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Tamar Herzig
  • Department of History, Tel Aviv University;

    Director, Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies,
    Tel Aviv University, Israel
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A Luso-Malay cosmographer who claimed to have discovered Ophir, a Franciscan friar who headed a delegation of shabby fraudulent emissaries from the Orient, a Dominican tertiary's confirmed stigmata eventually revealed as fraud but later... more
A Luso-Malay cosmographer who claimed to have discovered Ophir, a Franciscan friar who headed a delegation of shabby fraudulent emissaries from the Orient, a Dominican tertiary's confirmed stigmata eventually revealed as fraud but later venerated again as saintly, a Jewish convert who was suspected of both demonic possession and of feigned sanctity, poor folk who survived by converting time and again in order to enjoy the benefits accorded to neophytes, religious chameleons who adapted themselves to the surroundings in which they found themselves, and a number of possessed girls – these are some of the figures re-enacting their charade in the pages of this volume. Twelve distinguished scholars analyze categories and individual cases of imposture in the age of geographical discoveries, of debates over the category of sanctity, and of forced conversions, thus offering a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of identity and pretense, truth and falsehood, in early modern Europe.
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In: Scritture, carismi, istituzioni: Percorsi di vita religiosa in età moderna. Studi per Gabriella Zarri, ed. Concetta Bianca and Anna Scattigno (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2018), pp. 139-150.
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This article argues that converting Jewish girls and women constituted an important expression of Italian nuns' religiosity throughout the age of Catholic Reform. Unlike their male counterparts, however, converting nuns rarely left behind... more
This article argues that converting Jewish girls and women constituted an important expression of Italian nuns' religiosity throughout the age of Catholic Reform. Unlike their male counterparts, however, converting nuns rarely left behind accounts of their conversionary efforts. Moreover, since these endeavors were directed exclusively at female Jews they are often obscured in the historical record and in modern historiography. The article tackles the difficulties of recovering the voices of converting nuns and presents examples that suggest how they could be circumvented. Exploring the potential of drawing on previously understudied texts, such as nuns' supplications, the article calls for the integration of this specific manifestation of female devotion into the scholarship and teaching on women's religious life in the early modern era.
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In 1501, Heinrich Institoris (aka Kramer, d. c.1505) published two works exalting the mystical experiences of contemporary women. Drawing on the entire corpus of Institoris’s works, this essay explores his fascination with somatic female... more
In 1501, Heinrich Institoris (aka Kramer, d. c.1505) published two works exalting the mystical experiences of contemporary women. Drawing on the entire corpus of Institoris’s works, this essay explores his fascination with somatic female spirituality. While Institoris’s diatribe on women in the Malleus maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer, c.1486)—arguably the most misogynistic work of the premodern era—has been ascribed to his fear of women, it proposes that he was no more preoccupied with female witches than he was with men who strayed from Catholic orthodoxy. Regarding the female sex as inferior to the male sex, Institoris maintained that the same qualities that rendered wicked women more
susceptible to witchcraft could turn devout women into the privileged conduits for revelations that confirmed the tenets of Christianity.
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Female monasticism and the conversion of the Jews were both major concerns for the ecclesiastical establishment, as well as for Italian ruling elites, after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Hence, the monachization of baptized Jewish... more
Female monasticism and the conversion of the Jews were both major concerns for the ecclesiastical establishment, as well as for Italian ruling elites, after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Hence, the monachization of baptized Jewish girls acquired a unique symbolic significance. Moreover, during this period cases of demonic possession were on the rise, and so were witchcraft accusations. This article explores a case from late sixteenth-century Mantua in which Jewish conversion, female monachization, demonic possession and witch-hunting all came into play in a violent drama. Drawing on unpublished documents as well as on chronicles and hagiographies, the article elucidates the mental toll that conversion and monachization took on the Jewess Luina, who later became known as Sister Margherita. It delineates her life, which culminated with her diagnosis as a demoniac, and analyzes the significance that this etiology held for the energumen—whose affliction was attributed to her ongoing contacts with Jews—and for Mantua's Jews. The article argues that the anxiety provoked by suspicions that a formerly Jewish nun reverted to Judaism was so profound, that it led to the burning at the stake of Judith Franchetta, the only Jew ever to be executed as a witch in the Italian peninsula.
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This article focuses on the vestition ceremony of the baptized Jew Caterina/suor Theodora (1479-1506), which was celebrated in 1501 at the enclosed Dominican tertiaries’ house of Santa Caterina da Siena in Ferrara. It traces the... more
This article focuses on the vestition ceremony of the baptized Jew Caterina/suor Theodora (1479-1506), which was celebrated in 1501 at the enclosed Dominican tertiaries’ house of Santa Caterina da Siena in Ferrara. It traces the vicissitudes that led to the conversion to Christianity of suor Theodora’s father, the renowned Jewish goldsmith and engraver Salomone da Sesso/Ercole de’ Fedeli (c.1452-c.1521)—together with his entire family—following his condemnation for sodomy in 1491. I argue that suor Theodora’s vestition ceremony was aimed at complementing the celebration of her family’s baptism a decade earlier, which culminated with the sermon that her father had been forced to deliver in Ferrara’s cathedral. The duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este (r. 1471-1505), whose program of church and convent building and decoration in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was unparalleled, timed the celebration of suor Theodora’s vestition to mark the completion of his most impressive and massive pious foundation. The baptized Jew’s vestition was staged as a performance that manifested Christianity’s victory over Judaism, and showcased the achievements of the duke’s ongoing conversionary efforts. It thus attests to the convergence of Ercole d’Este’s cultural patronage and his profound religiosity during the latter half of his reign.
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Tamar Herzig. "Las Mujeres, la Reforma y la Biblia en Italia.” In Reformas y Contrarreformas en la Europa Católica (siglos XV-XVII), ed. Adriana Valerio and Maria Laura Giordano. Navarre: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2016, pp. 41-51.
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... It is therefore only reasonable to surmise that he shared his views on the diabolic sect with friars of the Lombard Congregation that he met in the winter of 1499-1500, thereby contributing to the escalating anxiety over witchcraft in... more
... It is therefore only reasonable to surmise that he shared his views on the diabolic sect with friars of the Lombard Congregation that he met in the winter of 1499-1500, thereby contributing to the escalating anxiety over witchcraft in northern Italy. ...
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International Conference, co-organized by Alessio Assonitis (The Medici Archive Project) and Tamar Herzig (Tel Aviv University), held at Tel Aviv University in June 2018.
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In Renaissance and early modern Italian society, communities and social groups formed the heart of both individual and corporate identity. Such networks served to support and strengthen the existing social order, yet they were also... more
In Renaissance and early modern Italian society, communities and social groups formed the heart of both individual and corporate identity. Such networks served to support and strengthen the existing social order, yet they were also constantly subject to change and adaptations that external pressures and tensions demanded. This conference seeks to explore the role of cultural production in the creation, operation, and negotiation of social networks in Italy and, conversely, the ways in which these networks facilitated the exchange and translation of images, objects, rituals, and ideas. The papers proposed investigate artistic, literary, familial, political, and religious communities and the relationships between them, as friends or enemies. From networks between humanists, Hapsburg courtiers, and artists to rivalries and competition between and within both secular and religious groups, the individual papers address most aspects of early modern culture and the dynamics that shaped and drove their production and transmission.
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In Renaissance and early modern Italian society, communities and social groups formed the heart of both individual and corporate identity. Such networks served to support and strengthen the existing social order, yet they were also... more
In Renaissance and early modern Italian society, communities and social groups formed the heart of both individual and corporate identity. Such networks served to support and strengthen the existing social order, yet they were also constantly subject to change and adaptations that external pressures and tensions demanded. This conference seeks to explore the role of cultural production in the creation, operation, and negotiation of social networks in Italy and, conversely, the ways in which these networks facilitated the exchange and translation of images, objects, rituals, and ideas. The papers proposed investigate artistic, literary, familial, political, and religious communities and the relationships between them, as friends or enemies. From networks between humanists, Hapsburg courtiers, and artists to rivalries and competition between and within both secular and religious groups, the individual papers address most aspects of early modern culture and the dynamics that shaped and drove their production and transmission.
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Conference organized by the Curiel Institute for European Studies at TAU and Camões - Instituto da Cooperação
e da Língua, Portugal.
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Second Joint University of Maryland-Tel Aviv University Workshop Behavioral Practice, Social Boundaries, & the Marking of Identity in the Early Modern Era September 30th and October 1st, 2015 Francis Scott Key Hall 2120 University of... more
Second Joint University of Maryland-Tel Aviv University Workshop
Behavioral Practice, Social Boundaries, & the  Marking of Identity in the Early Modern Era
September 30th and October 1st, 2015
Francis Scott Key Hall 2120
University of Maryland, College Park


Wednesday, September 30
10:00-12:00 Language and Religion: Boundary or Frontier
Chair: Philip Soergel

Christopher Celenza
Johns Hopkins University
The Problem of the Latin Language in the Italian Renaissance.
Stefano Villani
University of Maryland
Becoming Italian: Early Modern British Converts and the Inquisition
Shai Zamir
Tel Aviv University
The Image of the Jewish Woman in the Trent Blood Libel (1475)

Lunch Break

1:45-5:00 Gender, Sexuality and Behavioral Practices
Chair: Marsha Rozenblit

Pawel Maciejko
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Sexuality and Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz
Hugo Brulhart
University of Maryland
Sodomy & Crime in 16th-Century Geneva
Tamar Herzig
Tel Aviv University
Being a 'Jewish Nun' in Early Modern Italy
Eyda Merediz
University of Maryland
Canary Islands’ Malinches: Happy Foundational Couples in the Atlantic?

Thursday, October 1
9:10-10:45 Change in the Marketplace; Change in the Environment
Chair: Bernard Cooperman

Robert Friedel
University of Maryland
Beer, Cheese, and Bread. Men, Women, and Work in Early Modern Britain.
Noel Johnson
George Mason University
Jewish Persecutions and Weather Shocks


11:00–12:30 Labeling People
Chair: Tamar Herzig

Ira Berlin
University of Maryland
What’s In a Name?
Bernard Cooperman
University of Maryland
Race, Slavery, and Synagogue Honors
Holly Brewer
University of Maryland
Identifying People as Property. Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and its Empire

Lunch Break
1:45–4:30 Cultural Shifts
Chair: Stefano Villani

Andrea Frisch
University of Maryland
Moving History: Affect & National Memory after the French Wars of Religion
Ralph Bauer
University of Maryland
Lucretius' New World: Cannibalism, Materialism, and Humanism in the Early Modern Encounter with the Americas
Jonathan Allen
University of Maryland
Excluding and Defending Tomb-Visitation in Early Modern Ottoman Islam?
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Joint Tel Aviv University-University of Maryland Workshop to be held at Tel Aviv University on 14-16 June, 2015.
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Contemplata aliis tradere. Lo specchio letterario dei frati Predicatori
Roma, 23-27 gennaio 2017
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