Jews in Early Modern Venice
Monday, July 14

Each panel is broken down into different talks, questions and responses. The audio for each section is found at the bottom its box.

Law, Inquisitorial Culture and the Jews in Venice
by Kimberly Lynn Hossain and Gretchen Starr-Lebeau.

"In her presentation, Kimberly Hossain focused on inquisitors and their activities. This is an important development in historical analysis of the inquisition, because for too long scholars have focused on those accused to the exclusion of all else. Increasingly, through the work of Kimberly Hossain and others, it is becoming clear that the Inquisition was not an independent, reified institution that exerted its will upon a victimized, oppressed population. Rather, the inquisition was created and re-created out of the actions of the inquisitors..."

word document Recorder's Reports | sound Audio

Jews and the Plague
by Lisa Pon.

pdf document View the PDF

Usury and the Blood Libel in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
by James Arieti.

"We can divide the history of the West into eras of enlightenment and eras of magic. In eras of enlightenment there is a belief in logos—that the faculty of reasoning and its concomitant of speech is the means to human happiness; in eras of magic there is the belief that happiness, if achievable at all, is achievable only by the propitiation of divinities, whose motive for acting is their own capricious will..."

doc document Paper



Venice in Early Modern Cultural Imaginary
by Thomas Cartelli.

"In the fourth act of Shakespeare’s Othello, Ludovico, a Venetian visiting Cyprus in the wake of Othello’s pacification of the island, sees the Moor strike Desdemona in a jealous rage and exclaims, “this would not be believed in Venice/Though I should swear I saw it.” Since the argument I can only begin to develop today turns upon the gulf between fact and fantasy, the presumptively established and invented, it’s worth stating at the outset that the stories Shakespeare tells in Othello and The Merchant of Venice would not likely be believed in London either, however closely they might mesh with myths about Venice in general circulation..."

word document Venice Paper


Audio file breakdown
  • James Arieti: 0:00 to 17:24
  • Thomas Cartelli: 17:25 to 39:06
sound Audio

American Ethnic Literature, Jewish Literture and Theories of Ethnicity
by Werner Sollors.

sound Audio

Reflections on the Research on the Jews of the Venetian Republic
by Benjamin Ravid.

sound Audio

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           Sponsor - Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation