ABSTRACT
The second trauma of Italian Judaism is represented by the birth of the ghettos. This is a truly Italian story, a phenomenon of Counter-Reformation Italy. After the Venetian prototype in 1516, the decisive turning point was imposed by the Church of Rome and by a papacy that succeeded in making the Italian solution – separation and segregation – prevail over the Spanish solution of expulsion. The ghetto of Rome, established in 1555 by the bull Cum nimis absurdum, constitutes the model for all the Italian ghettos. Changes also took place within the Jewish institutions, as the rabbis assumed greater political and cultural importance with respect to the bankers. Notwithstanding the generalized confinement of Jews in Italy (with the exceptions of Livorno and Pisa), the exclusion did not interrupt the bonds and intertwining with the outside, nor did it prevent the existence of a plurality of spaces of communication and work that granted the Jews agency, visibility and mobility. The obsession with conversion expressed in the purpose of the ghettos almost simultaneously gives rise to specific institutions such as the Case dei Catecumeni, sites of violence and forced baptisms.
