The Jewish Ghetto of Nicastro

by Vincenzo Villella

The presence of Jews in Nicastro is documented historically in the 13th century. However, they had almost certainly established themselves there earlier, between the end of the 9th and beginning of the 10th centuries, concomitantly with the Saracen incursions of that period, when the first nucleus of Jews habitation was born, called Muscona’. Upon their first arrival, the Jews were already so numerous as to constitute a community. For that reason, their immediate need was to acquire, in addition to their dwellings, a place for community prayer (the future synagogue), a ritual bathhouse and butchery, and a small plot of land for a cemetery. The willingly chose as a place of residence a quarter that was entirely concentrated and closed, surrounded by the two streams Canne and Barisco, which is called Timpone in the town’s historic center. The town authorities looked favorably on this choice of venue, since it made it easier to control the area, to record the movements of its inhabitants, and to impose taxes. Initially then, Nicastro’s Jewish ghetto was not an involuntary enclosure or a discriminatory restriction imposed on the Jews. Nevertheless, its characteristic layout offered no possibility for expansion.

Yet, none of the local historians have ever documented the Jewish presence in Nicastro. Our knowledge of the phases of the Jewish presence has been handed down fragmentarily, in segments, since none of Nicastro’s historians has dedicated a single word to the Jews—not Maruca, nor Scaramuzzino, nor Giuliani, nor Ardito. Even Father Francesco Russo, in his history of the diocese of Nicastro, ignored Nicastro’s Jewish community. The history of the Jewish presence in Nicastro seems to have been repressed, and for that reason we do not have any adequate documentation at the local level of the important cultural, economic and social contributions, which the Jews made to the Nicastro community, as they did to so many other communities in southern Italy.

In fact, we only have detached and fragmentary information. As in other towns of Calabria, the foremost evidence of the Jewish presence lies in the name of the locality of the Jewish ghetto, and from popular memory that recalls the Jews as moneylenders and that’s all. The prejudices that existed in their interface with others rendered the Jews unworthy to be remembered in any other way. They had to be without a history, and they could not leave traces in the hometown memories. They were tolerated but not integrated, used but always seen with suspicion and aversion. We don’t know precisely how many there were, but certainly their quarter of town was densely and completely inhabited.

Entry to the Jewish Ghetto

According to a report by Bishop Francesco Montorio in 1597 (the oldest report preserved in the diocesan archives), Nicastro at that time had 3,400 inhabitants, Sambiase 2,500, and Zangarona 480. On the basis of tax revenue data, it emerges that at the end of the 13th century (in the year 1276) there was a population of around 2,500-3,000 Jews in Calabria. The whole of continental southern Italy had slightly fewer than 15,000. Immediately after the end of the 15th century, according to the information on Jewish taxation, there were 12,000 Jews living in Calabria (such as 1,000 in Montalto, 700 in Altomonte, 300 in Monteleone). It has been calculated that, in general, one in about 10 or 12 people was of Jewish culture or religion. If so, the Jewish community of Nicastro, based on the foregoing episcopal data, was around 300-400 people.