Origins
Possible Spanish origin
One theory claims a Spanish origin, forming the hypothesis that they fled Spain because of the Inquisition. However, 22 years before 1492 (year of the Spanish expulsion), they were already settled in Italy, probably at Senigallia. Apart from the date problem, it seems difficult to believe that families running away from the Holy Inquisition and the Vatican, end up in a town run practically by the pope himself; whether it was Pope Alexander VI from the Borgia family, of Spanish origins, or Julius II from the Della Rovere family.
Possible Roman origin
Another theory claims a Roman origin. If the family came from Rome, they probably fled the city after 1215, when a Roman Catholic Church council, convened by Pope Innocent III, passed a law that authorized and encouraged princes to forbid all commerce between Jews and the Christian majority, and to favor Christians while being “zealous in restraining Jews.” The law also demanded that Jews who had ever acquired property from Christians must pay heavy fines to the church.[1] The pope was both the head of the church and the direct ruler of Rome and the surrounding Papal States.
During the subsequent centuries a number of Roman Jewish families left Rome on their own, or were encouraged by the Church to go to different towns or villages to establish small usury banks (with the purpose to substitute Christians in that line of business). They traveled choosing the Via Salaria or the Via Flaminia, taking along with them their tradesman abilities (with the corresponding family names, respectively): Orefice, Tessitori, Tintori, Della Seta (Goldsmith, Weaver, Dyer, Silk).
Other possible origins
Other possible origins are mixed in the melting pot of those troubled years:
- Ashkenazi Jews came from German-speaking countries, after the 1348 black plague (that Jewish communities have been accused of spreading, and for which many have been burnt alive). The individuals and families lucky enough to have survived moved to Venice and to Ancona, probably because the proximity of water made them safer.
- Sephardic Jews (the word derives from "Spain", Sepharad in Hebrew), expelled from Spain in 1492, started a long migration through Portugal and Northern Europe arriving at Livorno and later in the 16th century reaching the Marche.
