Research on the Jews of Southern Italy by Cesare Colafemmina: 2012-2022 - State of the Art of Jewish Studies

Cesare Colafemmina (1933-2012) was the scholar who most systematically investigated the sources attesting the Jewish presence in southern peninsular Italy from late antiquity to the modern age. Ten years after his death, this contribution intends to present the state of the art of the research and trace the context of the Jewish presence in relation to local communities.

Colafemmina is internationally known for the discovery of new areas of Jewish and Christian catacombs of Venosa and for the study of Jewish epigraphs. He has dealt with many fields: from archeology to Latin documentary sources, also dealing with Jewish sources with the translation of Sefer Yuḥasin of Aḥima’aṣ ben Palti’el (1054).

Since 1981, Colafemmina published documents attesting the Jewish presence: not only notary deeds concerning private individuals, but also documents of public and ecclesiastical authorities. The result of this screening among the Historical Archives allowed Colafemmina to draw a picture of Jewish presences in the South from the early Middle Ages to Expulsion (1541). The investigation sees thirty years of his scientific editing of documentary surveys, initiated in the wake of the landing in Bari of the "Italia Judaica" project conceived since 1969 by Shlomo Simonsohn, editor of the series «A Documentary History of the Jews in Italy» published by Brill, with which Colafemmina published Jews in Calabria (2012).

In 2012 the scholar founded CeRDEM - Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione sull`Ebraismo nel Mediterraneo, for the scientific continuation and continuity of his research. Among the next projects of CeRDEM “Colafemmina” are the critical re-editions of his works and the posthumous edition, in particular concerning documents from Basilicata, from the Principality of Citra and partly from Campania.

Furthermore, on the anniversary of the scholar`s death, CeRDEM promotes many initiatives dedicated to Colafemmina, with Institutions and Universities.