The Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (Sixteenth Century)

The goal of the paper is to present the results achieved through my doctoral dissertation (to be defended no later than June 2017) on the Hebrew chronicle Divre ha-yamim shel ha-‘apifior Pavolo ha-revi’i ha-niqra Teatino (i.e. ‘Chronicle of the Pope Paul IV Called the Theatine’), written in the second half of the Sixteenth century by the Italian Jewish moneylender Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (located in central Italy). The work was already known to the Hebrew readers thanks to the edition by Isaiah Sonne (1930-1) who, as he asserted in the introduction, saw the manuscript only for a short time. It seemed thus necessary to provide a new edition of the Hebrew text and the first English unabridged translation as well as an extensive commentary on the contents of the work and a historical introduction on Civitanova Marche. My doctoral research has shown that this chronicle is a remarkable source for understanding the history of Italian Jewry and its relationship with the Catholic Church. For example, the author chronicle is surprisingly cutting: he does not refrain from calling the Pope - the former Grand-Inquisitor Gian Pietro Carafa - “evil”, “devil”, or comparing him to Amalek or Balaam. Moreover, he associates Carlo Carafa, the Pope’s nephew, to Haman. Negative images like Amalek and Haman were widely used in Jewish literature to justify the impulse to remember through writing history.

Besides presenting the results achieved by my doctoral research, the paper will purpose some future perspectives of study.