PIOVE DI SACCO ():

By: Richard Gottheil, Ismar Elbogen

Small Italian city in the district of Padua; the first in that territory to admit Jews. A loan-bank was opened there by an association ("consortium") before 1373, and was probably an unimportant institution, as it paid a yearly tax of only 100 lire. When, in 1455, the Jews of Padua were forbidden to lend money, they transacted their business through their fellow bankers at Piove. No Jews except a few money-brokers seem to have lived here; and apparently these were expelled at an early date. Piove never had a ghetto. Leone Komanini Jacur is now (1905) the representative for Piove in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

The city owes its importance to the fact that a Hebrew printing-press was temporarily established there. Meshullam Cusi Rafa b. Moses Jacob printed at Piove Jacob b. Asher's "Arba'Ṭurim" in folio, 1475, this being the second work issued there. Complete copies of this edition are extremely rare. A fine impression on parchment is in the city library at Padua (B. P. 574). The "Arba'Ṭurim" was circulated both as an entire work and in the separate parts.

G. I. E.