The Jewish Communities of Cremona, Venice, and Rome

The Jewish presence in Cremona dates to the late thirteenth century. The first Jewish families in Cremona, who engaged in loan banking, were granted the right of residence in 1387 by the Duke of Milan. Despite frequent requests to expel the Jews, Cremona became a center of Jewish scholarship and the largest community in Lombardy. In 1525, Cremona passed to Spanish rule and the Inquisition enforced anti-Jewish laws. In 1591 the Jews (numbering just under five hundred persons) were forced to leave the city and the community was never reestablished. Jews were first officially permitted to reside in Venice in 1382, although they were subsequently expelled, and the community began to flourish again only in the sixteenth century. There too, many of the Jews, who were confined to a ghetto, engaged in moneylending. The Jewish community of Rome is one of the oldest in Europe: there has been an almost uninterrupted Jewish presence there since the Maccabean period. In addition to their engagement in moneylending, many Jews in Rome worked as craftsmen, and popes consulted Jewish physicians. Jews slowly spread from Rome throughout the Italian peninsula and were joined by Jews fleeing persecution in other European countries.