The paper aims to investigate the religious deviance in the Roman Jewish community, starting from the analysis of two texts of the seventeenth-century theatre. Such plays, called giudiate, were anti-Semitic comedies staged in the streets and characterized by a fixed pattern: the protagonist is always a Jew who is punished or killed. The violent and often blasphemous tone of these texts is one of the reasons why many have not survived to date. I have discovered two giudiate unknown to critics preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Rome: "Lo catanne di due accallà" and "Il giudio frustato". Both texts focus on the theme of the moral wandering and its social sanction. In "Lo catanne", the geographical distance between Rome and Livorno conceals the hostility between the Jewish community in Rome and the wealthy Sephardim of Livorno. On the other hand, in "Il giudio frustato", the topic of conversion is explored through the figure of the converso Angelo, considered a renegade and a traitor by the Jewish community.
L’ebreo livornese e il giudio rinnegato. Erranze e conversioni nel teatro delle lingue seicentesco
Alice Grazzini
2022-01-01
Abstract
The paper aims to investigate the religious deviance in the Roman Jewish community, starting from the analysis of two texts of the seventeenth-century theatre. Such plays, called giudiate, were anti-Semitic comedies staged in the streets and characterized by a fixed pattern: the protagonist is always a Jew who is punished or killed. The violent and often blasphemous tone of these texts is one of the reasons why many have not survived to date. I have discovered two giudiate unknown to critics preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Rome: "Lo catanne di due accallà" and "Il giudio frustato". Both texts focus on the theme of the moral wandering and its social sanction. In "Lo catanne", the geographical distance between Rome and Livorno conceals the hostility between the Jewish community in Rome and the wealthy Sephardim of Livorno. On the other hand, in "Il giudio frustato", the topic of conversion is explored through the figure of the converso Angelo, considered a renegade and a traitor by the Jewish community.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
