«Que antiquitis vocabatur delli hebrei». Storia e topografia della presenza ebraica alla fiera di Farfa (secoli XVI-XVII)

Among the dates of the dense fair calendar of the Papal States in the early modern period, those of the two fairs held in March and September around the Abbey of Santa Maria di Farfa, in the heart of Sabina, stood out. Around this abbey, perhaps uniquely in the Italian context, a true fair district began to take shape starting from the early sixteenth century. Its shops were rented out by the Benedictine monks to merchants who flocked to Farfa from across the peninsula and beyond. This article aims to emphasize how the presence of Jews at the Farfa fair dates to its very origins and accompanied its development throughout the sixteenth century. This is evidenced by the existence of a street and a square bearing their name as early as the 1530s. Furthermore, it investigates whether and how this stable presence at the Farfa fair changed during the second half of the century amidst the growing coercive measures enacted by the Papal authority against Jews. Finally, it examines how Jewish participation in the fair progressively diminished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, disappearing first from the toponymy of the fair district and eventually from the district itself.