482 benjamin ravid
thereby highlighting the insecurity that was always hanging over a com-
munity that resided in Venice on sufferance, not by right.
Yet the Jews clearly thought of themselves not as foreigners but as Vene-
tians. at least two significant renaissance and early modern Jewish writ-
ers considered the government of the Venetian republic to represent the
ideal type of government as set forth in the old testament, while others
saw the affirmation of a key aspect of the Myth of Venice, the righteous-
ness of the laws of the city and the sense of justice of its government, in
the Venetian treatment of the Jews in its midst.79
still, no matter what privileges the Jews possessed, they always con-
stituted the other who inhabited a separate space, and no matter how
much concern the government took to apply the due process of law to all
matters involving them, their status never was—and never could be—the
same as that of other native inhabitants of the city. their situation con-
formed to the catholic policy initially formulated by Pope Gregory i and
subsequently reiterated by medieval popes, although not so often observed
in practice, which asserted that while the Jews ought not to claim more
than what was permitted to them by law, nonetheless those rights that
had been granted to them were to be observed. Venice felt that the status
quo represented a desirable compromise between complete rejection and
full acceptance that ought to be fairly maintained and only modified in
accordance with the due process of the law.
Viiiit can be concluded that the Venetian government not only tolerated the
presence of minorities in its midst but also actively encouraged them to
come to the city, and on occasion even offered them attractive conces-
sions if it thought that they could in some way be of economic or com-
mercial benefit. Yet, while giving them much freedom, the government
carefully controlled the activities of minorities in areas that it considered
important, especially in maintaining a monopoly of the Levant trade
for its own citizens, in preventing customs fraud, and in preserving the
catholic faith of the city.
79 see B. ravid, “Between the Myth of Venice and the Lachrymose conception of Jewish
History: the case of the Jews of Venice,” in B. cooperman and B. Garvin, eds., The Jews of
Italy: Memory and Identity (Bethesda, Md, 2000), pp. 151–92, photo-reproduced in ravid,
Studies on the Jews of Venice.