Amore, sessualità e convivenza fra ebrei e cristiane nella Venezia del Settecento

Abstract

This article investigates emotional and sexual relationships that involved dwelling
together between Jewish men and Christian women in eighteenth-century Venice,
drawing on sixteen judicial proceedings initiated by the Ufficiali al Cattaver
between 1712 and 1775. By analyzing testimonies from lovers, neighbors, workers,
passers-by, and members of their surrounding communities, the study reconstructs
practices of courtship, forms of intimacy, material arrangements of shared
households, and the emotional dynamics that shaped these heterodox unions.
Despite strict prohibitions and social stigma, these relationships generated shared
domestic spaces – households that were neither fully Jewish nor Christian – and
reveal processes of everyday integration, urban mobility, and the negotiation of
religious boundaries. The judicial records further illuminate neighborhood reactions,
informal surveillance networks, gossip as a moral instrument, and anxieties
surrounding interreligious contamination. Taken together, these cases expand our
understanding of emotions, sexuality, and interconfessional relations in eighteenth-
century Venetian society.