Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382-1797 by Benjamin RavidReview by: John HuntThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 158-160Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477254 .

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158 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVI/1 (2005)

National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. It provides a fine overview of the strengths and weaknesses, along with the successes and failures, of chartered trading companies. Another essay, "England, Portugal and the Estado da India c. 1500-1635," looks at early English efforts to gather information about the Portuguese maritime empire in the Indian Ocean. The English hoped to interlope on Portuguese trade but had only achieved meager success in that enterprise by 1635. Lack of capital and focus crippled the English efforts. Two other essays deal with the hardships and hazards of Europeans, particularly the Portuguese, in their voy ages to Asia. It is well known that the round trip from Lisbon to Goa was long and dangerous. Scammell takes pains to emphasize that the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama, by opening up vast new sea routes, also subjected Europeans to regular voyages of previously unprece dented distances and durations. These voyages also passed through various climates and sail ing conditions that challenged the Europeans' provisioning and seamanship as never before. It took time and experience for the Portuguese and other Europeans to learn how best to adapt to these new and difficult conditions. Meanwhile, mistakes were made, with disaster and death frequently following. As Scammell shows, the Dutch adapted the best, and their adaptability made them the most successful European traders in Asia during the seventeenth century. In spite of all the shipwrecks, mutinies, pirate attacks, diseases, and foul provisions, most ships of all European countries got to the Asian marts and back home successfully and profitably. Otherwise, the sea route to Asia would have been quickly abandoned as unviable. As Scammell rightly points out, smooth voyages are seldom remarked upon, except concern ing their boredom.

The collection also includes two of Scammell's essays that provide broad, insightful overviews. He first delivered "The Great Age of Discovery, 1400-1650" to the Hakluyt Soci ety in 1982. It provides a succinct account of the challenges facing and the consequences arising from European exploration and expansion during the early modern era. "After Da Gama: Europe and Asia since 1498" is a wide-ranging reflection on the chain of events and historical changes in Europe and Asia that followed from Vasco da Gama's famous voyage. Both continents experienced good and bad consequences from this new contact and both were profoundly changed by it. At the same time, both continents, especially Europe, retained their fundamental natures in spite of these changes. Students of naval history, the explorations, international trading, and imperialism of the early modern age will welcome the ready access to Scammell's writings that this volume provides. It complements the earlier Variorum collection of other writings by Scammell, Ships, Oceans and Empire: Studies in Euro pean Maritime and Colonial History, 1450-1750 (1995).

Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382-1797. Benjamin Ravid. Aldershot:Ashgate, 2003. 382 pp. $111.95. ISBN 0-86078-919-5.

REVIEWED BY: John Hunt, Ohio State University

Unlike Rome and other major Italian cities,Venice never had a stable settlement ofJews during most of the Middle Ages. In the late fourteenth century the Venetian government allowed Tedeschi Jews to settle temporarily in the Most Serene City for the first time in its long history. More than a century later, in the wake of the War of Cambrai, the temporary arrangement was reexamined, and a Jewish population began to reside in the city on a per manent basis after receiving a charter to live and work in the city. The charter, passed by the Senate in 1516, made theJews' residence in the city contingent on their enclosure in a ghetto

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Book Reviews 159

that segregated them from their Christian neighbors and limited their occupational choices to moneylenders and purveyors of used merchandise, or strazzaria. Later, in the 1570s, the Venetian government invited Ponentine and Levantine Jewish merchants to the city to but tress the maritime city's weakening grip on trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The Jewish community survived as "an island in a Christian sea" for almost three hundred years, until Napoleon ordered the ghetto abolished in 1799.

Traditionally, scholars of what has been called the Lachrymose school ofJewish history have emphasized the constrained lives of Venetian Jews in the ghetto: the tight, cramped liv ing quarters; the lack of mobility; the antipathy theVenetian populace directed toward them; and the exploitive policies of theVenetian government, which forcedJewish bankers to lend money to Christian poor at unfavorable terms.While not denying any of these things, Ben jamin Ravid, in a collection of nine articles spanning the breadth of his career, seeks to tem per the Lachrymose depiction of Jewish existence in Venice. Looking primarily at the numerous charters that allowed Tedeschi, Levantine, and Ponentine Jews to stay in the city, Ravid demonstrates thatJews occupied a much more ambiguous place withinVenetian soci ety than the Lachrymose school usually admits-owed in large part to theVenetian govern ment's policy of privileging economic raison d'etat over religious concerns and latent anti Jewish sentiments. On the one hand, Ravid argues, the Venetian authorities recognized the importance of both Tedeschi Jews in lending money to poor Christians and Levantine and Ponentine merchants in shoring up the city's declining maritime trade in the eastern Medi terranean. On the other hand, authorities wanted to keep Jews, especially the Ponentines,

who were really Iberian Marranos, or New Christians, from having contact with the Chris tian populace. The compromise between these two extremes, according to Ravid, was the ghetto; created in 1516, it gave Jews the opportunity to live in the city, albeit in an enclosed environment. The alternative was expulsion.

As is generally the case with the collection of essays in theVariorum series, there is much repetition in this volume, especially when Ravid discusses the founding charter of 1516 that permitted Jews to live inVenice on a permanent basis.Yet, as a collective whole, they give a general picture of the Venetian government's attitude toward Jews and the position of the Jewish community in Venetian society. The first three articles explore the special privileges that Jews extracted from Venetian authorities, owing primarily to their crucial economic activities. Jewish merchants, as well as Jewish doctors and musicians, often obtained exemp tions from curfews and the wearing of yellow head coverings. Ravid uses government char ters, petitions from Jews, and the writings of Christian travelers from northern Europe to examine these exemptions.The next three articles focus explicitly on the raison d'&tat policy of the Venetian state toward Jews, which allowed Jews to remain in the city despite popular anti-Jewish sentiment and the fact that many of them were once New Christians.TheVene tian government followed this tolerant policy in the face of opposition from the Counter Reformation papacy, even defendingJewish infants and youths from forced conversions.The last three essays examine Jewish apologetica and anti-Jewish polemics, centering on their res idence in the city and their money-lending activities. In the last article, Ravid situates Jewish apologists such as Simone Luzzatto in the myth of Venetian tolerance and good government, arguing that they hailed the Venetian state as a benevolent one because of its protection of the Jewish community.

Ravid provides a new perspective for the history of the Jews of Venice in the early modern era by navigating between the Lachrymose school and the Golden Age school, which maintained that Renaissance rulers possessed an enlightened view of Jews until the

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160 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVI/1 (2005)

Tridentine papacy took an increasingly repressive stance toward them after 1555. Ravid, in contrast, places much emphasis on the ambivalent raison d'etat policy of Venetian authorities, which tolerated and even protected Jews from harm and repression more out of economic necessity than from any great sense of Philosemitism. This collection of articles will serve as a useful introduction to the legal and political situation ofJews in early modernVenice.

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The Front-Runner of the Catholic Reformation: The Life and Works of Johann von Staupitz. Franz Posset. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. 398 pp. $104.95. ISBN 0-7546-0866-2.

REVIEWED BY: Gordon A. Jensen, Lutheran Theological Seminary

The Augustinian Johann von Staupitz has often been consigned to the edges of the Ref ormation movements of the sixteenth century, hidden too often in the shadows of one of his proteges, Martin Luther. Posset contributes a rich and stimulating English-language mono graph that looks at Staupitz the preacher on his own terms, and questions Staupitz's label as forerunner to the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, the title of this work indicates the direc tion taken by Posset.

The first chapter provides a succinct summary of the reform tradition in the Observant order of the Friars Hermits of St. Augustine. In his preaching and organization of friaries as vicar, Staupitz was a front-runner of the reforms in early sixteenth-century Germany. Preaching was recognized by various mendicant orders as an important tool for bringing about reform-the improvement of the ecclesiastical life-in the urban centers. Staupitz encouraged the best preachers in his order to study for their doctorates in theology, the better to equip them as reform preachers. While Staupitz had sympathy for humanism, his reform preaching was based on a devotional theology that focused on the cross of Christ. In fact, Posset suggests that Luther's theologia crucis stems from Staupitz's own focus on the cross of Christ (15). Staupitz's main concern was for pastoral care. Following Summenhart, his pro fessor at Tiibingen, Staupitz wanted to be delivered from the "quarreling theology" of the scholastics (42).

The main contribution of this book is found in the careful analysis of the sermons and writings of Staupitz. Posset does this in sections: first, the early years (ending in 1512); then as a prominent preacher and pastor (1512-17); next as an associate of Luther, caught up in the reforms; and finally his last sermons as a Benedictine abbot in Salzburg. Staupitz's ser

mons reflect a strong Christocentric emphasis and are foundational for later Reformation theology. Posset analyzes these sermons and writings, carefully tracing the recurring reform ing themes. Posset is able to show that in many cases, Luther is a disciple of Staupitz, rather than the other way around.

Posset claims that Staupitz does not give up his "reform" agenda, even when events called for the excommunication of Luther. Even Staupitz's decision to leave the Augustinian order for the Benedictines was not a rejection of Luther's teachings. He did so because he realized, first, that his reform efforts would not be carried out; second, that the general of the order was closing the observant congregations; and third, that it would give Luther the freedom he needed to continue his reforms (269). Staupitz was not willing to sacrifice his devotional and reform theology or to betray Luther (266). No longer could Staupitz disci pline Luther, as the general of their order had requested.

Posset suggests that while Staupitz was likely the source of Luther's criticism of

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