Meanwhile the Portuguese Marranos, who had found an asylum in Ancona, under the protection of Pope Clement VII., and who had continued to live there unmolested under Paul III. and Julius III., were exposed to even more violent persecution than their Jewish brethren of Rome. A month after the establishment of the Ghetto in the latter city, a secret order was issued by Paul IV. that all the Marranos of Ancona should be cast into the vaults of the Holy Office and their goods confiscated. Some of the prisoners professed penitence, and were banished to Malta; the rest were burnt at the stake. The few who succeeded in escaping the racks of the Inquisition took refuge in the dominions of the Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara, while of the exiles in Malta some fled to Turkey; and all these refugees combined in a scheme of revenge upon the Pope by attempting to place his seaport Ancona under a commercial ban. But their efforts failed, owing to the conflicting interests of the various Jewish communities in Italy and the Levant, and the Rabbis assembled at Constantinople for the purpose could not arrive at a unanimous decision.
♦1558♦
Not long after, the Duke of Urbino was compelled by the Inquisition to banish the refugees from his dominions, and they, having barely escaped the Pope’s naval police, fled to Turkey. In the same year the Duke of Ferrara also was obliged to withdraw his protection from the Marranos. Throughout the reign of Paul IV. the persecution of the Jews and crypto-Jews left in the Papal States raged fiercely, baptized renegades being always the hounds in the chase. Paul IV. died in 1559, and his body was accompanied to the grave by the curses of the Romans. His statue was demolished, and a Jew insulted the tyrant’s image by placing upon its head his own yellow hat, while the mob applauded the act with shouts of bitter joy. The buildings of the Holy Office were burnt, and the Dominicans roughly handled by the populace.
But the lot of the Jews was not permanently improved by the disappearance of their arch-enemy. Pius IV. was besought to alleviate their burdens, and he issued a favourable Bull. Those Jews who lived outside the city were allowed to dispense with the badge, to acquire land to a certain value, and to trade in other articles besides old clothes. ♦1566–1572♦ But even these slight concessions were withdrawn by Pius V., who vied with Paul IV. in his conscientious persecution of heresy and unbelief. In the third month after his accession to St. Peter’s throne all the old restrictions were once more enforced on the Jews of the Papal States, and were extended to their brethren throughout the Catholic world. Infractions of these decrees were punished severely, and were made the pretext for robbery. ♦1569♦ Finally Pius V., deaf to the advice of his wisest counsellors and to the interests of his own State, issued a Bull, expelling all the Jews in his dominions, save those of Rome and Ancona. As usual, a few turned Christians, but the majority preferred to quit in a hurry, leaving behind them all the property which they could not realise and all the debts which they could not collect at the short notice given. The exiles were scattered among the neighbouring States of Urbino, Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan.
♦1572–1585♦
Gregory XIII., the successor of Pius V., carried on the anti-Jewish programme of his predecessors. He renewed the canonical law which forbade Jewish physicians to attend on Christian patients, punishing transgressors on both sides. Jews suspected of holding intercourse with heretics, of harbouring refugees from Spain, or of otherwise helping the enemies and the victims of the Church, were dragged before the Inquisition and condemned to loss of goods, to slavery in the galleys, or to death. The Talmud and other Hebrew writings were again hunted out and burnt. Gregory also encouraged the Jesuits in their work of conversion, and the Jews were compelled, by a Papal Bull of 1584, to listen to sermons at the church of St. Angelo, near the Ghetto, and to pay the preachers employed to pervert them. Many of the wretches, yielding to fear or to temptation, embraced Christianity; many more left Rome.
♦1585–1592♦
Sixtus V., actuated by a broader and humaner spirit and by a more enlightened thirst for gold than had animated any of his antecessors or contemporaries, abolished these cruel decrees, ♦1586♦ pulled down the barriers which circumscribed the judicial and financial status of the Jews, forbade the gallant knights of Malta to enslave the Jews whom they met on the high seas in their voyages to and from the Levant, granted to the Jews perfect liberty of conscience, residence and commerce in his dominions, and, in lieu of the unlimited rapacity of former Popes, substituted a fixed capitation tax of twelve Giulii on all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. This revolution tempted many Jews to return to Rome. Sixtus crowned his liberality by allowing the printing of the Talmud and of other Hebrew books, after previous subjection to censorship.
♦1592–1605♦
But the relief was only temporary. Under Clement VIII., otherwise an excellent man and an able statesman, the reign of intolerance was revived. ♦1593♦ He expelled the Jews from the States of the Church, except Rome and Ancona, and forbade the use of Hebrew books. ♦1597♦ A few years later he ordered their expulsion from the Milan district, and they barely escaped a similar sentence at Ferrara, which, upon the failure of the line of Este, had recently been added to the Pope’s dominions.