France / Occitanie

Pézenas

Porte Faugères and porte du Ghetto © Wikimedia Commons (Mossot)

It was around 1298 that the Jews settled in Pézenas, coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy. In the trade of clothes and cattle, they added the activity of the sale of wool and sheets. In 1332, a law imposed on the Jews crossing Pézenas or coming to sell there, a right of “leude” (a grant, or a toll). Jewish families disappeared from the city in 1394, during the expulsion of the community of the kingdom of France.

In Pezenas, the medieval Jewish district is circumscribed to the streets of Juiverie and street of Litanies. An earthen tank forming a small basin in the basement of a house that could be a mikveh was also found.