Koper Medieval Synagogue

סקירה

הסיפור של Koper Medieval Synagogue

Koper lies on the Slovenian coast of Istria. In the Middle Ages it was Capodistria, a town of the Venetian Republic, and from the later fourteenth century Jews settled there, as they did in neighbouring Piran and Izola. They came mostly from those coastal towns or from the German lands by way of northern Italy, and they lived chiefly from lending money under contracts, called condotte, agreed with the town commune.

According to Klemen Jelinčič Boeta's 2009 survey of the Jews of medieval Slovenia, the contracts of Venetian Istria regulated religious autonomy, burial rights and the construction of synagogues. For Koper, three articles of the contract of 1391, its confirmations of 1409 and 1425, and a new contract of 1459 survive. The same author lists Koper among the places where synagogues 'certainly' existed, adding that of all these buildings only the one in Maribor is preserved. The European Jewish heritage guide places the medieval synagogue in the former Jewish street, Židovska ulica, today Triglavska ulica in the old town.

Beyond these statements nothing is known of the synagogue: no description, date of building, plan, image or record of its loss was found. Because Jelinčič Boeta also says the Jews of Koper mostly rented their houses, it cannot be ruled out that the synagogue was a room rather than a separate building.

מיקום

Where it stood

Historic: Jewish street (Židovska ulica, contrada degli ebrei), Capodistria; exact house unknown. Today: Triglavska ulica / Calle Monte Tricorno, old town, 6000 Koper (approximate: street midpoint).

פתיחת מפה גדולה ←

הקהילה היהודית

Jelinčič Boeta dates the Jewish presence in Koper from 1386 until 1486, and at the latest until 1550, drawing on Italian and Slovenian archival studies by Roberto Grison, Rita Cusin and Janez Peršič. Koper was one of the Venetian towns of Istria, with Piran and Izola, where Jews lived under contracts with the commune; parts of such contracts survive only for Poreč, Koper and Piran. A banker named Abraham is attested in Koper in 1418 before he appears in Izola in 1421, which shows how the lenders moved between the coastal towns and Trieste. Jelinčič Boeta writes that most of the Jews of Koper, Izola and Piran came either from the other two towns or from the northern lands of Ashkenaz by way of northern Italy, so that the coast formed a cultural world distinct from the Jewish communities of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. Women are recorded in business in Koper, and the article notes that poor Jews are specifically mentioned there. Koper is also named among the towns with a Jewish street and a Jewish cemetery.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

Nothing is known of the architecture of the Koper synagogue. No source consulted gives its size, plan, materials, date of construction or appearance, and no drawing, photograph or plan of it has been found. Its very form is uncertain. Jelinčič Boeta writes that in Piran, Izola and Koper the Jews mostly rented the houses they lived in, unlike in Ljubljana or Maribor, where they owned them, and in such small communities a synagogue was often a hall or room inside a house rather than a free-standing building. On the other hand, the Venetian contracts with the Jews of Istria expressly regulated the construction of synagogues, and Jelinčič Boeta describes the synagogue in general as the central building of a community, usually larger and finer than the Jewish houses around it. Which of these descriptions fits Koper is unknown. The heritage guide's statement that the synagogue stood in the Jewish street, today's Triglavska ulica, a short, narrow, slightly curving lane of five houses running off Čevljarska ulica according to Ruth Ellen Gruber, is the only indication of its setting.

החיים בבית הכנסת

No record of services, officers or rabbis of the Koper synagogue was found. Jelinčič Boeta argues that the Jews of the coastal towns, Koper among them, probably kept the ritual of their Rhineland and northern Italian origins, the rite he calls Raynus, rather than the Austrian Ashkenazi custom of the inland communities such as Maribor. He also writes that in small communities the synagogue served at least occasionally as a classroom or house of study, and that such a classroom can safely be assumed in Koper, though no document names one there. The community was small and partly poor, and its members were bound to the commune by the terms of the condotte, which, as the article explains, set out their religious autonomy alongside their rights of burial, trade and moneylending. The community's dead were buried in a Jewish cemetery in Koper, whose site is not given in the sources read. Everything said here about worship in Koper is drawn from the general account of the region; nothing specific to this synagogue has survived in the sources consulted.

הרס

When and how the Koper synagogue ceased to exist is unknown. Jelinčič Boeta, the only scholarly source read, states only that of all the medieval synagogues he lists in present-day Slovenia and its neighbourhood, the one in Maribor alone is preserved; for Koper he gives no date, cause or actor for the loss. The heritage guide and Ruth Ellen Gruber's itinerary mention the site but say nothing of the building's fate. No source records that the synagogue was confiscated, converted, burnt or pulled down, and no document of an expulsion of the Jews from Koper was found: the community simply disappears from the records between 1486 and about 1550. If the synagogue was a rented room in an ordinary house, it may have returned to domestic use without leaving any trace. Who demolished or converted it, if anyone did, is not recorded. The date given on this page is therefore unknown, and any later rebuilding of the houses in Triglavska ulica cannot be linked to the synagogue from the sources found.

גורל הקהילה

According to Jelinčič Boeta, Jews are recorded in Koper until 1486 and at the latest until 1550; he cites no expulsion order for the town, and no source read names anyone who drove the Jews out of Koper. The neighbouring community of Piran is recorded until about 1583, and Jews lived in Izola throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and later. The heritage guide jguideeurope.org states, by contrast, that a ghetto was established in Koper at the beginning of the sixteenth century; it gives no source, and Jelinčič Boeta writes that the Jewish quarters of the region were never ghettos, so the claim is unconfirmed. Whether the last Jews of Koper left for Piran, Izola, Trieste or Venice is unknown. No Jewish community existed in Koper in modern times. The Jewish cemetery that Jelinčič Boeta says existed in Koper has not been located in any source read, and no tombstone from it is reported among those that survive in the region.

האתר כיום

The heritage guide places the medieval synagogue in the former Jewish street of Koper, Židovska ulica, which is now called Triglavska ulica (Italian Calle Monte Tricorno), in the old town. Ruth Ellen Gruber describes it as a short, narrow, slightly curving street of five houses perpendicular to Čevljarska ulica. Which house, if any, stands on the site of the synagogue is unknown, and no marker of the synagogue in the street is recorded in the sources found. The map pin marks the middle of Triglavska ulica as given by OpenStreetMap and should be read as the street, not the building.

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