Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/578

528 Barcelona Bardaoh, Julius

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

from attendance upon such occasions could be purchased only at large figures. Inspired by the priesthood, exceptional laws were passed against them, and statutes already existing were rendered more stringent. Jews were forbidden to live outside of the juderia, or even to seek temporary shelter in the house of a Christian. No convert to Christianity, no Christian woman, could enter the juderia, which was kept closed during every Good Friday. Christian women were not permitted to visit the house of a Jewess by night or by day. A decree, issued April 11, 1302, compelled a Jew or a Jewess, meeting a priest with the sacrament, to kneel down in the street. Trading in Christian prayer-books and holy pictures was strictly forbidden them. They were not permitted to sell the ritually slaughtered (kosher) meat anywhere outside of the juderia or at the entrance to it. In 1338 a nobleman named Jordan de Ilia wished to celebrate a "divinum mysterium" at the house of the wealthy Samuel Benveniste. As soon as the king, Pedro the Elder, heard of this, he had Benveniste imprisoned and his estates confiscated, "to serve as a warning to other Jews." At the head of the aljama were thirty men, elected by the members of the community and confirmed by the king. They were the administrators and secretaries, to whom were added official auditors and a manager of the poorhouse. According to the statutes, the election of three members took place every three years under the management of the three departing members and by the vote of the majority. These three election-managers were required to take oath in the presence of ten members of the community, and holding the Torah in their Communal arms, to promise that they would

Organization.

faithfully carry out the election to the best interests of the community; and that they would consult nobody.

The

election often led to dissensions and to rupture in the aljama (see Responsa of Isaac b. Sheshet, Nos. 214 and 228). The religious affairs of the com-

munity were under the guidance of several famous Abraham b. Hasdai, son of Samuel b. Abraham b. Hasdai and Solomon ben Adret, whose contemporary, Aaron ha-Levi, also lived in Barcerabbis, as



lona.

The following personages among many

others

mentioned were born in Barcelona Isaac b. Reuben, called "al-Bargeloni" (the Barcelonian); Judah b. Barzilai, author of the valuable "Sefer ha-Tttim"; Abraham b. Hi v va ha-Nasi the poet Joseph ibn Sahara; Hasdai Crescas. Astruc Bonsenyor and Judah Bonsenyor, his son, scholars and physicians, enjoyed the respect of the court of Aragon. The Jewish community of Barcelona came to a disastrous end, earlier than any other in Spain. The disastrous year 1348 did not pass without leaving its traces. Toward the end of June, on a Sabbath eve, the mob banded together against the Jews, killed twenty, and plundered the Jewish houses. Meanwhile the nobility and some prominent citizens espoused the cause of the Jews, and dispersed the deluded crowd the more easily because a fearful storm accompanied by terrible lightning set in, and the rain poured down in streams (Joseph ha-Kohen, that could be



'"Emekha-Baka,"

p. 66).

528

In 1391, during the great persecutions which began at Seville and spread over all Jewish communities of Spain, the

community

of Barcelona

was

destroyed.

Three days after the massacre at Palma in Majorca, on Saturday, August 5, 1391, on the feast of San Dominic, two vessels containing fifty Castilians landed at Barcelona. As if by appointment, those who landed rushed, with the native sailors, The Great laborers, peasants, and women, into Massacre the Calle Mayor, the principal street of the juderia, and murdered and plunof 1391. dered indiscriminately the entire night long and all of the following day. In the first assault, a hundred Jews lost their lives the rest fled to the Castello Nuevo, which, with the juderia, was manned by troops by order of the governor. Several of the Castilians were imprisoned and the city council acquiesced in the suggestion of the governor and the most prominent citizens to have them forthwith executed as ringleaders. The enraged citizens angrily protested against this decision, and attacked the governor and the members of the council. One of the latter was killed, and several



others seriously in j ured.

The

infuriated

mob forced

an entrance into the prison and freed the condemned. The castle was taken by storm; all Jews that had not left it about three hundred in number were killed. Many committed suicide, many threw themselves from the wall or lost their lives in frenzied combat with their assailants. A great number though not eleven thousand as Gratz has it (" Gesehder Juden," viii. 68)— accepted baptism as salvation ("Revue Etudes Juives," iv. 57 et seq,). At first the king of Aragon decided, by a decree dated Sept. 10, 1392, to abolish the Jewish commuConsidering, however, nity of Barcelona forever. what advantages had accrued to trade through the Jews, and what great services they had rendered the state, he publicly announced, on Oct. 2 (only two weeks later), that it was his wish to establish a new aljama there, and to grant it the same privileges He promised to that the former one had possessed.

—

—

the new settlers possession of the Calle de Sanahuja, in the neighborhood of the Castello Nuevo, with all the houses as residences. He also promised them, for the holding of services, the synagogue already existing there (perhaps the one built by Bonafos Solomon), and likewise the use of Monjuichas

a cemetery for the burial of their dead. They were to be freed, for three years, from all direct and indirect taxes; and to be protected from molestation by the government and the authorities for five years. No amount of promises, however, cculd iiMuce the Jews to settle again at Barcelona. At the request of some converts, and by perChureh mission of the king, a church to the Supersedes Holy Trinity was erected on the site Synaof the above-mentioned synagogue. gogue. In 1392, there were no longer any Jews or synagogues at Barcelona. On Dee. 26, 1424, Don Alfonso V. granted to the city of Barcelona the privilege that a Jewish community should never again be established there, and that no Jews were ever to settle there again. All Jews that were still in the city were either to leave it within sixty days or to become converts. But a Jew might