Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy

Flora Cassen is Associate Professor of History and JMA and Sonja Van der Horst Scholar in Jewish History and Culture, both at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the history of Jews in early modern Italy, Spain, and the Mediterranean. She has published articles on these subjects in the Association for Jewish Studies Review and The Journal of Early Modern History.

• Introduction; 1. Origins and symbolic meaning of the Jewish badge; 2. Dukes, friars and Jews in fifteenth-century Milan; 3. Strangers at home: the Jewish badge in Spanish Milan (1512–1597); 4. From black to yellow: loss of solidarity among the Jews of Piedmont; 5. No Jews in Genoa; Conclusion.

'In this fascinating study, instead of focusing on the better-known Venice, Rome, and Florence and their ghettos, Flora Cassen has chosen to concentrate on northern Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the under-studied areas of Piedmont, the Duchy of Milan, and Genoa, where Jewish communities were small. … a stimulating and informative contribution to Jewish–Christian studies.' Christopher F. Black, Renaissance and Reformation