They were received, as we have seen, with more kindness than might have been expected in Italy. Many of the Popes were far-sighted enough to perceive that, by expelling the Jews from their dominions, they were simply transferring capital and intelligence to other countries.[165] Leo X., in 1513, checked the zeal of certain preachers, who were inveighing against the Jewish usurers in Rome. He had no mind to have popular tumults excited, which might oblige him to drive out men whose residence in the city was so advantageous to him. His successor, Clement VII., adopted a similar policy. When he heard of the persecution in Portugal, A.D. 1523, undergone by the New Christians (as those Jews were called who were recent converts to the Church), he not only sent an invitation to them to come and live in his dominions, but intimated that he should not inquire what had happened to them previously in Portugal. It need not be said that great numbers availed themselves of his offer. Paul III., 1539, espoused their cause still more openly. He would not permit the Inquisition to continue its persecuting and bloody work within the Papal States. Whatever offences might have been charged against the Jews in their own land, when they crossed the confines of his, a full amnesty was granted them. Especially this was the case in the rising city of Ancona. Entire freedom of trade was permitted, no inquiries being made as to any man’s creed. There was complete equality of taxation. No one was compelled to wear any distinguishing badge. We are told that, in consequence of these measures, Ancona grew rapidly in population and wealth. It was doubtless in consequence of this special favour that Cardinal Sadolet complained, at Avignon, of the extraordinary favour shown to the Israelites; and we learn that, later in his reign, Paul issued a bull, annulling the decrees he had made in their favour, and requiring that converts to the Church should be separated from their relatives.
Ten years afterwards Julius III. confirmed the privileges which his predecessors had granted; indeed, he went further. Considering that the Reformation was making dangerous progress in Italy, he thought it necessary to set up the Inquisition in Rome. But he especially exempted the Jews of Ancona from its supervision. And, as regards the other Jews in his dominions, he gave the most stringent directions to his legates and cardinals to show the most complete toleration to their religious opinions and observances. They were to make no inquiry as to what they professed, or what they might formerly have professed—this last promise being obviously intended to meet the case of those Jewish exiles who, in their native country, had been induced to make a nominal profession of Christianity, which they had now laid aside.
His tolerant treatment of them, however, was subjected to a severe trial. A Franciscan friar, one Corneglio of Montalcino, had become a convert to Judaism, and forthwith was possessed with a spirit of proselytism, which drove him openly to preach the falsehood of Christianity in the very streets of Rome! He was seized, and inquiry made as to the cause of his apostasy. Fortunately for the Jews, this was alleged to be the study of the Talmud, not the personal influence of any Jew. Of the Talmud, accordingly, the penalty was exacted. It was ordered to be publicly burned in Rome and other Italian cities. The Jews, who had lived in terror of a furious popular outbreak or a stern papal decree, were allowed to escape scot free—an act of mercy which is gratefully recorded by one of their Rabbins.
But it was different when Paul IV. succeeded to the pontificate, a man of arrogant and impetuous character, who carried intolerance, it might be said, to the highest pitch of which it is capable.[166] He was as stern in his demeanour to the Jews as he was to the Reformers. He renewed all the hostile edicts that had been in force against them in the time of his predecessors. He prohibited them from holding real property, and compelled them to sell what they were possessed of within six months,—of course at a ruinous loss. He debarred them from trading in corn, or any of the necessaries of life, though he allowed them the privilege of dealing in old clothes, with which traffic they have been so generally associated in the popular fancy. He ordered all their synagogues but one to be destroyed. He was the first to shut them up in the Ghetto, where, for centuries afterwards, they were forced to live. He obliged them again to wear a distinctive dress—the men yellow hats, the women yellow hoods—to abstain from work on the Sunday, to keep from all intercourse with Christians, and especially from attending them as physicians, and to pay a tax for the instruction in the Christian faith of any Jews who were inclined to embrace it.
His rule, however, only lasted for four years, and Pius IV., who succeeded him in 1559, somewhat, though not very greatly, relaxed the sternness of his predecessor’s policy. He maintained the enforced residence within the Ghetto, but he enlarged and improved it, and forbade the exorbitant rents which the owners of houses had hitherto exacted. He removed several restrictions on their trade, and permitted them to hold real property up to the value of 1500 ducats. He allowed friendly intercourse between them and their Christian fellow-subjects, and, though he would not dispense with the cap, which was one of their distinguishing badges, he changed its colour from yellow to the less remarkable one of black.
Pius V., 1566, a man of austere and sombre character, revived in a great measure the harshness of Paul IV. He banished the Jews from all the cities in his domains, except Rome and Ancona, and revived most of the severities with which Pius IV. had dispensed. He seems to have tolerated the presence of the Jews at all, only because by that time it had come to be generally understood that to expel them from any country was to destroy its commercial prosperity. There was little change in their treatment when Gregory XIII. followed, A.D. 1572. He promulgated a bull, which he caused to be fixed at the entrance of the Ghetto, which prohibited the reading of the Talmud, and required all Jews who were more than twelve years of age to appear periodically, for the purpose of listening to sermons preached for their special conversion. What effect these had in producing the desired result, we are not informed.
In 1585, however, Sixtus V. assumed the pontificate—a man of far higher character and more commanding mind than any of his predecessors during the present century. His mode of dealing with the Jews was at once humane and statesmanlike. He swept away with a stroke of his pen the vexatious and frivolous restrictions which had been imposed on them; he gave them free access to, and unrestrained residence in, all the cities of his dominions; he allowed them to carry on whatever trade they might prefer; he ordered the full toleration of their religion; subjected them to the same civil tribunals and the same taxes as their Christian fellow-subjects. He also limited the amount of usury which they were permitted to exact to eighteen per cent.
After his death, in 1590, there was a succession of Popes who vacated the papal chair almost immediately after occupying it.[167] Clement VIII., who was elected in 1592, confirmed the bull of Pius V., by which they were banished out of all the papal cities except Rome and Ancona; but to these he added Avignon, where they have since resided, with full liberty of holding their religious belief and maintaining their form of worship.
In the other Italian States their condition during this century appears to have been quite as good—somewhat better, indeed, than it was at Rome. In Florence they were kindly received, and so well protected by the laws, that we are told it was a favourite saying in that city, that ‘a man might as well insult the Grand Duke himself as a Jew.’[168] In Venice they were equally in favour. They had already, in the previous century, obtained permission to set up a bank in the city, the Senate being aware of the commercial advantages obtained by the residence of the Jews among them. They disapproved the step taken by the Spanish and Portuguese kings, and themselves employed Jews on missions of importance, as for instance Abarbanel, to negotiate a treaty with Portugal; and in 1589, another Jew, Daniel Rodriguez, to put down some troubles in Dalmatia, which he successfully accomplished. In Livorno (Leghorn), which the Medici in the latter part of this century took under their special protection, designing it to become a great mart of European trade, a quarter was especially assigned to the Spanish and Portuguese exiles, who flocked thither in great numbers. It was, indeed, declared to be a Jewish colony, and it has continued to flourish from that day to the present time. The Spanish language is still spoken by the Hebrew population, and the Mosaic ritual is maintained, says a modern writer, in great splendour.
At Ferrara, the Spanish and Portuguese emigrants were received with the same favour, and the like privileges, which had been accorded by other Italian princes. Their numbers were so great, that the duke was induced, probably by popular clamour, to revive an old law, requiring them to wear a small yellow circle on the breast. From the same cause, popular pressure, he was obliged in 1551 to dismiss the whole of the Hebrew population from his realm, in consequence of a widespread, though it would seem unfounded, belief that they had brought the plague into Ferrara. They were, however, soon permitted to return. Many Jews also settled at Bologna, Cremona, Modena, Mantua, Padua, and other large towns, where they were kindly received.