Italian Promissory Note issued to Reuben ben Samuel Sforno and others.

(ITALY).

Bologna

15th May, 1439

The Sicilian mayor of Bologna, Jacomo di Costanzo, knight and doctor, acknowledges receipt of a bank loan of 40 lire from the Jews Mosetto son of Ventura, Mosetto of Modena, Abraam son of Lia, and Rubin son of Samuel, which he undertakes to repay on demand. The document, with the heraldic seal of the borrower, is written in Italian, in the elegant cursive of the merchant and professional class of the early 15th-century. A four-line endorsement in an equally elegant Hebrew semi-cursive states: Document furnished us by Messer Jacomo di Gostanzo, mayor (moshel) of Bologna, to pay all of us the 40 lire that we loaned him collectively on 15th May, [5]199.

Father and son Reuben ben Samuel Sforno and Abraham ben Samuel Sforno were the leading Jewish bankers in Bologna during the first and second halves of the 15th-century respectively. The building that housed both the Sforno bank and the Sforno family home still stands on the Piazza Santo Stephano, in the historic center of the city. The building has frequently been misidentified as the home of the Biblical commentator, philosopher Obadiah Sforno (1475-1550) who did indeed live in Bologna, where he conducted a yeshiva with the support of his brother Hananel Sforno, also a Bologna banker. Sforno, or Spurno as it is spelled in one document here, is first found as a Jewish family name in the 15th-century, but the relationship of Obadiah and Hananel to Reuben and Abraham, while seemingly apparent, has not been demonstrated. For more on the activities of Jewish bankers in Renaissance Bologna, see M. G. Muzzarelli, Banchi ebraici a Bologna nel XV secolo (1994).