Great Synagogue of Palermo

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Great Synagogue of Palermo

Palermo had one of the largest Jewish communities of medieval Sicily, living mainly in a quarter called the Giudecca or Guzzetta, between the Kalsa and the Albergheria, around today's Via Calderai, Via del Giardinaccio and Vicolo Meschita. Its main synagogue was known as the Meschita, from the word Christians used for any non-Christian place of worship. Scholars have long suggested that it occupied the site of an earlier mosque, though this is debated.

The fullest account comes from Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro, who was held in Palermo from July 1487 while waiting for a ship to Jerusalem. He described a square prayer hall about forty cubits each way, entered through a vine-covered courtyard with porticoes, benches and a well, with a hospice, a ritual bath and a council hall around it. He wrote that the building had no equal.

The Spanish Crown's expulsion edict of 1492 ended Jewish life in Palermo; the last Jews left in January 1493. On 6 October 1492 the community's leaders sold the synagogue property to Cristina De Salvo. In the following century the complex passed to religious foundations, and the church of San Nicolò da Tolentino was eventually built over the site. The synagogue vanished, although a portico in front of its entrance has been traced by the researcher Maria Eugenia Manzella, and a well-head with a Hebrew inscription, possibly from its courtyard, survives at the Magione.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: the Meschita, Jewish quarter (Giudecca/Guzzetta) of Palermo, entered from Via dei Calderai through the arch of the Meschita. Today: site of the church of San Nicolò da Tolentino, Via Maqueda / Vicolo Meschita, 90134 Palermo (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Jews are documented in Palermo from 598, when letters of Pope Gregory the Great refer to them, and from the Norman period the Meschita was the heart of the city's Jewish community. The Jewish quarter lay just outside the old walls, crossed by the Kemonia stream; its known gates were an iron gate at the start of today's Via dell'Università and the arch of the Meschita in Via dei Calderai. Obadiah of Bertinoro counted about 850 Jewish families in 1487. Many worked as coppersmiths and ironworkers, porters and labourers, and he judged them lax in religious practice except in making kosher wine, which Christians also bought. The community was governed by twelve representatives elected each year, who dealt with taxes, fines and penalties in a hall beside the synagogue. Other Jews lived in the Cassaro and Conceria districts, and notarial deeds suggest the quarter may have held more than one synagogue.

Architektura i projekt

No plan, drawing or view of the building is known, so its appearance rests on Obadiah of Bertinoro's letter of 1487. He entered through a square courtyard whose stone pillars carried vines, with porticoes on three sides furnished with large benches for those who did not go inside, and a well; the door of the synagogue opened on the fourth side. The prayer hall was square, about forty cubits (bracci) on each side. On its east side stood the hekhal, the cabinet for the Torah scrolls, reached by doors from the south and north and guarded by two members of the community, and in the centre was a wooden platform, the tevah. Around the courtyard were a hospice with beds for the sick and for strangers, a ritual bath and a large hall for the community's governors. Its builder, date of construction, capacity and style are unknown. Manzella's study, based on finds made in 2011 and archive documents, has identified a portico in front of the synagogue's entrance.

Życie w synagodze

Obadiah of Bertinoro gives the only eyewitness view of worship in the Meschita. The Torah scrolls were kept in the hekhal on the east side, adorned with silver crowns and precious stones, and its textiles were valued at about 4,000 gold coins. Two members of the community guarded the doors to the hekhal. On Sabbaths and festivals five cantors stood on the wooden platform in the centre of the hall and sang, he wrote, with sweet voices and melodies he had never heard elsewhere. The synagogue was also the centre of communal life: the twelve elected governors met in the adjoining hall to settle taxes, fines and penalties, and the hospice took in the sick and travellers. A marble well-head inscribed in Hebrew for Yshmael, son of Rav Sa'adya, possibly marking his appointment as rabbi, may be the well Obadiah saw, but its origin is not proven.

Zniszczenie

The synagogue was not destroyed in a riot. Its use ended with the expulsion ordered by the Spanish Crown in 1492, which applied to Sicily as a Spanish possession. Jews had to sell their property to repay creditors, and some nobles bought at very low prices. On 6 October 1492 the leaders of the Jewish community sold the synagogue property to Cristina De Salvo in two deeds; the last Jews left Palermo on 12 January 1493. In 1495 De Salvo left the property to her daughters, and on 27 October 1507 the Poor Clare Lucrezia de Leo founded the convent of Santa Maria del Popolo in former synagogue buildings leased from Giovanni Abatellis; a flood in 1557 forced the nuns out. Sources disagree on what followed: one dates a church of the Compagnia di San Nicolò da Tolentino on the site to 1507, others date the church of San Nicolò da Tolentino to 1617 and an Augustinian convent to the seventeenth century. The building was destroyed at an unknown date during these works; no source names who demolished it.

Los społeczności

The expulsion edict of 1492 ended the organised Jewish community of Palermo and of Sicily. Jews were forced to sell their houses and goods quickly to settle debts, and unsold property was to be confiscated. The last Jews of Palermo left the city on 12 January 1493. About 5,000 Jews were living in the city at the time of the expulsion, and just under 200 families of converts stayed behind. Some exiles came back posing as merchants, but they were then barred from trading on the island. After the expulsion the Jewish cemetery outside Porta Termini was repeatedly plundered and its gravestones were reused as building material, so very few survive. No Jewish community existed in Sicily again until modern times, apart from a few merchant families in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The fate of individual Palermo families after they left is not traced in the sources read.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The site lies in the old Jewish quarter between Via Maqueda, Via dei Calderai and Via del Giardinaccio. The church of San Nicolò da Tolentino, reached through the surviving arch of the Meschita in Via dei Calderai, stands where the synagogue stood, and the area also holds state archive premises. Nothing of the prayer hall is known to survive above ground. The Arco del Notaro in Via del Giardinaccio may have been an entrance to the complex. In 2017 Archbishop Corrado Lorefice lent the Oratory of Santa Maria del Sabato, in the same complex, to the Jewish community for use as a synagogue; a protocol signed in December 2024 planned its conversion from 2025.

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