Metadata: Ancient Sanitary Magistracy
Collection
- Country:
- Italy
- Holding institution:
- Mantua State Archive
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archivio di Stato di Mantova
- Postal address:
- via Roberto Ardigò 11, 46100 Mantova
- Phone number:
- +39 376324441
- Web address:
- http://www.asmantova.beniculturali.it
- Email:
- as-mn@beniculturali.it
- Reference number:
- 70
- Title:
- Ancient Sanitary Magistracy
- Title (official language):
- Magistratura Sanitaria Antica
- Date(s):
- 1555-1813
- Language:
- Italian
- Latin
- Extent:
- 201 boxes
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- This fonds contains documents of the Collegio dei medici (College of Physicians), from 1555 to 1806; of the Commissione di sanità (Sanitary Board), from 1807 to 1808; of the Magistrato di sanità (Sanitary Magistrate), from 1631 to 1785, later to become the Ufficio di sanità (Sanitary Office), from 1786 on. They include many documents relating to the Jews of Mantua, which are distributed throughout the fonds. Examples include: licences granted to Jews to freely exercise as physician, surgeon and/or “aromatario” (druggist); documents regarding the activities of Jewish doctors, some of them very famous, such as the relatives of Abraham Portaleone (his son David, in 1570; his nephew Guglielmo, 1639-1676), and others fairly unknown, such as Benedetto Cases or Samuel Bonomino, who converted to Christianity in 1640, but faced difficulties with the Collegio dei Medici in obtaining the proper place and privileges he deserved, as he had been baptised (the possibility for the Jews to cure Christians it is not explicitly discussed here, but when Mantua was part of the Repubblica Cisalpina under French control, a permit for Jewish doctors to exercise “outside of the ghetto” was required in 1797); Jewish women appointed as midwives (1777-1779), but only inside the Jewish ghetto, and a Jewish woman, Sara Romanelli, who in 1789 was allowed to practice as midwife in Mantua and in the countryside; a trial against a Christian apothecary who sold a special liquor to the Jewish pharmacists Della Volta; lists of the population, with numbers of living people, the dead, new-born babies and marriages in Mantua and the countryside, divided into male and female, Christians and Jews, throughout the 18th century (please note there are no lists of the living after 1786, because this task was undertaken by “Regia Intendenza Politica”; from 1700 to 1768 there is a long list of the dead, including their age when they died and the cause of death; no Jews were indicated in the year 1791); annual visit to the ghetto to check the sewer and the sanitary condition of the houses (there are also edicts and fines related to this issue); Jewish burials and cemeteries; a serious accident happened in 1776, when 65 Jews died in the ghetto in Mantua because a slab of a house fell down (details of this episode may be found in volume no. 402 of another fonds, “Magistrato camerale antico”, where this volume is kept at the moment, although it actually belongs to the fonds of “Magistratura sanitaria antica”).
- Archival history:
- For historical information about the holding institution, the State Archive of Mantua, see http://guidagenerale.maas.ccr.it/document.aspx?uri=/istituticonservatori/IC0460022101
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Magistrature di sanità (1555-1817) groups together the offices that dealt with health issues from the Gonzaga period up to the Habsburgs: Collegio dei medici (1555-1783), Delegazione medica (1785-1807) and Commissione dipartimentale di sanità (1807-1808).
- Access points: locations:
- Mantua
- Access points: persons/families:
- Portaleone, Abraham ben David, 1542-1612
- Finding aids:
- Guida Generale degli Archivi di Stato. Archivio di Stato di Mantova
- Yerusha Network member:
- Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center - Milan
- Author of the description:
- Samuela Marconcini; Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea; 2017