The Court of the Massari: Legal Pluralism, Acculturation, and Autonomy in Early Modern Livorno

Early modern visitors to Livorno often marveled at two local wonders : the synagogue and the court of the Jews. The jurisdictional privileges granted to the Jews were in many ways unique, whether within the context of Livornese or early modern Jewish history. While the general normative history of the court of the massari is known in its main lines for the early period at least, the court records and cases have hardly been touched upon, save for a few topical incursions. Using court records, supplications and external judicial sources, this contribution will cast some light on the court as it functioned in three main capacities, as a court of first instance, as a court of appeal or as an instance supervising arbitration. Questioning the norms, the procedures, as well as the resort to the Jewish judiciary forum and the attempts to escape it, we will combine an institutional approach with a perspective looking at the social uses of justice « from below ». This will allow us to revisit the very notion / topos of autonomy in a context where autonomy is usually taken for granted by historians, and to contend that the justice rendered by the massari is by no means an automomous justice. The court of the massari provides exceptional material to analyze the complexity of Jewish legal pluralism and legal acculturation.