The call major, which was active between the twelfth century and the riots of 1391, is Spain’s best-preserved Jewish quarter and the easiest to visit. It comprises a small zone between the Palau de la Generalitat and the calles Banys Nous, Sant Domenec del Call, Sant Honorat, Arc de Sant Ramon del Call, Sant Sever, la Fruita, Marlet, and del Call. The synagogue was at 7 Calle de Sant ...
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “history”
Besalú
The presence of Jews in Besalú is attested in a document from 1229 in which Jaume I the Conqueror reserves to them the function of moneylender. In 1342 the community, hitherto linked to the one in Barcelona, became independent. In those days it numbered 200, a quarter of the total population, and lived side by side with the Christians. We have no information about 1391 and its pogroms. Not ...
Plus d'infosGerona
Gerona was the second most important community in Catalonia, both for its size (1000 men and women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but only 100 or so in the fifteenth) and for the quality of its scholars. gerona was the home of Nahmanides, Johan ben Abraham Gerondi, Azriel of Gerona, Bonastruc da Porta, and Isaac the Blind. Jewish Gerona has been famous since 1980, when the discovery ...
Plus d'infosCastelló d’Empúries
In the fourteenth century, and up to 1492, there was a large community in Castelló d’Empúries living around the Plaza Llana, in the calles de la Judería, del San Padre, and Peixetiries Velles. There are two known cemetery sites. A tombstone found in one of them can be seen in the local museum (Museo Parroquial), while seven others have been reused in various constructions.
Plus d'infosCatalonia
The Jews settled in Catalonia in Roman times and communities began to take shape in Barcelona and Gerona in the tenth century. By the twelfth century, there were five major Jewish centers: Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida, Tortosa, and Perpignan (French Catalonia). The Jews are mentioned in Catalonia’s first legal code, Els Usatges de la Cort de Barcelona. They distinguished themselves in ...
Plus d'infosTudela
In the fifteenth century some 15% of Tudela’s population were Jews. There were two quarters, one around the Zaragaza gate, the other within the castle walls, but nothing remains of these sizable communities. Visitors can, however, go to the at the confluence of the Ebro and Merchando, where Benjamin de Tudela set off on his long journey. The journey which enabled researchers and ...
Plus d'infosVitoria
The town of Vitoria had 300 Jews in 1290 and 900 on the eve of the expulsion -the equivalent of 6 or 7% of the total population. Their main activities were tax collecting and medicine. In 1492 they took refuge in Bayonne across the French border, where, even today, the Jews think of themselves as the descendants of those in Vitoria. The most surprising vestige of the Jewish presence is the ...
Plus d'infosRibadavia
Probably the most interesting judería in Galicia, Ribadavia has kept its old Jewish quarter despite later urban developments. Although it is known Jews were her as far back as the tenth century, few documents about the life of their community remain. The old synagogue is the building with crests on its facade in the , which runs between the Plaza Mayor and Plaza de la Madalena. In September ...
Plus d'infosNavarre
The historical province of Navarre, straddling the Spanish-French border, was violently disputed by the Castilians and counts of Champagne. It was also where Jews from Arab Spain came together with those of Castile and France to take advantage of the famous pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and thus contribute to its commercial prosperity. The important center of Nájera gave its name ...
Plus d'infosAguilar de Campó
The earliest mention of Jewish shopkeepers in Aguilar de Campó, situated along the trading route toward the port of Cantabria, is from 1188. A Hebrew inscription can still be seen under the town’s coat of arms on the . It tells that on 1 June 1380 work on building the door began, paid for by Don Caq (Isaac) ben Malak and his wife Bellida. The text is in Hebrew and Castilian, with Hebrew ...
Plus d'infosPuente Castro (León)
A small jewish community lived in Puente Castro until the twelfth century. It disappeared during the wars between Castile and León. The cemetery has yielded more than a dozen magnificent tombstones. Three of them have been on permanent loan at Toledo’s Sephardic Museum since 1969, and a fourth can be seen at the diocesan museum in León. A fifth one, at the Archaeological Museum of León ...
Plus d'infosAmusco
The village of Amusco is known to have had a community of some 300 Jews in the fifteenth century. The old synagogue is still here, surprisingly positioned on the village square next to the church and village hall; it is now the Synagogue Café (Café de la Sinagoga). The medieval synagogue was at basement level. Its powerful vaults are supported by six arches. Its design is not surprising since ...
Plus d'infosSegovia
Segovia was home to one of the biggest communities in the Kingdom of Castile. It produced important figures like Abraham Senior and his son-in-law Meyer Melamed, who served the Catholic monarchs up to 1492. Segovia also saw a violent anti-Jewish movement under the influence of the Santa Cruz convent and subsequently as a result of the “Holy Innocent Child” affair at La Guardia. It ...
Plus d'infosToledo
The “Sephardic Jerusalem” is known around the world for the beauty of its synagogues and its Jewish quarter. The memory of the community has remained vivid in Toledo; historians have from the thirteenth and fourteenth century onward been able to supply fairly precise information about the location and history of the city’s Jewish community. Toledo is a city of great ...
Plus d'infosMadrid
We know that from the tenth century onward there was a small Jewish community in Muslim-ruled Madrid. This grew considerably after the reconquest. Though hit hard by the pogroms of 1391, it was slowly built up again. It is also known that Jewish doctors such as Rabbi Jacob were, under the king’s protections, allowed to live outside the Jewish quarter, the better to tend to the sick. In ...
Plus d'infosCastile and León
The presence of Jews in Castile and León is attested as far back as the tenth century. Over the centuries that followed the rulers granted the Jews the same rights and duties as of the Christians. The rulers considered the Jews their personal property and, throughout the period of reconquest, the community helped with the administrative and commercial organization of the conquered ...
Plus d'infosLiège
Liege is a city known, like Ghent, for its large university population, but also for its cathedral, its waffles and its film makers, the Dardenne brothers. The Jewish presence in Liege seems to date back to the Middle Ages. Documents from the 11th century attest to a local religious conflict between a bishop and a Jewish doctor. The case of a priest healed by a Jewish doctor is mentioned in ...
Plus d'infosGhent
Ghent is a city known, like Liège, for its student life, but also as an important cultural centre, its port and its ancient textile activity. The Jewish presence in Ghent seems to date back to the 8th century according to some sources. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1125, but were allowed to settle again in the following century. In the following century they were allowed to settle ...
Plus d'infosManchester
With 30000 Jews, Manchester has the highest Jewish population in Great Britain after London. The Jewish presence in Manchester seems to date from the late 18th century, with many of them coming from Liverpool. Its first synagogue was built at this time, under the leadership of the brothers Lemon and Jacob Nathan. It moved to Garden Street in 1794, then to Ainsworth Court in 1806, to Halliwell ...
Plus d'infosBordeaux
For three centuries, the cellars of tumbledown houses in the old town were home to a hidden Jewish community, that of the conversos who came here from Spain after 1474. Used to hiding their faith in Spain, these “new Christians” continued to practice their old religion in secret when they came to France. Bordeaux’s Jewish community began to emerge from the shadows only in ...
Plus d'infosBayonne
On the day of tishah b’ab -the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem- the old synagogue resounds to these words in Spanish: “Hemos perdido Sion pero tambien hemos perdido. España tierra de consolacion” (We have lost Zion, but we have also lost Spain, land of consolation”). was built in 1837, but its Holy Ark, kept from the earlier place of ...
Plus d'infosNouvelle-Aquitaine
After many years of English domination, the southwest was returned to France in the fifteenth century, at the end of the Hundred Years War. In an effort to stimulate growth in this ravaged region, Louis XI offered special privileges to foreigners wishing to settle there. This largesse attracted Portuguese and Spanish Jews oppressed by the Inquisition and religious intolerance in their home ...
Plus d'infosNarbonne
The (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire) in Narbonne has the oldest known inscription relating to the Jewish presence in France. It is an epitaph for the three children of Paragorus: Justus, aged thirty; Matrona, twenty; and Dulciorella, nine. Absolute proof of the Jewishness of the inscription is given by a seven-branch candelabrum and a short text in Hebrew: “Peace on ...
Plus d'infosOccitanie
Occitanie is a very rich region geographically, thanks to its proximity to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, but it is also culturally rich. It brings together territories with very different histories and experiences. You’ll find prehistoric remains in its caves, and monuments from the Roman era such as the Pont du Gard and the Nîmes Arena. While Jewish presence in the region has ...
Plus d'infosPézenas
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 ...
Plus d'infosMontpellier
The traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited Montpellier in 1165. In his travel diaries, he noted the existence of Batey midrashot kevouot le-Talmud in the city. In addition to these intellectual activities cited in a Hebrew source, Latin documents relate the presence of Jews in trade between Agde, Narbonne and Montpellier. They have a monopoly on silks and fabrics. Representatives of the Mosaic ...
Plus d'infosAntibes
The Picasso Museum (Musée Picasso) has the mold and a cast of an original inscription, now lost, in Greek characters (in ancient times, Antibes was called Antipolis): “Justus son of Sials, he lived seventy-two …”
Plus d'infosTrets
An important village in the Middle Ages -it has a studium papale– Trets had a Jewish community that lived in the present-day rue Paul Bert, known in those days as the carriera judaica or judea. The Jewish quarter in Trets is not unlike that in Gerona, Catalonia. Sadly, there has been no restoration so far. The medieval facade on rue Paul Bert could be a vestige of the synagogue. ...
Plus d'infosAix-en-Provence
The census ordered in 1341 by Robert, count of Provence, gave the Jewish population of Aix at the times as 1205, representing the 203 families grouped together in the Jewish quarter. In her book Provincia Judaica: Dictionary of historical geography of the Jews in medieval Provence, Danièle Iancu-Agou recalls a text quoted by JS Pitton from Archbishop Peter IV which authorizes the Jews to ...
Plus d'infosMarseille
The Jewish presence in Marseille dates back at least to the 6th century as is attested by Grégoire de Tours, but probably dates back to the Roman Empire. One of their main commercial activities was to act as an intermediary between Gaul and the Levant. In 576, the Jews of Clermont, victims of the intolerance of Bishop Avitus, took refuge in Marseille, enlarging the Phocaean community. In the ...
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