Feeding the Eternal City: Jewish and Christian Butchers in the Roman Ghetto

Seemingly pedestrian, the slaughter and sale of meat, especially kosher meat, carries an enormous social and religious charge. This meat’s sale to non-Jews was canonically forbidden. Nonetheless, dispensations to allow it were issued as early as the year 1084, continuing through 1723, making these sales a barometer of a Jewish-Christian equilibrium, or its absence. Interactions, indeed, collaboration between butchers–Jewish with Jewish (including women) and Jewish with Christian–open a window onto the world of butchering itself.