ABSTRACT
The great ‘modern’ German-Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, Heinrich Graetz, was clear on the point. ‘It is astonishing, and yet not astonishing, that the surging movement, the convulsive heaving that shook the Christian world from pole to pole in the first quarter of the sixteenth century scarcely touched the Jews at heart. In their style and manner of life, sixteenth-century Italian Jews copied their Christian equivalents, according to their social and economic possibilities. Evidence from Christian sources for such a close relationship between Italian Christians and Jews may be found, for example, in the archives of Venice. The Netherlands were in any case an area with a high quality of education by contemporary standards, with ‘Latin schools’ and over 3,000 printers already in action. Community leaders continued to exercise a political as well as a moral and religious role in seeking to ensure some measure of safety for their charges.
