CEMETERIES OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS

WHENEVER a group of Jews settled in a new area, permission was immediately and urgently needed from the authorities for a space which they could use to bury their dead. Sometimes this simply meant reusing an area which had previously been a cemetery, as at Temi, where in the second half of the fifteenth century the Jews then living there received permission to use the land which had housed the cemetery of other Jews from Rome some 200 years earlier. More often it entailed the ex novo allocation of a field where burials might take place in accordance with Jewish law but without creating unnecessary complications for the authorities, such as eye-catching funerals proceeding along the main streets of the town, in front of churches and monasteries. The need for a cemetery was problematic but unavoidable; it was brought to the attention of the municipal authorities by the Jews themselves, who included it in the clauses of the charters that regulated their presence and activity within a town, and which constituted a sort of legal and official contract between the two parties. Thus we find Jews’ right to have their own cemetery recognized, for instance, in the clauses of the charters of Temi (I456 and I474), Foligno (I445 and I456), Todi (I48I), and Amelia (I426, I430, and I445). But even when such clauses were not explicit, it is clear that their underlying intentions were always put into effect.

The ground the authorities allotted Jews for their cemeteries, the sepulture dei giudei, was always extra muros, at the edge of the town or in open countryside. To reach it-the route was sometimes lengthy and hazardous-the funeral cortège had to request the opening of the city gates, both in the daytime and, more often, at night, when the solemn ceremony presented fewer organizational problems for the participants. At Perugia the cemetery was situated outside Porta S. Pietro, at a place called Vigiano; at Foligno it was in the Campo di Francalancia, outside the walls; at Assisi it was outside Porta Perlici; at Spello, in the countryside outside the town, at Scorpitolo. At Spoleto it was outside Porta S. Pietro, and at Citta di Castello it was in the countryside beyond Porta S. Giacomo.