Ancona אנקונה

Ancona was the Adriatic port of the Papal States and, with Rome, the one papal city from which the Jews were not expelled in either 1569 or 1593: the Levant trade did not work without them.

In 1547 Paul III issued a safe-conduct to Portuguese New Christians inviting them to settle and trade; Julius III confirmed it. Under it a colony of former anusim grew at Ancona, openly returned to Judaism, with agreements registered before the city magistracy. The Scola Levantina was built in 1549.

In 1555 Paul IV revoked the safe-conducts and loosed the Inquisition on them. About a hundred were arrested; about as many got away in time to Pesaro and Ferrara. Sixty-three abjured and were shipped toward the galleys at Malta — some twenty-six escaped en route. Those who refused to abjure were executed between April and June 1556 on the Piazza della Mostra: twenty-four people, twenty-three men and one woman, hanged and then burned.

In answer, Doña Gracia Nasi and Joseph Nasi in Constantinople organised the diversion of all Jewish Levant trade from Ancona to Pesaro. After eight months the boycott was abandoned. It failed not for weakness of design but because the Jews of Ancona themselves opposed it — the old Italian and Levantine communities, untouched by the executions and exposed to collective reprisal; because there was no rabbinic consensus, R. Joshua Soncino of Constantinople having declared the ban invalid; because Pesaro could not replace Ancona; and because Ragusan, Venetian and Ottoman shippers absorbed the traffic. In 1558 the Duke of Urbino, having gained nothing, expelled the Portuguese from Pesaro.

In the same year 1555 a ghetto was imposed at Ancona, trade was reduced to second-hand dealing, and medicine was left as the one permitted art.