GENERAL BACKGROUND

JEWISH SETTLEMENTS in Italy appeared as early as the Roman pagan era (2nd c. BC to AD 313). When Christianity became the religio licita of the Roman Empire the legal status of the Jews changed. They were not allowed to serve in the army, nor were they permitted to hold positions of honour in the civil service. Laws were passed forbidding the building of new synagogues or the repair of old ones. With the fall of the western Roman Empire in 476 and the troubles that followed, Jews emigrated to the relatively stable south of Italy, ruled by the Roman emperors in Byzantium. Although the Byzantine emperors Justinian and Heraclius enacted legislation designed to limit the practice of Judaism, the status of the Jews changed for the better in the ninth century under a more tolerant government. Now settled in the coastal cities Taranto, Trani, Oria, Venosa and Bari, Jewish merchants were active in the flourishing maritime trade with Greece, northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

An insight into Jewish life in Byzantine Italy is provided by the family chronicle of Ahima'as ben Paltiel (b. 1017). Written in rhymed prose, the Ahima'aṣ Scroll (Megillat ‘Ahima'aṣ) recounts the achievements of the author's ancestors from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, beginning with Amittai (c.800) of Oria, in Apulia. According to the family legend, Amittai's family was brought to southern Italy by Titus after the fall of Jerusalem. Ahima'as boasts that his forebears were ‘diviners of mysteries’ and ‘makers of verse’ and describes Amittai as ‘a poet and scholar’. The Italians were linked to the Franco-Germans by the Kalonymides of Lucca, Moses, Kalonymus and Mešullam (10th-11th c.) who moved to Mainz in the tenth century.

Jewish settlements in Germany date from the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who in 321 and 331 issued decrees affecting the Jews of Cologne. In the ninth century, under Carolingian rule, Jews are listed among the merchants near the Imperial Court at Aachen. By the end of the eleventh Century Jewish settlements were situated throughout the valleys leading to the North Sea, and on the Danube. Jews were often invited by government authorities to improve the commercial life of the region. The Bishop of Speyer in 1084 offered such inducements as protection against ‘the insolence of the populace’ and the privilege of owning land.