
to change history in a way.
I don't want to enter
into the pronunciation
with the word Ghetto or Jhetto.
I think that we should have
a glottologist working on it.
But it is true that we tend
to believe that because
of the location, because that part
of the city was an
industrial site, a foundry.
From that very name we
nowadays have been accustomed
to use this word, Ghetto.
The idea of the Venetian rulers was
to segregate people and this one
of the topic that we are
pre-discussing today La Città degli
Ebrei the City of the Jews,
Segregated Space and the Admission
of Strangers in the Jewish Ghetto.
But what does segregation
mean actually?
It might sound paradoxically
that a city like Venice,
Venice was a winner of
that time globalization.
We tend to believe that the
globalization is a very recent
world, this is not the case.
Venice was really globalized city.
You had Venetian ship
ruling the waves
in what was called the Venetian Sea
and now we are accustomed
to name Adriatic Sea.
They were sailing throughout the
Mediterranean down to the east,
the areas that we now call Syria,
the great city of Constantinople.
So they were particularly
open to different cultures,
different ideas, different
religions.
But nonetheless they decided
to segregate the community.
What is particularly intriguing is
to think about segregation today.
Because we do think
that that community made
out of very talented
people there were merchants,
there were intellectuals,
the were bankers.
They responded in the
best possible way.
They did continue their journey.
And their journey and the
journey that we can admire here
with the display of this great
piece of art, the books that thanks
to the library we will enjoy,
was a journey throughout their
mind, throughout their spirit.
This means that you can segregate
people, you can close a border
but you cannot segregate your mind.
Thanks to their ability,
to their deep knowledge,
to their great personality,
those people,
people that were not different
for anybody they were
part of the society.
There were an active part of the
society continue their journey.
They produce ideas,
they wrote about law,
about the arts, about daily life.
So they remain an active
part of the society.
And by the way Venice should
not have been the same
without the great contribution
of the Jewish Venetian.
They were a very, very
dynamic component to society.
Since then we've accustomed to have
different Ghettos not just Jewish
but in other part of the societies
and see we tend to use this word.
We are in the Library of
Congress so we tend to read books.
But books are so useful to us.
Cicero we used to say that
Historia est Magistra Vitae,
because of history we can learn
to better understand our present.
The historians have
a great privilege.
They look into the past and
they offer us opportunities
to think about the present.
It is not up to historians to
say what we should do nowadays
and what should do
particularly in the future.
But they are offering
us a current reading.
And I think that we will enjoy
listening to great contributions
of very prominent scholars.
Afterwards, some of you will
have the opportunity to be
and to receive a great treat I
received by looking at those books.
But first and foremost I
think that by going back
to that early spring day of 500 days
we will have opportunities to think
about our present and particularly
what lays in front of us.
Thank you very much
for having me here.
[ Applause ]
>> Natalia Indrimi: Good evening.
I'm Natalia Indrimi the Director of
the Centro Primo Levi in New York.
I like to thank Roberta Shaffer
and Ambassador Varricchio,
Armando for inviting us to
participate in this event
which I believe with and I
hope will be the beginning
of a fruitful collaboration
with the Library of Congress.
Our center has been
active in New York
for about 18 years presenting
the work of Primo Levi as well
as the history of Italian Jews.
The history of Italian Jews and the
particular combination of the lens
through which Primo Levi has
portrayed and transmitted it
to the public all over the world
has-- is especially symbolic.
We are talking about
one of the smallest
and longest living minorities in the
world which Jews have lived in Italy
for over 22 centuries and have
been always in the range between 30
and 50,000 people so a
very, very small population
that has not assimilated
at all but integrated
and coexisted being influenced,
that influencing the Italian society
to a very high degree
after the tragedy of Joshua
which Primo Levi has brought to
us in very unique universal terms.
The way in which the history of
this minority become symbolic is
to show what a small group
of people who are different
but fully participatory do to larger
society as the rule in systems
as the forms of governments
change in that country.
And I think that by studying the
relationship with an Italian Jews
and Italy as first as
combination of smaller states
and then as a unified country.
There is a lot that we can gain in
trying to understand the world today
and how we in a melting
pot relate to each other
and to a larger society
in which we live.
The way in which our center works
is by supporting programming,
both academic and public,
and publishing,
we have an online magazine, Printed
Matter that is free for everybody
to enjoy and a small
publishing house.
What we provide for
the academic world
and the general public is an
interface with enormous treasure
of Italian libraries and archives
that are also extremely
well-organized
through a unified portal
called SIUSA.
And that anybody from here or from
anywhere in the world can access.
What's always surprising
and interesting is
to see the traveling of books.
I mean, what we have in Italy has
often it create an interlocutor,
a book that is in Italy
as an interlocutor
in a library in the Unite States.
There is no library in the
United Stated and here we have
of course the most precious
example of Italian collection here
but that doesn't feature a piece
of the history of Italian Jews.
Some in very important ways like the
Jewish Theological Seminary library
which by the way was founded by
an Italian rabbi Sabato Morais.
The two smaller libraries
like Colombia and the Library
of Congress, the [inaudible]
library that he wrote that is
by 80% of Italian origin.
And the fact that it's such a
small population has left a legacy
that we can find and follow
in so many different places I think
is per se something to reflect upon
and something to investigate.
The history of traveling of each
of this book and what they did
to the place and the-- where
they landed and the students
that were able to read them is very
much important part of our culture
and our society and something
that we always ought to remember
because the destiny of books
and libraries is always
uncertain especially when we are
in tight times of crisis that people
tend to diminish what the books do
and instead our basis
even in the face
of basic, very, very, basic needs.
I'm going to leave the podium
to our distinguished speakers
and I just want to add that I
hope very much that the books
that are here at the Library
of Congress of Italian
and Italian Jewish origin and
the books that are [inaudible]
and this libraries are
featured in our website
and in others will begin a new
dialogs and continue the dialogs
that have been initiated so far
by scholars like Bernard Cooperman
who was been a champion of
understanding bringing the history
of Italian Jews here
in the United States.
Again, thank you very much and
please welcome our speakers.
[ Applause ]
>> Bernard Cooperman: Thank
you very much Natalia.
Welcome Ambassador.
Thank you Roberta, thank
you everybody for coming.
I am a professor by profession,
right, that's what I do for a living
which means that I can only
speak in 50 minute blocks
and they've only given
me 30 minutes.
So I'm going to talk very fast
now and then you'll understand
and you'll have to slow it down
on the tape afterwards trying
to understand what I said, OK.
So let my try-- first of all
let's put on a picture here.
How do we do?
Oh, there we are, OK.
Can you see that?
Yeah. All right.
So, I'm going to skip around
and I'm just going to try
to hit some highlights to try
to make sense out of this.
So forgive me if I'm too fast
and I assume there'll be time
for questions afterwards and
we can do it and I'll try
to also let you know about some of
the things you'll be able to see
in the room out there and what
they are and so forth and so on.
So the first question
is what is a Ghetto
and what do we assume it to be.
We assume for most people and
the Ambassador put it very well,
there is a sense of
segregation, there is a sense--
if you ask the average
person, most people if you ask
in America what is a Ghetto,
they don't know it has
anything to do with Jews.
They think the Ghetto
was the intercity,
it's African-Americans,
it's Latinos.
In American the word has
lost its Jewish connotation.
But if you ask my students
who know anything
about Jewish history they will tell
you the Ghetto is a terrible period
and the Ghetto gives its name to
pre modern to the pre modern world.
There's a very famous article that
is called Ghetto and Emancipation,
as if all the Jews lived in a Ghetto
and then they were led out, right?
Then they were let free,
who let the dogs out,
or who let thee Jews out, right?
So all the Jews run
out of the Ghetto
and suddenly they become a
part of the modern world.
And so there is a sense that
the Ghetto was an enclosure,
was an expulsion from society there
is one absolutely horrifying book
by a very well known
social scientist
from New York whose name I
won't mention but if you look
at my articles you'll see him
and who compares the Ghetto,
if you'll excuse me, to a condom
that protect society from the Jews
who are germs and that,
you know, this is insane.
It's absolutely nuts.
But it is part of a
narrative of Jewish history
that says the Jews
used to be excluded,
the Jews used to be punished
and then suddenly perhaps
with the French Revolution,
perhaps the American Revolution,
perhaps with the Austrian
Edict of Tolerance
that suddenly they were let out.
So there's this notion of
expulsion and exclusion.
And the idea was that the Jews were
excluded from not only the contact
with the outside world but from
the culture of the outside world.
It was a sense then that the Jews
gain their legal rights of citizen
and once they become a citizen,
discrimination was over.
We, you know, we are now
the Messianic Era has come.
Now in that story what is the
assumed motive for the Ghetto?
Why did they create a Ghetto?
Well first of all we all know
that everybody hated the Jews.
Anybody here who remembers
Tom Lahrer may remember
that wonderful song about national
brotherhood week and, you know,
the black folks hate the white folks
and the white folks
hate the black folks
and everybody hates the Jews, right?
So it's a kind of a narrative that
Jews and other people have come
to tell and that narrative
of course has been emphasized
by the holocaust and
by everything else.
We said, they always hated the Jews
they always prosecuted the Jews.
Why did they hate the Jews?
That's obvious.
They hated the Jews because
the Jews weren't Christians
because they killed
Christ, they are deicides.
They are condemned forever let
his blood be upon our hands
for all times, right?
That's the account of the
crucifixion and so forth.
And that becomes, and
this is very important
and I hope you won't see
me as just an idiot taking
in big words and-- or big phrases.
This is actually extremely
important to emphasize.
The idea that this hatred is age
old, we now call it anti-semitism,
right, which is in fat a new word
it was made up in the 19th century.
It's a political term and
has very specific meanings.
But we use it for everything and
we have all kinds of organizations
in both the Jewish community and
the non-Jewish community to stamp
out anti-semitism, to get
rid of this age old hatred
and has only changed its
face from time to time.
It is arguably the
only ahistorical idea
in all historians toolbox, right?
The only thing that isn't subject
to change is anti-semitism.
It just changes its rhetoric
but it's always there.
Everybody always hates the Jew.
So that's the first argument
that Ghetto is an example
of Christian anti-semitism.
The second argument is that
it has to do with economics.
Christianity was-- because of a
verse in the bible and because
of their interpretation of it
you shouldn't lend an interest
to your brother.
This was understood that Christians
could not lend an interest
to each other and therefore
Jews were led in.
Of course everybody hated
them because you have
to pay them interest but the
Jews were the only people
in Christian society that were
legally allowed to lend an interest.
Let me tell you, first of
all you may have gathered
from the way I presented
anti-semitism
that I think that's a silly
understanding of animosity
between groups but let me
tell you about this business
about money lending
it's absolute nonsense.
It is not true that
there was no credit
in Medieval Christian Society.
How do you think Venice
traded all over the world?
If you were sending out a
boat believe me you tried
to share the risk.
Believe me the merchants invested.
They had contracts that
were written in ways
that theoretically hid the
fact that there was interest.
Real interest was not what
Jews were involved in.
The real money that ran
society, the real money
that governments wore
bonds and so forth.
That wasn't a Jewish myth.
There are a few Jews here and
there but that's very unusual.
What Jews are doing is providing
what we use credit cards for today.
That is, they were providing
consumer credit, right?
And they were providing it
to relatively poor people.
Now, I assume that some people
will walk away saying Cooperman,
that's me, is an anti-semi.
My mother would be surprised
because she raised me Jewish but be
that as it may be I want to
assure you that the kind of credit
that Jews did and it's
very important to my story,
the kind of credit that Jews
did was an ugly kind of credit.
I don't mean that the Jews
were ugly people I don't mean
that they were nasty.
I mean that that kind of credit
is horrifying in its results, why?
Because poor people need it.
And when people get involved
in loans no matter how
low the rate of interest.
Think about check cashing places.
Think about the labor department
just put out a report about people
who borrow against their card.
The average borrowing against a
car in this country is for $700.
And 40% of those loans result
in the car being repossessed.
Because people get tied up and they
get hung up and there's no way out.
So you have to remember
that although it was
a profitable business,
although it was a very
specific business,
the reason Jews are admitted
to do this is first of all
because even though money lending
is legalized in Europe it's a myth
that there was no legal
money lending
and there were notarized
text that show
that money is being
lent and so forth.
Please by the way somebody tell
me when I'm out of time here
because I looked at my
watch I think I started
at 20 after but I'll forget.
I keep looking at.
But Jews are-- What happens is
that even though it is legal to do,
no one wants to do it, right?
Because it's a hard business,
you have to go done people
for the money very often the people
you've lent money to can't afford
to pay you back of course
you need the money too,
right, it's your money.
It's just one of those businesses
that Christians didn't like to do.
We know by the way that many
Christian wealthy people invested
money with the Jews and
made money off of this too.
In other words, they lent money
to Jew who then lent money
to the poor people, right?
It's never that simple and we could
go on for an hour and a half just
about the nature of
the credit business.
But the bottom like is that
societies need that service
at the same time, I
want to stress this,
that kind of money
lending has three elements
in it that are very important.
First of all that kind of
money lending will be something
that the society itself.
The government will have a stake
in making cheaper and cheaper.
They will try to keep
it as cheap as possible.
The people who are lending the money
are trying to make money from people
who will probably never
pay them back, right?
So it's a very, you know,
thin margin here even though it
looks like a horrifying thing.
But as a result of that
because there is pressure there I
always going to be pressure to force
down the rate of interest.
The Jews are going to
want to live in areas
where there are a lot of customers.
The government will
use that to force them
to accept a lower rate of interest.
In Venice, within a relatively
short time the Jewish community was
subsidizing the banks.
The Jews were admitted to lend
money at interest to the poor people
but fairly soon the Jews were
subsidizing their own banks
because the rest of the community
needed the banks to exist in order
to be able to live
in the city, right?
Very few people actually
own these little pawnshops
or banks whatever we
want to call them.
But because there's this
pressure from the government
to lower the rate--
nobody will take the job
because it doesn't make a living.
So the Jews pay loan bankers
significant sums to open banks
that don't make a profit.
So that's the first thing
you want to understand.
The second-- I know it's interesting
how well these things work.
The second thing is, I mean,
think about Trump University
and how they made money, right?
OK. So I don't know
why that came up.
The second-- ah Democrats.
The second point you want to
understand is that these pawnshops,
these little places where somebody
will bring their stuff to sell,
they are often selling what we
would call seconds or end of cloth
or out of season goods, right?
It's very important
to remember this.
So they're selling in other
words off-brand stuff.
Anybody here go to Marshalls?
OK. So, you know what Marshalls in.
Marshalls, you go in there
and you buy last season's good
or you buy things that have a
few less threads per square inch
in the knitting of the--
in the weaving of the fabric
and so forth and so on.
You buy things that
the company was trying
to get rid off and
so forth and so on.
That is what Jews did.
And remember the economy
of the early modern city
is dominated by guilt.
And these guilts control the
manufacturing and the price
and the quantity and the
quality and everything.
And Jews are not just
lending money at interest.
They are also in effect running a
secondary market, a gray market.
They are running the
Marshall Stores every
where that they are allowed to life.
Naturally, the guild merchants
don't want to Jews there
because they cut the price.
On the other hand, it's nice
to have somewhere you get rid
of your extras, your
end of season goods.
And so the Jew serves
first of all a function
of providing economic relief to
the poor, second with its problems,
second they are selling and
competing with established merchants
and the third thing that Jews
are doing and there's no doubt
about this and it sounds not nice
but I assure you it is true is
that these shops are
fencing agencies.
That is, the people
who bring them things
to pawn have often stolen
those things, right?
And that is a serious problem.
And if you go into any
used furniture store
or any used clothing store,
you had better believe
that a large proportion of what is
on sale there has not in one way--
it's more complicated than
simply saying it was stolen.
But I assure you that a large part
of it was not exactly
there legally, all right?
So that is a function of
this kind of gray economy.
It's an economy in used
items, off brand name items
and stolen material
and things like that.
OK. So that is why Jews are let in.
That is what they to.
Now in order then to take the next
step I want to say that what happens
if you want to understand
what the Ghetto is,
the Ambassador said quite correctly.
There is a decision
to exclude the Jews
or to segregate the Jews
and that's quite true.
But we have a word for that.
We call those gated
communities, right?
Everybody laughs when I say that.
But think about it.
What is a gated community?
I can live here and
you can't, right?
Now, you could say yes but the
Jews would have rather lived
somewhere else.
How many Jews do you think
lived in Venice before 1516?
How many people vote 300 people?
I'll tell you that in
1516, 900 Jews were
at one moment admitted
into that Ghetto.
How many lived there in 1514?
Or, let's say 1500.
Take a guess.
How many people would say 500?
How many people would say 1500?
Nobody is saying anything.
Come on guys.
You're like my classes.
Who give me $1500?
1500 Jews, 1500 Jews?
Going ones.
1500 Jews going twice.
How many people here would say,
"Oh there were only 500
Jews before the Ghetto."
OK, I got one.
How many? Three hundred, OK.
You want the real answer is?
So what was the Ghetto?
It was a way of letting
the Jews into Venice.
Now wait a minute.
Where did the Jews live before?
So let me try to show you
some quick maps here, OK?
This is a 1500 map of the city.
There are no Jews yet.
There is no Ghetto in the
city there are no Jews
in the city except people who come
in on short term peddling
licenses and so forth.
The Ghetto is going to be--
I don't know if there's--
no there's nothing.
OK. So but up at the top is
where the Ghetto was
going to be established.
Here you can see this
is a larger map.
This is already 1550 and if you
look at the top of the map here,
this is the area where
the Ghetto was established
as we heard it was a foundry
it was an old industrial zone
that had been opened
up, let me show you.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
And now I want to show you something
important for you to understand.
We're going to skip that.
I'll come back to that.
OK. The first Ghetto was called,
in Italian, the Ghetto Nuovo.
The second Ghetto was-- some
people here speak Italian.
The second Ghetto was
called the Ghetto Vecchio.
Now, does that make sense?
No. Because the new Ghetto shouldn't
come before the old Ghetto unless
you realize that the word
Ghetto means foundry.
And as we heard it means a foundry
or a melting pot like that I'm going
to use that in my next talk and
not admit I stole it from you.
But the Ghetto, the first area
that the Jews were given
was an old industrial area.
They were given that area to live in
and that area is called
the Ghetto Nuovo.
That's how we really know
the word comes from Venice.
There are a lot of
theories about maybe it came
from somewhere else that belong.
If you look down below,
[ Inaudible Remark ]
The first Ghetto was
established in 1516.
By 1541 the Jews need more space and
so they are given the second space.
Understand I said to you
the Jews were admitted
because they provided money
lending and they provided peddling
and they provide they were part
of that extended gray
market thus the old Ghetto
which is the newer Ghetto, right,
the Ghetto Vecchio which is
in fact the newer Ghetto
was established for Jews
who are bringing the trade of the
Ottoman Empire into Venice it is
for Levantine merchants and that
is an indication of how Venice
which had once as the Ambassador
quite correctly said once dominated
the Eastern Mediterranean,
Venice own the Eastern
Mediterranean, right?
But at this point the Ottomans
have become so powerful
that Venice is now forced.
If it wants the rights of its
merchants to trade in Istanbul
or Constantinople that
it becomes Istanbul,
they have to also admit
Ottoman subjects.
So this Ghetto, the second Ghetto
is an extension that is given
to the Jews who are coming
from the Ottoman Empire.
Now if you look up in the third
area, you can see the Ghetto
in Nuovo which is the kind of
pinky square, the bluish thing
down below is the Ghetto Vecchio.
If you look at the yellow up on the
right, that is the newest Ghetto.
By 1633 the word Ghetto had
come to mean not a foundry
but the place where Jews live.
And so by that point when
they give the Spanish
and Portuguese Jews a
new Ghetto they get it
and it is called the newest Ghetto.
That is 1633 and that is an
attempt by Venice to get access
to the huge imperial trade of
the Iberian Empires, right?
You know, we talk about the American
Empire and we bemoan the fact
that perhaps the American
Empire is over,
but it was a very short
life empire, right?
It was a very short
empire, maybe 50, 60 years.
If you want to take it back
to First World War maybe,
but Spain ran the world
for 250 years.
That's what you call an empire.
That's how to build an empire.
Those Hispanics don't let them in.
They'll take-- oh I'm sorry.
It's just-- I live on
CNN what can I tell you?
OK. So, there's another thing
and here is the entry
way into that Ghetto.
And that's just another map of it.
Now, let me-- What do I have left?
I have about 10 minutes
left, something?
OK, so not bad, not bad.
How long we leave out
three quarters.
OK. Now, what I want to
stress to you is this.
I used the term gated community.
And obviously, you know, everybody
laugh, "What are you talking about?
Gated communities are
for fancy people."
Thank you.
This is an admission of Jews.
Now, would the Jews have liked
to have places somewhere else?
Sure. Sure they would've.
In fact, in 1509 Jewish money
lenders were already negotiating
for spots on the Rialto for
places to live right on the Rialto
at the bridge, the main commercial
hub, the Wall Street of Venice.
And instead they got this place but
would Jews have preferred no Ghetto?
No, don't be silly because first
of all it gave them
a place of their own.
It gave them the right
to live in the city.
The community, there are rumors
that the community got to be as big
as 5000 Jews and there is a
wonderful lecture that I heard
by a man named David Cassuto who was
once the vice mayor of Jerusalem.
He's an architect who figured
out that there are literally was
not enough space in the Ghetto
for everybody to sleep
at the same time.
There were 5000 Jews there--
it just wasn't that big and so we
have this whole theory the Jews
slept in shifts.
Slept in shits-- oh no.
Whatever they did, right?
They live there but it's not so.
The community was probably
never much more than 2500 Jews.
There were bigger Jewish
communities.
Rome's Jewish community got to about
8000 and Livorno's Jewish community
on the other side of the
peninsula got to be about 5000.
Amsterdam was close to 5000.
Prague may have been
as much as 10 or 15000.
So but Venice is one of
the biggest cities in one
of the biggest Jewish
cities in Europe and one
of the richest and wealthiest.
Now I just want-- let me--
I'm going to skip this.
I just want to show you
a couple of pictures
of synagogues in the
Venetian Ghetto.
If you haven't been there,
go there, quite remarkable.
This is the Ashkenazi Synagogue.
This is the outside of
the Spanish synagogue
which was built a little bit later.
This is the Canton synagogue.
The pictures aren't that great
because I took them off the web
and I don't have very good ones.
OK. So now let me now sum this up,
I've got about five minutes left
so let me see if I can
bring this together for you
to make some sense of it.
What did it mean that the Jews
were given their own city,
their own business that these
are people whom Venice needs
and wants and attracts?
The first thing I want you to
understand is it does not mean.
We always talk about in terms of
rights, toleration, assimilation,
getting along, going together.
Don't be silly.
This is a society which is defined
by ethnic and religious factors.
And people did not.
They may have crossed those
lines on a daily basis,
at night when they
slept with somebody.
You can never tell
what they're doing.
And believe me everybody is sleeping
with everybody especially
during carnival.
But these are segregated
societies in a way
that our society doesn't
know how to deal with.
We live in a segregated
society not as much
as it was 30 or 40 years ago.
But you look around look at
residential neighborhoods
and you see that people
tend to live in groups.
And we have an ideology in our
society of openness, right?
I move to this country
from Canada at a time
when the Civil Rights Act was just--
the country literally tore itself
apart to try to maintain and foster
and build up that ideology when it
came to racial segregation, right?
But the whole idea of this
country is this ideology
and we think that's the norm.
It's not the norm here and
it certainly is not the norm
in other societies and we
somehow say they're immoral.
No they're not immoral
because the anxieties of groups
that are separate living
next to each other
in crowded urban situations,
is always real.
You can work against it.
You can try to articulate
an ideology of openness.
But in this society nobody though
that everybody should be the same.
And remember please, this is
very important to remember.
I started out by saying everybody
knows that Christians hate the Jews.
If it weren't for the Christianity
Judaism would not have survived
in Europe.
If it weren't for the church,
Judaism would have been eradicated.
The church has an ideology that
says the world will be saved
by the ultimate redemption
of the Jews.
And as a result the
church worked consistently,
there were exceptions here and there
but consistently church teaching is
that the Jews must be
fostered and protected and kept
within the society because they are
the ultimate redemption of mankind.
If you'll ask me, a Jew, I think
it's a crazy-- I know Jews.
I wouldn't make them the
redemption of nothing.
But the Christians have
a mishegas, a craziness.
[ Foreign Language ]
But it is a Catholic doctrine.
So it's very important
to remember that.
That doesn't mean there
isn't anxiety.
But where does that leave us?
I want to just end off with
a couple of quick moments.
First of all what was
mentioned before the idea
that the Jews have their own city
that this was the Città degli
Ebrei, the Jews have their own city
and therefore they
had obligations there.
They had to control behavior there.
There are legal implications.
Jews were in charge of the streets,
Jews were in charge of crime,
Jews were in charge of membership.
Jews would keep some Jews out
and allow certain Jews in.
I want to show you one of
the most famous characters
from the Ghetto of Venice.
His name, you'll see
his book out there.
He wrote a-- on sec, let
me show you the title page.
His name is Mayor ben
Gavriel [assumed spelling].
His first name was Mayor, a
good Hebrew name but he was born
in Madshow Amaya and so in
Italian they called him Magino,
Magino Gabrielle was quite a
character and in the 16th--
there you see a picture
of him in the middle.
You could see that he's dressed in
the latest most fashionable clothes.
He does not have a badge.
He does not have a long beard.
He does not have a hat, because he's
an Italian Jew they didn't bother
with all that stuff.
And what did he do?
He taught Italians how to make a
second crop of silk worms each year.
How did you do it?
By keeping the Bhakti,
the little worms warm.
Where did you keep them warm?
Well there were women
and they had dresses
and they-- you could keep them.
And so here you see a picture
from his book of him handing
that little sack, you see the
little in the woman's hand?
That's full of little silk
work cocoons and she gives it
to her neighbor, the neighbor
gives it to the nest lady
and the lady is there ready to
bring the worms into bed with her,
right, and keep them there.
And if you think that's
a craziness it's not
because in fact we
have travelers who say
that this was quire regularly done.
It was one of the ways that Italians
got two sets of silk works each year
and improve their produce.
But now, you can look at Magino
and Magino is a character.
He's obviously-- look at how he's
dressed, look at what he is here
and he really is one of
the most fascinating people
of the Venetian Ghetto.
But he is typical in a
very interesting way.
He's not an intellectual.
He is not a rich merchant.
He is an operator.
He is one of those guys that
make movies about on Wall Street.
You know, she's one of these
guys who's always got a new idea.
He got the Pope's sister
to invest in his idea.
He got-- sorry, Ferdinando de
Medici to invest in his idea.
He was sure he was going
to build everything.
And he also made himself a
console of the Jewish nation.
And he-- this Jew from Venice gets
de Medici to give him the right
to bring as many Jews as he
wanted to Venice's rival the city
of Livorno on the other
side of the country
and to be there chief fellow.
Within about one year, the Jews
there say, "You're our what?"
And they throw him out and
they rewrite their constitution
so that no more is this Charlton
or this operator running things.
And like a lot of people who
dream of making a lot of money,
his eventually thrown out.
But I want to go back just to a very
different Jew and this is the fellow
that I mentioned before,
that I showed
and passed over before Leon Modena.
Leon Modena and this
is my last point.
Leon Modena was born in the
Ghetto of Venice in 1571.
He lived there his entire life.
Every time he left
all he could dream
about was coming back to the Ghetto.
He dreamed of the Ghetto.
He loved the Ghetto.
And he was an unbelievable failure.
He was a famous rabbi.
He spoke, he wrote, he was friends
with the ambassadorial
class in Venice.
He wrote books that
were published in French
and in English and
so forth and so on.
He wrote in Hebrew and he was
a terrible failure primarily
because he was addicted to gambling.
And as a gambler he lost
every cent he ever made.
At one point he was giving
four sermons every Saturday
in different synagogues in the
Ghetto and he went through the money
like water because he gambled.
He wasn't gambling just for nothing.
Gambling was a problem
in the Ghetto.
And I want to mention
as I end this thing,
I really am coming
to the end I promise.
The [foreign language]
stealing his time.
His sons, one of his sons died
from alchemical experiments.
He was trying to make a quick buck
and he poisoned himself with arsenic
and ended up bleeding to death.
Second son left the city,
was captured by the Turks.
He's actually expelled from the city
for gambling and alcohol abuses.
He leaves, he eventually ends up
and leave or nowhere he has to write
to his father because he
is now a prisoner and slave
and the father sends money but
the kid never comes to visit him.
The third son is a
boy named Zebulon.
It's his pride and joy he calls
him Zebulon because the bible says
that Zebulon was a tribe that
lived on the sea and they live
in Venice and it's on the sea.
And this is a boy who sand in the
synagogue choir and he's wonderful.
And then the boy gets involved in
gangs in the Ghetto and he gets
in a fight with the head of the gang
over a prostitute and he is stabbed
on the street and they run and
call his father this old rabbi here
and he comes and he's holding his
head in his lap as the boy dies.
Now, what I want you
to understand then is
that the Ghetto was many things.
It was not a condom.
It was the city of the Jews.
But that means that it
had all the complications
and all the plusses
and minuses of cities.
It had intellectuals, it had
merchants, it had gang fights,
it had prostitutes, it
had robbers, it had theft,
it had selling goods on the slide.
That ladies and gentleman is the
Ghetto and the book that I'm working
on right now has this it's
subtitled "The Ghetto of Venice,
The Birthplace of Jewish Modernity".
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
And I now introduce
Professor Stefano Villani
who knows much more
about Venice than I do.
>> Stefano Villani: Than you.
[ Applause ]
Thank you so much to the Library
of Congress and to the embassy
for being organize this event.
It's always difficult to
speak after Berny and actually
in my talk I'm asking whether where
Ghettos for non-Catholic Christians.
To answer to this question we must
therefore first address the issue
of what was the protestant present
in Italy in early modern times.
The information as its
known dates from 1517,
following the establishment of the
Ghetto of Venice when Martin Luther
on the heave of all saints put
out this 95 thesis at [inaudible].
Luther's work quickly circulated
throughout whole Germany
and Europe already in 1520
the first anti-lutheran text,
the [foreign language].
Politi was published in Italy at
Florence spreading information
about the German religious
debate among Italians.
Lutheran ideas spread in Italy among
religious orders and in particular
in the Augustinian one to which
formerly Luther himself belong.
Refer my ideas circulated since
1530s in many areas of Italy.
Significant reform groups affirming
Venice creates to a political elite
which claim its autonomy
from Rome in Ferrara
where the Dutch's near
France offer protection
to enter dock Saint
Calvinist and then Luca
where the entire city portrayed
openly sympathize for the new ideas.
Reform groups more or less structure
are report in Milan, Cremona, Como,
Pavia, Udine, Pagua,
Vigencia Modena.
Enables in the 1540s a spiritual
circle that develop orthodox ideas
without being openly
protestant gather
around the Spanish theologian Juan
de Valdez challenging traditional
Catholic doctrines.
The spreading of heresy in Italy
led the Pope Paul III in July 1542
to organize a special committee
of six cardinal with the task
of proceeding against
heretics, those suspected
of heresy and those who help them.
The congregation of the holy office
or the Roman inquisition was born.
The holy office unlike the
already existing Spanish
and Portuguese inquisition
which were born mainly in order
to control the Jews and the Muslims
what converted to Catholicism was
so established to stop the diffusion
of protestant ideas in Italy.
The congregation was given the
task of creating a structure
of tribunals all over the
entire Italian Peninsula.
It was heavily centralized
institution.
Everything was report
directly to Rome.
Since Pius V pontificate
the practice
that the Pope himself
preceded over the meetings
of the cardinal once a week
usually on Thursday was established.
The congregation was also meeting
once a week without the Pope,
usually on Tuesdays to
revue all the cases,
judge it in the local tribunals.
On December 7, 1965 on
the heave of the hand
of the council Vatican II the Pope
changed the name of the congregation
of the holy office into that of
the congregation for the doctrine
of faith which is still exist.
Because of the dispersion of
the archives and documents
which are secure over the years.
It is difficult to establish the
number of prophesies and death
of the death sentences executed
by the 48 local seeds
of the inquisition.
We know that 128 people were
burned at the stake at Rome.
Rough calculations suggest that
in the four centuries of activity
of the holy office, 11 to 1400
of people were executed
throughout Italy.
The last death sentence
was carried out in 1761.
About half of the sentences
were against protestant.
The others concern
diabolic witchcraft,
men with ministrio de
confesión or celebrated mass
without being ordained priest
and again Jews and Muslims.
The Spanish inquisition was more
ferocious for bringing out for
than 1200 death sentences.
Their oppression played an important
role in preventing the spread
of protestant ideas in Italy.
Many were those who
choose the path of exile,
Italian protestant churches
where if founded abroad
in Geneva and Zurich and London.
An Italian branches of the
Geneva church were established
in Paris, Leone and [inaudible].
Italian protestant churches
were then active in Valtellina
which from 1512 was
under the control
of the Swiss Canton of the Grisons.
The Grisons joined the reformation
in the 1530s and therefore
since then ulting Valtellina
for several decades co-existence
between protestant and
Catholics was practiced.
This experiment of co-existent
between different religious
confessions however ended in blood
in 1620 when the pro-Spanish
revolt against the domination
of the Grisons led to the
massacre of hundreds of protestants
between 400 and 600
people were killed.
The only other place that
saw a protestant presence
in the Italian peninsula were
the valleys west of Pinerolo
in Piedmont part of the
Duchy of Savoy where most
of the population were Waldensians.
These areas of the westerner half
since the middle ages had seen
the presence of heretical groups
that not even the last
great crusade internal
to Christianity in
1487 had weed out.
They're Waldensians who
did not speak Italian
but the French dialect
establish a relationship
with the Swiss protestant
and in 1532 formally joined
the reformation becoming
Calvinist church.
For 30 years the Waldensians
Mountains resisted in arms
to any attempt of the Duke of Savoy
to bring them back to Catholicism.
On June 5, 1561 in Cavour a peace
treaty between the representatives
of the Waldensian communities
and those
of the Duke of Savoy was signed.
This treaty granted religious
freedom to the Waldensians
in precise and define
territorial limits.
The agreement was condemned by
Rome and the Waldensian communities
which then existed till to Calabria
were massacre in the same year
with thousands of deaths.
Since then the Waldensian valleys
were sort of [foreign language].
And in those mountain municipalities
around 15,000 Waldensians could
build temples, organize schools
and they have pastor
trainee in Geneva.
The Waldensians could not move
outside the prescribed areas
of the valleys mentioned in the
treaty, the high valley Lucerne,
valley San Martino Castrozza.
We don't find the expression Ghetto
to define the Waldensians valleys
in any influent at the time.
This was an expression
coined in the 19th century
and since then much
using the historiography.
But even though it was
not a space enclosed
by walls the term Ghetto well
describes the idea of a space
that allowed the presence of people
of different religion
in a Catholic country.
The valleys that very well
defined and precise boundaries.
The Cavour treaty is in fact the
first Edict of Tolerance issued
in Europe which surpass the
principle of [foreign language]
in shine in the piece of
Oxberry 1555 which stated
that in par subject were to follow
the religion of their ruler.
Over the years Waldensians families
settle outside limits that set
up by the treaty of Cavour.
In 1655 an ordinance imposed to
the Waldensians who are settling
in these areas either to convert to
Catholicism or to leave their homes.
A massacre followed in which it
doesn't mean that about 1700 men
and women were killed and
148 children were taken away
from their valleys and given
to Catholic families
to be educated as such.
The massacre provoked the
ignition of the protestant world
and the memory of the
protestant anger was enshrined
by John Milton in a
famous [inaudible].
The Waldensians valleys, the
Ghetto of the hubs represent
and thus the only area of religious
freedom in the Italian peninsula
after the massacres of the
Waldensians of Calabria
and of the protestants
of Valtellina.
In evidence of those places in
fermented over the year's practice
of tolerance and co-existents.
It was only with the patent electors
granted by Duke Carlo Alberto
of Savoy to the Waldensian on
February 17, 1848 that the terms
of the treaty of Cavour
were overcome.
The patent electors granted to
the Waldensians the possibility
of building temples outside of
the 13 parishes of the valleys,
the Waldensians set in Turin in
Genuine after the unification
of Italy they adopted the
Italian language instead of French
and established churches throughout
the peninsula in very major city.
Except from the Waldensian valleys
in all Italian states protestant
and foreign non-Catholics were not
allowed to stay even temporary.
And those were found run the risk to
be persecuted as formally heretics.
Every year on Holy Thursday the Bull
in China domeny was solemnly read
in letting an Italian
from the [inaudible]
of Saint Peter's Basilica.
This battled document listed
the most serious case punishable
by excommunication and the list is
in 1610 the excommunication was
clear prescribed for all the sites,
likely fights, Lutherans,
Indians, Calvinist, Huguenots
and Baptist anti-Trinitarian
apostolate of the Christian faith.
Those who were aware of the
presence of heretics were obliged
to report them to the inquisition.
In 1592 Italian Catholics were
explicitly forbidden to live
in countries where mass
was not celebrated openly.
In 1623 Gregory XV issued
the Bull Romanum Pontificem
which reiterated the ban for
heretics to travel in Italy.
From a purely theoretical point
of view a protestant persecuted
by the inquisition had
only the option to choose
between the conversion
to Catholicism
and the condemnation is a relapsed
heretic which followed the transfer
into the hands of the
secular authorities
to carry out the death sentence.
If the legislation excluded in
such a precise and dramatic manner,
the possibility for heretics
to travel, trade and settle
in a Catholic country,
in reality things run
in a complete different way.
Since the 16th century
flexible practices correspondent
to the Draconian rule and heretic
travelers would have behave
in a prudent and judicious way were
usually left entirely undisturbed.
It is obviously clear that the
presence of a strict rule even
if not always applied let the
ample space to an arbitrary
and arrogant discretion
therefore over the years,
the protestant countries try often
successfully to introduce elements
of perfection for protestants
who needed
to travel in Catholic countries.
For example, after the approval
of the peace treaty between Spain
and England in 1605 it's
provisions regarding the protection
of British travelers
from any persecution
of the Spanish inquisition where in
fact the standard the old thing the
Mediterranean countries
under the jurisdiction
of the Roman inquisition.
The only condition that were imposed
on them were not to do any kind
of religious propaganda, not to
behave without giving scandal
in the eyes of Catholics.
That means no to publicly
express their idea in said
to a known Catholic faith.
These flexible practices led to
the establishment in many parts
of the Italian Peninsula
of South communities
of foreign protestants
as permanent residence.
In early modern Italy for
a known Catholics live
in the great trading cities of the
Italian Peninsula, Venice, Milan,
Janua, Livorno, Rome, Naples.
In the republic of Venice,
known Catholic foreigners study
at the University of Padua
where students who came
from protestant lands had this
special status or serve a soldiers
in the fortress of Palmanova.
In the north, there was a continuous
osmosis between the Catholic
and the protestant world
with merchants and craftsmen
who move from place to place.
In other Italian cities,
the presence of known
Catholic foreigners,
were very limited often temporary
and due to the individual choices
that in their singularity
escape through a general rule.
Of course especially
in north in Italy,
most of these foreign
heretics were from Germany.
There were also depending on
the place of French Huguenots,
Dutch Calvinist, this
charismatic Greeks and Armenians.
Known Catholic British are the
structure presents only in Venice,
Genoa, Naple and Livorno.
In the later city, in the
17th century, German speaking
and English speaking protestant
communities were established.
The de facto tolerance
towards protestants
and protestant merchants was also
granted in the port cities of Nice
in the Duchy of Savoy and [foreign
language] in the Papal States.
You know, these places, protestants
were asked to do their best not
to be recognized as such because in
theory it was impossible for them
to reside in any Italian state,
they were not demanded to reside
in a particular part of the city.
On the contrary, there were request
to adopt pneumatic strategies
to avoid being discovered
as for example not
to eat meat during
holidays of obligations.
The typical example of this practice
common told the Catholic country
that for commercial reasons
of protestant presence is
that of Livorno where known
Catholic merchants were protected
by Monco Proporio issued by
the Grant Duke of Tuscany
in 1593, the so called Levornina.
This decree designed to protect
from the inquisition the Jewish
cumbersome versus desire to settle
in Livorno was addressed to the
merchants of whatever nation,
Levantini and Ponentini, Spanish,
Portugese, Greeks and Germans,
Italian Jews, Turks and Moores,
Armenian, Persian and others.
Gradually, the Levornina
became a point of reference
for whole known Catholic Christians
who wanted to settle in Tuscany.
Between to the end of the 1500s and
the early 1600s, not many British
and Dutch settle in Livorno.
Those who did so were
often ship captains
in the service of the grand Duke.
Less frequently, they were merchants
and although there were no precise
that have very often
they were Catholic.
It was only in 1620s
when the English
and Dutch mercantile
presence increase in number
that gradually the
protestant element emerge
of becoming predominant
in a few years.
There were a few dozen people and
almost all of them were bachelors
or had left their wives home
clearly showing that at least
in their intention, their stay in
Livorno was conceived as temporary.
Eventually, the growing foreign
presence led to the establishment
of formal national communities, the
[inaudible] officially recognized
by the Tuscan government
structure with their home statutes
and self-governing bodies
headed by a counsel.
We did not have diplomatic status
and only represented the
mercantile community.
The German presence in Livorno,
at least until the middle
of the 18th century was
completing negligible.
The few German merchants within
their early modern hate to reside
in Livorno joined the Dutch nation
which in fact was called
Dutch-German nation hat's [foreign
language] Germanica.
There was also small
garrison of German soldiers,
and a number of abjuration of
these soldiers make us think
that among them the
majority were protestants.
It must be emphasized that the
tolerance granted to the protestants
of Livorno was a limited and
controlled one which offer
to them neither the freedom
of worship nor the possibility
of religious frugalities,
not to worry with the quorum
and dignity their debts.
On the contrary, it
allowed Catholic frugalities
and inquisitorial control over them.
Gradually, with the
growth of importance
of their mercantile communities,
British and Dutch started
to feel uneasy with this strict
limits imposed on their freedom
and sought to widen
the space of tolerance.
The history of the protestant
presence in Livorno in the 17th
and 18th century is that's also
the history of the conflict
of this communities
with the political
and religious Tuscan
authority to assert their right
to live openly their
religious beliefs.
The first to clean this
right were the British,
it was since 1644 tried
several times
to have a protestant
minister for their community.
Very significantly, the Tuscan
authorities both locally
and centrally were
well aware of the fact
that the protestant worship
was practiced in the city.
It did not try any objections.
However, every time that
the protestant went over
and above the limit of desirable
description and this correction
in the presence of this protestant
minister became publicly known the
inquisition intervene forcing the
state authorities to expel them.
Between 1644 and 1670s we know
at least of 10 expulsions.
It was only in 1697 that the
ambassador's chaplain could informal
exercise his ministry also for
the English mercantile community
of Livorno thanks to extra
territoriality granted
to the English diplomats.
At first this happened, if
not secretly, with discretion
and prudence then since
1707 openly and publicly.
This change was obtained
by England threatening
to break off diplomatic relation
with Tuscany if they did not agree
to this request and even
menacing military intervention.
However, it is significant that even
after 1707, it was explicitly ask
to the British that the buildings
where the protestant congregation
met should not be recognizable
in many way as a chapel or a church
in contrast to the Jewish synagogues
which are to be clearly recognizable
in the case of protestant places
of worship, they assist soft
of talking invisibility.
In the 1640s the Dutch and
the English communities
of Livorno were allowed
to have grave yards
where they could erect
individual tombs.
Almost certainly before then
they buried their deaths
in anonymous common graves.
All these cemeteries, for
almost half a century,
however, could not be fenced.
Fences to protect the burials
of not Catholic from animals
and grave robbers were ask in 1685
by the Dutch in 1706 by the English,
difficult negotiations follow.
The Dutch at first write the
issue first fenced their cemetery
as early as 1695.
The English could also only in 1746.
One of the reason which
prevented the erection of walls
around the known Catholic
cemeteries was the fear
that the religious rights
could be celebrated there
and seen from the outside.
And for this reason, even when
eventually the construction
of the wall was permitted, this had
to be short enough to allow those
who were outside to see what was
going on inside the cemetery.
The religious authorities wanted to
affirm so in a symbolic way the fact
that the burial of heretics
had nothing to do with religion
and for death reasons much attention
was devoted to forbid Catholic
to attend any protestant
from their own service.
The protestant in Livorno
live all over the city.
Their issues in the central cities,
the ordering less prestigious areas,
the same thing as far as I know can
be say the fall the Italian cities
in which there was
a foreign presence.
The co-existence in
the same urban space--
they co-exist in the same
urban space led eventually
to process assimilation especially
among the wealthy foreigners.
In 1616, the inquisitor of Turin
complained the Swish merchant
married Catholic women, was
children he did not know
which church they belonged to.
We know dozens of dozens of foreign
protestant who are having decided
to settle in Italy forever
converted to Catholicism.
In some, there were no protestant
Ghettos in Italy, on the contrary
as we have pointed out, protestant
were asked to be as invisible
as possible to formally
admit the presence
of organized protestant
congregations beyond the violation
of the Canon law who they've meant
to admit that it was possible
to be a Christian without being
Catholic and this was inconceivable.
The closest thing to a Christian
Ghetto is the Fondaco dei Tedeschi,
the German Fondaco in Venice.
This ethnic institution was
established well before the
reformation in the mercantile
center of the city close
to Rialto Bridge [foreign
language] where medieval buildings
that in the maritime Mediterranean
Cities were used as warehouse
and definitely also to
accommodate the foreign merchants.
The words come from Arabic
Funduk literally warehouse house.
Between the 11th and
the 14th century,
Fundachi were built all
over the Mediterranean.
Gradually, they lost
their shelter function
and became essentially place
where they live with custom taxes.
With 1500s, the great period
of the Fundachi had concluded.
The end of this system was
determined mainly by the impact
of the full Constantinople
in 30 shrines
and on the Mediterranean trade
with the consequent search
of New Atlantic routes and
the progress in shifting
of commercial access
to the Northern Europe.
The Fondaco dei Tedeschi
in Venis established
in 1228 following the model of
Venetian Fundachi Gesan same
in the Islamic countries was the
only one of this medieval structure
to survive in the Italian Peninsula.
The structure permanently house
about 120 German merchants
in addition to a large
number of workers, as cooks
and carriers the Venetian Sea at
the direction of that Fondaco.
Every German mentioned was
obliged to stay in the Fondaco.
The boatman referred
them to the Venice
from the Mainland were forbidden
to take them to another place
that was not the Fondaco.
A personal interpreter was assigned
to every merchant and was supposed
to assist him in all his dealings
and of course to control it.
Entering the Fondaco,
the merchant had to hand
over their weapons and their money.
As a matter of fact, many
of these measures were meant
to prevent tax fraud.
In 1505, the building of
the Fondaco caught fire.
The republic he gave order
to immediately rebuild
it at his own expenses.
The speed with which this decisions
was taken relies creates the
economic importance that
the republic attributed
to the German presence.
The new Fondaco completed in
1508 was a compact, beautiful
and harmonic building
decorated with fresco
by Jojo na Tisi [assumed spelling].
On the ground floor on the square,
courtyard they were the shots.
In the two floors above
there were the houses
for the merchant and their factory.
Many of the German merchants in
Venice joined the reformation.
Already in 1529 the Pope lamented
that the Fondaco was a center
for heretical propaganda.
In subsequent year of the 16th
century of no much information
about the religious life
of the Fondaco the silence
of the sources led us to
think that known probability,
the republic was able to obtain
cautious attitude on the part
of the German community offering
it's political protection
in exchange of prudent behaviors
that would avoid any scandal.
This dynamics were clearly similar
to those we have just described
for the Tuscan scenario.
But everyone they knew that the
Fondaco dei Tedeschi was nest
of heretics.
In 1634, the apostolic minister of
Venice wrote to the congregation
of the holy office that in
the Fondaco dei Tedeschi
in Rialto almost all the
merchants were heretics.
In the changing religious climb that
follow the hand of the 30 year wars
in 1650, the first
Lutheran pastor disguised
as a physician move in the Fondaco.
He started to secretly celebrate
the protestant cult in two rooms
on the third floor of the building.
At Easter of 1651 about 150
Lutherans did the communion.
The presence of the successor to the
first minister was denounced in 1654
and they are cast of the [inaudible]
it was spelled from Venice.
These are [inaudible]
turning point in the life
of the German protestant
community of Venice
which to avoid possible future
problems work out the set
of articles which organize
the worship rigorously
to ensure the secrecy
of the community.
There were clear provision for
new comers and prescription role
to access the worship hall
without arousing suspicion.
In addition to the detail longer
version they also prefer an
abbreviated document that that was
right to the younger new members
of the time of their
hunter in the community.
The Fondaco, and I'm
going to finish,
was clear at the same
time both an institution
of coexisting and of separation.
It is not unlikely
that when the decision
to establish the Jewish Ghetto
was made the German structure
as in some measure represent
a model for this project.
In this brief overview we
have examined the three models
of integrous coexistent the
developing their early modern times
in Italy towards protestant.
The [inaudible] Ghetto of
the Waldensian Valleys,
the de facto tolerance granted
to foreign protestants in Livorno
and other mercantile cities provided
the [inaudible] publicly express
their belonging to church
different from the Catholic one.
In the Fondaco they did this in
Venice a sort of Christian Ghetto
on ethnic grounds which
reproduce the multi-confession
of the German nation.
The study of this practice of
limited tolerance in the Italy
of Counter Reformation is
obviously significant in itself
to investigate the methods
that they've allowed
to maintain commercial
relationship outside the
congressional boundaries.
Beyond this however in the
5th century of the founding
of the Ghetto the study of these
events made for us beautiful
to study Jewish history in a context
that goes beyond the tragic
history of anti-Semitism.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Roberta I Shaffer: I'm going
to invite both of our speakers
to the podium now and we'll have
a question and answer period.
If we have to cut off the question
and answer period please
do not be alarmed
because we will have a
reception following this.
And I hope you'll take that
as an opportunity to talk
with our speakers and our scholars.
I believe we have microphones,
so if you'll race your hand a
microphone will come to you.
I think its working.
Professor Cooperman, you
indicated that besides Venice
or other fairly large Jewish
communities throughout Europe
at that time.
Did any of these communities
replicate the segregation
that existed in Venice be it in
Amsterdam or any of the other areas?
>> Bernard Cooperman: Yeah,
that's a great question.
One of the surprising things that
[inaudible] they did this work was
to realize that Venice even though
the word Ghetto I have no doubt
comes from Venice.
In fact, the idea of
special segregation as a way
of allowing the community
in goes back much further.
Frankfurt, the Jews are expelled
by the merchants of Frankfurt
and the Bishop of Frankfurt builds
an area right next to the gate
of the city to accommodate
a hundred Jews.
It was a very ample area.
By the time the Rothschild's live
there it had its estimated 3000 Jews
living in that same space.
So these places become
very attractive
and the same method is used.
In other words, what you have is
the merchants control the zoning
within the walls and they want
the Jews out but the Bishop
who wants the Jewish taxes and
their contributions to the economy
or whatever or wants the there
as Jews gives them a
space in his territory.
The same thing can be seen Krakow.
One if the beautiful things you
have here, one of the treasures
of the library of congress
is the Nuremberg Chronicle.
Nuremberg Chronicle was
published in 1490 and it is one
of the most elegantly and
beautifully illustrated geographic,
you know, it's kind of like an Atlas
and a picture book
and a history book.
And if you look at Krakow there
you will see that there's the city
of Krakow and then just cross a
little bridge there's the city known
as Kashmiris or in Polish
it's called Kashmirs.
The Jews had lived in Krakow.
There had also been Jews in Kashmirs
they are two separate jurisdictions.
When the Jews are eventually
forced out by the merchants
of Krakow they are put in
the Ghetto of Kashmirs.
But it's not a Ghetto.
It's a separate city there is a
wall around the Jewish district
but the Jews control it and
in fact the rest of the city
of Kashmir is very angry at the
Jews because they don't take care
of the sewage and they
don't maintain the wall
and they're very angry at them.
But again you see that
same kind of thing.
So the idea is done in many areas.
Now in Amsterdam there is no wall.
And in Livorno there is no wall.
That's one of the important
things about Livorno
and Pisa there was never in
Livorno or Pisa a formal area.
But Livorno and Pisa are a
custom zone and Jews can't go
out elsewhere in Tuscany.
So there is a Ghetto which just
didn't have physical walls it has
economic walls, right?
And, you know, the
Duke of Tuscany said,
"I'm going to make the
Jews build this wall
and they're going to pay for it."
And the Jews didn't
want to pay for it, so.
I don't know how that
comes up all the time.
[ Laughter ]
Sorry.
>> Yeah I-- It's on?
OK. I have several questions
one to each one of you.
You went through a whole list
of different historical
features can you outline to us
where you got the sources from?
These are 500 year old data.
I mean I would think that there
weren't computers 500 years ago.
And where did you, you know, you
just elaborated on the facts.
Where do you do your research
and where your recourses are?
>> Stefano Villani: Yeah, yes.
I work extensively on the records of
the inquisition in Rome for and many
of the things that I'm saying here
are actually can be based on some
of the documents of the inquisition.
So for example in very recent times
I've been working on the hundreds
of duration of protestants and from
that duration they are
very formalized documents.
You usually think that these
document enrich people presented
them self in front of the
inquisitor and converted
to Catholicism really
conversion narratives.
On the contrary they're
very bureaucratic documents.
They are more similar to the
form that you are filling
up for the Green Card and for
a real narrative conversion.
And you can get some
of the data for these.
In the case of the
Fondaco dei Tedesch a lot
of work has been done
since the 19th century.
There are two huge volumes edited by
German scholars that yes would dug
up all the documents in
the Venetian archives.
So it really-- and then, I
mean, in the case of Livorno
that is probably the
place that I know best.
There are documents as
well in the correspondents
of the local state authorities
with again Duke of Tuscany.
So it's really-- I was
presenting here a short summary
of a major research.
I'm planning actually to
write a book on the presence
of protestant foreigners
in Italy and so
in the book you will
find older reference.
[ Inaudible Question ]
>> Bernard Cooperman:
Basically, one of the things
that my own teachers
did not realize was
that there are many more documents
about Jews in general archives
than there are in Jewish archives.
And that's an interesting question.
Jews are overrepresented in general
archives and I'm not sure of why.
There are all kinds of theories as
to why this might be but I think one
of the reasons is basically
what was I talking
about in terms of the Ghetto.
The Jews you see in a city, Jews
don't have any of the mechanisms
that other people can
use to defend themselves.
They are not part of the guild.
They don't have a cousin who
is the mayor of the city.
They don't have access
to the leaders of power.
And so what they do
is they go to court.
And they go to court all the time.
And there are people who think that
Jews, oh Jews we're always afraid
of going to non-Jewish courts and
that they only went to rabbis.
Baloney! It's not at all true.
Jews trusted the non-Jewish courts
they knew what the non-Jewish courts
were they knew they could rely
on them especially on Italy.
I mean, as much as you can
ever rely on a court, you know,
but this were established
legal procedures.
>> I make questions for
Professor Cooperman.
So, you know, I'm with you in terms
of pushing back against, you know,
the kind of modern idea that the
medieval or early modern Ghettos
that these were essentially
prisons that, you know,
had no redeeming features
whatsoever.
But I wonder if there's maybe like a
little bit of kind of overcorrection
in this revision in terms of, you
know, when you start using analogies
to gated communities, you know, or
when you just kind of say things
like well, we have to
understand that, you know,
these kinds of ethnic religious
factions this was just par
for the course in pre-modern
societies.
I mean there was something new
about the kind of segregation
that was being instituted in Venice.
And yes, OK, so you have precursors
like Frankfurt and the idea
to some extent goes back further.
But, you know, the notion of
creating an area that Jews must live
in and only Jews can live in.
In other words, this
isn't just the kind
of basically open Jewish
quarter that's densely Jewish
but has Christians who live --
you know, I mean there
is real separation here.
The idea of surveillance,
right, that, you know,
yeah OK so maybe the idea of
a Jewish quarter having a wall
around it, yeah, that's older.
But the idea of these areas being
guarded, the idea of, you know,
you have to break over any kind
of outward facing windows or doors
and there is real scrupulousness
about that.
Some saying, you know, are you kind
of undermining a little bit
the importance of the concept
of segregation in terms of
the early modern Jewish gap.
>> Bernard Cooperman: Excuse me, are
you suggesting that I would reach
for a joke and say
ridiculous things--
you know, well, let me say
"Of course you're right
but you're wrong," OK?
I'll try to very briefly, I mean,
I can go on as you
might know for hours.
But let me say this.
First of all I try to hint at
something that's very important.
And that is that groups
living together, right,
the idea that everything will be
hunky-dory and everybody will all go
to each others berm let's
put some confirmations
and we'll all drink wine together
and so forth and so on although
in Italy they drink wine
together but that's another thing.
But that kind of idea that like
I have students who say to me,
"Wait a minute, Jews live
separately or Jews live--
", who did they play
with on the street?
And the answer is they played with
other Jews if they played at all.
Why would you think?
But they didn't go
to school together.
There were no common
schools you ding-dong.
I mean, actually it my kids
not my students not you, right.
But we look at the world from the
assumptions to the 21st century.
We projected back and say,
"Well but if it wasn't like that
that must mean something."
And what the meaning we
give it are the meaning--
we use things like surveillance.
These societies surveilled
everybody.
You know, these are small places.
If a foreign merchant
came to London,
just what Professor
Villani was talking
about with the Fondaco dei Tedesch
in Venice, if foreign merchant came
to London they immediately
had the innkeeper right
down everything he brought
in, everything he took out
and we have these records.
The government kept records.
Surveillance is not the new thing.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is obviously
there are anxieties when groups
that are truly different from each
other and ideologically different
from each other live
next door in each other.
The social anxieties, cultural
anxieties, if we in America with all
of our Facebook and all of our money
and everything can't live in peace
with each other then
how much more so.
And of course it gets worse at
time with economic downturn,
at times of war tensions all
kinds of things like that.
So yes obviously they
are separate communities.
The problem is though that
we understand that difference
as if it is the antithesis
of our perfect society.
Our society ain't perfect and
that was the 16th century not the
21st century.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
My wife and I and a small
group just came back last month
from three weeks exploring
Jewish Italy
and the Italian people
are wonderful.
They are wonderful!
[ Applause ]
>> Bernard Cooperman:
Clearly he ate a lot of pasta.
>> No, no.
I had a little blog with the group
because I took a lot of photographs
and I just was citing
examples of the friendship.
My wife had to go to the
bathroom and [inaudible]
and the lady left the
restaurant alone.
There was no one in the restaurant
and she took her to
go to the bathroom.
>> Bernard Cooperman: For this
you have to comfort him to talk
about you going in the bathroom.
>> Well there is a
bathroom here so she canme.
>> Bernard Cooperman: Let
me tell you something.
No Italian would have
gotten away with saying
that about his wife
in a public place.
>> But we learned that
in the 15th century,
Italy was basically
a group of States.
And correct me if I'm--
and then in the central
and southern part it
was ruled by the papacy.
A lot of the Sephardic Jews came
to Italy they didn't like being
under the rule and so with
the invitation of many towns
and wealthy families like the
[inaudible] and one of the--
and Ferrara the Este family.
They came there.
But when the families moved away
or in the case of the Este family
and Ferrara, when the
last person died
and there was no heir the papacy
came in and took away a lot
of the freedom of the Jews.
Took away a lot of the
business and set up the Ghetto.
So my question really is, is
that in many areas the Jews lived
without a Ghetto and
they live, you know,
very happily with the
general community.
So why do you feel that
the Ghetto was something
that the Jews would want to live in.
>> Bernard Cooperman: So is it--
First of all I have to say that
professor Villani is much more
of an expert on general Italian
policy and the papacy in Italy
and his attitudes, you
know, with general history.
So I'll say something
and then maybe you want
to clarify and tell me what I miss.
But let me just say this.
First of all, the description that
you've been given or the description
that you repeated here is correct
but fundamentally too
simplistic, OK?
So for example the very
first charter to Spanish
and Portuguese Jews to openly
practice Judaism even though they
had been living as Christians even
though they had been baptized,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
was given in Papillon Cona in 1514
and then in the 1530s and 1540s.
So it is simply not true that it
was a simple arbitrary decision
or difference between the papal
authority and the-- not papal.
What tends-- But the question was
asked before is relevant here.
I have argued and I've written about
this and I'm trying to write more
about it that the Ghetto is really
a product of commercial competition.
But as in our society, right, I
keep pointing back to our side
because it's the model
that sits in front of us.
Historians are not supposed to
use an anachronistic models.
But in our society when people
talked about discrimination
against African-Americans during
slavery or after slavery, right,
after 1863 during Jim Crow
after the Civil Rights Movement
and so forth and so on.
We use a rhetoric about they and us.
And that rhetoric is
based on anthropological
or pseudo-anthropological
categories or sociologic.
They are like that,
you know, those people.
It doesn't matter what the people
are but we use those terms.
But that's not what's going on.
That's the words we use to justify
what is very often a power play,
a commerce play, a control of money.
If you want to understand, for
example the riots in Baltimore,
the first thing you should look
at is the way money is allocated
by the city council of Baltimore and
by the bank of Baltimore to allow,
you know, building in certain
parts of the city as opposed
to other parts of the city.
You know, very often it has a lot
more to do with economics and thing.
So out there you have the
papal decree of the Ghetto.
Venetian Ghetto was 1516.
The papal Ghetto [foreign
language] is 1555.
And there are all kinds of
books that will tell you
that the popes it's
because it's Paulo OV,
Paul IV who is a Carafa
who is a crazy guy.
Everybody in Rome hated him.
Everybody was so happy when he
died that they dance in the streets
and they burned all his
papers and so forth and so on.
And he was an old fanatic and an
anti-semi and everything like that.
And so there is a famous book by one
of my colleagues, one of my friends
who wrote about how the
Ghetto in 1555 is part
of a conversionary
policy by the popes.
There's only one problem with that.
That's not what it says.
What it says is Jews are moving
into the nicest streets in Rome.
What the hay.
I forgot exactly how
they say that in Italian.
But they say excuse me Jews should
live in their part of the city
and we're going to put up a wall.
Now what I'm saying is yes religious
rhetoric is used and I'm not saying
that the church didn't become
obsessed with the Jews.
It certainly did.
It always has been and I said
the church was the most tolerant
that the church was the reason
for the survival of the Jews
but there are periods
especially in the 19th century
when Italy is unifying and papal
control is being threatened.
The papacy becomes reactionary
in a way that's astonishing
and it backs off of
many of the principles
that it had self had
stood for, for centuries.
All right, good, we
know that in times
of trouble society,
you know, change.
And they become more restrictive.
I mean we've seen it in our society
many, many times in the hundreds
of years of America
which isn't that long
in the few hundred years
of American history.
But what happens is that these
themes become more powerful
and yes they become part
of an institution that's really what
Professor Villani and his teachers
and there's on-- this whole
project about the inquisition.
That's what they're work on.
The way the inquisition really
is a bureaucratic institution.
Part of, you know,
that kind of thing.
So, yes that happens but
it's not as simple as,
oh the Spanish Jews didn't--
because in fact the Spanish Jews
are very happy to live in Rome.
They fight like hell
to live in Rome.
And Alexander VI who does
not get the best press
in papal history was very
nice to the Spanish Jews
and made the Jews of
Rome let them in.
Maybe you want to say something?
>> Good afternoon first of all
I'd like to thank you gentlemen,
the Library of Congress and the
government of Italy for bringing joy
to my heart and this topic.
I'm an armchair historian and come
from the family of Sephardic rabbis.
My thinking was that the Jews
that were brought to Rome
to build the coliseum where
the first Jews brought
to Italy, I guess officially.
That's not true?
>> Bernard Cooperman: No.
>> Can you explain upon that?
>> Bernard Cooperman: No they
didn't build the coliseum
but the argument is that
Titus brought Jews as slaves.
And everybody will take
you to the Arch of Titus.
Did you go to the Arch of
Titus when you were in Italy?
>> Yeah I think.
>> Bernard Cooperman: All right.
So the destruction of the temple
is '70, Jews think its '68
but its apparently '70 and use--
have that Arch and you see the
menorah for supposedly the menorah
for their arguments
about people usually say.
And they say these Jews
are brought as slaves
and there are wonderful poems by if
any of you know the Hebrew poetry
of Judah Lieb Gordon and so forth.
Was it Judah Lieb Gordon?
Yeah, I think it was
Judah Lieb Gordon.
About the slaves who
perish, you know, in the--
with the lions, you know, and they
eat them and all that kind of stuff.
It's a great story.
The truth is that when the
Maccabees won in 165 BCE, right?
So that's a long time.
That's 230 years before the
destruction of the second temple.
When they come they send an
ambassador to Rome and the Jews
in town meet them there and are
very happy and celebrate them.
So Jews had been living in Rome from
at least the second century BCE.
No, no, no.
The ghetto was 1555.
They lived all over the city.
>> Roberta I Shaffer: Please
continue this conversation as part
of the reception and the display.
I would like to take this
opportunity, however, to thank
and introduce you to the
curators of the display.
Particularly Julia Wolfe [assumed
spelling] who brought the idea
that commemoration of the 500 years
of the Venetian Ghetto was a topic
that the Law Library and the
European Division of the Library
of Congress should
present to the community.
And so thank you Julia,
Nathan Dorn, Anthony Mullan
and Anne Brener [assumed spelling]
who are our wonderful curators
and are anxious to talk to you more
in the room just behind this
one about the collection.
And please, please continue the
conversation over a glass of wine.
If you would be so kind to also
fill out the evaluation form
that should have been in
your program it will help us
in the future to make
wonderful programs like this.
And thank you so much for coming.
[ Applause ]
