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A Convert’s Tale

A Convert’s Tale

Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy

Tamar Herzig

ISBN 9780674237537

Publication date: 12/03/2019

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An intimate portrait, based on newly discovered archival sources, of one of the most famous Jewish artists of the Italian Renaissance who, charged with a scandalous crime, renounced his faith and converted to Catholicism.

In 1491 the renowned goldsmith Salomone da Sesso converted to Catholicism. Born in the mid-fifteenth century to a Jewish family in Florence, Salomone later settled in Ferrara, where he was regarded as a virtuoso artist whose exquisite jewelry and lavishly engraved swords were prized by Italy’s ruling elite. But rumors circulated about Salomone’s behavior, scandalizing the Jewish community, who turned him over to the civil authorities. Charged with sodomy, Salomone was sentenced to die but agreed to renounce Judaism to save his life. He was baptized, taking the name Ercole “de’ Fedeli” (“One of the Faithful”). With the help of powerful patrons like Duchess Eleonora of Aragon and Duke Ercole d’Este, his namesake, Ercole lived as a practicing Catholic for three more decades. Drawing on newly discovered archival sources, Tamar Herzig traces the dramatic story of his life, half a century before ecclesiastical authorities made Jewish conversion a priority of the Catholic Church.

A Convert’s Tale explores the Jewish world in which Salomone was born and raised; the glittering objects he crafted, and their status as courtly hallmarks; and Ercole’s relations with his wealthy patrons. Herzig also examines homosexuality in Renaissance Italy, the response of Jewish communities and Christian authorities to allegations of sexual crimes, and attitudes toward homosexual acts among Christians and Jews. In Salomone/Ercole’s story we see how precarious life was for converts from Judaism, and how contested was the meaning of conversion for both the apostates’ former coreligionists and those tasked with welcoming them to their new faith.

Praise

  • [An] illuminating microhistory of the Jewish goldsmith and Christian convert Salomone da Sesso, and how far he and his family were truly able to integrate into their ‘host’ society of Renaissance Mantua and Ferrara.

    —Simon Ditchfield, Times Higher Education

Awards

  • 2020, Winner of the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize

Author

  • Tamar Herzig is Director of the Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies and Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. She has published extensively on various aspects of the Italian Renaissance, gender history, and religious history. Her books include Savonarola’s Women and "Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman": Lucia Brocadelli, Heinrich Institoris, and the Defense of the Faith.

Book Details

  • 400 pages
  • 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
  • Harvard University Press

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