480 benjamin ravid
lower rate reserved for Venetians had been granted to those Jewish mer-
chants, how much more so should they also be granted to christian Vene-
tian subjects living on the terraferma and to foreigners from all places. He
again invoked the Jews to justify his proposal to admit foreigners to the
Levant trade, as he pointed out reassuringly that since for 25 years the
foreigners would pay higher customs duties than did the Venetians and
the Jews, they would be in the disadvantaged position of having to sell
their goods at a higher price. the memorandum of santonini was sup-
ported by the cinque savii alla Mercanzia, who pointed out that granting
Greeks, Muslims, and Jews not only freedom of maritime trade but also
payment of the customs at the same rate as Venetian subjects had turned
out to be very profitable, because currently those merchants were pay-
ing a great part of the customs revenue received by the government from
that merchandise. the issue was hotly debated on the senate floor. nicolò
donà, a proponent of the liberalizing bill, rejected the argument that non-
catholics should not be admitted to trade in Venice. He pointed out that
foreigners, although of different religions and customs, had never been
abhorred, citing as evidence the Fondaco dei tedeschi and the presence
of ottomans, Jews, Marranos, and all other nations. apparently because
the senate was very sharply divided, no changes were made in the highly
protective Venetian commercial system, and the Jews retained their
unique status of being able to become “instant merchants” of Venice.
Unlike other minorities, the Jews did not need to establish a scuola
in order to have a focal point for the maintenance of their identity, for
their institutions in the compulsory, segregated, and enclosed ghetto
served that purpose. aptly characterized as “the city of the Jews,”75 the
ghetto was the designated area in which virtually all aspects of the life of
the Jews took place. notwithstanding its generally restrictive legislation
vis-à-vis the Jews, as long as the Venetian government was unwilling to
establish a Monte di Pietà, retaining the Jewish moneylenders constituted
the most expedient alternative to officially avoid the practice of chris-
tians lending money to fellow christians. to retain Jewish moneylenders
as well as to attract Jewish merchants to Venice, it was necessary not only
to enable them to survive physically and economically but also to assure
them that they could practice their religion freely. commencing in 1528,
the charters of the tedeschi Jews established the basic principle that they
75 as in the title of concina, camerino, and calabi, La città degli Ebrei, and d. calabi,
“the ‘city of the Jews,’ ” in davis and ravid, The Jews of Early Modern Venice, pp. 31–49.