The decadence of Italy under Spanish dominion and its reflection on the excluded minority of the Jews.

The stiffening of seventeenth-century Italian society into layers increasingly impermeable to any exchange can be observed through a phenomenon somehow marginal but nonetheless telling: the process of exclusion of those elements such as the Jews which did not appear liable to pure and simple assimilation.

During the Spanish dominion over Italy, which can be roughly located between the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) and the peace of Utrecht (1713), several changes occurred by which Italy would emerge as a changed and unquestionably backward territory. As Cipolla has pointed out, "still at the beginning of the seventeenth century Italy [...] was one of the economically most developed areas of western Europe, with living standards exceptionally high for the time. At the end of that very century, however, [...] Italy would become a backward and depressed area" (1). Especially towards the end of the sixteenth century, the whole of Italy, and not just the territories under Spanish rule, would start to experience deep economic unbalances and increasing social inequality exacerbated by a revival of feudal practices and norms.

Where and when the Spanish rulers or the Italian princes (the dukes of Savoy and the grand-dukes of Tuscany in particular) were trying to achieve state structures similar to those of the great European monarchies, the implementation of such administrative constructions was hindered by the persistence of traditional forces. The consequence of this process would be extremely important: the central authority's need of sufficient income in order to fund the increase and enlargement of political and administrative structures led all the states to that alienation of revenue and to that sale of appointments so detrimental to the life and survival of the state itself.

After the destruction in the early 1490s of Spanish and Portuguese Judaism, the Italian Jewish communities remained the richest and most open to influences and relations with the outside world (4). The expulsion decree from the territories under the Catholic sovereigns (5) also resulted in the sweeping away of important Sicilian communities — a process that, it has been suggested, amounted to the dislocation of around forty thousand people (6). Communities named Italy, Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, Otranto in Salonika; Sicily, Messina, Apulia and Calabria in Constantinople and Adrianople reveal the importance of this diaspora and the strength of the links with the countries of origin (8).

As for the rest of sixteenth-century Italy, the situation of the Jews was liable to change, although generally remaining essentially favourable, if one does not take into account the complex problem of the marrani, the converted Jews suspected of "giudaicisation" and considered, in criminal law terms, as heretics. However, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the formation of an aristocratic block increasingly identified with the ranks of administration changed the situation in Italy by generally eliminating any remainder of the old communal regulations within which the Jewish communities could have carved out some room for themselves.

Therefore, in the second half of the sixteenth century, a new series of regulations was adopted by the various governments of the Italian peninsula so as to practically exclude the Jews from society. Regulatory measures became increasingly severe, especially under the influence of extremely strict popes such as Paul IV and Pius V (15). Julius III's 1553 bull imposed the destruction of the Talmud and prohibited indiscriminately its possession and reading. The destructive violence against the Talmud — which was publicly burnt in Rome in 1553 and, successively, in other cities of the Italian peninsula — could contribute to the uprooting of Judaism from experiences of social life.

In the last century of Spanish dominion, the confinement of the Jews in ghettos became compulsory. The imposition of a distinguishing mark underlined their inferior condition and allowed a rigid separation from these groups perceived as ethnically as well as religiously different. During the two-and-a-half centuries of Spanish dominion in Italy, the quantitative increase in the nobility and the halting of the development of all those forces that could have countered feudalism enabled the slowing down of the establishment of an absolutist system.

NOTES

(1) C. M. Cipolla, Il Declino Economico dell'Italia, in Storia dell'Economia Italiana, Turin, 1959.
(3) R. Villari, The Revolt of Naples, Polity Press, Cambridge Mass., 1993, p. 5.
(4) I. E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith, Mouton, Paris, 1967.
(7) Marrano is an interesting word signifying Christian convert from Judaism or Islam, often with a negative connotation.
(9) The Zohar is considered a holy book by Jewish mystics.
(12) R. Segre, Gli Ebrei Lombardi in Età Spagnola, Turin, 1973.
(16) Talmud: The monumental work compiled between the third and the sixth century gathering Jewish tradition.
(23) C. Cattaneo, Interdizioni Israelitiche, Fazi, Roma, 1995.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith, Mouton, 1967.
A. Milano, Storia degli Ebrei in Italia, Turin, 1963.
R. Segre, Gli Ebrei Lombardi in Età Spagnola, Turin, 1973.
C. Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy, Philadelphia, 1946.