© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/978900434��4�_ 008
CHAPTER 6
Jews in Sardinia: From Antiquity to the Edict of
Expulsion of 1492
Cecilia Tasca1 Introduction
This paper contains a general summary of the history of the Jews in Sardinia,
updated according to the most recent studies, which should be referred to
for specific details and also for their numerous bibliographical and archival
quotations.1
2 Antiquity
In antiquity, the first evidence of the Jewish presence in Sardinia regards the
4,000 freedmen expelled from Rome and deported to the island during the
reign of Tiberius in 19 AD. We currently have no record of whether and how
the Jews expressed their identity on the island. In fact, all epigraphic and ar-
chaeological evidence refers to a Jewish presence quite a few centuries later
and does not seem to relate directly to the Tiberian deportation. However,
1 The International Conference Gli ebrei in Sardegna nel contesto Mediterraneo. La riflessione
storiografica da Giovanni Spano ad oggi (Cagliari 17–20 November 2008) was a wonderful
opportunity for the scientific community to consider the relationship between the Jewish
world and the second largest island in the Mediterranean. This conference, whose proceed-
ings have recently been published in Materia Giudaica, explored the history of the Jews from
the distant past to the end of the nineteenth century; Cecilia Tasca, ed., “Gli ebrei in Sardegna
nel contesto Mediterraneo. La riflessione storiografica da Giovanni Spano ad oggi. Atti del
XXII Convegno internazionale dell’AISG e X Convegno internazionale Italia Judaica: Cagliari,
17–20 November 2008,” Materia Giudaica 14:1/2 (2009), pp. 11–359. The event introduced a
new corpus of documents on the Jewish presence in Sardinia in the fifteenth century, which
also inspired Michele Luzzati (1996; 2009) to review the effective meaning of Judaism on the
island and to highlight the lack of any specific development. Then Gabriella Olla Repetto, an
innovator in the research on Sardinian Judaism, traced the historiographical development
over the last 150 years; Cecilia Tasca, “Ebrei e società in Sardegna nel XV secolo. Fonti archi-
vistiche e nuovi spunti di ricerca,” Quaderni di materia giudaica 3 (2008).