Jews, State and Politics. The Trial against Bernardino Campello and the Birth of the Ghettos (Papal States, 1555–1561)

Focusing on hitherto unexplored sources relating to the Papal States and Bernardino Campello – the apostolic commissioner responsible for enforcing the 1555 papal bull Cum nimis absurdum in the Campagna and Umbria – this chapter examines the birth of the ghettos from an innovative perspective. As the trial of Bernardino shows, the fate of the Jews was part of the early modern state building process. The events in Spoleto illustrate the way in which central institutions attempted to control the periphery and impose the same rules on everyone, sometimes failing because they clashed with local peculiarities. In the aftermath of Cum nimis absurdum, the lives of Bernardino and his Jewish and Christian colleagues are marked by loans, confiscations of property and books, judicial auctions, imprisonments and investigations, revealing a fil rouge of political relationships and tensions that have yet to be explored. It is a long and complex story that brings together individuals, communities and states, and that shows how difficult it has been to govern the machine in the peripheries, where other logics can prevail. And it is worth asking whether Pius V’s decision in 1569 to confine the ghettos (and therefore the problems) to the major cities of Rome and Ancona might have something to do with the failures of that period. And if this were the case, the history of ghettoisation would have to be re-read from many other – and very challenging – perspectives