The synagogue on Via Mario Finzi … Bologna has an ancient Jewish community (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Two of us had lunch in the historic heart of old Bologna yesterday with Peter Bolot from New Zealand and his wife, the Israeli writer Shifra Horn, from Jerusalem. Later in the day, the Irish Jewish Museum was in contact with me, trying to source images from this blog. They were unusual coincidences on a day I was researching the story of Bologna’s ancient Jewish community.
Last week, archaeologists and the Jewish community here announced that the site of Bologna’s mediaeval Jewish cemetery has been rediscovered, four and a half centuries after its desecration and destruction following the Papal expulsion of Jews in 1569. In all, 408 graves have been found in the largest-known mediaeval Jewish cemetery in Italy.
Although the discoveries were made in 2012-2014, the discovery was only announced on Tuesday last week at a news conference by the Mayor of Bologna, Virginio Merola, Bologna’s Chief Rabbi, the president of Bologna’s Jewish community and other officials.
The cemetery was discovered during the excavation of a site earmarked for a new housing project. The newly-found graves include women, men and children. Some had been buried with ornaments made of gold, silver, bronze, hard stones and amber, the superintendent said.
The area, which is near Via Orfeo, was used as a Jewish cemetery from the 1390s, but it was destroyed in 1569 after Pope Pius V banished Jews from everywhere in the papal territories except Rome and Ancona.
The cemetery was handed over to the nuns of the nearby convent of Saint Peter the Martyr, who were told ‘to dig up and send, wherever they want, the bodies, bones and remains of the dead: to demolish, or convert to other forms, the graves built by the Jews, including those made for living people: to remove completely, or scrape off the inscriptions or epitaphs carved in the marble.’
The 408 graves uncovered recently were perfectly aligned in parallel rows in an east-west direction. No trace of tombstones been found, and 150 graves showed clear signs of deliberate desecration. However, four ornate Jewish gravestones beautiful sculpted Renaissance lettering and on display in Bologna’s Civic Mediaeval Museum are believed to have come from this cemetery.
Rabbi Alberto Sermoneta has said the recovered remains needed to be given a dignified burial.
The piazza in front of the Basilica of Saint Stephen … here Saint Ambrose of Milan records the first Jewish presence in Bologna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on image for full-screen view)
The first Jewish presence in Bologna is recorded by Saint Ambrose of Milan, when he came to Bologna in the late fourth century to move the bodies of two Christian proto-martyrs, Saint Vitalis and Saint Agricola, to the Basilica of Saint Stephen. They were exhumed from the Jewish cemetery, or the so-called Campus Judeorum.
Later, local legends say, a hypothetical Jaqob Calderisi from Castel Tedaldo lived in in a house between what is now via Caldarese and via Castel Tialto. In the second half of the 1300s, a large number of Jewish immigrants arrived in Bologna, and by the end of the 14th century the city had bustling Jewish population.
As Bologna experienced growth and development, many of specialised Jewish craftsmen worked on important city monuments, including the Loggia dei Mercanti, the Basilica of Saint Petronius, and the churches of Saint Stephen, Saint Francis and Saint John, built in the Gothic style.
These Jews lived in peace in the city for two centuries. They settled mainly in the area located between the ancient Roman settlement, which goes from the Two Towers up to Piazza Malpighi, and the ancient Lombard camp which also starts at the Two Towers and runs in a semicircle towards the churches of Saint John on the Mount, Saint Stephen, Saint Vitalis and Saint Donatus.
The area was eventually renamed via de’ Giudei or Jews’ Street. The first immigrant, Gaio Finzi, Judeus de Roma, practiced as a strazzarolo” or a ‘rag-man.’ Many Jews in Bologna formed their own guild called Giudei, ‘The Jews’, but officially known as the Corporazione di Drappieri-Strazzaroli-Pegolotti-Vaganti e Giudei, the Guild of the Drapers, Ragmen, Upholsterers, Wanderers and Jews. Its headquarters were in the Palazzo degli Strazzaroli, known today as the Case Malaguti.
The guild contributed to the economic and cultural development of Bologna, guild members built three synagogues and laid out a cemetery, and eight more synagogues were built in the nearby villages.
Two of the city synagogues were in Via San Vitale and the third was on via Santo Stefano. One of the two in Via San Vitale was called La Grande or the Great Synagogue.
The Jewish community had a very close relationship with the University of Bologna. Jewish students received degrees in medicine and Jewish professors taught there. The university adopted texts written by Jews, including Maimonides, and Jewish scholars translated medical texts from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin, and from Latin into Hebrew and Arabic.
Bologna had respected Talmudic academies, important Torah teachers, and was the source of many printed Jewish religious books. The world’s first edition of the Book of Psalms printed in incunabulum, as well as ritual prayer book, and a collection of 16th century books are preserved in the library at the University of Bologna.
Jacov Mantino was called to teach medicine by Pope Clement VII, and another professor, who chose to remain anonymous because he was a Jew, was called to teach Hebrew literature. Famous rabbis, such as Obadia Sforno, Azarià de Rossi, and Samuele Archivolti settled in Bologna and contributed to developing local Jewish culture.
This ‘Golden Age’ came to an end at the Counter-Reformation, when the first Italian ‘Grand Inquisitor’ became Pope in 1555. The Jews were ordered to be locked up in what was called the Serraglio (‘Enclosure’) or Chiuso degli Ebrei (Pen for the Jews), later known as the ghetto.
It took about 11 years from the publication of the Papal bull for all the Jews of Bologna to move into the ‘Jewish cage.’ The creation of the ghetto met with resistance, and many other families were forced to relocate. Many Christians, for example, were reluctant to abandon their homes in the city, were forced to rent them to Jews.
Two large streets ran through the ghetto – Strada San Donato, today’s Via Zamboni, and Via Cavaliera, today’s Via Oberdan – and four large gates served as entrance and exit points. The entire perimeter of the ghetto has been the subject of recent conservation work.
Free movement to and from the ‘enclosure’ was forbidden in 1567, and by 1569 only one synagogue remained in Bologna’s ghetto, in Via dell’Inferno, at what is now No 16. That year, the Jews were expelled from the city.
When they were allowed back in again by Pope Sixtus V in 1586, they did not go back to the ghetto, and in 1597 Pope Clement VIII expelled them for good with the following decree: De Iudeis ex universo Statu Ecclesiastico expellendis, Roma, Avinione et Ancona exceptis (‘On the Jews, who must be expelled from the entire Papal State, with the exception of the cities of Rome, Avignon and Ancona’). The decree was nailed to the doors of the Basilicas of Saint Peter and of Saint John Lateran in Rome on 13 March 1593.
The synagogue on Via Mario Finzi, a pedestrianised street, is in the heart of Bologna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Jews returned to Bologna two centuries later, following the French Revolution. They stayed on after Napoleon’s defeat, when the city fell under control of the Papal States.
In 1858, a housemaid working for a Jewish family claimed she had secretly baptised a six-year-old Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara. The Inquisitor of the Holy Office then sent his armed guards to the family home to remove the child and give him a Catholic upbringing. The Mortara family incident moved the people of Bologna, and changed public opinion, significantly damaging the Pope’s power in Bologna.
With the Unification of Italy, Jews acquired full human rights, and migrated to Bologna from other parts of Italy. From 1830 to 1930, the city’s population rose from about 100,000 to about 400,000 and its Jewish population at the same time rose from about 100 to about 900. A new synagogue, built in 1874-1877 on a plan by Guido Lisi, was dedicated on the evening before vigil of Shavu’ot in 1877.
As the Jewish community continued to grow, the synagogue became too small and Attilio Muggia was commissioned to design a new synagogue. This building was designed in the Art-Nouveau style with a pavilion vaulted roof, and was dedicated in 1928.
The building stood on Vicolo Tintinaga, now known as Via Mario Finzi. It was destroyed 15 years later in an air raid on the city in 1943. After World War II, the synagogue was rebuilt by Guido Muggia and dedicated in 1953. For the first time, the façade – albeit on a side street – was visible to the public. But for security reasons, the entrance to the synagogue is through the Community Centre at the back.
The street is named after Mario Finzi (1913-1945), a Jewish magistrate and judge and a hero of the resistance in Bologna. But it is worth telling his story in another posting later today.
The synagogue on Via Mario Finzi was rebuilt in 1953, ten years after it was destroyed in World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
17 November 2017
A day visiting the
Byzantine treasures
and churches in Ravenna
Mosaics in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Professor Judith Herrin of King’s College, London, is one of the greatest Byzantine scholars today. In one of her books, Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, she recalls how the mosaics in Ravenna were her ‘first and most exciting introduction to Byzantine art.’
Her mother had seen an exhibition on the Ravenna mosaics and was keen to see the originals, while she was learning Italian at school. They both agreed that Ravenna should be the focus of a summer holiday. They rented a Fiat Cinquecento in Milan, and off they headed to Ravenna to see the mosaic panels that commemorate Justinian and Theodora.
It was only later that Judith Herrin wondered why portraits of rulers of Byzantium who never went to Ravenna flanked the approach to the altar in the church of San Vitale. For her, that journey from Milan to Ravenna was the beginning of the path to becoming the acclaimed Byzantine scholar she is today.
Earlier this week [15 November 2017], two of us set off, not by car but by train, and not from Milan but from Bologna, to see Ravenna, those Byzantine mosaics and some of its eight Unesco World Heritage Sites.
Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Byzantine Empire. Later, the city was the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, and it then became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
The Romans ignored Ravenna during their conquest of the Po Delta, and it was not until 89 BC that it was incorporated into the Roman political system. It was here, then, that Julius Caesar gathered his forces in 49 BC before crossing the Rubicon.
Inside the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Today the city is landlocked, but Ravenna was an important Adriatic seaport until the early Middle Ages, and greatly prospered under Roman rule. In the year 402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, which was easy to defend because it was surrounded by swamps and marshes yet had good connections by sea to the Eastern Roman Empire.
However, Alaric and the Visigoths bypassed Ravenna in 409 and went on to sack Rome in 410, taking Galla Placidia, the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I, as a hostage.
When Galla Placidia eventually returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III, and with the support of her nephew Theodosius II, Ravenna enjoyed a period of peace.
In that time, Ravenna gained some of its most famous monuments, including the Baptistry, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia – although she is not actually buried there – and the Church of Saint John the Evangelist.
After the collapse of Roman authority in the west, the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Theoderic the Great to retake the Italian peninsula. Theoderic took Ravenna in 493 and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy.
The fifth century mosaic of the Baptism of Christ in the Neonian Baptistry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Theoderic also built splendid buildings in and around Ravenna, including his palace church, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral, now Santo Spirito, a Baptistry, and his own Mausoleum outside the city walls.
Theoderic was an Arian, but he co-existed peacefully with the largely Orthodox people of Ravenna, and their bishops built more splendid church buildings, including the Capella Arcivescovile. When a mob burned down the synagogues of Ravenna in 519, Theoderic ordered the city to rebuild them at its own expense.
Theoderic died in 526 and in 540 the Byzantine Empire recaptured Ravenna, which became the seat of Byzantine government in Italy. Ravenna’s bishops embarked on a new building programme that included the Basilica of San Vitale and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
Under Byzantine rule, the Archbishop of Ravenna enjoyed autonomy from Rome, and held the second place in Italy after the Pope. But Byzantine rule came to an end in Ravenna in 751 when it was captured by the Lombards. Ravenna gradually came under the direct authority of the Popes. Pope Adrian I allowed Charlemagne to take away anything from Ravenna that he liked, and an unknown number of columns, mosaics, statues and other items were pillaged and taken to Aachen.
In the 14th century, Dante came to live in Ravenna in 1318, and the city is mentioned in Canto V in Dante’s Inferno. When Dante died in 1321, on his way back to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission in Venice, he was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore, now known as San Francesco.
Apart from another short occupation by Venice (1527-1529), Ravenna was part of the Papal States until 1796, when it was annexed by the French. It returned to the Papal States in 1814.
Lord Byron lived in Ravenna from 1819 to 1821, when he worked on Don Juan and wrote his Ravenna Diary.
Ravenna became part of the modern state of Italy in 1861. Surprisingly, the city suffered very little damage during World War II.
In all, eight early Christian monuments and buildings in Ravenna are listed by Unesco as World Heritage sites: the Orthodox Baptistry, also called the Baptistry of Neon; the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia; the Arian Baptistry; the Archiepiscopal Chapel; the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo; the Mausoleum of Theoderic; the Basilica of San Vitale; and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
In just one day, I managed to visit many of these this week, as well as the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, which was built in the fifth century by Galla Placidia and was restored after the World War II bombings; the tomb of Dante; and the Palace of Theoderic, which was, in fact, the entrance to the former church of San Salvatore.
On each occasion, the visit was overpowering and left me in awe and wonder. But Ravenna is worth a fuller account at a later stage.
The visit of the Magi in the sixth century Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Professor Judith Herrin of King’s College, London, is one of the greatest Byzantine scholars today. In one of her books, Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, she recalls how the mosaics in Ravenna were her ‘first and most exciting introduction to Byzantine art.’
Her mother had seen an exhibition on the Ravenna mosaics and was keen to see the originals, while she was learning Italian at school. They both agreed that Ravenna should be the focus of a summer holiday. They rented a Fiat Cinquecento in Milan, and off they headed to Ravenna to see the mosaic panels that commemorate Justinian and Theodora.
It was only later that Judith Herrin wondered why portraits of rulers of Byzantium who never went to Ravenna flanked the approach to the altar in the church of San Vitale. For her, that journey from Milan to Ravenna was the beginning of the path to becoming the acclaimed Byzantine scholar she is today.
Earlier this week [15 November 2017], two of us set off, not by car but by train, and not from Milan but from Bologna, to see Ravenna, those Byzantine mosaics and some of its eight Unesco World Heritage Sites.
Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Byzantine Empire. Later, the city was the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, and it then became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
The Romans ignored Ravenna during their conquest of the Po Delta, and it was not until 89 BC that it was incorporated into the Roman political system. It was here, then, that Julius Caesar gathered his forces in 49 BC before crossing the Rubicon.
Inside the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Today the city is landlocked, but Ravenna was an important Adriatic seaport until the early Middle Ages, and greatly prospered under Roman rule. In the year 402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, which was easy to defend because it was surrounded by swamps and marshes yet had good connections by sea to the Eastern Roman Empire.
However, Alaric and the Visigoths bypassed Ravenna in 409 and went on to sack Rome in 410, taking Galla Placidia, the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I, as a hostage.
When Galla Placidia eventually returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III, and with the support of her nephew Theodosius II, Ravenna enjoyed a period of peace.
In that time, Ravenna gained some of its most famous monuments, including the Baptistry, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia – although she is not actually buried there – and the Church of Saint John the Evangelist.
After the collapse of Roman authority in the west, the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Theoderic the Great to retake the Italian peninsula. Theoderic took Ravenna in 493 and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy.
The fifth century mosaic of the Baptism of Christ in the Neonian Baptistry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Theoderic also built splendid buildings in and around Ravenna, including his palace church, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral, now Santo Spirito, a Baptistry, and his own Mausoleum outside the city walls.
Theoderic was an Arian, but he co-existed peacefully with the largely Orthodox people of Ravenna, and their bishops built more splendid church buildings, including the Capella Arcivescovile. When a mob burned down the synagogues of Ravenna in 519, Theoderic ordered the city to rebuild them at its own expense.
Theoderic died in 526 and in 540 the Byzantine Empire recaptured Ravenna, which became the seat of Byzantine government in Italy. Ravenna’s bishops embarked on a new building programme that included the Basilica of San Vitale and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
Under Byzantine rule, the Archbishop of Ravenna enjoyed autonomy from Rome, and held the second place in Italy after the Pope. But Byzantine rule came to an end in Ravenna in 751 when it was captured by the Lombards. Ravenna gradually came under the direct authority of the Popes. Pope Adrian I allowed Charlemagne to take away anything from Ravenna that he liked, and an unknown number of columns, mosaics, statues and other items were pillaged and taken to Aachen.
In the 14th century, Dante came to live in Ravenna in 1318, and the city is mentioned in Canto V in Dante’s Inferno. When Dante died in 1321, on his way back to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission in Venice, he was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore, now known as San Francesco.
Apart from another short occupation by Venice (1527-1529), Ravenna was part of the Papal States until 1796, when it was annexed by the French. It returned to the Papal States in 1814.
Lord Byron lived in Ravenna from 1819 to 1821, when he worked on Don Juan and wrote his Ravenna Diary.
Ravenna became part of the modern state of Italy in 1861. Surprisingly, the city suffered very little damage during World War II.
In all, eight early Christian monuments and buildings in Ravenna are listed by Unesco as World Heritage sites: the Orthodox Baptistry, also called the Baptistry of Neon; the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia; the Arian Baptistry; the Archiepiscopal Chapel; the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo; the Mausoleum of Theoderic; the Basilica of San Vitale; and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
In just one day, I managed to visit many of these this week, as well as the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, which was built in the fifth century by Galla Placidia and was restored after the World War II bombings; the tomb of Dante; and the Palace of Theoderic, which was, in fact, the entrance to the former church of San Salvatore.
On each occasion, the visit was overpowering and left me in awe and wonder. But Ravenna is worth a fuller account at a later stage.
The visit of the Magi in the sixth century Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)