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Sources for the History of the Jews of Majorca

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

J. N. Hillgarth
J. N. Hillgarth*
Affiliation:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
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Extract

In my view it will not be possible to write the detailed history of the Jewish community in Majorca until a great deal more preliminary work has been done on the sources for that history. The following sketch of the subject is limited to the period before 1500, and, except for some references to conversos, to the time before 1391. It seems best to begin with a brief discussion of the context within which the Jewish community of Majorca emerged in the later Middle Ages and of the historical background which gave it its peculiar importance.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 50 , 1995 , pp. 334 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by Fordham University 

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References

1 This article began as a paper given at a conference entitled “In Iberia and Beyond” held at the University of Maryland in April 1991. The only abbreviations used are ECR (for the “Escrivania de Cartes reials”), a series in the Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca in Palma de Mallorca, and REJ (for the Revue des études juives).Google Scholar

2 For literary records, see Amengual i Batle, Josep, Els orígens del Cristianisme a les Balears i el seu de senv olup ament fins a l'època musulmana (Mallorca, 1992); see my review in Speculum 69 (1994): 729–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Abulafia, David, A Mediterranean Emporium, The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge, 1994), 57–64, has a critique of Elena Lourie's (still very valuable) “Free Moslems in the Balearics under Christian Rule in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 45 (1970): 624–49 (reprinted in Elena Lourie, Crusade and Colonisation: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Aragon [Aldershot, 1990]).Google Scholar

4 See Còdex Català del Llibre del Repartiment de Mallorca, ed. Soto Company, Ricard (Barcelona, 1984); the older edition in the Colección de documentos inéditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón, vol. 11 (Barcelona, 1856), is still useful.Google Scholar

5 Dufourcq, Charles-E., L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib au XIII e et XIV e siècles, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études hispaniques, 37 (Paris, 1966); J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1976–78), 1: 363; A. Riera Melis, La Corona de Aragon y el reino de Mallorca en el primer cuarto del siglo XIV, vol. 1 (Madrid-Barcelona, 1986).Google Scholar

6 Régné, Jean, The History of the Jews in Aragon, Regesta and Documents 1213–1327, ed. Assis, Yom-Tov (Jerusalem, 1978; first published in the REJ 60–75, 78), doc. 236. For this repertory, which remains the first collection to consult when one is studying the Jews of the Crown of Aragon in this period, see Romano, David, “Análisis de los repertorios documentales de Jacob y Régné,” Sefarad 14 (1954): 247–64. There are over 250 references to Majorcan Jews — taken from Régné and other publications — in A. L. Isaacs, The Jews of Majorca (London, 1936), 225–70.Google Scholar

7 J. N. Hillgarth, Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

8 See Chazan, Robert, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley, 1992).Google Scholar

9 See the two recent editions: Die Disputation zu Ceuta (1179) und die Disputatio zu Mallorca (1286): Zwei antijudische Schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua, ed. Limor, Ora, MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters (Munich, 1994); Disputatio contra ludeos, ed. Dahan, Gilbert and Contardo, Inghetto, in Auteurs latins du moyen âge (Paris, 1993). For a discussion of these, see Hillgarth, J. N., “The Disputation of Majorca (1286): Two New Editions,” Euphrosyne 22 (1994): 403–13.Google Scholar

10 See the Guía del Archivo de la Corona de Aragon (Madrid, 1958).Google Scholar

11 Abulafia, , Emporium (n. 3 above), 88–89.Google Scholar

12 See Hillgarth, J. N., “Majorcan Jews and Conversos as Owners and Artisans of Books,” in Exile and Diaspora, Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart (Jerusalem-Madrid, 1991), 125–30.Google Scholar

13 J. N. Hillgarth, Readers and Books in Majorca, 1229–1550 (Paris, 1991), 2: 438–41.Google Scholar

14 Hillgarth, , The Spanish Kingdoms (n. 5 above), 2: 12.Google Scholar

15 Baer, Yitzhak, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1961–66), 2: 46–54.Google Scholar

16 J. N. Hillgarth and J. Rosselló Lliteras, The ‘Liber communis curiae’ of the Diocese of Majorca (1364–1374) (Montreal-Paris, 1989), 189–90.Google Scholar

17 Hillgarth, , The Spanish Kingdoms, 2: 139–40.Google Scholar

18 See Selke, A. S., The Conversos of Majorca. Life and Death in a Crypto-Jewish Community in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Hispania Judaica (Jerusalem, 1986).Google Scholar

19 Especially E. de K. Aguiló, in many articles in the Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana (Palma, 1885–), and Antonio Pons, Los judíos del Reino de Mallorca durante los siglos XIII y XIV, 2 vols. (Palma, 1984), first published in articles in Hispania 16 (1956) and 20 (1960), and unfortunately still unindexed. For a critique of this book, see Riera i Sans, Jaume, “Estudis sobre el judaisme català,” Calls 1 (1986): 130. See Mut Calafell, A., Guía sumaria del Archivo del Reino de Mallorca (Madrid, 1984).Google Scholar

20 Ricard Soto Company, “La población musulmana en Mallorca bajo el dominio cristiano (1240–76),” Fontes rerum Balearium, 2 (1978): 65–80, 549–64, and idem, “La aljama judaica de Ciutat en el siglo XIII (Epoca de Jaime I),” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 36 (1978): 145–84. For further discussion of these documents, see Hillgarth, J. N., “Ramon Lull's Early Life: New Documents,” Mediaeval Studies 53 (1991): 337–47 (the two plates reproduced there provide examples of the type of cursive employed in these volumes).Google Scholar

21 So Riera, Calls 1 (1986): 108.Google Scholar

22 There are also errors as to folio references. The use of other studies by Soto has shown me that it is invariably necessary to check every statement he makes and to verify every transcription.Google Scholar

23 ECR 344, fol. 183v.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., fol. 190.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., fols. 214, 218v, 323v. 26 ECR 346, fol. 97.Google Scholar

27 ECR 347, fols. 71, 142.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., fol. 202.Google Scholar

29 ECR 344, fol. 272.Google Scholar

30 See Verlinden, Charles, “La esclavitud en la economía medieval de las Baleares, principalmente en Mallorca,” Cuadernos de historia de España 67–68 (1982): 123–64.Google Scholar

31 Hillgarth, , Readers and Books (n.13 above), 2: 414, 434–37.Google Scholar

32 José Miralles y Sbert, Catálogo del Archivo Capitular de Mallorca, 3 vols. (Palma, 1941), is reasonably complete and accurate, but it is very summary.Google Scholar

33 See Miralles, , no. 14558.Google Scholar

34 The Arxiu Diocesà of Majorca has no printed catalog. For some of its more important registers, see Hillgarth, and Rosselló, , ‘Liber communis curiae’ (n. 16 above).Google Scholar