Trudy Gold
Abravanel: Italy and the Medicis, Part 2

Trudy Gold - Abravanel: Italy and the Medicis, Part 2

- And good evening everyone. Now, I think William was incredibly brave to lecture so well yesterday. And of course, beginning a very important chapter just to set you in the picture. As you know, we decided to build a whole set of lectures around the Medici exhibition. So what we’re proposing to do this week, I’m going to be continuing with Abravanel and how his son was so connected with Cosimo de’ Medici and his wife had a very close relationship with Cosimo’s wife. And then on Thursday, in the same vein, I’m going to look at the Ottoman Empire. But in a couple of weeks, William and I are switching back to mediaeval England because I know there are an awful lot of questions about the bloodline and what went on, et cetera, et cetera. So what we’ve decided to do, and we’ve talked this through with Wendy, that we’re going to look a little at Mediaeval history because I think it’s important to give you a real feel of what Jewish history is all about. Now let me reiterate. Before I even speak about Abravanel, the Jews were really just a tiny speck in the world’s population, and we’re looking to date at very judo-centric history. Now, in order to make this understood for you, what I think is quite important, I look at the century that the Jews are going to collide with.

Last time I lectured, I talked about the very painful experience of the Jews who were forced to leave Spain. And remember how important 1492 is. It’s the expulsion, of course. It’s the defeat of Granada and the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, but it’s also the beginnings of the exploration of the Americas. So it makes 1492 an incredibly important year, but I think it’s in, before we can even go onto those kind of issues, we need to look at the kind of issues that the Jews are going to face and that the world’s going to face. Because the 1500s are an incredibly complicated, but very interesting period of history. And we’ve actually already begun to talk about it a little. Now, also there was some extraordinary leaders, some good, some bad, but there were some very, very forceful personalities. Can you switch onto the slides please, Judy, if you don’t mind. Well, there you have Isaac Abravanel, and we’re going to go back to him in a minute. I’d like now to look at Ferdinand and Isabella. If you could switch to the next two slides. There’s King Ferdinand and his queen, Isabella, Saint Isabella, canonised by the Catholic Church, the really zealous Christian. Now, let’s leave it on Isabella a little bit because what we need to talk about now are the dynasties that are going to be so important and are going to have a repercussions for the Jewish community. Now, Ferdinand and Isabella are the monarchs that expel the Jews from Spain.

They have five children, and those children make incredibly good dynastic marriages. The son and the daughter marry into the House of Habsburg. Another two other daughters marry the king of Portugal. One dies, he marries the next one. And another daughter, Catherine, of course, marries Henry VIII of England. The succession to the throne of Spain is actually taken by the son of the second daughter. She’s known as Joanna the Mad. She was married to the Habsburg prince. She produces a son called Charles V. Because Isabella and Ferdinand’s son die, because the first wife die, the first daughter dies without heir, it is left then to Joanna and their grandson becomes Charles V. Charles V, stupor mundi. I’ve already mentioned him because it was said the sun never set on his empire. He of course took control of all the Spanish possessions in the new world and through his, the paternal line, the Hapsburg lands, which meant lands in Flounders, the low country, what is now Austria and parts of Italy. He was one of the most powerful men in the world. And what’s also important about him, he is the Holy Roman emperor. Consequently, he is responsible for defending the papacy. And of course, his reign, which is 1500 to 1558. And this is going to be the time span I’m looking at, plus his heirs because his son is Philip II of Spain who goes against England in the Armada. His brother, Ferdinand, they split the empire.

The Spanish possessions go to Philip, which also includes part of the low countries such as Holland. But Ferdinand creates the court in Vienna. So from now on, you’re going to have two branches of the Hapsburg family. And this of course coincides with the reign of Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence. France, a great enemy of Spain, a Catholic country, the wily Francis is the first who I talked about when I talked about Catherine de’ Medici. His son Henry, of course, married Catherine de’ Medici. And he died in a jousting accident in 1559. And for the next 30 years, France is run by his three incredibly ineffectual sons with Catherine as the real power. And Catherine was very forceful. So you’ve got forceful Spain, you have forceful France, and what about England? And we’ll be spending more time on England. Henry VIII comes to the throne and he is married to Catherine of Aragon. He’s the one who builds up the English sea power. And of course, something happens in Henry’s reign, which is so important, so important to all of them. And it’s the Protestant Reformation, which we’ve already talked about. It begins with Luther, but it’s going to have incredible repercussions because by the end of the century, Europe is divided between Protestant countries and Catholic countries. And the Protestantism spread so strongly that in the the end, the Popes had to do something. And they created what is known as the Counter Reformation, which is the tightening up of the Catholic church to ward off any kind of heresy. So you can imagine what this is going to do to the Jews.

When the church fights back, how are you going to do with the arch heretics? And of course, some of the Protestants, like Lutheran, we’ve already discussed this, was violently anti-Jewish. So important to remember the backdrop to the Europe that the Jews are going to come to. And also, think about the great trends that are going to occupy Europe. I haven’t even begun to talk about the Ottoman Empire, which I’m going to talk about on Thursday, which by that time, we get to the reign of Solomon the Magnificent who is on the throne between 1520 and 1566. He becomes one of the most powerful men in the world. He expands the Ottoman Empire. And what you have is a huge clash between the forces of Christendom and the forces of Islam. What Abravanel was going to refer to as the War of Gog and Magog. Plus of course, the very wily Francis I is even prepared to do deals with the Turks against the Hapsburgs. So something else is happening. I’ve talked about religiosity, but don’t forget the Renaissance and the incredible explosion of humanism and secularisation. When we talked about the Medici Popes, and when we talked about the Borgia Popes, these are secular characters, really. These are renaissance princes. What do they really care about?

They care about the politics of the state. And next week you’re going to have a lecture on Machiavelli because I think he really sums it all up. So you have the rival dynasties, the clash between Protestantism and Catholicism, the growth of mercantilism. Now, this is so important. And William began to talk about this. It’s very, very important. It’s going to become one of the most important aspects of the 1600s. And really, this is the birth of the modern world. So let me reiterate. The rise of powerful rival dynasties, all of whom with very strong personalities. Just think of Elizabeth in England, just think of Solomon the Magnificent, just think of, if you like Philip II of Spain who ran a Holy War. Mercantilism, who is going to emerge as the most powerful nation in terms of merchanting? And ironically, it’s going to be the Dutch when they break away from Spain and become Protestant. And that’s where the Jews are going to come in. And of course, the clash between Islam and Christianity, which doesn’t stop certain Christian princes deciding to side with the Turks. So that’s the backdrop. And then of course, you come to that horrific story, the exile of the Jews from Spain. And it, let me just begin with a quote of, about Don Isaac Abravanel by Netanyahu Sr. Don Isaac Abravanel is the outstanding historic figure amongst the Jews in the closing periods of the middle ages.

He was a statesman, he was a diplomat, he was a courtier and financier of international renown. He was also an encyclopaedic scholar, a philosopher, thinker, and brilliant writer. A rare phenomenon. Look, last time I began to talk about his life, how he comes from an incredibly important ancient family who believed that they claimed dissent from King David in they had amassed a huge fortune starting in the diamond business, but as actually as bankers. He was financial advisor for a while to the king of Portugal. Because of internecine dynastic problems, he fled to Spain where he becomes financial advisor to King Ferdinand. He’s the only man in history, I think, to be chancellor of the exchequer to four separate kingdoms. And then of course, he couldn’t stop the expulsion from Spain. Why did it happen? Religiosity, Ferdinand and Isabella realising because there have been so many hundreds of thousands of conversions since 1391, were these people that the Jews, if Jews are in Spain, the conversos would backslide. And I think it’s more that than anything else. And of course, to give you an example, a very interesting example of somebody who did convert, the other important advisor to Ferdinand Isabella was a man called Abraham Senior. He was a politician, he was a rabbi, he was a banker. He was the rabbi of Castile, but he was a lay person.

Abravanel actually had a very solid Jewish knowledge. What happens with him in Castile, he was the largest tax farm for the crown, which meant that he administered all the crown’s rents. So here you have the Jew, the intermediary between the monarchs and the aristocrats. He was also treasurer of, wait for this, the Holy Brotherhood, which is a military peacekeeping force in Castile. He was Isabella’s most important advisor. He was also chief justice of the Jewish community. Now, what are we dealing with when we’re dealing with Abraham Senior and we’re dealing with Abravanel? Abravanel, as I said, was a great scholar, but they really were court Jews. Abravanel, for example, new languages. He had studied philosophy. He wasn’t just a Jewish scholar. He’d studied the humanistic ideas that were around at the time. He believed he could walk both worlds. He liked being at the court. He was a man of affairs. And Senior makes a decision when the expulsion happens.

And of course, it’s announced on Tisha B'Av and Jews have to be out of England after, with three months notice. It’s actually announced in the Alhambra Palace, one of the, that incredible palace that you can visit. Well, if you do visit it, don’t forget that that is where the edict of expulsion was granted. It’s very, so I’ve done a couple of tours there and it’s not even mentioned. And of course, Isabella’s burial place is considered to be a great shrine. And it’s partly worn away because so many people have put their hands on the wonderful marbles for blessing. So this is a woman who was regarded as a saint, and yet was responsible for one of the most appalling episodes in Jewish history. Now, he was 80 years old, and he makes the decision he was going to convert. Ferdinand and Isabella believed that if he converts, then most of the Jews will follow suit. And in fact, Ferdinand stood godfather at the conversion of the 80-year-old advisor. And so within a few days of conversion, he becomes the ruler of Segovia. He’s a member of the Royal Council and the accountant to the Crown Prince. And ironically, he’s also going to do everything he can to help Jews leave Spain. But he made the decision to convert. Is this the quote of Henry IV, the Protestant who converted to Catholicism to become King of France when he said Paris is worth a mass?

I don’t know. It’s down to you to think about this. What happened to his family is interesting. A grandson was appointed the Constable of the Indies. They become an incredibly important family in Spain. And he stood godfather to the first Native American Indian to be converted. He was brought back to Spain in 1496. And Senior’s grandson actually stands godfather. Some of his descendants truly did become Catholic. Duarte, though one of the most interesting, managed to escape to Holland where he reemerged as a Jew. He subsequently went to Brazil. He became the richest man in Brazil. And Menasseh Ben Israel, who I’ll be talking about later on in the series, dedicated a very important book to him. And this was a pattern. Now on the numbers who left Spain, it’s very, very difficult to be accurate because as I mentioned last week, some historians put it as high as 200,000. Henry Carmen puts it as low as 40,000. The point is you’ve got to see the Exodus from Spain as the worst thing that had happened to the Jews since the destruction of the second temple. It was a period of great mourning. And in fact, we now need to turn to Abravanel because he’d already begun to write. I told you last week, when he was in Portugal, he’s already worked on commentaries. Yes, he is the court Jew, but he is also imbued in Jewish scholarship. He tried to war both worlds. And so what happens is that after the expulsion from Spain, he goes with his three sons. Now, just before that, he’d written an important book called the Inheritance of the Father.

It was actually written for his son, Samuel, who at this time was studying medicine in Solanica in the Turkish empire. And what he did was he expressed concern over the moral state of his people. He was worried about the rising materialistic tendencies. Speaking personally, considering he was one of the richest men in Spain, I think it’s rather strange, he believed, but he did believe that the only real asset, this is what he wrote, that the Jews ever had, was their moral heritage. And after the expulsion, as I said, he goes to Italy, they move first to Naples. And in Naples, he manages to take most of his wealth with him. He manages to, and was Ferdinand helpful in this? Some scholars believe he was. But anyway, remember now this is already the period of shipping. He manages to get most of his wealth to Naples where he is welcomed in with his family. And he’s going to have three years in Naples of relative peace until 1495 when he really begins to work. And this is something that he wrote. “What is the worthwhileness of suffering? Why are the Jews suffering so much?” And he asked the question, “Will there ever be an end to it?” And here I’m quoting Benzion Netanyahu. “Before his eyes passed all the tragedies he’s witnessed or which had been brought to his knowledge. He saw the old dying on the roads, the young expiring of famine and plague, mothers fainting with children in their arms, and people taking their own lives.”

You’ve got to understand just what a terrible catastrophe this was. The Jews have been in Spain since Roman times. And from the time of the Muslim conquest for about 500 years, it’s referred to as the Golden Age. It was one of the great centres of the Jewish world and now it’s over. The conversos, of course, are now going to be subjected to the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada. And the other problem that Benzion Netanyahu really brings up is that in the end, the Inquisition, was it a blood inquisition? Did it really matter whether you were a Pius Catholic, convert, or did it matter that you had Jewish blood? And this is also going to transfer to Portugal, which I’ll talk about the week after next. Because what happens is, if you think about the Exodus, I’ve already mentioned that Abravanel and his family are going to make it first to Naples. Many of the Jews moved on foot into Portugal, where the king actually set up five crossing part, points where he charged him an awful lot of money to live in Portugal. And it’s not going to last very long. That’s going to be another extraordinary story. And of course, you already know that about 10,000 went to Rome where they were greeted, ironically, by Alexander Borgia. He understood, as William told you yesterday, he understood the importance of Jewish bankers. And he was prepared to allow poor Jews in, to allow the wealthier Jews to live a Jewish life. It’s the wealthy Jews he wants.

And I’ll be talking about the Jews who made it to the Ottoman Empire later on. So he goes to, he first goes to Naples where he begins to write, he begins to try and come up with some sort of, what is this about? The deprivation, the horror, and he’s also going to begin to witness later on what’s going to go on in Portugal, what is going to happen to his people? And what he does is he goes into the Jewish sources. He’s going to look at the prophets, he’s going to look at the Talmud, and he’s going to try and work out what is going to be the future of the Jewish people. He wants to find out from the rabbinic literature, he’s very interested in scholars such as Maimonides. What is the story of the Messiah? Now, this is one of the areas that he’s going to think about most. Will the Almighty ever alleviate the suffering of the Jews? Now, the notion of Messiah, as I’m sure you all know in Judaism, is very different from what it became in Christianity. A Messiah is an anointed one. And in the Hebrew Bible and in many of the, particularly in the prophets, and in also in the apocryphal and in rabbinic writings, there are hints of what is the Messiah. The Messiah to come will be Ben-David. He will come from the house of David. He will be the Son of Man, and He will suffer for His people.

And what must happen is there’s going to be a terrible calamity, and there will be the War of Gog and Magog, and out of it will come to some sort of reconciliation for the Jewish people. He realised that Christianity could not be the truth. Why not? Because the whole purpose of messiahship in the Jewish tradition is to save the Jews and to create peace on this world. So basically, as far as he’s concerned, Christianity has to be false because the Messiah to come is the Messiah that will save the Jews at the end of days. And for the Jews who’ve been evicted from Spain, and later on from Portugal, there’s going to be this messianic fervour that’s going to be incredibly important. And it’s also going to be very much tied up more and more with the study of Kabbalah. And we’re going to see that there are going to be Messianic claimants around this period. And later on, probably the most famous messianic claimant of all in the Jewish tradition, Shabbetai Zevi. But he also comes from the Sephardi world. But he comes around the time of the second worst calamity after the expulsion from Spain. The next horror to meet the Jewish people is of course going to be in 1648. The Khmelnytsky massacres in Poland. So this is the story of the Jews. The Jews are now thrown out of Spain.

The only price to remain is conversion. What is going to happen to them? Ironically, at this period, Spain, Portugal, which was a very short haven, is going to become completely impossible, Poland and the Turkish Empire. And ironically, one of the reasons I wanted to dwell quite a lot on the Sephardi Jews that leave Spain is, and particularly those that go to Holland and the Turkish empire, you do realise that the Jews who come back to England in 1656, well, there were already some Portuguese here, but I’ll be talking about them later on. They are the descendants of these Jews. So what he’s going to spend his time thinking of is what on earth can be the future of the Jewish people? And he’s putting all his faith on the coming of the Messiah. And this is going to be very much echoed in all sorts of Jewish writings. And in fact, his daughter-in-law is Benvenida Abravanel, is also going to take up this extraordinary notion that in this time of horror, what can save the Jews, but divine intervention? Otherwise, why have the Jews suffered so much? And it’s interesting because what happens to him, as I said, they first go to Naples where Ferdinand, he protected them. But that little haven, and what happens, Abravanel becomes his advisor. That can only last three years because in 1495, the French conquer the city. It’s not until 1510 that Spain wins control. Now, Abravanel, whilst he’s there in those three years, he completes his commentary on the Book of Kings. But when the French attack, they loot his home. He’d managed to get most of his great library out to Naples, but they loot his library, his great library is destroyed.

And he’s incredibly, his writing at this period is incredibly dark. He follows the royal family to Messina, and he stays there until Alfonso actually dies. Then he moves on to Corfu. And it’s interesting because why on earth does he and his family stay in the Christian world when the world of Islam is becoming much more positive towards its Jews? And it seems, this is interesting because he also saw himself as a European. If you talk about people who try and walk both worlds, I really think Isaac Abravanel, who was a great Jewish scholar, but remember he was also a great courtier. I think he did try and walk both worlds. So what he does, he goes to a place called Monopoli, which was a seaport on the Adriatic Coast. And he really spends the next seven and a half years writing and thinking. And he works on the Passover stories because it’s the Passover, is it not? That deals with the first great redemption of the Jews. Now, what happens is his son comes to visit him and persuades him to go back to Venice, and that’s where he dies. He dies in Venice. But before that, his son Joseph, who has a huge fortune, also, it’s interesting. These court Jews, they win, they lose, but his son now has a huge fortune and he is one of the main advisors to Venice. And his father, the last great act of a statesman, his father, and this is so ironic. He gets involved in negotiations, trade negotiations between Portugal and the Venetian state. It was about a commercial treaty about the spice trade.

And who do you think is involved in the spice trade in the main converso families from Spain and later on from Portugal? And we’re going to see after Portugal goes rotten for the Jews and the conversos, many of these people are going to be gouged out by the wealthy, the wealthy ship owners who run the Spice Routes, who run the Pepper Route. We’re going to talk about the Mendes family who had a monopoly on pepper in Portugal. And they get a lot of their co-religionists out as though they were setting sail for the colonies. So he dies in Venice with his family present, and we now turn to his son, Samuel. Unfortunately, we have no pictures of Samuel. Can we go on a little bit if you don’t mind, Judy? Let’s go past Thomas. Okay, now that is the extraordinary Benvenida Abravanel. She was the daughter of Judah who is Isaac Abravanel’s brother, and she marries her first cousin, Samuel. So let’s talk a little bit about Samuel. Remember, he is the youngest son. As I said, no pictures. That he is the youngest son of Isaac Abravanel. He’d been born in Lisbon. And he, as I mentioned before, he’d been sent to Salonika to pursue his Talmudic studies. Like his father, he walked both worlds and he moves to Naples where he becomes the chief financier of Don Pedro de Toledo.

Once the Spanish takeover, the Viceroy is Don Pedro de Toledo. And I’m going to show you a portrait of him at the moment. He amasses this huge fortune, but he also inherits a huge fortune from his wife’s dowry. So they’re incredibly wealthy and they later are going to move to Ferrara where Lucrezia Borgia’s son, Duke Ercole, welcomes them in. Now, Samuel Abravanel, not only was he a great banker, he was also a huge philanthropist and he really supported so many Jewish institutions. His house also becomes a meeting place for Jewish and Christian scholars because don’t forget, this is the Renaissance. The study of Hebrew humanistic scholarship. So it’s like walking both worlds on one level with the impact of the reformation and the counter reformation. The Catholic church is tightening up, but there are scholars now and rulers who have access to the world of Greece and Rome and humanism. I mean, one of the things that made Isaac Abravanel such an interesting scholar, when he looked at the Kings, when he looked at the books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, he used his own experience. Plus he looked at the Greek and the Latin sources about kingship, which is a whole new take on these biblical heroes. And the poet, Samuel Usque who was a converso, he called him the father of Israel, who thrives, I’m quoting. “He thrives great in scholarship, ancestry, and wealth.”

And he says this. “He generously employs his wealth in promoting the welfare of his co-religionists. He enables many orphans to marry, supports the needy, and endeavours strenuously to free captives so that in in him are combined all the great qualities which makes one fitted for the gift of prophecy. The gift of prophecy.” Now, mentions captured. There are lots and lots of pirates in the Mediterranean. And important to remember, when Jews were captured, they were put up for ransom. And who’s going to ransom them, but the community? And we’re going to see that Benvenida, and later on, another extraordinary woman, Donna Gracia, they’re going to be very involved in actually rescuing Jews. So let’s talk a bit more about her. What is interesting about Benvenida is that she received both a Jewish and secular education. And she, remember her, her husband is already the financial advisor to the Viceroy of Naples, and she becomes the tutor to his daughter, Eleanor. She’s evidently an extraordinary strong woman. Many of the books say that in fact, the tutor had to be Samuel, but the latest evidence is the tutor to the daughter of the Viceroy was actually Benvenida. And she treated the girl almost as a daughter. And can we move on please? Now that is Don Pedro, that is the father.

I’m going to give you a little bit of background because he’s important. He’s second cousin to Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, and he arrives in 1532. He’s very important in rebuilding the city in Naples, naval shipyards. He built an incredible palace and he makes Naples, he tries to make Naples invulnerable to attack. By 1550, Naples had a population of 200,000, which after Paris made it the biggest city in Europe. And here you see a portrait of Titian by him. But can we go on, please? Yes, now who is that? That is Eleanor of Toledo, the daughter of Pedro, who is the student of Benvenida. Now, why is she important? Because who is she going to marry? Can we see who she marries please? Yes. Now do you see how we come full circle? She marries Cosimo de’ Medici. Of course, the exhibition is all about him. That is a wonderful portrait. That’s Bronzino. Can we go back now to Eleanor of Toledo? Let’s talk a little bit about her. She was quite an extraordinary woman. Rumour she’s had a humanistic education. And really, when her husband was travelling, she became the regent of, she becomes the regent of Florence. She’s a brilliant, brilliant businesswoman, much of the acumen. They think that she probably picked up from Benvenida. She was very, she was important really in the building of the Pitti Palace. And when he’s away, she walks as regent.

She found it, outwardly, she was quite pious. She founded many Jesuit churches. But what is obviously true that is her closest friend was a Jew. And she was actually raised in the home of Samuel and Benvenida. And she always honoured her. She actually called her mother. And going back, can we go back and have a look at Benvenida again? Can we go back, Judy? Yes. Now, now what is fascinating about Benvenida is that she was a very strong woman. She was a very, very canny business woman. And she and her husband would spend a lot of time visiting Cosimo and Eleanor in Florence. And I’m going to talk about the kind of deals that they did. She had five children, and she also brought up her husband’s illegitimate child. And when Samuel died in Ferrara in 1547, he made her his heir. And except for money that he’d left to his children, he left her in charge of the banks. Because of her friendship with Cosimo and Eleanor, he allowed her to set up five new banks in Florence. Her illegitimate son actually contested the will, which led to a huge rabbinic debate. She actually managed to defend her rights in a rabbinic court. Interestingly, go to the rabbinic court because Jews, this is another issue that I think explains why most Jewish communities today still look after their own affairs.

Look, we’ve already talked about Samuel. Samuel who gave to the poor, Samuel who made sure that the poor had dowries for weddings, Samuel who would really look after the community. This is Jewish self-help. The rich have always seen as a part of their business to look after the poor within the community. And not only that, if there’s a dispute, you don’t go to, you wouldn’t go to the court of Ferrara. Who would you go to? You’d go to a beth din. And in front of a beth din, she defended her right to take over Samuel’s business affairs. And she, as I said, through her relationship with the woman who called her mother, who happens to be the wife of Cosimo, she opened up five banks in Florence. And this was actually authorised by Cosimo during a visit. Now, according to the will, Samuel, when Samuel explains in the will why he’s left it to his wife, he said that it was her dowry, which of course came from the family. Remember, this is first cousins marrying. Because she bought such a large dowry to the wedding, it was the main source of their wealth. She held quite a court. She was involved in all sorts of literary circles, and she received praise and dedications in many, many books. She sponsored printing presses, she sponsored books. This is a woman of the Renaissance.

And it’s interesting. In the will, the children by her had been left money, but their marriages had to be approved by her. And there was one case where the marriage wasn’t approved and she allowed the boy to be actually in prison. She was a tough, tough cookie. The other point about her is that she supported mystic messianism. And did she get that from her father-in-law? I think it’s quite likely that she did. But before I do that, I want to talk a little more about the Medici themselves and the Jews. What we’ve established for Cosimo is that because of this incredibly close relationship, he is very positive towards the Jews and his wife. Charles V, there was a move for Charles V to explore Jews from Naples. And actually the princesses all stood together against it and he didn’t do anything for 10 years. Remember, Charles V is cousin to this whole family. So you can see that these incredibly rarefied court Jews are mixing in the highest echelons of society, but in the end, they do have to get out of Naples. So as a friend of mine once said, you still have your packed suitcase. And this has always been one of the problems. So on one level, they’re living the life of Renaissance princess. Within the fold of the Jewish world, her husband was a good Jewish scholar, so was she.

Remember she was also a scholar of the Renaissance who had taught Eleanor, the wife of Cosimo, and who taught Eleanor to become so self-reliant that she becomes the regent of Florence when her husband’s away on his campaigns. Now, let’s talk about Cosimo. He obviously realised, look, he was a merchant prince. Yes, his family are marrying into the royalty of Europe. But let’s face it, they made their money through banking. And he actually encouraged affluent Jews to come into Florence. Back in the past, actually, going back to the 1430s under another great Medici, the born brokers licences for Christians were never renewed. And this was a concession that was actually given to Jews. And there were one or two Jews that were really favoured by the Medici. And they were given incredibly good, they were given incredibly good deals. For example, Jews were obliged to invest 40,000 florins in four different banks, but they could fix the rate of interest at 20%.

And this went on right up until 1494 when you had the first fall of the Medici. So you can also understand, I suppose, how the Christians, the Christian traders, because Florence is after all a great centre of trade, the Medici are actually favouring the Jews. And it’s quite fascinating because something else, the Port of Livorno. Now, Cosimo, when Cosimo was on the throne, Livorno was really sort of a very, very dire kind of, it was a plague-infested village. And what Cosimo de’ Medici does, he’s going to turn it into a real important port for the Medici. And he issues an invitation to foreigners. And this is the charter. Livorno grants religious liberty, amnesty for crimes committed, opportunities to return to Judaism unmolested, plus exemption from taxation, safe passage of goods and people. So what happens is in Livorno, which is the port that the Medici are going to build, they actually encourage foreigners and they encourage Jews in. And as a response, Jews could own houses, they could inherit property, they could carry arms, they could open shops everywhere in the city, they could have Christian merchants, they could study at university to become doctors, and they didn’t have to wear the Jew badge. And this is Livorno under the Medici. And you know why it’s also important? Because by the time you get to the 1700s, about a third of the city are Jewish, and it becomes the home of two individuals who are going to have a very important part to play in the history of the Jews of England. One was called Benjamin Israeli, not Benjamin Israeli prime minister of England, but his grandfather. He was a straw bonnet maker in Livorno and he comes to England and becomes one of the members of the London Stock Exchange.

He earns enough money to have a stately home in Edmonton and becomes a very popular figure in the city. And the other one was a very important family called Montefiore. And so Moses Montefiore was actually born in Livorno. And many of the Jews who made their way to England, why England? Because England, by the 1700s, is a very important trading centre. This is also, you see, these are, if you like, the wealthy Jews, the court Jews. Others are going to follow them. And they go where the trade is, where the opportunity is. And in a way, it’s about living on, it’s really about living on your wits, is it not? If you think about, and I’ve had two in preparing for these kind of courses, how on earth did they have the resilience to go on, and to live on their wits, and in a way to have their suitcases packed? That is of course the quote of George Steiner, always live with a suitcase packed. They nevertheless, it made them very adaptable and adaptable to survival. But in the period I’m talking about, the impact of the expulsion from Spain was so great that there was also this dream of Messiah. And one of the things that Benvenida did was to support a very strange phenomenon, the phenomenon of David Reubeni. And can we see a drawing of him please?

Yeah, that is David Reubeni now. Philosopher Hebraeus he is called. What a strange individual. He was born, no, sorry, we got the wrong picture. I thought I didn’t recognise it. Judy, go back, I’m sorry. That is not David Reubeni. Go back to Cosimo. Sorry, that is Menasseh Ben Israel for another time. Forget all of that. He, look, his dates are 1490. He was born in Khaybar. Now, which is today’s Saudi Arabia. He really is going to arouse huge Messianic hopes. And the main source of information we have from him is from his diary, which was written in Hebrew. He probably made most of the diary up. It’s very difficult, but we’re going back over 500 years. Who was this man? He was obviously hugely charismatic. Bearing in mind it was a time of unbelievable grief for the Jewish people. He claimed to be the son of King Solomon and brother of a King Jude Joseph, who ruled the lost tribes of Reuben and Gad in the Haboob desert.

But basically, they live in a desert in Africa, and other times, he claims descendants from the tribe of Judah, and he even claimed that his descendants went all the way back to King David. There’s a huge disagreement about his origins. And some scholars think that he was Sephardi, and that he’d lived in Israel because, in the land of Israel, because he certainly had very good knowledge of the land, especially the holy places. He was a very well-traveled adventurer. It seems also that he was connected to some of the sages of the Jerusalem yeshiva, particularly Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi who was a very famous kabbalist. Because what were the kabbalists looking for? They’re looking for the coming of the Mashiach. And according to his diary is he travelled throughout the east, he was captured by Arabs, taken to Alexandria. It’s really a kind of “Don Quixote,” from one thing to another. And he travels to Jerusalem and Tzfat, which is of course the centre of Kabbalah. He proclaims himself a Reubenite, King of the lost tribes. And his first historic appearance where we can cross reference, he appears in Venice in 1523, evidently about 40, and he claims to be commander-in-chief of his brother’s army. And he begs the Jews to aid him on a mission to the Pope. And in February 1524, he arrives in Rome on a white horse, and he’s received by a humanistic cardinal. And think who’s on the papal throne? It’s a Medici pope. And you know, this is interesting.

The fact that a humanistic cardinal has a meeting with this Jewish adventurer because Christianity is also looking for something. Are they not? Think of the Italian wars, think of the instability, and think back to the century before the Black death, the notion of messianism. With the Christian world, the second coming of Jesus. With the Jewish world, the coming of the Mashiach. And this is a thread that is often going to combine. And in the end, he is, he does gain an audience with Clement VII, and he proposes. What he proposes is that the forces of Israel will rise up with the Christians in a Holy War against Islam. He’s proposing something that the Pope always wanted, to destroy Islam, because think about what’s happening. We’re in the 1520s now. Constantinople had fallen to the Turk. By this period, Salem, I beg your pardon, Solomon the Magnificent had, was on the throne. He had defeated the forces of Christianity at the battle of the Mohawks. He’d taken half of Hungary. Christianity wants a salvation figure as well. And according to his own diary, he requests that the Pope give him a letter to Charles V and Francis I, the two most important rulers in the world. And he also wants to send a letter to Prester John, who is the mythical king of Ethiopia. And as a result of this, he actually does manage to get a letter of recommendation. And he also travels to Portugal. He wants to meet the King of Portugal. He does, after a year, give Reubeni a couple of letters.

Now, what is fascinating is that he receives a lot of support from Benvenida Abravanel. She actually sends him not just a lot of money for his journey, but she sends him a silk banner embroidered with the Tongan Mormons. So if you could think about it, he’s now travelling around Italy. He’s collected a retinue around him with these silk banners, and he’s proclaiming to be a descendant of the kings of Israel, trying to convince the Christians to go to war against the Turks. He’s received in Portugal. And this is a problem because the conversos in Portugal treat him as a messiah. He claims he’s the Messiah, they held him as the Messiah because the conversos are now being seriously persecuted in Portugal and this is their way out. And he actually says to a representative of Solomon, the time has come for the Jews to take Jerusalem from the Ishmaelites, which is more chutzpah than anyone should ever have. He also spends a lot of time, this is all in his own diary, establishing contact with the Jews of North Africa. And something happens though. There is a young man, Diego Perez, who’s a very important converso. He is a very important in, he is a sort of, he’s in charge of a whole legal department in just outside Lisbon, and he declares himself a Jew. Reubeni doesn’t really want anything to do with him. He circumcises himself and changes his name to Solomon Molcho.

And it’s at this stage that the king of Portugal realises he’s got a problem and he is expelled from Portugal. And in the end, Reubeni is really, the Christian kings get fed up with this charismatic character and he’s put in prison. And Molcho is actually burnt at the stake. And it comes to nothing. But I think the reason I told you this story is I think it’s so important to understand the kind of messianistic fervour that this terrible period of history engaged. And yet on the other hand, you do have these extraordinary characters like the Abravanel family who are surviving, are still having incredible lives in terms of their financial and social lives. Remember I mentioned to you that they are received at court. They are involved in humanistic discussions with Christian scholars. What was the real situation? How tenuous was it? And this of course is what, in his extraordinary book, Netanyahu Senior writes about. Because as far as he is concerned, this is just one of the horrible tragedies of the diaspora. What on Earth can Jews do in the diaspora? It’s going to be one disaster after another. Times are good, times are bad, but we will never have stability. And according to him, of course, we cannot rely on the coming of a Mashiach. What we can rely on though is creating our own entity. And remember he wrote that book in 1953 when of course, so much in the shadow of the show. So in a way, I’ve taken what I think is an extraordinarily exciting period of history. I know a lot of you know a lot of history. I hope I’ve made it clear the various kings of Europe at the time because of course, it is going to be very important. And once our website is up, we are going to include all this information on the website.

So I think I will stop there, and let’s have a look at some questions. That’s all right, Judy.

Q&A and Comments:

Abravanel Abraham. A tree would be useful. Yes, I know it would.

Please explain mercantilism. Oh, have you got 25 hours? Merchanting, really.

Q: Audrey. Can we have the publishing details of Netanyahu’s book on Abravanel?

A: Yes, and it’s his father, Benzion. Of course I said it’s the grandfather. Don Isaac Abravanel, statesman and philosopher beat Netanyahu. And it’s Benzion. Benzion Netanyahu is a very interesting character. He of course was a professor in America, Columbia, but he was also Jabotinsky’s secretary Josephus said the Jews have been living in Spain for hundreds of years. Yeah, they came in Roman times, definitely.

Q: When did they get there?

A: Not sure, but they came in Roman times.

Q: What were the Abravanel’s relationship with the exceptional Donna Gracia?

A: Ah, Barbara, you’re preempting. I’m giving, next week I’m giving the session on Donna Gracia. I don’t think they liked each other too much. They were both incredibly powerful Jewish woman.

Oh, this is from Sandra. Hi, Sandra. Recent genetic testing estimated approximately 30% of Portugal population have Jewish blood. It’s around an interesting article about 15 years ago about the emergence of the Anusim, descendants of the crypto Jews. Yeah, this is an incredible story. You see, next week before I talk about Donna Gracia, I’m going to talk about how the Inquisition hit Spain. Even before that, there was this most terrible thing to persuade the Jews to convert. All children between the ages of four and 14 were taken away from their parents and baptised. The only way you could remain with your children is if you converted. And we know, can you just imagine this is a world of religiosity. What that did to parents. So obviously, there would’ve been a lot of conversions. Now, Benzion Netanyahu believes a lot of these conversions are sincere. That’s why he attacks the persecution of the conversos as a blood libel rather than actual religiosity. But yes. In fact, I’ve heard it put higher than that. So we also, we’ve all heard of stories of how in the Iberian peninsula and also in the Balearic Islands, we know that women light the candles in their cellars. And they don’t really know why they do it, and it’s obvious that this is a tradition that they’re being carried on from generation to generation to generation. So yeah, because you see in Spain from 1492, there were no Jews left in Spain. There were the conversos. Then in Portugal, they did move in for five years, but then it was, I’ll talk about what happened to them. But of course, these conversos, and many of them achieved the highest positions that Spain and Portugal had. And think about it. The Jews are kicked out just as Spain and Portugal are emerging as great conquering peoples. Because when Columbus bumped into America, Alexander Borgia drew a very bad line through a very bad map of the new world and divided the new world between the Spanish and the Portuguese. Now, think of all the goods and the gold and the spices and think about the sea route to India. Who is going to actually do the merchanting? Who is actually going to sort all of this out? Do you really think the Spanish and Portuguese aristocrats wanted to sully their hands? You didn’t have a big enough trading class. So there’s a big irony going on here. There are some historians who actually pinpoint the decline of Spain to the expulsion.

Yes, Eleanor, not only Portugal, but Spain and Latino descendants in Central and South America. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. Because think about where the Spanish and the Portuguese went. And those of you who live in New York will know that in 1653, a group of, what had happened was Recife had been a Dutch colony. Remember the Dutch breakaway from Spain, they are Protestant. It’s reconquered by Portugal. Bringing these people who’ve been conversos, so they were subject to the Inquisition. The Inquisition wasn’t halted until 1810, by the way. So what happens is they set sail in a ship called the St. Charles. And where do they make for? New Amsterdam, a trading post of Peter Stuyvesant. And of course, a few years later, the British conquer it, New York.

So now this is from Ellie. There was an article on Asia about a religious Christian man who traced his ancestry 500 years through a long research and found out that his family were crypto Jews and he converted back. That is extraordinary. I met a young man actually in Cordoba who ran the Jewish Study Centre there ‘cause there are no Jews in Cordoba now, obviously. And he, then I bumped into him again at the Leo Baeck where he had decided, he believed he was of Jewish ancestry and he decided to convert and even go to the rabbinate. Yes. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? You know, in a way, I had to set, I hope I haven’t been too convoluted. What I’ve tried to do is to set Jewish history in the context of general European history. You see, we are such an afterthought, and yet we still have a central place, which is fascinating because of the centrality of Judaism to both Christianity and Islam. You know, that’s why I think we have such a high profile and I think that’s why when things go wrong, conspiracy theories, it’s got to be the Jews. Anyway, I won’t go there.

Yes, Livorno is also called Leghorn. David, I did know, and I can’t remember, but I know, I know that someone on this line will. That’s what I love about you. If I a question comes up and we don’t know.

Q: Was the illegitimate son Jewish?

A: Yes, he was. Yes, he was older than the children. Yes, he wouldn’t be illegitimate by Jewish law. Wait a minute, I better think that one through. Was he born after they were married? I’ll have to try and check that out for you, Mira. It’s a very, very good point because of course it’s, Jewish law is strange, isn’t it? Because he’s only illegitimate if the mother is married to someone else. Yeah, good point, Muriel.

This is from Lillian. My father went from Spain to Portugal and then to Holland. One of the three brothers went to Kupiskis in Lithuania and traded with England. Most of the family were killed during the Holocaust. Wow. Ay, ay, ay, yeah. You see why they go from Spain to Portugal. Holland seems to be a haven. Why from Holland to Lithuania? That’s interesting. There were Sephardi Jews who made their way to Poland, by the way, but not many. Not in proportion.

Q: Do we know details of Benvenida’s appearance before the beth din?

A: There are transcripts, yes.

Q: How did a woman win the support of the rabbis?

A: Maybe she was the richest woman in Florence. I don’t know. Did I say that? I don’t know. I don’t know, but she did. She must have been, and besides her husband’s will. Her husband, that was his request. And also, this is another interesting one. The fact that she was so close to the Medici. Remember the wife of Cosimo treats her as a mother. That must, in the real world, I mean, for example, talking about the modern period, do you remember the 12th questions that Napoleon asked the Jews of France? Well, many of those questions, like do you regard France as your country for purposes? Using Jewish law, you can make it go either way, but you have to give the answers the prince wants. You can imagine that she would’ve had the support of the Medici. This is from Peoria. In 1968, just after 500 years after the Inquisition, three friends of myself, young women from Toronto, took a tour of Spain and Portugal. The number of people that were shocked and couldn’t understand how Jewish girls dare travel to Spain. Nowadays, no one questions if Jews go to Germany or Poland. How times changed. Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it? Look, travelling in Europe is very, very complicated if you have a sense of Jewish history. But on the other hand, we can, and why shouldn’t we? That’s how I view it. I mean, my daughter just got back from 10 days in Poland and I mean she’s completely traumatised. What she’s really traumatised about is how that Poland has become so reactionary. But yeah, we go to Poland. When I go to Poland, I don’t go just to say caddish, I go because Jews live there. And I think that’s important. Spain, it’s very difficult to get a smell of it in Spain. The area I love very much is Seville and Cordoba where you have the wonderful mosque, which is one of the wonders of the world. You wander around the Jewish quarter, there is a synagogue, but there’s nothing. And you, how worse is it? I don’t know. Sometimes you just walk the streets and you get a smell of the orange blossom and you wonder what it was like for them. Because my mother’s family were originally Sephardi from that part of the world. So maybe that’s just my fantasy, I don’t know. Actually, in certain circles, travel to Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Poland. Rabbi Lau refuses to sleep over in Poland. It’s complicated. On the other hand, I know other rabbis who spend a lot of time in Poland. Rabbi Glick, who is the chief rabbi of Krakow. He’s a very pious Jew because he wants to do something with the Jews there. It’s such a complicated story and I personally believe it’s how you feel about it in your own families.

Miss Dahlia is wanting a book to learn about the Medici year and from the Jewish point of view. Ooh. I’m afraid I’ve had to scan most of my information from lots of different books. This is something, there’s some serious books that need to be written.

• [Wendy] You’ve got a job, Trudy.

Q: - When did the pronunciation, this is from Ellie. When did the pronunciation of Abravanel morph into Abarbanel?

A: It hasn’t morphed. Different scholars do both. So both is acceptable, Ellie. Thank you, Ellie.

Thank you, Joe. The Hasmonean sent Jews as emissaries to the Roman Empire and they founded a Jewish community there. Yeah. You know, I believe some Hasmonean coins were even found in Como. Oh, wait a minute. Jonathan, sensing an advantage, the Ottoman’s invited the Jews to live in the empire and promised fair treatment. Yeah, and it’s going to be fascinating. When later on, week, I think next week, I’ll talk about the Duke of Naxos who was a converso. He became really the ambassador of the court. And not only that, he and his aunt Donna Gracia were given land in Tiberius, which is extraordinary for Jewish colonies. And he is probably the model for “The Jew of Malta” Marlowe’s play, which David Pima is going to talk about in one of his presentations. We’re trying to pull it all together for you. This is from Ronnie. Portuguese genealogists recently estimated that 70% of the community had Jewish roots. Cape Verde was populated with Jewish children. Yes, yes, we know about that. And when I talk about Portugal, I’ll talk about that. Yes. I remember when we were on the IHR, a colleague of mine went to Portugal and was told by the rector of the university, they put the hire, that people with Jewish descendants hire 70%.

Q: Did Jews from Spain in 1490 go to Germany?

A: Henry, unlikely to go into Germany. Germany was pretty dark at this time. Many, most Jews have been expelled. Germany remembers over 300 city states. It was very dark. My father-in-law spoke of some of his ancestors from Livorno. He grew up in Hamburg. Yeah, that’s possible. That’s later. That’s much later though.

Q: What about the relationship between Pico Del and Rabbi Alaman?

A: Yes, now this was through the Medici. They had a study centre, yes. This is from Marlene. We visited Ronen a number of years ago. There’s a beautiful Sephardic synagogue. Yes. Oh, Haim Kassa, that might be the man I met. Do I have a book suggesting for the history of the Jews of Salem? There are many on that. I promise you I’ll get a bibliography together. I think that, Wendy, are you there again? You off the train yet?

• I’m still on the train.

• Hello darling.

• We had a holder.

• Oh, well. Anyway, I think that’s it. Have a fabulous trip.

• Thanks, Trudy. Thanks everybody for joining us. We’ve got Jeremy Rosen in an hour.

• Yes.

• Just to remind everybody, and also just to say thanks Judy, and onwards and upwards.

• Lots of love.

• Thank you. It was excellent.

• God bless everyone.

• Thanks a lot.

• Bye.

• Take care.

• Bye.

• [Wendy] Thanks, bye-bye.