Nadene Goldfoot
Modern Italy as we know it didn't become a country of Italy until Modern Italy became a nation-state during the Risorgimento on March 17, 1861, when most of the states of the Italian Peninsula and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, hitherto king of Sardinia, a realm that included Piedmont.
Jews were in Italy before that in the 2nd century BCE We know that Rome had occupied Jerusalem before 70 CE when they burnt down our capital and the Temple. There had been Jews living in Rome at the time and afterwards.
Though Rome held the 1st Jewish settlement, they soon moved to the southern ports and along the trade routes being that's what brought them to Italy in the first place. Catacombs are evidence of their way of life and of cultural assimilation. By the 4th century, the Jews deteriorated with the Christianization of the Roman Empire by the 4th century. However, they were protected by the POPES against the worst excesses and their basic rights were maintained.
At the end of the 13th century, persecution in the kingdom of Naples drove large numbers of Jews to convert to Christianity. During this same period Jewish loan-bankers were invited for the public convenience into the towns of central and Northern Italy. Rimini is in Northern Italy. This is also when Florence developed, and Venice, Mantua, Ferrara, etc.
By 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the Spanish authorities expelled Jews from Sicily, and by 1541, from the kingdom of Naples to which they never returned.
Jewish ghetto in Venice, Italy
(Daniel Silva's main character, Gabriel Allon, was depicted as an artist married to an Italian daughter of a Rabbi of the ghetto in Venice. (Chiara Allon (née Zolli) — Gabriel's wife and now retired Office agent whom he meets in The Confessor. She is the extraordinarily beautiful and intelligent daughter of Venice's chief rabbi. Many of his books are centered in Italy.)
Pope Paul IV's bull of 1555 instituted the GHETTO and oppression against Jews in Rome and the Papal States, later imitated all over the country. The Ghetto Period lasted until the end of the 18th century.
In 1938, Mussolini finished an alliance with Nazi Germany, and a thorough-going anti-Semitic policy was adopted. Jews were removed from office and many emigrated. Italy did not imitate Nazi brutality, but during the German occupation of Northern Italy from 1943 to 1945, violent persecution began and some thousands of Italian Jews were deported to the death-camps. "Italy in 1938 turned on its Jews, and captured, killed or deported some 9,000 of them."
Some 3,000 Italian Jews settled into Israel after the war. By 1990, the Jewish population in Italy was 34,500, of whom 15,000 lived in Rome and 10,000 in Milan.
There are Jews who have traced their genealogies to the surname of Kalonymus, a prominent family from 8th-century Italy and 10th century Germany where they had moved to.
https://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2022/04/tracking-down-kalonymos-descendants.html
Kalonymos or Kalonymus (Hebrew: קָלוֹנִימוּס Qālōnīmūs) is a prominent Jewish family who lived in Italy, mostly in Lucca and in Rome, which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in Germany. The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei Provence and the Ashkenazi Hasidim. The name is a translation of the Hebrew "Shem-Tov"; Zunz, that it represented the Latin "Cleonymus".
Rapoport, Leopold Zunz, and many others place the settlement in 876, believing the King Charles, mentioned in the sources as having induced the Kalonymides to emigrate to Germany, to have been Charles the Bald, who was in Italy in that year; Luzzatto and others think that it took place under Charlemagne, in approximately 800 CE, alleging that the desire to attract scholars to the empire was more in keeping with the character of that monarch; still others assign it to the reign of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (973-983), whose life, according to the historian Thietmar von Merseburg, was saved in a battle with the Saracens by a Jew named Kalonymus.
The following table,from my resource, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family
Compiled from the accounts of Eleazar of Worms and Solomon Luria, this gives the Italian and German heads of the family, which produced for nearly five centuries the most notable scholars of Germany and northern France, such as Samuel he-Hasid and his son Judah he-Hasid. Although all of them are mentioned as having been important scholars, the nature of the activity of only a few of them is known.
Moses ben Kalonymus
Liturgical poet; flourished at Mainz in 1020. He was the author of אימת נוראותיך and of a kerovah consisting of various poems for the seventh day of Passover, which used to be recited in the congregations of Mainz. Citations from several of the ḳerovah poems are given in various earlier Bible commentaries. (On the confusion existing in the rabbinical sources concerning the identity of the author of the לאימת נוראותיך, see Zunz
One of this family made it into my encyclopedia. He was Kalonymos Ben Kalonymos, called Maestro Calo (b: 1286-d: after 1328). He was a French Jewish author and translator that lived in various French centers and in Rome, so the family was spread out in Europe. He was the translator for many philosophical and scientific works from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin for King Robert of Naples.
It is one of the most notable seaside resorts in Europe with revenue from both internal and international tourism forming a significant portion of the city's economy. It is also near San Marino, a small nation within Italy. The first bathing establishment opened in 1843. Rimini is an art city with ancient Roman and Renaissance monuments, and is also the birthplace of the film director Federico Fellini.
A few Jewish genealogies may have led back to a city in Italy besides Rome. One such place is Rimini, Italy. Though all Catholic today, some Jews lived in Rimini at one time.
"RIMINI (Heb. ארמיני), city on the Adriatic coast of Italy. There is evidence of the existence of a Jewish colony in Rimini from the beginning of the 12th century, which dealt in local commerce and in trade connected with the port. Under the benevolent rule of the Malatesta, Jewish moneylenders appeared there in the 14th century and carried on their business successfully, showing considerable initiative.
Accounts of Jewish moneylending in and around the town mention names of bankers from Rimini: one of them, Menahem ben Nathan, left money in 1392 for the repair of the walls of Rome, his native city, and for improvements in the harbor of Rimini. Jewish bankers from Rimini were also active in moneylending in Modena in 1393 and subsequently in Padua. Genealogy lists a Feiga of Rimino.
A century later the Franciscan Bernardino da *Siena visited the town and unsuccessfully tried to rouse anti-Jewish feeling there. Between 1521 and 1526 Gershom *Soncino worked in Rimini where he printed eight books.
Jewish association with Rimini presumably ended with the expulsion from the Papal States in 1569. In 1587–89, 17 Jewish loan banks were authorized to be set up there in consequence of the tolerant policies of Pope Sixtus V, but the Jews were driven out again by the reactionary bull of 1593. In the first stages of the Italian war of independence, a platoon including about 20 Jewish volunteers fought the Austrians at Rimini (1831).
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family
https://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2022/04/tracking-down-kalonymos-descendants.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimini
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rimini
https://museoebraico.roma.it/en/landing1/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw7KqZBhCBARIsAI-fTKJf1GdeQGFrIx-ADovbJ8vI3eJbZrf-uGdgGhpsuOiK8ok241o6TsoaAiigEALw_wcB
https://www.mycast.io/stories/gabriel-allon-series/roles/chiara/189/suggestions/hadar-ratzon-rotem/808701
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