The jews of the italian peninsula

The Jews of early modern Italy were at the center of economic, social, cultural, and political networks of international scope. These net‐ works positioned the ḳehilot on the Italian Peninsula in preeminent roles within the wide‐ranging Jewish Diaspora of the Early Modern Period despite being ghettoized since the beginning of Sixteenth century. Those limitations had origins in an increasingly hostile Catholic society. Yet the limitations themselves, and the solutions that Jews devised to manage those limitations, form the “knot” at the center of our discussion of Italian Jews’ actual mobility and adaptability—indeed, of the pivotal role that these Jews played within the wider Jewish world. This chapter analyzes the economic, institutional, cultural and political strategies which permitted the Jews of the Ancient Italian States to successfully pass through the centuries of the Counter-Reformation.