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Presentation – Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598-1638

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The following is a guest post by Jeanine Cali, a writer for the Law Library’s Outreach Team on the upcoming presentation by Professor Katherine Aron-Beller about her new book, Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598-1638.

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at 12:00 p.m., the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress will jointly host a public presentation by Gratz College Professor Katherine Aron-Beller regarding her new book, Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598-1638.  Professor Aron-Beller will discuss and sign her book in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room, located on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, Room LJ220, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540.

As part of her research, Professor Aron-Beller studied a large number of primary documents including trial transcripts, letters and other manuscript sources, many of which are available in the Library of Congress collections.  According to the author, “the book explores two areas of interest: the Papal Inquisition in Modena and the status of Jews in the early modern Italian duchy.”  The author hopes the book will bring a “better understanding of  how an Inquisitorial court assumed jurisdiction over a practising [sic] Jewish community in the seventeenth century.”

For an examination of a similar topic and references to rare books in the Law Library’s collection, see the November 29, 2011 post by Nathan Dorn, Law, a Curse and Life in an Italian Ghetto.

Please join us at this event that we hope will generate increased interest amongst experts and the general public to explore our collections dealing with the topics reviewed in Professor Aron-Beller’s book, in particular, materials written originally in Latin, German, Italian, and other  languages.

For those of our readers who will not be able to make it to the event, we will have a member of the In Custodia Legis team attend on your behalf and blog about it afterwards.  We will also live tweet the event via Twitter @LawLibCongress.  Stay tuned!

Update: The event video was added below.

Comments (4)

  1. Great topic, very much a part of modern times.
    Is this presentation recorded and posted on the Internet so the rest of the world can benefit? Unfortunately I do not see this as an option: For those of our readers who will not be able to make it to the event, we will have a member of the In Custodia Legis team attend on your behalf and blog about it afterwards. We will also live tweet the event via Twitter

  2. We are very fortunate to have the library of Congress. I hope one day events such as this could be viewed live on cable.

  3. Thank you for your comments and interest in the event. Although it will not be streamed live, a webcast of the event is planned. We will add a link to the webcast once it is formatted and posted.

    • In case you missed it, you can watch the webcast of Prof. Aaron-Beller’s talk.

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