Release from Excommunication

Following the expulsion from Castile and Aragon in 1492, Jews from the Iberian Peninsula began to arrive in Rome, and the influx continued well into the sixteenth century. They were given shelter in the city, although the local Roman Jewish community objected to their presence. Three separate Iberian communities were present there in the early fifteenth century, each named according to place of origin and each preserving its own rite. In 1519, Pope Leo X granted permission for the Catalan community to build a synagogue. However, the siege of Rome caused a decline in the Jewish population, forcing the Catalonian and Aragonese communities to merge. In 1555, all the Jews of Rome were confined to the ghetto. The Catalan-Aragonese community numbered around 250 to 350 persons in 1566, and by 1581 had increased to between 400 and 500 (about 15 percent of the city’s Jewish population).