Jews of Italy
Italy is complex. There was an Italian Jewish community – the Italkim – who had lived in the peninsula since Roman times. Portuguese Jews settled in Italy, notably in Livorno. Ashkenazi Jews settled in the north and eastern Sephardim notably in Venice. Currently this website focuses on Sephardic communities, so no Rome for example. It will be update in due course.
Ferrara – Genoa – Livorno – Lucca – Mantua – Milan – Modena – Naples – Parma – Pontifical States – Presidi – Savoy – Urbino – Venice
Italian birth, marriage and death for 1809-1930 can be searched on the Antenati website. Hopefully this will be useful for families that migrated from Italy to Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. I don’t think these records include overseas territories such as, after 1911, Libya and Rhodes.
Books on Italian genealogy necessarily focus on Church records. Two well-regarded books are:
The Family Tree Italian Genealogy Guide: How to Trace Your Family Tree in Italy by Melanie Holtz.
Italian Genealogical Records: How to Use Italian Civil, Ecclesiastical & Other Records in Family History Research by Trafford R. Cole was published in 1995, but remains popular.
Italian States
There were long-established Jewish communities in Italy before the Expulsion in 1492. Some of these communities had existed since Roman times. They have their own rites, independent of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Judaism.
The arrival of Sephardic Jews in Italy took place to the background of the Italian wars, a series of conflicts between 1494 and 1559. This was largely a power struggle for control of the Italian peninsula between the Hapsburgs (principally Spain) and France (the Valois). The Italian states were concerned that neither side should emerge dominant. Eventually the Spanish emerged on top. France was then consumed by the wars of religion. Following the Italian wars, the Italian peninsula was largely peaceful until the French Revolution. In 1714 Spanish Hapsburg rule was replaced by Austrian Hapsburg rule.
Generally the liberal and commercially minded Este of Ferrara and Medici of Tuscany were tolerant of the Jews, as were the Borgia and Medici Papacies.
It is worth noting that prayer books published by Sephardic Jews in Italy, especially Ferrara, helped redefine Ashkenazi Jewish culture.
The Universal History, published in 1759, devotes a whole section to the “Dispersion of the Jews”. Below is a snapshot of communities in Italy. This might be limited to Spanish and Portuguese, excluding the indigenous Italian Jews.
“The reader may further consult the last will of Zachariah a Porto, a rich Jewish merchant of Urbino, that died at Florence, an. 1671, after he had compiled a concordance on the comments of the thalmud, which he left at his death to the rabbies at Rome, and his library to the academy of it. He bequeathed moreover 24,000 piastres to his nation; one-fourth part of which he divided between the academies of Leghorn, Venice, Jerusalem, and of the Holy Land. The other 18,000 piastres were to be distributed to serve for dowry to the Jewish daughters of the synagogues of Rome, Ferrara, Ancona, Urbino which was his native place, Pesaro, Cesano, Venice, Padua, Verona, Rovigo, Florence, Siena, Pisa, Leghorn, Mantua, Modena, and Reggio; which shews how numberous they are still in Italy.”
The modern part of an universal history. 1759. Page 409
Italy was not a unified country until 1861. Our interest is principally from 1492-1750. The map is a little late but more or less shows the main divisions of the peninsula during the period with the exception of a couple of little duchies that had been swallowed up by their neighbours. In the centre of the map we see the Papal States, the Pope’s secular kingdom. To it’s south was the Kingdom of Sicily, part of the kingdom of Spain before being transferred to other Hapsburgs. Talking about ‘other Hapsburgs’ we can see Austria (pink) – belonging to the Holy Roman Emperor and (between the light and dark green bits at the top) the strategically critical area of Milan, also belonging to the Hapsburgs. You can see the tension between the Hapsburgs and the Papacy. The Popes needed the Hapsburgs strength, but feared it too. Their common enemy – the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) – can be seen pressing into Europe at the far right of the map.
The Republic of Genoa, a regional maritime power and bankers to the Spanish monarchy. They tied themselves a bit too closely to the Spanish. At first they benefited, but suffered greatly from Spanish bankruptcies.
The Serene Republic of Venice, founded by Roman refugees from Attila the Hun, was a seaborne trading empire, especially dealing with the hated Turks. More interested in trade than religion, they weren’t much trusted by everyone else.
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany – ruled by the Medici – gradually muscled their way into the Genoese and Venetian businesses’, in part by welcoming Sephardim who had merely been tolerated by the Venetians.
The Kingdom of Sardinia, eventually to unite Italy, did not exist at that time. Tiny Savoy tried to walk the tightrope between the Hapsburgs in the east and the French – jealous of Hapsburg supremacy everywhere, but especially in Italy to the west.
Genealogy of Sephardic Jews in Italy
The video below, a talk by Luca Ascoli, is probably the best introduction to Jewish surnames in Italy.
As you would expect from what is written above, Italian records are scattered through a number of different cities. A good place to start is the website: Jewish Genealogy in Italy. Probably Livorno, a free port established by the Duchy of Tuscany is the most important location for Sephardi genealogy. As the port decline some Jews (including the family of Sir Moses Montefiore) moved to London whilst others settled in Egypt and north Africa.
Moked is the portal of Italian Jewish community, and has links to congregations around the country.
The Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, as the name suggests, is interested in more recent research, but may be able to offer some pointers.
Nardo Bonomi ([email protected]) is an Italian genealogist interested in Jewish genealogy. Large parts of this chapter rely on his lecture to the 2004 IAJGS Conference in Jerusalem. http://www.geocities.ws/cittadinanzafattiva/IRJG.html
There are four bibliographies of Italian Jewry:
Attilio Milano, Bibliotheca Historica Italo-Judaica, Sansoni, Firenze 1954.
Attilio Milano, Bibliotheca Historica Italo-Judaica, Supplemento 1954-1963.
Aldo Luzzatto, Moshe Moldavi, Biblioteca Italo-ebraica, Bibliografia per la storia degli Ebrei in Italia, 1964-1973, Carucci, Roma 1982.
Aldo Luzzatto, Biblioteca Italo-ebraica, Bibliografia per la storia degli Ebrei in Italia, 1974-1985, Angeli, Milano 1989.
Shlomo Simonsohn, Biblioteca Italo-ebraica, Bibliografia per la storia degli Ebrei in Italia, 1986-1995, Menorah Ed., Roma 1997.
Have a look at the Dr. Meir Padoa Collection of Italian family trees at Beit Hatfutsot in Tel Aviv.
http://moked.it/centrobibliografico/
Below is a list of Italian consular archives from around the Mediterranean.
Documentazione Storico Diplomatica – Archivio Storico Diplomatico
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