||Regie Patenti colle quail Sua Majesta, Ordina agli Ebrei proprietarii di stabili… [“ Royal decree of the Sardinian Government ordering Hebrews owning properties to send to the Intendancy of Finances a list of their holdings, and ordering the obligatory sale of such holdings by 1 January 1824, after which those properties still within the possession of Hebrews will be publicly sold by the Magistrate”].15 February 1822. On title, Royal Emblem of Kingdom of Sardinia.
Napoleon Bonaparte was viewed as something of a saviour by Italian Jewry. Under the French the Jews enjoyed rights they had never known in their long and lugubrious history. With Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, came the inevitable backlash, or what Cecil Roth has termed the “Recoil”. In the Kingdom of Sardinia, heavily influenced by the Jesuits, the old anti Jewish code was once again enforced with a vengeance. In 1816, Jewish property owners, who had prospered under Napoleon, were given five years to liquidate their holdings. Seeing that progress did not progress as planned, the government served notice in 1822 that properties remaining in Jewish possession by January 1, 1824 would be publicly sold by the Magistrate. The one concession to the Jews made in 1816 was that the regulations regarding the wearing of the Jewish badge were relaxed.