Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition of Modena, 1598-1630

Author(s): Katherine Aron-Beller

Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal , Fall 2010, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 713-729
Published by: Sixteenth Century Journal

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Sixteenth Century Journal
XLI/3 (2010)
ISSN 0361-0160

Disciplining Jews:
The Papal Inquisition of Modena, 1598-1630
Katherine Aron-Beller
Bet Shemeshy Israel

In 1598, the year that Duke Cesare d'Esté (1562-1628) lost Ferrara to papal forces
and moved the capital of his duchy to Modena, the papal Inquisition in Modena was
elevated from vicariate to full inquisitorial status. Despite initial clashes with the
duke, the tribunal began not only to prosecute heretics and blasphemers, but also
professing Jews. Such a policy towards infidels by an organization appointed to
inquire into heresy (inquisitio haereticae pravitatis) seems unusual. How did the
papal Inquisition come to assume authority and prosecute Jews in early modern
Italy? Examination of trial procedure of Jews as opposed to that of Christians will
help decide if there is anything distinctive about the Holy Offices treatment of Jews.
It will be argued that inquisitorial tribunals were disarming the Jewish threat to
Christian society, not for its own sake, but as an attempt to impose social and reli-
gious discipline on the Christian community.

The papal inquisitorial archives in Modena contain details of at least 476

processi1 of practicing Jews, compared with some 4,829 of Christians, covering the
period from the post-Tridentine Inquisitions establishment in 1598 to its demise
in 1785, a collection unmatched by any other Roman inquisitorial archive in Italy.2
None of these Jews had ever converted to Christianity in Italy and hence had not
been accused of Judaizing.
This essay concentrates on inquisitorial action against practicing Jews
between 1598 and 1630, the first thirty- two years of activity, stopping at the time
of the Great Plague, a violent epidemic which caused the death of almost half of
the population of Modena, eight years before the Jews' enclosure in the Modenese
ghetto in 1638.3 During these three decades, there were at least 119 proceedings

lrThe Italian term processo does not always mean a trial in the English sense, but rather an inquiry
which resulted in a court drawing up a dossier. Some processi consist of little more than a denunciation
of one or two witness statements, while others are very large collections of documents which include
formal accusations, interrogations, defense pleadings, and sentences.
These statistics were taken from the buste of Processi and Causae Hebreorum located in the

Fondo dell Inquisizione of the Archivio di Stato di Modena (hereafter ASM), Fondo dell'inquisizione
(hereafter Inq.). The archives Fondo dell'inquisizione Causae Hebreorum will be cited as CH. The
busta (hereafter b.) number will then be cited, followed by the folio number. Finally page numbers of
particular processi will appear in parentheses. For example ASM, Inq., CH, b. 27, fol. 2 (2r-v). Other
proceedings in the archive's Fondo dell'inquisizione Processi will be cited as ASM, Inq. P. The busta
number will then be cited followed by the folio number and finally the page number will be cited in
parentheses. For example ASM, Inq. P, b. 45, fol. 6 (lr-v).
3See Giovanni Siera, La Peste dell Anno 1630 nel Ducato de Modena (Modena: Aedes Muratori-
ana, 1960).

713

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714 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

against Jews, compared to approximately 1,338 against Christians. This means that
9 percent of the proceedings were against Jews and an average of four Jews found
themselves susceptible to inquisitorial procedure per year.4
This essay discusses how the papal Inquisition created to combat heresy came
to assume authority and prosecute Jews in early modern Italy. Examination of trial
procedure of Jews as opposed to Christians will then help decide if there is any-
thing distinctive about the Holy Offices treatment of Jews. Was inquisitorial juris-
diction over Jews restricted because of the Jews' being primarily answerable to the
duke? It is argued that in Modena, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
Holy Office was taking unprecedented judicial actions against Jews. This inquisi-
torial jurisdiction over practicing Jews helped to further the Inquisition's overall
goal of "disciplining" Catholic society.5 To preserve the moral as well as the reli-
gious order of Christian society, practicing Jews were punished for alleged crimes
against Christianity and for infringing on ecclesiastical regulations. The Inquisi-
tion's intention was not to encourage the Jews' conversion or expulsion but to try
and keep Jews apart from Christians and so purify Catholic society. The Inquisi-
tion's control was tight and regulated, but it was also checked by competing juris-
dictions and even more intensively by its own legalism, a paradox inquisitorial
research has affirmed time and again.6 It remains doubtful, however, that the
increasing jurisdiction of this ecclesiastical court seriously affected Modenese
Jewish life at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
In 1025, Jews first arrived in Modena, a "little circular city" built around the
Romanesque Cathedral and the Ghirlandina tower, intersected by canals and cut
through by the Via Aemilia, the ancient Roman highway from Piacenza to Rimini.
Three centuries later, in 1336, when the city came under the rule of the Este dukes
based in Ferrara, Duke Borso I d'Esté (1450-71) granted the Modenese Jews priv-
ileges which entitled them to maintain their religious institutions and to lend
money at a moderate interest rate. The Modenese Jewish community increased
and prospered. There was immigration of German Jews from the north, Italian
Jews from the south, and later Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain and Genoa in
1492 and the duchy of Milan in 1540. From 1492, Iberian Jews were allowed to
practice trading and medicine, as in other Italian states at this time. Ashkenazi
Jews practiced a variety of professions such as tailoring and mattress making, as

4In general Jewish women were not arraigned for offenses before the Inquisition, but occasionally
they were brought as secondary suspects, especially in processi against Jews for hiring Christian ser-
vants in their homes.

-The term disciplining has been adopted by Paolo Prodi and Adriano Prospen in their work on
the early modern Inquisition. See Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisituri, confessori,
missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), and Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia: Dal pluralismo dei fori al
moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: II Mulino, 2000).
See in particular Paul Grendler, The Roman Inqutsitton and the Venetian Press 1540-1605
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of
Holiness, Inquisition and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618-1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 2001), and Stephan Wendehorst, ed., The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Con-
texts, Sources and Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 7 1 5

well as the more standard Italian Jewish professions of pawnbroking, medicine,

and trading in secondhand goods.7
With the death of Duke Alfonso II in 1598, the main line of the Este family
died out, and Pope Clement VIII (1536-1605) took advantage of the church's tech-
nical overlordship to invade and annex Ferrara. As a result, the Este family moved
from Ferrara to Modena, turning the modest town into a ducal capital. Jews who
had previously lived in Ferrara followed Duke Cesare d'Esté (1562-1628),
attracted to Modena because they preferred the relative tolerance of the Este
family to the harsh and often unpredictable policies of the papacy.8 The Jewish
population in the city increased, reaching 750 in 1638 on the eve of the creation of
the ghetto, in a total population of approximately 30,000.9
John Arnold asserts that the medieval papal Inquisition, the Inquisitio haere-
ticae pravitatiSy was officially founded in the 1230s, to attack Cathar heretics who
had gathered in southwestern France.10 There is documentary evidence of a per-
manent domus Inquisitionis in Modena by 1299, but the main headquarters of the
medieval inquisitor for the regions of Modena, Ferrara, and Reggio remained in
Ferrara.1 1 The inquisitorial vicar of the subdistrict ofModena, Antonio da Brescia,
built a new domus Inquisitionis in 1517 to replace the ramshackle tower at the edge
of the convent of San Domenicos garden that had housed the inquisitorial offices
till then.

In 1542, Pope Paul III reconstituted the papal Inquisition in Italy in his bull
Licet ab Initio, keen to reestablish control over a Catholic population shaken by
Protestant movements across its borders. Its tribunals spread throughout northern
7See Attilio Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), 302.
The papacy shifted its entire policy towards the Jews at this time. See Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic
Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555-1593 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
1977), and Robert Bonfils comprehensive study of Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994).
See Federica Francesconi and Luisa Levi DÄncona, Vita e Società ebraica di Modena e Reggio
Emilia: Ixtà dei ghetto (Modena: Reggio Emilia, 2007), 10-1 1. In 1767, it was recorded that the number
of Jews was 1,262 out of a total of 21,000 inhabitants. Fregni Euride, "La Communità Ebraica di
Modena nelle carte del suo Archivio Storico (secc. XVII-XVIII)," in Vita e Cultura Ebraica nello Stato
Estense, ed. Euride Fregni and Mauro Perani (Bologna: Fattodarte, 1993), 299-316, takes this figure
from the Archivio della Comunità ebraica di Modena, filza 15 D, "Denunzie delle anime all'Uffizio
dell'abbondanza," 1766-94. See also Alan C. Harris, "La Demographia del ghetto in Italia (1516-1797
circa)," in La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 33 (1967): 1-15, at 11. Harris notes that the Jews made up
approximately 5 percent of the Modenese inhabitants. This contradicts Francesconi and Fregni, who
suggest closer to 10 percent. Giovan Battista Spaccini, in his Cronaca 103 (22 February 1598), reported
that a Modenese census of 1598 recorded 5,000 Jews in a population of 27,000 Christians. It is clear that
this figure is highly exaggerated.
10There is still discussion as to when the medieval Inquisition, as an institution, was originally
founded. John H. Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval
Languedoc (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 24-33, argues that one cannot talk
of an official inquisitorial court before this date. See also James Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society:
Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), who holds the
same opinion.
1 libano Biondi, "Lunga durata e microarticolazione nel territorio di un Ufficio
dell Inquisizione: II 'Sacro Tribunale' a Modena (1292-1785)," Annali dell' Istituto storico italo-germa-
nico in Trento 8 (1982): 73-90, at 74.

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716 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

Italy, dealing initially with Lutherans and Anabaptists, but by the 1560s began to
prosecute lesser offenses such as magic and sorcery (often misleadingly termed
witchcraft).12 Appointments of inquisitors as well as overall supervision of proce-
dures came from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome. However,
in many cases ecclesiastical political weakness and secular opposition hindered
official inquisitorial activity. 13
The first inquisitor general of Modena, Giovanni de Montefalcone,14 received
his investiture from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in March of 1598
and the tribunal was raised by Pope Clement VIII to full inquisitorial status on 8
April 1598;15 it was housed in the old seat of the vicar in the convent of San
Domenico.16 Sufficient money was raised by the Holy Office through fines
imposed on offenders, particularly Jews, to erect a new building by 1604, on the
grounds of San Domenico.17 It was not until 1622 that the names of those who
worked for the Inquisition were listed in a catalogue.18 Here it was noted that the
central office in Modena was composed of twelve consultori (four theologians,
four canonists, and four jurisconsults), eight ministri, and twelve famigliar i , in
addition to the inquisitor general and his vicar.19 The office also took control over

12On magic and sorcery, see Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550-1650
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); John Martin, Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Mary O*Neil, "Magical Healing, Love Magic and
the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena," in Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe,
ed. Stephen Haliczer (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987), 88-113; Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Inquisition
and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses," in Church History 58 (1989): 439-51; and
Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition and Gender in the Republic of
Venice, 1618-1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 28.
13A prime example of this is the situation in Venice. See Paul Grendler, "The Tre Savii sopra
Eresia 1547-1605: A Prosopographical Study," Studi Veneziani, n.s. 3 (1979): 283-340.
^Montefalcone was also prior of the convent of San Domenico at this time. See Albano Biondi,
"'La Nuova Inquisizione' a Modena: Tre Inquisitori (1589-1607)," Città Italiane del '500 tra Riforma e
Controriforma: Atti del Convergo internazionale di studi, Lucca 13-15 Ottobre 1983 (Lucca: M. Pacini
Fazzi, 1988), 61-76, at 63.
15Mauro Perani cites this date in his article, "Confisca e Censura di Libri Ebraici a Modena: Fra
Cinque e Seicento," in L'inquisizione egli ebrei in Italia, ed. Michele Luzzati (Laterza: Bari-Rome, 1994),
287-320, at 288.
16Albano Biondi, "Lunga Durata," 81. Biondi records the description by Giovanni da Montefal-
cone, the first inquisitor-general, of his accommodation in Modena: "As to the property of our office,
there is nothing except one cell, in a dormitory with the other monks with a bedstead, a bed, and a mat-
tress, without sheets or covers and stripped of all other religious furniture" ("Quanto alle robbe
dell officio nostro non vi é eccetto che una sola cella, in dormitorio con gli altri frati con una lettera,
letto e starnazzo, senza lenzoli e coperte, et spogliata di ogni altra comodità religiosa").
17ASM, Inq., b. 282, Libro della fabrica dell Santo Officio di Modena. In this account book, there is
a clear indication of the Jews' contribution to the building of the Inquisition, both through fines as a
result of their trials as well as occasional loans that they granted the Inquisition without interest. Perani,
"Confisca e Censura," 293, also indicates that money collected as a result of the expurgation of Jewish
books in Reggio in 1602 provided further funds to complete the inquisitorial building in 1604.
18ASM, Inq., b. 287, Catalogo de Patentati del S. Officio di Modena mandato a Roma il 9 Aprii
1622.

l9Famigliah helped with the day-to-day running of the Inquisition including acting as notaries
and censors of books. See John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition
in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 142.

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 717

peripheral inquisitorial vicariates in the Este region. In 1622 there were at least 154
people working for the Roman Inquisition in Modena.
Duke Cesare d'Esté, spurred by resentment towards the Roman Curia, and
especially towards Pope Clement VIII, for reclaiming Ferrara and imposing an
interdict, was hardly ready to accept a papal Inquisition with open arms.20 The
inquisitor appealed to the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome, and corre-
spondence on this issue between the two institutions continued for the next nine
years.21 Although there were occasional further disputes, the relationship mel-
lowed after this. The tribunal tried to function with as little contact with the duke

as possible and the relationship between the Holy Office and duke stabilized. With
few exceptions it remained cordial until the abolition of the Inquisition in 1785.
The tribunal in Modena proclaimed at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury that it had direct authority to prosecute Jews. Such authority, the Holy Office
argued, had been given to inquisitorial courts by Pope Gregory XIII, who in his
bull Antiqua ludaeorum improbitas of 1 July 1581 had authorized inquisitorial
supervision of Jewish actions.22 Clause 12 of this bull stated:

we assign as inquisitors for every kingdom, province, state, dominion

and place in the whole Christian world, judges for all time, each in his
own area, to diligently make enquiries and institute proceedings about
these matters against the Jews and any other heathens, together or
separately, in the cause of the faith, according to the plan of the holy
canons and the constitution of the Office of the Inquisition, and those
whom they find guilty of any of these crimes let them sentence
according to their culpability, the number and frequency of their
offenses and their habitual offending, to whipping, the galleys, even
permanent exile, and other harsher punishments, which should be
made public to provide an example to others and deter criminals from
that sort of crime in the future.23

Albano Biondi, "Gli Ebrei e LÌnquisizione negli Stati Estensi," in L 'inquisizione e gli ebrei in Ita-
lia, 287-320, esp. 287-89.
l'n 1609 the papacy lost patience and ordered Michelangelo Lerri, inquisitor-general ofModena
from 1607 to 1616, to ensure that only when proceedings were conducted against someone from his
household would the Inquisition inform the duke. See Albano Biondi, "Lunga Durata," 79, and Grazia
Biondi, "Le Lettere della Sacra Congregazione Romana del Santo Ufficio all'Inquisizione di Modena;
note in margine a un regesto," Schifanoia 4 (1987): 93-107, esp. 104-5, "not out of obligation, but out
of courtesy, you should notify the most serene duke only when the Holy Office has to proceed against
members of his household" ("non ex obligatione, sed ex urbanitate notificetur serenissimo duci cum in
santo officio aeendum est contra aliemos ex suis familiaribus").

22Bullarium Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, Sebastiani Franco

et Henrico Dalmazzo (Augustae Taurinorum 1857-72), 8:378-79. For commentary and a summary of
the bull see Stow, Catholic Thought, 33-34.
23Bullarium Diplomatum et Privilegiorum, 8:378-79: "omnes praedictae pravitatis Inquisitores
omnium regnorum, provinciarum, civitatum, dominiorum et locorum universi orbis Christiani, iudi-
ces, in suis quemque locis perpetuo delegamus, ut super his contra iudaeos atque infideles quoscum-
que, simul vel separatim, prout in causis fidei, iuxta sacrorum canonum formam necnon Officii
Inquisitionis huiusmodi constitutiones diligenter Inquirant et procédant, et quos in aliquo vel aliqui-
bus horum flagitiorum excessibus culpabiles, repererint, in eos pro culpae modo, ac etiam pro

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718 Sixteenth Century Journal XLll 3 (2010)

The content of this bull was not original.24 It represented instead an attempt
to bring together, even to codify, a good deal of medieval legislation and make it
accessible to inquisitors. The offenses listed included denying belief in one God,25
sacrificing to demons or causing Christians to dabble in devilry,26 blaspheming
Christ and the Virgin,27 proselytizing Christians or neophytes,28 dissuading or
abusing potential converts from baptism,29 sheltering heretics,30 mocking Chris-
tians, Christ, or the Cross,31 possessing blasphemous books,32 and finally housing
wet nurses in their homes.33
Most of these charges, such as devilry, encouraging Christians to embrace
Judaism, dissuading Jews from baptism, aiding and comforting heretics, defacing

criminum numero vel multiplicatione, aut consuetudine delinquendi, flagra, remigia, etiam perpetua,
rerum quoque publicationes, exilia aliaque atrociora décernant, et alios decis exempla edant, quae
sceleratos illos deterreant, ab huius modi flagitiis in posterum admittendis." Emphasis added.
24Since the Middle Ages, there had been a general belief among theologians that the papacy could
punish Jews. See Benjamin Z. Kedar, "Canon Law and the Burning of the Talmud," Bulletin of Medieval
Canon Law 9 (1979): 79-82, at 81. Evidence of actual inquisitorial action against Jews in the Middle
Ages is rare, even though theoretically the papacy was giving the Inquisition authority to prosecute
Jews. See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, "The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard
Gui," Harvard Theological Review 63 (1970): 317-76.
25The first mention of this offense in an inquisitorial manual was in Directorium Inquisitorum
composed in 1376 by the Aragonese inquisitor Nicholas Eymeric. Turning to the belief that Jews and
Christians had in common such as one God, the creator, Eymeric specified that if Jews denied this
directly or indirectly, "they and their abettors might be punished as heretics." See Nicolau Eymeric,
Directorium Inquisitorum, cum scholiis seu annotationibus eruditissimis D. Franasi Pegnae Hispani, S.
Thpnlnaiap et luris Utriusaue Doctoris (Rome. 1578Ì. 2 oars, directorii. 119.

26In 1323, the inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui, in the fifth section of his inquisitorial manual,
Practica Inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis of 1323, reiterated that inquisitorial competence with respect
to Jews, and particularly their magic and acts of devilry. See Yerushalmi, "Inquisition and the Jews of
France," 347.
27The Practica Inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis also specified inquisitorial competence with
respect to Jewish blasphemies against Christ and the Virgin.
28The 1267 papal bull Turbato corde gave the Inquisition jurisdiction over any Jew who urged or
merely facilitated converts to return to Judaism. See Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the
Thirteenth Century, ed. Kenneth R. Stow (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989) vol. 2. doc. 26.
29Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, vol. 2, doc. 26. The bull Turbato corde also brought Jews who
dissuaded other Jews from being baptized under inquisitorial jurisdiction.
30From the time of Eymeric s Directorium, standard textbooks for inquisitors permitted them to
consider Jews subject to them in cases of Jews' receiving or otherwise helping relapsed Jewish converts
to Christianity or other heretics.
31 See Emil A. Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck -
u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955); Gratians Decretum, part 1, D.21.C.1 (1), and Decretales of Gregory IX,10:4,5,6,
andD.54c.14.
32See Yerushalmi, "Inquisition and the Jews of France," 338. Yerushalmi argues that in Bernard
Guis manual the only offense against practicing Jews which came within the competence of medieval
inquisitors, and was acted upon, was the central crime of blasphemy in Jewish literature and liturgy.
33This offense is connected to the canon Etsi Iudaeos. See Emil A. Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris
Canonici, X. 5, 6, 13, originally a decree of the 4th Lateran Council of 1215, and absorbed into the 1234
Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, which specified that Jews forced wet nurses to throw their milk into
latrines after they ingested the Eucharist.

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 719

Christian images, and the performance of rituals abusing Christians, the church,
and the sacraments, could also be brought against Christians.34 The only defini-
tive "Jewish" offense that is an offense which Jews and not Christians could and
were accused of by the Inquisition was the hiring of Christian wet nurses and ser-
vants to serve in Jewish households.35 No evidence has yet come to light that
Jewish wet nurses or servants served in Christian households, or that the Holy
Office was concerned with this issue.36 Table 1 shows the types of offense brought
against Jews in 1598-1630.
Although it was eager to monitor Jewish actions closely, and sometimes did so
forcefully, the Inquisition observed legal limits in the courtroom, a point that
research on the Holy Office has affirmed time and again. Regarding the building
of synagogues without licenses, Marquardus de Susannis, a sixteenth -century Udi-
nese jurist, had written in his De Iudaeis et Aliis Infidelibus, a manual of civil and
canon law on matters pertaining to Jews and other infidels, that because the Jews
and their rites were tolerated, the Jews were allowed to maintain their old syna-
gogues but were not allowed to erect new ones.37 This had been recorded in canon
law and it is not surprising that the Inquisition assumed control over it.38 The pro-
hibition against the Jews' use of Christian grave diggers who helped the Jews bury
their dead during the plague,39 fitted indirectly to clause 6 of Antiqua ludaeorum
Improbitas, which ordered that Christians were forbidden to go "to the rites, cere-
monies, superstitions, or unholy services of the Jews."40
After 1581 the provisions of Gregory's bull were reiterated in nearly every
inquisitorial manual and legal textbook dealing with Jews.41 Jews were required to
publicize in their synagogues inquisitorial edicts that clarified the tribunals rules
and regulations. On 21 June 1603, five years after its establishment in Modena, the
Holy Office published an edict called Contra gli abusi del conversare de Christiani
con Hebrei. This edict reiterated further canon law prohibitions, such as Chris-
■ 4For example, in Venice heretical witchcraft was specifically related to the abuse of sacraments
of the church or sacramentais such as benediction, confession, and the words of the Eucharist. It also
could apply to the abuse of sacred objects, such as a consecrated crucifix, adoration or invocation of
demons. See Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice.
Both papal bulls reiterate the offense of Jews' hiring Christian servants in their homes. Cum
Nimis in particular stresses the topic of Christian servants' serving Jews, twice in the text, once in the
long introduction: "It is iniquitous that children of the free woman should serve the children of the maid
servants," and later in clause 4 "neither Jewish men nor Jewish women may have nurses or serving
women or any other Christian serving them. Nor may they have their children wet-nursed or reared by
Christian women." For a transcription and translation oí Cum Nimis see Stow, Catholic Thought, 291-98.
36Stefanie Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early
Modern Jewish Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 296, has recently claimed that
Christians often hired Jews as servants in their households in Florence prior to ghettoization there, but
not wet nurses. However, no inquisitorial trial proceeding against Christians for hiring Jewish servants
or wet nurses has been uncovered in Modena.
Marquardus de Susannis's manual is comprehensively analyzed by Stow, Catholic Thought.
38See Stow, Catholic Thought, 82.
39See ASM, Inq., CH b. 245 F54 and 65.
40Bullarium Diplomatum et Privilegiorum 8:378-79, clause 6.
41 See Francisco Bethencourt, L'inquisition à l époque moderne: Espagne, Italie, Portugal, XVe-
XlXe siècle (Paris : Fayard, 1995), 198.

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720 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

Table 1: Offenses for which professing Jews were prosecuted

by the Modenese Inquisition, 1598-1630

m i-s^rr a No. of PwCeSSl,

Employing Christian servants 33

Profane cursing (blasphemy) 24
Dissuading others from being baptized 16
Possessing prohibited books 1 3
Fraternizing/dining with Christians 6
Desecrating Christian images 5
Proselytizing 5
Sexual relations with Christians0 4
Obstructing work of the Holy Office 3
Employing Christian wet nurses 3
Abuse of Christian sacraments 2

Disturbing Christian ceremonies or services 2

Building a new synagogue without licenses 1
Employing Christian grave diggers 1
Malefìcio

TOTAL =

aOn occasions, the t

fied by the delator t
change in offense, the
bThe offense of sex
been discussed in th
pontiffs in the course
and the Jews, 15. M
tween a Christian and
not only the individu

tians' attending J
sions, or ceremo
religious objects. O
Inquisition's frustr
keeping Jews and
these offenses to
ceivea quarter of
between the two
gogues throughou
A study of inqui
adjustments made b
ference in trial pr
Christians usually
bor of the suspect
42 ASM, Inq., b. 270,
per mero zelo e desider
sente nostro editto ac
vono solo per la spera
pene pecuniarie che si

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 721

delators not personally acquainted with the Jewish suspect. It seems that it was not
the Christians who had dealings with the Jews, either business or social, who
denounced them, but those who had less intimate and regular contact with them.
For example, in the processi of Caiman Sanguineti and Abraamo de Sacerdote for
hiring Christian wet nurses in 1602, the two Jews did not know the Christian
woman who denounced them.43 Julia Maola was a Christian prostitute and an ex-
convict for witchcraft, who served the Inquisition as a spy.44 In another trial pro-
ceeding against Angelino, accused of hiring Christian servants in 1622, an inquis-
itorial officer who had spotted the Christian servant Anna carrying water from the
Jews house had forced the servant to denounce herself to the Inquisition.45 There
are also cases of Jews initiating inquisitorial proceedings against fellow Jews.46
Occasionally, there is no delator and it is not clear how the Inquisition heard of the
case. This occurred in the trial proceedings of Viviano Sanguineti, accused of dis-
suading his daughter from being baptized in 1604.47 A different example is the
processo of Davide de Norsa in 1604, where the local inquisitorial vicar denounced
the Jew's disturbance of Christian prayer during Easter, and the vicar's contact with
David was official and not personal.4 This might suggest that denunciations were
not often interpreted by Christians as a way for individuals in the community to
exercise power over Jews they knew personally. Sometimes, Jews volunteered to
appear before the Holy Office to save themselves from inquisitorial prosecution.
In 1607 Abraham Sacerdote appeared before the court to testify that someone had
affixed a crucifix to the back of his shop.49 It was the most sensible move in this
situation, since if he had removed it himself he would have been charged with con-
tempt of holy images. As a result of his testimony, an inquisitorial vicar was sent to
Abraham's shop to remove the crucifix and Abraham was not charged.
The delator, who in processi against Jews was usually a Christian, was
expected to provide precise evidence, with specific times and places where he or
she had witnessed the offense, as well as, if not more importantly, two witnesses,
preferably Christians. In most processi of Jews, Christian witnesses listed by the
delator were always summoned and interrogated before any Jewish ones. The

43 ASM, Inq. P, b. 15, fol. 6.

Julia Maola offered her services as a spy to the Modenese Inquisition after being tried for witch-
craft. See Albano Biondi, "*La Nuova Inquisizione' a Modena," 69. See also ASM, Inq., b. 294 Miscella-
nae 1600-1609. Here the inquisitor wrote a note in 1604 that Maola s depositions were not to be
trusted: "nothing or very little is to be believed in the deposition of the prostitute Julia Maola. In fact
this woman spontaneously came to serve the Holy Office as a secret denouncer and even though she
said something true in her accusation, nonetheless she introduced many false things in the hope of
earning money. For this reason the inquisitor must be diligent and careful not to be deceived by her"
("Niente o poco è da credere nelle deposizioni di Iulia Maiola meretrice: in fatti questa donna sponta-
neamente si è presentata per servire il S. Offici, come accusatrice segreta e sebbene abbia detto qualcosa
di vero nelle accuse già presentate, tuttavia ha introdotto molte cose false, spinta dalla speranza di
denaro. Pertanto l' Inquisiture diligente stia in guardia affinchè non venga ingannato").
45 ASM, Inq. P, b. 62, fol. 10.
4òSee for example ASM, Inq. P, b. 20, fol. 14, and ASM, Inq. P, b. 23, fol. 9.
47See ASM, Inq. P, b. 20, fol. 22.
48See ASM, Inq. P, b. 25, fol. 6.
4VASM, Inq. P, b. 29, fol. 19, 23 July 1607.

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722 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

Inquisition was zealous in trying to find the two necessary witnesses who could
confirm allegations against Jewish suspects; the Jewish suspect was then arrested,
summoned before the inquisitor, told to swear on the Hebrew Bible or the Psalms
of David, and ordered to tell the truth.50 Christians of course took oaths on the
New Testament. Most Jews pleaded ignorance and remained fast in their positions,
as opposed to Christians, who often admitted to inquisitorial accusations.
When brought to San Domenico, most Jews and Christians were kept in
prison during the period of their trials. Investigation and interrogation usually
took place right away. Unlike Christian trial proceedings, where local parish
priests were sometimes summoned to confirm the suspects' religious behavior,
inquisitors did not summon religious leaders or fellow religionists of the Jewish
suspect to act as character witnesses unless the Jew had requested legal counsel. A
Jews reputation, social merit, or standing in the Jewish community was not impor-
tant to the Holy Office.
In the event that the defendant refused legal counsel and placed himself or
herself in the hands of the Inquisition, the tribunal could elect to use torture as a
last resort against Jews, as they would in the same circumstances against Chris-
tians, to obtain the confession that was so important to the inquisitor.51 Torture
was used to obtain a confession if the person under investigation was contradict-
ing himself or herself and making inconsistent statements, or if a case was partially
but not fully proved. Full proof required two impeccable witnesses who had no
obvious grudges against the prisoner or a confession which in Roman canon law
was the desired outcome of trial proceedings. The court might also resort to tor-
ture to obtain the names of accomplices, if there was good reason to think that
other people were also involved in the offense. Torture was applied only to able-
bodied Jewish and Christian suspects and persons believed to have a chance of
withstanding the physical hardship. Modenese figures show that of the approxi-
mately 1,338 processi against Christians, three hundred suspects (22 percent) were
tortured by the Inquisition between 1598 and 1630, and of the 1 19 processi against
Jews, thirteen suspects (10 percent) faced torture. What motivated the court to
resort to torture is not always obvious; some of the serious Jewish offenders were
not tortured, while others charged with relatively mild offenses were. There is no
suggestion that Jews were subjected to harsher tortures by the Inquisition, as has
been shown to be the case in criminal courts in Germany.52 Jews were subject to
the same tortures as Christians, and for the same length of time.
According to inquisitorial law, if a suspect withstood torture and still refused
to confess, he or she had to be released without sentencing or punishment unless

50In the trial against Angelino, who hired a Christian servant in 1622, the Jew was made to swear
upon the Psalms of David instead of the Hebrew Bible. The reason why is not clear. ASM, Inq. P, b. 62,
fol. 10, 24 March 1622.
51 Pope Innocent IV had sanctioned torture in his bull Ad Extirpanda of 1252. See Edward Peters,
Torture (New York: Blackwell, 1985), 65. See also John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof:
Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 15.
52Maria R. Boes, "Jews in the Criminal-Justice System of Early Modern Germany," Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 33 (1999): 407-35, at 419.

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 723

new incriminating evidence was subsequently discovered. Trial sentences against

Christians were often recited on the cathedral steps or during church services
before a full congregation in order to bring embarrassment to the offender and act
as a warning to others.53 By contrast, trial sentences against Jews seem to have
been read privately by the notary in the inquisitorial interrogation room.54 The
sentence was to remain a private matter for the ears of the Jewish defendant. Since
the majority of the Jews' sentences were fines, it made sense to keep knowledge of
these amounts within the walls of San Domenico since the inquisitors general - at
least at the beginning of the Inquisitions history- preferred to keep the money for
their own purposes.
For the convicted Christian, the Holy Office framed its punishments as atone-
ment, a penance that had to be done in order to make amends for the defendants
injury to God, the church, and the sacraments. Penances usually included large
doses of public humiliation, a detailed regimen of set prayers, fasts, attendance at
religious services, and confession at specified times to designated confessors. Such
spiritual penalties, known as "salutary penances," obviously were not prescribed
for Jews. The Jew received a direct reprimand, a punishment for bad behavior.
Punishment of Jews for most offenses varied from fines to light prison sentences
depending mainly on whether the Jew was able to pay the fine.55 As a result,
inquisitorial punishments of Jews in Modena remained relatively mild. No Jew
was burned at the stake; a fate reserved for the relapsed heretic, the impenitent,
and those convicted of attempting to overturn the central doctrines of the church.
Physical punishments against Jews included a whipping in the piazza and
public shaming, which meant being paraded in a public place wearing a placard
for all to see, designed as a deterrent and as a warning to other potential offenders.
However, this on occasion imperiled Jewish safety. A letter from Cardinal Bor-
ghese on 19 October 1602, recommending to the Inquisition a suitable punish-
ment for one Angelo da Rubiera, who could not pay his fine, hinted at this: "to
make him stand at the column before the church of San Domenico with his hands
tied behind his back, for the time you judge suitable, free from the threat of injury
or danger to the Jew, forbidding people to insult or to hurt him, as it usually hap-
pens that people do these things."56 In December 1605, Cardinal Angoni ordered
a change in the location for shaming Jews in Modena. Instead of being shamed
53Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, 49.
54This fact is confirmed by the notaries who recorded the trials. For examples, see the trials
against Viviano Sanguineti in 1602 in ASM, Inq. P, b. 20, fol. 22, and Moise de Modena in 1625 in ASM,
Inq. P, b. 77, fol. 4, 24 March 1625.
55On the imprisonment of Jews, and the use of the prison as a form of punishment, see Kenneth
R. Stow, "Castigo e delitto nello Stato della Chiesa: Gli ebrei nelle carceri romane dal 1572 al 1659,"
Italia Judaica, Gli Ebrei in Italia tra Rinascimento ed Età Barocca: Atti del II Convegno Internazionale,
Genova 10-15 giugno 1984 (Rome: Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, Divisione studi e pubblica-
zioni, 1986), 173-92, at 179. Stow confirms that in Rome poor Jews who could not pay debts were also
imprisoned.
b6ASM, Inq., b. 251, Modena Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma, 1568-1608 ("di farlo
stare alle colonne avanti la chiesa di S. Domenico con le mani dietro legate per il tempo che a lei pareva
conveniente, puro dal volgo non si faccia ingiuria, o causi pericolo alla persona dell' hebreo, mentre
stava legato, come suole spesso accadere").

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724 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

outside a church, Jews were to stand outside their synagogue, or in a public piazza,
so that "the penance of standing before the door of a church shall be imposed only
upon Christians and not upon Jews."57
Demanding a distinction between the different punishments was probably
Angoni's intention, but this policy was changed again in 1635, when the Jew Eligio
de Modena was tried for irreverent cursing and made to stand for a whole day out-
side the church doors with a placard around his neck.58 The inquisitor stated in
the sentencing that this punishment was to "denote the cause of your penitence."59
Was it more important for the Holy Office to humiliate the offending Jew or to
warn Christians to keep away from the Jew? Perhaps both were equally important.
The Inquisition preferred to fine Jews rather than inflict bodily punishment.
In this way the Jewish offender was transformed into a debtor without any other
costly sanctions needing to be applied. The punishment of the Jew Mosè Tedeschi
for dissuasion from baptism was changed from a five-year galley service to a hefty
fine when it was discovered that he could pay a fine.60 Correspondence between
the Sacred Congregation and the Roman Inquisition in Modena shows that in
some situations Jews who were unable to pay the fine in full at the time of the sen-
tencing were occasionally given an extension of time to pay. In a letter of 1621,
Abraam Pasiglio, a Jew of Modena, was condemned by the Inquisition to pay a 100
scudi fine. He was only able to pay 25 scudi and his petition to be given a year to
pay the fine was accepted.61
Processi of Jewish bankers of Modena such as Caiman Sanguineti, Viviano
Sanguineti, Davide de Norsa, and Moise de Modena involved lengthy proceedings
during which the inquisitors spent significant time and resources on completing
prosecutions.62 Three of the four bankers were given crippling fines for their
actions. The monies received from Jews were used to help construct and then
maintain the inquisitorial headquarters in the city.63 It may even be suggested that
the court focused on those offenders whose coffers could provide the inquisitorial

57ASM, Inq., b. 251, Modena Lettere della Sacra Congregazione di Roma, 1568 - 1608 ("la peni-
tenza di stare avanti le porta della chiesa s'impone solo a Christiani, et non ad hebrei").
58ASM, Inq., CH, b. 245, fol. 50.
59ASM, Ina., CH, b. 245, fol. 50 ("denotante la causa della tua penitenza").
60ASM,Inq. P, b. 21, fol. 8.
61 ASM, Inq. P, b. 253, Modena lettere della sacra congregazione di Roma, 1621-28.
62ASM, Inq. P, b. 15, fol. 6. Calman Sanguineti was accused of hiring a Christian wet nurse who
lived in his home for four months. ASM, Inq. P, b. 20, fol. 22. Viviano Sanguineti was accused of dis-
suading his daughter from being baptized. ASM, Inq. P, b. 25, fol. 6. De Norsa was accused of disturbing
Christian services during Easter. ASM, Inq. P, b. 77, fol. 4. De Modena was accused of trying to prose-
lytize Christians who came into his house on the festival of Purim.
See n20 above and ASM, Inq., b. 283. This document, entitled Condennationi e commutationi
pecuniarie fatte nel S. Officio di Modena dall'anno 1600, décembre sino al l'anno 1604, maggio, lists the
date, offense, and fine the following Jews faced and gives some indication of the sum the Inquisition
collected from the Jews. According to Albano Biondi, "Gli Ebrei e 1 Inquisizione," 278, the Jews contrib-
uted 4,408 lire out of the 9,200 needed for the building.

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 725

building fund with sufficient contributions.64

It should be recognized that punishments meted out against Jews by the
Modenese Inquisition were not consistent. It seems that the Holy Office did not
maintain a set of uniform procedures. Instead, individual inquisitors applied dif-
ferent punishments, often allowing prisoners room for maneuvering and even for
negotiating the eventual outcome of their trial. Punishment of those with little
money or of low social status was often more severe. In 1603 Abramo de
Abramino was publicly whipped in the piazza for heretical blasphemy, and in 1622
Angelino de Resignani was given a six-month prison sentence for hiring a Chris-
tian boy to light fires in his house on the Jewish Sabbath, since he had no funds to
pay a fine.65
At the same time many Jews were acquitted and proceedings discontinued, as
were those against Christians. Figures show that in the approximate 1,338 processi
of Christians between 1598 and 1630, 545 (41 percent) of the processi against
Christians and 49 of the processi against Jews (also 41 percent) ended with the
punishment of the suspect.66 The majority of both Jews and Christians either were
acquitted or had their proceedings discontinued, for on many occasions the Jews
or Christians guilt could not be proved. On the one hand, the trial procedure indi-
cates a genuine attempt on the part of the Inquisition to establish the Jew's guilt but
on the other there is a sense of inquisitorial restraint in its authority over the Jews.
Such restraint was a combination of its own legalism and its position vis-à-vis
the secular power, for despite its new status, the papal Inquisition in Modena was
barred from acquiring full authority over Jews because the latter were subject to
the duke. Jews were answerable to ducal courts if they committed offenses such as
lodging Christian servants in their houses and having intimate contact with Chris-
tians.67 Unable to challenge ducal policy, the Holy Office persisted in its demand

64See ASM, Inq., b. 251, fol. lr-v, Modena Lettere della Sacra Congregazioni di Roma, 19 October
1602. In one letter sent to the Inquisition in Modena in 1602 from the Congregation of the Holy Office
in Rome, Cardinal Borghese hinted that before the inquisitor sentenced the Jew Angelo da Rubiera,
Borghese needed to know the extent of Angelos poverty: "but before you execute the sentence, give us
notice and at the same time inform us of the poverty of the said Angelo" (ma avanti chésseguisca la sen-
tenza, ne dia avviso co' informarsi della povertà delsudetto Angelo).
65ASM, Inq. P, b. 29, fol. 17, 10 July 1603; ASM, Inq. P, b. 62, fol. 10, 24 March 1622.
66This figure was calculated with the assistance of the inventories in Giuseppe Trenti, / Processi
del Tribunale dell'inquisizione di Modena: Inventario generale analitico 1489-1874 (Modena: Aedes
muratoriana, 2003).
67ASM. Archivio per Materie Ebrei, 253, Grida a stampa e ms. di face. The edict of Alfonso II, of
19 March 1570. In 1570, Duke Alfonso II d'Esté had decreed that Jews could employ Christian wet
nurses and servants in urgent circumstances if they acquired a license from the ducal authorities.
Alfonso's decree read: "no Jew may be permitted to keep in his service any Christian woman as servant
or maid or in any other capacity, or to make use of her in his house, except out of necessity that is due
to childbirth or similar urgent needs. For this he needs to acquire a license from the Giudice di Savii
[the Judge with primary jurisdiction over them], and not through any other means on pain of a fine of
100 scudi to be applied, one third to the accuser and the rest to the treasury, and three hoists of the rope
or more at the discretion of His Excellency" ("niuno Hebreo possa tener al suo servitio per fantesca o
massara o per altro effecto alcuna donna christiana, né anche servirsene in casa, salvo però in caso di
necessità, come sarebbe per parto o per altro simile urgente bisogno, con licenza però del Giudice di
Savii loro Giudice ordinario e non altrimente; sotto pena di scudi cento d'applicarsi per un terzo

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726 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

that it be allowed to monitor Jewish use of Christian servants in their homes. Since
the duke allowed Jews to hire Christian servants and wet nurses, but with certain
limitations, the Inquisition adapted its own tactics, forcing Jews to obtain inquisi-
torial licenses to hire Christians at the same time as they secured secular ones.
This enabled the Inquisition to maintain its watch over Jews more closely. It issued
these licenses only if a Jew could prove that his Christian servant was over the age
of forty-five, neither ate nor slept in the Jews house, and was maintaining sacral
obligations, such as receiving the Eucharist and obeying the strict rules of Easter
and Lent while serving their Jewish masters. These licenses had to be renewed
every three months and the Jew had to pay for the privilege. Thirty-three proceed-
ings were brought against Jews for hiring Christian servants without licenses
during these years, the highest number of processi for any offense. Three proceed-
ings were brought against Jews for hiring Christian wet nurses without licenses.
Another area that the Inquisition tried to control in Modena was the crime of
profanity. What the ducal courts defined as profanity and cursing and therefore
under their jurisdiction was also at this time listed in the dossiers of the Inquisi-
tion as bestemmia hereticales for which twenty-four Jews in Modena were prose-
cuted between 1598 and 1630. This was largely because the early modern
Inquisition had widened the definition of bestemmia hereticale beyond the tradi-
tional understanding of heretical blasphemy to include profanity and various
kinds of curses - bad language, but with religious content.68 The Roman Inquisi-
tion argued that many commonplace expletives had heretical implications, even
though suspects who used them probably did not realize this. The Modenese
Inquisition took authority to judge Jews for the more serious crime of blasphemy
as well as the various forms of profanity. Clause 5 of the 1581 papal bull Antiqua

all'accusatore e per il resto alla Camera, e di tratti tre di corda, e di più all'arbitrio di S. Eccell").
In 1602, Duke Cesare d'Esté renewed the edict of his cousin Alfonso II, but stated explicitly that
under no circumstances was the servant to live or eat in the Jew's house: "His Serenity has ordered and
commanded that no Jew may be permitted to keep in his house at his service as servant or maid or for
any other purpose, any Christian man or woman. It is only permitted that Jews use Christian women
in childbirth, and Christian men in other similar urgent need with a license from the Judges. The
Judges shall give or withhold restricted licenses as they see fit. As for other tasks [i.e., jobs other than
domestic service such as maintenance work on a house, etc.], the Jews may make use of them freely and
pay them due wages, so long as the workmen, craftsmen, and others whom they employ do not eat or
sleep with them [the Jews]" ("Di più ordina e comanda S.A. Serenissima che niuno Ebreo possa tenere
in casa al suo servigio per servitore o fantesca o per altro effetto alcuno huomo o donna Christiana si
permette però loro il valersi di donne Christiane ne parti, e dliuomini in altri simili urgenti bisogni con
licenza di Giudici quali la negheranno o daranno limitata secondo che conosceranno convenirsi
quanto poi a gli altri affari esercitij e opere si permette loro il valersene liberamente pagando le debite
mercedi purché non dormano, ne mangino seco gli operaij, artefici, o d'altri de quali si varranno").
68See Ronald E. Surtz, "Crimes of the Tongue: The Inquisitorial Trials of Cristóbal Duarte Balle-
ster," Medieval Encounters 12, no. 3 (2006): 519-32. See also the Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, lettere
ed arti publicata sotto l'alto patronato di S. M. il re D'Italia, Istituto Giovanni Treccani (Rome, 1930),
12:863. Under the term bestemmia nella legislazione ecclesiastica it is noted: "Quando tuttavia la
bestemmia non solo in sé un ingiuria a Dio, ma sia nella sua espressione, sia nell' animo di chi la pro-
ferisce contiene un' eresia bestemmia ereticale."

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 727

Iudaeorum improbitas stated that Jews were to be punished if they "should suggest
that our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was an impure man, or even a sinner, or
that the mother of God was not a virgin, and other blasphemies of this sort, which
heretics are accustomed to utter, to the shame, contempt and corruption of the
Christian faith."69
In most processi, Jews are accused of irreverently cursing in a moment of
anger. The dossier still sometimes noted bestemmia hereticale on the title page,
despite the fact that the type of offense was inappropriate. That is, even though
Jews could attack God, Jesus, or the Virgin if they casually blasphemed Christian-
ity, Jews could only be canonically accused of using impious speech, or insult. Yet
the Holy Office managed to punish them as a method of controlling Jewish
speech.
How did the increasingly wide jurisdiction of the Modenese Inquisition affect
Jewish life? The processi indicate a certain confidence among the Jews and a belief
that their legal rights would be observed. At least one Jew refused to appear in the
inquisitorial court on a Saturday, even though the Inquisition (against the canons)
ordered him to do so.70 Interestingly, most Jewish suspects began their testimonies
by denying the charges against them. The Jews who were tortured usually man-
aged to withstand the experience without confessing. After a few years there was a
fair number of Jews who had experienced inquisitorial trial procedure. A level of
understanding of the workings of the Inquisition was possible, and the processi
suggest that the Jews were increasingly prepared for the kind of interrogations they
faced.71 Unfortunately, no Jewish record of an inquisitorial processo in Modena

69Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum taurinensis editio

locupletior facta collectione novissima plurium brevium, epistolarum, decretorum actorumque S. Sedis a
s. Leone Magno usque ad praesens cura et studio collegii adlecti Romae virorum s. theologiae et ss.
canonum peritorum quam ss. d. n. Pius papa IX apostolica benedictione erexit auspicante emo ac revmo
dno s. r. e. cardinali Francisco Gaude (Augustae Taurinorum, Seb. Franco et Henrico Dalmazzo
editoribus, 1857-72), 8:378-79 ("si salvatorem et Dominum nostrum iesum christum impurum
hominem vel etiam peccatorem fuisse, matremve Dei non esse virginem et alias huiusmodi
blasphemias, quae per se haereticae dici solevit, in christianae fidei ignominiam, contemptum aut
corruptionem impie protulerit").
70See for example ASM, Inq., CH, b. 245, fol. 38. The five Jews accused of throwing stones at an
image of the Blessed Virgin in 1627 refused to appear on the Saturday in October when the Inquisition
summoned them. The canons were clear about this. Jews were not to be summoned on the Sabbath. See
Stow, Catholic Thought, 82.
71 Rabbi Ishmael Haninah of Valmontone, who was tortured by the Bolognese Holy Office in
1568, wrote one of the few Jewish accounts of inquisitorial torture. See Aaron Jellinek, "Investigations
on Christian matters and answers concerning the abuses of the neophyte Alesandro di Foligno in
November 1568 by Rabbi Ishmael Haninah da Valmontone," HaShahar 2 (1871): 17-23 (in Hebrew).
See also Stow, Catholic Thought, 38-39, and David Ruderman, "A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Six-
teenth Century Bologna," Hebrew Union College Annual 50 (1979): 253-76, at 254-55. Although the
rabbis ability to manipulate the inquisitor is probably exaggerated, his knowledge of inquisitorial pro-
cedure and the torture process is real: "When the inquisitor interrogated me about this, he brought me
to a place where royal prisoners suffer rope torture. They bound my hands with cords and began to
draw me with the rope. Then I said, 'Let me down' and the face of the inquisitor grew bright, as he
thought that I too wanted to confess. Once cut down, however, I refused to confess and stated that
repeated torture would yield the same result. Should I break down and confess under torture, I would
at the first opportunity declare my confession invalid, because it had been gained under duress. The

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728 Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

has yet been discovered.

The proceedings were not always veiled in secrecy.73 That a denunciation had
been made to the Holy Office, or was about to be, was very often common knowl-
edge within the Jewish community. In the processo of Moise de Modena in 1625 for
proselytizing Christians, Moise's wife and son found out exactly why Moise was
imprisoned, even though the inquisitors tried to hide this information from
them.74 Although witnesses were sworn to silence after making their depositions,
it was often common knowledge who was being interrogated and for what crime,
which also helped Jews prepare themselves for their interrogations. In general, one
must tread warily in any assumption that the Inquisition seriously affected Jewish
life. It was local agitation, not inquisitorial initiative, that led to the establishment
of the ghetto in Modena in 1638.75
In short, Modenese Jews found themselves answerable to a tribunal that could
threaten their standing, financial and otherwise, should they slip and violate the
ecclesiastical regulations or the strict rules to keep themselves distant from
Christians. At the same time, for all the high-minded principles the Inquisition
espoused, its operators were usually placated by money. Because they were able to
pay the fines, Jews of Modena, on the whole, managed to endure prosecutions with
little bodily harm. Although there were hints that the Inquisition tried to widen its
jurisdiction over Jews, it is clear that legal restraints were real and observed by the
Inquisition, a point that the trial proceedings and punishments themselves
confirm.
At the same time, in the early seventeenth century the Inquisition evolved
into a court which primarily judged deviance from the standard moral code,
whether by practicing Catholics or Jews. This prosecution of Jews should therefore
be understood as a new policy to impose social and religious discipline on the

inquisitor on hearing this, steamed with rage and anger burned within him. He reviled and cursed me
bitterly and ordered his servants to cast me into a prison more evil and vile than the first, a cramped
place with no room for one who is standing to stretch himself to his full height or for one who is sitting
to stand. There I remained for three weeks, but he did not continue to interrogate me any more."
72Besides the writings of Rabbi Haninah, there are the descriptions of the Inquisitions prison in
Rome by Benjamin ben Elnatan of Civitanova. See Isaiah Sonne, From Paul IV to Pius V (Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1974), 71-76. Elnatan provides a rich commentary on life in an inquisitorial prison, the
number of rooms, the courtyards, the number of prisoners, and the behavior of the guards.
73See Sonne, From Paul IV to Pius V, 73. Elnatan describes how prisoners were allowed to talk to
each other, sharing their concerns and fears every evening in the prison of the Roman Inquisition.
74 ASM, Inq. P, b. 77, fols. 4, 58r-v, 24 March 1625.
75There is no suggestion in the correspondence or an increase in trials against Jews, that the papal
Inquisition was the cause that led to the establishment of the ghetto in 1638. In fact, the agents of the
ghettoization were neither the papacy nor the Inquisition. The main incentive to establish the ghetto
lay elsewhere, particularly in the arrival of the plague in 1630. See Giovanni Siera, La Peste dell Anno
1630 nel Ducato de Modena (Modena: Muchi, 1960), which brought an intensification of ecclesiastical
disapproval of local Jews. Jewish bankers in particular were blamed by churchmen for keeping large
quantities of gold and silver received in pawn from many people who had died in the plague. The rich
documentation presented by Siera contains countless complaints against the Jewish bankers of
Modena.

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 Aron-Beller / Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition ofModena 729

Christian community, to disarm the Jewish threat to Christians, to ensure the cor-
rect and appropriate behavior and separation of Christians from Jews, and finally
to bring about a stronger, purer post-Tridentine Catholic world. The trial proceed-
ings too are evidence of a change in attitude on the part of the papacy; it no longer
saw Jews as collectively responsible for particular offenses, but began to treat them
as autonomous individual offenders, modifying the standard inquisitorial process
for this purpose. c#

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