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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Murviedro, Gerona, Tarazona, Daroca, and Calata-

yud were especially ill-treated. The great persecution of 1391, which began Seville, affected the

in

Jews of Aragon and Catalonia

severely entire communities, such as those of Valencia, Lerida, and Barcelona, were wiped out; thousands of Jews were slain; and 100,000 professed to

embrace Christianity.

The

resulting large number of pseudo-Christians, or Maranos, was materially increased twenty years later by the exertions of the fanatical

Massacre of 1391.

preacher Vicente Ferrer.

All Jews

who remained faithful to their ancestral religion were ordered by King Martin of Aragon to wear a mark of Another public disputation took place between the rabbis of the more important congregations of Aragon, on the one side, and Joshua ha-Lorki, named after his conversion Jerome de Santa Fe, assisted by the converts, Andres Beltran and Garcia Alvarez de Alarcon, on the other. This discussion, which had the effect of still further increasing the number of pseudo-Christians, was held at Tortosa in 1413 in the presence of Pope Benedict XIII. Severer sufferings were in store for the Jews of Aragon in the last eighty years of their sojourn in the province. After the Tortosan disputation, Pope Benedict issued the bull, " Etsi Doctoribus Gentium " (see De los Rios, identification.

ii.

627),

in 1415.

which was promulgated throughout Aragon It interdicted the

study or the reading of the

Talmud and similar works, every copy Persecu- of which was to be surrendered and tions Under destroyed. Jews were not allowed to Pope possess antichristian literature. They Benedict XIII.

were debarred from holding any office or from following the vocations of phy-

surgeon, accoucheur, apothecary, broker, marriage-agent, or merchant. Christians were forbidden to live in the same house with Jews, to eat or bathe with them, to renderthem any services, such as the baking of Passover bread, or to buy from or sell for them meat prescribed by the Jewish law. Each congregation was permitted to have only a small and scantily furnished synagogue, and new synagogues were not allowed to be built or old ones repaired. Finally, all Jews of either sex over the age of twelve years were compelled to listen to three Christian sermons every year. To all these sufferings were added the terrible epidemics of the plague which scourged Aragon in sician,

1429, 1439, 1448, 1450, 1452, and 1457. Commerce and trade in the formerly flourishing cities of Saragossa, Huesca, and Daroca came to a standstill; the Jewish merchants and their trade became impoverished and could no longer pay taxes. In order to prevent their emigration, however, Queen Maria, consort of Alfonso V. and queen regent in his absence, reduced the royal imposts considerably. For instance, the Jewish congregation of Barbastro had only 400 sueldos jaqueses to pay; Calatayud and Monzon, 350; Saragossa and Huesca, 300; and Fraga and Tarazona, 200. The very wealthy Marano families of Saragossa, Huesca, Calatayud, and Daroca the Caballerias, Santangels, Villanovas, Paternoys, Cabreros, Zaportas, Rivas, and others occupied influential positions in the Cortes, in public life, and at the court of Juan II. and often intermarried with aris,

—

—

,

Arag-on 'Arakin

tocratic families, and even with the Infantas. After Juan's death in 1479, the two kingdoms, Aragon and Castile, were united into one under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella; and henceforward the history of the Jews of Aragon becomes one with that of all the

Jews of Spain. The Aragonian Jews

other

possessed a special ritualliturgy (Mahzor Aragon), which was preserved for a long time in several cities of the Orient by communities of fugitive Jews from Aragon. (See

Mahzor.) Bibliography



J.

Amador de

de Espafla, passim 27, 210



Tourtoulon,



los Rios, Hisloria de !os Judios Ersch and Gruber, Encyklopddie, ii.

Jaime

I.,

U Conquerant, Boi d' Aragon,

Swift, Jamesl. of Aragon, Oxford, On the many documents relating to the Jews of Aragon now in the "Archiv. de la Corona de Aragon " in Barcelona, see Jacobs, Sources of SpanishJewish History, xv. 9 et seq. vol.

ii.

1894



Montpellier, 1867

Zunz, Bitus,



p. 41.

M. K.

a-

•ARAKIN

the German(p1$), " estimations " use the Aramaic form p3"1J7, pronounced

Polish Jews by them 'Erchin



or 'Erechin):

A

treatise of the

Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the Babylonian Talmud in the order Kodashim. In the Mishnah the treatise Arakin consists of nine chapters (perakim), forming in all fifty paragraphs (mishnayot). It deals chiefly Analysis with an exact determination of the of the regulations in Lev. xxvii. 2-29, conMishnah. cerning the redemption, according to fixed rates (-py, " estimation "), of persons or things consecrated to the sanctuary by a vow. It is presupposed by the Halakah that the above-mentioned Bible passage refers to the consecration not only of persons that belong to the one who consecrates them, but of any person for the consecration of a person signifies nothing more than a vow to dedicate to the sanctuary the value which that person represents. Consequently, the first chapter treats of the persons capable of making such a vow, as well as of the qualifications of those whose value must be paid by the consecrator. Following exactly the order of the Bible, the second chapter discusses the maximum and the miniof the amount to be given to the sanctuary, according to the financial condition of the dedicator. The mention of this special case of a maximum and a minimum gives occasion for discussing the maxiand the minimum for various religious preIncidentally, many an interesting item of incepts.

mum

mum

formation is imparted concerning Temple affairs



as,

for instance, certain details about the Temple music. In a similar way, the third chapter, discussing the

uniformity of assessment of values of dedicated lands irrespective of their mercantile values, takes occasion to group together all such cases of indemnity for which the Biblical law prescribes a fixed amount to be paid, regardless of attendant conditions. After this digression, the fourth chapter lays down detailed rules for the various "estimations" mentioned in Lev. xxvii. 2-8, and at the same time intimates wherein these rules differ from those applying to sacrificial

The

vows and

gifts.

chapter treats of particular instances; for example, the consideration of cases wherein the weight or the value of a limb of a person or a porThis brings to an tion of his value is dedicated. fifth