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‘A Ship with Two Rudders’: ‘Righetto Marrano’ and the Inquisition in Venice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Brian Pullan
Brian Pullan
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

In Venice on 5 October 1570:

A man of ordinary height, dressed in the foreign style, with a curved black beard, was escorted into the Holy Office and asked his age.

He answered, ‘Some forty years’.

He was asked his name, his surname, his father, his status, his country and his employment.

He answered, ‘My name is Abraham, called Righetto, my father's Num Rig (a Spaniard of Portugal), my occupation is that of an exchange-broker; I am no Christian but a Jew; and I have been detained in the prisons of the Most Excellent Council of Ten’.

He was asked, ‘For what reason have their Most Excellent Lordships sent you to this Holy Office?’

He answered, ‘I know not, and cannot imagine, for I have never heard of Jews entering this Office’.

He was asked, ‘Do you know what Office it is?’ He answered, ‘This moment I was told it was the Office of the Holy Inquisition’.

He was asked, ‘In the last ten years, where have you lived?’

He answered, ‘Lately I have been in Spain, and was there three years from leaving this place, and I journeyed, too, to France; and seven months have passed since my return to Venice’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 25 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Papers relating to the case are in A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, in the bundle marked ‘Abraam detto Righetto’.

2 For statistics on the contents of the archive, see Cecchetti, Bartolomeo, La Republica di Veneziae la Cortedi Roma neirapportidella religione (2 voh. Venice, 1874), II, 3. The number of inquiries (processi) surviving from the years 1541–1794 is given as 2,910 and the number of persons inquired about (processati) as 3,594.Google Scholar

3 Printed in Pietro Caliari, Paolo Veronese, sua vita e sue opere (Rome, 1888), pp. 102–8.Google Scholar

4 See ‘The Heretic's Coat’ in Brecht's Tales from the Calendar.

5 See especially Pad, Renzo, ‘La scala di Spalato e la politica veneziana in Adriatico’, Quaderni Storici, anno v (1970), pp. 48–105, at pp. 51–64.Google Scholar

6 On the Mendes in general, and on Nasi in particular, see Roth, Cecil, The House of Nasi (2 vols. Philadelphia, 1947–8);Google ScholarGrunebaum-Ballin, P., Joseph Naci, Due de Naxos (Paris-The Hague, 1968);Google ScholarRose, C. H., ‘New information of the life of Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos: the Venetian phase’, The JewishQuarterly Review, LX (1970), 330–44:Google ScholarRose, C. H., Alonso Núñez de Reinoso: the Lament of a Sixteenth-Century Exile (Rutherford-Madison-Teaneck, 1971), pp. 44ff.; and for a large bibliography,Google ScholarRosenblatt, Norman, ‘Joseph Nasi, Friend of Spain’, Studies in-Honor of M. J. Benardete, ed. Langnas, I. A. and Sholod, Barton (New York, 1965), pp. 323–32.Google Scholar Mayer Kayserling, the nineteenth-century historian of the Sephardim, described Righetto's father, Nuñes Enriques, as agent and kinsman of Doña Gracia Nasi, Don Joseph's wife's mother - see his Historia dos judeus em Portugal, ed. Novinsky, Anita (Sao Paulo, 1971), pp. 196–7, and below, p. 45.Google Scholar

7 For general accounts of the Marranos, see Roth, Cecil, A History of the Marrtmos (Philadelphia, 1932);Google ScholarRevah, I. S., ‘Les Marranes’, Revue des Etudes Juives, sér. III, 1 (1959), 29–77;Google ScholarBaron, S. W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, XIII (New York-Philadelphia, 1969), 64–158. On Marranos in Venice,Google ScholarRoth, Cecil, ‘Les Marranes à Venise’, Revue des Études Juives, LXXXIX (1930), 201–33.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Yerushalmi, Y. H., From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto. Isaac Cardoso: a Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York - London, 1971), p. 7: ‘The Portuguese New Christian…knew the collective origins of his entire group, indeed of all the New Christians in the land. His fathers had not entered Christianity as individuals; they had been swept up in the common fate of all Jewry.’Google Scholar

9 On the position of professing Jews within Venice, see Roth, Cecil, The History of the Jews of Venice (Philadelphia, 1930);Google ScholarPullan, B. S., Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: the Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620(Oxford, 1971), pp. 476–578;Google ScholarMueller, R. C., ‘Charitable Institutions, the Jewish Community, and Venetian Society’, Studi veneziani, XIV (1972), 37–81, at pp. 63–74;Google ScholarRavid, Benjamin, ‘The Legal Status of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1541–1638’, Journal of Economic History, xxxv (1975), 374–9.Google Scholar On the Greek Orthodox community, Fedalto, Giorgio, Ricerche storiche sulla posizione giuridica ed ecclesiastica dei greet a Venezia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence, 1967). On the toleration extended to German Lutherans, see (for example) the letter of the nuncio Facchinetti to the cardinal-nephew Michele Bonelli, 14 Sept. 1566, N.V., VIII, ed. Aldo Stella (Rome, 1963), 105–9; Stella Bolognetti, pp. 277–86.Google Scholar

10 In The Commentaries of Pius II, trans. Gragg, F. A., ed. Gabel, L. C., Smith College Studies in History, xxv (1939–40), 257–9; XLIII (1957), 742 ff., 775 ff., 814–16.Google Scholar

11 Wotton to Sir Robert Cecil, 23 May 1603, in Smith, Logan Pearsall, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (2 vols. Oxford, 1907), I, 318.Google Scholar

12 As does Bouwsma, W. J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation Berkeley, 1968Google Scholar

13 Cf. Prodi, Paolo, ‘The Structure and Organization of the Church in Renaissance Venice: Suggestions for Research’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale, J. R. (London, 1973), pp. 409–30, at p. 409: ‘…the best known and most solid historical writing has demonstrated the confessional nature of the Venetian state beyond any doubt’.Google Scholar

14 Cf. the remarks of Facchinetti to Bonelli, 27 July 1566: ‘it is clear that it would be to the benefit of their state that no heretics should dwell therein, for these think of nothing but sedition and the disturbance of all civil and political order. Hence the value of any measure that would result in their Dominion being purged of these sorry villains’ (N.V., VIII, 82); also Stella-Bolognetti, pp. 168, 282.

15 See the nuncio Beccadelli to Cardinal Bernardino Maffei, 5 Sept. 1551, N.V., v, ed. Franco Gaeta (Rome, 1967), 279; Facchinetti to Bonelli, 20 July 1566, N.V., VIII, 76.

16 See the correspondence of the Cardinal Secretary Rusticucci with the nuncio Facchinetti, 14, 18, 25 July 1571, D.N., filza 9, fos. 64–65, 68v.

17 On the extradition of Guido of Fano, N.V., VIII, 71, 74, 75–80. 82–3, 87,89–90, 92, 96, 6 July to 24 Aug. 1566. On 30 April 1552 the nuncio Beccadelli had mentioned to Cardinal Gian Domenico De Cupis the principle that ‘appeals are not granted in matters of heresy’ (N.V., VI, ed. Franco Gaeta, Rome, 1967, 95). It was possible at least in theory for a nuncio to call an as yet undetermined case from a diocese in the Venetian dominions to Venice itself. But Facchinetti said that he had not exercised this right - see his letter to Bonelli, 96 Apr. 1567, N.V., VIII, 206–7.

18 To say nothing of the experts who examined the imprisoned man's circumcision - A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 30 Apr. 1571. For the nundo's attempts to obtain information from Florence, see D.N., filza 9, fos. 64V–65, 18 July 1571.

19 See N.V., v, 279; Stella-Bolognetti, pp. 290–1, 293–4.

20 See N.V., VIII, ix–x.

21 E.g. in Beccadelli to Girolamo Dandino (secretary to Pope Julius III), 13 Sept. 1550 (N.V., v, 122): ‘in the house of others you cannot do as you choose, and we must adapt to their lordships, to whom these furies are displeasing’. Compare his letter to Cardinal Cervini, 27 Feb. 1552, in which he complains of the excessive zeal of the commissario Annibale Grisonio - N.V., VI, 59.

22 See Prodi, ‘Church in Renaissance Venice’, loc. tit. pp. 415–17. The patriarch's vicar-general would often deputise for him in the Holy Office.

23 Cf. Benzoni, Gino, ‘Una controversia tra Roma e Venezia all’ inizio del ‘600: la conferma del Patriarca’, Botlettino dell' Istituto di Storia delta Società e dello Stato Veneziano, III (1961), 121–38;Google ScholarPullan, B. S., ‘Service to the Venetian State: Aspects of Myth and Reality in the early seventeenth century’, Studi Secenteschi, V (1964), 95–148, at p. 129.Google Scholar

24 See Soranzo, Giovanni, ‘Rapporti di San Carlo Borromeo con la Repubblica Veneta’, Archivio Veneto, ser. v, XXVII (1940), 23–5, 36–7.Google Scholar

25 See the list of Dominican Inquisitors and notes on their subsequent careers in Cecchetti, La Republica e la Carte, II, 10–11. The previous incumbent, Fra Valerio Faenzi, had missed the see of Chioggia, but had been seriously considered for it (N. V., IX, ed. Aldo Stella, Rome, 1972, 51, 103: letters of Facchinetti to Bonelli, 27 Apr., 3 Aug. 1569). Few Venetians would have accepted Facchinetti's argument - à propos of a Servite, Fra Raffaele that ‘friars could not in any sense be called their subjects, because on making their profession they became dead to the world, and subject only to His Holiness and their superiors’ - N.V., VIII, 238, to Bonelli, 28 June 1567.Google Scholar

26 E.g. Beccadelli to Cardinal Girolamo Verallo, 4 Oct. 1550, N.V., V, 137–8; to Cardinal Cervini, 15 Nov. 1550, ibid. p. 160; to Cardinal Maffei, 5 Sept. 1551, ibid. pp. 279–80. For a time the galleys were not considered a suitable penalty for condemned heretics, but the prohibition on resorting to them was revoked in 1568 - Facchinetti to Bonelli, 6 Nov. 1568, N.V., VIII, 455.

27 On the finances of the Holy Office, see Cardinal Scipione Rebiba, head of the Inquisition in Rome, to the nuncio Castagna, 5 Dec. 1573, N.V., XI, ed. Adriana Buffardi (Rome, 1972), 105. On the provision of torturers by the state, Rebiba to Castagna, 29 Jan. 1575, ibid. p. 319.

28 According to Beccadelli in 1551, the three lay patricians ‘attend and take account of the matters under discussion and give their opinions, although they always defer to the auditor and inquisitor in whose name indictments and sentences are drawn up, and a chief constable (capitano) of the Council of Ten is deputed to carry out the instructions of th tribunal’ - N.V., V, 279–80. Cf. Grendler, P. F., ‘The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605’, Journal of Modem History, XLVII (1975), 48–65: at p. 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 E.g. N.V., VIII, 42; N.V., IX, 119–20, 123, 127, 214; N.V., XI, 328, 346, 360–1.

30 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 29 May 1572. The excerpts from the interrogation of Tristan da Costa by the Council of Ten in 1555, in Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci, pp. 55–61, suggest that it followed very similar lines of questioning in dealing with suspected Marranos. Cf. also Stella-Bolognetti, p. 291.

31 On the procedures of the Ten, see Maranini, Giuseppe, La costihuione di Venezia dopo la serrata del Maggior Consigtio (first published 1931; reprint Florence, 1974), pp. 447ff. On Venetian legal procedures in general, Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Authority and the Law in Renaissance Venice’, in Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice, pp. 293–34Google Scholar

32 On which see Cozzi, Gaetano, Religione, moralità e giustizia a Venezia: vicende delta magistratura degli Esecutori contro la Bestemmia (typescript for circulation to students at the University of Padua, 1969).Google Scholar

33 N.V., XI, 130, Castagna to Tolomeo Galli, cardinal secretary of state, 16 Jan. 15

34 N.V., XI, 99–100, 115–16, 119, 166–7, 217 363–4: Facchinetti to Bonelli, 31 Aug., 5, 12 Oct. 1566, 1 Feb., 17 May 1567, 20 Mar. 1568.

35 Rivkin, Ellis, ‘The Utilization of Non-Jewish Sources for the Reconstruction of Jewish History’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, XLVIII (1957–8), 183–203. But compare the remarks of Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, pp. 21–4, with which I substantially agree. See also below, p. 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 See the interrogation of the servant Francisco Dies ‘in rigoroso examine’ on 13 Nov. 1585, which forms part of the trial of the Filippi in A.S.V., S.U., b. 54.

37 For rules on the application of torture, ‘pro vlteriori veritate et pro complicibus habendis’, see Rebiba to Castagna, 29 Jan. and 12 Feb. 1575, in the case of Hieronimo Donzellino, a physician from Orzi Nuovi - N.V., XI, pp. 318–19, 328–9.

38 For his examinations, A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 5 Oct. 1570, 4 Apr., 4 Aug. 1571, 15 Feb., 29 May 1572.

39 See below, pp. 52–3.

40 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, entries of 20 Oct. 1571 to 7 Feb. 1572; D.N., filza 9, fo. 174r.-V., Facchinetti to Rusticucci, 26 Jan. 1572.

41 See, for example, the paper of 6 July 1579 in which one Stefano Noghera confesses to having denounced four Portuguese to the Inquisition ‘because they refused to give me a few crowns which I asked of them, and two pieces of camlet to clothe me’ - A.S.V., S.U., b. 45, the case of Gaspare Ribeiro.

42 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 7 Oct. 1570, 9 May 1571. Don Diego was a former servant of the Duchess Eleonora of Tuscany and subsequently left Venice in the service of Marc' Antonio Colonna, leader of the papal forces in the crusade against the Turk. He admitted to being Righetto's creditor for sums of sixty and ten crowns. See also Righetto's petitions of late May and August 1571.

43 Ibid., copy of a paper of 21 June 1570, produced to the Holy Office on 1 Sept. 1571. The distinction between Spain and Portugal was not invariably observed.

44 A.S. V., S.U., b. 45, interrogations of Matthia da Rippa Sicca, 7 Apr. 1580, and of Nicolò da Ponte, formerly clerk to the Ribeiro firm, 14 June 1580. Matthia had heard the tale from another maid servant, Marietta. For references to the important trial of Gaspare Ribeiro, see Stella-Bolognetti, pp. 136–7, 241, 289.

45 A.S.V., S.U., b. 8, II Jan. 1550: the ‘Depositio Ioannis Alondngaria de Castiglia contra Maranos’. Compare the celebrated case of El Cristo de la Paciencia in Toledo, 1630, described in Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, pp. 105–2

46 Cf. Tessadri, Elena, L'Arpa di David: Storia di Simone e del Processo di Trento contro gli Ebrei accusati di omicidio rituale, 1475–1476 (Milan, 1974), pp. 273–6; Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, pp. 466–7.Google Scholar

47 On the genealogy of the word, see Farinelli, Arturo, Marrano: storia di un vituperio (Geneva, 1925);Google ScholarSicroff, A. A., Les controverses des statuts de ‘pureté de sang’ en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1960), pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

48 Farinelli, Marrano, pp. 43 ff.; Kaufmann, David, ‘Die Vertreibung der Marranen aus Venedig im Jahre 1550’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 1st ser., XIII (1902), 520–32, at pp. 525–6; Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin and others (58 vols. Venice, 1879–1903), 1, col. 819, 13 Nov. 1497.Google Scholar

49 As is suggested by some of the replies of defence witnesses in the case of Gaspare Ribeiro, A.S.V., S.U., b. 45, from 19 Nov. 1580. On 21 November Giovanni Cornuca, consul of the Spaniards and Portuguese, says of Portuguese expatriates that ‘unless they were sent upon the King's service I would take them for Jews’. The Jew Moisè Cardiel adds on 23–24 November that ‘It is customary in this city as in all Italy to call any Spaniard a Marrano’. Giulio Balanzan, Venetian citizen and merchant, states on I December that ‘throughout Venice Gaspare and João Ribeiro were called “those Marranos” because they came from Spain’, and Don Simeone Castelloro, a Milanese, on 28 Feb. 1581 that ‘I have heard all Portuguese called “Marranos”’.

50 By Gebhardt, Carl, Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa (Amsterdam, 1922), p. xix. But cf. Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, p. 297.Google Scholar

51 Florio, John, Queen Anna's New World of Words (London, 1611; facsimile edition, Menston, 1968), p. 300; quoted in Farinelli, Marrano, p. 63.Google Scholar

52 A.S.V., S.U., b. 46, 23 Apr. 1580.

53 A.S.V., S.U., b. 45, 26 Jan., 3 Sept. 1580.

54 A.S.V., S.U., b. 24, 19 Oct. 1569: testimony of Fra Enriques de Mello, included in a bundle of papers which ostensibly relate to Agostinho Enriques and Doarte Gomes, but extend to other cases of suspected Marranism

55 Benardete, M. J., Hispanic Culture and Character of the Sephardic Jews (New York, 1953), p. 22;Google Scholarcf. Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranee et le monde méediterranéen à l'epoque de Philippe II (2 vols. Paris, 1966), II, 141, and the broad theme of Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court.Google Scholar

56 A point made expressly to Righetto by the tribunal: ‘Your brother Hieronimo left all his property, as you stated above, to your mother Violante. But how could your mother, if she was as you say a Jewess, have the benefit of his estate when Hieronimo died a Christian, since a Jew cannot succeed to the property of a Christian, either ex testamento or ab intestate?’ - A.S.V., S.U., b. 36,4 Apr. 1571. In 1555 Tristan da Costa told the Council of Ten that he had failed to leave Portugal promptly because of the need to wind up his father's estate - Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci, p. 60.

57 As in the Ribeiro case in A.S.V., S.U., b. 45. The conflicts of the Mendes sisters on this point are well known: see Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci, pp. 46 ff., and N. V., v, 316–17, 325, VI, 49–50: Beccadelli to Maffei, 21 Nov., 5 Dec. 1551, and to Innocenzo del Monte, 13 Feb. 1552.

58 N.V., v, 87–8, Beccadelli to Dandino, 12 July 1550; submission of Righetto in his defence, II Sept. 1572, in A.S.V., S.U., b. 36. In a deposition of 26 Apr. 1571, Matteo Priuli, bishop of Vicenza, who had been attached to the nunciature in Portugal from 1542 to 1548, estimated unspectacularly that in the past thirty years more than one hundred families had left Portugal for Italy. Here, again, he was probably referring to exceptionally rich ones - ibid.

59 See A.S.V., Senato, Terra, filza 14, 26 Sept. 1551, for Antonio Priuli's statement of his affairs. In A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 21 July 1571, Don Vincenzo dall' Olmo describes one of the Enriques brothers, c. 1553–54, as an associate of Antonio Priuli.

60 See Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 101–3.

61 A.S.V., S.U., b. 34 contains an anonymous delation of Agostinho Enriques and Doarte Gomes, dated 9 Mar. 1555. It includes the statement that ‘On Rialto they do business with Christians, they send merchandise aboard galleys and ships, and because they cannot do so on their own account they use the name of a nobleman of Venice whom they maintain and who goes everywhere with them, and they give money to the father - a great man - to obtain the favours they desire…’ When Doarte Gomes exculpated himself in Ferrara on 31 Aug. 1555, he presented a long list of persons who would vouch for him if need be, and this was headed by the Spanish Ambassador and followed by the names of the Procurator Marco da Molin and of his son Nicolò. Both the Molin were involved, together with Enriques and Gomes, in intrigues and disputes with Tristan da Costa, agent to Brianda Mendes - see Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci, pp. 57–8.

62 A.S.V., Senato, Terra, filza II,8 July, 22 Aug. 1550; registro 1550–1, fos.43v–44,29 Aug. 1550; Kaufmann, ‘Die Vertreibung’, loc. tit. pp. 526–30; Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 515–16.

63 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36: witnesses examined in Lisbon, II Jan. 1572; Don Emanuel Rocha in Rome, 30 Aug. 1571; deposition of Matteo Priuli, 26 Apr. 1571.

64 N.V., v, pp. 316–17, Beccadelli to Maffei, 21 Nov. 1551.

65 See Herculano, Alexandre, History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, trans. J. C. Branner in Stanford University Publications in History, Economics and Political Sciences, 1/2 (1926), 189–636: at pp. 466–71, 479–83.Google Scholar

66 Ibid. pp. 506–9; cf. Kayserling, Historia dos judeus, pp. 196–7

67 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, Don Emanuel Rocha, 17 Sept. 1571. Miguel da Silva's promotion was publicly announced on 2 Dec. 1541 - see Hierarchia Catholica, ed. Gulik, W. van and Eubel, C. (Munich, 1923), III, 27.Google Scholar

68 Cf. Roth, History of the Marranos, pp. 199–200; Roth, The House of Nasi, I, 30 ff.; Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci, pp. 28 ff.; Révah, I. S., ‘Pour l'histoire des Marranes a Anvers’, Revue des Études Juives, série IV, II (1963), 123–47;Google ScholarBaron, , History of the Jews, XIII, 119 ff. Compare the travels of the Filippi, which can be reconstructed from their trial (1585–6) in A.S.V., S.U., b. 54.Google Scholar

69 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, testimony of Righetto himself, 5 Oct. 1570; of Giacomo Cavallaro, wood-pedlar in Ferrara, 22 May 1571; comments of Pietro da Rimini, Inquisitor in Ferrara, July 1571, on the value of Cavallaro's evidence.

70 Ibid. Don Alessandro Banducci in Ferrara, 14 Jan. 1571.

71 Ibid, evidence of Righetto, 4 Apr., 4 Aug. 1571.

72 Ibid, certified copy of certain clauses of the will of Hieronimo, dated 7 July 1552 and sent from Ferrara.

73 In general, see Balletti, Andrea, di Ebrei e gli Estensi (Reggio-Emilia, 1930),Google Scholar and Baron, , History of the Jews, XIV, 88–9, 339–40.Google Scholar

74 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 29 May 1572, Righetto's own testimony.

75 Ibid. 5 Oct. 1570, where Righetto also says that he received an outright bequest of 6,000 ducats from his father.

76 Ibid, evidence of Don Diego Ortiz de Vera, 7 Oct. 1570. Don Emanuel Rocha, Rome, 30 Aug. 1571, put this incident in 1553 or 1554. On 13 Nov. 1570 Giacomo de'Conti, a notary in Ferrara, confirmed the story that Righetto had lost large sums to the duke of Florence. Cf. the remarks of the Venetian Secretary Vincenzo Fedeli concerning the Duchess Eleonora: ‘… she gambles constantly for her own amusement, but she always wants to win, and plays for stakes of thousands. And the duke, too, gambles, but does so rarely, for he never ceases to apply himself to public affairs’ (see his account of Florence in 1561, in Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, ed. Arnaldo Segarizzi, III/I, Bari, 1916, 149). See also Baron, , History of the Jews, XIV, 75–6, 334.Google Scholar

77 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 4 Aug. 1571.

78 Ibid, audiences of Chazeres with the Holy Office, 30 Oct., 2 Nov. 1571, 21 Jan. 1572. The first of these at least was granted at his own request.

79 See Benardete, Hispanic Culture, p. 44, 56.

80 Letter of 26 Jan. 1571, A.S.V., S.U., b. 36.

81 Ibid. 23 Jan. 1572.

82 A.S.V., Consiglio dei Died, Registro Criminalium II, fos. 86V–87, contains under the date 26 Sept. 1570 the resolution ‘That Abraam Benvenisti, otherwise Aregeto, Jew, who has been arrested, be handed over to the office of the Holy Inquisition as the Reverend the Papal Nuncio has requested of the Signory, and that so far as this Council is concerned he shall be deemed to have been acquitted’, passed in the Council of Ten and Zonta by 28 votes to o with three abstentions. For the nuncio's account of the reasons for the arrest, D.N., filza 9, fo. 64r–v, 18 July 1571; for that of Don Diego Ortiz de Vera, A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 7 Oct. 1570. For the connexions of Don Joseph Nasi with the War of Cyprus and Lepanto, see Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Nasi, pp. 135–47; for the wife he married in Constantinople in 1554, ibid. pp. 68–71.

83 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 15 Feb. 1572.

84 E.g. of Gaspare Ribeiro, 6 Aug. 1571, who appeared to be dating the departure of the Enriques from Lisbon in 1527–32, although he connected it at the same time with events such as the disgrace of the cardinal-bishop of Viseu which undoubtedly occurred in the 1540s - ibid. Ribeiro's age was then seventy-eight, and at his own trial in 1580–1 the defence was to seek to prove senile incapacity (S.U., b. 45).

85 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, letters of Retro da Rimini from Ferrara, 22 May, July 1571

86 Ibid. 1 Sept. 1573, interrogations of Padre Nicolò Tagliapietra, former messenger of the Holy Office, and (3 Sept. 1573) of Padre Battista Ghislero, notary or chancellor of the Holy Office. In his submission of 31 July 1572 the Advocate Bariselli had argued in favour of revealing to Righetto the names of witnesses abroad.

87 Ibid, especially Righetto's petition of late May 1571; also his interrogations of 5 Oct. 1570 and 4 Apr. 1571. On 13 Nov. 1570 Giacomo de' Conti, a notary of Ferrara, said that the prisoner used the Christian name ‘Henriche or Righetto Nunes on account of the merchandise he had in Spain, in Flanders and in France’. In answer to Righetto's own question at his first interrogation, the court had told him that ‘living in the manner of Christians is the practice of going to churches, hearing Mass, going to confession, taking holy water and other such things, as is the custom of Christians’. If Righetto accepted this, he made an implied distinction between living as a Christian and accepting Christianity.

88 Franciscan Observants of the house of Santo Spirito in Ferrara told the Inquisitor there that ‘they keep no account of the dead who are buried in their church’ (see his letter of 7 Feb. 1571, ibid.) In the later case of Gaspare Ribeiro, slightly more precision was shown by Fra Pompeo Sansoni of Vicenza, prior of the Hieronymite monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie outside Venice (S.U., b. 45, 16 June 1580). But evidence about burials even here still seemed to depend on an old man's long memory, and not on written records.

89 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, 14 Jan. 1572.

90 Herculano, Inquisition, pp. 408–9.

91 Cf. ibid. pp. 531–2.

92 Ibid, evidence from Ferrara, 22 May, 2, 23 July 1571; on 27 June 1573 his guarantors were Salamon Maestro, Mair Lumbroso (or Lambros), Joseph Hammias, David Boino and Jacob Cohen. On 18 September 1573 Michele of Riviera di Salo, turnkey in the new prisons at San Marco, said: ‘I never saw him with money, save three, four, or eight ducats, according as the Jews brought them to him.’ Father Battista, the notary, recalled that he had consulted many people about the defence later prepared for him by the Advocate Bariselli- 1 Sept. 1573.

93 On the doctrines of Brunfels and their dissemination, see especially Carlo Ginzburg, ll nicodemismo: simulazione e dissimidazume religiosa nell' Europa del' 500 (Turin, 1970): for their association with Venice, pp. 160–1, and 129, n. 2.Google Scholar

94 For a specimen of the advocate's oath, see that of Pier Paolo Rutilio on 15 Sept. 1580 in the Ribeiro case, A.S.V., S.U., b. 45. In the case of the Filippi the advocate Tommaso Trevisan withdrew from the defence of the accused Salamone on the grounds that he was convicted by ‘his own admissions and the apostolic briefs relating to the indictment’ - S.U., b. 54, 6 May, 3 June 1586.

95 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, documents submitted on II Sept. 1572 by the Advocate Bariselli on behalf of Righetto. The extract from the chronicle is not ascribed by Gois by name, but can be identified as Chapter 20 of his Crónica de felicissimo rei Dotn Manuel - see the edition of J. M. Teixeira de Carvalho and David Lopes (4 vols. in 2, Coimbra, 1926),Google Scholar 1,38–40. For details of its first publication see p. xli. Goís was in prison under investigation by the Inquisition in Portugal from 4 Apr. 1571 to 16 Oct. 1572, was condemned for heresy to perpetual imprisonment and confiscation of goods, and was sent to the monastery of Batalha to serve his sentence. He died on 30 Jan. 1573 - ibid. PP- xxxix-xl. The chronicle of Gois provided the foundation for the De rebus Emmanuelis Regis Lusitaniae invictissimi virtute el auspicio gestis libri duodeckn (Lisbon, 1571) of Jeronimo Osorio da Fonseca, bishop of Silves or the Algarve, who also wrote at the suggestion of the cardinal, and would also have fitted Righetto's description.Google Scholar

96 Ibid. Bariselli's Latin submission of 31 July 1572. On the Ancona affair, see Pastor, Ludwig, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Antrobus, F. I. and others (40 vols. London, 1891–1953), XIV,Google Scholar 275–76; Roth, House of Nasi, 1, 134–75; Baron, , History of the Jews, XIV, 35–43, 318–20;Google ScholarDelumeau, Jean, ‘Un ponte fra oriente e occidente: Ancona nel Cinquecento’, Quaderni Storici, anno v (1970), pp. 26–47, at PP. 42–6.Google Scholar

97 Contrast the verdict of Baron, who speaks of ‘that trial and execution of the Marranos in which ideology prevailed over political and economic considerations’ - in his History of the Jews, XIV, 35–6.Google Scholar

98 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, paper of 2 Nov. 1572. Compare the procedures in the case of the Fflippi, in which the accused was given nine days in which to abjure and in fact declared his repentance within three. Sentence was issued four months later - see S.U., b. 54, entries from 9 June to 17 Oct. 1586.

99 A.S.V., S.U., b. 36. On 29 Aug. 1573 the Advocate Bariselli described how in late June of that year Righetto had told him that ‘his case would be dragged out at length, for he had understood that it could not be expedited without advice from Rome’, and Bariselli obtained confirmation of the rumour from the Inquisitor himself.

100 Ibid. 7 Feb. 1572; undated petition of Righetto, probably of April-May 1572; petition of a group of Jews, 27 June 1573. On the casoni or district prisons of Venice, see Pullan, Rich and Poor, p. 395

101 Ibid, petition of Righetto, 4 Aug. 1573.

102 Ibid, evidence of Donna Helysada, matron of the prison of San Giovanni in Bragora, 1 Sept. 1573.

103 A report was to reach the Holy Office - ibid. 26 Feb. 1575 - that Righetto was staying in the Ghetto: but there is no indication that their attempt to arrest him succeeded. For the request from Lisbon, see D.N., filza 19, fo. 94V, 10 May 1578, and filza 20, fo. 37.

104 This story can be pieced together from testimony given to the Holy Office between a I Aug. and 17 Oct. 1573, by gaolers, officers of the court, their wives, and fellow-prisoners of Righetto in the new prisons - ibid.

105 N.V., XI, 93–4, Rebiba to Castagna, 7 Nov. 1573, shows that ‘Father Battista the chancellor, the gaoler and a constable’ have been judged guilty of permitting the escape of ‘Righetto Marrano’, and directs that they be suitably punished.

106 See Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 520–35.

107 See Kaufmann, David, ‘Die Verbrennerung der talmudischen Iitteratur in der Republik Venedig’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 1st ser., XIII (1903), 536–8;Google ScholarPaschini, Pio, Venezia e l'Intfuisizione Romana da GiuLio III a Pio IV (Padua, 1959), pp. 108–12;Google Scholar N.V., vi, 255–6, 258, 267, 274–5, 277,9 Aug. to 21 Oct. 1553; Baron, , History of the Jews, XIV, 29–31; Grendler, ‘Roman Inquisition’, pp. 52–3, 57–8.Google Scholar

108 As suggested by G. H. Williams, ‘The Two Social Strands in Italian Anabaptism, ca. 1526–ca. 1565’, in Buck, L. P. and Zophy, J. W. (eds.), The Social History of the Reformation (Columbus, Ohio, 1972), pp. 156–207, at pp. 161–6.Google Scholar

109 In a petition of April-May 1572 Righetto complains of his isolation from his fellow-Jews in the casone of San Giovanni in Bragora: ‘in this sestiere you will never find a Jew, because he would at once be stoned or dubbed by Greeks and other races that dwell in these parts’ -A.S.V., S.U., b. 36.

110 Facchinetti to Bonelli, 5 Mar. 1570, N.V., IX, 226.

111 Ibid. pp. 292, 295, 368, 17, 24 June and 14 Oct. 1570.

112 A.S.V., Senato, Terra, fiza 58, 18 Dec. 1571.Google Scholar

113 E.g. in Castagna to Galli, 27 Nov. 1574: ‘I have taken the point in your letter about spies, which I will bear in mind so far as I can in this city, where I believe their numbers are infinite, for there are four fountains that can gush forth only troubled waters, and these are the German Exchange, the Greeks, the Jews and the Turks, all of whom are enemies of Christendom…’ (N.V., XI, 283).

114 A.S.V., Senato, Term, fiza 61, II July 1573, and reg. 1572–73, fos. 136V–141V; A.S.V., S.U., b. 36, testimony of ‘Zuane pettener’, minister of the Holy Office, a8 Aug. 1573.

115 Bonelli to Facchinetti, 24 June 1570, N.V., IX, 295.

116 Cf. Hermann Kellenbenz, ‘Le dédin de Venise et les relations économiques de Venise avec les marchés au nord des Alpes’, Aspetti e cause della decaderaa economica veneziana nel secolo XVII (Venice, Rome, 1961), p. 113.Google Scholar

117 N.V., XI, 136–7, 139, 140, 14a, 152,156, correspondence of Castagna and Galli, 23 Jan. to 13 Mar. 1574.

118 See above, p. 37.

119 See Ravid, ‘Status of Jewish Merchants’, pp. 276–7. For the full text of the condotta, see Dr Ravid's article ‘The First Charter of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1589’, to appear in Association for Jewish Studies Review, 1 (1976).Google Scholar

120 In the case of the Filippi, for example, it was invoked on at least three occasions - AS.V., S.U., b. 54, 24 Oct. 1585, I Feb. 1586, 27 Mar. 1586.

121 In the case of Gaspare Ribeiro, A.S.V., S.U., b. 45. See his testimony in file after 28 Jan. 1580, and on 23 Apr. 1580.

122 Ibid, copy of testimony of Antonio Machado, a Portuguese examined in Ferrara on 31 Jan. 1579.

123 The case of Gaspare Ribeiro plainly differs from that of Righetto in that he had lived in Venice, ostensibly as a Christian, for twenty years, before documentary evidenceapparently incontrovertible - suggested that he had been a party to the marriage of his son Joao to a Jewess of the Mendes cousinhood; that of the Filippi in that they had dwelt in Venice outside the Ghetto for a year and a half, whilst indiscreetly practising Jewish rites in the expensive house they rented from a Contarini in the parish of San Leonardo. Their past history in Lisbon and Flanders certainly became a major part of the inquiry, but they had given rise to scandals in Venice itself which brought about their arrest.

124 Grendler, ‘Roman Inquisition’, p. 52.