A list of Jewish communities in Italy, 1671

The Universal History devotes a whole section to the “Dispersion of the Jews”. Below is a snapshot of communities in Italy. This might be limited to Spanish and Portuguese, excluding the indigenous Italian Jews.

"The reader may further consult the last will of Zachariah a Porto, a rich Jewish merchant of Urbino, that died at Florence, an. 1671, after he had compiled a concordance on the comments of the thalmud, which he left at his death to the rabbies at Rome, and his library to the academy of it. He bequeathed moreover 24,000 piastres to his nation; one-fourth part of which he divided between the academies of Leghorn, Venice, Jerusalem, and of the Holy Land. The other 18,000 piastres were to be distributed to serve for dowry to the Jewish daughters of the synagogues of Rome, Ferrara, Ancona, Urbino which was his native place, Pesaro, Cesano, Venice, Padua, Verona, Rovigo, Florence, Siena, Pisa, Leghorn, Mantua, Modena, and Reggio; which shews how numberous they are still in Italy."

The modern part of an universal history. 1759. Page 409

Jews of Rome, 1766

THE Jews in this city are indulged in the use of synagogues ; but are obliged to live all together in the Ghetto *, as they call such places in the cities of Italy. At nine o'clock every evening the gates of the place where they live are shut up, and opened again in the morning ; but at Easter they are locked up from Thursday in passion-week 'till the Monday following, during which time no Jew dares to be seen abroad. When they appear in the streets they are distinguished by a piece of yellow silk, or crape, on the crown of their hats, and are subject to a great penalty if seen without it. They are most of them very poor, and little respect is paid to the richest of them. Their synagogue has a mean appearance; yet it has some sine apartments, adorned with a great number of silver lamps.

These places have several little streets, and a synagogue; but the gates at the several entrances are all shut about sun-set. Wright, p. 31

Source: John Northall. Travels through Italy. 1766.

Jews of Rome, 1714

"The Jews at Rome enjoy'd some Measure of Liberty, and liv'd somewhat easily before the Pontificate of Paul IV [He was Pope from 1555-1559]; but that Pope was a terrible Enemy to 'em: For whereas before they were permitted to live in any Part of the City, he confin'd 'em to one Corner of it, whither he order'd 'em to retire at the Close of the Evening. He fore'd 'em to sell their Possessions, and suffer'd 'em only to trade in old Clothes, or old Goods. He commanded 'em, for a Mark of Distinction, to wear yellow Hats, and issu'd out an express Prohibition, That no Christians shou'd either eat or converse with 'em. I am inform'd, that by a Decree of Gregory XIII, they were oblig'd, or at least a certain Number of 'em, to hear a Christian Sermon every Saturday in the Afternoon, but I have not yet had an Opportunity to see that Assembly. The Italian Jews, and particularly those of Rome, as some of them assur'd me, do scrupulously observe the Law that enjoins 'em to marry at Twenty Years of Age at farthest, under the Pain of Ignominy, and being treated as Persons living in Sin. The Number of the Jews at Rome may at present amount to about Seven or Eight Thousand, according to the vulgar Computation.
…

The Author of la Roma Santa affirms, that the Jews stink, and that their noisome Smell vanishes . after they are baptiz'd. ( Cosa maravigliosa, che ricevuto il Sto Battesimo non puzzano più ) I know not why this shou'd be reckon'd wonderful for those who are to be baptiz'd are so carefully wash d and cleans'd, that they must needs become sweet, tho' they really stunk before. But 'tis ridiculous to imagine that the Jews, as being Jews, have a peculiar Smell. The Jews at Rome are very poor; those who are poor are always nasty, and those who are nasty, usually stink: That is the Mystery. 'Tis also a vulgar Error that the Jews are all black; for this is only true of the Portuguese Jews, who marrying always among one another, beget Children like themselves, and consequently the Swarthiness of their Complexion is entail'd upon their whole Race, even in the Northern Regions. But the Jews who are originally of Germany; those, for Example, I have seen at Prague, are not blacker than the rest of their Countrymen."

Source: Maximilien Misson. A new voyage to Italy. 1714. Pages 138-139

“Mortifying Ceremony to which the Jews are subject in Rome”, 1769

I think that the Roman Jews follow their own, Italian, minhag rather than those of Spain & Portugal. The account below is fascinating; a piece of medieval theatre in Enlightenment Europe.

At the time of the possesso [I think, Papal coronation] the Jews in Rome are subject to a very mortifying ceremony, but strictly kept up. Near Titus’s triumphal arch, the rabbis and elders of the Ghetto stand in a place fitted up at their expence. As the pope is on his solumn procession to St. John de Lateran, they step forth, and on their knees offer him the Pentateuch in a basin full of gold and silver coins. The pope, making a stop, touches the basin with a wand, and performs the like ceremony on the head and shoulders of the chief rabbi, in token that he accepts of the Jews homage, and allows them to remain in Rome during his pontificate.

Annual Register, 1770. Page 169

Roman Inquisition, 1843

This is an edict from the Roman Inquisition dated 1843. This is the same year the British were launching metal hulled ships and Verdi was writing opera. All other Inquisition had been abolished, even in Spain.

The Roman Inquisition was active in the Papal States, that part of Italy directly ruled by the Pope. The Pope at that time was the reactionary Gregory XVI (right) who even opposed gas lighting and railways. The edict was an international public relations disaster for the Catholic Church. Its mean-mindedness will have made life harder for Jews in Ancona and Sinigaglia, and no doubt some of them emigrated.

We, Fra Vicenzo Salina, of the Order of Predicatori, Master in Theology, General Inquisitor in Ancona, Sinigaglia, Jesi, Osinio, Cingoli, Macerata, Tolentino, Loreto, Recanati, and other towns and districts, &c.

It being deemed necessary to revive the full observance of the disciplinary laws relative to the Israelites residing within our jurisdiction, and having hitherto without effect employed prayers and exhortations to obtain obedience to those laws in the Ghetti (Jewries) of Ancona and Sinigaglia, authorized by the despatch of the Sacred and Supreme Inquisition of Rome, dated June 10, 1843, expressly enjoining and commanding the observance of the decrees and pontifical constitutions, especially in respect to Christian nurses and domestic servants, or to the sale of property either in towns or country districts, purchased and possessed previously to 1827, as well as subsequently to that period, we decree as follows:—

1. From the interval of two months after the date of this day, all gipsy and Christian domestics, male and female, whether employed by day or by night, must be dismissed from service, in the said two Ghetti; and all Jews residing within our jurisdiction are expressly prohibited from employing any Christian nurse, or availing themselves of the service of any Christian in any domestic occupation whatever, under pain of being immediately punished according to the Pontifical decrees and constitutions.

2. That all Jews who may possess property, either in town or country, permanent or moveable, or rents or interest, or any right involving shares in funded property, or leased landed property, must within the term of three months from this day dispose of it by a positive and real, and not by any pretended and factitious, contract. Should this not be done within the time specified, the Holy Office is to sell the same by public auction, on proof of the annual harvest being got in.

3. That no Hebrew nurses, and still less any Hebrew family, shall inhabit the city, or reside in, or remove their property into, any town or district where there is no Ghetto (place of residence for Jews); and that such as may actually be there in contumacy to the laws must return to their respective Ghetto within the peremptory period of six months, otherwise they will be proceeded against according to the tenour of the law.

4. That, especially in any city where there is a Ghetto, no Hebrew must presume to associate at table with Christians, either in public houses or ordinaries, out of the Ghetto.

5. That, in a city which has a Ghetto, no Hebrew shall sleep out of the Israelite quarter, nor make free to enter into familiar conversation in a Christian house.

6. That no Hebrew shall take the liberty, under any pretext whatever, to induce male Christians, and still less female Christians, to sleep within the boundaries of the Ghetto.

7. That no Hebrew shall hire Christians, even only by the day, to work in their houses in the Ghetto.

8. That no Hebrew, either male or female, shall frequent the houses of Christians, or maintain friendly relations with Christian men or women.

9. That the laws shall remain in force respecting the decorum to be observed by the Hebrews who may absent themselves from their Ghetto, to travel in other parts of the state.

10. That all Hebrews are expressly prohibited from trafficking in sacred ornaments, or books of any kind, and from purchasing, reading, or keeping possession of prohibited hooks of any sort, under the penalty of 100 scudi and seven years' imprisonment; and they who may have such articles in their possession must surrender them to the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition; and in case of failing to do so, they will be subject to the above-mentioned penalty.

11. That the Hebrews, in conveying their dead to the place of burial, shall not observe any pomp or ceremony, and must especially abstain from singing psalms, or carrying torches or lighted tapers through the streets without the boundaries of the Ghetto, under pain of forfeiting the torches and tapers, and suffering other punishments, to which the nearest relative of the deceased will be condemned.

They who violate the above articles will incur some or all of the penalties prescribed in the edicts of the Holy Inquisition. And in order that no one may be ignorant of the dispositions above decreed, they shall be formally communicated to the deputies and representatives of the Israelite community of this Ghetto of Ancona, with the injunction that the same shall be published in the synagogue, the present edict being affixed thereto; and these dispositions are to be enforced in the same manner as if they were made known to all and every one, and notice must he given forthwith to the Hebrews residing out of Ancona, but belonging to this Ghetto.

Given at Ancona, in the Chancellery of the Holy Inquisition, on the 24th of June, 1843.

FRA VICENZO SALINA, General Inquisitor.
Don VITALIANO BURATTINI (for the Chancellor).

Jews in the Mediterranean, 1818

Letter from Rev. William Jowett to the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. Malta, August 4, 1818. I think he gives at interesting insight into the state of Jewish communities in the Mediterranean at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

“When I was at Corfu, in the autumn of 1816, I was very intimate with the most learned of the Jews in those parts, rabbi Lazzaro Mordos. He is an old man, nearly blind, and quite deaf, a physician; … He has no Hebrew books of English typography. For this part of the world, Venice formerly, but latterly Vienna, have been the chief place for Hebrew printing: and still more recently, Leghorn.

[He comments on how well the Jews in Ionia got on with the French, and that they are now protected from the Greeks by the British.]
…

I have been credibly informed, that the condition upon which the Jews enjoyed toleration at Rome, was – beside payment of money – an attendance upon a weekly lecture delivered by some learned priest in one of the churches; in which the question between the Jews and Christians was regularly discussed. The attendance of the Jews residing at Rome was obligatory:

…

I would here observe, that beside the thousand Jews at Corfu, they are numerous in Albania, Thessaly, Venice and northwards towards Constantinople. At Salonica they are said by some, to be more numerous even than the Turks and Christians put together. At Yannina, the metropolis of Ali Pasha, they have much influence, a Jew being the treasurer of that Pasha; liable, of course, to heavy exactions, all which however that oppressed people have too long learned to bear. In Athens, where I was lately, they informed me there are no Jews; but in the neighbourhood, in Livadia and northward, they abound.

In Smyrna, the Jews and Armenians are the principal brokers to the Frank merchants, and discharge their trust in such a manner as to raise their character somewhat high. I have heard merchants speak with great respect of their fidelity, as well as diligence. The number of these brokers, however, must be small in comparison with the bulk of the Jewish people there. In must also strike you, that there are often circumstances in which it is more for a person’s immediate interest to be honest, than to be roguish. It is to be lamented that the Jews have seldom been dealt with on this footing: they have been unfairly treated, and have seldom enjoyed the equal rights of humanity.

…

At Scio [Chios] there are not above 60 or 70 Jews; and these live for the sake of security within the walls of the Turkish fortress, They fled thither during some disturbances, in which the Christians were ill using them; and having found safety there, they do not stir out, but give themselves to handicraft trades.

…

The number of Jews in Malta is at present very small; not more I am told than fifteen or twenty families.

…

It is not thus with the Jews of Leghorn and Triest. As far as I have seen or heard of these, they have a liberality bordering on infidelity; something very much of the Sadducee character. There may be 15,000 at Leghorn; they are rich and enterprising. They have a synagogue one of the most splendid in the world. They print largely here, and in all respects enjoy great liberty. At Trieste they had about three years ago a a distinguishing mark of the emperor’s favour: he visited their synagogue in person, which event they commemorated by a Hebrew inscription.

I have received several very interesting notices respecting this people from Dr. Richardson, an English physician, just returned from his travels in Egypt and Syria. At Cairo they have seven synagogues; at Jerusalem they have two, but poor-looking. At Damascus, the population of which he thinks to be upwards of 300,000 the Jews are numerous. At Tiberias – once so highly famed for Hebrew literature – he visited a college which still exists there. Here he found five rabbies (sic), living apparently in learned leasure, with a library of no mean size, well supplied with Hebrew Scriptures and commentators. One of these was in great repute for learning. … The late Djezza, that terrible character, the Pasha of Acre, had a Jew for his principle Minister: with his well known brutality he cut off the man’s nose, put out one eye, and otherwise mutilated and disfigured his face.

…

I will add an article which I received from an English gentleman, intimately acquainted with the state of that regency [Tripoli]. “Their number in Tripoli is estimated at 3,000; they had seven synagogues, and pay an annual tax to the Bashaw of about two thousand dollars. They are governed by their Caid, who is appointed by the prince, but whose power extends to the punishment only of offences, not capital. The Jews in the vicinity are likewise under his authority; but those of Bengazi and Derne have their respective Caids. The number in those places may be reckoned at 1000. The rabbies in Tripoli are about twenty, who are paid from three to four dollars a week. In the vicinity of Tripoli (called the Gardens) there may be about twenty Jews, who have no synagogue, but pray in their houses. An annual visit is paid by a rabbi from Jerusalem, who is appointed by the chief of the holy land for the purpose of collecting money; and who may get in Tripoli a thousand dollars. They have synagogues at Arzon, Tagioura, Tajur, Mesurata, Bengazi and Derne. Their printed books they have from Leghorn, their manuscripts from Tunis.”