478 benjamin ravid
down to 1711, and its provisions were to remain in effect until the end of
the Venetian republic.
While Levantine Jewish merchants already enjoyed the privilege of
engaging in the Levant trade by virtue of the treaties between Venice
and the ottoman empire, the extension of this privilege to Ponentine
Jews was especially noteworthy from both the commercial and religious
vantage points. in 1586, the only Venetians legally allowed to engage in
trade between Venice and the Levant, the patricians and the cittadini
(both originari and de intus et de extra but not de intus), constituted 4.3
per cent and less than 5.1 per cent respectively of the population.72 thus,
the Levantine and Ponentine Jewish merchants possessed rights to which
more than 90 per cent of the Venetian christian population could never
aspire. Moreover, they were not subject to the waiting period of 25 years
that applied to all christian non-Venetians who desired the privilege of
engaging in the Levant trade. this unprecedented concession reversed
a policy that had been established since the 14th century and serves as
clear testimony to the Venetian perception of the importance of the Jew-
ish merchants. However, it should be noted that the privileges granted to
the Jewish merchants were less generous than the rights enjoyed by the
Venetian nobility, cittadini originarii, and citizens de intus and de intus et
de extra, for they did not confer any rights of citizenship within Venice,
which meant that the Jewish merchants could not purchase real estate or
engage in trade within the city.
Understandably, this charter issued more than 30 years after the start
of the hostile counter-reformation attitude toward the Jews and the rever-
sion of new christians to Judaism constituted a challenge to the new
counter-reformation papal mentality that rejected the previous permis-
sive papal attitude toward the reversion of new christians to Judaism.73
the Venetian ambassador to rome, alberto Badoer, in a report sent to
Venice in June 1591, related that the pope had called the charter of 1589 a
detestable and unprecedented action that could not be tolerated and had
expressed his hope that the Venetian government would revoke it. Badoer
unsympathetically responded that there was no doubt that the charter
72 see d. Beltrami, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del Secolo XVI alla
caduta della Repubblica (Padua, 1954), p. 72.
73 on this paragraph and the following two, see B. ravid, “Venice, rome, and the rever-
sion of conversos to Judaism: a study in Ragione di Stato,” in P. c. ioly Zorattini, ed.,
L’identità dissimulata: giudaizzanti iberici nell’europa cristiana dell’età moderna (Florence,
2000), pp. 151–93, photo-reproduced in Ravid, Studies on the Jews of Venice.