Document Highlights

November 2002

click on image to enlarge

Map of Fano (Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1663).

DOCUMENT CITATION:
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato Vol. 183, f.15
(Entry 15516 in the "Documentary Sources" database.)

TRANSLATION:
My Good Man and Dear Friend,

Manuelle di Musetto, a Jew from Fano, is sending a son of his plus a few others who are entrusted to his care to those baths in order to achieve good health. Someone to whom we always wish to express our gratitude has commended him to us and it would therefore please us if you continue in this vein and place him and his company under your protection. In this way, nothing will be done or allowed to be done to them, due to their nationality, which is contrary to rightful and decent practice. Rather, they will be received and treated graciously so that they can undertake the above mentioned health cure with comfort and ease. We promise that we will make no further demands beyond this.

May you fare well.

(Unsigned file copy)

TRANSCRIPTION:
[...]Sp.lis Amico nr. char.mo. Mandando Manuelle di Musetto Hebreo da fano un suo figliolo insieme con alcuni altri datogli in custodia, a quelli Bagni per procurarsi la sanita essendoci stato rac.to da chi noi desideriamo exhibirci sempre grati prenderemo piacere che voi facciate il medesimo con prendere di esso et di sua compagnia la protectione chel non sia facto ne permesso si facci loro, rispecto alla natione cosa che venghi contro il giusto et honesto ma riceputi et tractati benignamente a causa che con piu facilita et commodita si possino vacare alla cura del predetto et perche cie lo promettiamo non ci extenderemo piu avanti in exhortarvene et bene valete[...]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
In the spring of 1538, a party of Jews traveled from the port city of Fano in the Marche to take the waters at Bagno di Romagna. This famed thermal center had been known to the Romans as "Oppidum Balnei" ("balnei" meaning "baths") and then as "Castrum Balnei", after its fortification in the Middle Ages. In addition to the health-giving properties of its mineral springs, it was also an important strategic site, dominating the so-called "Val di Bagno". This territory, separated from the geographical entity of Tuscany by the Appenine Mountains, had been ruled by the Florentines since 1404, offering them a useful foothold in the eastern region of the Romagna. In fact, the area was administered by a military governor, the "Capitano della Val di Bagno", who was despatched from Florence for a one-year term of office. At the time of Cosimo de’ Medici’s letter, the Capitano was Michele Strozzi.

On one level, the present document can be read as a straightforward note of instruction from the head of the Florentine State to one of its many functionaries. However, notwithstanding Cosimo I de’ Medici’s confident expropriation of the royal "we" and off-handed treatment of a member of the powerful Strozzi clan ("My Good Man and Dear Friend"), the writer was not quite 19 years old and had been Duke of Florence for barely 15 months, following the assassination of his cousin Alessandro de’ Medici. Cosimo’s grasp of power was tenuous and this fledgling autocrat was fighting for his political and personal survival by constructing alliances with other more established power-brokers. Indeed, the commendation of Manuelle di Musetto comes at second hand, at the instance of an unnamed "someone to whom we always wish to express our gratitude".

Manuelle son of Musetto ("Musetto" being a diminutive of Moses) was clearly a person of substance, traveling at the head of a group of other Jews and their retainers. In Fano, a thriving port on the Adriatic, there had been a Jewish presence since at least the early thirteenth century. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the ruling Malatesta family had come to rely heavily on their local Jewish bankers and concede them increasing rights and privileges, a leniency which led to the excommunication of the entire city council of Fano in 1427. In 1463, Fano was annexed by the State of the Church; though this development did not bode well for the Jewish community, the policy of relative tolerance continued for quite a few years. For a brief period (1501-7), the city hosted Gershom Soncino and his celebrated press, which produced books in Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. Ultimately, however, the Jews of Fano were caught in the cycle of increasing restrictions by the Papal authorities, leading to their expulsion from the State of the Church in 1569, apart from the ghettos in Rome, Ancona and Avignon. At that time, the head of the Jewish commission in Fano which effected the forced sale of their synagogue and cemetery was Salomon di Emanuel di Musetto, presumably the son of the "Manuelle" who made the excursion to Bagno di Romagna three decades earlier.

Two references in Cosimo’s brief letter are particularly intriguing. He requests protection for the Jewish visitors in order to guard them from molestation "due to their nationality" (rispecto alla natione). This phrase had important implications, since it was a contested point whether the Jews were in fact an authentic national group, with a claim to relative autonomy and protected "foreign" status, or else merely resident infidels without civil rights. Then there is Cosimo’s closing assertion, "We promise that we will make no further demands beyond this." The young Duke of Florence evidently wished to state for the record that he was only granting Manuelle and his entourage the one-time privilege of a health cure, not underwriting permanent Jewish settlement in the jurisdiction of Bagno di Romagna.

ILLUSTRATIONS:

click on image to enlarge	Map of Fano (Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1663). Blaeu was presumably replicating an old drawing, since the long-defunct synagogue is still identified in the lower left corner of the walled city, near the Porta Marina.
An introduction to the Hebrew language, printed by Gershom Soncino in Fano in 1510.	click on image to enlarge
	A recent festive recreation of the installation of the Florentine "Capitano" as governor of Val di Bagno.

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