During the early period of the
Middle Ages,
Calabria,
Basilicata and
Apulia forming the
Catepanate of Italy were under
Byzantine rule, and Calabria was an important commercial center. During this time the Calabrian Jewish population, estimated at around 12,000, flourished. According to some sources, some areas of Calabria may have had a Jewish population of up to fifty percent. Many Jews were prosperous merchants dominating such industries as
silk trading and cloth
dyeing. Money lending was also an important source of revenue for the Calabrian Jews. Many Jews of Calabria lived in special segregated neighborhoods known as
La Giudecca. Remnants of these neighborhoods still exist in Calabrian towns such as
Nicastro. At their height, the Jews of Calabria, along with the other Jews of southern Italy were second only to the Jews from the
Iberian Peninsula. During the
First Crusade, southern Italy, including both Sicily and Calabria fell to the
Normans. For a time, this resulted in uniting both Jewish populations, as well as other Jewish communities in southern Italy under the flag of the
Kingdom of Sicily.
Norman conqueror,
Robert Guiscard governed Calabria in 1061. Guiscard encouraged the Jews of Catanzaro to engage in several agricultural trades. In fact, unlike many of the Jewish communities of
Western Europe, the Jews of Calabria largely escaped the atrocities associated with that period.
Benjamin of Tudela mentioned the Jews of Calabria on his return trip to Spain around 1175. After several centuries of relative peace and prosperity under the rule of the
Kingdom of Naples, the persecution of the Calabrian Jews started in 1288 with accusations of
blood libel. Under
Charles II of Anjou with the assistance of the friars of the
Dominican Order, the decline of the Calabrian Jewish communities began. During this time many Calabrian Jews and their wealth began to move to other Jewish communities of France and Northern Italy. Meanwhile, other Calabrian Jews were pressured to convert to
Christianity. These Jewish converts to Christianity in Southern Italy were known as
Neofiti. In 1348, during the years of the
Black Death, a Jew by the name of Agimet of Geneva, confessed under torture to poisoning the wells of Calabria among other places. This extracted confession was one of the factors contributing to the anti-semitic
Strasbourg pogrom. The first type set
Hebrew books in
Europe were printed in
Reggio by
Abraham Garton in 1475. Garton did not use movable type, but used a block page format to print his material. Garton's works were printed in a Hebrew style known as
Rashi Script. Some historians ponder the connection between Garton's pioneering mass production revolution of Hebrew books and the raise of
Ashkenazi prominence in religious scholarship. In the former Jewish quarter of Reggio there is a street named, "Via
Ashkenaz". In addition to the first printed Hebrew book, the first Hebrew commentary on the
Hagaddah also appeared in Reggio, in 1482. A short-lived revival of the Calabrian Jewish communities began after
Sephardic Jews fleeing the
Spanish expulsion arrived in 1492. Another wave of Jewish refugees also arrived in Calabria fleeing from the
Expulsion of the Jews from Sicily in 1493. And Jews from the island of
Sardinia also resettled in Calabria after their expulsion as well. In 1510, the first in a series of Jewish expulsions began in Calabria. The final blow to the Calabrian Jews culminated when the
Spanish Inquisition at last reached Calabria. By 1541, the
Roman Catholic Church ordered the last Jews of Calabria to either leave or to convert to
Catholicism. For those who could afford to leave, most went to the
Greek cities of
Arta,
Corfu and
Thessaloniki, The Calabrian Jews were a sizable block in the Jewish community of Thessaloniki where they constituted four of the 30 synagogues in the city. A Calabrian Jewish Synagogue, which was located in
Constantinople is also known. Four hundred years later, the last direct descendants of the Calabrian Jews living in Greece would perish in the
Holocaust. As for the rest of Calabrian Jews too poor to emigrate during the Inquisition, they were subjected to a
forced conversion, and Jewish houses of worship were converted into churches. For example, the synagogue of Catanzaro was converted to a church dedicated to St. Stefano. The Calabrian converts, many who still secretly practiced
Crypto-Judaism, were known in
Hebrew as
Anusim. Despite their conversion to Catholicism, many converted Jews of Calabria were regularly discriminated against and were forced to live as second class citizens. During the Middle Ages, Calabria contributed much to the culture of the Jewish people in Europe. Many Jewish scholars, such as Rabbi
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital and descendants of the
Isaac Abarbanel were known to have come from or resided in Calabria. Also, the 15th-century
Christian Hebraist, Agathius Guidacerius, a well regarded Greek and Hebrew grammatical expert was born in the Calabrian town of Rocca-Coragio. ==Modern times==