The estrangement of the glassmakers of Altare from their roots did not take
place quickly. The clandestine identification of the Università with
Judaic glassmakers faced with even direr circumstances was made evident by a
most peculiar influx of glassmakers from Spain. Not only did the Università
accept these forestieri(foreigners) with open arms, but placed them into their
highest council. It appears that the Università became a surreptitious
way station, or "underground railway," for Judaic glassmakers seeking
to pursue a livelihood in the Diaspora.
Some of these artisans remained in Altare; others , along with many of the original members of the community, brought their art to Provence, to the Netherlands and to England.
The eminent Italian historian of the Università, Guido Malandra, hesitant to identify these emigrants directly as Jews, pointed out that "The Altarese do not restrict themselves to produce and work at home, as is normal in other Italian regions, but leave in groups from their home base to exercise their art even at a distance from Montferrato... They leave, they build their furnaces, produce glass and sell it, and move again as if they were in a biblical diaspora; in other cases, however, they implant establishments which function for generations at the new locations, but always, and again characteristically maintain a direct relationship with their original country of origin."
Then Malandra hints, significantly: "It is a phenomenon unknown to any other social group of the Marquisate of Montferrato, where only the Hebrews are in the habit of moving the seat of their business from place to place."14
Malandra's oblique reference derives from the fact that Jewish glassmakers were unable to identify themselves as Jews in the pursuit of their art. Most glassmakers assumed a Huguenot disguise. England, a country from which the Jews had been banned, eager to establish a glassmaking industry, turned a blind eye to the fact that virtually all of the scores of glassmakers who entered England in the seventeenth century, declared themselves either "Huguenot" or "of no church." Many "Huguenots" bore names such as "Robles" and "Rodriquez!"
Over the centuries the Spanish and Italian names of the glassmakers became anglicized along with the memories of their bearers. The family name "Racchetti," for example, became transmuted into "Rackett."
Some of the members of the reconstituted Università d'Altare bore names that begin with "Bar" or "Me." "Bar" means "from" in Hebrew, just as does "Von" in German or "da" or "de" in Italian. "Me" translates to "of" in Hebrew. An eponym formed by the name of a city and prefixed by Bar or Me is therefore most likely to be of Judaic origin.
Thus, Jacobo Bartolletti (and also Bartoluzzi) translates to Jacob from Toledo (after the Latin version of Toledo: Toletti). Barcaluso identifies the family as being a Judaic family from the town of Caluso in Lombardy. Metrevis translates to "of Treves," from which glass-making town of Provence Jews fled into Italy. Often the prefix was dropped. "Treves," for example, is a common Italian-Jewish eponym appearing ubiquitously throughout the Judaic communities of France and northern Italy.
Jewish surnames were frequently simple eponyms of the cities from which they migrated. Names such as "Pisano" and "de Pisa," for example, appear in the annals of both the Venetian and Altarese glassmakers. There was, in fact, a considerable Judaic glassmaking community in Pisa. As we shall see further on, some were granted exclusive glassmaking rights in the Republic of Genoa.
An extraordinary number of the forestieri appear in Altare into the seventeenth century with names which identify them as coming from Iberian Portugal or Spain. The fact that these stranieri, or "outsiders" were straightaway made welcome at the Università takes on sharp significance in light of the otherwise inflexible application of injunctions against the acceptance of outsiders. The statutes of the community explicitly proscribe access to the furnace to anyone unrelated to the registered families.
The local paesani could not be hired for anything other than the menial housecleaning jobs within the vetreria (glasshouse) when they were permitted to work there at all. The uncompromising restrictions were enforced by severe penalties for their transgression.
The Università became more than a melting pot for certain foreigners; it became the hub of their dispersal into the diaspora. The secrets of glassmaking were then universally and strictly confined within the family circles of the glassmakers. The economic interest of the glassmaking community would seem to be to prevent the industry from spreading beyond its borders. Yet the Università not only condoned but encouraged members to establish competitive enterprises abroad, and made the emigrants welcome upon their return. This apparently schizophrenic attitude can only be rationalized by the proposition that, indeed, these foreigners were considered family, and so considered because they were Jews.
The coats-of-arms of the main glassmaking families of the Universita
d'Altare. Conspicuous among these monsu are those of apparent Sephardic origin:
Marini, Marenghi, Bertoluzzi, Racchetti, Masari, Lodi, and Somaglia. They indicate
an influx of glassmakers from Spain and Portugal from the 15th century forward.
Documentation of the Judaic identity of the glassmakers in the area was found
by the author in Genoa's archives. After a grueling search through reams of
fading and crumbling documents, a paper dated dated 1659 came to light which
began "The Serenissimo Republic of Genoa hereby grants to Eliahu Bernol
and his Hebrew compatriots the exclusive rights to produce glass and glassware
for all the dominions of Genova for a period of twenty five years..."15
The document went on to outline guarantees for the privilege.
Sixteen other documents were then uncovered in Genoa's Archivio Segreto under the category Hebreorum. They filled in vital details about the Jewish community, and about the glassmakers among them.
The Jews had been expelled from Genoa in 1567, during the period in which the Republic was under Spanish domination. Glassmaking thereupon disappeared from Genoa. The Università issued a strict prohibition against members going to work for the Genovese. They even passed a statute in 1601 that imposed sanctions upon members or any one else lured into practicing the art in Genovese territory.
The Genovese eventually threw off the Spanish yoke. Desiring to redevelop the industry and commerce lost with the expulsion of the Jews, Genoa invited a group of Jews from Pisa in Tuscany to "come and settle in the Serenissimo Republic of Genova." In 1658, two Jews, Abram da Costa de Lèon (from Lèon in Spain) and Aron de Tovar (likewise a Sephardic name) , obtained the Capitoli per la Nazione Hebrea, which became effective on April 1659. Only a few months later, the exclusive right "for the production of glass and glassware" was granted to the master glassmaker from Pisa, Elihu Bernol, and to "his Hebraic compatriots."
At that very time all five members of the governing council of the Università d'Altare were of Spanish origin. Three members of the council bore the surname da Costa!
The other two were a Ponte and a Rachetti.
The documents included a census of the Jews and a map of their dwellings in the ghetto assigned to the Jews. A Ponte and a Da Costa were among the residents. They were neighbors to an Abram Salom, registered in the census as a dealer in lead "for the purpose of making glass."
Salom's trade becomes significant when we take account of the fact that a Da Costa from Altare went to work in London for a Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft soon thereafter took out a patent for "lead glass," and is commonly credited for its invention!
The Judaic glassmakers spread out into the western European Diaspora, implanting the glassmaking industry wherever they went. For many generations they intermarried only within the extended glassmaking family circles.
As the centuries rolled by they became integrated into Christian society and lost all memory of their origins.