Gli Ebrei in Italia nell'epoca del Rinascimento

Describes the history of the Jews as a struggle between their will to perpetuate their alterity and the non-Jewish majority's will for them to assimilate. Pt. I (pp. 23-85), "Le strutture dell'insediamento e dell'economia, " states that the mendicant friars' anti-Jewish sermons combined condemnation of usury with deicide, blood libel, and Host desecration accusations. There was always a need to justify the Jews' living among Christians: economically (usury, medicine) or spiritually (witnesses of the truth of the Scriptures). After the expulsion from Spain (and Sicily) in 1492, Pope Paul IV radically changed the policy toward Jews in 1555, instituting the ghettos and introducing the yellow badge.