Economic History Association

The Legal Status of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1541-1638

Author(s): Benjamin Ravid
Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 35, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History
(Mar., 1975), pp. 274-279
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2119173
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 The Legal Status of the Jewish Merchants
of Venice, 1541-1638

This thesis, based primarily on documents preserved in the State Ar-

chives of Venice, traces and analyzes the process whereby considerations
of economic raison d'etat induced the Venetian government to overcome
its longstanding hostility toward Jews in general, and specifically toward
Jewish merchants, and to embark upon a more favorable policy, culmi-
nating in granting them special commercial privileges unavailable to non-
Jews, including even ninety percent of the native Christian inhabitants
of Venice.
Although Jewish moneylenders had been authorized to settle in Venice
briefly in the fourteenth century, their permanent residence commenced
only in 1509. Then, as the armies of the League of Cambrai arrayed
against the Venetian republic invaded the Venetian mainland territories,
their inhabitants fled across the lagoons to the city of Venice. Among
these refugees were many Jews, including moneylenders hitherto re-
stricted to dwelling in Mestre. The financially hardpressed Venetian gov-
ernment recognized the value of the Jews as a source of revenue for the
treasury, and also the added convenience their continual presence in the
city constituted for the urban poor. Consequently, after much sharp and
extended debate, it decided to modify its religiously-motivated policy of
exclusion, and in return for substantial payments, allowed Jewish money-
lenders (known as Tedeschi Jews, because most of them came originally
from the Germanic lands) to remain in the city and operate pawnshops
for the urban poor and also second-hand goods stores. However, the
Jews were subjected to many restrictions, including the wearing of a
yellow hat, and from 1516 on, confinement to living in compulsory quar-
ters in the ghetto nuovo, thereby giving a new meaning to the word
ghetto, previously used to refer to an iron foundry. Their religious free-
dom and economic privileges were carefully defined in charters called
condotte, which by the middle of the sixteenth century were issued reg-
ularly for five-year periods.
The Jewish moneylenders were not the only Jews on the Venetian

I wish to express my gratitude to the McCill University Social Science Research

Fund for two grants in 1969 and 1971, for obtaining microfilms from the Archivio
di Stato di Venezka; to the Director and the staff of the Archivlo, and especially
to Signorina Lina Frizziero, for providing me with the requested microfilms; to the
National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish
Culture for grants enabling me to take a leave of absence from the Department of
History at McCill University during the academic year 1972-1973; and to Professor
Isadore Twersky of Harvard University, for his sage counsel and strong support as
director of my Ph.D. thesis.
274

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 Jewish Merchants of Fenice 275
scene. The city was also frequented by specially privileged Jewish doc-
tors, by transient Jewish pilgrims bound for Palestine, and by visiting
Jewish merchants. While the evidence adduced to support the presence
of Jewish merchants in the Venetian marketplace during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries does not withstand critical scrutiny,' archival docu-
ments attest to their activities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
It was only in the sixteenth century, as a result of events transpiring at
opposite ends of the Mediterranean, that they appear to have assumed
a significant role in Venetian commerce. Many of the Jews expelled from
Spain in 1492, and also some of those who later had been converted to
Christianity by force in Portugal in 1497 and subsequently chose to flee
the Iberian peninsula, found a refuge in the Ottoman empire; there, they
soon assumed a preponderant role in its overseas commerce, especially
in the cities of Constantinople and Salonica, and some began returning
as Ottoman subjects to the ports of Christian Europe, including Venice.
The Venetian authorities tolerated the presence of these Jewish merchants
on the condition that they lodged, together with their co-religionists, the
"native" Jewish moneylenders, in the ghetto nuovo.
An improvement in the status of these visiting Jewish merchants took
place in 1541. The Venetian government, concerned with the decline in
its trade with Romania, the former European territories of the Byzantine
empire now under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, eliminated customs
duties for a two year period on many imports originating in Romania
and also on Western goods exchanged in Venice for these Eastern im-
ports, with the hope of thereby successfully maintaining the entrepot
nature of the Venetian marketplace, which was especially threatened by
the Ancona-Ragusa connection. A passage in this legislation of 1541 dealt
with the Levantine Jewish merchants, singling them out, apparently for
the first time, as a specific group. It stated that since they handled the
greater part of the merchandise imported from Romania, their complaint
that they did not have sufficient room in the ghetto was to be investigated,
and if valid, they were to be given additional quarters in the adjacent
ghetto vecchio, with the stipulation that they be prohibited from engag-
ing in moneylending, the sale of second hand goods, and all activities
other than overseas commerce. It was quickly ascertained that indeed
they did not have sufficient room in the existing ghetto, and consequently,
they were lodged in the ghetto vecchio, with the added restriction that
they neither bring their families with them, nor reside continually in the
city for longer than four months.2
Three months later, these merchants requested an extension of the
limited period of residence, presumably on the grounds that four months

1 See my forthcoming article, "The Jewish Settlement of Medieval Venetian

Giudecca: Reality or Mirage."
2 For further details, see my article, "The Establishment of the Ghetto Vecchio
of Venice, 1541: Background and Reappraisal," to be published in the History sec-
tion of the Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem,
1973.

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 276 - Ravid
were insufficient for them to
Strong objections notwithstand
tending their legally permitted
for the same length of time th
years later in 1543, the custom
two years, without any refere
Similarly, no mention of them
1545 and 1547. However, the ex
intended that the Jews remain
permitted them to remain for
of 1551 and 1553, this one year residence permission was omitted in
subsequent extensions, which made no references to the Jewish merchants.
Although as a result of economic and religious hostility, the Venetian
government did not officially authorize the Levantine Jewish merchants
to reside in Venice, nevertheless because of their significant role in Ve-
netian commerce with the Levant, it tacitly permitted them as Ottoman
subjects to benefit from the commercial treaties between Venice and the
Ottoman empire, and to remain in Venice, even with their families, for
extended periods of time. Meanwhile, the ranks of these Levantine Jews,
most of whom were of Iberian origin, were augmented by the arrival,
directly from the Iberian peninsula, of Marranos, whose presence was also
tolerated for reasons of commercial utilitarianism, on the tacit condition
that they revert to Judaism and live as Jews in the ghetto.
During the Venetian-Turkish war of 1570-1573 (as during the previous
war of 1537-1540), the Jewish merchants were interned, together with
the Ottoman Turkish merchants, not because of their Jewish religion, but
on account of their Ottoman nationality. This experience led the Jewish
merchants to seek guarantees of security in Venice. Indeed, they soon
went one step further; under the leadership of Daniel Rodriga, one of
the outstanding commercial entrepreneurs of the sixteenth century, they
initiated requests for the privilege of long-term residence in Venice, citing
the precedent of the charters granted to the Tedeschi Jews.
Petitions of Rodriga submitted in 1577, 1579, 1583, and 1584 were all
denied. However, in 1589, a favorable result was obtained. The reason
was apparently two-fold. First, Venetian commerce with the Ottoman
empire was declining in the late sixteenth century. While Venice could
compete successfully with Genoa and Ancona, the Atlantic nation-states
of Spain, Portugal, France, England, and Holland constituted far more
formidable challenges; the Venetian government felt that granting the
Jews formal privileges might induce the Ottoman Jewish merchants to
bring their goods to Venice, rather than going to other Italian ports, espe-
cially Ancona, or selling directly to Western European merchants in the
Ottoman ports. Secondly, the Venetian government was finally ready to
implement the project, long advocated by Daniel Rodriga, of establishing
a major commercial center at the Venetian town of Spalato, located on
the Dalmatian coast north of Ragusa with the intention of diverting trade
from the Ragusa-Ancona route to Venice; in view of the prominent role

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 Jewish Merchants of Venice 277
of the Jews in the trade of Dalmatia, the Venetian government r
that it was essential to grant them privileges in Venice to assure their
participation in the Spalato project. Thus, in 1589, the long-sought charter
was granted.
We cannot here analyze this remarkable and as yet unpublished docu-
ment, but must restrict ourselves to its crucial opening paragraph. It pro-
vided that for the coming ten years a safe conduct was to be granted to
any Levantine or Ponentine Jewish merchant, permitting him to come to
Venice with his family and property and trade freely, on the condition
that he wear the yellow hat of the Jews and reside in the ghetto, where
he might practice Judaism securely, without being molested on account
of religion by any magistracy.
These terms represented a significant departure from the traditional
Venetian commercial policy. While trade between Venice and the West
was open to all, trade between Venice and the Levant was restricted to
the two upper "classes" of Venice, the nobles and the cittadini originari,
comprising less than ten percent of the population, and of course, also
reciprocally to Ottoman subjects; all foreigners wishing that privilege
had first to reside in Venice for twenty-five years. Now, in 1589, not only
were the Levantine Ottoman Jews formally invited to settle in Venice,
but this highly valued privilege was even extended to Ponentine Jews
(that is, Marranos fleeing the Iberian peninsula), on the condition that,
in violation of the then accepted counter-reformation papal interpretation
of canon law, they would revert to Judaism and live openly as Jews in
the Venetian ghetto.3
In 1598, as the expiration date of the ten-year charter of 1589 ap-
proached, the Jewish merchants submitted a petition requesting its re-
newal, with certain modifications. The Board of Trade, aware of the
liberal terms offered in the interim-possibly partially as a reaction to
the Venetian charter of 1589-to Levantine merchants, including Jews,
by Venice's two chief Italian competitors, Livorno in 1593 and Ancona
in 1594, supported the petition of the Jewish merchants, citing their very
significant contributions to the customs and their important role in main-
taining the entrep6t nature of the Venetian marketplace. Consequently, a
new charter was introduced in the senate and passed by an overwhelming
majority.
The favorable policy of the Venetian government did not go unchal-
lenged. Native Venetian merchants, probably also motivated by religious
hostility, protested the liberal treatment of the Jews on the grounds that
they were usurping the trade that formerly had been in the hands of the
Christians and gaining a larger percentage of the declining international
commerce of Venice. But their protests were to no avail.
Strong objections to the Venetian policy were also raised by the Papacy,
which in 1555 had reversed its earlier policy of encouraging Marranos to

3 See my forthcoming article, "The First Condotta of the Levantine and Ponentine
Jewish Merchant8 of Venice, 1589."

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 278 Ravid
revert to Judaism in the p
ing the presence of bona f
version of the Marranos to
the Papacy over matters of
ened in the early seventeen
policy of giving refuge to
of the Venetians. Fra. Paolo Sarpi, the champion of the Venetian point
of view, justified the Venetian policy not only by citing the previously
tolerant papal policy, but also by arguing that the privileges granted by
the Venetians to the Marranos redounded to the public benefit of Christi-
anity, for they served to dissuade the Marranos from emigrating to the
Ottoman empire, and thereby strengthening it with their wealth and
industriousness. Thus Sarpi ingeniously identified Venetian policy moti-
vated by commercial raison d'etat with the greater glory of European
Christendom.
Under these circumstances, it is understandable that the charter of
the Jewish merchants was routinely renewed in 1611, 1625, and in 1636;
indeed in 1634 (and not in 1629, as hitherto assumed) the right to en-
gage in the Levant trade was also granted to the Tedeschi Jews who had
been petitioning for it for over twenty years. The valuable privilege of
engaging in trade between Venice and the Levant was also sought by
English, Dutch and Flemish merchants. Some members of the Board of
Trade, always anxious to increase Venetian commerce, on occasions, de-
spite internal disagreement, reacted favorably to the petitions of these
foreign merchants, citing in support the important contributions the Jews
were making to the customs. However, the government, always reluctant
to depart from its protectionist mercantile policy, apparently only once,
in 1610, introduced liberalizing legislation into the senate, but it did not
pass. Thus, the Jews retained their unique position of being eligible for
the status of merchants of Venice, and the only non-Venetians (other
than Ottoman subjects), allowed to engage in trade between Venice and
the Levant.
In 1636-1637, as a consequence of a theft and subsequent bribery of
the judiciary, in which some Venetian Jews were implicated, the threat
of an edict of expulsion seems to have hung over the Jews of Venice.
Apparently in response to this crisis, the Venetian Rabbi Simone Luzzatto
wrote a book entitled Discorso Circa ii Stato degli Hebrei et in Particolar
Dimoranti nelrInclita Citti di Venetia (Venice, 1638). Addressed to the
Venetian patriarchate, the Discorso attempted to make it more favorably
inclined towards the Jews, and thus presumably avert the expulsion. In
my thesis, I demonstrated that the first part of this unique work, dealing
with the commercial and fiscal benefits the Jews conferred on the city of
Venice-which greatly influenced Menasseh ben Israel, and also John
Toland and other eighteenth-century advocates of the amelioration of
the status of the Jews-can only be understood and evaluated in the light

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 Jewish Merchants of Venice 279
of an examination of the legal status and commercial activities of the
Jews of Venice.4
Luzzatto's defense of the Jews, according to a recently (1949) pub-
lished seventeenth-century Hebrew chronicle, played a major role in
averting the proposed expulsion of the Jews from Venice. The separate
charters of the Levantine and Ponentine Jewish merchants and of the
Tedeschi Jewish moneylenders were renewed for the remainder of the
seventeenth century. Although in the eighteenth century the two charters
were combined into one, and certain further restrictions introduced, nev-
ertheless, the commercial privileges of the Jews of Venice were not af-
fected, and indeed remained in effect down to the end of the Venetian
Republic.
In conclusion, it should be noted that this thesis not only sheds new
light on the legal status and economic activities of the Jews of Venice,
but also on Venetian commercial policy toward select tolerated minority
groups; the treatment of the Jewish merchants must be compared to that
of the German and Ottoman merchants, confined respectively in the
Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and ultimately, the Fondaco dei Turchi. Further-
more, since commercial forces and religio-economic considerations sim-
ilar to those existing in Venice were prevalent in other Mediterranean
and Atlantic port cities, this thesis serves as a case study of the phenome-
non of the Jewish merchant in the Mediterranean and Atlantic ports, and
of the toleration and admission (or readmission) of the Jews into Ancona,
Livorno, southern France, England, Holland, and the Americas.
BENJAMIN RAvW, Brandeis University

4 See the expanded version of my lecture, "Raison d'6tat and the Jews of Venice
in the Seventeenth Century: Some Re-considerations of the Discorso of Simone
Luzzatto," given at the December 29, 1974 Annual Meeting of the American Acad-
emy for Jewish Research, which I expect will be published in a forthcoming volume
of the Proceedings of that Academy.

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