Before the Ghetto
The Medici and the Segregation of the Jews in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany
edited by Piergabriele Mancuso
Hardback (Forthcoming)
(October 2026)
ISBN: 9781915487001
Price: $175.00
In 1570, Cosimo I de’ Medici ordered the segregation of Tuscan Jews within the city. This volume examines this pivotal moment in Tuscan Jewish history and presents the first annotated edition of the official documents that led to the community’s urban segregation.
Established by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1570, the ghetto was officially justified by claims of repeated Jewish violations of canon laws (condotte) and banking regulations. However, a comprehensive investigation conducted by the Magistrato Supremo (1568-1570) found such infractions to be rare, minor, and isolated, insufficient to justify sweeping restrictions. At the time, Tuscany’s Jewish community, about 700 individuals dispersed across the duchy, had strong social and professional ties with the Christian majority, particularly through Jewish moneylenders who provided affordable credit to the lower classes. In truth, the ghetto’s creation stemmed from an ideological and bureaucratic process that framed even minor Jewish transgressions as serious threats to Jewish-Christian separation. Carlo Pitti, the powerful Medici chancellor and a staunch opponent of Jewish presence in Tuscany, played a key role. He promoted the ghetto as a political achievement aligning the Medici state with the Counter-Reformation Church and as a profitable investment for the ruling elite. This volume explores this pivotal moment in Tuscan Jewish history, offering the first annotated edition of the official documents that led to the community’s urban segregation.
- By (author) Mancuso, Piergabriele
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Councils, Conflicts, Correspondence
Urban Diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470–1570)
Volume 67
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
