July 14, 1555 – Pope Paul IV Orders Jews Into a Ghetto

Cum nimis absurdum was a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV on this day in history. It was less than two months from the date of Paul’s ascent to the papacy.

(A papal bull is a type of public decree issued by a pope of the Roman Catholic Church. It is named after the leaden seal (bulla) that was traditionally appended to the end in order to authenticate it.)

This particular bull took its name from its first words:

Since it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery…”

The bull placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States; renewed anti-Jewish legislation; and subjected Jews to various degradations and restrictions on their personal freedom. [The Papal States were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope from the 8th century until 1870. At their zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio (which includes Rome), Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. These holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.]

Pope Paul IV

Most significantly, the bull established the Roman Ghetto and required the Jews of Rome, which had existed as a community since before Christian times and numbered about 2,000 at the time, to live inside it. The Ghetto was a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night. The ghetto became the mandatory home of the city’s Jews until its abolishment in 1870.

In addition, pursuant to the bull, Jewish males were required to wear a pointed yellow hat, and Jewish females a yellow kerchief. Jews were required to attend compulsory Catholic sermons on the Jewish sabbath.

The bull also subjected Jews to various other restrictions such as a prohibition on property ownership and practicing medicine among Christians. Jews were allowed to perform only unskilled jobs outside the ghetto, as rag men, secondhand dealers or fish mongers. They could also be pawnbrokers.

The Roman Ghetto was established in one of the least desirable sections of the city, and the Jews themselves had to finance its construction. (The Nazis copied this practice when they put Jews into ghettos in Europe.) As Haaretz Newspaper reports in its history of this papal bull:

Since the area of the ghetto could not expand, the only way to add living space was to build up, to as high as seven stories. This helped to block the sun, making the ghetto a dark space.”

As a result of the tall, multifamily houses over a single lane, the Jews never could see the sun except for the few minutes it was directly over the lane in between the houses, and subsequently the Jews became known for their pale, pale complexions.

Haaretz also notes:

Pope Paul IV (1476-1559) was an unusually rigid and intolerant pontiff. He had been the leading figure in the establishment of a Roman Inquisition in 1542 – the papal bull that created the Inquisition stated, ‘Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him’ – and had overseen the burning of the Talmud in Rome in 1553.”

Paul IV’s successor, Pope Pius IV, enforced the creation of other ghettos in most Italian towns, and his successor, Pope Pius V, recommended them to other bordering states. The Papal States ceased to exist in 1870 when they were incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy, but the requirement that Jews live in the ghetto was only formally abolished by the Italian state in 1882.

Vicolo Capocciuto, Roman Ghetto by Franz Roesler c.1880