This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century

History

Stow, Kenneth R.

Europe

University of Washington Press

Generations of tourists visiting Rome have ventured into the small section between the Tiber River and the Capitoline Hill whose narrow, dark streets lead to the charming Fountain of the Tortoises, the brooding mass of the Palazzo Cenci, and some of the best restaurants in the city. This was the site of the Ghetto, within whose walls the Jews of Rome were compelled to live from 1555 until 1870. Kenneth Stow, leading authority on Italian Jews, probes Jewish life in Rome in the early years of the Ghetto. Jews had been residents of Rome since before the days of Julius Caesar, but the 16th century brought great challenges to their identity and survival in the form of Ghettoization. Intended to expedite conversion and cultural dissolution, the Ghetto in fact had an opposite effect. The Jews of Rome developed a subculture, or microculture, that ensured continuity. In particular, they developed a remarkably effective legal network of rabbinic notaries, who drew public documents such as contracts, took testimony, and arranged for disputes to go to arbitration. The ability to settle disputes relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and other internal matters gave Jews the illusion that they, rather than the papal vicar, were running their own affairs. Stow applies his concept of “social theater” to illuminate the role-playing that Jews adopted as a means of survival within the dominant Christian environment. He also touches briefly on Jewish culture in post-Emancipation Rome, elsewhere in Europe, and in America, and points the way toward a comparison with the acculturational strategies of other minorities, especially African Americans.

Generations of tourists visiting Rome have ventured into the small section between the Tiber River and the Capitoline Hill whose narrow, dark streets lead to the charming Fountain of the Tortoises, the brooding mass of the Palazzo Cenci, and some of the best restaurants in the city. This was the site of the Ghetto, within whose walls the Jews of Rome were compelled to live from 1555 until 1870. Kenneth Stow, leading authority on Italian Jews, probes Jewish life in Rome in the early years of the Ghetto.Jews had been residents of Rome since before the days of Julius Caesar, but the 16th century brought great challenges to their identity and survival in the form of Ghettoization. Intended to expedite conversion and cultural dissolution, the Ghetto in fact had an opposite effect. The Jews of Rome developed a subculture, or microculture, that ensured continuity. In particular, they developed a remarkably effective legal network of rabbinic notaries, who drew public documents such as contracts, took testimony, and arranged for disputes to go to arbitration. The ability to settle disputes relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and other internal matters gave Jews the illusion that they, rather than the papal vicar, were running their own affairs.Stow applies his concept of "social theater" to illuminate the role-playing that Jews adopted as a means of survival within the dominant Christian environment. He also touches briefly on Jewish culture in post-Emancipation Rome, elsewhere in Europe, and in America, and points the way toward a comparison with the acculturational strategies of other minorities, especially African Americans.

Univ of Washington Pr

In 1555 the Roman Catholic papacy announced major innovations in its Jewry policy. Previously, despite the existence in theory of repressive canonical legislation, Jews living under direct papal rule had enjoyed relative freedom of movement and numerous exemptions from legal restrictions. The many papal expressions concerning the hoped-for conversion of the Jews had also remained no more than a pious wish. From 1555, however, and for the next three hundred years, the papacy insisted on the enforcement of all the repressive Jewry laws, and required Jews to live bound in ghettos. More threatening, it launched an active and by no means unsuccessful conversionary program. The present study examines the underlying causes and ideology of these actions. Based in part on documentation from the papal archives and from various publicist writers of the period, it concentrates on the De ludaeis et Aliis Infidelibus by Marquardus de Susannis, a core text which clearly illuminates the motives behind the new policy. This legal-polemical tract, dating from 1558, is also the first synthetic exposition of medieval Roman and canon Jewry law. The author has examined this text for its own merits, and an index of the laws and commentaries cited in the tract have been appended here as an introduction to the significant, yet all but neglected, subject of the Jews in medieval law. Because it reviews in detail a substantially unknown facet of the sixteenth-century papacy, and of canon law in general, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy merits the attention of both Jewish and Christian scholars.

Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555 -1593

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

The Jewish Theological Seminary Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stow, Kenneth R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stow, Kenneth R.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stow, Kenneth R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century

Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century

Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century

Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century

Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555 -1593