While previous works have established that the Jewish nation was not explicitly considered as such, examining the case of businessmen can reveal that the Jews were not a foreign natio and demonstrated a character comparable to that of the Italians of the “merchant nations”. Interaction between business strategies and representations of usury determined the economic characteristics of national affiliation, thus determining mechanisms that could at the same time favor integration or lead to exclusion, following a non-linear, dialectic evolution. This oldfashioned nation without a natio, paradoxical but declined in the present, can be found in the textual space of the nova of Esther or of the travel narrative, was more affective than territorial, political or juridical, and was certainly not unequivocal.