Ancona and Pesaro

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Ancona and Pesaro

The cities of Ancona and Pesaro were each a place of refuge for Marrano Jews in the early sixteenth-century. The Marranos (formally Sephardic and Portuguese Conversos) who settled in the cities of Ancona and Pesaro fled the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) in the late fifteenth-century as result of the Spanish Inquisition. Many Jews sought refuge in Renaissance Italy, and initially found “acceptance” by many of its local inhabitants. Cohabitation was tolerated on a marginal scale upon the arrival of the Sephardic Jews. The two cities Ancona and Pesaro located in Central Italy were similar in that mercantile commerce was the main source of revenue. Large Numbers of Marrano Jews in Ancona and Pesaro had established themselves as competent businessmen. During the sixteenth-century, the Catholic Church underwent a significant change. Accompanying this new change was conflict with the relatively new Converso (Jewish) population. The cities of Ancona and Pesaro experienced the effects of Counter Reformation that led to Inquisition or “Acts of Faith in the summer and spring of 1556. The political and economic reasons behind leaders and the pope acting the way they did against the Jews, was to prohibit Jews from being an economic power in Italy, and to force Jews in to a subservient role.

The Spanish Inquisition forced Sephardic Jews of Spain and Converso Jews living in Portugal to relocate to Italy. “The Spanish Inquisition was established with papal approval in 1478 at the Request of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I. This Inquisition was to deal with the problems of the Marrano Jews, who through coercion or social pressure had insincerely converted to Christianity”. Many Catholics...

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...a sense had their own Renaissance. “As a part of Counter Reformation, a reaction set in against the Jews of the Papal States, later spread to the whole of Italy. Yet even now there was among the Italian people a basic kindliness: and even now, the long acclimatization of the Jews in the country attuned them completely to the Italian outlook and Italian cultural life. Thus, in a certain sense, Renaissance conceptions prevailed even in the ghetto”. Individuals like Pope Paul IV were jealous and envious of their success that was why he took the actions that he did. I conclude in saying that the will of the Jewish people could never be broken, and know matter how adverse a situation seems faith allows success. The Jews in Ancona and Pesaro made the best out of their individual situations, and through faith, they survived the Inquisitions and the Catholic Church.

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