Project Details
Projekt
Interaction and Organization: Ashkenazi Jews in Northern Italy During the 15th and Early 16th Centuries
Applicant
Professor Dr. Lukas Clemens
Subject Area
Medieval History
Early Modern History
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Early Modern History
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517713369
Northern Italy was of enormous relevance for the reconfiguration of Jewish life-worlds in the transitional period between 'medieval' and 'modern', due to the cultural identities surviving here. The individual project investigates Jewish agents and the ongoing development and change of their forms of self-organization and network relations in the Venetian mainland territory, where Jewish life was marked by Ashkenazic traditions in the wake of immigration, since the end of the 14th century, from the German-speaking areas of the Empire. These traditions are represented in the communal documents (including epitaphs, communal registers, etc.). However, research into the living conditions and forms of self-organization of Italo-Ashkenazim in the 15th - to early 16th - century Terraferma as a whole is still insufficient. What were their relations with the traditional Ashkenaz north of the Alps, how did they interact with the surrounding Christian majority, how did they relate to the indigenous Jewish population of Italy? Much of the existing research consists of local studies, and sources are rarely placed in a broader regional context. Ashkenazi identity in the Venetian diaspora was framed by contracts that touch on legal and economic as well as religious and inter-religious matters. These condotte were negotiated between Jewish bankers and the representatives of the local Christian authorities. Their clauses frequently include regulations referring to traditions from the Empire. Women play a prominent role, both as independent parties in the contract for the Jewish bank and in the company of male bankers. These sources and the information they contain, as well as other references from the communal and notarial documentation of the cities, allow for reconstructing family relations and business structures of Ashkenazic Jews, in a Mediterranean context that was culturally new for them. A common representative body on the regional scale, possibly initiated by the authorities to meet tax demands, can be found since the end of the 14th century. These practices of joint decision-making demand for an investigation of the Jewish agents’ strategies aimed at influencing political processes. During the first funding period the project will analyze the communal and notarial registers of Padova (Archivio di Stato di Padova) and Mestre (to be found in Archivio di Stato di Venezia), as these two cities assumed a translocal prominence in the Jewish Terraferma from the 1440s through immigration from Treviso. In the second funding period the project will exend ist scope to include internal Jewish documents. It will focus on Jewish individuals and their relations with the Ashkenazic traditiuon in religious practice, language, and cultural disposition.
DFG Programme
Research Units
