Jews on Trial : The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638

This book explores the Papal Inquisition in Modena and the status of Jews in an early modern Italian duchy. Its purpose is to deepen existing insights into the role of the former and thus lead to a better understanding of how the tribunal assumed jurisdiction over a practicing Jewish community in the seventeenth century. -- .

Jews on trial concentrates on Inquisitorial activity during the period which historians have argued was the most active in the Inquisition''s history: the first forty years of the tribunal in Modena, from 1598 to 1638, the year of the Jews'' enclosure in the ghetto.

Scholars have in the past tended to group trials of Jews and conversos in Italy together. This book emphasises the fundamental disparity in Inquisitorial procedure, as well as the evidence examined, and argues that this was especially true in Modena where the secular authority did not have the power during the period in question to reject, or even significantly monitor, Inquisitorial trial procedure. It draws upon the detailed testimony to be found in trial transcripts to analyse Jewish interaction with Christian society in an early modern community.

This book will appeal to scholars of inquisitorial studies, social and cultural interaction in early modern Europe, Jewish Italian social history and anti-Semitism.