Transforming Adulterers into Adults: Jewish sexual morality in late-medieval Italy

• In Event: Literature and Communal Norms in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy are best characterized as volatile: civil wars raged alongside a creative formation of self-governing civic entities known as communes. These centuries also witnessed pronounced Jewish mobility throughout the peninsula, since newly-formed communes in central and northern Italy sought Jewish commercial enterprise to help grow their towns. Although not much evidence of Jewish life in the early communes survives, this paper aims to demonstrate Jewish engagement with the civic values of Italian communes through unusual sources—Hebrew literature and biblical exegesis. The poet and exegete, Immanuel of Rome, likely traveled throughout these towns, as he mentions Fermo, Orvieto, and Camerino, chronicling both positive and negative encounters with people and patrons in his MAHBAROT, a collection of Hebrew literary tales. On his tour of Hell, in MAHBERET HA-TOPHET V'HA-EDEN , Immanuel encounters an adulterer enduring punishment for his sin, but Immanuel’s unique description of the sin of adultery does not focus on the act itself, but rather the social and moral ramifications of the adulterous union. The adulterer is punished because his illegitimate and uneducated child caused mayhem in the community. This same view is expanded and developed in Immanuel’s commentary on the Judah and Tamar story in Genesis, where the prohibition of prostitution linked to adultery is cast as a blight on social morality. Surpassing the Maimonidean historical arguments about the history of prostitution, Immanuel offers a lengthy exposition of how adultery leads to illegitimate children who damage society. I argue that Immanuel’s acute focus on sexual morality and its role in the social order, a stark difference from other medieval exegetical views of this tale, reflects the Christian communal values of social order and morality emphasized by Italian communes in their state-building campaigns. Whereas there is copious evidence that Italian communes sought civic order through investigation and adjudication of cases involving Christian adulterers, prostitutes and homosexuals, Jewish parallels remain curiously absent. Though atypical as historical sources, Immanuel’s books indicate that Jews, indeed, engaged with these communal values even though their underlying motivations differed.

Author

• Dana Fishkin, Touro College