Place
Livorno ליוורנו
The port that invited the exiles by decree and promised not to ask about their past.
The Livornine charters of the Tuscan dukes at the end of the sixteenth century expressly invited Jewish merchants and former anusim to settle in Livorno, promising no prosecution for the past and no ghetto. No one else in the Italy of that time made such a promise.
The community grew into one of the chief ones in the Mediterranean: trade with the East and North Africa, its own press printing for Sephardic communities, and the connections that brought news from Safed and Salonika.
On the timeline
5260 · 1500 CEWhere the Exiles Went: The Turning Point of the Diaspora5257 · 1497 CEPortugal, the Anusim and the Inquisition5426 · 1666 CEShabbetai Zevi and the False Messiah
Sources
Documents of the period
- The Livornine charters, 1591 and 1593 — the charters inviting Jews and former anusim to settle with no questions about their past
Basis: documents and evidence.