Farewell to Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, scholar of Italian Judaism

He was 80 years old. A historian of the Inquisition, he brought to light centuries of persecution against Jews and Judaizers, giving voice to history's invisible figures.

Historian Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, an internationally renowned scholar of modern Judaism and the Inquisition's prosecutions against the Jews, died at his home in Udine at the age of 80. He dedicated much of his academic life to rigorously and passionately reconstructing human events often erased from collective memory, opening new avenues of research and historical reflection, and shedding light on lesser-known aspects of Judaism in Italy.

Ioly Zorattini has published all the "Trials of the Holy Office of Venice against Jews and Judaizers" from the 16th to the 18th century in the "History of Judaism in Italy" series, which he edited (14 volumes, from 1980 to 1999, Olschki). This research has given voice to hundreds of marginalized, persecuted lives, often erased from official history. He has addressed all facets of Judaism—Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Italian—in over ninety publications. Among his most important works are "Leandro Tisanio. A Judaizer from San Vito in the Seventeenth Century" (1984), "A Salvation That Comes from Afar. The Purim of the Jewish Community of Padua" (2000), and "'This is Justice for You Other Christians'. Jews, Judaizers and Neophytes in the Proceedings of the Holy Office of Aquileia and Concordia" (2009), all published by Olschki.

Born in Pavia di Udine on September 2, 1944, Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini graduated with honors in philosophy from the University of Padua. He began his academic career at the universities of Bologna, Ferrara, Trieste, and, above all, Udine, where he established the center of his scientific and teaching activities in 1978. At the University of Udine, he founded the first humanities department, that of Historical and Documentary Sciences, and from 1986 held the first Italian chair of Jewish History, a discipline he helped establish and legitimize in the national academic landscape. From 1995 to 2011, he was a full professor of History of Religions in Udine, consolidating his profile as a scholar capable of analyzing in depth the complex interaction between cultures and faiths in early modern Europe, with particular attention to the dynamics of the Counter-Reformation, the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, the Sephardic and Marrano diaspora, forced conversions, and the censorship of sacred texts.

A rigorous academic and tireless cultural organizer, Ioly Zorattini has participated in countless conferences in Italy and abroad, holding seminars at the Sorbonne and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. In 1998, he was invited by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the former Holy Office, to participate in the International Conference on the Inquisition sponsored by the Holy See in preparation for the Jubilee of 2000. Since 1999, he has been a member of the Italian-Israeli Commission for the History and Culture of the Jews of Italy.

He has received numerous prestigious academic and associative awards: he is a full member of the Deputation of National History for Friuli and the Veneto, of the Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Udine, of the World Union of Jewish Studies, and of the International Society of Historians of the Mediterranean; he is a founding member of the Italian Association for the Study of Judaism (which he chaired from 2003 to 2009) and of the Pio Paschini Institute for the History of the Church in Friuli.

(by Paolo Martini)