Penitential Warfare or Holy Wars

The Christian Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, although campaigns were also waged against pagan Slavs, pagan Balts, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemies of the popes. The Muslim presence in the Holy Land began with their initial conquest in the 7th century AD. Christianity and Islam were thrown into complete opposition, a polarity that has lasted to this very day.

The Christian Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns waged by of Latin Christian Europe, by the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to acquire Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century.

Foreign Invasion of the Holy Land: After the Roman Empire invasion of the Holy Land and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Romans named the Holy Lands, Palaestina [meaning palace of, or kingdom of a god] as a reference to the Hebrew nation. The Jerusalem Temple Mount was considered the temple of this Hebrew God. With the evangelizing of Greek inspired Christianity the Holy Land became a center for the new religion of a new messiah leader. Following Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 A.D which ended Christian persecution, Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem became safe for those who had the means of travel.

The Muslim Invasion of the Holy Land: The founding of Islam by Mohammed (570-632) changed the ethos of the Middle East. The concept of holy war, or jihad, to expand religious aims was embraced by the followers of Islam. The Muslims captured Jerusalem in 638, and the Christian Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria were placed under the control of the Caliphates. Although, Islam proved a tolerant religion in victory, in keeping with the teachings of Mohammed, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was allowed to remain Christian and Christians were allowed to practice their religion with the payment of a special tax, called the jizya.

The Muslim armies’ successes put increasing pressure on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The Moslem invasion captured the eastern part of the Byzantine empire but were held off twice at Constantinople, decisively in 717 by Emperor Leo III. By the next century, Islam under the Umayyad Dynasty extended all the way from India through Morocco into Spain. It was only their defeat by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 that stopped the Western European advance of Mohammedan forces. But the Reconquista of Spain, or the re-unification of Spain under Christian rule, was not completed until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when Granada was captured from the Moors on January 2, 1492.

In the beginning of the eleventh century AD, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was completed in 335 AD alleged to be on the site of Jesus crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In 1009 a Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In 1039 his successor, after requiring large sums be paid for the right, permitted the Byzantine Empire to rebuild it. A new wave of Muslim aggression by the Seljuk Turks led to Christian persecution in the Holy Land and the invasion of the Byzantine Empire. The defeat of the Byzantines at the decisive Battle of Manzikert in 1071 gave the Seljuk Turks possession of Asia Minor. Nicaea and then Antioch fell to the Turks.

Constantinople was vulnerable, and pilgrimages to the Holy Land abruptly ended. This led Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus to appeal to Pope Urban II for help. The Emperor sent his emissaries to the Pope’s Council of Piacenza in March of 1095, with a request for knights to defend the East.
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The Animus of the Crusades: Developments in Western Europe earlier in the Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the Byzantine Empire in the east caused a new wave of Turkish Muslim attacks. The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in the late 9th century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings, Slavs, and Magyars, had produced a large class of armed warriors whose energies were misplaced fighting one another and terrorizing the local populace in their pursuit of power. The Euopean Christian Church attempted to divert this violence with the Peace and Truce of God movements, which were occasionally successful, however trained warriors sought an outlet for their skills; and opportunities for territorial expansion were becoming less attractive for large segments of the nobility.

One exception was the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian knights and some mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Islamic Moors. While the Reconquista was the most prominent example of European reactions against Muslim conquests, the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard had conquered Calabria in 1057 and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of Sicily. The maritime states of Pisa, Genoa and Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in Majorca and Sardinia, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids.

Much earlier in 638 AD, the Christian territories of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Holy Land had been conquered by Muslim armies. This long history of losing territories to a religious enemy created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I’s call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands starting with Jerusalem.

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The Rally for the First Crusade: In 1063, Pope Alexander II had given his blessing to Iberian Christians in their wars against the Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the vexillum sancti Petri) and an indulgence to those who were killed in battle. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to the loss of territory in the region of western Anatolia, around Constantinople and all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) except the coastlands.

The Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I in desperation made an appeal to his enemy, the Pope, for aid. Previous Papal attempts at reconciliation after the East-West Schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church had failed, but when the Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed for a positive response from the Pope for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire he eventually got it.

Pope Gregory VII had struggled with the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord but had resolved the question in favour of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Gregory’s intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service of Jesus in Jerusalem [The City of God]; and a Christian “just war” might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself.

The Church attempted to place some measure of control on warlike behavior by the institution of the Peace of God, which protected defenseless women, children and the elderly; the Truce of God, which banned warfare on Sundays and holydays, as well as Advent and Lent; and the development of a Code of Chivalry for the proper conduct of knights. The knights’ Code called for the knight to defend and obey the Church and Commandments and to be the champion of right and good against injustice and evil. The Church raised the reception of Christian knighthood to an honor through a Christian ceremony.

The northerners would be cemented to Rome and their knights could partake in combative action that suited them. To the south of Rome, Normans demonstrated how these combative skills might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and Byzantine territory (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the Levant would provide leverage in resolving the Papacy’s claims of supremacy over the Patriarch of Constantinople, which had resulted in the Great Schism of 1054, a rift that might be resolved through the force of Frankish arms.
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Penitential Warfare or Holy Wars: Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), following St. Augustine, developed the concept of “penitential warfare,” whereby warfare was justified when performed in the service and defense of the Catholic Church and the Christian faith. He offered absolution to those who died fighting for the Cross in the reconquest (reconquista) of Spain. Since Gregory was occupied with the Investiture Controversy and could not call on the German emperor, a crusade never took shape under his papacy.

It was Pope Urban II who formally invoked penitential warfare or warfare in the service and defense of the Church for the remission of sins, when he called for the First Crusade on November 27, 1095. The Pope justified a war under the banner of Christianity. While St. Basil and the early Church Fathers would never have accepted war, St. Augustine held that war was justified at the command of God. European warfare during the age of feudalism primarily involved Christians, noblemen and knights fighting each other over land, possessions, romance, or right of succession!

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For Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be found in Urban’s homeland among the northern French.
The pleas from the Byzantine Emperors, now threatened by the Seljuks, thus fell on ready ears. Pope Urban II saw the request by Alexius I Comnenus as an opportunity to heal the Schism of East and West, when Alexius promised he would take measures toward recognizing Rome once Constantinople was safe from the Turks. The Crusades had the goal of capturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and were launched against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia.

Thus, the First Crusade was proclaimed in 1095. The Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country and Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish Toledo to the Kingdom of León in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of Muslim emirs was an essential factor.

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The Papal Order For the Christian Crusades: Pope Urban II called for the capture of the Holy Land to claim the Land of Jesus and stop the Muslim invasion; to heal the rift between Roman and Orthodox Christianity following the Schism of 1054; and to marshal the energy of the constantly warring feudal lords and knights into the one cause of “penitential warfare.”

Pope Urban II, launched 200 years of the Crusades at the Council of Clermont, France on November 27, 1095 with this impassioned plea. In a public speech in an open field, he urged the knights and noblemen to win back the Holy Land, to face their sins, and called upon those present to save their souls and become “Soldiers of Christ.” Those who undertook the venture were to wear an emblem in the shape of a red cross on their body. And so derived the word “Crusader,” from the Latin word cruciare – to mark with a cross. By the time his speech ended, the captivated audience began shouting “Deus le volt! – God wills it!” The expression became the battle-cry of the crusades.

The Crusaders took vows: Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a votus), to be fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem and they were granted a cloth cross (crux) to be sewn into their clothes. This “taking of the cross”, the crux, eventually became associated with the entire journey; the word “crusade” (coming into English from the Medieval French croisade and Spanish cruzada) developed from this. They were granted penance for past sins, often called an indulgence.

The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). They saw themselves as undertaking an iter, a journey, or a peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms.
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Remission of Sin: Since the Holy Land included Jerusalem and Antioch (the first Christian city), the remission of sin was a driving factor and provided any God-fearing man who had committed sins with an irresistible way out of eternal damnation in Hell. Most believed that by retaking Jerusalem they would go straight to heaven after death. However, debate of what was promised by the popes of the time continued.

One theory was that one had to die fighting for Jerusalem for the remission to apply, which would fit more closely to what Pope Urban II said in his speeches. This meant that if the crusaders were successful and retook Jerusalem, the survivors would not be given remission. Another theory was that if one reached Jerusalem, one would be relieved of the sins one had committed before the Crusade. Therefore one could still be sentenced to Hell for sins committed afterwards.

The Crusades became an outlet for fanatic religious fervor. A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the pope or his legates and was thus considered a “soldier of the Christian Church”. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public and public interest in religious affairs. The frenzy was further strengthened by religious propaganda, that advocated a Just War in order to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims. All of these factors were manifested in the overwhelming popular support for the First Crusade and the religious vitality of the 12th century.

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First Crusade 1095-1099: The First Crusade (1096-1099): After Pope Urban II had finished his speech at Claremont, Adhemar de Monteil, Bishop of Puy, volunteered for the expedition. The Pope nominated him to be the Papal Legate and head of the Crusade, to ensure that the Church would lead the effort. The choice was an excellent one, as Adhemar of Puy proved to be fair-minded, calm, and diplomatic in his attempt to coordinate the major armies that crossed Europe in different routes and assembled in Constantinople by May of 1097.

Raymond of St. Gilles, Count of Toulouse, was the first who “took up the cross.” He made a vow to and pledged his service to the Pope and his loyalty to Bishop Adhemar of Puy; the Bishop travelled with Raymond for the entire Crusade. They left France in October of 1096 and crossed the Alps into Dalmatia and the Balkan states, through Thessalonica, reaching Constantinople in April of 1097.

Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, and his younger brother Baldwin of Boulogne, took the northern route through Germany, and followed the Danube River through Hungary, arriving in Constantinople just before Christmas 1096.

The Crusader States: Godfrey died after only a year, and his brother Baldwin, the ruler of the County of Edessa, was crowned King of Jerusalem on December 25, 1100, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established. Raymond of Toulouse headed North and established the County of Tripoli, the fourth Crusader state.The four Crusader states of Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli collectively became known as Outremer, outre-mer being the French word for “overseas”.

Hugh of Vermandois, brother of King Philip I of France, left from Paris, traveled through Italy to the port of Bari, and sailed to Dyrrhacium in the Balkan States, and then by land reached Constantinople. Later, Robert, Duke of Normandy, his cousin Stephen, Count of Blois, and his cousin Robert II, Count of Flanders travelled the same route and reached Constantinople in early May of 1097.

Bohemond of Taranto, his nephew Tancred, and the Normans of Southern Italy sailed to Dyrrhacium and then traveled by land, reaching Constantinople in April 1096. With the exception of Bohemond of Taranto, religious fervor was the strongest motive for joining the Crusade, although the greed for earthly riches and petty rivalries of the leaders would create troubles for the Crusaders far beyond Adhemar’s control.

Emperor Alexius deftly handled the Crusaders, and dispatched them across the Bosporus Straits into Asia. The Crusaders laid seige to Nicaea, a major stronghold of the Seljuk Turks. The seige induced them to negotiate with Alexius, who took back Nicaea in June of 1097. Alexius did not allow the Crusaders to enter Nicaea, a decision which affected his future relationship with them.

Following a victory at Dorylaeum which routed the Turks, the Crusaders faced the arduous task of crossing the mountainous terrain of Anatolia (modern Turkey) in Asia Minor. The goal to reach Antioch took months to accomplish, and was marked by the Crusaders taking two different routes. Baldwin of Boulogne, Godfrey’s younger brother, went through Armenia, and, setting out on his own conquest, ended up capturing Edessa. After marrying an Armenian princess, he was invited by the people to rule. The first Crusader state, the County of Edessa, had been established.

The main Crusading force finally reached Antioch, on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea in October of 1097. The first Patriarch of Antioch was St. Peter himself, and following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, became important to early Christianity. The followers of Christ were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26). Matthew wrote his Gospel there, Paul set out on his three missionary journeys from Antioch, and St. Ignatius of Antioch established the order of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon. The Eastern Catholic Maronite rite originated in Antioch.
The Crusader armies fought further battles against the Turks, facing grave deprivation of both food and water in their summer crossing of Anatolia. The lengthy Siege of Antioch began in October 1097 and endured until June of 1098. The ruler of Antioch was not sure how the Christians living within his city would react, so he forced them to live outside the citadel. The siege only ended when one of the gates to the city was betrayed by an Armenian dissident. A large Muslim relief army under Kerbogha immediately besieged the victorious Crusaders within Antioch.

Bohemund of Taranto led a successful break-out and defeat of Kerbogha’s army on the 28th of June. The starving crusader army marched south, moving from town to town along the coast, finally reaching the walls of Jerusalem on 7 June 1099 with only a fraction of their original forces.

Antioch’s defenses were formidable, and it took nine months before its walls could be stormed. Rivalries began, as Bohemond of Taranto wanted Antioch for himself, while Raymond of Toulouse argued that it should be handed back to the Byzantines, as agreed upon in Constantinople. Following a bribe by Bohemond of one of the Turks, the Crusaders scaled the walls and invaded Antioch in June of 1098.

The town became a bloodbath as every Turk was massacred. Shortly after they had taken over Antioch, they were besieged within the city by an invading Turkish army from Mosul. Trapped within the walls, disease and discouragement set in.

The Holy Lance: the Roman army lance that pierced the side of Jesus, was discovered in the Church of St. Peter. Taken as Divine intervention, the Crusaders were rallied. Led by Bishop of Adhemar of Puy carrying the Holy Lance, the Crusaders proved invincible. The knights charged, mounted on their horses and pressing next to each other, routed the Turks. The cavalry charge was a formidable weapon for the Crusaders throughout their campaigns in the Holy Land.

Bishop Adhemar of Puy died from an illness in August of 1098, and his leadership was sorely missed. The Crusaders began squabbling for the next few months, until finally Bohemond of Taranto ended up with Antioch. The second Crusader state, the Principality of Antioch, was established.

Raymond of Toulouse was left the undisputed leader of the Crusaders, and set out for Jerusalem in January of 1099. He traveled through Tripoli, Lebanon, and discovered the Maronites, a Christian group in the mountains that had resisted Turkish rule, and who confirmed loyalty to the Pope in 1181. The Crusaders, known to the Muslims as the Franj or Franks, reached Jerusalem on June 7, 1099, and began their siege.

A Genoese fleet arrived with materials to help them scale the walls of the heavily fortified city. Morale sank, as an initial attack failed, and water became scarce. But then a priest had a vision of the deceased Bishop Adhemar, who urged the Crusaders to fast and then walk barefoot around the city to atone for their sins.

The Crusaders eagerly complied, and encouraged, they attacked the city, and two days later, on July 15, 1099, entered the city of Jerusalem. Maddened after three years of suffering and frustration, once inside the city, as was standard military practice at the time, the Crusaders massacred every Moslem and Jew within the city of inhabitants, destroyed mosques, synagogues and pillaged the city. Local Christians assassinated Yaghisiyan, former ruler of the city.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the northwest quarter of the old city at the end of Via Dolorosa, was once again in Christian hands. The Crusaders thanked God in a solemn ceremony. Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen as the ruler, taking the title of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Jerusalem became the third and principal Crusader state.

Pilgrimages were allowed to the Holy Lands before and after the Sepulchre was rebuilt, but for a time pilgrims were captured and some of the clergy were killed. The Muslim conquerors eventually realized that the wealth of Jerusalem came from the pilgrims; with this realization the persecution of pilgrims stopped. However, the damage was already done, and the violence of the Seljuk Turks became part of the concern that spread the passion for the Crusades.

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Summary of the Siege of Jerusalem: The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks. They were unsuccessful though and on 15 July 1099 the crusaders entered the city.

The Crusaders proceeded to massacre the remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and pillaged or destroyed mosques and the city itself.  One historian has written that the “isolation, alienation and fear” felt by the Franks so far from home does not explain the atrocities they committed, including the cannibalism which was recorded after the Siege of Maarat in 1098.

As a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem at most 120,000 Franks (predominantly French-speaking Western Christians) ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians who had remained since the Arab occupation began in 638 AD.

The First Crusade, the only successful one, was over, but left a certain irony. The two that began the effort never heard the news – Pope Urban II died just two weeks later, before word reached Rome, and Bishop Adhemar had died in Antioch. Many of the Crusaders, having fulfilled their vow, returned home.

Following abortive popular crusades in early 1096, the official crusader armies set off from France and Italy on the papally-ordained date of 15 August 1096. The armies journeyed eastward by land toward Constantinople, where they received a wary welcome from the Byzantine Emperor.

Pledging to restore lost territories to the empire, the Crusaders were supplied and transported to Anatolia where they laid siege to Seljuk-occupied Nicaea. The city fell on 19 June 1097.

The Crusaders also tried to gain control of the city of Tyre, but were defeated by the Muslims. The people of Tyre asked Zahir al-Din Atabek, the leader of Damascus, for help defending their city from the Franks with the promise to surrender Tyre to him. When the Franks were defeated the people of Tyre did not surrender the city, but Zahir al-Din simply said “What I have done I have done only for the sake of God and the Muslims, nor out of desire for wealth and kingdom.”

After gaining control of Jerusalem the Crusaders created four Crusader states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli. Initially, Muslims did very little about the Crusader states due to internal conflicts. Eventually, the Muslims began to reunite under the leadership of Imad al-Din Zangi. He began by re-taking Edessa in 1144. It was the first city to fall to the Crusaders, and became the first to be recaptured by the Muslims. This led the Pope to call for a second Crusade.

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Massacres of Jews after the First Crusade: The first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, Christian fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of “schismatic” Orthodox Christians of the east. During many of these attacks on Jews, local pagans made attempts to protect Jews from the mobs that were passing through.

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Crusade of 1101: Following this crusade there was a second, less successful wave of crusaders, in which Turks led by Kilij Arslan defeated the Crusaders in three separate battles in a well-managed response to the First Crusade. This is known as the Crusade of 1101 and may be considered an adjunct of the First Crusade.

Norwegian Crusade 1107-1110: Sigurd I of Norway was the first European king who went on a crusade and his crusader armies defeated Muslims in Spain, the Baleares, and in the Holy Land where they joined the king of Jerusalem in the Siege of Sidon.

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Second Crusade 1147–1149: A new crusade was called for by various preachers, most notably by Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South German armies. The capture of Edessa by the Turks in 1144 led Pope Eugenius III to call for a Second Crusade. Bernard of Clairvaux played an active role in inspiring Western Europe to protect the Latin states of the East. King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany led their armies into the Holy Land and met in Acre. Launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus, an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders.

They failed because of their lack of cooperation. Soundly defeated and then massacred by the Turks, they never reached Edessa. Under the Kings Louis VII and Conrad III respectively, they marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Second Crusade met with success as a group of Northern European Crusaders stopped in Portugal, allied with the Portuguese King, Afonso I of Portugal, and retook Lisbon from the Muslims in 1147. A detachment from this group of crusaders helped Count Raymond Berenguer IV of Barcelona conquer the city of Tortosa the following year.

In the Holy Land by 1150, both the kings of France and Germany had returned to their countries without any result. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his preachings had encouraged the Second Crusade, was upset with the amount of misdirected violence and slaughter of the Jewish population of the Rhineland. North Germans and Danes attacked the Wends during the 1147 Wendish Crusade, which was unsuccessful as well.

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Third Crusade 1187–1192: In 1187, Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, conquered Jerusalem after nearly a century under Christian rule, following the Battle of Hattin. After the Christians surrendered the city, Saladin spared the civilians and for the most part left churches and shrines untouched to be able to collect ransom money from the Franks.

Several thousand apparently were not redeemed and probably were sold into slavery. Saladin is remembered respectfully in both European and Islamic sources as a man who “always stuck to his promise and was loyal.” The reports of Saladin’s victories shocked Europe.

Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe’s most important leaders: Philip II of France, Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart), and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick drowned in Cilicia in 1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the English and the French.

Before his arrival in the Holy Land, Richard I, captured the island of Cyprus from the Byzantines in 1191. Cyprus would serve as a Crusader base for centuries to come, and would remain in Western European hands until the Ottoman Empire conquered the island from Venice in 1571. After a long siege, Richard the Lionheart recaptured the city of Acre and took the entire Muslim soldier garrison under captivity, which was executed after a series of failed negotiations. Philip left, in 1191, after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims.

The Crusader army headed south along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near Arsuf, recaptured the port city of Jaffa, and were in sight of Jerusalem. However, Richard did not believe he would be able to hold Jerusalem once it was captured, as the majority of Crusaders would then return to Europe, and the crusade ended without the taking of Jerusalem. Richard left the following year after negotiating a treaty with Saladin. The treaty allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land (Jerusalem), while it remained under Muslim control.

On Richard’s way home, his ship was wrecked and he ended up in Austria, where his enemy, Duke Leopold, captured him. The Duke delivered Richard to the Emperor Henry VI, who held the King for ransom. By 1197, Henry felt ready for a crusade, but he died in the same year of malaria. Richard I died during fighting in Europe and never returned to the Holy Land. The Third Crusade is sometimes referred to as the Kings’ Crusade.

Summary of the Third Crusade (1190-1192): The ending of 88 years of formal Christian rule in Jerusalem sent shock waves throughout Europe. Pope Gregory VIII quickly called for the Third Crusade to liberate Jerusalem. He was greeted with enthusiasm by King Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, King Philip II of France, and Richard, the son of King Henry II. Before Richard left England, his father died, leaving him King Richard I of England. Before the Third Crusade was over, he would be known as Richard the Lionhearted.

King Richard, eager to join his friend Philip in the Crusades, placed the throne in the hands of his brother John. Several disagreements between Philip and Richard on the way to the Holy Land soured the relationship, however, and their broken friendship affected their cooperation and the outcome of the Third Crusade.

King Frederick drowned in a river near Tarsus on the way to Antioch, and his German army dispersed. King Philip sailed directly to the city of Acre to assist Guy of Lusagne in his attempt to recapture the city. Guy had been graciously released by Saladin from imprisonment. In spite of their efforts, Acre remained in Muslim hands.

After capturing Cyprus, King Richard arrived in Acre on June 8, 1191. With his energy, and, without Saladin to lead the Muslims, Acre surrendered on July 11, 1191. While there was no one as brave as Richard, his hot-temper marred his leadership. Too impatient in a negotiation with the chivalrous Saladin, he had 2700 Muslim prisoners-of-war slaughtered by the Franks. War became inevitable.

It was at this juncture that King Philip returned to France with the excuse of illness and troubles at home. This proved disastrous to the cause.

Saladin attacked Richard at Arsuf with 80,000 men, three times the size of Richard’s army, but Richard led a cavalry charge and routed Saladin’s troops. Their spirits heightened by victory, Richard marched on to Jaffa. Richard then engaged Saladin at Jaffa. Even though heavily outnumbered, he bravely stood his ground and again defeated Saladin. After 15 months in Outremer, Richard captured the Mediterranean coast of Palaestina from Saladin, but never attacked Jerusalem.

Richard headed towards Jerusalem, but the French army without their King would not support Richard’s plan of attack. Richard turned back and captured Ascalon on the coast. A second march to Jerusalem in June 1192 ended with Richard again turning back, for the Knights Templar and Hospitallers advised that, even if Jerusalem were captured, the Knights would be unable to hold onto the city once Richard returned to England. The one time that Richard gazed upon Jerusalem from a distance, he screened his view with a shield, saddened that he would be unable to return the city to Christian hands.

At this point, the two mighty warriors of the Crusades decided to negotiate. Richard was eager to return home, and Saladin was weary of war. On September 2, 1192, they signed a peace treaty. The Crusader states would retain control of the coastal strip from Tyre to Jaffa, with their other holdings in Antioch and Tripoli. Jerusalem would stay in Muslim hands, but Christian pilgrims would be allowed free access to the Holy sites of the city. The City of Acre rather than Jerusalem became the center for the Crusader States. Both the Third Crusade, as well as any religious idealism, were over.

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Fourth Crusade 1202–1204: The Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. One of the primary reasons for Pope Urban II calling for the Crusades was to reconcile Roman and Byzantine Christianity. Any hope for Christian unity was completely dashed by the Fourth Crusade.

Pope Innocent III commissioned the Fourth Crusade, as Jerusalem was still in Muslim hands. Crusaders planned to leave Venice by sea and first attack Egypt and divide the Muslim world before heading to Jerusalem. Under the Doge of Venice, the city had become a wealthy and independent political port as the point of entry for trade from the East. Because Crusaders lacked the funds to pay for the fleet and provisions that they had contracted from the Venetians, Doge Enrico Dandolo enlisted the crusaders to restore the Christian city of Zara (Zadar) to obedience.

The crusaders, both Franks and Venetians, accepted the Doge’s offer for free passage to Egypt if they seized the Venetian town of Zara, which had been lost to the Hungarians. When the news of the sack of Zara reached Rome, Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Doge of Venice and the entire expedition. In Zara, the Crusaders were approached by Alexius, who claimed his father Isaac as the rightful heir to the Byzantine throne. The Franks accepted his promise that if they restored his father to the throne, he would finance their crusade to Egypt.

The leaders decided to go to Constantinople, where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on the throne. The Crusaders arrived off Constantinople on June 24, 1203. To appease matters, Alexius and his father Isaac were hastily made co-emperors, However, tensions grew, and in a direct challenge to the Crusaders, Alexius and his father were unseated in a palace coup. When it became evident that the new Emperor would not release funds, the Christian Franks and Venetians attacked the Christian Byzantines and sacked Constantinople on April 12, 1204.

The Franks massacred the citizens while the Venetians looted priceless treasures. Count Baldwin of Flanders took the throne on May 16, 1204, commencing the Latin Empire of Constantinople and a series of other Crusader states throughout the territories of the Greek Byzantine Empire. This is often seen as the final breaking point of the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and (Western) Roman Catholic Church..

The 1204 sack of Constantinople has been called “the greatest crime against humanity. Roman and Byzantine Christianity have remained severed to our present day. Crusades expressed extreme ferver and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291 and the Occitan Cathars were exterminated during the Albigensian Crusade; the crusading massacres were devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.

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Albigensian Crusade: The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars of Occitania (the south of modern-day France). This was a decade-long struggle that had to do with the concerns of northern France to extend its control southwards as it did with heresy. In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of southern France were exterminated.

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Children’s Crusade: The Children’s Crusade is a series of possibly fictitious or misinterpreted events of 1212. The story is that an outburst of the old popular enthusiasm led a gathering of children in France and Germany, which Pope Innocent III interpreted as a reproof from heaven to their unworthy elders. The leader of the French army, Stephen, led 30,000 children. The leader of the German army, Nicholas, led 7,000 children. None of the children actually reached the Holy Land: those who did not return home or settle along the route to Jerusalem either died from shipwreck or hunger, or were sold into slavery in Egypt or North Africa.

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Fifth Crusade 1217–1221: By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade afoot, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land.

Pope Innocent III called for a fifth Crusade. But he died in 1216, just after convening the Fourth Lateran Council. In the first phase, a crusading force from Austria and Hungary joined the forces of the king of Jerusalem and the prince of Antioch to take back Jerusalem.

In the second phase, crusader forces achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta in Egypt in 1219. After an initial success in capturing Damietta, Egypt, many Crusaders were conquered by disease in the Nile Delta.

Al-Kamil had put a bounty of a Byzantine gold piece for every Christian head brought to him during the war. During 1219, St. Francis of Assisi crossed the battle lines at Damietta in order to speak with Al-Kamil. He and his companion Illuminatus were captured and beaten and brought before the Sultan.

St. Bonaventure, in his Major Life of St. Francis, says that the Sultan was impressed by Francis and spent some time with him. Francis was given safe passage and although he was offered many gifts, all he accepted was a horn for calling the faithful to prayer. This act eventually led to the establishment of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

Pope Honorius III sent Cardinal Pelagius as his legate and under the urgent insistence of the papal legate, Pelagius, they then launched an attack on Cairo in July of 1221. The crusaders were turned back after their dwindling supplies led to a forced retreat.

A night-time attack by the ruler of Egypt, the powerful Ayubid Sultan Al-Kamil, resulted in a great number of crusader losses and eventually in the surrender of the army. Al-Kamil agreed to an eight-year peace agreement with Europe.The Franks were then trapped on the way to Cairo. A truce that returned Damietta to the Muslims freed Crusaders that lived.

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Sixth Crusade 1228–1229: Pope Gregory IX called for the Sixth Crusade in 1227, and King Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire responded. Emperor Frederick II had repeatedly vowed a crusade but failed to live up to his words, for which he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1228.

Frederick finally departed in June of 1228. In 1229 after failing to conquer Egypt, Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire, set sail from Brindisi and landed in the Holy Land. Choosing diplomacy over warfare he negotiated a peace treaty with Al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt for the return of Jerusalem. This treaty allowed Christians to rule over most of Jerusalem, while the Muslims were given control of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa mosque.

Through diplomacy Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire achieved unexpected success; Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were delivered to the crusaders for a period of ten years. Many of the Muslims though were not happy with Al-Kamil for giving up control of Jerusalem and in 1244, following a siege, the Muslims regained control of the city.

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Seventh Crusade 1248–1254: The papal interests represented by the Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in 1243, and in the following year a Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter stormed Jerusalem. The crusaders were drawn into battle at La Forbie in Gaza. The crusader army and its Bedouin mercenaries were completely defeated within forty-eight hours by Baibars’ force of Khwarezmian tribesmen.

This battle is considered by many historians to have been the death knell to the Kingdom of Outremer. The Mongolian invasion, initially led by Genghis Khan, conquered Asia all the way to Baghdad. The Khwarezmian Turks fled the Mongols and on the way to Egypt, conquered Jerusalem in 1244.

Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had done, Pope Innocent IV called St. Louis IX , King of France, for the Seventh Crusade. Louis IX of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254, leaving from the newly constructed port of Aigues-Mortes in southern France. It was a failure, and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the crusader kingdom in Acre.

He took Damietta, Egypt in May of 1249, but was captured on the way to Cairo in 1250. He had to pay a grand ransom for his army’s freedom. In the midst of this crusade was the first Shepherds’ Crusade in 1251.

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The Eighth Crusade (1270-1271) and The Fall of Acre (1291): The Muslim Mamluks of Egypt ended the Mongol scourge at Ain-Jalut (near Nazareth) on September 3, 1260. The Muslims then captured the Christian towns of Caesarea and Jaffa; the fall of Antioch in 1268 led to the Eighth Crusade.

King Louis IX led an Eighth Crusade in 1270 (during the Papal vacancy of 1268-1271), again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the crusader states in Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying from an infectious disease. For his efforts, Louis was later canonised.

The future Edward I of England undertook another expedition against Baibars in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. Prince Edward of England, son of King Henry III, arrived in Acre with Visconti of Liege in 1270. The chivalrous Prince, offended by the political infighting and corruption in Outremer and without the military help of Louis IX, decided on diplomatic efforts and brokered a ten-year truce with the Mamluks.

Visconti of Liege went home in 1271, chosen to become Pope Gregory X. Edward stayed until his wife Eleanor delivered and then voyaged home to England to become King Edward I. It was the last of the Crusades to the Holy Land with any success against the Muslims.

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Ninth Crusade 1271–1272: The Ninth Crusade was deemed a failure and ended the Crusades in the Middle East. In their later years, faced with the threat of the Egyptian Mamluks, the Crusaders’ hopes rested with a Franco-Mongol alliance. The Ilkhanate’s Mongols were thought to be sympathetic to Christianity, and the Frankish princes were most effective in gathering their help, engineering their invasions of the Middle East on several occasions.

Although the Mongols successfully attacked as far south as Damascus on these campaigns, the ability to effectively coordinate with Crusades from the west was repeatedly frustrated most notably at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260.

The Mamluks, led by Baibars, eventually made good their pledge to cleanse the entire Middle East of the Franks. With the fall of Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291), those Christians unable to leave the cities were massacred or enslaved and the last traces of Christian rule in the Levant disappeared.

Unchecked, the Mamluks of Egypt easily conquered the rest of Outremer. The fall of the city of Acre on May 18, 1291 ended 192 years of Crusader territory in the Holy Land.

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The Military Orders: The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the Knights of St. John or Hospitallers. The Knights Hospitaller who were Merchants from Amalfi, Italy built the hospital of St. John in Jerusalem in 1070. The Monks provided staffing for the hospital and they would eventually evolve into the Knights Hospitaller, who wore a white cross and protected the pilgrims who entered Jerusalem.

The Knights Templar were instituted in 1119 by the French knights, and were housed in the Temple of Solomon. They wore a red cross, and were responsible for protecting pilgrims going to and from the Holy Land.

A group of German crusaders joined with members of the German Hospital in 1190 to begin the Teutonic Knights, formally known as the Brothers of the Hospital of St. Mary in Jerusalem. They maintained their headquarters in the City of Acre until 1291.

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Additional Notes:

The Crusader states lived a fragile existence, for, once the lands were conquered, most of the Crusaders, having fulfilled their vows, went home to Europe. But they were able to survive because of Muslim disunity. They were quick to realize that the only chance for long-term survival of the four Crusader states was mutual cooperation, and the presence of a stable military force.

An important event was the foundation of the three military orders, instituted to defend Outremer and protect the renewed flow of pilgrims into the Holy Land. The military orders were composed of monks who served both as knights or performed clerical and civic functions, as well as the lay who assisted the knights.

List of Crusades: A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades totals nine during the 11th to 13th centuries. This division is arbitrary and excludes many important expeditions, among them those of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. In reality, the crusades continued until the end of the 17th century, the crusade of Lepanto occurring in 1571, that of Hungary in 1664, and the crusade to Candia in 1669. After the final fall of Acre,on May 18, 1291 this ended 192 years of Crusader territory in the Holy Land. They took control of the island of Rhodes and in the sixteenth century, were driven to Malta, before being finally unseated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.

The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original aim, such as the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the Crusaders. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Pope. The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Crusades resulted in Mamluk and Hafsid victories, as the Ninth Crusade marked the end of the Crusades in the Middle East.

The Knights Hospitaller continued to crusade in the Mediterranean Sea around Malta until their defeat by Napoleon in 1798. There were frequent “minor” Crusades throughout this period, not only in the Holy Land but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe, against Muslims and also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs.

Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rum during the Fifth Crusade. The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories outside the Levant usually against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons.

There are both Christian and Muslim sources for the Third Crusade. Richard, a canon of the Augustinian priory of Holy Trinity in London, recorded the expedition of King Richard I of England, whereas Imad al-Isfahani of the Imperial Court of Saladin provided the Muslim viewpoint. Pope Gregory VIII called for the Third Crusade in his encyclical Audita tremendi. Other primary sources for the Third Crusade include Roger of Howden, Peter of Blois and Gerald of Wales.

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The greatest warrior of the Muslims was Saladin: Noted for his chivalrous behavior, he was respected by Muslim, Jew and Christian alike. Saladin, or Salah ed-Din, also proved to be a skilled diplomat.

The Muslim world was completely divided into the Shiite and Sunni religious sects, as well as the warring secular nations of the Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians. Saladin was the one who brought all of them into one unified Islamic force in the twelfth century.

Saladin began his career as a young Kurdish warrior in the army of his uncle Shirkuh, who commanded the Syrian army and captured Egypt. Shirkuh became vizir of Egypt, the secular head of government under the Shiite Caliph. Shirkuh died shortly thereafter in 1169, leaving his 31 year-old nephew Saladin as vizir of Egypt.

When the Shiite Caliph of Egypt died, in the predominantly Shiite land of Egypt; Saladin extended the spiritual authority of the Sunni Caliph of Baghdad over Egypt. However, at the same time allowed the Shiites to practice their own form of Islamic faith. The religious world of Islam was united. When the secular regent of Syria died, Saladin and the Saracens (Muslim warriors) captured Damascus in a bloodless coup.

While Saladin, the new Sultan of Syria and Egypt, was uniting the Moslem world, the Crusader states were in a power struggle after the death of the peaceful King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who died at age 24 of leprosy in 1185. Saladin set his sights on the Crusader states. He first attacked Tiberias in the county of Tripoli in 1187. The new King and the Frankish army foolishly rode out into the desert to the Horns of Hattin, and, deprived of water, were no match for Saladin, who defeated the Franks on July 4, 1187. He captured Acre on July 10, 1187.

Unopposed, all the Crusader cities except Tyre fell to Saladin’s army as he swept through the Holy Land. Saladin attacked Jerusalem on September 21, 1187, and captured the city October 2, 1187. Unlike the Crusaders of 1099, Saladin spared the inhabitants of Jerusalem from bloodshed or injury!

The Byzantine Orthodox of Jerusalem actually preferred rule by Saladin compared to the heavy taxations of the Latin patriarch.

The Jews of Austria are an ancient Jewish community who are from the territory of the modern state of Austria, which originated from the Roman occupation of Israel. Jews have been in Austria from at least the 3rd century. In 2008 a team of archeologists discovered a third century CE amulet in the form of a gold scroll with the words of the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one) inscribed on it in the grave of a Jewish infant in Halbturn. It is considered to be the earliest surviving evidence of a Jewish presence in what is now Austria. It is hypothesized that the Jews immigrated to Austria following the Roman legions after the Roman occupation of Israel. It is theorized that the Roman legions who participated in the occupation likely came back after the First Jewish–Roman War with Jewish prisoners.
According to a document from the 10th century which determined rights of equality between the Jewish and Christian merchants in Danube, and there was likely a Jewish population in Vienna at this point. The existence of a Jewish community in the area is known after the start of the 12th century, when two synagogues were created. In the same century, the Jewish settlement in Vienna increased with the absorption of Jewish settlers from Bavaria and from the Rhineland.

At the start of the 13th century, the Jewish community started to flourish. One of the main reasons for the prosperity was the recognition by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor that the Jews were a separate ethnic and religious group, and were not bound to the laws that targeted the Christian population. Following this assumption, on July 1244, the Emperor published a bill of rights for Jews which encouraged them to work in the banking business, encouraged the immigration of additional Jews to the area, and promised protection and autonomous rights, like the right to judge themselves and the right to collect taxes. This bill of rights affected other kingdoms in Europe such as Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Silesia and Bohemia which had a high concentration of Jews in their population.

During this period, the Jewish population mainly dealt with commerce and the collection of taxes and also gained key positions many other aspects of life in Austria. In 1204, the first documented synagogue in Austria was constructed. In addition, Jews went through a period of religious prosperity and a group of notable rabbis settled in Vienna and were later referred to as “the wise men of Vienna”. The group established a Beth midrash and it was considered to be the largest Talmudic school in Europe during that period.

The prosperity of the Jewish community caused increased jealousy from the Christian population and hostility from the church. In 1282, when the area became controlled by the Catholic House of Habsburg, Austria stopped being a religious center for the Jews. Jews were largely hated because they acted as tax collectors and bankers and loans for the country. The earliest evidence of Jews collecting taxes appears in a document from 1320. During the same time, riots occurred against the Jews in the area. The Jewish population continued to deteriorate in middle of the 14th century and at the start of the 15th century during the regime of Albert the Third and Leopold III. This period was characterized in the cancellations of many debts that would have been collected by Jews, the confiscation of Jewish assets, and the creation of economic limitations against them.

In middle of the 15th century, following the establishment of the Anti-Catholic movement of Jan Hus in the Czech Republic, the condition of the Jewish population worsened. In 1420, the Jewish community suffered persecution from false allegations when a Jewish person from Upper Austria was charged with the desecration of the sacramental bread, a ritual performed by Catholic clergy who mysteriously change bread into flesh of their god which Catholics eat. This led Albert the Fifth to order the imprisonment of all of the Jews in Austria. Two hundred and ten (210) Jews were burnt alive in public and the rest were deported from Austria, leaving their belongings behind which the Catholics confiscated. Austria became the first European state to deport the Jewish population from it. In 1469, the deportation order was canceled by Frederick the Third who was known for his good relationship with the Jews and was even referred to at times as the “King of the Jews”. He allowed Jews to return and settle in all the cities of Styria and Carinthia. Under his regime, the Jews gained a short period of peace (between 1440-1493).

The relative period of peace didn’t last long, and with the start of the regime of Ferdinand the First in 1556, despite that he opposed the persecution of the Jews, he demanded them to pay excessive of taxes and ordered them to wear a mark of disgrace. Between 1564 – 1619, in the period of the regimes of Maximilian the first, Rudolf the Second and Matthias, the fanatical Society of Jesus prevailed, and due to their delusional rituals, the condition of the Jews worsened even more. Later during the regime of Ferdinand the Second in Austria, and in spite of that he opposed the persecution of the Jews like his grandfather; and even permitted constructing a synagogue, he demanded excessive amounts of tax from the Jewish population.

The Jewish community in Austria again suffered during the period of the regime of Leopold the First, a period in which Jews were persecuted frequently and were deported from different areas, including a deportation from Vienna in 1670. The Jews had to bare different laws, one of which only permitted the first-borns to marry, in order to stop the increase of the Jewish population. Although Leopold the First treated the Jewish population severely, he comissioned Samson Wertheimer, a Jewish economic advisor, to wrok for him.

A Sabbateans movement which was established during the same period of time, also reached the Jewish community in Austria, especially due to the rough condition of the Jews there, and many of them immigrated to the land of Israel in the footsteps of Sabbatai Zevi.

After the period of the religious fanaticism towards the Jewish population of the region, a period of relative tolerance towards the Jewish population came about. It was less noticeable during the regime of Maria Theresa of Austria, and increased during period of the regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria, which was a relief to the Jewish population. Upon the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772 the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, or simply “Galicia”, became the largest, most populous, and northernmost province of the Austrian Empire. As a result many Jews were added to the Austrian Empire and the empress, Maria Theresa, quickly legislated different laws aimed at regulating their rights and canceled the Jewish autonomy in order to put the authority of the Jews in her hands instead. Despite the fact that the empress was known for her hatred Jews, several Jews were obliged to work for her at her court. The empress made it mandatory that the Jewish population would start going to the general elementary schools, and in addition permission of Jews joining the universities. Jewish schools did not exist yet during that time.

After Maria Theresa’s death in 1780 her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor succeeded her and started working on the integration of the Jewish population in the Austrian society. The emperor determined that they would be obligated to enlist in the army, and further established governmental schools for the Jewish population. In 1782 he bestowed the Jewish population with the 1782 Edict of Tolerance, which canceled different limitations which had been bestowed upon the Jewish population previously, such as the limitations which permitted them to live only in predetermined locations and the limitation to work only in certain professions. Jews were allowed to establish factories, hire Christian servants and join the higher education institutions, but all this only on the condition that the Jews would be obligated to go to the schools; that they would use German only in the official documents instead of Hebrew and Yiddish; that dorsal tax would be forbidden; that the trials held within the community would be condensed; and that those whom would not get an education would not be able to marry before the age of 25. The emperor also declared that the Jewish population would establish Jewish schools for their children, which they opposed because he forbade them to organize within the community and establish public institutions. In the aftermath of different resistances from the Jewish party which opposed the many conditions held upon them and also from the Christian party which opposed many of the rights given to the Jewish population, the decree was not fully implemented.

After the death of Joseph II in 1790, he was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor. After only two years of regime, he was succeeded by his son Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who continued working on the integration of the Jewish population into the Austrian society, but he was more moderate than his uncle. In 1812 a Jewish Sunday school was opened in Vienna. During the same period of time a number of limitations were bestowed upon the Jewish population, such as the obligation to study in Christian schools and to pray in German.

Between 1848 – 1938, the Jewish Austrian population enjoyed a period of great cultural prosperity. The prosperity began with the start of the regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria as the Emperor of the Austria–Hungary Empire, and dissolved gradually after the death of the emperor up to the annexation of Austria to Germany by the Nazis, a process which lead to the start of the holocaust of Austrian Jewish population.

In 1848 Franz Joseph I of Austria was appointed as the emperor of Austria, an event which marked the start of the period of great prosperity for the Jewish population of Austria. The emperor bestowed the Jewish population equality of rights, stating that “the civil rights and the country’s policy is not contingent in the people’s religion”. The emperor was well liked by the Jewish population, which as token of appreciation made prayers and songs about him which were printed in the Jewish prayer books. In 1849 the emperor canceled the prohibition held upon the Jewish population to organize within the community, and in 1852 the regulations of the Jewish community was set. In 1867 the Jewish population formally received equality of full rights.

In 1869 the emperor visited Jerusalem and was greeted in by the Jewish population there. The emperor established a fund aimed at financing the establishment of Jewish institutions and in addition established the Talmudic school for rabbis in Budapest. During the 1890s several Jews were even elected to the Austrian parliament. During the regime period of Franz Joseph and after it the Austrian Jewish population contributed greatly to the Austrian culture. Despite their small percentage in the population, many Austrian Jewish scholars became some of the greatest contributors to the Austrian culture, among them were many Jewish lawyers, journalists, authors, playwrights, poets, doctors, bankers, businessmen, artists and among them Theodor Herzl. Vienna became a cultural Jewish center of Austria, a center of education, culture and Zionism. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, studied in the University of Vienna, and was the editor of the Feuilleton of the Neue Freie Presse, a very influential newspaper at that time. Felix Salten, who was also Jewish, succeeded Herzl as the editor of the Feuilleton.

The intertwining of the Jewish population and the attitude of the emperor towards them could also be seen in the general state of the empire. From the middle of the 19th century started a lot of pressures from the different nationals living in multinational House of the Habsburg empire: the national minorities (such as the Hungarians, Czech and Croatians) began demanding more and more collective rights; amongst the German speakers a great grudge overcame them against the minorities and against the empire and its institutions, and many started feeling more connected to Germany which was strengthening and was more dynamic. Under these circumstances, the Jewish population was especially notable for their absolute loyalty to the empire and their personal admiration of the emperor. In circa 1918 about 300,000 Jews in Austria, were scattered in 33 different settlements. Most of them, about 200,000 lived in the capital city of Vienna.

The cultural prosperity period ended abruptly with the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 (the “Anschluss”). At the time of the annexation, the Jewish population in Austria consisted of 181,882 people, of them 167,249 in Vienna, fortunately thousands of Jews emigrated the years before, including people with one Jewish parent or at least one Jewish grandmother or grandfather. The Nazis entered Austria without any resistance, and even were accepted approvingly by the Austrians. Immediately with their entrance to Austria the Nazis started committing the anti-Jewish policy all over the country. The Jewish population was expelled from all their cultural, economic and social life in Austria and was humiliated as they were commanded to perform different humiliating tasks, without any consideration of differential of age, social position or sex. The number of Jews and those with Jewish ancestries accounted for 201,000 to 214,000 people.

During the same year of the annexation, “the Night of Broken Glass” (known as Kristallnacht) was carried out in Austria, in response to the Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, assassinating the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in France. As a result, Jewish Synagogues and buildings all over Austria were shattered and robbed throughout the country by the Hitler Youth and by the SA, as well as many homes of the Jewish population. During that night 27 Jews were killed.

After the “Anschluss“ many Jews were trying to emigrate out of Austria. The immigration center was Vienna, the capital of Austria, and the people leaving were required to have visas and documents approving their departure in order to get out of the country. They had to leave everything of any worth in Austria. To leave the country high “taxes” had to be paid. The emigrants hurried to collect only their most important belongings and the departure fees, and they had to leave behind them everything else. The people whom didn’t rush out of the country ended up being killed in the holocaust, except for a few survivors.

During the period of the holocaust of the Austrian Jews, the general Chinese consul, Feng-Shan Ho was stationed in Vienna. While risking his own life and his career, Feng-Shan managed to rescue thousands of Jews which were seeking to escape the Nazis, by rapidly approving thousands of visas for the Jewish emigrants which were in rush of fleeing out of the country. Among them were possibly the Austrian filmmakers Jacob and Luise Fleck, who got one of the last visas for China in 1940 und who then produced films with chinese filmmakers in Shanghai. Ho’s actions were recognized posthumously when he was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations by the Israeli organization Yad Vashem in 2001.

In 1939 the Nazis initiated the annihilation process of the Jewish population. The most notable persons of the community, about 6000, were sent to the Dachau concentration camp and to the Buchenwald concentration camp. The main concentration camp in Austria was the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, which located next to the city Linz. Many other Jews were sent to the concentration camps in Theresienstadt and Łódź and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the summer of 1939 hundreds of factories and Jewish stores were shut down by the Austrian government. In October 1941 Jews were forbidden to exit the boundaries of Austria. The total number of Jews whom managed to exit Austria is about 28,000. Part of the Vienna Jews was sent to the transit camp Nisko in Poland. In the end of winter 1941 additional 4,500 Jews were sent from Vienna to different concentration and extermination camps in Poland (mainly to Izbica Kujawska and to other ghettos in the Lublin area). In June 1941 a direct delivery exited the city to the Sobibor extermination camp which had around one Thousand Jews. In the fall of 1942 the Nazis sentenced more Jews to the death from ghettos of the towns and of the cities which they occupied in the Soviet Union: Riga, Kaunas, Vilnius and Minsk. Those Jews were murdered by Nazi soldiers mainly by gunshots and mass graves.

In conclusion, although Austria became a center of Jewish learning during the 13th century, the increased anti-semitism led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1669. Following formal readmission in 1848, a sizable Jewish community developed once again, contributing strongly to Austrian culture. By the 1930s, some 300,000 Jews lived in Austria, most of them in Vienna. Following the Anschluss with Nazi Germany, most of the community emigrated or were killed in the Holocaust. The current Austrian Jewish population is around 10,000.

The following is a list of some prominent Austrian Jews. The German speaking Jews from the Habsburg Empire are also listed. During the course of many centuries, the community had many challenges, and times when the Jewish community enjoyed equality and rights and their culture prospered. The Jewish community dealt with Pogroms, Deportations and Blood libels. After the Holocaust, the size of the Jewish community in Austria decreased significantly until about 1990. Nowadays, it comprises officially 8,140 people (census 2001).

NOTABLE JEWS OF AUSTRIA

Politicians
Max Adler (1873–1937), Austrian social-marxist philosopher
Viktor Adler, Austrian Socialist leader
Otto Bauer, Austrian Socialist leader Republikanischer Schutzbund
Julius Deutsch, Founder and chairman of the paramilitary organization “Republikanischer Schutzbund”
Rudolf Hilferding, German Finance Minister
Walter Hollitscher, Austrian Marxist philosopher (1911-1988)
Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem (1965-1993)
Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor (1970-1983)
Ignaz Kuranda, politician
Dorrit Moussaieff, First Lady of Iceland
Other
Friedrich Adler (1879-1960), son of Viktor Adler assassin of Count Karl von Stürgkh
Nathan Birnbaum, early Zionist
David Josef Bach, important and influential figure in the cultural life
Adolf Fischhof, leader in Viennese revolution of 1848
Felix Frankfurter, US judge & civil rights activist
Alfred Fried, pacifist, Nobel Peace Prize (1911)
Theodor Herzl, Zionist leader
Emil Jellinek, automobile entrepreneur
Joachim Edler von Popper, court Jew
Samuel Oppenheimer, court Jew
Felix G. Rohatyn, New York financer
Felix Weltsch, 1884-1964, Zionist, journalist, philosopher
Samson Wertheimer, court Jew
Simon Wiesenthal, 1908–2005, pre-eminent Nazi hunter

Scientists
Robert Adler, physicist
Hermann Bondi, cosmologist
Eugene Braunwald, cardiologist
Erwin Chargaff, chemist
Carl Djerassi, chemist: first oral contraceptive pill
Paul Ehrenfest, physicist
Albert Einhorn, biochemist: Novocaine
Walter Feit, mathematician
Sir Otto Frankel, geneticist
Otto Frisch, physicist
Thomas Gold, cosmologist
Hans Hahn, mathematician
Kurt J. Isselbacher, physician, oncologist
Eric Kandel, neuroscientist, Nobel Prize (2000)
Martin Karplus, chemist
Walter Kohn, physicist, Nobel Prize (1998)
Carl Koller, ophthalmologist; first to use cocaine as an anaesthetic
Rudolf Kompfner, invented traveling wave tube
Hans Kronberger (physicist), nuclear physicist
Karl Landsteiner, biologist: blood groups, Nobel Prize (1930)
Adolf Lieben, chemist
Robert von Lieben, physicist
Herman F. Mark, chemist: polymers
Lise Meitner, physicist: nuclear fission
Gustav Nossal, immunologist
Friedrich Paneth, chemist
Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, Nobel Prize (1945)
Max Perutz, molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (1962)
Isidor Isaac Rabi, physicist, Nobel Prize (1944)
Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908 – 2002) physicist. During World War II, he worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons

Psychologists and psychiatrists
Alexandra Adler, post-traumatic stress
Alfred Adler, founder of individual psychology
Leo Alexander, medical expert at the Nuremberg Trials
Ernst Angel, psychology and writer
Bruno Bettelheim, child psychology
Josef Breuer, forerunner of psychoanalysis
Anna Freud, child psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis
Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy
Marie Jahoda, psychologist
Leo Kanner, child psychiatry
Melanie Klein, psychotherapy
Heinz Kohut, psychoanalysis
Sophie Lazarsfeld individual psychologist, student of Alfred Adler, mother of Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
Walter Mischel, experimental psychology
Jacob L. Moreno, developer of psychodrama
Otto Rank, psychoanalysis
Wilhelm Reich, psychiatry and psychoanalysis
Theodor Reik, psychoanalysis
Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, born in Prague.

Social and political scientists
Samuel Bergman, philosopher
Gustav Bergmann, philosopher
Peter Blau, sociologist
Paul Edwards, philosopher
Eugen Ehrlich, sociology of law
Herbert Feigl, philosopher
Philipp Frank, philosopher
Paul Frankl, art historian
Heinrich Friedjung, Moravian historian and politician.
Heinrich Gomperz, philosopher
Theodor Gomperz, philosopher
Theodor Hertzka, writer of Freiland
Raul Hilberg (1926-2007), Holocaust historian
Ivan Illich, polymath
Norbert Jokl, founder of Albanology
Hans Kelsen, legal philosopher
Georg Kreisel, philosopher and mathematician
Nachman Krochmal, Jewish philosopher
Otto Kurz, historian
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, sociologist
Emil Lederer, economist
Gerda Lerner, American feminist historian
Robert Lowie, anthropologist
Ludwig von Mises, economist
Otto Neurath, sociologist
Julius Pokorny, scholar of Irish Gaelic
Karl Popper, philosopher of science
Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer, diplomat, journalist, political scientist
Alfred Schutz, sociologist
Otto Weininger, philosopher
Felix Weltsch, Jewish writer, philosopher, journalist, Zionist
Eric Wolf, anthropologist

Film and stage
Leon Askin, actor
John Banner, actor
Theodore Bikel, actor
Leo Birinski, playwright, screenwriter and director
Elisabeth Bergner, stage actress
Rudolph Bing (1902 – 1997) opera impresario, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972
Gerhard Bronner, cabaret artist
George Burns, actor (Austrian parents)
Heinrich Conried, theatre owner & manager
Ricardo Cortez, actor
Max Fleischer, animator
William Fox, film producer
Fritz Grünbaum & Karl Farkas, caberet artists
Fritz Kortner, director
Georg Kreisler, cabaret artist
Hedy Lamarr, actress & inventor
Hermann Leopoldi, cabaret artist
Herbert Lom (1917 – ) international film actor
Fritzi Massary, singer
Paul Muni, actor
Luise Rainer, actress
Max Reinhardt, director
Joseph Schildkraut, actor
Sam Spiegel, producer
Josef von Sternberg, director
Erich von Stroheim, director & actor
Edgar G. Ulmer, director
Helene Weigel, stage actress
Billy Wilder, director
Fred Zinnemann, director
Max Reinhardt,
Fritz Lang,
Richard Oswald,
Fred Zinnemann
Otto Preminger
Peter Lorre,
Paul Muni
Jacob Fleck
Oscar Pilzer,
Arnold Pressburger
Artur Berger,
Harry Horner
Oskar Strnad
Ernst Deutsch-Dryden,
Heinrich Eisenbach
Fritz Grünbaum
Karl Farkas
Georg Kreisler
Hermann Leopoldi,
Armin Berg
Fritz Kreisler,
Hans Julius Salten,
Erich Wolfgang Korngold,
Max Steiner
Musicians
Kurt Adler, conductor
Norbert Brainin, violinist
Ignaz Brüll, composer and pianist
Emanuel Feuermann, cellist
Felix Galimir, violinist
Heinrich Grünfeld, cellist
Alfred Grünfeld, pianist
Joseph Joachim, violinist (born in Kittsee, Austria, at that time Hungary)
Hans Keller, musicologist
Julius Korngold, music critic
Fritz Kreisler (1875 – 1962) violinist and composer, one of the most famous of his day
Josef Krips, conductor
Erich Leinsdorf, conductor
Erica Morini, violinist
David Popper, cellist
Julius Rudel, conductor
Erwin Schulhoff (1894 – 1942) composer and pianist
Julius Schulhoff (1825 – 1898) pianist and composer
Rudolf Schwarz, conductor
Rudolf Serkin, pianist
Fritz Spiegl, broadcaster
Fritz Stiedry, conductor
Salomon Sulzer, cantor
Walter Susskind (1913 – 1980) conductor
Richard Tauber, singer and composer
Georg Tintner, conductor
Egon Wellesz, composer
Paul Wittgenstein, pianist
Eric Zeisl (1905-1959) composer
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, pianist
Grete Forst, opera singer
Composers
Guido Adler, musicologist (born in Bohemia)
Max Brand, pioneer of electronic music
Edmund Eysler, composer
Leo Fall, composer
Wilhelm Grosz, composer
Walter Jurmann, popular composer
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, composer (born in Bohemia)
Fritz Kreisler (1875 – 1962) violinist and composer, one of the most famous of his day
Frederick Loewe, Broadway composer
Gustav Mahler, composer (born in Bohemia)
Ignaz Moscheles, composer and pianist
Arnold Schoenberg, composer
Robert Starer, composer
Max Steiner, film composer
Oscar Straus, composer
Ernst Toch, composer
Viktor Ullmann, composer and pianist
Erich Zeisl, composer
Alexander von Zemlinsky, composer
Artists & Architects
Arik Brauer, painter
Hattie Carnegie, jewelry designer
Josef Frank, architect & designer
Ernst Fuchs, painter
Rudi Gernreich, fashion designer
Ernst Gombrich, art historian
Chaim Gross, sculptor
Victor Gruen, architect of the modern American shopping mall
André Heller, multimedia artist
Friedensreich Hundertwasser, artist & architect
Lisette Model, photographer
Richard Neutra, architect
Harry Seidler, Architect
Weegee, photographer
Berta Zuckerkandl, art critic & salon host, see Salon of Berta Zuckerkandl

Writers
Walter Abish, writer
Ilse Aichinger, writer
Peter Altenberg, writer
Ernst Angel, writer and psychology
Raphael Basch (1813-?), journalist & politician
Abraham Benisch (1814-1878) Hebraist and journalist; born Bohemia
Vicki Baum, writer
Leo Birinski, playwright, screenwriter
Henri Blowitz, journalist
Boris Brainin (Sepp Österreicher), poet and translator
Fritz Brainin, poet
Harald Brainin, writer and poet
Hermann Broch, writer
Max Brod, writer
Oscar Bronner, founder/publisher of Vienna’s Der Standard
Otto Maria Carpeaux, literary critic
Eric Frey, managing editor of Vienna’s Der Standard; contributor to New York’s Forward
Erich Fried, poet
Egon Friedell, historian & writer
Balduin Groller, journalist & writer
Elfriede Jelinek, author, Nobel Prize (2004)
Franz Kafka, writer, (Bohemian born)
Leopold Kompert, writer
Paul Kornfeld (1889 – 1942) writer, author of many expressionist plays
Karl Kraus, author
Heinrich Landesmann, poet
Ruth Maier, diarist
Robert Menasse, writer
Frederic Morton, writer
Alfred Polgar, poet & essayist
Leo Perutz, writer
Doron Rabinovici, writer
Joseph Roth, writer
Felix Salten, Hungarian-born Austrian writer
Otto Soyka, writer
Franz Werfel, playwright
Hugo Sonnenschein, Bohemian-born writer
Arthur Schnitzler, writer
Manès Sperber, writer, philosopher
Friedrich Torberg, writer
Schlomo Winninger, biographer (born in Austrian Bukovina, lived in Vienna)
Stefan Zweig, writer

Sport figures
SC Hakoah Wien, Jewish football (soccer) club (Austrian champions in 1925)
SC Maccabi Wien, Jewish football (soccer) club.
Richard Bergmann, world table tennis champion (4 singles titles)
Judith Deutsch, champion freestyle swimmer
Otto Herschmann, Olympic medalist in swimming & fencing
Hugo Meisl, Austrian soccer manager
Paul Neumann, swimmer & first Austrian Olympic champion
Ellen Preis, Olympic fencing champion
Rudolf Spielmann, chess grandmaster
Elisabeth Schwarz, pairs figure skater who won the Olympic gold medal in 1956
Wolfgang Schwarz, gold medal figure skater from the 1968 Winter Olympics

Miscellaneous
Arthur Murray, Jewish dancer
Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher
Alfred Edersheim, Bible scholar
Eduard Fischer
Eduard Glaser, Arabist explorer
Ignaz Glaser, Entrepreneur
Maurice de Hirsch, banker
Robert Kronfeld, gliding pioneer
Wilhelm Jerusalem, rabbi
Hermann Wassertrilling, rabbi
Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal, merchant
Rixi Markus, contract bridge player (born in Austrian Bukovina, lived in Vienna)
Marcel Prawy, opera guru
Jakob Rosenfeld, Chinese doctor & general
Chaim Sheba, Israeli physician (born in Austrian Bukovina, lived in Vienna)
Martin Schlaff, millionaire businessman
Hedi Stadlen musicologist, philosopher and British/Sri Lankan Communist.
Julius Steinfeld Head of the Agudath Israel in Vienna before and during the Holocaust. (Born in Mattersdorf, Austria)
Desider David Stern, Bibliographer and Coffee machine inventor (born in Breslau (Poland), lived in Vienna)
Moritz Steinschneider, Bibliographer and Orientalist
George Weidenfeld, publisher

Others
Elsa Bernstein, an Austrian-German writer, dramatist
the House of Porges
Heinrich Porges, a Czech-Austrian German choirmaster and music-critic
the House of Henikstein
the House of Todesco
the House of Gomperz
the House of Eskeles
the House of Wartenegg von Wertheimstein
Jean Améry, an ethnic Jew, noted for having written one of the central texts on the Nazi death camps
Viktor Aptowitzer (July 16, 1871, Tarnopol, Galizien, – December 5, 1942, Jerusalem), Jewish theologian, Talmudist;”two Austrian Jewish scholars – Samuel Krauss and Viktor Aptowitzer”
Rudolf Auspitz (July 7, 1837, Vienna – March 8, 1906, Vienna), Austrian politician, entrepreneur (Unternehmer)
Friedrich Austerlitz (April 25, 1862, Hochlieben, Bohemia – July 5, 1931, Vienna), Austrian journalist, politician
Joseph Samuel Bloch (November 20, 1850, Dukla, Galizien – October 1, 1923, Vienna), Austrian publicist, politician
Ludo Moritz Hartmann, Austrian Jewish historian and statesman ” two lay Jews Ludo Moritz Hartmann”
Paul Hatvani, exactly Paul Hirsch (August 16, 1892, Vienna – November 9, 1975, Kew, near Melbourne), Austrian Jewish writer, chemist “Paul Hatvani, a German Jewish refugee”

Jews have been present in Italy from the Roman period until today. The first attested Jews in Italy were the ambassadors sent to Rome by Judah Maccabee in 161 BC, Jason son of Eleazar and Eupolemus son of John. According to I Maccabees they signed a treaty with the Roman Senate. An embassy was sent later by Simon Maccabees to Rome to strengthen the alliance with the Romans against the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom. The ambassadors received a cordial welcome from their coreligionists who were already established there.

Large numbers of Jews lived in Rome during the Roman Republican period.In Rome, the community was well organized and presided over by heads called (archontes) The Jews maintained in Rome several synagogues, whose spiritual leader was called in Latin (archisunagogos). Jewish tombstones inscriptions were in Greek, Hebrew/Aramaic or Latin and were decorated with the ritual menorah (seven-branched candelabrum). Rome had increased contact with military and trade dealings in the eastern Mediterranean, during the second and first centuries BCE, and since many Jews spoke several languages they came to Rome to increase commercial enterprize as traders and merchants. The Romans recognized and respected the antiquity of their religion and the fame of their Temple. Romans did not know much about Judaism, including the emperor Augustus who, according to his biographer Suetonius, thought that Jews fasted on the Sabbath. Julius Caesar was alleged as a great friend to these Jews.

The fate of the Jews in Rome and Italy fluctuated, with partial expulsions being carried out under the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. After the successive Jewish revolts of 66 and 132 CE, many Judean Jews were brought to Rome as slaves which were the norm in the ancient world for prisoners of war and inhabitants of defeated cities who were sold as slaves. These revolts caused increasing official hostility from the reign of Vespasian onwards after the destruction of Jerusalem. The most serious measure taken against the Jews was that they were forced to pay the tithe that had formerly been sent to the temple in Jerusalem; was now paid to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine I in 313, the position of Jews in Italy and throughout the empire declined rapidly and dramatically. Constantine established oppressive laws for the Jews. There was some reprieve when these laws were abolished by Julian the Apostate, who showed his favor toward the Jews to the extent of permitting them to resume their plan for the reconstruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. However, this concession was withdrawn under his successor and the oppression escalated where there were periods of persecution followed by periods of quiescence, until the fall of the Roman Empire.

At the time under Theodore, there were flourishing communities of Jews in Rome, Milan, Genoa, Palermo, Messina, Argumentum, and in Sardinia. The popes of the period were not seriously opposed to the Jews. This accounts for the ardor with which the latter took up arms for the Ostrogoths against the forces of Justinian at Naples, where the remarkable defense of the city was maintained almost entirely by Jews. After the failure of various attempts to make Italy a province of the Byzantine empire, the Jews suffered severe oppression from the Eparch of Ravenna; but it was not long until the greater part of Italy came into the possession of the Lombard’s, under whom they lived in peace.

The Lombard’s passed no laws relative to the Jews. Even after the Lombard’s embraced Catholicism the condition of the Jews was favorable, because the popes of that time not only did not persecute them, but guaranteed them more or less protection. Pope Gregory I treated them with much consideration. Under succeeding popes the condition of the Jews did not grow worse; and the same was the case in the several smaller states into which Italy was divided. Both popes and states were so absorbed in continual external and internal dissensions that the Jews were left in peace. In every individual state of Italy a certain amount of protection was granted to them in order to secure the advantages of their commercial enterprise. The fact that the historians of this period scarcely make mention of the Jews, suggests that their condition was tolerable.

There was an expulsion of Jews from Bologna in 1172; but they were soon allowed to return. A nephew of Rabbi Nathan ben Jehiel acted as administrator of the property of Pope Alexander III, who was amicable towards the Jews at the Lateran Council of 1179, where he defeated the designs of hostile prelates who advocated anti-Jewish laws. Under Norman rule the Jews of southern Italy and of Sicily enjoyed freedom and were considered the equals of the Christians. They were permitted to follow any career and had jurisdiction over their own affairs. A later pope either Nicholas IV (1288-1292) or Boniface VIII (1294-1303) had for his physician a Jew, Isaac ben Mordecai, nicknamed Maestro Gajo.

Among the early Jews of Italy who left behind them traces of their literary activity was Shabbethai Donnolo (died 982). Two centuries later (1150) there were known writers such as Shabbethai ben Moses of Rome; his son Jehiel Kalonymus, once regarded as a Talmudic authority even beyond Italy; and Rabbi Jehiel of the Mansi (Anaw) family, also of Rome. Nathan, son of the above-mentioned Rabbi Jehiel, was the author of a Talmudic lexicon (“‘Arukh”) which became the key to the study of the Talmud.

Solomon ben Abraham ibn Parhon during his residence at Salerno, compiled a Hebrew dictionary which fostered the study of Biblical exegesis among the Italian Jews. The liturgical author of merit was Joab ben Solomon, some of whose compositions are extant. Toward the second half of the thirteenth century signs appeared of an improved Hebrew culture and of a more profound study of the Talmud. Isaiah di Trani the Elder (1232-1279), a Talmudic authority, was the author of many celebrated responsa. David, his son, and Isaiah di Trani the Younger, his nephew, followed in his footsteps, as did their descendants until the end of the seventeenth century. Meïr ben Moses presided over an important Talmudic school in Rome, and Abraham ben Joseph over one in Pesaro. In Rome two famous physicians, Abraham and Jehiel, descendants of Nathan ben Jehiel, taught the Talmud. One of the women of this gifted family, Paola dei Mansi, also attained distinction; her Biblical and Talmudic knowledge was considerable, and she transcribed Biblical commentaries in a notably beautiful handwriting.

During this period the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the last of the Hohenstaufen, employed Jews to translate from the Arabic philosophical and astronomical treatises; among these writers were Judah Kohen of Toledo, later of Tuscany, and Jacob Anatoly of Provencal. This led to the study of the works of Maimonides, the favorite writer of Hillel of Verona (1220-1295). Hillel practiced medicine at Rome and in other Italian cities, and translated into Hebrew several medical works. The liberal spirit of the writings of Maimonides had other votaries in Italy inclusive of Shabbethai ben Solomon of Rome and Zerahiah ben of Barcelona, who migrated to Rome and contributed to spread the knowledge of his works. The effect of this on the Italian Jews was apparent in their love of freedom of thought and their esteem for literature, as well as in their adherence to the literal rendering of the Biblical texts and their opposition to fanatical cabalists and mystic theories. Among other devotees of these theories was Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, the celebrated friend of Dante Alighieri.

The rise of poetry in Italy at the time of Dante influenced the Jews also. The wealthy and the powerful, partly by reason of sincere interest, partly in obedience to the spirit of the times, became patrons of Jewish writers, thus inducing the greatest activity on their part. On the initiative of the Roman community, a Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Arabic commentary on the Mishnah was made. At this time Pope John XXII was on the point of pronouncing a ban against the Jews of Rome. The Jews instituted a day of public fasting and of prayer to appeal for divine assistance. King Robert of Sicily, who favored the Jews, sent an envoy to the pope at Avignon, who succeeded in averting this great peril. This period of Jewish literature in Italy is indeed one of great splendor.

The Vatican’s position on Jews in Italy worsened considerably under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). This pope threatened with excommunication those who placed or maintained Jews in public positions, and he insisted that every Jew holding office should be dismissed. The deepest insult was the order that every Jew must always wear, conspicuously displayed, a special badge. In 1235 Pope Gregory IX published the first bull against the ritual murder accusation. Other popes followed his example, particularly Innocent IV in 1247, Gregory X in 1272, Clement VI in 1348, Gregory XI in 1371, Martin V in 1422, Nicholas V in 1447, Sixtus V in 1475, Paul III in 1540, and later Alexander VII, Clement XIII, and Clement XIV.

The Jews suffered much from the relentless persecutions of the Avignon-based “antipope” Benedict XIII. They hailed his successor, Martin V, with delight. The synod convoked by the Jews at Bologna, and continued at Forlì, sent a deputation with expensive gifts to the new pope, begging him to abolish the oppressive laws promulgated by Benedict and to grant the Jews those privileges which had been accorded them under previous popes. The deputation succeeded in its mission, but the period of grace was short; for Martin’s successor, Eugenia IV, at first was favorable toward the Jews, but ultimately reenacted all the restrictive laws issued by Benedict. However, his bull was generally disregarded.

The great centers, such as Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Pisa, realized that their commercial interests were of more importance than the affairs of the spiritual leaders of the Church; and accordingly the Jews, many of whom were bankers and leading merchants, found their condition better than ever before. It became easy for Jewish bankers to obtain permission to establish banks and to engage in monetary transactions. In one instance the Bishop of Mantua, in the name of the pope, accorded permission to the Jews to lend money at interest. All the banking negotiations of Tuscany were in the hands of a Jew, Jehiel of Pisa. The influential position of this successful financier was of the greatest advantage to his coreligionists at the time of the exile from Spain.

The Jews were also successful as skilled medical practitioners. William of Portaleone, physician to King Ferdinand I of Naples, and to the ducal houses of Sforza and Gonzaga, was one of the most competent of that time. He was the first of the long line of illustrious physicians in his family.

When Jews were exiled en masse from Spain in 1492 a great number of them took refuge in Italy, where they were given protection by King Ferdinand I of Naples. Don Isaac Abravanel received a position at the Neapolitan court, which he retained under the succeeding king, Alfonso II. The Spanish Jews were well received also in Ferrara by the Duke, Ercole d’Este I, and in Tuscany through the mediation of Jehiel of Pisa and his sons.

However, at Rome and Genoa they experienced severe oppression and were forced to accept baptism in order to escape starvation. In some cases the immigrants exceeded in number the Jews already domiciled, and gave the determining vote in matters of communal interest and in the direction of studies. From Alexander VI to Clement VII the popes were indulgent toward the Jews, having more urgent matters to occupy them. The popes themselves and many of the most influential cardinals openly violated one of the most severe enactments of the Council of Basel, namely, prohibiting Christians from employing Jewish physicians, yet they gave these same physicians positions at the papal court. The Jewish communities of Naples and of Rome received the greatest number of appointments; but many Jews passed on from these cities to Ancona, Venice, Calabria, and Padua. Venice, imitating the odious measures of the German cities, assigned to the Jews a special quarter (ghetto).

The orthodox-Catholic party tried to introduce the Inquisition into the Neapolitan realm, then under Spanish rule. Charles V, upon his return from his victories in Africa, was on the point of exiling the Jews from Naples, but deferred doing so owing to the influence of Benvenida, wife of Samuel Abravanel. A few years later, however (1533), such a decree was proclaimed, but upon this occasion also Samuel Abravanel and others were able through their influence to avert for several years the execution of the edict. Many Jews went to the Ottoman Empire, some to Ancona, and still others to Ferrara, where they were received graciously by Duke Ercole II.

After the death of Pope Paul III, a period of strife, of persecutions, and despondency set in. The Jews were exiled from Genoa and among the refugees being Joseph HaKohen, physician to the doge Andrea Doria and eminent historian. The Marranos, driven from Spain and Portugal, were allowed by Duke Ercole to enter his dominions and to profess Judaism without molestation. Thus, Samuel Usque, also a historian, who had fled from the Inquisition in Portugal, settled in Ferrara; and Abraham Usque founded a large printing establishment there. A third Usque, Solomon, merchant of Venice and Ancona and poet, translated the sonnets of Petrarch into excellent Spanish verse, which was much admired by his contemporaries.

The return to Judaism of the Marrano Usques caused much rejoicing among the Italian Jews. This was counterbalanced by the deep grief, by the seductive conversion to Christianity of two grandsons of Elijah Levita, [Leone Romano and Vittorio Eliano]. One became a canon of the Church; the other, a Jesuit. They slandered the Talmud to Pope Julius III and as a consequence the pope pronounced the sentence of destruction against this work, to the printing of which one of his predecessors, Leo X, had given his sanction. On the Jewish New Year’s Day (September 9), 1553, all the copies of the Talmud in the principal cities of Italy, in the printing establishments of Venice and even in the distant island of Candia (Crete), were burned. The worse fate of the Jews under Pope Marcellus II, who wished to exile them from Rome because of a charge of ritual murder but he was restrained from the execution of this project by Cardinal Alexander Farnese who succeeded in bringing to light the true culprit.

The most serious misfortune for the Jews was the election of Paul IV as Marcellus’ successor. This pontiff confirmed all the more severe of the bulls against the Jews issued up to that time and added others still more oppressive and containing all manner of prohibitions, which condemned the Jews to the most abject misery, deprived them of the means of sustenance, and denied to them the exercise of all professions. They were finally forced to labor at the restoration of the walls of Rome without any compensation whatsoever.

Upon one occasion the pope had secretly given orders to one of his nephews to burn the quarter inhabited by the Jews during the night; but Alexander Farnese, hearing of the infamous proposal, succeeded in preventing it. Many Jews then abandoned Rome and Ancona and went to Ferrara and Pesaro. Here the Duke of Urbino welcomed them graciously in the hope of directing the extensive commerce of the Levant to the new port of Pesaro, which was, at that time, exclusively in the hands of the Jews of Ancona. Among the many who were forced to leave Rome was the illustrious Marrano, Amato Lusitano, a distinguished physician, who had often attended Pope Julius III. He had been invited to become physician to the King of Poland, but had declined the offer in order to remain in Italy. He fled from the Inquisition to Pesaro, where he openly professed Judaism.

The tolerant pope Pius IV was succeeded by Pius V, who took an opposite stance. He brought into force all the anti-Jewish bulls of his predecessors—not only in his own immediate domains, but throughout the Christian world. In Lombardy the expulsion of the Jews was threatened, and, although this extreme measure was not put into execution, they were tyrannized in countless ways. At Cremona and at Lodi their books were confiscated; and Carlo Borromeo, who was afterward canonized, persecuted them mercilessly. In Genoa, from which city the Jews were at this time expelled, an exception was made in favor of Joseph HaKohen. In his Emek Halakha he narrates the history of these persecutions. He had no desire to take advantage of the sad privilege accorded to him, and went to Casale Monferrato, where he was graciously received even by the Christians.

In this same year the pope directed his persecutions against the Jews of Bologna, who formed a prosperous community well worth despoiling. Many of the wealthiest Jews were imprisoned and placed under torture in order to force them to make false confessions. When Rabbi Ishmael Hanina was being racked, he declared that should the pains of torture elicit from him any words that might be construed as casting reflection on Judaism; they would be false and null. It was forbidden to the Jews to leave the city; but many succeeded in escaping by bribing the watchmen at the gates of the ghetto and of the city. The fugitives, together with their wives and children, escaped to the neighboring city of Ferrara. Then Pius V. decided to banish the Jews from all his dominions, and, despite the enormous loss which was likely to result from this measure, and the remonstrance’s of influential and well-meaning cardinals, the Jews (in all about 1,000 families) were actually expelled from all the Papal States excepting Rome and Ancona. A few became Christians. The majority found refuge in other parts of Italy such as Leghorn and Pitigliano.

A commotion was caused in Italy by the choice of a prominent Jew, Solomon of Udine, as Turkish ambassador to Venice who was selected to negotiate within that republic during July of 1574. There was a pending decree of expulsion of the Jews by the leaders of several kingdoms within Italy, thereby making the Venetian Senate concerned if whether there would be difficulties collaborating with Solomon of Udine. However, through the influence of the Venetian diplomats themselves, and particularly of the Patrician, Marc Antonio Barbaro of the noble Barbaro family, who esteemed Udine highly, Solomon was received with great honors at the Doge’s Palace. In virtue of this, Udine received an exalted position within the Republic of Venice and was able to render great service to his coreligionists.

Through his influence Jacob Soranzo, an agent of the Venetian Republic at Constantinople, came to Venice. Solomon was influential in having the decree of expulsion revoked within Italian kingdoms, and he furthermore obtained a promise from Venetian patricians that Jews would have a secure home within the Republic of Venice. Udine was eventually honored for his services and returned to Constantinople, leaving his son Nathan in Venice to be educated. Nathan was one of the first Jewish students to have studied at the University of Padua, under the inclusive admission policy established by Marc Antonio Barbaro. The success of Udine inspired many Jews in Turkey, particularly in Constantinople, where they had attained great prosperity.

Persecutions and confiscations on the Jews continued and the position of the Jews of Italy at this time was pitiable. The bulls of Paul IV and Pius V had reduced them to the utmost humiliation and had materially diminished their numbers. In southern Italy there were almost none left; in each of the important communities of Rome, Venice, and Mantua there were about 2,000 Jews; while in all Lombardy there were hardly 1,000.

Gregory XIII was more fanatical than his predecessors. He noticed that, despite papal prohibition, Christians employed Jewish physicians; he therefore strictly prohibited the Jews from attending Christian patients, and threatened with the most severe punishment Christians who should have recourse to Hebrew practitioners; and Jewish physicians who should respond to the calls of Christians. In addition, the slightest assistance given to the Marranos of Portugal and Spain, in violation of the canonical laws, was sufficient to deliver the guilty one into the power of the Inquisition, which did not hesitate to condemn the accused to death. Gregory also induced the Inquisition to consign to burn a large number of copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books.

Special sermons, designed to convert the Jews, were instituted; and at these at least one-third of the Jewish community, men, women, and youths above the age of twelve, were forced to be present. The sermons were usually delivered by baptized Jews who had become friars or priests; and not infrequently the Jews, without any chance of protest, were forced to listen to such sermons in their own synagogues. These cruelties forced many Jews to leave Rome, and thus their number was still further diminished.

Under the following pope, Sixtus V, the condition of the Jews was somewhat improved. He repealed many of the regulations established by his predecessors, permitted Jews to reside in all parts of his realm, and gave Jewish physicians freedom to practice their profession. David de Pomis, an eminent physician, profited by this privilege and published a work in Latin, entitled De Medico Hebraeo, dedicated to Duke Francis of Urbino, in which he proved to the Jews their obligation to consider the Christians as brothers, to assist them, and to attend them. The Jews of Mantua, Milan, and Ferrara, taking advantage of the favorable disposition of the pope, sent to him an ambassador, Bezelel Massarano, with a present of 2,000 scudi, to obtain from him permission to reprint the Talmud and other Jewish books, promising at the same time to expurgate all passages considered offensive to Christianity. Their demand was granted, partly through the support given by Lopez, a Marrano, who administered the papal finances and who was in great favor with the pontiff. Scarcely had the reprinting of the Talmud begun, and the conditions of its printing arranged by the commission, Sixtus died.

His successor, Gregory XIV, was well disposed to the Jews as Sixtus had been; but during his short pontificate he was almost always ill. Clement VII, who succeeded him, renewed the anti-Jewish bulls of Paul IV and Pius V, and exiled the Jews from all his territories with the exception of Rome, Ancona, and Avignon; but, in order not to lose the commerce with the East, he gave certain privileges to the Turkish Jews. The exiles left for Tuscany, where they were favorably received by Duke Ferdinand dei Medici, who assigned to them the city of Pisa for residence, and by Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, at whose court Joseph da Fano, a Jew was a favorite. They were again permitted to read the Talmud and other Hebrew books, provided that they were printed according to the rules of censorship approved by Sixtus V. From Italy, where these censored books were printed by thousands, they were sent to the Jews of other countries.

It was odd that under Philip II, that the Jews exiled from all parts of Spain were tolerated in the duchy of Milan, then under Spanish rule. Such an inconsistency of policy was designed to work ill for the interests of the Jews. To avert this misfortune an eloquent ambassador, Samuel Coen, was sent to the king at Alexandria; but he was unsuccessful in his mission. The king, persuaded by his confessor, expelled the Jews from Milanese territory in the spring of 1597. The exiles, numbering about 1,000, were received at Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Verona, and Padua.

The princes of the house of Este had always accorded favor and protection to the Jews, and were much beloved by them. Eleonora, a princess of this house, had inspired two Jewish poets; and when she was ill public prayers were said in the synagogues for her restoration to health. But misfortune overtook the Jews of Ferrara as well. When Alfonso I, the last of the Este family, died, the principality of Ferrara was incorporated in the dominions of the Church under Clement VII, who decreed the banishment of the Jews. Aldobrandini, a relative of the pope, took possession of Ferrara in the pontiff’s name. Seeing that all the commerce was in the hands of the Jews, he complied with their request for an exemption of five years from the decree, although this was much against the pope’s wish.

The Mantua Jews suffered seriously at the time of the Thirty Years’ war. The Jews exiled from the papal dominions had repeatedly found refuge in Mantua, where the dukes of Gonzaga had accorded protection to them, as they had done to the Jews already resident there. The next to the last duke, although a cardinal favored them sufficiently to enact a statute for the maintenance of order in the ghetto. After the death of the last of this house the right of succession was contested at the time of the Thirty Years’ war, and the city was besieged by the German soldiery of Wallenstein. After a valiant defense, in which the Jews labored at the walls until the approach of the Sabbath, the city fell into the power of the besiegers, and for three days was at the mercy of fire and sword. The commander-in-chief, Altringer, forbade the soldiers to sack the ghetto, thereby hoping to secure the spoils for himself. The Jews were ordered to leave the city, taking with them only their personal clothing and three gold ducats per capita.

There were retained enough Jews to act as guides to the places where their coreligionists were supposed to have hidden their treasures. Through three Jewish zealots these circumstances came to the knowledge of the emperor, who ordered the governor, Collalto, to issue a decree permitting the Jews to return and promising them the restoration of their goods. Only about 800, however, returned, the others having died.

The victories in Europe of the Turks, who brought their armies up to the very walls of Vienna (1683), incite the Christian population in Itally against the Jews, who remained friendly to the Turks. In Padua, in 1683, the Jews were in great danger because of the agitation fomented against them by the cloth-weavers. A violent tumult broke out; the lives of the Jews were seriously menaced; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the governor of the city succeeded in rescuing them, in obedience to a rigorous order from Venice. For several days thereafter the ghetto had to be especially guarded.

Under the influence of the liberal religious policy of Napoleon I, the Jews of Italy, like those of France, were emancipated. The supreme power of the popes was broken: they had no longer time to give to framing anti-Jewish enactments, and they no longer directed canonical laws against the Jews. Among the first schools to adopt the Reform projects of Hartwig Wessely were those of Trieste, Venice, and Ferrara. To the Sanhedrin convened by Napoleon at Paris (1807), Italy sent four deputies: Abraham Vita da Cologna; Isaac Benzion Segre, rabbi of Vercelli; Graziadio Neppi, physician and rabbi of Cento; and Jacob Israel Karmi, rabbi of Reggio. Of the four rabbis assigned to the committee which was to draw up the answers to the twelve questions proposed to the Assembly of Notables, two, Cologna and Segre, were Italians, and were elected respectively first and second vice-presidents of the Sanhedrin. But the liberty acquired by the Jews under Napoleon was of short duration; it disappeared with his downfall.

Pope Pius VII, on regaining possession of his realms, reinstalled the Inquisition; he deprived the Jews of every liberty and confined them again in ghettos. Such became to a greater or less extent their condition in all the states into which Italy was then divided; at Rome they were again forced to listen to proselytizing sermons.

An edict of the Emperor Francis I, in 1829 opened in Padua, with the cooperation of Venice, Verona, and Mantua, the first Italian rabbinical college, in which Lelio della Torre where Samuel David Luzzatto taught. Luzzatto was a man of great intellect; he wrote in biblical Hebrew on philosophy, history, literature, criticism, and grammar. Many distinguished rabbis came from the rabbinical college of Padua. Zelman, Moses Tedeschi, and Castiglioni followed at Trieste the purposes and the principles of Luzzatto’s school. At the same time, Elijah Benamozegh, a man of great knowledge and the author of several works, distinguished himself in the old rabbinical school at Leghorn.

The Revolution of 1848, which shook up all Europe, brought great advantages to the Jews. Although this was followed by restoration of the Papal States only four months later, in early 1849, the persecutions and the violence of past times had partially decreased towards the Jews. One outrage against the Jews of Italy was connected with the case of Edgardo Mortara, which occurred in Bologna in 1858. In 1859 most of the Papal States were annexed into the United Kingdom of Italy under King Victor Emanuel II.

In and near Rome, where oppression lasted until the end of the papal dominion (September 20, 1870), the Jews obtained full emancipation. On behalf of their country the Jews with great ardor sacrificed life and property in the memorable campaigns of 1859, 1866, and 1870. Of the many who deserve mention is Isaac Presario Maurogonato. He was minister of finance to the Venetian republic during the war of 1848 against Austria, and his grateful country erected to him a memorial in bronze. There was erected in the palace of the doges a marble bust of Samuel Romanin, a celebrated Jewish historian of Venice. Florence commemorated a modern Jewish poet, Solomon Fiorentino, by placing a marble tablet upon the house in which he was born. The secretary and faithful friend of Count Cavour was the Piedmontese Isaac Artom; while L’Olper, later rabbi of Turin, and also the friend and counselor of Mazzini, was one of the most courageous advocates of Italian independence. The names of the Jewish soldiers who died in the cause of Italian liberty were placed along with those of their Christian fellow soldiers on the monuments erected in their honor.

Italian Prime Minister Luigi Luzzatti, who took office in 1910, was one of the world’s first Jewish heads of government. Another Jew, Ernesto Nathan served as mayor of Rome from 1907 to 1913.

Pope John Paul II gave access to some formerly secret Vatican archives to scholars. David Kertzer, used this information obtained in his book The Popes Against the Jews. According to that book, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the popes and many Catholic bishops and Catholic publications consistently made a distinction between “good anti-Semitism” and “bad anti-Semitism”. The “bad” kind directed hatred against Jews merely because of their descent. That was considered un-Christian, in part because the church held that its message was for all of humankind equally, and any person of any ancestry could become a Christian. The “good” kind denounced alleged Jewish plots to gain control of the world by controlling newspapers, banks, schools, etc., or otherwise attributed various evils to Jews. Kertzer’s book details many instances in which Catholic publications denounced such alleged plots, and then, when criticized for inciting hatred of Jews, would remind people that the Catholic Church condemned the “bad” kind of anti-Semitism.

Pope Pius XI issued many criticisms of Jews for many years, and shortly before his death in early 1939 during the Nazi Holocaust. After the overthrow of fascism in 1943, Pope Pius XII asked the new Italian government to repeal those sections of Italy’s race laws that held marriages between persons reared Catholic and formerly Jewish converts to Catholicism were not valid. He did not object to other provisions of the discriminatory race laws.

During the Holocaust, Italian Marranos took in many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. However, with the creation of the Nazi-backed puppet Italian Social Republic, about 15% of Italy’s Jews were killed, despite the Fascist government’s refusal to deport Jews to Nazi death camps. A small community of around 45,000 Jews remains in Italy today.

Synagogue in Florence, built in 1847

The treasures of Jerusalem (detail from the Arch of Titus)

NOTABLE JEWS IN ITALY

Political figures

• Isacco Artom, politician and diplomat
• Emanuele Fiano, politician
• Vittorio Foa, socialist trade unionist
• Anna Kuliscioff, revolutionary feminist
• Ricardo Franco Levi, member of the political staff of former Prime Minister Prodi (2006-08)
• Rita Levi-Montalcini, scientist and Senator
• Luigi Luzzatti, Italian Prime Minister (1910-1911)
• Daniele Manin, President of the Venetian republic (1848)
• André Masséna, Military commander during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
• Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, politician member of the Italian Constituent Assembly
• Elio Morpurgo, mayor of Udine, first elected jew mayor in Italy in 1889.
• Ernesto Nathan, mayor of Rome (1907-1913)
• Alessandro Ruben, MP for PDL (elected in 2008)
• Giuseppe Ottolenghi, general and former Minister of Defense
• Margherita Sarfatti, journalist
• Sydney Sonnino, Italian Prime Minister (1906 1909-10)
• Marco Taradash, MP for the Radical Party
• Claudio Treves, politician and writer, grandfather of Carlo Levi
• Umberto Elia Terracini, MP, former president of Italian Costituent Assembly
• Leone Wollemborg, politician and former Minister of Economy

Religious and Communal leaders

• Samuel Aboab, prominent rabbi
• Aaron ben Gershon Abu Al-Rabi or Aronne Abulrabi of Catania (1400-1450), rabbinic scholar, cabalist and astrologer.Called also Aldabi or Alrabi, Aaron was the First Jew in the history to be invited during a Pontificate to discuss freely and without censorship about religious subjects and papal perplexities.The Pope Martin V with his swarm of Cardinals welcomed him in Rome. [Hypocracy of the Vatican]
• Barbara Aiello, first Italian woman rabbi
• Benjamin Artom, Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Great Britain
• Umberto Cassuto, rabbi
• Abraham Isaac Castello, Rabbi
• Renzo Gattegna, president of Italian Jewish Communities Union
• Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Rabbi, scholar, mystic
• Amos Luzzatto, writer and former president of the Italian Jewish Communities Union
• Raphael Meldola, Rabbi
• David Nieto, rabbi
• Daniele Nahum, president of Young Italian Jews association
• Menahen Ben Elhanan Rizzolo, Rabbi at Modena (1643) and Ferrara (1656)
• Riccardo Pacifici, Rabbi
• Leone Paserman, Chief of Rome Jewish Community
• Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, Rabbi, philosopher
• Elio Toaff, Rabbi and former Chief of Italian Jews Community
• Tobia Zevi, former president of Young Italian Jews association
• Tullia Zevi, first woman to be President of Italian Jewish Communities Union, journalist and MP of Italian parlamient, wife of Bruno Zevi, grandmother of Tobia Zevi and Nathania Zevi

Academics

• Giorgio Abraham, psychologist
• Alessandro Artom, scientist
• Emilio Artom, mathematician
• pedigree of Azzopardi
• Haim Baharier, Torah scholar, philosopher
• Faraj ben Salim, Sicilian physician and translator from Agrigento
• Mosé Bonavoglia de’ Medici (or Bonavoglio de’ Medici), Sicilian physician from Messina and Dienchelele (Naggid or Dayan kelali = Universal Judge of Sicilian Jews).His Hebrew name was Moses Hefez and he died in 1447.
• Michele Besso, engineer
• Caecilius of Calacte, Sicilian rhetorician from modern Caronìa
• Eugenio Calabi, mathematician
• Riccardo Calimani, historian
• Laura Capón, physicist
• Guido Castelnuovo, mathematician
• Fabio Cusin, historian
• Federigo Enriques, mathematician
• Gino Fano, mathematician
• Robert Fano, physicist
• Ugo Fano, physicist
• Bruno Finzi, mathematician
• Anna Foa, historian
• Guido Fubini, mathematician
• Carlo Ginzburg, historian
• Giorgio Israel, mathematician and science philosopher
• Giovanni Jona-Lasinio, physicist
• Beppo Levi, mathematician
• Giovanni Levi, historian
• Giuseppe Levi, scientist
• Tullio Levi-Civita, mathematician
• Giorgio Levi della Vida
• Rita Levi-Montalcini, neurologist, Nobel Prize (1986)
• Cesare Lombroso, criminologist
• Salvador Luria, microbiologist, Nobel Prize (1969)
• Gino Luzzatto, economical historian
• Samuel David Luzzatto
• David Meghnagi, psychologist
• Attilio Milano, Historian
• Franco Modigliani, economist, Nobel Prize (1985)
• Arnaldo Momigliano, Italian-born historian
• pedigree of Pontecorvo
• Bruno Pontecorvo, physicist
• Guido Pontecorvo, geneticist
• Giulio Racah, physicist
• Bruno Rossi, astrophysicist
• Asher Salah, Historian
• Beniamino Segre, mathematician
• Cesare Segre, linguistics, semiotics
• Corrado Segre, mathematician
• Emilio Segrè, physicist, Nobel Prize (1959)
• Vittorio Dan Segre, Historian
• pedigree of Sforno
• Piero Sraffa, economist
• Ariel Toaff, Historian
• Andrew Viterbi, inventor of the Viterbi algorithm
• Vito Volterra, mathematician

Musicians

• Mario Ancona, baritone
• Abramo Basevi, composer and musician
• Alvise Bassano, musician
• Anthony Bassano, musician
• Baptista Bassano, musician
• Jeronimo Bassano, musician
• Haim Cipriani, violinist and reform rabbi
• Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, guitar, composer
• Giacobbe Cervetto, cellist
• Lorenzo Da Ponte ( Emanuele Conegliano), opera librettist
• Abramino dall’Arpa, harpist
• Aldo Finzi, composer
• Salamone Rossi, baroque composer
• Victor de Sabata, conductor
• Leone Sinigaglia, composer
• Liliana Treves Alcalay, musician
• Obadiah, (musician)

Writers

• Giorgina Arian Levi, writer
• Enrico Castelnuovo, father of Guido
• Giorgio Bassani, author
• Angela Bianchini, fiction writer
• Antonella Boralevi, writer
• Lorenzo Da Ponte (b. Emanuele Conegliano), opera librettist
• Corrado Israel De Benedetti, writer
• Leonardo de Benedetti, physician and writer
• Manuela Dviri, writer
• Alain Elkann, writer and journalist, father of John, Lapo and Ginevra
• Angelo Fortunato Formiggini, publisher (1878-1938)
• Carlo Ginzburg, historian, writer, essayst and pioneer of microhistory
• Leone Ginzburg, writer (born in Ukraine)
• Natalia Ginzburg (b. Levi), author, wife of Leone and mother of Carlo
• Wlodek Goldkorn, essayist and journalist
• Arrigo Levi, writer, journalist and TV anchorman
• Carlo Levi, writer, painter and physician
• Lia Levi, writer
• Primo Levi, chemist and author
• Elena Loewenthal, writer and Hebrew-Italian translator
• Carlo Michelstaedter, philosopher
• Lisa Morpurgo Dordoni, writer, astrologer
• Paolo Mieli, journalist, historian and director of Corriere della Sera
• Paolo Milano, author
• Liana Millu, writer
• Alberto Moravia (b. Pincherle), author
• Alessandro Piperno, writer
• Umberto Saba, poet
• Clara Sereni, writer
• Alessandra Shomroni, Hebrew-Italian translator
• Italo Svevo (b. Schmitz), author
• Shulim Vogelmann, writer and Hebrew-Italian translator
• Humbert Wolfe, poet and civil servant
• Zvi Yanai (b. Sandro Toth), Italian born Israeli writer
• Nathania Zevi writer and journalist (granddaughter of Tullia and Bruno Zevi)

Artists

• Cristiana Capotondi, actress
• Silvia Cohen, actress
• Gioele Dix, (b. Davide Ottolenghi) actor and comedian
• Ginevra Elkann, film director, sister of John and Lapo
• Arnoldo Foà, actor
• Massimiliano Fuksas, architect
• Stas’ Gawronski, literature critic and TV host
• Alessandro Haber, actor
• Frank Horvat, fashion photographer
• Carlo Levi, writer, painter and physician
• Gabriele Levy, sculptor, painter and writer
• Leo Lionni
• Emanuele Luzzati, painter
• Amedeo Modigliani, painter and sculptor
• Moni Ovadia, theatre figure
• Gillo Pontecorvo, director
• Xenia Rappoport, actress
• Tobia Ravà, painter
• Bruno Zevi, architect

Business

• John & Lapo Elkann, Vice Chairman of Fiat
• Armand, Georges, Maurice & Paul Marciano, founders of GUESS
• Moses Haim Montefiore, financier & philanthropist.
• Adriano Olivetti, son of Camillo, industrialist and social activist.
• Camillo Olivetti, founder of Olivetti typewriters.

Other

• Sara Bennewitz, journalist of La Repubblica
• Eugenio Calò, a Jewish partisan awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour
• Fausto Coen, journalist of Sky TG24
• Leonardo Coen, journalist of La Repubblica
• pedigree of Castelnuovo
• Giuliano Ferrara, Politician, TV anchorman and journalist, founder of Il Foglio
• Leo Finzi
• Mario Finzi, partisan (died in Auschwitz in 1945)
• Gad Lerner, TV anchorman and journalist
• Miriam Mafai, essayist and journalist of La Repubblica
• Renato Mannheimer, pollster, president of IPSO
• Sandro Mayer, journalist, director of gossip magazines
• Enrico Mentana, journalist and tv anchorman
• Clemente Mimun, journalist and former director of broadcast news of RAI
• Maurizio Molinari, journalist and essayist
• Edgardo Mortara, boy kidnapped by Catholic Papal authorities
• Fiamma Nirenstein, essayist, journalist and MP for PDL (elected in 2008)
• Susanna Nirenstein, journalist of La Repubblica
• David Parenzo, journalist
• pedigree of Rappaport
• Enzo Sereni
• Elisa Springer, holocaust survivor and writer of memoirs
• Shlomo Venezia, holocaust survivor and writer of memoirs
• Angelo Vivante, journalist, activist and public intellectual from Trieste
• Italian Jewish Nobel Laureate Turns 100 - Apr/22/09 Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Jewish-Italian neurologist who received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), is celebrating her 100th birthday today. Born on April 22, 1909 to Sephardic Jewish parents in Turin, Italy, Levi-Montalcini did most of her early research not in the Turin Medical School at which she enrolled, but in her bedroom laboratory, being forced out of university life by anti-Jewish laws imposed by dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1930s.