The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (66 page)
Read The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi Online
Authors: Jacqueline Park
Read on for a preview of the final novel in
the Grazia dei Rossi Trilogy,
Son of Two Fathers.
1
CHAOS
V
ENICE
A
PRIL 4, 1536
A lone figure stands at the foot of the Ponte di Ghetto Vecchio gazing up at the portal over the entrance to the Venetian Ghetto. Tall, muscular, and fair haired, the stranger could be taken for a Frank, but his papers identify him as Davide dei Rossi, son of a Jewish merchant from Mantova, returned this day to his Italian homeland.
The stranger hesitates, trapped in a state of mind between apprehension and anticipation. Today, April 4, is the eve of Passover. Jewish law decrees that any Jew travelling far from home on Passover must be offered a place at a Seder table. All this stranger need do to gain entrance to the ghetto is announce his presence. But he cannot bring himself to sound the bell hanging from the portal.
Was it foreordained, he wonders, that he should find himself at this doorway on this day after his long Mediterranean journey? What lies ahead for him behind these doors? A new life? Is it a life that he wants to live? And does he have the right to claim Passover hospitality?
Deceit does not come naturally to him. He is uncomfortably aware that although he is a traveler far from home, he is only half a Jew; that his blood father is a Christian knight; and that his papers are fraudulent. Still, as the son of a Jewish mother, by Jewish law he is a member of the Jewish race — which makes him a Jewish traveler far from home. Reassured by this reminder he reaches up, grasps the bell-pull hanging from the portal, tugs at it hard, and prepares to claim his birthright.
Meanwhile, across town, high above the majestic reaches of the Palazzo Ducale and shielded from the eyes of the vulgar masses below, a furious battle continues to rage between two opposing factions on the floor of the Venetian Senate. The celebration of Christ’s rising is only two days away. By long-standing tradition the senate disperses for its annual Easter recess on Holy Thursday. But this year Holy Thursday has come and gone, and the august body that rules the Serene Republic of Venice cannot adjourn until they resolve the issue on the floor.
Venetians do not readily violate a long-established tradition. What can have caused this transgression of the customary Lenten recess? Is menace looming from the ever-threatening Ottoman fleet? Has the volcano on Cofru erupted? Is a flash flood rising from the lagoon to submerge the entire city of Venice? Not if the reports from our spies are to be trusted. The latest word is that the Ottoman fleet is tucked into the Golden Horn far across the Mediterranean — too far to present an immediate threat. Corfu remains untroubled. No trace of flood waters is lapping at the edges of the Piazza San Marco. But there is an outstanding issue sufficiently provocative to have set off today’s crisis in the Senate chamber — the reoccurrence of the age-old Venetian problem: what to do about the Jews?
Jews have been trading actively in the ports of the eastern Mediterranean for centuries. When the tide of anti-Semitism spread into northern Europe following the Black Death, the German Jews began to trickle down over the Alps into Venice. There they set themselves up as loanbankers — banchiere — purveyors of easy credit. They quickly became an integral part of the economic fabric of the city. Unfortunately, they also became so numerous, so successful, and so visible that an edict was soon passed forbidding them to live in Venice — with certain exceptions, such as Jewish doctors. The ruling went so far as to resettle the Jewish banchiere at a safe distance in the nearby port of Mestre, thought to be far enough from the capital to save its pious residents from being contaminated by the heretic Jews.
All this at a time when Venice was poised to become a world financial power but was being held back by the Catholic Church’s condemnation of moneylending as the sin of usury. And this de facto ban had begun to stifle the ability of Christian bankers and traders to lend or borrow money at interest, which in turn was placing Venice at a disadvantage in its contest with other major commercial centers such as Antwerp and London — cities less bound by the dictates of the Catholic Church.
The Jewish banchiere had brought untold benefits to all sectors of Venetian society, from the merchants and traders up to the doge himself. To expel them seemed a foolhardy move, but it did satisfy the demands of piety. In the streets and squares of the city, itinerant Franciscan friars roamed and roared, preaching support for the expulsion edict. Led on by these Franciscan churchmen, pious Venetians were coming to believe that God was punishing them for the sin of nurturing heretics in their midst.
“Nothing but the total eradication of the Jewish population from the city of Venice will appease God’s anger,” ranted Friar Giovanni de l’Anzolina.
From his pulpit in the
Frari a Basilica
, Friar Giovanni Maria di Arezzo sermonized against Jewish doctors, singling out a certain Master Lazaro.
“This villainous Jew has frequented Christian women,” he raged, “and made them dissolute. All afflictions of the state arise from their presence in this city.”
“They are a perfidious people!” Alvice Grimani thundered in the Senate. “They are spies of the Turks! They are the scum of the earth!”
In the mid-fifteenth century a dissident faction of the Franciscan Brotherhood took to the streets again, not in support of the expulsion of the Jews this time, but to support their continuing presence in the city. Do not forget, they cautioned, heretic Jews had been permitted to settle in Venice in the first place, so that they could be allured to convert to Christianity. Now it was the Christian duty of Venetians to keep the Jews in residence in order to bring them to Jesus. And think of the hardship that would devastate the poor if they were unable to pawn their meagre possessions to the Jewish brokers in times of need.
The Senate voted to reinstate the banchiere. Not surprisingly this change of heart was not destined to remain permanent. Within two years the reinstatement was annulled.
With only the occasional eruption, the debate continued to disrupt Venetian governance for over a hundred years. But when the Venetians suffered a humiliating military defeat at Agnadella in 1509 by what Senator Antonio Coldumer reminded his colleagues was “an alliance of God-fearing nations,” the Jews once again became the scapegoat. Adding fuel to Coldumer’s argument, Zaccaria Dolfin brought it to the attention of the Senate that both Spain and Portugal had expelled their Jews and had been blessed by heaven for it. On his knees, he warned the nobles to fear the wrath of God if they failed to expel the Jews once and for all.
But God-fearing as they might be, the Venetian nobility were all too aware that the foundation of their prosperity lay not on a bedrock of faith but on trade, and that their trade supremacy floated on a sea of credit. This presented Venice with a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between piety and profit. The Venetians could neither live with the Jews nor without them.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS BOOK, VOLUME TWO OF THE GRAZIA TRILOGY, IS dedicated to Heather Reisman, who adopted Grazia long before anyone else and has never wavered in her support.
The book would never have been completed if not for the help of several assistants and friends who stuck with me through many long years. I owe a special thanks to Dr. Alan Berger of St. Mike’s Hospital, whose ongoing concern and great skill have preserved my eyesight.
All the members of the Osman family are genuine historical figures except for Saida, whose character is based on an anonymous “princess” born to one of Suleiman’s concubines who died in childbirth.
Jacqueline Park is the founding chairman of the Dramatic Writing Program and professor emerita at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in Toronto.
Table of Contents
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The Road to Baghdad: Letters from the Courier's Pouch
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Coda