CULTURE AND HISTORY FROM AFAR WITH JHSEMINARS
UPCOMING LECTURE
Wed, June 29th at 6 pm Israel time (11 am EST; 8 am PST; 4 pm UK; 10 am Mexico): THE ABSORPTION OF JEWS INTO LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY, Dr. Kathy Aron-Beller
At the time of the Roman Empire, and in the first ten centuries of the Middle Ages, that is approximately until 1350, almost all Italian Jews lived in the southern part of the peninsula (Rome, and southern Italy and Sicily). But 200 years later, around 1550, Jewish settlements were all in central and northern Italy, besides Rome. I would like to follow this immigration of Jews by looking at their absorption into the dynamic duchies and republics of Northern Italy such as Milan, Florence and Venice. What motivated Jews to move to these areas in the late medieval period and why did the Italians accept them? How should we define their experience here? The circumstances provide a possible key to the extraordinary capacity demonstrated by these states to tolerate and protect their Jews, refusing to expel them as other European kingdoms did during this turbulent period. Our study will include a visit to these important places as well as reflecting what it was that kept Roman Jews in Rome.
Originally from London, Katherine Aron-Beller is lecturer of Jewish History in the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University and at Tel Aviv University. Her areas of expertise are medieval Jewish history, early modern Jewish-Christian relations, the early modern Inquisition and Anti-Semitism. In 2007-8 she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the George Washington University in Washington DC. At present she is a Visiting Scholar of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. She is the author of Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena 1598-1638 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), the co-editor of The Roman Inquisition: Centre versus Peripheries (Leiden: Brill, 2018) and many other articles on the Catholic Inquisition, anti-semitism and the Jews of Italy. She is now finishing a book called "Christian Images and Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation," 400-1700." Dr.Aron-Beller has been a scholar in residence on many trips with Jewish Historical Seminars including trips to Spain, Portugal, England, Sicily and Italy.
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