The Jews of Perpignan in the Thirteenth Century. an Economic Study Based on Notarial Records 9780231894883

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
TABLES
ABBREVIATIONS
Map
INTRODUCTION
I. THE JEWS IN PERPIGNAN IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
2. JEWS IN TRADE, IN THE CRAFTS, AND IN THE PROFESSIONS
3. THE JEWS AS MONEYLENDERS: THE LENDERS
4. THE JEWS AS MONEYLENDERS: THE BORROWERS
5. DEBTS OF JEWS TO CHRISTIANS AND TO OTHER JEWS
6. THE JEWS AND REAL PROPERTY
7. THE JEWS AS MONEYLENDERS: CONCLUSIONS
APPENDIX 1: ARNALDUS DE CODALETO OF RIVESALTES: AN ENTREPRENEUR OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
APPENDIX 2. SOME NOTES ON THE VALUE OF MONEY IN PERPIGNAN IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
APPENDIX 3. THE EVIDENCE FOR THE ECONOMIC ROLE OF THEJEWS OF MONTPELLIER AT THE END OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
APPENDIX 4. DOCUMENTS
GENERAL INDEX
INDEX OF PERPIGNAN JEWS

Citation preview

THE JEWS OF PERPIGNAN IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY AN E C O N O M I C S T U D Y B A S E D ON N O T A R I A L R E C O R D S

THE

JEWS OF PERPIGNAN IN THE

THIRTEENTH

CENTURY

AN E C O N O M I C S T U D Y B A S E D ON N O T A R I A L R E C O R D S

BY R I C H A R D W. EMERY

NEW Y O R K 1959 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

PRESS

L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S C A T A L O G C A R D N U M B E R : 58-5652

P U B L I S H E D 1959, C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S , N E W Y O R K

P U B L I S H E D IN G R E A T BRITAIN, CANADA, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN BY T H E O X F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y

PRESS

L O N D O N , T O R O N T O , BOMBAY, AND K A R A C H I

M A N U F A C T U R E D IN T H E

NETHERLANDS

TO MY

WIFE

PREFACE

AS yet, I have not quite recovered from my surprise at having written this particular book. When I began research in the notarial registers of Perpignan I had no such project in mind; it is, in fact, peripheral to my main interests. It was, in a sense, forced upon me by the contents of those registers; it seemed to me that the materials they contain for Jewish history are important enough to warrant presentation. I have attempted to present them very fully. And, being in no sense a specialist in any aspect of Jewish history, I have tried to show an unnatural modesty in drawing conclusions from them. It is pleasant to be able to acknowledge some of the many obligations I have incurred in the preparation of this volume. First and foremost is my debt to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a grant from which enabled me to devote the scholastic year 1952-1953 to undisturbed research; all the research and some of the writing of this study fell into that year. M. Pierre Bernard, archivist of the Pyrenees-Orientales, and his staff have been most friendly and cooperative on my two visits to Perpignan, and have been most kind in making materials available for microfilming. The Societe Frangaise du Microfilm at Paris has rendered quick and efficient service many times over the past half-dozen years. Part of the cost of microfilming the pertinent materials was defrayed out of a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Professor Benjamin N. Nelson of Hofstra College and Professor John H. Mundy of Columbia University have lent steady support since the inception of this project; each has read the manuscript of this book, and each has striven mightily, and some times successfully, to rescue me from errors of omission and commission. I am indebted to Professor Guido Kisch for some helpful suggestions and for his friendly encouragement. My former colleague, Professor Jack H. Hexter of Washington University, St. Louis, has listened patiently and critically to much that I have had to say for many years, and has never failed to prod vigorously. Dr. William Bridg-

viii

PREFACE

water and Miss Elisabeth Shoemaker of the Columbia University Press have earned my gratitude for a number of editorial suggestions. Finally, I take this opportunity to recognize the great debts I owe to a remarkable triumvirate of medieval historians and one ancient historian under whom I did the bulk of my graduate work at Columbia University: Austin P. Evans, Lynn Thorndike, the late Eugene H. Byrne, and the late William L. Westermann. RICHARD W. EMERY Queens College of the City of New York September 4,

1958

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1.

T H E J E W S IN P E R P I G N A N IN T H E

I THIRTEENTH

CENTURY 2.

II

J E W S IN T R A D E , IN T H E C R A F T S , A N D IN T H E PROFESSIONS

17

3.

T H E J E W S AS M O N E Y L E N D E R S . " T H E L E N D E R S

26

4.

T H E J E W S AS M O N E Y L E N D E R S : T H E B O R R O W E R S

39

5.

DEBTS OF J E W S TO C H R I S T I A N S AND TO O T H E R J E W S

67

6.

THE JEWS AND REAL P R O P E R T Y

75

7.

T H E J E W S AS M O N E Y L E N D E R S : C O N C L U S I O N S

80

A P P E N D I X i : A R N A L D U S DE C O D A L E T O R I V E S A L T E S : AN E N T R E P R E N E U R

OF

OF T H E

THIRTEENTH CENTURY

IO9

A P P E N D I X 2 : SOME N O T E S ON T H E V A L U E OF M O N E Y IN P E R P I G N A N IN T H E T H I R T E E N T H C E N T U R Y A P P E N D I X 3: THE EVIDENCE FOR THE

ECONOMIC

R O L E OF T H E J E W S OF M O N T P E L L I E R A T T H E OF T H E T H I R T E E N T H CENTURY APPENDIX 4:

128

END 131

DOCUMENTS

A. Selected Documents Concerning the Jews of Perpignan

134

B. Selected Documents Concerning Arnaldus de Codaleto

192

GENERAL

INDEX

I97

INDEX OF P E R P I G N A N J E W S

200

TABLES

1.

THIRTEENTH CENTURY NOTARIAL REGISTERS

OF

PERPIGNAN 2.

4

J E W I S H INDIVIDUALS OR FAMILY GROUPS

INVOLVED

IN F I F T E E N OR M O R E E X T A N T L O A N S 3.

D I S T R I B U T I O N OF N E W D E B T S IN GASH

30 BY

FACE VALUE 4.

BREAKDOWN

34 OF 1,321 NEW LOANS OF J E W S

C H R I S T I A N S IN P E R P I G N A N ,

1261-1286, BY

TO CLASSES

OF B O R R O W E R S 5.

39

E X T A N T D E B T S OF R E L I G I O U S E S T A B L I S H M E N T S

TO

PERPIGNAN JEWS

43

6.

B R E A K D O W N OF 3 9 9 NEW LOANS TO TOWNSMEN

49

7.

BREAKDOWN

51

8.

OF I 5 6 N E W LOANS TO C R A F T S M E N

MONTHS IN W H I C H LOANS B Y J E W S TO AND TO A L L O T H E R S W E R E

9.

VILLAGERS

CONTRACTED

64

M O N T H S I N W H I C H P A Y M E N T F E L L D U E ON L O A N S BY J E W S TO V I L L A G E R S AND TO A L L O T H E R S

10.

N E W D E B T S OF J E W S T O C H R I S T I A N S IN

65

PERPIGNAN,

1261-1286 11.

S E L E C T E D P R I C E S IN P E R P I G N A N , 1

12.

68 1261-I287

AND

309-1334

130

C O M P A R I S O N OF J E W I S H LOANS TO C H R I S T I A N S

IN

M O N T P E L L I E R AND P E R P I G N A N 13.

I32

M O N T H S IN W H I C H 6 9 D E B T S OF V I L L A G E R S

TO

J E W S OF M O N T P E L L I E R W E R E C O N T R A C T E D

AND

FELL DUE

133

ABBREVIATIONS

AC

Communal archives (followed by name of town)

AD

Departmental archives (followed by name of department)

Doc.

Document included in Appendix 4 (followed by number)

IAD

printed Inventaire-sommaires des archives departementales (followed by name of department)

Reg.

Register (followed by number) of the Fonds des notaires, Series E, A D : Pyrenees-Orientales

RE J

Revue des etudes juives

SAS

Societe agricole, seiendfique et litteraire des Pyrenees-Orientales

INTRODUCTION

T H E present study attempts to utilize for the economic history of the Jews of southern France a source of information almost entirely ignored up to the present—the notarial register. The classic study of southern French Jewry by Gustave Saige not only failed to make use of this type of material, but, by the very thoroughness of its treatment of other sources, created a picture of Jewish life in southern France in the thirteenth century that is rather misleading.1 For Saige relied primarily upon the most common type of medieval documentary material, acts concerning real property. By collecting an impressive mass of such acts involving Jews over a long period and over a wide area, Saige left the impression with many readers that the southern Franch Jew of the thirteenth century differed but little from his Christian neighbor in economic interests. That the Languedocian Jew might own land and collect the emoluments thereof he demonstrated thoroughly. But it is well to remember that he made no vast claims on this score; he at least realized that his evidence, bulky though it was, involved relatively few individual Jews. His insistence on the Jew as a merchant and as a craftsman, and his frequent references to the Jew as a moneylender, were very scantily documented, and it is not surprising that many readers were little impressed by them. On the other hand, while many were impressed by his efforts to show that the Languedocian Jew of the thirteenth century enjoyed an honorable social status with his Christian fellows, his evidence for this was weak, not to say defective.2 In a sense it is unfortunate that the best study we have of a southern French Jewish community—that of Jean Regne for Narbonne3—deals with a town from which notarial registers have vanished, but in which the surviving archives abound in land acts. The 1

Les Juijs de Languedoc antbieurement au XlVe sikle (Paris, 1881). Regni, in RE J, LXI (1911), 236-9, has shown that the dominus prefixed to the names of Jews in some of Saige's documents is merely a copyist's error for dictus. 3 'Etude sur la condition des juifs de Narbonne du Ve au X l V e si6cle,' RE J, LV (1908), 1-36,221-43; LVIII (1909), 75-105, 200-225; LIX (1910), 59-89; LXI (1911), 228-254. 2

2

INTRODUCTION

general effect has been to reinforce the misconceptions that arose from Saige's work. Few studies better illustrate the limitations set upon a medievalist by the nature of his sources. The Jewish community of Narbonne was one of the largest and richest north of the Pyrenees, but documentary evidence for its economic basis is so sparse that Regne's work, when it reaches the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, deals largely with the Jews as owners of real property, winding up with a meticulous catalogue of such property at the time of the expulsion. This is inevitable, because no other aspect of Narbonnese Jewry can be documented today. However, the excellence of the study, within its necessary limitations, is unquestionable. There has been no thorough study of the Jews of Montpellier. Some valuable materials from that town's two oldest notarial registers, however, have been printed or analyzed in an article by Salamon Kahn.1 Even though Kahn, in this article and elsewhere tended to oversimplify the problems with which he dealt, and indeed showed a certain naivete, he deserves great credit as the first scholar to employ notarial registers in the study of Jewish history.2 The small volume by Emile Azemard added nothing to Kahn's article.3 For the Jews of Perpignan there is a single but lengthy article by Pierre Vidal.4 Although Vidal made use of the extant notarial registers of Perpignan, and frequently cited acts from them, he never went through them systematically. Rather, he skimmed off such acts as seemed to him noteworthy; and his article is, in consequence entirely unbalanced, leaning toward the extreme and the bizarre rather than the typical. It is also marred by grave errors of transcription that indicate, at the very least, much carelessness with the 1 'Documents inidits sur les juifs de Montpellier au Moyen Age,' REJ, X I X (1889) 259-281; XXII (1891), 264-279; XXVIII (1894), 118-41. 2 Kahn also studied the oldest notarial register of Mende for his work 'Les Juifs du Givaudun au Moyen Age,' REJ, LXXIII (1921), 113-37; LXXIV (1922), 73-95. He is the author of several other articles on the Jews of southern French towns. It will suffice here to point out that he sometimes rather rashly identified the Jews he found in the Montpellier registers with better-known ones mentioned elsewhere; that he consistently underestimated the wealth of the Jews in the thirteenth century; and that his somewhat passionate and understandable defense of the medieval Jew was based at times on very strange reasoning. 3 Etude sur les Israelites de Montpellier au Moyen-Age (Nfmes, 1924). * 'Les Juifs dans les anciens comtis de Roussillon et de Cerdagne,' REJ, XV (1887), 19-55; XVI (1888), 1-23, 170-203.

INTRODUCTION

3

sources.1 One must agree in large part with the strictures passed upon Vidal's work by an outstanding scholar, Jean-Auguste Brutails, whose work on agrarian society remains the starting point for any study of Roussillon in the medieval period.2 Brutails was thoroughly familiar with the Perpignan registers, and his brief remarks on the Jews of that town give a picture much closer to the truth than may be found in Vidal's article. But Brutails had not studied the registers to write on Jewish history; he had read them from another point of view, and simply gave his summary impressions, with no effort at documentation. His remarks on the Perpignan Jews, a few pages in a book devoted to a quite different subject, have done little to counteract Vidal's article.3 The Departmental Archives of the Pyrenees-Orientales at Perpignan contain today seventeen notarial registers of the thirteenth century, ranging in date from 1261 to 1287.4 All seventeen are from Perpignan (though registers for Eine, Sauveterre, Toulouges, Ponteilla, Pia, and other places have survived in the same archives for the fourteenth century). The state of preservation of these registers varies. Although a few have fairly extensive sections that are illegible (at least to the present writer), most are in relatively good condition and are written in good hands. There is no more than the usual incidence of water stains, worn margins, and holes, and the registers present no grave paleographical problems. It is somewhat surprising that these registers have been so little studied. In Table 1 these seventeen registers are listed, with a few pertinent facts in each case. Fifteen of the registers are general in character, containing a wide diversity of acts, but two of them (numbers 8 and 11) are excep1 Some instances of this will appear in the following pages. Perhaps his most amusing error came in reading an act by which a debt of I,500i was acknowledged to Mosse filio et heredi Salamoni Samielis de Carcassonna. Vidal decided that the money was owed jointly to two Jews with the highly unusual names of Mosse Filius and Herod (REJ, XV [1887], 31). 2 Etude stir la condition des populations rurales du Roussillon au Moyen Age (Paris, 1891). 3 Pp. 73-79. Brutails' criticism of Vidal, whom he does not mention by name, occurs in the work cited, p. 75, n. 5, where he regrets the failure of Alart to write the study of Roussillon Jewry he had been preparing—a study 'que d'autres ont faite et mal faite.' But Brutails' own remarks upon the expulsion of the Jews from Spain were scarcely objective, and can perhaps be best understood in terms of French political issues as he wrote. 4 Series E, Fonds des notaires, nos. 1-17. These registers are hereinafter cited as Reg. 1, Reg. 2, and so forth.

INTRODUCTION

4 TABLE

I. T H I R T E E N T H

JVo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

CENTURY NOTARIAL

REGISTERS OP

Period Covered

1261, May 1266, Jan. 1272, Nov. 1273, May 1274, Sept. 1278, Sept. 1276, Oct. 1276, Aug. 1276, Oct. 1277, Sept. 1279, Jan. 1282, Oct. 1283, Aug. 1283, Aug. 1284, Feb. 1283, Aug. 1285, Nov. 1286, Aug.

15 to 1261, Sept. 28 15 to 1266, Apr. 10 19 to 1273, Aug. 29 22 to 1273, Sept. 24 27 to 1275, June 13\ 19 to 1278, Nov. 27/ 8 to 1277, May 29 29 to 1277, Feb. 24 18 to 1287, Mar. 7 4 to 1277, Dec. 13 6 to 1279, Sept. 2 15 to 1285 31 to 1283, Nov. 4 13 to 1284, Feb. 6 12 to 1284, Apr. 25 31 to 1284, May 18 13 to 1287, Feb. 6 2 to 1286, Oct. 24

PERPIGNAN

Folios

No. of days Covered

40 49 40 48

136 88 285 125

88

330

50 235 51 179 72 (family acts) 57 101 48 241 53 (family acts) 46 66 51 175 36 73 50 261 50 451 49 84

tional, being special volumes maintained by the scribes for business concerning, respectively, the families of Arnaldus de Codaleto and Laurentius Rotundi, two of the more important local businessmen.1 The coverage in time afforded by the group of registers is quite irregular. There is a lapse of five years between the first and second and a similar lapse between the second and third. The years from 1272 to 1279 are fairly well covered by seven full registers, but the four years between 1279 and 1283 are represented only by a few specialized acts in Registers 8 and 11. The period 1283-1287, on the other hand, is covered in six full registers (in addition to which Register 8 gives numerous acts for this period, and most of Register 11 is devoted to it). There then ensues a gap of some three decades before the beginning of Register 21 in February, 1317. This gap, commencing in 1287, serves as a convenient terminal point for the present investigation. One problem is always present in the handling of medieval notarial registers. However rich any extant collection of such registers may be, it can represent only a fraction of the original total. To what extent are the surviving registers an adequate sampling of those that 1 It is important to note that none of the extant Perpignan registers of the thirteenth century is the work of a court scribe or notary, containing only acts dealing with legal procedures, as is the case with many Massilian registers of that period, for instance.

INTRODUCTION

5

once existed? It would be rather more comfortable to ignore this question (as most medievalists dealing with notarial registers have done), since no very satisfactory or convincing answer to it is likely to be found. And yet it is clear enough that the validity of almost any conclusions reached by studying notarial protocols depends closely upon the answer that can be given to such a question. To pass over it in silence is to leave in doubt many points that a study of the present type may advance. However small the likelihood that a good answer can be found, an effort should be made to find some answer. The question may, for our present purpose, be broken into two parts. First, how large a sampling have we ? Second, to what extent are the extant registers typical of all those that were written ? The second question is perhaps the most vital of the two, for it will be obvious that our registers show great variance as between Registers 8 and 11, on the one hand, and the remaining fifteen on the other. The dangers inherent in basing conclusions upon a weak sampling, or upon a single atypical register, are evident enough. Only seventeen registers have been preserved out of a far larger number. In view of the rarity of notarial registers from southern France for this period, it would hardly be surprising if only one of the Perpignan volumes had survived instead of seventeen. If such had been the case and if the sole survivor had been Register 11, and all our knowledge of the economic role of the Jews of Perpignan had been derived from that register, we should have had a remarkably distorted picture; a scholar who approached the question through this sole register would, especially if he never asked the basic question we have posed, probably have felt himself entitled to draw conclusions which would be utterly belied by the other sixteen registers that we happen to have. This sort of hazard is run by anyone who works with source materials that represent a tiny part of what formerly existed. The historian should be aware of the peril he incurs; more than this, he should make some effort to ascertain the approximate degree of this peril. 1 1 One specific example of this danger may be offered. There is for the year 1248 a most remarkable notarial register from Marseilles, printed and analyzed by L. Blancard, Documents inidits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age (Marseille, 1884—1885), I, 261-417; II, 7-344. This is the oldest extant Massilian register. Its extreme wealth of commercial materials has rather dazzled economic historians—and all the more so in

6

INTRODUCTION

To the second part of the problem—whether or not our registers are typical of all the registers compiled in their time—we can give, within the limits of the subject under treatment, a moderately confident reply. From the point of view of Jewish economic activities, Registers 8 and 11 are atypical—and, moreover, are not only totally unlike the other fifteen, but also totally unlike each other. But the other fifteen registers show only minor variations. Roughly speaking, the conclusions drawn from any one of them would be reinforced by the perusal of the others. They seem to constitute a body of evidence substantial enough to warrant a high degree of credence. The answer to the first question—as to how large a sampling these seventeen registers represent—is far more complicated. It is important, for without some notions on this score we cannot, however typical the extant registers may be, approach any quantitative ideas concerning Jewish economic activities. It would be very pleasant to know the exact number of notarial registers compiled in Perpignan in the years that concern us, but we can hardly hope to find so thoroughly satisfactory a solution; a very rough idea indeed would be the most that could possibly be expected. Such a rough idea might be reached in two different ways. One of these ways is closely related to our subject. The extant registers contain acts dealing with 235 debts contracted by Christians to Jews prior to the writing of the document; in each case a debt-contract had previously been written. If we had today every register that had been written, all—or practically all (allowing for references to some debts that may have been contracted before 1261)—of these 235 debts would be found elsewhere in the registers in their original form. I n fact, only four of these 235—one out of sixty— do so occur in the surviving registers. Now if we could be sure that this in turn was an adequate sampling, then we could conclude without further ado that there were origiview of the relative barrenness of subsequent registers in this respect. It would appear that w e have here a strikingly atypical register, very valuable indeed, but utterly unrepresentative. If such is the case, than the conclusions based upon this one register concerning the Jews of Marseille by Isidore Loeb ('Les Negotiants juifs ä Marseille au milieu du X H I e siecle,' RE J, X V I [1888], 73-83) are to be viewed with a good deal of skepticism. For a competent and well-balanced summary of the economic role of the Massilian J e w s in the fourteenth century, see E. Baratier and F. Reynaud, Histoire du commerce de Marseille (Paris, 1951), II, 8 9 - 9 6 . T h e remarks of R i g i n e Pernoud o n the same subject for the thirteenth century (Busquet and R . Pernoud, Histoire du commerce de Marseille (Paris, 1949), I, 2 9 0 - 9 3 ) are, like the article by Loeb, based largely upon the single register of 1248.

INTRODUCTION

7

nally sixty times seventeen registers, or about a thousand in al. Unhappily, there are two possible sources of distortion here. The sixty-to-one ratio may have been exaggerated by the inclusion of some debts contracted before 1261 that could not possibly have been contained in any run of registers beginning with that year, and it may have been minimized by the special circumstances surrounding the four repetitions that are found. For in all these four cases the second reference to the debt is dated three weeks or less after the original contract—a very short space of time—and in all four cases too, the second reference occurs in the same register as the original contract. Thus the fact is that in no instance is the same debt mentioned in two different registers. This would seem to suggest that the number of registers originally drawn up was a very large multiple of the number now extant. The second way of reaching an estimate of the number of registers originally written would be to find out how many scribes were writing acts, and thus maintaining registers, in the years covered by the seventeen registers we still have. Now when an act in these registers referred to an older document, it was customary to identify it not by its date (save in rare instances) but merely by the names of the scribe who wrote it and the notary who signed it. Such references are plentiful. If we take the names of all such scribes and notaries concerned with acts not clearly anterior to 1261, we reach a total of eleven subscribing notaries (all mentioned several times, so that we may suppose this list to be complete) and forty-three scribes (three of whom appear also in the list of notaries). It was the scribes who kept the registers.1 The figures in Table 1 indicate that the average register was filled in about half a year, so that we would expect each scribe to fill two of them a year (if a scribe confined himself to one register at a time). But, of course, not all of these forty-three scribes worked at their trade during the entire period 1261-1287. Many are mentioned only a few times; some died, and new ones entered the field; a few became supervising notaries; others became village scribes in the surrounding region. Although many clearly worked at 1 There was a clear distinction between the scriptor, who wrote the act, and the notarius, who validated it. The dependence of the scribe upon the notary is indicated by the titles of many of the fourteenth century registers, such as Reg. 38 in 1327: Sextadecima notula Rqymundi Tmberti de tempore Johannis Barravi (Raymundus is the scriptor, and this is the sixteenth register he wrote under the direction of the notary Johannes Barravi).

8

INTRODUCTION

this business for a long period of years,1 there seems to have been a rather high rate of turnover in this class of notary's clerks. The turnover was, indeed, so great that our list of forty-three is probably incomplete, though it must include all the scribes who served for any very considerable part of our period. 2 Making the rather moderate assumption that about half of these forty-three scribes were at work in any given year, compiling two registers annually, we would again get an extremely rough estimate of something over a thousand volumes in all drawn up between 1261 and 1287. Here again, the figure is probably an underestimation. We are assuming some twenty scribes to be at work at any given moment; our information becomes much fuller in the fourteenth century, and it is possible, for example, to list not less than fifty-three scribes known to have been writing in the single year 1329—with every reason to suppose that list incomplete. 3 Though the scribes at work had probably increased in this half century, we would not expect too sharp a rise in their number, and would be inclined rather to suppose that we had underestimated the number working at the earlier time. The best conclusion from this line of reasoning, as from the first, would be that less than one register out of sixty is extant. At the outset of this discussion it was said that no thoroughly satisfactory answer was likely to be found for the question posed. The reader will probably agree at this point that none has been found. There is no mathematical formula by which the precise number of notarial registers compiled in Perpignan between 1261 and 1287 can now be determinded; nor is there a means of reaching a fairly certain approximation. But it is sure that the seventeen registers 1 The scribe Boffatus Gasc, for example, is mentioned no less than forty-five times as the writer of acts concerning Jews. 2 A number of other persons appear so regularly as witnesses in the registers that one suspects them to have been notary's clerks, even though they were never called scriptores and never occurred as the writers of documents. 3 Reg. 42, 43, 44, 45, passim. For the period 1317-1334 (a considerably shorter time than that from 1261 to 1287) one hundred and fifty-seven men are designated as scriptores or notarii (Reg. 18 through 54 and B.25). And the average time covered in a single register was markedly less than in the thirteenth century—about two months instead of six months. The fifty scribes active in 1329 would apparently have written therefore some three hundred registers, and for the eighteen years 1317-1334 there would have been written more than five thousand registers. Thirty-eight have survived, a ratio of less than one to one hundred and forty. Other things being equal, w e would expect a poorer survival rate for the thirteenth-century registers than for those of the fourteenth. Such a line of reasoning leads to a figure of something over two thousand as the number of registers compiled between 1261 and 1287.

INTRODUCTION

9

extant are a very small part of the original total, which must have run to at least a thousand, and possibly considerably more than that. The present investigation is based essentially upon these seventeen registers from thirteenth-century Perpignan. A few other Perpignan materials, however, have been employed. Some materials have been drawn from the registers of the early fourteenth century. Some of the registers from Series Β of the same archives have been used for auxiliary information of one sort or another, especially the register B. 19. But no attempt has been made to comb through the ecclesiastical archives so plentifully preserved for the region of Perpignan. They certainly contain materials pertinent to this study. But to make use of them would be to sacrifice a major advantage of the notarial register as a source: in the registers we find all types of acts, and the data contained in them should not be heavily weighted in any direction. This statistical benefit would be lost by using the more specialized documents. 1 Apart from these manuscript materials, some useful information is to be found in the catalogue of acts of the kings of Aragon concerning Jews, issued by Jean Regne after painstaking labor in the crown archives of Aragon. 2 Since these sources have been little studied and are not readily accessible to most scholars, Regne's work has helped to fill a major gap. In Appendix 3, an effort will be made to examine briefly the economic activities of the Jews of Montpellier; for this the two oldest extant notarial registers of that town will be utilized. 3 In this study, no effort has been made to alter the form in which proper names appear in the Latin documents employed. Jacobus Textoris can be changed to Jacques Tisserand, or Jaime Tejedor, or 1 For example, Vidal used the technique of drawing specialized information from the registers and then augmenting it from other sources; this led him to distort the importance of Jewish loans to clerics. H e collected almost every reference to such a loan, and paid virtually no attention to other lending operations. It is obvious enough that Vidal did this deliberately, for polemical purposes. See below, Chapter 4, p. 42. 2 REJ, L X ( 1 9 1 0 ) - L X X V I I I (1924), passim. 3 Communal Archives of Montpellier, BB.l (1293-1294, 94 folios) and BB.2 (1301-1302, 143 folios). Both were written by one Johannes Grimaldi. Many, but by no means all, of the acts involving Jews in these two registers are given in the article of Salamon K a h n cited in note 4 above. T h e first of these two registers, BB. 1, is rich in commercial acts; it has been cursorily analyzed from that point of view in the article of A. Sayous and J . Combes, 'Les Commergants et les capitalistes de Montpellier au X l l l e et X l V e siecles,' Revue historique, C X C I X (1940), 341-77.

ΙΟ

INTRODUCTION

Jacme Teycheire, or even James Weaver, but it is not clear that much is gained thereby, or that any one of the alternatives has a clear field over the others. For both Jews and Christians, names are given as they appear in the Latin sources. Sums of money mentioned throughout this work are in money of Barcelona unless otherwise specified.

I. THE JEWS IN PERPIGNAN IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

T H E Jewish community of Perpignan seems to have been established at a rather late date. The earliest known reference to Jews there falls in 1185, and there are only rare references to them in the early thirteenth century. 1 Jews became numerous in Perpignan, apparently, around the middle of that century. The period covered in this study (1261-1287) was one of rapid growth, and by the end of the century Perpignan had one of the largest Jewish communities north of the Pyrenees. Exactly how many Jews lived in Perpignan in the late thirteenth century cannot, of course, be determined. In the registers are named 228 adult male Jews (exclusive of those designated as coming from other towns), together with 20 minor males and 65 women. Some of these 228 adult males may have been out-of-town Jews not so designated by the scribes; 79 of them are mentioned only once or twice, which suggests visitors rather than residents. On the other hand some of these 79 were certainly residents;2 some were temporary residents who moved on; 3 some were Perpignan Jews who died near the beginning of our period or who came of age towards the end of it. Perhaps a good guess would be that about 200 of the adult male Jews were residents, spread over a quarter of a century. This in turn suggests a total population towards the end of our period of around 100 families, or 300 to 400 souls.4 We know that there were about 1

Vidal, REJ, XV (1887), 20-22. Vitalis de Montepessulano, for example, is mentioned only twice, once in 1266 and again in 1273, when he made his will (Doc. 19); this will shows that he and his children were residents of the town. Similar cases could be cited. Nor can we be sure that every Jew who lived in Perpignan is mentioned in the surviving registers. 3 An example is Salamon Deuslacrega, mentioned in 1272 and 1277; on the latter date he is specifically called a Jew of Eine (Reg. 3, f. 2; Reg. 9, f. 43v). 4 A community made up so largely of new immigrants probably contained more adult men and fewer women and children than we would find in an older settlement. It is likely, too, that some of these men were transients who lived and worked in the town for a few years and left again. For both of these reasons, it is safer to take a rather moderate estimate of the total population. It should also be remembered that this total is for the end of our period, and would have been much smaller at the date of our first register, in 1261. 2

12

T H E J E W S IN P E R P I G N A N

180 Jewish families living in Perpignan in 1413;1 one would expect that the natural increase of the group, together with the very substantial influx of refugees from southern France at the time of the expulsion from that kingdom, would have more than balanced the losses incurred in the plagues of the fourteenth century and the steady, though small, loss through conversions to Christianity.2 It is known that the Jewish community of Narbonne, traditionally the largest in southern France, numbered about 140 adult males in 1305, on the eve of the expulsion; 3 the Jews of Perpignan were probably somewhat fewer in number at that time. 4 It is important to realize at the outset that the Jewish community of Perpignan was a 'new' one in our period, with no very deep local roots, and thus rather different in character from such older communities in Languedoc as Narbonne and Lunel. This newness, however, characterized Perpignan as a whole, not merely its Jewish community. Only in the thirteenth century did Perpignan begin to rival such older centers as Eine, the ecclesiastical capital of Roussillon. By the end of our period Perpignan was a flourishing town, a capital of an independent kingdom, with a growing commerce and industry that had made it the great center of Roussillon and enabled it to rival even its ancient northern neighbor, Narbonne. The rapid growth of Perpignan Jewry in the late thirteenth century was only one aspect of Perpignan's development. Since Perpignan's Jewish community was being fed steadily from the outside in our period, it is a matter of some significance to determine the origins of those Jews who moved into the town. Luckily, a pretty fair indication exists. Of the 228 adult male Jews mentioned 1

Loeb, REJ, X I V (1887), 65 References to nine Jewish converts to Christianity in the period 1343-1410 are found in the published inventory of a small part of the Perpignan archives ( I A D : Pyr6n6es-Orientales, series B, pp. 55, 95, 138, 219, 222); such references become more common in the fifteenth century. No single instance of conversion in the thirteenth century is found, but the occurrence among Christians of such surnames as Christianus, commonly adopted by Jewish converts, is suggestive. 3 A. Blanc, Le Livre de comptes de Jacme Olivier (Narbonne, 1895-1902), pp. 545-46. R e g n i , REJ, L I X (1911), 68, adds the women in Blanc's list to reach a total of 165, and multiplies this by five to reach a n estimate of 825 for the Jewish population of Narbonne in 1305. But the coefficient of five is very high, especially for this type of list, and it is pretty certain that the true total never exceeded 500; even this would have been very large for a Jewish settlement outside of Spain in the thirteenth century. 4 For estimates of the size of Jewish communities in some other medieval towns, see Loeb, REJ, X I V (1887), 161-83. 2

T H E J E W S IN

PERPIGNAN

13

above, 114, just half, bore surnames of geographical origin.1 Of these, 95 names, or more than 80 percent, refer to southern France, and the list of places concerned includes most of the known Jewish settlements in Languedoc between Carcassonne and the Rhone.2 Of the remaining 19, ten represent places in the general vicinity of Perpignan itself (six from Eine, two from Collioure, one each from Puigcerda and Villefranche-de-Conflent).3 Only nine names imply origin south ofthe Pyrenees.4 It seems evident that the great mass of Perpignan Jews came from the present southern French departments of Aude, Herault, and Gard, with a few families moving in from the older settlement at nearby Eine,5 and a few also from Catalonia. The fact of this emigration ofJews from Languedoc to Roussillon is well known, but the reasons for it are not entirely clear. Gustave Saige believed that excessive exploitation of Jews in the French royal domain led to their mass flight to the Jewries of lesser French lords and to Roussillon.6 He showed easily that in the late thirteenth 1 It does not much matter for our present purposes whether the surname indicates that its bearer or only an ancestor came from the place named. There is no question but that, in Latin documents, Jews bore hereditary place-name surnames often enough. For example, the descendants ofJacob de Montepessulano, a Jew who settled in Perpignan before 1261, still used that surname four generations later, in the middle of the fourteenth century. 2 The following localities in southern France occur as surnames of Perpignan Jews in our period (in each case, the number of Jews bearing the surname is indicated): Capestang 15 Beaucaire 5 Largentiere 1 Lunel 13 Le Caylar 4 Limoux 1 Montpellier 11 Lagrasse 3 Marseille 1 B6ziers Orange I 9 Villemagne 3 L'Escalette 8 Posquieres 1 Maguelonne 2 Narbonne 7 Provincialis 1 Surgieres 2 Carcassonne 6 Agde 1 For these places, see Henri Gross, Gallie Judaica (Paris, 1897), Index. 8 The cases involving Collioure, Puigcerda, and Villefranche, however, occur late in our period. They may concern Perpignan Jews who had moved to those places and then returned to Perpignan. Such seems to have been the case in the instance concerning Puigcerda, at least. 4 Three Perpignan Jews bore the general surname Catalanus. Two other derived their surnames from Burgos, two from Barcelona, and one each from Besalu and Gerona. 5 Vidal's statement {REJ, XV [1887], 32) that Jews were established at Eine only in 1349 resulted from his misunderstanding of an act of that year. We find a Judeus habitator Eine in 1277 (Reg. 9, f. 43v). An Eine notarial register of 1311-1312 (Reg. 19) contains references to six Jews styled habitatores Eine. From the frequency of the surname de Elna among Perpignan Jews in the thirteenth century, and from the greater importance of Eine before that time, it seems certain that a small Jewish community had existed there before any Jews had settled in Perpignan. Gross (op. cit.) mentions no such settlement at Eine. β Saige, pp. 25-49, 88-89. The same position is taken by Regne, REJ, LIX (1911), 62-64.

14

T H E JEWS IN

PERPIGNAN

century Jews were moving out of the crown lands of the Midi, that the royal government was alarmed at the loss of revenue entailed thereby, and that energetic measures were taken to recover such Jews when they could be traced to the jurisdictions of the king's vassals. But Saige's explanation for this movement is very dubious; at the very least it involves a marked oversimplification of a rather complex phenomenon. The Perpignan data, indeed, suggests that Jews from the royal domains of Languedoc were a minority among the immigrants. Montpellier, Lunel, Capestang, and Narbonne account for almost half of the place-name surnames of southern French origin borne by Perpignan Jews, and those four places (as well as some of the smaller places appearing on the list) did not at that time form part of the crown holdings. It might also be noted that the royal lands of the seneschally of Toulouse make almost no contribution to Perpignan Jewish surnames, though the distance from Perpignan to Toulouse is about the same as that from Perpignan to Lunel. Judging from the surnames of Perpignan Jews, hardly more than a third of the Languedocian Jews who moved to Roussillon originated in the French royal domain. It would seem safer to suppose that the growing importance of Perpignan, and the financial opportunities this afforded, made it an attractive place to many southern French Jews. There is no evidence that it was any more attractive to Jews from the French crown lands than to those living in the Jewries of the crown's vassals. There is still another objection to Saige's thesis. T o think of this movement of Jews as some sort of flight is to ignore the fact that, while a great many Jews were moving southward into Roussillon, some were moving northward into French territory. The simple truth is that the Jews of eastern Languedoc and Roussillon, at least, had strong transient tendencies in the late thirteenth century;1 they moved around a good bit. The concern of the French crown at the loss of Jews from its domain was probably shared by the lords of other Jewries, but these lords had little opportunity to do anything about it, or even to leave us, in the surviving documents, much evidence of their alarm. Jews were drifting from southern France into Roussillon, and there was, in consequence, some numerical shrinking of the Jewish population in French territory; but even 1

For some striking examples of this, see Saige, pp. 213-17.

T H E J E W S IN P E R P I G N A N

15

within Languedoc many Jews were shifting their domiciles from one town to another. That there was a net decline in the number ofJews in southern France, and a corresponding increase in the number of Jews in Roussillon, seems certain. But that there was a net decline of royal Jews and an increase of those under the king's vassals has never been demonstrated, and there seems to be no reason to think that such was the case. That the surviving information, largely royal documents, refers mostly to Jews who had left the crown lands is not very significant; we would hardly expect the crown to be much concerned about the Jews who were moving out of the vassals' Jewries.1 In short, the thesis of Saige seems designed to explain a set of circumstances that never took place. Some examples of this migratory tendency of the Jews of the thirteenth century may be found in the Perpignan materials. Though the number ofJews there was rapidly increasing in our period, some Jews were certainly moving away. We know of four Perpignan Jews who moved northward into French territory—two to Narbonne, one to Montpellier, and one to Saint-Paul (in the royal domain) .2 There are also instances of Perpignan Jews moving to Eine,3 Puigcerda,4 Villefranche-de-Conflent,5 Collioure,6 Gerona, 7 and Besalu.8 The Jewish community of Perpignan in the late thirteenth century was thus open at both ends, with a relatively heavy immigration, but with some emigration, too. A result of this fluidity was that most Perpignan Jews must have had close relatives in other towns. The character of our sources is such that we would not expect to find much evidence for this, but a few cases do occur. One Perpignan Jew had a sister living in Beziers;9 the widow of another had a brother in Beziers and herself owned real estate in Narbonne that 1 The only nonroyal act that offers information on the movements of Languedocian Jews, a Narbonnese document concerning Jews moving into that town, supports the position here taken. It mentions these specific places of origin of Jewish immigrants into the town: Lunel, Montpellier, Capestang, B6ziers, and Perpignan (Saige, pp. 200-207). Of these five places, only Biziers was part of the French royal domain. 2 Reg. 3, f. 16v; Reg. 5, f. 52; Reg. 7, f. 28, 43, 49; Reg. 8, f. 37v; Doc. 104, 120, 122; Reg. 16, f. lOv, 17, 22, 23v; Reg. 3, f. 13, 30; Reg. 10, f. 12; Reg. 1, f. 21v, 31v; Reg. 2, f. 20v, 36; Reg. 11, f. lOv. 3 Reg. 3, f. 2; Reg. 9. f. 43v. 4 Reg. 2, f. 25v; Reg. 5, f. 41 v, 68. 6 Reg. 1, f. 38v; Regn