Reinhold C. Mueller, "Jewish banks between Mestre and Venice in the late Middle Ages". After a short interlude, 1382 to 1397, Jews and their pawn banks were expelled from Venice. In time some Jews returned to live in Venice but the banks,...
moreReinhold C. Mueller, "Jewish banks between Mestre and Venice in the late Middle Ages".
After a short interlude, 1382 to 1397, Jews and their pawn banks were expelled from Venice. In time some Jews returned to live in Venice but the banks, three of them, were licensed to operate only in nearby Mestre. Not only the banks but all formal Jewish institutions, such as the synagogue and the rabbinical court, were located only in Mestre and around them there developed in the 15th century a large Jewish community and an important center of Ashkenas culture. Beginning in the mid-13th century “manifest” usury, meaning especially money-lending by Christians with pawns as collateral, was forbidden in Venice but permitted in Mestre, which served the Venetian market long before it became Venetian in 1339. Most of the money-lenders were Florentine and were called “tuschi”, there as well as in northeastern Italy generally. Sometime in the later 14th century Jews replaced the Christians and established three important licensed banks which first competed with banks in Treviso and then overshadowed them. In 1483 the rents owed by the banks to the state were auctioned as a perpetual annuity (censo) to important members of the Venetian nobility, thus in practice guaranteeing constant renewals of their charters (condotte), even after the banks were transferred to Venice, to guarantee the safety of the pawns of Venetians, in the days following the defeat of Venetian forces at Agnadello (14 May 1509). Before that, in 1490, one of the Mestran banks failed; resolution of the affair involved a veritable procession of Jews from near and far to the bankruptcy court in Venice itself, showing how conversant Jews were with Venetian institutions long before the league of Cambrai and the establishment of the Ghetto. The study documents for the first time the crucial role played by the large Jewish community of Mestre and its banks – serving the Venetian market – in a triangle with Padua and Treviso.
Originally in «Interstizi»: Culture ebraico-cristiane a Venezia e nei suoi domini dal medioevo all’età moderna, edited by U. Israel, R. Jütte, R.C. Mueller, Rome, 2010, pp. 103-132; here the revised version (Rome, 2021), pp. 367-393.