Veronese, Alessandra
Senior Fellow: May-July 2024
Research Project: Judicial Proceedings in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: Jewish Trials and Doubt
Although there is no lack of works dedicated to judicial practice in our peninsula for the late medieval and early modern period (for example Zorzi, 1997; Fosi, 2007; Dean, 2007), there are conversely few contributions that deal with trials involving Jews in various ways (Quaglioni 1991; AA. VV, 1998; Esposito & Quaglioni, 2006; Veronese, 2012). Yet Jews, although a minority, were fully part of society and were consequently involved in court cases on a par with the majority group.
In most cases, mentions of judicial proceedings (both civil and criminal) are found scattered in works dedicated to the Jewish presence, without, however, a detailed analysis of the trials.
As far as I know, there are also very few editions or transcripts of court proceedings, allowing scholars to place the trial itself within a strategy (on the Christian side as well as on the Jewish side); almost always, in fact, the study on the trials involving Jews focuses on highlighting the consequences, but not the forms and procedures of the trial itself. Forms and procedures were almost always respected, without there being - apparently - any significant difference from what happens with Christians. The procedural form always starts with a doubt: why does the accused stand before the judges? What is the nature of the accusation? Why do the accusers call certain witnesses to testify and not others? And equally, what are the motives of the accused to pursue a certain line of defense? Every trial starts from a doubt, explicit or not, and that is what I am interested in working on.
There is also a particular trial, the inquisitorial one, which although in theory it should not involve Jews (how can one accuse them of heresy, as non-Christians?), in fact, does not always respect this rule. In this case, the doubt does not only concern the trial practices, but the nature of the accusation itself. The Jew does not know why he is facing the inquisitors and continues to wonder (even more so, probably, than Christians) why he is being prosecuted. There is thus in this case the doubt that comes from not understanding the accusation itself, which is completely incongruous and lacking any apparent legal basis.
Alessandra Veronese is Associate Professor of Medieval and Jewish history.