The Roman Ghetto

...There was indeed a reaction under Paul IV and Pius V, principally owing to the instigation of the medical college which had become jealous of the ability and prestige of the Hebrew doctors...

...By daylight some of them (always the same ones since each rag-picker had his own particular clientele) would go about the city attracting attention from the houses by crying at the top of their lungs: "Old rags...

...There did not yet exist in Rome an organized garbage service...

...the word in their vernacular for the Italian "Roba vecchia"— in order that all who had old junk to sell might summon them...

...The trade in discarded and second-hand goods was the great industry of the population of the lower ghetto...

...What were these poor people to do if they could not find work among their coreligionists when it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to locate them elsewhere ? Certainly it was not easy even for them who, although poor, had been borne on by their just pride to assume a precarious but tenaciously guarded independence...

...The houses were not beautiful: a series of hovels built on the bare ground, wherein could be seen piles of rags, old junk, worn-out shoes and remnants of furniture...

...Crossing the old ghetto one felt both compassion and disgust...

...The Protomedico continued as late as 1674 to issue prohibitive edicts by the power which it was recognized to possess...

...There were not lacking evil practices among the more educated classes which incited boys and youths to harsh treatment and unjust persecution of these people...

...The stuff gathered in this way passed to the hovels which we have observed in the ghetto and was there overhauled by the women...

...There is, for example, the old and still repeated legend of the Marchese del Grillo who, whenever a junk dealer passed along beside his palace, was accustomed to throw green pine cones at his head...

...The old cemetery, now abandoned, is located on the Aventine to your left as you come up the Via dei Cerchi and a few steps from the beginning of the ascent...

...The keen intelligence of Sixtus V was aware of this, and he saw, too, how the prestige of papal authority was concerned in this matter...

...Of the unfortunate sentiment toward the Israelites and of the unworthy, even inhuman treatment accorded them, jealousy and envy are recognizably the prime causes...

...The Hebrews themselves did not want to be buried where there were Christian emblems...

...the cross was for them an especial mark of infamy, and for that reason their tombs were not found even in the Protestant cemetery under the pyramid of Caius Cestius...

...Certainly their psychology could be only that of those compelled to live in vile surroundings, without light or air, and in promiscuous congestion for lack of space...

...In addition to the sentiment of Christian charity which commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and certainly makes no exception for the Jews, the consideration and benevolence of the Pontiffs for this race were due to the fact that from the Hebrews had come to our first brothers the inspiration to construct the catacombs where they could practise their religion and bury their martyrs...

...The animosity of the masses in Rome was too great and their culture too low to make it possible to avert deplorable episodes, and these were always detrimental to the Israelites, who were blamed for everything that might contribute to the woes of the people...

...Some of them still exist near the Basilica of St...

...If the Jews there were relegated to one part of the city, this was a necessary measure and one indeed in their own interest...

...It cannot be doubted that among the Jewish doctors were some of the most distinguished physicians that the Popes ever employed...

...The rich and cultured element had abandoned the filthy quarter as soon as permission to do so had been granted by the same beneficent Pius IX...

...THE ROMAN GHETTO By ORESTE PARISOTTI THE ghetto where the Roman Jews had their synagogue and their schools was located in the vicinity of the ancient palace that had once belonged to the family of Beatrice Cenci, to your left as you go down the Via Arenula toward the Garibaldi bridge...

...But it came too late...

...The reputation which the Jewish physicians had won for themselves among the Roman population and throughout the Papal States was too great and widespread...

...Many wealthy Israelites, on the other hand, took Christians into their service, being ever zealous for their faith and requiring of them strict observance of their religious practices...

...At the time of which I am writing, the gates no longer existed...

...The Pontiffs never did violence to the consciences of nonCatholics in Rome...

...It is furthermore to be recognized to the credit of the Jews that they never rebelled, and always remained calm and indifferent to everything not immediately pertaining to their occupation or their cult...

...This debt indeed was gratefully recognized by the Semitic Synod held in Paris, 1807, and is attested by the church of Saint Gregory where even now, an imperishable testimonial, there can be seen the little box where Hebrews were asked to place their complaints every month to be judged and given attention by the Pope...

...All that piled-up debris was the product of the labor, usually nocturnal, of rag-pickers and junkmen...

...This was only the last step in an evolution which had been going on for some time...

...It should be noted to the honor of this unfortunate generation that their modification and civilization on emerging from the ghetto had made them feel that they and their kind were after all human beings like anyone else...

...This bulletin however was never put into effect...

...In spite of this, there were attempts to return "ad pristinum" in the seventeenth century...

...The Israelite surpasses the low-class Roman in activity and industry...

...Pius IX had had them torn down, and not a few of the ignorant element in the Jewish quarter had saluted and acclaimed him as the Messiah...

...There was also the conviction that a Hebrew doctor, called to assist a Christian, turned the latter from his religious duties...

...Long before this many wealthy Israelites had owned stores and habitations in the city...

...It was at this time that the gates of the ghetto were destroyed...

...Angelo Manuele, a Roman from the Trastevere, was the first papal doctor for Boniface IX in 1392...

...It was the 21 Messidor, at the time of the first Roman republic, that the general commanding the French troops in Roman territory gave orders that all Hebrews who had the prerequisites for Roman citizenship should have the full right to such under the Roman republic...

...some had owned estates and palaces...

...Admirable indeed was their patience, for ridicule and worse was their frequent portion at the hands of young boys of the masses, accustomed to hear Jews spoken of with scorn...

...It is still separated from the principal part of the great cemetery by high walls...

...Others were intent on separating the various pieces of old shoes or trying to piece together the fragments of dilapidated furniture...

...It was said that every year the Jews immolated a youth, preferably a Christian...

...Legends existed, too, which excited the ignorant Catholics against them...

...These were located in different parts of the city, some even on the best streets...

...Nor could this have offended the cultured class of Hebrews in Rome at that time...

...there were merely numerous repositories for refuse indicated by large letters on the walls of the avenues...

...There were, too, traditions and legends contributing to the contempt for that unfortunate race which, rather than beg, chose to labor in the mean employments of rag-picker and junk dealer...

...An attempt at reaction took place in 1808 with a bulletin of the Protomedico Brucioletti intended to revive the prohibitive laws long since fallen into complete disuse...

...for while Rome was a papal state non-Catholics could not be buried in the Catholic cemetery at Verano...

...People of culture did not disdain commercial or business relations with them...

...The regard and respect which the cultured class had for the Jews, while in part merely the just due of law-abiding citizens, is traceable also to some extent to the benevolent attitude which the Roman Pontiffs always assumed toward them...

...Just as soon as popular education had reached a certain stage, the segregation of the Jewish population in the ghetto was abandoned by order of the great Pontiff Pius IX...

...I am a Roman and I know that an earnest will to work has never distinguished our proletariat, always conscious of the history and tradition of the imperial vulgus...

...This deplorable habit of making that unhappy race the object of low practical jokes and even physical violence was exercised usually upon the junk dealers who went through the streets trying to earn their living by calling out to the houses "Robivecchi...

...Some years after 1870 their cemetery was established in the district of Verano at the boundary of the Catholic one before its enlargement with the building of the entrance on Via Tiburtina...

...Leo X, Clement VII and Paul III also had Hebrew doctors...

...There the citizens would go in the evening to leave odds and ends of material: broken crockery, discarded goods, the refuse of the kitchen and the sweepings of the rooms...

...hence the latter's malicious behavior...

...In these huts there were creatures—usually women—who passed their time sorting out this rubbish or ripping apart dirty bits of clothes...

...he removed every obstacle and gave to Catholics free permission to be treated by Hebrew doctors...

...Paul and in other quarters...

...Papal bulls eulogized him and granted numerous exemptions and privileges to his coreligionists...

...Those poor and miserable people were really pitiful to behold...

...Julius II himself called Teodoro de' Sacerdoti from outside the country to be chief doctor in his medical staff...

...They used to be closed at a certain hour in the evening when all the Jews dwelling in the ghetto were obliged to return to their homes...

...The doctor of Martin V was likewise a Jew and this Pope did much for the dwellers in the ghetto...

...This lent color to the tale current among the people of Rome that one such doctor had bled to death three Christian children in order to cure Pope Innocent VIII with their blood...

...The unjust treatment of the Jews remained, in Rome, a characteristic of the lower class...

...The Jewish catacombs were excavated to resist the Roman law which threatened at one time to impose cremation...

...The Spanish rabbi Samuel Sarfadi, who was also a doctor, was attached as personal physician to Pope Julius II...

...The need of isolation was felt, too, in the middle-ages when the Hebrews, not yet arrived at that point of culture which they later acquired, nourished an implacable hatred for Christians, followers of the Christ crucified by their ancestors and, according to them, justly...

...In the course of centuries much was done by the Popes for a race which was under continual persecution in Europe and even in the cities of Italy...

...The former made their rounds nightly, a lantern in the left hand and a spade in the right...

...As they had their temple and their schools, so too did the Israelites have their cemetery in Rome...

...The rag-pickers, all Jews, would visit these filthy heaps, digging and scraping with their spades in their search for old shoes, rags and the like, which they would place in the sack they always carried with them...