Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance
Emily Michelson
Princeton University Press, £30, 352 pages
In 1555 Pope Paul IV decreed that Rome’s Jews, “who through their own fault were condemned to eternal servitude”, should now live within the walls of a ghetto whose doors would be locked at night. These strictures marked a watershed moment; for the first time, the Jewish community in Rome was physically segregated from the rest of the population. Its history stretched back to antiquity; it was the oldest continuous Jewish settlement in Europe.
