In 1516, the Jews of Venice were forced to relocate to a single segregated neighborhood, the first ghetto; similar separations were soon reprised in many Italian cities. In 1555, Pope Paul IV brutally reversed the fortunes of the Jews in the Papal States and later presided over the execution of Jewish refugees of Spanish descent in the port city of Ancona. Notwithstanding these severe and critical challenges, some existential in nature, the flourishing of the Jews in Italy was unlike anything the Jews of Europe had known since the Golden Age of Iberian Jewry centuries before. Jewish scholarship and culture thrived unabated, not least of all in the traditional Jewish areas of halakhah (Jewish law) and kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). In more secular pursuits, including theater, music, literature, and the sciences, the Jews of Italy created a legacy of which they could be proud. The accomplishments of Italian Jewry would serve as a yardstick against which Jews of other lands could measure their own achievements in the coming years. All the Venetian cruelty had not slowed the Jews down in their accomplishments. Two Hundred thirty-four years later, Florence's ghetto was established by another Medici, Cosimo I de' Medici in 1750. It covered the area facing today's Piazza della Repubblica, between Via Roma, Via Tosinghi and Via Brunelleschi, according to the plan of grand-ducal engineer Bernardo Buontalenti. Let's find out what led to this betrayal and change of heart of the Medici family. Here is presented a family who are the heros of the story, and I find out they were responsible for locking up Jews in a ghetto twice.
Medici is on Netflicks, and I started watching again. I should have read the history of the di Medici family to follow it well, since I take a lot of breaks in my viewing and it's hard to follow that way. When my ears picked up that they were also bankers, I got interested. For many years, the Jews were the bankers in Europe as that was looked upon as a very vulgar occupation, and usually the gentiles were not the bankers. It takes place before Italy was created when their towns were city-states and they fought each other for power. Rome was the most powerful but others vied for the next powerful position.
Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent was an Italian statesman, banker, de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, meaning the city of Florence as we know it today, and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. He was a magnate, diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets. He's played by David Sharman.
The storyline is of a political, family drama set in Florence in the early 15th century. Cosimo de' Medici finds himself at the helm of his supremely wealthy, banking dynasty family, when his father, Giovanni dies suddenly. However Cosimo is concealing a dangerous secret - Giovanni was murdered. Now Cosimo and his brother must unearth his killer in order to protect the wealth and power of the family. He's played by Richard Madden.
Cosimo also had a brother Lorenzo, known as "Lorenzo the Elder", who was some six years his junior and participated in the family's banking enterprise. The brother of Cosimo de' Medici and second son of Giovanni de' Medici and Piccarda de' Medici. He led the Medici bank alongside Cosimo. Stuart Martin is the actor.
Similar and handsome men, these heros of the storyline, but they all look alike to me and sound the same. I'm confused. Then I read that there were even 2 different Lorenzos to follow. This is following history, all right.
So far, no one has mentioned Jews in the story, but a little research reveals that "the fate of Tuscan Jewry in the early modern period was inextricably linked to the favor and the fortune of the House of Medici.
Though a Jewish presence was registered in Lucca as early as the ninth century and a network of Jewish banks had spread throughout the region by the mid-fifteenth, the organized Jewish communities of Florence, Siena, Pisa and Livorno were political creations of the Medici rulers. And like the Medici Grand Dukedom itself, these communities took shape in the course by the sixteenth century.
1494 map of Italy with Lucca in green patch on orange,
near Florence, Italy
Lucca is known as an Italian "Città d'arte" (City of Art) from its intact Renaissance-era city walls and its very well preserved historic center, where, among other buildings and monuments, are located the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, which has its origins in the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the Guinigi Tower, a 45-metre-tall (150 ft) tower that dates from the 1300s.
The city is also the birthplace of numerous world-class composers, including Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and Luigi Boccherini.
Among the population that inhabited Lucca in the medieval era, there was also a significant presence of Jews. The first mention of their presence in the city is from a document from the year 859. The Jewish community was led by the Kalonymos family (which later became a major component of proto-Ashkenazic.
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. Jewry). My father's line has roots in this Kalonymos family line.They
were found in the 8th century Italy and 10th century Germany.
There was a David ben Kalonymus, of Naples, and Mainz.
In the 1490s, under the Catholic theocracy of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, both the Medici and the Jews were expelled from Florentine territory. When the Medici returned to power in 1512, the Jewish ban fell into abeyance, until the next expulsion of the Medici in 1527. In 1537 Cosimo de'Medici seized definitive control of the Florentine government and reorganized it as a princely state--the Dukedom (later Grand Dukedom) of Tuscany. This state flourished for two hundred years, under seven successive Medici rulers: Cosimo I, 1537-1574; Francesco I, 1574-1587; Ferdinando I, 1587-1609; Cosimo II, 1609-1621; Ferdinando II, 1621-1670; Cosimo III, 1670-1723; Gian Gastone, 1723-1737.
Mars and Venus (Gods in Roman theology)In real life, Lorenzo was described as rather plain of appearance and of average height, having a broad frame and short legs, dark hair and eyes, a squashed nose, short-sighted eyes and a harsh voice. Giuliano, his brother, on the other hand, was regarded as handsome and a "golden boy", and was used as a model by Botticelli in his painting of Mars and Venus. Even Lorenzo's close friend Niccolo Valori described him as homely, saying, "nature had been a stepmother to him in regards to his personal appearance, although she had acted as a loving mother in all things concocted with the mind. His complexion was dark, and although his face was not handsome it was so full of dignity as to compel respect."
Jews had held the position of bankers. How did a gentile family take over banking in Italy? This had been forbidden by the popes to their followers as a vile occupation.
The Medici family had long been involved in banking at a high level, maintaining their status as a respectably upper-class and notably wealthy family who derived their money from land holdings in the Mugello region towards the Apennines, north of Florence. The Medicis were not only bankers but innovators in financial accounting. At one point, the Medicis managed many of the great fortunes in Italy, from royalty to merchants.
Giovanni's father, Averardo (?–1363; known as "Bicci") was not a very successful businessman or banker. A distant cousin, Vieri di Cambio (1323–1396), the son of Cambio di Filippo de' Medici of the Lippo di Chiarissimo branch of Medicis, was a Florentine banker, a distant relative of the Medici banking dynasty.. however, was one of Florence's more prominent bankers (the first of the various modestly upper-class Medici lineages, numbering around 20 in 1364). Vieri de' Medici was enrolled in the Arte del Cambio, a major banking guild in Florence, where he presumably mastered the banking trade.
His banking house trained and employed Giovanni and his elder brother Francesco (c. 1350–1412), who eventually became partners in the firm. Francesco became a junior partner in 1382, while Giovanni rose to become general manager of the Rome branch in 1385, which was incorporated as a partnership, though it was not necessary to capitalize that branch (because the Church was usually depositing funds and not borrowing). Vieri de' Medici was enrolled in the Arte del Cambio, a major banking guild in Florence, where he presumably mastered the banking trade.
Vieri was long-lived, but his bank split into three separate banks sometime between 1391 and 1392. One bank failed quickly. The second, managed by Francesco and later his son, survived until 1443, a little less than a decade after Averardo's death. The third bank was controlled by Giovanni in partnership with Benedetto di Lippaccio de' Bardi (1373–1420
These were Grand Dukes of Tuscany. They go back to Medico di Potrone (1046–1102).
Eugenio IV Bishop of RomePope Eugene IV (Latin: Eugenius IV; Italian: Eugenio IV; 1383 – 23 February 1447), born Gabriele Condulmer, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 11 March 1431 to his death in February 1447. Condulmer was a Venetian, and a nephew of Pope Gregory XII. In 1431, he was elected pope. (Eugene is portrayed by David Bamber in the 2016 television series Medici: Masters of Florence).
After the death of Pope Martin V in 1431, the new Pope Eugenius IV reenacted the persecutory laws against Jews, forcing many Roman Jews to flee the city. However, many cities in Italy disregarded the new Pope’s declaration, and cities like Florence, expanded their Jewish population. Having left behind their homes and livelihoods, the Jews searched for ways to refashion their lives, and an opportunity soon presented itself.
During this time in Italy, Christians were forbidden from lending money at interest, as this practice contradicted Catholic teaching. This differed from the Jewish doctrine, whereby Jews were prohibited from lending money to fellow Jews at interest, but were free to do so to non-Jewish customers.
The prohibition against lending money made raising capital very difficult for Catholics interested in growing their businesses, so the Christians sought out exceptions to the law. Christian business owners in Florence demanded that the laws be changed, and in 1437 Jewish bankers were officially permitted to loan with interest in Florence.
Under the new Florentine law Jews were able to establish a community there, but the Florentine Jews now had their fate completely in the hands of the Medici and the Christian banking elites. The Medici family was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that ruled Florence. The Medici amassed their vast fortune by way of another loophole in the anti-interest laws, which allowed them to engage in what effectively amounted to loaning money at interest through the use of promissory notes and foreign currency exchange — a practice only viable to wealthy customers, and out of the reach of smaller merchants and tradesmen, who relied on the Jews. The Jews were tolerated by the political rulers as their banking prowess facilitated economic expansion under the Medici reign.
The Medici family had many enemies that tried to force them from power and banish them from Florence. In 1494, the Medici family was overthrown during the invasion of Charles VIII of France. A Dominican monk, Friar Girolamo Savonarola, emerged as the new leaders in Florence, and instituted a theocracy of sorts, banishing the Medici family and calling for the same treatment for the Jews. Due to their experience in finance, the Jewish bankers avoided expulsion by offering a loan to the Republic of Florence as the city attempted to rebuild under new rule. The loan was accepted, which granted the Jews a reprieve for a short period of time. The Medici family returned to power in Florence in 1512 forestalling the expulsion that the Jews would soon have faced, but not for long.
After another power struggle, Florence was once again led by the Medici family as Cosimo I de’ Medici became Duke of Florence in 1537. This coincided with the arrival to the Italian peninsula of Spanish and Portuguese Jews fleeing persecution on the Iberian peninsula, and Cosimo sought advice from a Jewish friend, who convinced him of the advantages of guaranteeing the rights of these refugees. Thus began the large-scale growth of the Sephardic Jewish community in Florence and the Tuscan port city of Livorno.
This was a period of relative prosperity, but as with most of Jewish history, it was to be temporary. Once he was given the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo changed his stance on the Jews, enacting persecutory policies in 1567. The Jews were forced to wear badges, their banks were burned down to the ground, and they were eventually forced to live in a ghetto in 1571. The residents of the ghetto of Florence continued their Jewish traditions, and the community built synagogues, schools and markets, but they would not be released from this open-air prisons until a new constitution was promulgated in 1848.
In the sixteenth century, Italian Judaism was in a completely new situation. In Rome and in the Papal States, the persecutions had become more severe since the middle of the century. In 1555, the newly elected Paul IV released the Cum Nimis Absurdum edict, which, instituting a ghetto for the Jews in Rome, subjected them to difficulties without precedent in the Eternal City. For ready identification, men were forced to wear a yellow hat and women a yellow veil while in the city. Jews no longer had the right to have real estate or Christian servants.
Authorised employment was limited to moneylending, and the bank owners no longer had the right to make loans at interest rates higher than 12 percents. In Rome, as in Ancona and all the territories administrated by the papacy, Jewish communities began to sink into a long night that lasted three centuries. The principal gathering spots for Jewish life, reinforced by the arrival of Jews from Spain, Portugal, or Sicily, subsequently spread to the northern cities of the peninsula thanks to the relative tolerance of the princes or local powers such as the Gonzaga family of Mantua, the Este family of Ferrara, or even Venice, which was, however, the first city to institute a ghetto in 1516. In Tuscany, at first Cosimo I de’ Medici welcomed numerous Jews in Florence and Siena before giving in to papal injunctions against them.
Ferdinand I Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand also developed valuable relationships with the German banking house of Jakob Fugger and the Catalan bank, Banca Palenzuela Levi Kahana.Unlike Maximilian I and Charles V, Ferdinand I was not a nomadic ruler. In 1533, he moved his residence to Vienna and spent most of his time there. After experiencing the Turkish siege of 1529, Ferdinand worked hard to make Vienna an impregnable fortress. After his 1558 accession, Vienna became the imperial capital.
His successor, Ferdinand I, decided to make Livorno a large trading port with the Levant and encouraged Jews to settle there, eventually making this city the ultimate haven of freedom for Italian Jews.
The Livorno experiment was a triumph of enlightened self-interest for both the Jews and the Medici. Indeed, this thriving commercial hub became so essential to the Tuscan economy that even Cosimo III (1671-1723), the most bigoted of the Medici Grand Dukes, had little choice but to respect Jewish rights there. Vast fortunes were made by an Iberian merchant aristocracy that gave Livorno Jewry its particular culture and character. However, the Livorno community also included "levantini" from Turkey and North Africa, "ashkenaziti" from Northern Europe and Italian Jews of various origins.
Resource:
Finding Our Fathers by Dan Rottenberg
https://www.visitjewishitaly.it/en/listing/the-ghetto/#:~:text=The%20Florence's%20ghetto%20was%20established,grand%2Dducal%20engineer%20Bernardo%20Buontalenti.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vieri_de%27_Medici
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-jews-and-the-medici
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_IV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Eugene_IV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Eugene_IV#:~:text=Pope%20Eugene%20IV%20(Latin%3A%20Eugenius,1431%2C%20he%20was%20elected%20pope.
https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/italy/
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-jews-in-the-italian-renaissance
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