ITALY AND UMBRIA: THE GENERAL PICTURE

'IN these regions the practice of giving credit is more widespread than in the rest of the Jewish diaspora … In these parts, now that money lending is a common profession, the need arises for a treatise briefly oudining the various laws governing credit.’ Thus wrote the banker Jechiel (Vitale) Nissim da Pisa in 1559, in the introduction to his treatise on credit (Ma'amar ḥayei olam at inyan haribit), giving succinct expression to two important truths: that in Italy above all the loan banks of the Jewish companies had found ideal conditions to thrive in; and that a considerable number of Jews living in Italy were now involved in this activity. Jechiel Nissim da Pisa's observations were made bearing in mind the situation that existed during the first years of the Counter Reformation (when the credit system had already entered a period of crisis and was subject to severe restrictions); but they acquire an even greater significance if we apply them to the earlier periods of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

There is no doubt that, from the end of the thirteenth century, the communes of central and northern Italy held a powerful attraction for Jewish financiers from Rome and beyond the Alps, and that the origins of many Italian Jewish communities, whose history often continues down to our own day, are linked to the migrations of these first Jewish merchants and bankers. At the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, Jewish financiers of varying degrees of wealth left Rome, where the Curia had attracted large investments of capital and where these merchants and bankers had forged valuable connections and attained positions of some importance. They travelled along the great consular roads towards northern Italy, stopping in those places where their capital was most in demand, where investment was more rewarding, and where the general financial climate was favourable. Their first appearance is usually made known to us by a large loan to the relevant commune.

In central Italy-Latium, Umbria, the Marches, Romagna, and Tuscany-a constellation of tiny Jewish communities was formed at an early date.