FRIULI–VENEZIA GIULIA

FRIULI–VENEZIA GIULIA, northeastern region of Italy. Jews were already settled in antiquity at Aquileia in Friuli. Between 1028 and 1420 the patriarch of Aquileia ruled over Friuli. Under his protection, Jewish merchants and moneylenders settled in cividale , Cormons (1340), Gemona (1395), Pordenone and Porcia (1399), san daniele , trieste (1348), Udine (1387), and Venzone (1333). Within a brief period, prosperous Jewish communities formed around them. When Friuli was annexed by the Republic of Venice in 1420, there was no essential change in the status of the Jews. However, at the end of the 15th and during the 16th centuries the preaching of friars and the Counter-Reformation movement led to deterioration in the situation of the Jews and the expulsion from Udine in 1556 and Cividale in 1572. The situation of the Jews living in Habsburg territory also deteriorated. However, in the middle of the 17th century Jews still lived at Gorizia and there was a new settlement at Gradisca. Jews were then segregated in ghettos, including Trieste in 1696. In 1777, Jews were expelled from all the settlement in the territory of the Republic of Venice. However, for Jews living in Habsburg territory, the 18th century was a period of growth in both Gorizia and Trieste. With Joseph II's reforms, Habsburg Trieste became the center of attraction for Jews in Friuli. While in the course of the 19th century, all the other Jewish communities, with the exception of Gorizia, begun a steady decline, Trieste grew to become one of the most prosperous communities of the Habsburg Empire. The end of World War I, and the passage of the whole region to Italy, as well as the deterioration of the economic situation, produced a decline in the Jewish population in Friuli. The Holocaust weighed heavily on Friuli's Jews, concentrated in Trieste. In the early 21st century, in all of Friuli, Jews lived only in Trieste. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. Roth, Venice (1930), 269, 349; F. Luzzatto, Cronache storiche della Università degli ebrei di San Daniele del Friuli… (1964); idem, in: RMI, 16 (1950), 140–6; Modona, in: Vessillo Israelitico, 47 (1899), 327–34, 366–8; Roth, Dark Ages, index. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: S.G. Cusin, and P.C. Ioly Zorattini, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Itinerari ebraici, I luoghi, la storia, l'arte (1998), 9–19; M. Del Bianco Controzzi, La comunita' ebraica di Gradisca d'Isonzo, Istituto di storia dell'Universita' di Udine, Serie monografica di storia moderna e contemporanea (1983). (Daniel Carpi / Samuele Rocca (2nd ed.)