The Politics of Exclusion: Licensing Jewish Medical Practitioners in Medici Florence

In 1560, the Florentine guild of Physicians and Apothecaries enacted new regulations that required all medical practitioners, even those who had long practiced in the Medici state, to pass a rigorous licensing examination. Local Jewish practitioners, however, were blocked from taking the examination on the grounds that it contravened Christian law. Only the intervention of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici enabled them to continue their medical pursuits, which heightened Jews’ reliance on ducal favors. This essay examines how medical professionalization and anti-Jewish sentiment intersected to create a complex politics of exclusion in mid-sixteenth-century Florence. Adopting a microhistorical approach, the essay probes the experiences of eight Jewish practitioners (four physicians, one surgeon, and three remedy vendors) whose pursuit of licensure not only documents myriad professional obstacles and Cosimo’s interventionist style of governance, but also gives voice to Italian religious minorities as they tried to make lives for themselves in an increasingly hostile environment.