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Avignon

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

degrade them in

its

own

The measures

interests.

devised against them by the councils of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have already been mentioned but it was especially in the second half of the seventeenth century that the intolerance of the Holy Office smote them most harshly. Prom that epoch, up to the French Revolution, the ordinances of legates and cardinals followed each other with ever-increasing rigor; and all former regulations were applied to the

Avila

A ntiquite et Organisation des Juiveries du Comtat-VenaisRevue Etudes Juives, i. 165 et seq., ii. 199; idem, in Revue Historique, i. For the origin and organization of the Jewry of Avignon Rene" de Maulde, Les Juifs dans lex Etats Franeais du Pape au Moyen-Age, in Revue Etudes sin, in



For the policy of the Popes Israel Levi, Clement VII. et les Juifs du Comtat-Venaissin, ib. xxxii. 63 et seq.; Lettres des Consuls d' Avignon, in the Archives Departmental de Vaucluse (inedited). For conversions in the eighteenth century: Jules Bauer, Peste chez les Juifs d' Avignon, in Revue Etudes Juives, xxxiv. 251 et seq. For the yellow hat Idem, Le CUapeau Jaune chez les Juifs Contadins, in Revue Etudes Juives, xxxvi. 53 et seq. For the commercial life of the Jews Roubin, Vie Commerciale des Juifs Contadins en Languedoc, ib. xxxv. 91 et seq. Juives,

vii.

227 ct seq.



La





letter.

La

The fanaticism of

the Inquisition did not stop even there; it aimed at the voluntary, or involuntary, conversion of the Jews, and the disappearance of Judaism. To this end Jews were forbidden to read the Talmud and other rabbinical books; Jesuits and Dominican monks were appointed to hold discussions, or to deliver sermons, every Saturday in the synagogue, where the presence of the Jews was absolutely compulsory. But these sermons did not produce the desired effect. Then the Church had recourse to force. During part of the eighteenth century the plague ravaged Avignon. The Carri&re had many victims, who were carried to the hospital and nursed by Dominicans, who, by persuasion, bypromises, and by threats, caused to be baptized a full third of the poor patients entrusted to their care. These were for the most part children and old men incapable of resistance. Stimulated by this semblance of success, the monks continued their exerAltions long after the epidemic had disappeared.

though the Church forbade it

officially,

they secretly

encouraged the carrying off of young Jewish children, whom they then forced into the pale of the Church. There is nothing more moving than the protestations as indignant as futile of the Jewa child once ish fathers against such proceedings touched by the waters of baptism had to remain a Christian, and was lost to its parents and to its faith. Avignon to-day contains about forty Jewish fami-

—

—



belongs to the Circonscription Consistorial of Services are only occasionally held in the synagogue, a modern edifice erected by the municipality to replace the older one, which was destroyed by fire. lies.

It

Marseilles.

The Jews

of

Avignon formed with those

of Car-

pentras, LTsle, and Cavaillon the four communities called " Arba' Kehillot " by Jewish authors of the Middle Ages. These communities had a special liturgy of their own, called " Comtadin, " from the name

formerly borne by the province in which these towns were included. This liturgy, while resembling the Portuguese greatly, is distinguished from it by numerous differences; a few only can be cited: the omission of the prayer '"Alenu," the substitution of " Shalom rab" for " Sim Shalom" the insertion of certain spe-

Liturgy,



compositions and poems on Friday evenings, which are not to be found elsewhere. There are also reminiscences of the local history as, for instance, "ODn Din Tom (the Nishmat for the Day of the Shutting In), recited on the Sabbath of the Christian Easter week in commemoration of the prohibition laid upon the Jews against leaving their cial liturgical

G.

BA.

J.

AVILA

(n^lN, i"6uK): Town in Old Castile, fifteen miles from Madrid. In the Middle Ages it was one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of Spain. Jews have resided there since 1085, when they dwelt in the street called " Calle de Lomo (now "Calle de Esteban Domingo"). In 1291 the congregation was of such large proportions that it paid more than 74,000 maravedis in taxes. It possessed several synagogues. One of them was on the same spot in the Calle de Lomo on which the Church of All Saints was afterward built a second, not far from the former, was "presented" by the government in 1495 to the monastery of Santa Maria de la Encarnacion. The Jewish cemetery, which had a frontage of about 200 meters, lay in the valley it is now called " Cerca de los Osos. " After the expulsion of the Jews their Catholic majesties "presented " it to the monastery of St. Thomas, which purchased additional land with the proviso that converts to Christianity or descendants of converts should not be interred therein. It was before the inquisitional tribunal of Avila in 1491 that the celebrated trial took place for the alleged ritual murder of the afterward canonized "child from La Guardia," a place that never existed. shoemaker named Juce Franco, his old father, and his brothers were accused of this murder, and were all put to death at the stake Nov. 16, 1491. As a sequel to the trial and execution a popular uprising took place, and the Jews in Avila were massacred and plundered. To such excesses did the popular fury give rise that a special edict had to be issued by the crown (Dec. 16, 1491) taking the Jews under royal protection. Avila with its many churches and monasteries was extremely ecclesiastical the Jews dwelling there were therefore inclined to religious mysticism. It was in Avila that a man named Abraham appeared Here, too, in 1295 as Messiah and miracle-worker. much attention was paid to the study of cabala and many cabalists and scholars from Avila (or whose ancestors had belonged to the town) took the surname "de Avila."



A





Bibliography



Boletin de la Real

xi. 7, 421, et seq.

and



Academia de la Historia, La Guardia

xxviii. 353 et seg.; see also

Abraham of Avila.

g.

M. K.



quarters at that period, and the prayer D"D:n

~>V-

For the rabbis and physicians born at Avignon Gross, Gallia Judaica, Index, s.v. Avignon Leon Bardinet,

Bibliography





AVILA, ELIEZER

SAMUEL DE

AuB. thor of rabbinical works, and rabbi at Rabat, MoAvila rocco; born 1714; died at Rabat Feb. 7, 1761. was a scion of an illustrious family of scholars. His father Samuel, his grandfather Moses,and Hayyim b. Moses ibn Attar, his maternal uncle, were all prominent Talmudists and well-known authors. Like