Research Project

Legal plurality in sixteenth-century Papal State. A case-study on the Inquisition trial against the Portuguese Jews of Ancona (1555-1556)

I am currently working on a research project on the case of the Portuguese Jews of Ancona, persecuted, dispersed and – in some cases – burnt at the stake by the Inquisition between 1555 and 1556. A dossier of hitherto unknown documents allows a new reading of this juridical affair. During my research stay in Münster, I will focus on studying the simultaneity of plurality and singularity in the legal system of the sixteenth-century Papal State. I will focus on the analysis of the legal stratification implied in the persecution of the Sephardi Jewish community of Ancona, concentrating especially on the overlapping of competences between the newly founded supreme religious court of the Holy Office and the civil legal system of the Papal State, the interrelations and the contradictions this produced. Moreover, I will research into the relationship between the peripheral and central legal actors, both of the religious and the civil courts, as well as the role played by the fiscal authority of the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, which controlled the goods and assets confiscated to the tried Portuguese Jews. Finally, I will take into account the violent effect brought onto the legal system, its interpretation and especially its actors by the transformations caused by successions on the papal see.