TY - BOOK AU - Francesconi,Federica TI - Invisible Enlighteners: The Jewish Merchants of Modena, from the Renaissance to the Emancipation T2 - Jewish Culture and Contexts SN - 9780812299625 U1 - 381.089/924045421 23/eng/20230216 PY - 2021///] CY - Philadelphia PB - University of Pennsylvania Press KW - Jewish merchants KW - Italy KW - Modena KW - History KW - 17th century KW - 18th century KW - Jews KW - HISTORY / Jewish KW - bisacsh KW - 16th 17th century Modena Italy KW - Ashkenazi KW - Camillo Jaghel da Correggio KW - Discorso of Moisè Formiggini KW - Early Modern Jewish Culture history KW - Este KW - Ferrara KW - Jewish Diaspora KW - Laudadio Formiggini KW - Miriam Rovigo KW - Modena Ghetto KW - Modenese Jewish merchants Mercantile Elite KW - Moisè Modena KW - Opera Pia dei Catecumeni KW - Simone Luzzatto KW - Soed Holim KW - humanism KW - philosophy KW - renaissance N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Note on Spelling, Translations, and Currency --; Map --; Introduction --; Chapter 1 A Network of Jewish Families in the Early Modern Period The Road Toward Ghettoization --; Chapter 2 Jewish Leaders, Their Circles, and Their Books Before the Inquisition A Parallel Story --; Chapter 3 The Jewish Household Family Networks, Social Control, and Gendered Spaces --; Chapter 4 The “Invisible” Wealth of Silver The Journey of the Formigginis from the Ghetto to the Ducal Court --; Chapter 5 Jewish Female Agency in the Ghetto Mercantile Elite --; Chapter 6 The Jewish Urban Geography of the Ghetto and Beyond --; Chapter 7 Moisè Formiggini Before Napoleon Two Steps Toward Emancipation and One Step Back --; Abbreviations --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access N2 - Federica Francesconi writes the history of the Jewish merchants who lived and prospered in the northern Italian city of Modena, capital city of the Este Duchy, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her protagonists are men and women who stood out within their communities but who, despite their cultural and economic prominence, were ghettoized after 1638. Their sociocultural transformation and eventual legal and political integration evolved through a complex dialogue between their Italian and Jewish identities, and without the traumatic ruptures or dramatic divides that led to the assimilation and conversion of many Jews elsewhere in Europe.In Modena, male and female Jewish identities were contoured by both cultural developments internal to the community and engagement with the broader society. The study of Lurianic and Cordoverian Kabbalah, liturgical and nondevotional Hebrew poetry, and Sabbateanism existed alongside interactions with Jesuits, converts, and inquisitors. If Modenese Jewish merchants were absent from the public discourse of the Estes, their businesses lives were nevertheless located at the very geographical and economic center of the city. They lived in an environment that gave rise to unique forms of Renaissance culture, early modern female agency, and Enlightenment practice. New Jewish ways of performing gender emerged in the seventeenth century, giving rise to what could be called an entrepreneurial female community devoted to assisting, employing, and socializing in the ghetto. Indeed, the ghetto leadership prepared both Jewish men and women for the political and legal emancipation they would eventually obtain under Napoleon. It was the cultured Modenese merchants who combined active participation in the political struggle for Italian Jewish emancipation with the creation of a special form of the Enlightenment embedded in scholarly and French-oriented lay culture that emerged within the European context UR - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812299625 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812299625 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780812299625/original ER -