Image Desecration in Spilamberto: Jews and Christian Images in Seventeenth-Century Italy

Abstract

Abstract This article explores a series of incidents that took place near Modena between 1632 and 1635, in which members of a Jewish family were accused of desecrating Christian devotional images. It is based on a file in the inquisitorial archive in Modena, with additional information culled from the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede in Rome. The principal locale of the story is a silk mill which was leased to Simon Sanguinetti and his four sons in 1632, a year after plague had devastated the region. The Sanguinetti were encouraged to take on this enterprise by the mill-owner, Baldassare Rangone, who clearly hoped that an injection of Jewish capital would result in the revival of the business. However, the Jewish tenants-cum-managers were soon accused of desecrating two types of Catholic images—a painted panel and cheap prints of religious subjects. During the investigations, three Jewish suspects were imprisoned for periods of up to four months, and two of them were tortured. The main focus of this article is on the two types of images, their religious and social significance, the Jewish–Christian tensions that were created by them, and their supposed desecration. It illustrates an unstudied aspect of hidden Jewish violence and the actualisation of emotions that might otherwise have remained unnoticed.