Bull «Caeca et obdurata» of Clement VIII

A quarter of a century after Pie V, Clément VIII renewed by the bull *Caeca et obdurata* the expulsion of Jews from the Papal States. The same exceptions were maintained — Rome and Ancône — and Avignon was added, that is to say the Comtat Venaissin, where the *carrières* survived.

The very title of the bull, which describes the Jewish people as blind and hardened, encapsulates the doctrine of the age: the Jewish presence was tolerated as testimony and not as a right, and that tolerance contracted in proportion to the zeal of the reigning pontiff. The communities of Umbria and the Marches, already afflicted, disappeared at that point for good.