THE POLISH Jews’ hope for intervention from Rome was not a random wish. “Jews are deemed innocent in the tribunals of Italy,” wrote Lorenzo Ganganelli of the Holy Office in 1759, contrasting the outcomes of trials of Jews accused of killing Christian children in Poland and Italy.1 Although “deemed innocent” in courts, the Jews in Italy were not immune to accusations of killing Christian children. And this should not be surprising, given the prominence of the cult of Simon of Trent on the peninsula popularized by works of literature and art.2 The 1475 trial in Trent led to an initial wave of accusations. Yet, after that initial wave, the Jews in Italy, though still occasionally subject to libels, would not be convicted in any of the trials in either secular domains, or in the Papal States. These acquittals and sometimes even the outright dismissals of charges were a result of careful, often protracted reviews of the cases by the relevant secular or ecclesiastical authorities. These outcomes reflected the power of existing laws and precedent, the ethos of good governance (buon governo) grounded in “good justice” (buon giustizia), and the cultural awareness of Jewish customs.3 Significantly, the outcomes of two trials of Jews—in Verona in 1603 and Viterbo in 1705–1706—helped shape the responses and expectations of both Jews and Catholic officials to subsequent accusations. Their legal arguments were grounded in published works and precedents, and the outcomes became precedents themselves, their impact felt beyond the Italian Peninsula.
The year 1705 brought back to life the image of Jews as enemies of Christians. In April 1705, leaders of the Jewish community in Venice appealed to the Senate of the Serenissima to intervene on their behalf. At issue was “a large painting” displayed for two days “on Rivoalto [Rialto Bridge] near the Church of St. Jacob, in which Jews were depicted as killing a boy, with other images and inscriptions aimed at stirring the people against the Jews.”4 The Jewish supplicants reminded the Senate that similar allegations of Jews killing Christian children had already been condemned by the very Senate and Doge Pietro Mocenigo in April 1475. The Jews included a copy of the decree for the Senate’s consideration. In the 1475 document, issued in the middle of the Trent trial, the Venetian authorities sternly prohibited the spread of similar stories and allegations under “most severe punishment,” emphasizing that “in our lands and regions Jews shall live securely and free from any injuries.”5 And lest in the future “preachers and others … stir the population toward insults of this kind,” the doge ordered that this decree be registered in the Senate Chancellery “for future memory.” In 1705 the centuries-old decree proved exceedingly relevant and still effective. The painting displayed on the Rialto Bridge was ordered to be immediately removed and destroyed.
Although the authorities in Venice took a decisive step to remove the incendiary painting from the Rialto Bridge and prevent disturbances affecting Jews in their city, news about the painting spread across the peninsula, inspiring, it seems, a real criminal accusation of murder against Jews. In June 1705, in Viterbo, a town in the Papal States, Jews visiting the town for the fair of Madonna della Cerqua (or Quercia) were accused of attempting to kill a Christian boy, spurring a lengthy trial that ended in November 1706 with their acquittal.6 Since 1593, Jews had no right to reside in the city—the result of the bull by Pope Clement VIII, Caeca et obdurata Hebraeorum perfidia (“The blind and obdurate perfidy of the Jews”), which expelled Jews from the territories of the Papal States, except for Rome, Ancona, and Avignon, although Jews would be allowed to live in cities later acquired by the Papal States.7 In the late seventeenth century, however, Jews occasionally received temporary permits of residence in Viterbo during the fairs held there.8 And so, in 1705, some Roman Jews were in Viterbo for the duration of the fair, which that year ran from May 27 to June 19.9
Six days before the end of the fair, on Saturday, June 13, a twelve-year-old boy, Girolamo Antonio Gallerani, the son of a local shoemaker, accused the Jews temporarily residing in Viterbo of trying to kill him to obtain his blood. Girolamo claimed that five Jews came out of their quarters and asked if he wanted a job for which they would pay him.10 The Jews then, according to Girolamo, “made him go with them,” and after reaching the end of Campo Grande, where the fair was held, they led him “to a hidden place where they could not be seen by anyone.” Once there, they threw him down on the ground and “placed a halter (il capestro) to his throat in order to strangle him.” Girolamo then said that the Jews pulled his hat over his eyes and “put their hands into his mouth” so he would not scream. Evoking the imagery of the martyrdom of Simon of Trent, he claimed they had a knife and a basin “to collect his blood for use in sorcery.” But according to the boy, after he appealed to the Madonna and S. Antonio, whose festival was that very day, miraculously, the halter broke. And “although he was half-dead, he fled from their hands.”
Almost immediately after Girolamo made this accusation, the news spread, and the matter was turned over to a lay court (curia laicale). And “though half-dead,” Girolamo was examined by “physicians and surgeons,” who found that on his neck he had three lines”; the boy seemed frightened and was short of breath. The boy then recounted what had happened to the prosecutor Antonio Volpini.
Some sixty-four Jews were immediately apprehended. The very next day, June 14, they were all lined up for Girolamo to pick out the perpetrators. Girolamo “recognized one of those who attacked him, touching him with his hands. It was Gioiello di Core, who was immediately arrested.”11 Another Jewish lad, Josef Samen, was also implicated, and eleven others were detained for further questioning; the remaining Jews were released. Jews immediately activated all their connections in Rome, Viterbo, and the rest of the peninsula. Ten Jewish leaders wrote to both the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome and the Roman Jewish community, seeking their intervention in face of the accusation of the attempted murder of a Christian boy “to collect his blood.”12 In their supplication, they emphasized the danger facing the incarcerated Jews specifically because of those charges.13
In Viterbo, the case was still in the hands of the curia laicale. And although the accused Jews remained in detention for months, the accuser Girolamo was also interrogated numerous times, providing contradictory testimonies. The Jews wanted the case transferred to the episcopal court (curia episcopale) in Viterbo and then to the Holy Office in Rome. They did not fully trust the lay court and seemed to have an ally in the episcopal court in the person of Paolo Bonanzi, a prosecutor. After much legal wrangling, the case was eventually turned over to the episcopal court.
By August, thanks to Jews’ persistent efforts, the Holy Office in Rome was forced to consider the case.14 In their appeal to the Holy Office, Jews insisted that neither the lay court nor the episcopal court found any convincing “proofs of such crime.” Indeed, the results of both investigations, they wrote, “demonstrate clearly the falsity of the said calumny.” Despite this, the governor of the city still continued to detain eleven Jews. The Jewish community in Rome was financially strained, having to provide not only for the incarcerated Jews but also for their families, now destitute “here in Rome,” as well as the representatives in Viterbo for the duration of the suit.15 These financial strains, although very worrisome for the Jews, were, of course, not of particular concern to the Holy Office, although the question of fiscal solvency and debts of the Jewish community in Rome would become an issue a few decades later. Emphasized thus in the Jews’ appeal were matters pertaining to religion: “invention of the said miracle” and the claim that Jews needed blood “for sorcery and superstition.”16 Jews pleaded that the case be moved to the “Holy Tribunal” and the incarcerated Jews to the prisons of the inquisition. When given a choice, Jews often showed a preference for the Holy Office, which they hoped would bring justice and truth.17
The charge that Jews killed Christian children had already been “recognized as calumnious” earlier that year, the Jews noted in their plea, when the Senate in Venice intervened on the Jews’ behalf to have “a painting depicting many Jews in an act of killing a Christian child” taken down.18 “It is difficult to believe that in the said city the calumny and imposture implied in the painting would have been legally condemned [si sia intentata],” but supported in Viterbo by “a judicial action.” Despite the Jews’ appeals, on August 24 the Holy Office decided that the case did not fall under its jurisdiction, marking the case as causam non spectare ad S. Officium. The decision, certified on September 4, 1705, was announced to the Jews on September 22. On September 25, the case was transferred back to Viterbo.19
Not giving up hope, the very next day, Rabbi Tranquillo Vita Corcos and the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome appealed to Placido Eustachio Ghezzi, an official at the office of Sacra Consulta, asking that the Sacra Consulta take up the case.20 The Sacra Consulta, founded in 1559 as part of the reform of the state, was a council responsible for appraising “the legitimacy of trials by peripheral courts” and for adjudicating conflicts over jurisdiction in the Papal States. It effectively functioned as a court of highest instance for appeals in criminal and civil cases.21
Rabbi Corcos appealed to the Christian “kindness” and “fraternal love, which [means] more than filial [affection],” thanks to which Jews had been “tolerated and embraced” by so many secular and ecclesiastical Christian princes.22 The rabbi juxtaposed “this love” by Christian rulers to “cruel and terrible prejudice [that] emerges from the bosom of the ignorant commoners,” who “accuse [Jews] of crimes so far from the truth, in order to make them despised both by the public and the very charitable princes.” Yet, even when Jews were “falsely” accused of these crimes, especially “infanticides, based on the false belief that Jews wanted to use their blood for sorcery and superstitions, [which are] utterly contrary to the Law of Moses,” the Jews’ innocence had always been recognized by popes and secular princes alike. Corcos referred to Gregory IX, who “following the example of his predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, Celestine, Innocent, and Honorius” extended his defense of Jews “in cases of similar impostures” in a brief Lacrimabilem Judaeorum Franciae from September 5, 1236.23 In his breve—issued soon after Emperor Frederick II had granted Jews his own charter of protection in the aftermath of one of the most notorious cases of anti-Jewish violence that took place in December 1235 in Fulda—Pope Gregory IX called for justice in the treatment of Jews and condemned their oppression and the calumnies against them. Yet, the pope did not explicitly deal with the accusations of infanticide; the first to do so was Innocent IV, who in 1247 wrote first to archbishops and bishops in France and Germany, and then to “all faithful Christians, most explicitly urging clergy, princes, nobles, laity, and citizens to abstain from charging innocent Jews with similar diabolic fraud, impostures, enormous crimes, such as infanticides of Christians.”24 Pope Innocent’s letters are some of the most powerful condemnations of the anti-Jewish accusations. In them, the pope admonished Christians not “to accuse [Jews] of using human blood in their religious rites, since in the Old Testament it is their precept not to use blood of any kind, let alone human blood.”25
These thirteenth-century condemnations had already been cited during the Trent affair, and although they were never inducted to canon law, they were repeatedly used by Jews to emphasize the long history of papal protection against accusations of infanticide. The archive of the Jewish community in Rome contained other documents related to intercessions in the aftermath of similar accusations, and Corcos was happy to make use of some of them in his methodically composed entreaties to Sacra Consulta. In the second half of the seventeenth century, a Polish Jew, Jacob ben Naftali of Gniezno, traveled to Rome seeking intercession against clergy and students of seminaries and colleges who attacked Jews and spread “calumnies among the most ignorant people”—charging that Jews needed “to mix Christian blood” in their unleavened bread and that they “also need, for the same reason, bits of the Eucharistic bread.”26 These “repugnant” accusations, Jacob ben Naftali stressed, contradicted the divine law, which prohibited consumption of any blood. As for the unleavened bread, there was nothing extraordinary in it; it just could not contain any leaven, and according to Exodus, must not be fermented. Indeed, the Polish Jew argued, the unleavened bread had been established thousands of years before “the birth of Christ,” and thus it would have been impossible to use “the said blood.” This claim was “invented after the coming of Christ.” Such claims, Corcos noted, had already been condemned by Church and secular authorities, among them Emperor Charles V, and more recently in “a letter written to the same effect in 1664 by Father General of the Dominican Friars,” copy of which was kept in the archive of the Jewish community in Rome.27 Corcos then directly quoted both Jacob ben Naftali’s letter and the intervention from the general of the Dominicans in one of his treatises he sent to the Sacra Consulta in the defense of Jews.28
To compose his sophisticated addresses to Ghezzi, Corcos had clearly drawn not only on archival sources but also on earlier printed works. He cited decrees already known from earlier publications: the 1475 condemnation of similar accusations in Venice, the 1479 decree by Bona and Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, the 1603 decree from Verona, and the 1544 letter by Charles the V, which was subsequently confirmed in 1566 by both Frederick III and Maximilian II.29 All of them were first listed in Richard Simon’s work in response to the 1669 trial in Metz, then published in Isaac Cardoso’s apologetic Las excelencias de los hebreos in 1679, and then again in 1681 in a short pamphlet against blood accusations by Isaac Viva Cantarini, Vindex sanguinis. A telltale that Corcos used Isaac Cardoso’s Las excellencias de los hebreos is the typographical error copied from Cardoso that dated the 1479 decree by Bona and Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza to 1470. But notably absent from Corcos’s appeal was the case of Simon of Trent, even though it was discussed by Cardoso.30 Corcos would likely not have wanted to draw attention to a story of Jewish murder of a Christian child that was sanctioned by the Church.
Like many other defenders of the Jews, Corcos focused on biblical injunctions against murder and consumption of blood.31 All the biblical proofs “demonstrate clearly not only that God prohibits Jews the consumption of human blood … but also that the primary cause [for this] is the rigorous prohibition to eat blood of beasts and animals,” which was to prevent the spilling of human blood. This was, Corcos pointed out, also noted by Thomas Aquinas in a section of his Summa theologica, which dealt with sacrifices in the temple.32 Although Aquinas discussed the exclusion of both fat and blood from priestly use and consumption, Corcos’s focus was on blood only. Blood was, Corcos paraphrased Aquinas, to be “poured at the foot of the altar in honor of God” for several reasons: first “to prevent idolatry, because idolaters used to drink the blood of the victims”; second, “to form human life living. For they were forbidden the use of the blood that they might abhor the shedding of human blood”; and third, Corcos added, following Aquinas, “on account of the reverence due to God: because blood is most necessary for life, for which reason life is said to be in the blood.”33
Rabbis too prohibited the consumption of any blood, Corcos wrote; the topic was addressed most explicitly by “Rabbi Moses Maimonides of Egypt,” who wrote in his Mishneh Torah on the section of prohibited foods, “Human blood is especially prohibited by the rabbis when it is separated from the body … but [in case] blood that happens to flow from the gums, if the patient swallows it, he does not commit an error, but biting bread or indeed other food, and leaving the blood on it, he first has to cleanse the blood and then continue to eat, treating the blood as if it were separated.”34
Evoking arguments similar to those raised during the mission of Jacob ben Naftali of Gniezno to Rome, Corcos argued that the belief in the use of blood for the Passover bread was unsustainable. How could one support the belief that “the bread, which had to be prepared with such caution and consideration, and for which scrupulous purification from any kind of pollutions was especially necessary, would require an ingredient, which in and of itself is considered polluted and filthy, and which cannot be used without committing a mortal sin”?35 Why would anyone require human blood in the unleavened bread, if the bread was not eaten “in commemoration of the massacre by His Divine Majesty of the enemies of the Hebrew people, but rather of Divine Providence, which knew to persuade those who obstinately kept [the people] subjected” to let them go in liberty, without “leaving that much time for the dough to become fermented”? If this “imagined superstition” were true, would not so many converts from Judaism to Christianity, “who were excellent scholars, like Nicolas of Lyra, Paul of Burgos, and others well-informed about the Jewish rituals, have shown it in their writings?”
In Corcos’s mind, the Viterbo accusation was undeniably connected to the earlier incident in Venice. And even though the Senate of Venice condemned the insinuations that Jews killed Christian children, “a similar calumny was fabricated no more than two months later” in Viterbo.36 Corcos implied that the motifs invoked in the Viterbo accusation—not only of blood but also of a basin and a knife—were related to the recent public iconographic depiction in Venice of Jews killing a child. Yet although in Venice, the attempt to promote this calumny was ultimately in vain, some believed that it could bear fruit in Viterbo, and “unfortunately, they succeeded at least in causing anxiety and evident dangers to all Jews, who find themselves here … and who, because of this, were detained in prisons, without any trace of crime.” If Venice was a trial run, then Viterbo took matters further.37 Pleading with Ghezzi and the Sacra Consulta for justice to protect Jews from accusations of “crimes of which they are absolutely innocent,” Corcos urged them to “imitate examples of so many popes, and decrees and judgments by secular princes, especially those of the Republic and the Senate in Venice,” all of which followed the tenor of the “apostolic declarations.”
In 1706, a much-expanded version of the treatise that included specific source references and an extensive discussion of rabbinic sources was published along with the Sommario, which contained the texts of several of the documents mentioned in the treatise, including the 1664 letter to Poland, a fragment of the decree by Charles V, and the latest condemnation issued in Venice in April 1705.38 This version of Rabbi Corcos’s treatise directly addressed the Jews’ failed attempt to have the trial moved to the Holy Office in Rome. But here this failure became a tool of the defense. “To render this supposed crime credible,” Corcos wrote, the prosecutor in Viterbo claimed that Jews acted “in scorn and contempt of the Christian religion.”39 Yet, the Congregation of the Holy Office “has already meticulously examined the trial, and noted Nihil extare, quod spectet ad Sacram Congregationem Sancti Officii [there is nothing here that pertains to the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office].” Thus, “it cannot be doubted” that “no act appears to have been committed in scorn of the religion, because if this Supreme and Zealous Tribunal merely suspected a similar crime, it would not have neglected to punish those accused severely.”40 The fact that the Holy Office dismissed the case meant that the prosecution’s argument was deeply flawed.
To accuse Jews of enmity was utterly unfounded. Not only did Jewish law prohibit murder, a topic that Corcos had already discussed at length in the first version of his defense, but it also prohibited Jews from deceiving non-Jews; indeed, Jewish law mandated honesty in dealing with gentiles.41 Citing Johannes Buxtorf’s Synagoga judaica, Corcos asserted that on all Sabbaths and other Jewish holidays, Jews prayed to God “for peace, quiet, and the felicity of the Prince, in whose domains they lived, and for all his subjects.”42 Yes, perhaps some “crazy Jew” might commit murder or a similar crime, but Corcos protested against condemning the whole nation for the actions of one. In fact, in all nations there were those who “disobeyed and did not observe laws of the princes” or “the divine laws.” There were to be sure even sorcerers and the wicked among Jews, such as Dathan and Abiram, biblical figures who conspired against Moses. There were also many “inobservant Israelites.” But still, Corcos shrewdly pleaded, just as it would not be appropriate to deem “Christians in general as impious, because Luther and Calvin were impious,” so too it was not reasonable “to call the whole Israel a villain or a sinner.”43
Corcos’s supplications were published by the official papal printing house, the Stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, which had prerogatives to publish officially approved Church documents from papal bulls, encyclicals, and brevi to apostolic privileges, edicts, and indulgencies, all of which were intended to be disseminated widely or at least “through our entire Church state and all of Italy.”44 The official printing house also published approved books, among them the Vulgate version of the Bible, “works of the Doctors of the Church, and other books, which contain and explain the doctrine and traditions of the Catholic faith.”45 It was thus no small matter that Corcos’s supplications and other documents in defense of Jews in Viterbo were printed by the Vatican’s printing house, after receiving the appropriate approval of Church authorities.46 The expanded version of Corcos’s defense sported the imprimaturs of Giovanni Pastrizio (Ivan Paštric, 1636–1708), a polymath and theologian at the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome, known for his expertise in the Hebrew language and rabbinic literature; Dominicus de Zaulis, a jurist and censor; and a Dominican friar Joannes Baptista Carus.47 The approbation by the highly respected Giovanni Pastrizio validated Corcos’s arguments that were grounded in Jewish sources. Decades later, when in 1758 Polish Jews once more appealed to Rome, any arguments based on Jewish sources would have to be sent to Paris, because Catholic scholars in Rome seem to have increasingly moved away from Hebrew research and learning.48
The publication of Corcos’s works with such distinguished approbations demonstrated that Jews had friends in high places. Whereas Corcos based his defense of Jews on earlier Christian condemnations of anti-Jewish accusations and on the precepts of Jewish law, a Christian lawyer, Andreas Alberettus (Alberetti), writing at the beginning of 1706, focused on the trial at hand and its broader legal implications. Building on Corcos’s argument that elsewhere in Europe and in Italy similar “calumnies” had been condemned and deemed untrue, Alberetti stressed legal consequences for those who filed false accusations. And, so too in the Viterbo case, “after more than six months of examination,” nothing had been proven. In fact, the accusation had been deemed “false and malicious,” with medical examiners finding no injuries consistent with the allegations of attempted murder and “endangerment of his life.”49
There were, Alberetti argued in defense of Jews, numerous inconsistencies and confusing statements in the various testimonies offered by the boy accuser Girolamo. Why did he not take the road that was shorter and more frequented by the public, but instead one that was longer and empty? Even more, it was unclear which road he did take.50 For example, he repeatedly changed the location of where the Jews supposedly called out to him and apprehended him.51 He “modified and varied” the description of the rope supposedly used by Jews. One time he said it was new; in another testimony he said that it was old and weak. But the major contradiction, consequential for the Church authority, came in the story about the breaking of the rope. First, Girolamo said that it broke because of the force Jews used when they threw him to the ground. But then he said that “it was not because of violence and pulling, but because he placed his own hands on his neck and called out to Mary the Virgin,” who miraculously freed him from the grip of the Jews. The claim of false miracles was potentially heretical and detrimental to the faith. The list of contradictions went on and on. Girolamo often said different things in different courts, so that his testimony varied between the secular court and the ecclesiastical court.52 The discrepancies and false statements made in this trial demonstrated clearly that one was dealing with “a calumny.”53 These falsities together with the lack of evidence that the crime had even occurred “superabundantly” demonstrated that the two Jews from Rome, Gioiello di Core and Josef Samen, still imprisoned after nine months of legal proceedings should be deemed innocent and freed immediately.54
If that were not enough, Alberetti argued, judicial procedures were not adhered to properly. Some of the witnesses were legally problematic. The only witness who allegedly saw Gioiello in action was the accuser himself, Girolamo, whose testimonies could not be trusted. Two other witnesses who were called to testify against Gioiello were criminals, charged with theft and incarcerated with him.55 They too were hardly trustworthy. In fact, one of them, Zamparinus, who had tricked Gioiello into making false statements, had already been tried at the Sacra Consulta for insulting the governor of Ischia.56 Moreover, there were omissions in the testimonies and final court account. No mention was made, for example, of the fact that Girolamo drank wine with his relatives. All this, Alberetti claimed, undermined the legitimacy of the judicial process.57
To reinforce these patent problems with the judicial process and the questionable nature of the accusation itself, excerpts of testimonies from court documents and “extrajudicial” evidence were published in March 1706, also by the Stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica.58 The printed commentary on the margins of the quotes from the court records served to underscore discrepancies between different testimonies. The publication offered additional details, one suggesting the boy’s drunkenness on the day of the alleged attack, and reports of more in-depth investigations, which included site visits and testimonies of other witnesses. Those site visits demonstrated what could be heard or seen from the places near the spots of the claimed attacks, providing yet another method to undermine the boy’s version of the story. The boy’s story simply did not hold: there were too many contradictions, big and small, about the location of the attack, the number of Jews involved, and the condition and color of the rope and other tools supposedly used by Jews. The long verbatim excerpts from existing court records of Girolamo’s contradicting testimonies provided compelling evidence for the defense.
But perhaps the most powerful material was the testimony of the parents and the medical examiners. Girolamo had apparently told the investigators that his father had interrogated him about the incident “in order to know if it truly happened to me.”59 The father “did not believe it.” He said to the boy “that it was not true and that he wanted me to tell the truth” and threatened that he would beat him if he had told lies. And so, “fearing my father, I told him that it was not true,” Girolamo said. But then when his father left the house, the lad called his mother and confided that his response to the father was motivated by fear. Girolamo’s father, for his part, first told the officials that he had initially not believed that Jews had attacked his son.60 But he then seems to have backpedaled, saying he realized the boy might have denied the Jews’ role out of fear of being beaten. “I am the only one,” the father said, “who beats him,” as he had done numerous times for “his pranks.”
There may have been a reason for the father to change his story. When the physician Marcucci arrived on Sunday, the day after the alleged attack, he was told that Girolamo’s neck hurt, but not why it hurt.61 The father took the doctor aside, telling him that the boy was well and that what Girolamo had said on Saturday against the Jews was not true. Marcucci then urged the father to go “in [good] conscience” to the authorities and report that the allegations were untrue. But after the doctor left and the mother came back from mass, the family, fearing that Girolamo would be prosecuted for “the calumny,” decided not to “retract the accusation.” And this was the reason, the Jews’ defense argued, why “between the three of them, the boy, the father, and the mother” could not keep their story straight.
In December 1705, two medical authorities, Giovanni Trulli, a public health official (protomedico) and the dean at the university “La Sapienza” in Rome, and Luca Tomassini, a medical official for the magistrate, were asked to opine about the causes of Girolamo’s injuries.62 Though it was too late to examine the evidence in situ, they reviewed the testimonies and descriptions of symptoms and injuries reported by Girolamo and recorded by the investigators. Trulli and Tomassini concluded that the symptoms described were not consistent with the alleged cause of the injuries: an attempted strangulation. Given that symptoms of strangulation, they wrote, were different from those described, “without any doubt” the reported symptoms and injuries were either feigned, or merely caused by epilepsy, or, truly, caused by drunkenness, or by having eaten sallow, wet, and difficult to digest foods, or perhaps by having taken a long walk during a hot summer day.… All can be identified both in theory and practice.” The physicians’ opinion was delivered to Ghezzi, the official at the Sacra Consulta in January 1706.
The argument presented by Jews and their defenders must have been persuasive. Two months after the defense opinion was rendered, it was decided that the case be transferred from Viterbo to the Sacra Consulta in Rome, and the two incarcerated Jews, Gioiello di Core and Josef Samen, were moved to a new prison in the city.63 They reached Rome on April 13.64
Still the case was not yet over. In September 1706, the final four-page summary of the issues undermining the accusation against the Jews was published in Italian by the official pontifical printing house.65 It focused on the repercussions of affirming these accusations against Jews based on such problematic evidence, which failed “any principle of proof.”66 “Owing it to justice,” the judge “is obligated to find the truth.” The Statute of Rome mandated that judges investigate crimes with a presumption of innocence of the accused; it was the accuser who needed to sustain the accusation.67 The case against the Jews in Viterbo was contrary to this principle, and the procedures so flawed that it was hoped that this would be remedied in Rome. With the Sacra Consulta weighing in, the trial’s outcome, positive for the Jews, it was assumed, would not be easily “dismissed.” But as the matters stood, with this “false stain” that they slaughtered Christian children, “the unhappy Jews” were unable to function in society “without [being] universally hated,” “without danger of being killed, and without being able to do business at the fairs”—all this despite being “tolerated and defended by the Holy Apostolic See.”68 An accusation “so vicious” must not be legitimated by the trial. The whole case should be dismissed and Jews let free.
Intervention in this lengthy affair was expensive and challenging for the already financially strained Jewish community in Rome.69 Numerous letters were sent to different officials and persons of influence in efforts to release the Jews or gain access to the incarcerated. More than 1,200 scudi were collected to cover some of the expenses from Jewish communities in Florence, Mantua, Ancona, Venice, Livorno, Ferrara, Reggio, Lugo, Cento, Verona, Fiorenzola and Piacenza, Modena, Pesaro, Casale, Siena, and Senigalia (known at the time as Sinigaglia, or Sinigalia).70 The efforts by Jews and their supporters proved effective, though the results were not immediate. In November 1706, after seventeen months, the case was finally resolved by the Sacra Consulta. On November 5, the governor of Rome was ordered to release the incarcerated Jews, and the next day Gioiello di Core and Josef Samen were free again.
One of the byproducts of the protracted trial of Viterbo in 1705–1706 was the consolidation of arguments in defense of Jews. Preparing their defense of Gioiello di Core and Josef Samen, Jewish leaders in Rome obtained copies of previous decrees condemning similar anti-Jewish accusations and presented them as legal precedents. It was not only that both secular and ecclesiastical leaders granted Jews general patents of protection against such accusations but also that in actual cases against Jews the authorities had found them innocent.
The most recent of those decrees was issued in April 1705 in Venice following the incident with the offensive painting on the Rialto. That decree, not surprisingly, directly referred to a Venetian precedent, the 1475 ruling by Doge Peter Mocenigo condemning accusations against Jews. But of the accusations of murder that resulted in an investigation and an exculpating decree, one of the most recent took place in Verona in 1602–1603 when a Jew, Giuseppe Abramino, was accused by a certain Bernardino Bretorio of abducting his son, and “either trying to take a Christian soul from the bosom of Mother Church and lead him to the Jewish perfidy and damnation,” or “killing him in mocking of the death of our Savior, and of taking the innocent blood.”71 Giuseppe Abramino “denied committing such a wicked crime,” and his lawyer demonstrated “with various passages from the Holy Bible” that Jews held “the shedding of blood in horror.” Indeed, the defense argued, “many princes considered the rumor of use of blood to be vain and false,” which they publicly conceded in many privileges, as did Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, the duke of Milan on March 29, 1479, and Pietro Mocenigo, the doge of Venice on April 22, 1475, and “finally, Frederick III, Charles V, and Maximilian II on May 8, 1566,” who drew on and affirmed earlier papal injunctions “to believe” such accusations. Based on this defense, the authorities in Verona decreed, “all suspicion of committing such a crime is annulled and thereby the illustrious podestà along with the most excellent Senate liberate the above mentioned Giuseppe.” The documents that served as the foundation for the defense of Jews and the exculpating decree in Verona were then inscribed in Verona’s official records and came to be more broadly known thanks to Richard Simon, Isaac Cardoso, and Isaac Viva.
Of the three documents mentioned in Verona, the 1479 decree by Bona of Savoy, the regent of Milan on behalf of Bona’s minor son, Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, was perhaps one of the most powerful denunciation of anti-Jewish accusations issued by Christian authorities. It called the accusations “craziness” and stressed that Jewish law prohibited consumption of blood.72 Indeed, there were many baptized Jews “respected in their faith” all over Christendom, who would have revealed this “secret” crime if it were true. The decree dismantled the accusation with logic, pointing to the centuries of a Jewish presence in Rome to prove that these accusations were absurd. For hundreds of years, no one had ever found Jews to commit such crimes, and “if they had, it would have been impossible not to discover it after some time.”73
If the edict of Milan so forcefully and persuasively debunked the charge that Jews killed Christian children that it came to be used in the subsequent defense of Jews in similar accusations, the decree reissued by three successive emperors—Frederick III, Charles V in 1544, and Maximilian II in 1566—further undermined the validity of these anti-Jewish charges by building on, as well as lending an executive support to, earlier papal condemnations.74 The emperors’ decrees clearly articulated a mutual relationship between imperial and papal power. On the one hand, earlier papal condemnations lent legitimacy to the imperial condemnations. On the other, the cases in which Jews were “most gravely bothered, taken captive, tortured, condemned to death, robbed of their possessions, evidently despite the fact that the Most Holy Fathers, Our Pontiffs, declared and prohibited to believe [these accusations]” were to be judged solely by the emperor, “as the supreme lord and judge of the Jews.” Even though these imperial decrees were in fact assertions of imperial power over Jews, the fact that they drew a lineage to and highlighted their dependence on earlier papal pronouncements made the decrees crucially important for the defense of Jews living on the Italian peninsula, subject to papal authority, as they were in Papal States.
If the 1603 decree from Verona provided references to existing documents, in his defense of the Jews accused in Viterbo, Tranquillo Vita Corcos then brought them to life and supplemented them with additional sources and explanations, thus creating a comprehensive blueprint for the future defense of Jews. The Jewish community of Rome evidently recognized the relevance of Corcos’s elaborate treatises beyond Viterbo, saving many unbound copies for future use.75 And used they were just a few years later, in 1711 in Ancona, in 1721 in Senigalia, and then eventually in the 1750s in defense of Jews of Poland, with Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli referring precisely to the same documents and sometimes even using similar wording to that found in Corcos’s works in his report on blood accusations issued for the Holy Office of the Inquisition and Pope Clement XIII.
Ancona was one of the few cities within the Papal States where Jews were allowed to reside, albeit in a ghetto. In 1711, during Holy Week, a three-year-old Christian boy disappeared, so wrote the Jews of Ancona in their supplication to Pope Clement XI.76 Since that year Easter and Passover coincided, “some Christians” began to “slander” Jews, denouncing them to the episcopal vicar, and claiming that the child had been seen in the ghetto where he was taken “by Jews [who wanted] to make use of his blood.”77 As the rumors spread, people in town began to “whisper” about “setting the ghetto on fire.” To make matters worse, even “the judge himself” embraced this rumor and ordered “a rigorous search of all Jewish homes,” which would have been destroyed “had the child astonishingly not been found the next morning in the house of a Christian tanner, far away from the ghetto.” The boy had apparently fallen into one of the tanning vats and drowned. If that were not enough, the following day, on Good Friday, April 3, which was also the eve of Passover, a woman was heard wailing that she could not find her six-year-old son. She began to incite the city against “the ghetto.” But a short time later the boy was found outside of the city gates. The Jews asserted that it was no accident that this rumor was spread; rather, it was a concerted effort inspired by hate. In similar situations in the past, the pope’s “predecessors Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, Celestine, Innocent, and Honorius” excommunicated “such slanderers,” the Jews of Ancona wrote, citing almost verbatim one of the supplications by Tranquillo Vita Corcos.78 They also mentioned the decrees of Bona and Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, of the three Holy Roman Emperors—Charles V, Frederick III, and Maximilian II—the 1475 decree from Venice, the 1603 verdict from Verona, and most recently, the results of the incident in Venice and the trial in Viterbo in 1705–1706. Copies of the treatises by Tranquillo Vita Corcos and transcripts of some of the mentioned documents were attached.79
The Holy Office took the Jews’ complaints seriously, and on May 17, less than two weeks after first considering the supplication, it requested from the officials in Ancona more information about the incidents in which Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian boys.80 The bishop’s deputy (vicario episcopale) of Ancona, who was apparently about to leave the city, quickly composed the requested report and forwarded it to the Holy Office in Rome.81 According to the vicar’s report, on March 24—not April 2 during Holy Week as the Jews’ supplication suggested—Gasparro Baldassare Nicolò, a three-year-old boy and the son of Antonio Pallotta and Maddalena Angelini, disappeared, having been reportedly last seen on a street not far from the ghetto. Or, so it was reported by Don Donato Conditi, a parish priest at the Church of St. Giaccomo in Ancona, and by Giuseppe Angelini, the boy’s uncle, who came to the vicario soon after the child disappeared. Many people searched through “all the streets and alleys of the city, sounding the bell, and shouting, as it is always done in similar cases,” but the boy could not be found. Thus, “what was left was to search diligently the ghetto.” The vicario then requested help from the bargello, the chief constable of the episcopal court, and ordered him to notify the Jewish leaders to provide help in the search efforts. But the next morning the secretary (cancelliere) of the criminal court reported that a body of a child was found in a small well. The secretary had already seen the body and testified that it “was found intact, without any wounds or signs of abuse.” How the boy fell and drowned, he could not say, but one girl of about the same age as the boy was said to have pushed him with a stick during play. Nonetheless, the vicario did not try to deny that before the boy’s body was found some Christians had gone into the ghetto at night to look for him.
As for the second boy—Antonio Valentino, the son of a tanner Giuseppe Bonafortuna, who, according to one account was six years old and twelve according to another—his story was more complicated.82 The incident took place on Thursday during Holy Week just as the gates of the ghetto “were being closed”; its timing was perhaps why the Jews conflated the two incidents in their supplication. That morning Antonio Valentino went with his boss Giovanni Catani (or Catanei), a local shoemaker, into the ghetto to the house of Rabbi Giuseppe Cipolletta to deliver a pair of shoes for the rabbi’s daughter. But the shoes were too big, and so Antonio was sent back with a pair that was a little smaller. They did not fit either, so the boy had to go back a third time. When he entered the house there were two men, one of whom was the rabbi’s son and the other his servant, as well as a Jewish widow named Canizza. (Later testimonies would indicate that even more people were in the house.) The Jews asked him if he had seen a piece of paper, in which a few coins were wrapped. When the boy denied seeing it, they took him to a room “where the chickens were” and locked the doors.83 One put his hand on the boy’s mouth “so he would not scream, the other took off his shirt.” They then apparently offered him something to eat and drink “so he would stay quiet.” When the boy did not return to the workshop, the master, Giovanni Catani, came to look for him, whereupon Antonio was set free and went back to work. The boy said nothing, the vicario wrote, about what had happened in the ghetto until he got home for lunch. There he told his mother, who in turn told his father. Hearing this the father went to the Office of the Inquisition and, it was claimed, tried to lodge a complaint against the Jews.
But in the court records sent to Rome, Giovanni Catani’s version of the events was different. He said that when he went back to the rabbi’s house, the Jewish women and men present there asked him to make the boy confess if he had taken that piece of paper with money.84 But the boy cried and, so Catani suggested that they undress him to see if he had that paper. But “the rabbi did not allow that, saying it was not required.” Back at the shoemaking workshop, the boy told the workers that “Jews locked him in a room … place a hand on his mouth so he would not scream.” Catani then, along with the boy’s father, informed the Office of the Inquisition.
In the meantime, an anonymous letter arrived at the Holy Office in Rome informing it about “a barbarous act committed in the city of Ancona by the perfidious Jews.”85 “Because of [the] zeal of Christian piety,” the anonymous author decided to write directly to the Holy Office because nothing was being done about this “barbarous act” in either the secular or ecclesiastical tribunal. This might have been, he speculated, because of the Jews’ persuasiveness or their money.
The letter recounted the events of that Maundy Thursday, telling the story of Antonio’s dramatic visit to the rabbi’s house, where the “twelve-years-old” was trapped in a room, his mouth and eyes covered as he was disrobed, tied with the help of the Jewish widow Canizza, and thrown to the ground so he would be quiet.86 Canizza offered him money and something to eat and drink so he would stay quiet. But the boy, the anonymous informer wrote, “was continuously shrieking” until his boss, Giovanni Catani, arrived, whereupon Antonio was quickly dressed and sent away. The letter pleaded that the Holy Office “find the perpetrators because of the sinister end the said Jews had in mind for the poor and innocent boy … to fulfill their barbarous law, which during the days close to their Passover” makes them “attack and kill a Christian.” The Holy Office needed to intervene because the Jews had succeeded in getting away with such crimes “through the power of money and oppression of Christians.” The Holy Office in Rome did not ignore the letter. After debating the matter, it decided, on June 1, 1711, to forward a copy to the inquisitor in Ancona and to request more information “about the second case.”87
Soon after the request from Rome arrived, the inquisitor began his investigation, which was to last until June 22. On that day, he sent his response, along with an “authentic copy of the court records” related to “the supposed attack on Holy Thursday by Jews against Antonio Ventura [sic] Bonafortuna, a Christian boy represented in the anonymous letter.”88 The inquisitor explained why initially the Holy Office in Ancona had not dealt with this matter; that was simply because “no denunciation was brought before this Holy Office, and the rumor running around the city was about a supposed theft,” not about “a menacing” act done by Jews to the Christian boy.
On June 11, Antonio Valentino, the boy at the center of the controversy, was called in for questioning.89 He recounted the events of Holy Thursday, during which he visited the rabbi’s house three times, because the shoes did not fit “his daughters.”90 It was during that third visit that the Jews detained him. When asked who was in the house, he said that the first two times he was only in the front rooms of the house, and there was only the rabbi’s wife (named Isotta) and his two daughters, for whom the shoes were intended; but when he arrived for the third time, there was also the rabbi’s son Moise Aron and another Jew—the servant of the widow Canizza. It was those two who undressed him and continued to threaten him, asking if he had taken the piece of paper with money, until his master Giovanni arrived. Antonio then told both his master and his father about what had happened in the rabbi’s house, and the master told him to report the incident to the Holy Office. He went there after lunch and first told a priest and then the vicario.
The same day, the boy’s father, Giuseppe Bonafortuna, was also called to the Holy Office.91 According to Giuseppe, his only son, the twelve-year-old Antonio, came home at lunch crying. Antonio told his father about the incident in the ghetto that morning: his visits to the rabbi’s house and the Jews’ attempt to undress him in search of the lost piece of paper with money. After the father heard the story, he went to the rabbi’s house himself. The Jews told him that the boy had stolen the money; and after “quarreling” with the father they told him they would file a complaint against his son. That was when he decided to denounce the Jews to the Holy Office. The vicario was not there, but one of the people present, Father Morganti Filipino, seeing it as a case of theft, told him that the vicario would not have “taken up such matters.” Filipino added the father must have “known well” that his son once “was in the store in [Filipino’s] house” and stole money, and he “was found red-handed stealing it.” Having heard that, Giuseppe Bonafortuna left the Holy Office. “Why didn’t he return to the Holy Office?” the official wanted to know. It was because he did not want to be bothered with this case anymore.
Next was Giovanni Catani, the shoemaker, Antonio’s master.92 According to Catani, after Antonio went to the ghetto for the third time, he was missing for about an hour, and at that point a Jew, whose name he could not recall, came to his workshop and asked him to come to the house of the rabbi to talk. Once there, the rabbi told him about the missing paper with money, claiming that Antonio must have taken it. Catani then suggested that they undress the boy to see if he was hiding the money. But the rabbi said it was not necessary, because after he had brought the shoes the second time, he left the house—implying that he might have disposed of the stolen money; they just wanted to make the boy confess where the money was. Hearing this, the shoemaker said that the boy was trustworthy; he had worked in the shop for a long time and had not stolen anything. They then left without waiting for the Jew’s response. Asked if he had heard about any other abuses of the boy by Jews, he answered he had not.
The next day, on June 12, Antonio’s mother was examined.93 She said that on Holy Thursday, her son came home around lunch “half-dead, and trembling.” He told her about what had happened, whereupon she and her husband, together with their son Antonio, went to the ghetto. She did not enter the rabbi’s house “because of the prohibition against Christian women entering Jewish homes.” While the Jews blamed Antonio for stealing the money, the boy lay the blame on the rabbi’s daughters. And so, the Jews threatened to file a formal complaint against Antonio. But the widow Canizza interrupted, saying that “she had already done that.” To which the mother responded, presumably from outside the house, “We will also go and file [a complaint].” Following this exchange, Antonio’s mother left with her husband and son and went to the Holy Office to denounce the Jews. When asked if there was anything else the Jews had done to her son, she added nothing to what had already been said by others.
Over the next few days, Antonio’s coworkers were interrogated about the affair.94 Their testimonies were vague, adding nothing new to the case. Still, they all agreed that Antonio was a “good boy.” But a priest Antonius questioned on June 15 said that after the parents had arrived to report the incident in the ghetto he told them that their son had stolen something from his house. Hearing these words, “they both left, without filing another complaint.”95
The investigation ended on June 20, and on June 22 the findings were dispatched to Rome, although one more testimony, that of Bartholomeo Lucatelli, a tanner who knew Giuseppe Bonafortuna, was added on June 28.96 He had been absent from the city during the investigation. Bartholomeo said that Giuseppe had told him about what had happened to his son in the ghetto, mentioning that Jews had tried to crucify and kill his son. He added that he had also heard that Antonio’s mother went to denounce Jews to the Holy Office. After the holidays, Bartholomeo went to the ghetto and talked to the Jewish moneylenders (banchieri). He told them not to worry about this quarrel at the Holy Office because it was “not a matter of faith and religion but of theft,” whereupon the Jewish moneylender said, “Giovanni Catani spread the rumor so that ‘the rabbi would be quiet and not talk about the gold that had been stolen.’ ”
When the investigation prompted by the Jewish supplication and the anonymous denunciation finally concluded, it was evident that in neither case in Ancona were the Jews guilty of any crime. Accusations that the Jews harmed the two Christian boys were caused by malicious rumors that easily spread throughout the town. If in the aftermath of the events in Viterbo it may not have been clear why Jews would have sought to have their case transferred to the Holy Office, the incident in Ancona offers some possible answers. Jews appear to have had confidence in the Holy Office: it was not easily seduced by rumors and acted only when in possession of evidence that was substantive enough to begin proceedings. When the anonymous letter reached Rome, expressing frustration that local authorities had not acted to punish the Jews and demanding justice for “the barbarous act,” its demands dovetailed with those of the Jews, who also sought Rome’s intervention. But a thorough investigation revealed that the whole incident was prompted by disgruntled individuals seeking revenge at the hands of the Holy Office. And the Holy Office refused to play along, clearing the Jews of all “calumnies” against them.
The Holy Office again had the Jews’ back in 1721 in nearby Senigalia, where, as The Historical Register reported in England, “the common people had begun to insult the Jews, and would in all probability, have proceeded farther, had not that Tribunal interpos’d their Authority.”97 On July 14, 1721, the Holy Office in Senigalia issued a decisive decree “forbidding everybody to rail at, abuse, or insult the Jews in any manner whatsoever, upon pain of imprisonment and other arbitrary punishment, as the superiors should think fit, even upon the deposition of one single witness.” The officials—the vicar general, the vicar of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and the notary—exhorted, as the Historical Register reported, “everybody to pay obedience to this order, that they may not incur the penalties aforesaid.”
Jews were indeed “deemed innocent in the tribunals of Italy,” as Lorenzo Ganganelli would write decades later, and were exculpated by lay and ecclesiastical authorities. But it was not because the story of Jews killing Christian children was unknown or culturally unacceptable in Italy. The relative ubiquity of the imagery and of the publications reminding Catholics of the story of Simon of Trent and the very fact that such accusations even took place suggest the opposite. Italian scholar Tommaso Caliò has argued that the judicial persecution of Jews on the Italian peninsula was stifled because it interfered with long-term conversionary policies of the Church.98 Although the medieval argument that the persecution of Jews prevented their conversion was known, with some Christians warning against such spurious accusations and their impact on Jews’ conversions, this ideology alone would not have been sufficient to prevent the persecution of Jews, and their acquittals. After all, harassment of Jews in order to convert them had been an accepted method in the Papal States since at least the mid-sixteenth century. It was rather the ethos and framework of the legal system, with its insistence on buon governo (good governance) and buon giustizia (good justice), with proper judicial process as a sign of both, that should be particularly credited with saving many Jewish lives on the Italian peninsula. This stress on “good justice” allowed for a gradual move away from confession as the crown of evidence and prompted not only legal scholars but also local inquisitors and other officials to consider other types of evidence before ruling on guilt or innocence. Canon law prohibiting the clergy from pronouncing death sentences and participating in criminal cases that would end in capital punishment may have been a moderating factor on the peninsula, much more so than north of the Alps.99 In the Papal States, “God’s good order,” as Irene Fosi has recently argued, was the goal to emulate, and Rome was to be the model for other rulers.100 True, the ideal often clashed with reality, but the fact that it existed at all and was, at least in theory, embraced by Church authorities and other rulers on the peninsula meant that the courts there were more deliberate and attentive to legal precedent than in Poland-Lithuania, where the ideal of justice was to be swift and where, in contrast to the Italian peninsula, the ethos of a weak state and governance dominated to the point that “anarchy” was understood to be a guarantor of Polish stability.101 In Poland, thus, in contrast to Italy, the combination of a lack of knowledge about Jewish customs and the weak judicial system meant that trials against Jews were often deathly. In Italy, the legal framework protected the Jews, even though within canon law itself that legal framework would tie the Church official’s hands to issue explicit public condemnations of blood libels.