Jewish History
By the 12th century, Trani already housed one of the largest Jewish communities of Southern Italy, and was the birthplace of one of the greatest medieval rabbis of Italy: Rabbi Isaiah ben Mali di Trani (c. 1180-1250), a prolific and prominent commentator and halakhic authority. The great talmudist Rabbi Moses ben Joseph di Trani (1505–1585) was born in Thessaloniki, three years after his family had fled there from Trani due to antisemitic persecution.
Trani entered a crisis under the Anjou and Catalan-Aragonese rule (14th-16th centuries), as its Jewish component was persecuted under Dominican pressure. Under the House of Bourbon, however, Trani recovered a certain splendour, thanks to the generally improved condition of Southern Italy economy and the construction of several magnificent buildings. Trani was province capital until the Napoleonic age, when Joachim Murat deprived it of this status in favour of Bari. In 1799, moreover, the French troops provoked a massacre of Trani's population, as it had adhered to the Neapolitan Republic.
The Scolanova Synagogue survives and, after many centuries as a church, has been rededicated as a synagogue. The church of Sant'Anna is another medieval former synagogue.
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