13th–14th centuries
Angevin persecutions
1290-1294·Naples, Pouilles
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
forced conversions, synagogues converted into churches, disappearance of communities in the kingdom
The Angevin kingdom of Naples harbored, in Apulia, communities among the oldest in Europe — Trani, Bari, Otranto, Taranto — whose academies had nourished the Italian rabbinical tradition. Under Charles II, a conversion campaign led by the Dominicans caused them to disappear within a few years: synagogues transformed into churches, baptisms obtained under duress, property confiscated.
The converts, known as *neofiti*, remained clustered together and suspect, kept under Inquisition surveillance for two more centuries. The Jewish community of southern Italy, attested since late Antiquity, never reconstituted itself; the episode stands as one of the most complete erasures of a regional Judaism in the Western world.
- Period :
- 13th–14th centuries
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Italie
Cesare Colafemmina, *The Jews in Calabria* ; Joshua Starr, « The Mass Conversion of Jews in Southern Italy » ; Cecil Roth, *The History of the Jews of Italy*.