3. The Role of Kings and Courts

Though the Hebrew scribe’s records were generally recognized by Christian courts, particularly for wills and marriage or dowry affairs, there must have been occasional confusion, rejection, or bad experiences with local Christian courts. The crown issued several clarifications (perhaps more, since our records are very incomplete). To the relatively new and growing Jewish community on conquered Majorca island, Jaume in 1252 included among the communal privileges: “that any of you can effect espousals to your wife with a Hebrew [hebraica] charter,” with the usual financial arrangements. These instrumenta iudaica “have the same validity as if they were drawn by Christian public notaries.”^[1] This is not mere authenticity or practical acceptance within the dhimma pattern of subject communities but rather juridical equivalence in the two worlds. The occasion for this privilege was probably not some challenge or denial by local authorities but simply the need to compile statutes suitable for a frontier into which a jumble of Christian and Jewish communities and legal traditions were arriving. The privileges may well have represented practice elsewhere, either general or (to attract settlers by replicating advantages) possibly from one or other advanced locale.

Equivalence for Hebrew Charters

At Zaragoza in 1264 King Jaume I ordered that “the dowry and espousal documents between anyone of the aljama of Jews of Zaragoza, drawn or in future made by the hand of any Jewish scribe who is not licensed [publicus], are to be observed just as well as though they were made by the hand of a notary public, as long as there are two Jewish witnesses in them according to the custom of the Jews.” If any challenge arises, “We desire that [the complainant] accept justice according to the Sunna of the Jews.” The term Sunna, meaning the practice and deeds of Muḥamad as clarifying the written Koran, was used by the crown to denote the entire Islamic law and custom and sometimes grotesquely the Judaic tradition and law. This odd usage, though not common, was not rare in the crown registers, and a dozen exemplars might easily be cited for the thirteenth century.^[2]

In 1278 from his Perpignan palace in the Pyrenees the Conqueror’s son, King Jaume II of Majorca, made a similar but wider statute for his parallel kingdom: “All testaments and nuptial documents” drawn by Jews either on the mainland or the islands “can be made and written by a Jewish scribe or scribes in Hebrew script and with Jewish witnesses only, if they wish.” Such instruments “are to be held ratified and valid and as public, just as if they were made by Christian notaries public,” and had the same effect when presented by men or women “in or out of judicial usage,” just like “the wills and documents” of Christian notaries.^[3] A particularly valuable witness is the charter of Jaume II of Arago-Catalonia in 1292 to “the whole community of the Jews of Valencia present and future,” assuring the equivalence of Hebrew charters with those of Christian notaries, just as in the era of Jaume the Conqueror. “All charters or Hebrew documents drawn or to be drawn about any activities entered or to be entered between any Jews” were to be observed and to have the same effect “just as, in the times of the illustrious lord king Jaume and lord king Pere, those charters or Hebrew documents were accustomed to be observed and used.”^[4] This rescues for us the pattern of past Valencian practice under Jaume I, while confirming it also at the end of the thirteenth century.

Time is the fatal enemy of documents. Private charters such as wills tend to disappear unless they lodge by chance in some institutional archives. Even the precious public privileges of Jewish communities were at peril from what King Pere the Ceremonious called “the inroads of worms or feeding of insects,” which were corrupting even the crown archives.^[5] In 1275 Jaume I addressed the Pyrenean Jews in the various towns centered on Perpignan, Prada, and Puigcerdá (which will hold our attention below). He was “aware that damage and danger threaten you in the documents of concessions and privileges you have from us, both because of the breaking of seals and because of water-damage, as well as because of losing [them], and other various hazards that are known to happen daily.” He therefore equated “all copies made and taken from these charters, under the control of your own scribe, or the scribe of the court of the place and sealed with the court’s seal,” as equal in validity to the original.^[6] The devastating destructions of 1391 and 1492 brought extensive ruin to the remnants of the even more vulnerable private documentation.

Just as some Jewish wills survived in the Latinate notarial codices (themselves a fraction of their original numbers), so other kinds of Hebrew documents persisted in Latinate notices in the crown registers. The king functioned in Jewish community life as a kind of supreme court for intra-aljama legal actions. Some of these cases were appeals from the Jewish Bet Din, but as Abraham Neuman remarks, “in far too many cases the royal personages appear as judges of the first instance” at the request of one or both Jewish parties. Not only did the royal court invoke the Jewish law or sometimes deflect such an issue to Jewish judges but (by decree of Jaume I) it preferred Hebrew documents where available. Norman Roth perceives this appeal to the crown in a sense completely contrary to Neuman’s. In Spain Jews frequently used civil as well as criminal royal courts. In such a court the Jew had full standing as a person, unlike his situation in ecclesiastical courts and law. Rulers like Jaume the Conqueror had savant rabbis at hand to advise them in such cases.

Recourse to the ruler was not only by appeal from lower or Jewish courts but was available directly to Jewish subjects and on matters a modern might consider too trivial for the royal ear. Roth notes, for example, an appeal directly to the king about a disagreement over seating in a new synagogue. We need not suspect some reason of state, some eminence in the petitioner, or some financial interest by the crown in prosaic cases that preoccupied kings such as the Conqueror. To Roth this recourse was a form of representation in medieval Spain, “a voice” for the Jew in the general public realm.^[7] Living in a permanently parallel society, Jews related directly to king and to crown officials, under crown protection. Paradoxically, this vertical relationship made a more powerful linkage with Christian society, or rather with the pluricultural society called by shorthand Christian, than did the horizontal linkages of shared social and economic connections with their Christian neighbors.

Any number of crown interventions involved documents in Hebrew or Hebrew script. In the 1280s a Valencian Jew had given his son three small towns or villages by a charter in Hebrew. When the kingdom’s justiciar confiscated these in connection with a debt, Alfons III ordered the official to respect “the Hebrew documents and also other Hebrew documents drawn between Jews on other contracts.”^[8] Alfonso also had to give his attention to Hebrew documents of debt, partnership, agreement between aljamas, lease of houses, nuptials, and a loan drawn by Rabbi Meir (“Mahir”). Sample cases taken from the king’s general registers for 1289 include the purchase in that year by Salamó Baḥya of Murviedro “of the pasturage tax [erbatge] of the kingdom of Valencia, as is more fully contained in the Jewish [i.e., Hebrew] charter drawn up for this.”^[9] Similarly, a lawsuit by four Jews over their inclusion in Lérida’s Jewish tax collectory involved “a public Jewish [Hebrew] document drawn up.”^[10] Salāmah Mālikī (“Malagi”) of Barcelona and his son Astruc were involved in a court case over “some buildings and their rental, located in the Barcelona Jewry,” put out at lease “with Hebraic documents.” To decide the ensuing quarrel the crown ordered an arbitrator appointed from the community to judge “according to Hebraic law and the Sunna of the Jews.”^[11] In another dispute, between the Lérida Jew Mossé Ibn Zabr (“Cabra”) and Chayyim Azarel (“Chaim Azcarel”) together with his son David, over the marriage “contracted some time ago” between Mossé and the daughter of Chayyim, the king ordered arbitration by “one Jew, competent and not unacceptable to the parties,” using the “Hebrew documents” and proceeding “according to Hebrew law.”^[12]

Crown Testamentary Intervention

If actual Hebrew wills have rarely survived, considerable documentation about Jewish wills and testamentary activity has been preserved in the crown registers. In some cases the king is confirming the will or one of its provisions. In others he addresses fraud that has come to light. In a few he clears the name and clarifies the financial ambiguities of some Jew involved in crown finances just before his death. In yet others the king has to settle disputed wills or an element in such a will, as the heirs squabble over the provisions. A Jew might die intestate or have no direct heirs. Crown officials might have seized his properties or complainants brought claims arising from charges of usury. In more than one case the king intervened to protect or reinforce the widow’s right to her dowry, to review the ongoing administration by executors, to establish an administrator for minor children, to sequester property until heirs could be found, or to confer a general crown protection.

In a very early case at Barcelona in 1227 Perfet Vidal Gracià, a Jew and former crown bailiff of Barcelona, left much of his fortune to his seven nephews. The mutual interlacing of crown and personal finances caused the bailiff of Barcelona to sequester Perfet’s goods. On appeal King Jaume declared the seven to be proper heirs, released the legacies, and arranged a settlement. The heirs forgave the crown a debt of 11,362½ sous it owed Perfet as well as all other debts owed by King Jaume’s father Pere I (II of Aragon) and Jaume’s uncle-regent Count Sanç. The crown waived claims on Perfet’s property involving business with “butchers, bakers, wine-sellers, clothiers, and all others” and dismissed any other debt. The agreement was to have effect by “each law both Latin and Hebrew.” The nephews signed this charter in Hebrew.^[13]

In 1268 King Jaume ruled on a will drawn in Hebrew for the deceased Benvenist according to the custom of the Jews. He approved its six executors: Jahudà de la Cavalleria, Astruc Sa Porta, Ismā‘īl Ibn Venist of Morella, Mossé Sullam, Perfet “de Sa” Real, and the widow Jamīla, all “constituted executors according to the custom of the Jews for the aforesaid Benvenist and by him, as manifestly appears in his testament drawn in Hebrew.” The text distinguishes between the deceased as “Ben Venist” and his executor as “Ibn [Aben] Venist.” The latter’s origin so early in recently conquered Valencian Morella supports the conclusion that his immediate antecedents were Judeo-Arabic; his first name is both Arabic Ismā‘īl and Hebrew Yishmael. The Benvenist were a powerful family in the realms and in Occitania as well as in North Africa; in thirteenth-century Catalonia three generations bore the honorific or princely title ha-Nasi. Among the other executors Jahudà de la Cavalleria was particularly distinguished as the treasurer of the highland kingdom of Aragon. In the presence of such notables, King Jaume dispensed all six from having to produce the customary inventory of the decedent’s goods.^[14]

A related and complex case that same day involved the great Salomó Ibn Adret suing the four Jewish executors of Benvenist de Porta of Villafranca. An earlier decedent, Bonanasc of Besalú, had apparently willed his goods to his children Sara and Belshom (with Ibn Adret as Belshom’s guardian) and to Benvenist de Porta of Villafranca. When Benvenist himself died, leaving his claim to his own son Vidal, the executors for Benvenist (three of whom also served as Bonanasc’s executors) assumed control of his goods. Ibn Adret then initiated a suit, arguing that Bonanasc had died intestate, thus obviating the claim of Benvenist/Vidal and returning all of Bonanasc’s properties to Belshom, Ibn Adret’s own ward. But the executors produced a will naming Bonanasc’s daughter Sara as an heir, so King Jaume ruled against his friend and adviser Ibn Adret. The long account of this tangled trial deserves study; it is transcribed below in the appendix, document 6.

The final stage and delivery of sentence took place in the Dominican convent at Barcelona, “in the presence and witness” of a remarkable array of notables, including the bishop and archdeacon of Barcelona, several barons (including two of the Anglesola family), the patrician notable and syndic of Barcelona Jaume Gruny, the king’s confessor Arnau de Sagarra (who had studied under Albert the Great at Paris), “and many other witnesses,” most notably the greatest canon lawyer in Christendom, Ramon de Penyafort. Penyafort’s presence lends an adventitious interest to this charter, but the solemnity and weight of such unusual witnesses shows how seriously King Jaume took this lawsuit between his Jewish subjects. Benvenist de Porta, whose will was in question, was brother to the notable and courtier Astruc de Porta (whom some historians have confused with the towering figure of Nahmanides), from one of the great Jewish families of the realms. Ibn Adret was the king’s most prominent Jewish adviser and, of course, a scholar respected then throughout the world of European Jewry and still famous today as RaShBa. The document is not only an example of the crown’s role in the testamentary activity of the Jewish communities but also a glimpse into the rarefied world of courtiers, Christian and Jewish, around King Jaume the Conqueror.^[15]

Hard on the heels of this elaborate closure came two waivers of prosecution, in the guise of a royal pardon. In the first King Jaume dismissed any possible crown action at law against “Vidal de Porta, the son of the deceased Benvenist de Porta, and the executors of your said father, and your successors in perpetuity” that could be brought “by reason of Benvenist himself and by reason of his deceased son Perfet, and also by reason of the deceased Bonanasc of Besalú or his heirs.” The king went on to confirm in perpetuity “all gifts, concessions, establishments or determinations made by Us to the aforesaid Benvenist with Our documents, both concerning the goods of the same Benvenist your father or also concerning the goods of the aforesaid Bonanasc,” ratifying and confirming all such documentation.^[16] On the same day, the day after that final closure, a similar waiver went “to you the executors of the deceased Benvenist de Porta” and to Vidal, releasing them from responding at law to “the son of the deceased Bonanasc of Besalú or his guardian or also any other persons, about any suits or claims made or to be made against you” in connection with the legacies of Benvenist or Bonanasc. With these final waivers the lawyers forestalled any reopening of this hard-fought case.^[17]

A tangled case came before Pere the Ceremonious in 1347 in Valencia. The deceased Astruc de Beers had left behind two sets of children by his two wives. Though divorce or the polygamy sometimes found among Catalan Jews might be suspected here, the phrasing allows for either or both wives to be dead. Neither is named or given any role in the proceedings. The first set of children had a guardian-executor; the second set, presumably younger, had at least a relative as procurator. The quarrel over Astruc’s will had gone on “for a long time” (dudum) and finally was resolved by a Jew of Tárrega “as arbiter and arbitrator.” The son of the first wife got a residence, his father’s seat in the Barcelona synagogue, a Bible, and “a volume of Moses of Egypt containing fourteen books” (clearly the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides). The son of the second wife was to have had an equivalent share from his father’s properties in Villafranca del Panadés, a share his procurator soon rejected. An appeal to the king resulted in a period of calm assessment of the estate by both parties. If they could not reach agreement, the bailiff of Barcelona was then to elect “a third assessor or arbitrator acceptable to the parties,” the bailiff enforcing his decision.^[18]

An even odder case at Perpignan in 1327 was more easily resolved. The deceased Bonjorn de Barri of Collioure had made his son Daví his universal heir, but only on condition that he stay away from strife-torn Perpignan for ten years and also stay out of the kingdom of Majorca’s politics and finances. Should young Daví fail in these conditions, “all his estate would devolve to Us” the king! “Subsequently the aforesaid testator established codicils in which he imposed certain other prohibitory conditions” on his heir and again made the crown his sole heir if Daví did not abide by them. Pleading that the conditions were “very onerous and dangerous” (some false accusations were abroad in the Jewish community), Daví sought and received from the crown release from the conditions.^[19]

Certain cases more obviously invited crown intrusion. At Calatayud in 1349 the plague (presumably the Black Death then raging) carried off “a number of Jews among the wealthiest and highest taxpayers,” who left behind no heirs. By custom in such cases the community itself took the place of heirs, but this disposition left the other taxpayers overburdened (the estates apparently going to philanthropic and other nontax uses). The crown provided relief by instructing that such estates should go to tax-paying “heirs” who might normally receive some legacy “by testaments, gifts, or otherwise, according to the code or rite of the Jews.”^[20] In other cases the king seems to have entered with some reluctance, passing the problems on to committees. The physician Master Astruc Bonsenyor of Barcelona petitioned the king in 1349 to take up the case of his friend, the widow Mira (a form of Hebrew Miryam or the popular Catalan feminine Mira for “notable”). The royal register reads: “Recently fallen into grave illness she drew up her testament, which for various reasons or causes proposed in Our presence is said to be null and according to the Hebrew law ought to lack effective validity.” As a result, “the dowry of the said Jewess ought to be divided in equal shares among those nearest to her in the family line.” King Pere the Ceremonious therefore commissioned Astruc Jahudà des Cortal and Cresques Salamó “to judge whether the aforesaid testament ought to be considered as valid or as null and what ought to be done about the said dowry consequently” according to “the rite of the Jews and [their] law and justice.” For their mission the king “by this charter establishes you Our proxies [vices].” Thus the king acceded to the role of intervener while distancing himself from the actual complexities of solving the case personally.^[21]

Larceny and Fraud

Scandals titillate, so cases of fraud particularly catch the eye. Discovered fraud was also most likely to rouse a demand for justice on the part of other potential legatees and to invite intervention by the crown. A case that preoccupied Pere the Great left a paper trail of nine documents throughout 1285 and 1286, with a final echo in 1287. Jahudà of Limoux (Limós indicating that Languedocian city of origin rather than the Catalan surname Llimós) had died and disputes of an unspecified nature “about the will and about the goods bequeathed to his wife Bonadona” had arisen. King Pere’s entry into this fray took the form of an instruction to the bailiff of Lérida “that you do not allow this Bonadona to be unjustly aggravated,” so long as she was willing to respond at law to any formal charges.^[22] Ten days later the king had been apprised of those charges and had taken them seriously enough to launch a legal investigation: “We have learned that when Jahudà of Limoux, a Jew of Lérida, was dying in his final moments and desired to draw up a will, his wife Bonadona and some Jews among her relatives fraudulently and by force caused him to draft a will beyond what he would have done in sound mind and according to his [real] wishes.” The king ordered the bailiff of Lérida “diligently to investigate the truth about this, and to proceed at law against whomever you shall find guilty of the aforesaid.”^[23]

A half-year later, in receipt of the bailiff’s report, Pere expressed his dissatisfaction at its inconclusive nature: “We have learned that you received both oral testimony or depositions of those against whom the investigation was made, and of those witnesses produced on certain points touching that affair, in the business of that investigation that We recall having committed to you against Bonadona, the wife of the deceased Jahudà of Limoux, a citizen of Lérida, and her other accomplices, concerning a fraud committed (it is said) by them in the testament of the said Jahudà.” None of this had availed. “We have learned besides,” the king continued, “that both those against whom the investigation was made, as well as the aforesaid witnesses, swearing with contempt for religion and vacillating in their depositions, fraudulently varied what they said, suborned, to such a degree that (the truth buried) you cannot appropriately conclude the business of the investigation.” The crown’s instructions therefore ran: “If from plausible presuppositions or notable arguments you gather that the aforesaid [persons] (against whom the investigation was held, and also against those [witnesses] produced or to be produced) stand as suborned, or in their depositions differing, or otherwise suspect as to speaking the truth: you are to take care to examine them and their words again” and to start a proper lawsuit if that seems reasonable, and “without distractions” to push forward “to a definitive sentence,” forwarding it “to Us ourselves, wherever We shall be.”^[24] Again the king’s persistence, intensity, and personal involvement are striking.

The case dragged on. Nearly six months later the new king Alfons wrote to the same bailiff of Lérida. Alfons reviewed the progress of the case under his father, “against Bonadona the wife of the deceased Jahudà of Limoux a Jew of Lérida and her other accomplices, because of fraud said to have been committed by them in the will of the said Jahudà, and also against certain [witnesses] produced in this affair who vacillated in their depositions as suborned.” The new king now insisted that “according to the mandate” of King Jaume “you are to proceed in that affair right up to a final sentence, and you are to send that business or trial record to Us immediately, protected by the power of your seal.” That was not to be the end: a day would be assigned “suitable to the parties, on which to appear before Us for hearing the sentence on this matter and for proceeding” as shall be necessary.^[25] Final resolution of the case does not appear; Bonadona turns up in several more documents that same year, and in late 1287 she claimed and was awarded the return of 500 Jaca sous deposited in the course of her tangled career in court. As in other such cases, Jahudà and Bonadona do not seem special people or court Jews. The situation seems rather one of public scandal, unseemly tumult among the king’s more affluent subjects, to be handled for his Jews as he would have done for similar Christians. On the side of the Jews, such cases apparently involved contestants who would not arbitrate or settle within the community but who allowed their dispute to spill over into the royal courts.

In another case in 1286 the new king Alfons required the executors of a Barcelona Jew to present an accounting to his legatees. The king ordered the bailiff of Barcelona and the vicar and the bailiff of Cervera “to compel Biona Shealtiel [Saltel] and Isaac Sa Porta, Jews, executors of the testament and goods of the deceased Astrug de Porta, a Jew of Besalú resident at Barcelona, to render an account or reckoning to the children or heirs of the said deceased or even to his guardian or guardians, about that which they administered of the goods of the said deceased.” If the executors “perhaps cause delay of the audit,” these officials “are to take suitable legal precautions by your authority, in such wise that they cannot dissipate the goods.” The officials were also to require the executors (and pledge their property) “to restore to the said heirs or their guardians whatever they are bound to return after the audit.” In this episode one must resist the temptation to conflate Astruc de or Sa Porta with Bonastruc de Porta, the great Nahmanides, or with Astruc de Porta de Penadès, both public figures. The deceased here seems an altogether more private figure. This single echo of his postmortem troubles reveals a strong suspicion or near certainty of maladministration by executors, to the detriment of child heirs who required a “guardian.”^[26]

Yet another fraud “came before” King Pere in 1284. “The Jewess Boneta” tried “to defraud her daughter,” the wife of Bondavid the son of Astruc b. Bonsenyor, concerning “the lawful share that she ought to have from the goods of her mother at the time of her death.” Boneta, “forgetful of her blood ties, against the duty of [family] piety and in fraud and injury against the said daughter,” transferred all movables to a friend, Shaltiel Astruc, who then “turned them to [her] own ownership, doing business and making contracts and putting out at loan.” Because the royal power is obligated to restrain such injury, the culprit must now put all those goods plus the contracts (cirographa) before the king’s vicar of Barcelona, where the king will make a final decision on this matter.^[27]

King Alfons in 1286 had to deal with Sol, the determined widow of Avihu Ibn Rudriq (“Avenrodrich”), a Jew of Teruel. In June the king noted that Sol and her sons “want to flee from here, so as not to pay us the 4,000 gold morabatins” that Avihu had bequeathed to Alfons’s predecessor, King Pere the Great. Alfons ordered his official “to arrest without delay” both widow and sons “and to confiscate all their goods” until they would release that sum. At the official rate set by Jaume the Conqueror in 1247, the Alfonsine gold morabatin was worth 6 Valencian sous or 7½ Jaca sous, making the total legacy 24,000 Valencian sous, or 30,000 Jacan. Using an exchange ratio from the early 1280s, David Romano reckons the total at 42,000 Barcelonan sous or 63,000 Jacan. (The disparity in reckoning may reflect the difference between the maravedí alfonsí of Alfonso VIII of Castile, current in 1247, and the later coinage of that name by Alfonso X, which had two coins to the earlier maravedí’s one.) With such an enormous sum at stake and with the king as beneficiary, royal intervention is understandable. What is not clear is Avihu’s motive for such a legacy to the recently deceased king and in effect to the reigning king. A reasonable conjecture might be that Avihu had mingled public and private moneys, after the fashion of the day among tax farmers and financiers, so that the crown’s interest was merely in recovering its own. In Avihu’s case the context of community taxation, or the need for or gratitude for a privilege, offers alternate possibilities. The explanation may be much more complicated, as in a similar huge gift in a Jewish will to the kings of Majorca and France, to be considered below in chapter 4. Whatever the motive, our own interest is in the attempted fraud and the crown’s intervention.

In July the king ordered his official to extract from the prisoner Sol her share of Teruel’s current Jewish taxes. An August letter reveals the manner of the fraud: “You hid the testament of your said husband in which, it is said, he bequeathed to the lord king Our father” the 4,000 morabatins. As was common in medieval quarrels, an arbitration was arranged by which Sol surrendered to the crown only 2,500 sous of Jaca—a tenth or less than a fifth of the original sum, depending on the rate of exchange followed. Romano suggests as reasons urgent need for money, legal doubts about one king’s legacy going to another king or about the legacy as such (seen in the phrase “it is said”), or just a desire to close the case. King Alfons issued a pardon or waiver, and he ordered his official “that you acquit the said Jewess, and restore and release her movable and property goods which you seized and confiscated from her.”

The names in this series of four crown documents are intriguing. The family name Ibn Rudriq suggests an Arabic background, though the names of his brother Jacob and of Jacob’s sons Mossé, Samuel, and Isaac carry no such hint. The first document calls him David (uxor Davidis), doubtless a scribal confusion of Avihu with Catalan Daviu. The scribes also give him variously as Abayut and (twice) Avayu. Two biblical names are involved: Hebrew Avihud (“majestic father”) and Avihu (“he is my father”), the latter seeming best to fit the majority of spellings and the early confusion with Daviu. The Romance first name Sol is declined in the Latin text as masculine, indicating its meaning as “Sun” rather than as derived from Catalan sòl for “ground” or the Aragonese adverb for “alone.” As Sun it would be a cognate or crossover for Hebrew Shimshona, the feminine for biblical (English) Samson.^[28]

Another bit of larceny involved the physician Salamó Ibn Vives, son of Vives Salamó, as executor of Samuel Ibn Vives of Valencia. Salamó Ibn Vives belonged to a major distinguished family of the realms. King Jaume II described his crime and the conclusion of the affair in a wrap-up charter of 1310. The king reviewed “the seizure [empara] on Our part, done through Our faithful executive agent [porter] Arnau Cortit, of the goods of Samuel Ibn Vives the deceased Jew of Valencia, by reason of the [legal] action Our court was taking against the goods of that deceased because of the security guarantee that he had made to Our court on behalf of the Jew Ayhon Ibn Menax (biblical Hebrew Menashe), because of the Játiva bailiate and its revenues which the said Ayhon had previously purchased at auction.” After that action “and against the said attachment, together with Jahudà Ibn Vives, you [Salamó Ibn Vives] laid hold of a certain chest of the said deceased, which was in the house of Na Vives, a Jewess of Valencia, and took away out of it things that were there.” To cover up, “you and the said Jahudà, claiming that the said defunct Jew on his deathbed appointed you and the said Jahudà his executors, after his death caused a Hebrew charter to be made” to that effect.

“And when the truth about the foregoing was sought by Jaume de Arters a judge of Our court, Pere de Corell a citizen, and Jahudà Ibn Ḥasan a Jew of Valencia, [all;] appointed by Us to the investigation of this, and when they had caused for Our part a communal ban [alatma] to be placed on all Jews of the aljama of the said city (that on a fixed day they would give testimony concerning what they knew about the goods of the said deceased), against the said ban you omitted saying the truth about what you knew on the aforesaid, within the assigned period of the ban, on account of which you are said to have incurred a penalty of person and goods.” Eventually a compromise was worked out by which the physician Salamó Ibn Vives “paid and gave on Our behalf 4,000 Barcelona sous to Our faithful treasurer Pere Martí.” The documentary formula does not indicate a criminal fine, however, which doubtless would not have been so huge. It was rather that of a face-saving pardon, an amnesty and restoration of the most sweeping kind.^[29] The indignation apparent in this whole account and the rallying of the Jewish community to impose a ban and to force a general mobilizing of Jewish witnesses indicates how seriously both the crown and the Jews viewed such tampering with testaments.

Although accusations that executors had mismanaged a decedent’s estate were not uncommon, such charges may have cloaked the impatience of an heir or of other claimants. In 1328 Mossé Cohen, son of the deceased Aaron Cohen of Tortosa, made such a charge in the matter of an important legacy of his uncle Jucef Cohen: “In his last testament he arranged to have a school [of higher learning] organized for the use of poor Jewish students, for which school he willed a certain residence of his located in the Jewry of Tortosa, as well as many books and 1,000 Barcelonan sous to provide for the said school.” The uncle’s wife Bonadona “consented and approved the will.” His heir Aaron, and two other Jews named as executors, held “full power of directing and administering the school and the aforesaid goods.” Eventually only one executor survived as director “for sixteen years and more,” until his recent death; but “it is said he badly administered the aforesaid school.” Now the plaintiff Mossé Cohen asserts “that he as a person connected with the said testator ought to oversee and administer the said school and its properties and fulfill the last will of the said testator” as “the nearest to the said testator.” King Alfons ordered a judge of his court to investigate and resolve the case “briefly and simply, all malice put aside,” since Mossé was about to sue the “heirs and holders” of the estate of the recently dead administrator.

An oddly similar case came before Pere the Ceremonious thirty years later. Abraham Mayl (a variant of Meir) had left as a pre-gift inter vivos to his community at Egea, “out of piety and for his salvation and that of his relatives,” a school for young boys. This involved “some houses of his located in front of the synagogue of the Jews of the said town,” adjoining other buildings owned by Abraham, “and certain Hebrew books,” all on condition that “some master or rabbi of the said community would have to live there and make his residence in those houses and instruct Jewish boys of the said community in their Law, and that the said community could not convert or alienate the said houses to other uses besides those.” Some Jews of Egea, however, acting “from hatred of the said Abraham,” saw to it that the teacher did not live there or instruct the boys, to the damage both of the community and Abraham. Responding to Abraham’s plea, the king ordered the community to respect the conditions of the gift if Abraham’s case had been properly presented; otherwise the bailiff’s lieutenant would “enforce and compel” this order.^[30]

At times the fraud presented before the king does not seem weighty enough to have justified royal recourse. Meir, a Jew of Figueras and son of a deceased physician of the royal household, Master Cresques, deposed that “certain books were left him by his father, among them a book called Avicenna written on delicate calfskin parchments in a round script (otherwise called among Jews ‘squared’), and the said book at the time of death was stolen or taken away from his house, and now he has discovered it in the hands of a Jewish surgeon of Barcelona called Master Bonjua Cabrit.” King Pere ordered the city’s bailiff to sequester the book, investigate the circumstances, and do justice “without any litigation and formal documentation.” Though this case involved the disposition of a legacy, it is not clear that an actual will had been prepared, Hebrew or Latin.^[31]

The matter of the missing book probably involved more expense than the “certain quantity of oil” left by the dying Hizquia (a Hebrew biblical name) as “legacies to be distributed both as alms and otherwise.” Hizquia’s father, Master Salamó Bofill of Perelada, another physician of the royal household, complained that Hizquia “had no claims on it” but that it belonged to Salamó “and was being kept in his pharmacy-shop for himself.” The Jewish authorities, “invading and opening the shop, took away” the oil. The disposition of this case is illegible but presumably followed the usual course in such minor disputes—investigation by the bailiff and a prudent decision without legalities.^[32]

Young Mossé b. Samiel: Arbitration

Twelve documents in Jaume’s registers for 1272 detail the case about “the deceased Salamó Samiel, formerly called differently Bonisac Samiel from Carcassonne [and apparently also from Alès above Nîmes], a Jew of Perpignan.” Salamó left as his heir Mossé, his boy-child (impuber). Mossé and the property were in the hands of his widowed mother, Botina, and two co-executors, Vives Vidal and Astruc of Belcayre (Beaucaire). In his first contact with this situation, the king had confirmed this “will or last testament.”^[33] Crown confirmation of the will had been appropriate in this instance because the deceased had been involved with public moneys, presumably in farming or collecting taxes. King Jaume therefore received a settlement of 6,000 sous of Melgueil (an Occitan money) from the estate.^[34] The king had further concerns, however: “mindful of the industry of the administrators and the amount of the patrimony,” he and his advisers feared that the child’s “goods might be depleted [devastari] or even lost” by inept representation. The previously appointed three may have seemed too amateurish to manage so unusually large a patrimony. The king now “added and associated” as an oversight commission “two residents of Perpignan”—Bonafós Mossé of Narbonne and Samiel, a son of the deceased Cresques of Béziers. They were to audit the actions of the widow and executors each year until the boy was eighteen, “despite the confirmation given by Us to the testament of the said deceased Salamó.”^[35] Jewish courts intervened regularly in cases of such “orphans,” and the king’s action probably represented his validation of their action, or else their action as consultants of the crown when he returned the case to the community for adjudication. Such interplay of royal and communal courts was frequent enough; its application to a will allows a glimpse of this Occitan group of relatives and neighbors, part of the migration into Jaume’s realms, away from the increasing Frankish control.

At the same time the king extended to all five executors (including the newly appointed reviewers) a formal charter of amnesty or clearance for any “bad or fraudulent or underhanded administration.” No civil or criminal action could henceforth be taken under any law, on account of past performance, nor could further accounting be demanded by anyone except the boy heir. To that heir, however, “you are obliged to render an audit and explanation about each and every” such action.^[36] A companion document absolved the young heir from any blame or consequence “of any public or private malfeasance” by his deceased father against the crown. It also released “the goods of your said father” from any danger “of being confiscated in whole or in part” by reason of crown claims or rights.^[37] A separate charter indicates that malicious gossip and false charges were harassing the family. The king orders that anyone delating or accusing young Mossé or his deceased father must pay court expenses and any damages, unless the accuser can offer solid proof.^[38]

Three months later, obviously in response to the executors’ intervention, King Jaume again reviewed the facts in licensing all five executors and then specifically gave them “license and authority to buy in Perpignan and the Roussillon region, in the name and for the advantage of the said boy-child Mossé, properties and possessions, together or separately, for 10,000 Valencian sous” and to pay out that sum without interference. Anyone, presumably agents or an individual executor, who “dares to buy” such properties outside those two areas without “the will and consent of all of you” will incur a fine of 1,000 sous for each such action.^[39] A companion charter that day made the same point by prohibiting export of Mossé’s inheritance outside Perpignan and its region, Roussillon: “For the greater advantage of the boy-child Mossé, and lest his goods be depleted [dissipari], We wish and decree by this present charter, that any goods of the said child (namely cash or anything else or funds) not be extracted or exchanged or carried outside Perpignan or the land of Roussillon by a person or persons without the consent” of the five executors, “namely until the said child Mossé has passed the age of eighteen years.” Transgressors were to make restitution and also pay the fine of 1,000 sous (here described as of Melgueil) per violation. The investment sum alone reveals the deceased as one of the more affluent Jews of Perpignan. The loan and investment charters of Perpignan studied by Richard Emery confirm this impression and also show some of the loan activity carried on by the executors for young Mossé.^[40]

The last three documents of November 1272 put further restrictions on the heir himself. Mossé could not leave “Perpignan or the land of Roussillon for other parts, without the permission of his mother” and other guardians, “until the same Mossé will have attained eighteen years.”^[41] Another charter blocked his marrying during that time: “Let no one dare or be able to espouse any wife to the aforesaid Mossé, or make or establish a marriage between him and any Jewish woman, until the said Mossé will have reached eighteen years.”^[42] Finally, during that November King Jaume formally named Mossé’s mother Botina as direct guardian. “Noting it to be in harmony with reason and with law, that the mother ought to bring up her boy-children after the father has died,” the king made “the said Botina mother and nurturer of the said boy-child Mossé, until he shall attain the age of eighteen years, unless she meanwhile takes a husband.”^[43]

When Mossé’s mother Botina died the following year, King Jaume again entered this testamentary scene. He acceded to the request of the two remaining executors that “another guardian cannot be appointed while you are alive, nor can any administrator or guardian be given to the said ward or adjoined in the said guardianship, unless it shall first be proved against you in Our court that you conducted yourself less than well in that guardianship.”^[44] Such intense and sustained intervention by the crown in a Jewish testamentary affair may have been unusual, or perhaps it is only better documented than most. The deceased Bonisac does not seem to have been among the highest of Jaume’s Jews in wealth or reputation. Neither he nor his little heir Mossé appears elsewhere in the king’s registers, and it is difficult to get a sense of his role in crown finances. The episode nevertheless demonstrates how forcefully and minutely the king could intervene in a relatively normal and nonfraudulent case.

At times the crown’s role was limited to approving and validating a compromise reached by the contending parties under the legal advice of a local royal judge. In mid-1274 King Jaume “approved, conceded, and confirmed the agreement by Salamó Sullam de Porta and by Vidal Provençal and by Salamó Cohen and Astruc Salamó, Jews, arbitrators appointed with the advice of Pere Rubi, judge for Perpignan and Roussillon, between Astruc Vidal (the son of Vidal Astruc, a deceased Jew of Perpignan) and his brother Abraham on the one side and also Colasana the wife of the said deceased Vidal Astruc, and on the other side Perfet Garcia and Todros [Toroz] Garcia [both surnames scribal slips for the noted Jewish family Gracià in Catalonia?] and Vidal, brothers of the said Colasana, in the name and cause of Nina and Petita, the daughters of the deceased Vidal Astruc, concerning the goods namely and the inheritance of the said Nina and Petita, as more fully contained in the charters drawn on the matter.”^[45]

King Jaume’s eldest son Prince Jaume had confirmed a Jewish will as well as an audit of the executor’s management and also certain “agreements and arrangements and requests done between the children of the deceased Vidal Astruc of Perpignan and the guardian-executor Bondia of Lunel, appointed in the will.” Now in early 1273 the king himself added his confirmation both of the will and of the arrangements.^[46] Jaume’s son and successor Pere the Great acted traditionally in a 1282 lawsuit “between Astruc Jacob Xixó [Shashon/Sasson] on the one side and his in-law Jucef Cohen on the other, about a matter of marriages and wills.” The king instructs the subvicar of Tortosa, before whom the case had come “by delegation of the lord king,” to decide it “by the Hebrew Sunna,” or law. The casual use of Islamic “Sunna” again shows how acceptable the grotesque usage had become.^[47] It appears again in the case of “the deceased Astruc of Gerona formerly of Murviedro,” modern Sagunto in the kingdom of Valencia, who had left his estate or a considerable part of it to his daughter Astruga and his nephew Astruguet, both wards “in his testament.” King Alfons in early 1286 ordered his bailiff “to uphold and defend” these children in their claim: “You are not to permit these wards to be evicted from ownership of those goods without a legal trial,” and “if perchance they have been evicted” from all or part of that legacy, “you are to cause them to be restored in that possession, according as ought to be done by the law and code [forum] or Sunna of the Jews.”^[48]

A Will in Hebrew and Latin

The most fascinating of the royal intrusions into the field of Jewish wills is a charter of Jaume I in mid-1263. In granting his confirmation, conferring royal protection on its child-beneficiary, and summing the major provisions, Jaume supplies a kind of paraphrased will. More to our purpose, he describes the will as existing in two versions, in Latin and in Hebrew. The Jewish wills in Latin examined below may reasonably have had a corresponding Hebrew charter, but we have no survivals by which to test the supposition or to compare two versions. Would the Hebrew have been more detailed and itemized? Was the Latin concerned with the few matters that might enter a Christian court? This 1263 will of Salamó of Tortosa, a Jew of Barcelona, suggests that the two versions were in substance interchangeable and could be treated as one document in two languages.

Salamó had been “some time dead” by the time the case reached the king. Salamó had made “his testament and last will (as is evident) in two charters [instrumenta], one of which is written in Latin and validated by Pere de Castellterçol, lieutenant of Guillem de Torrelles Our vicar in Barcelona, and the other is written in Hebraic script [littera].” Salamó’s executors were Biona Satell, Isaac son of the deceased Bonet of Piera, and Zarc Modec, “our Jews of Barcelona.” The universal heir was Bellor, the daughter of Salamó, a minor, “to whom he left all his goods, whatever he had or ought to have anywhere by any title.” The executors were explicitly designated also as “guardians and administrators” of Bellor, “just as is contained more amply in the text [series] or composition [forma] of the said testament.” Seeing that the business had been done “correctly and carefully,” Jaume confirmed “the entire disposition or text of the aforesaid testament” as to choice of executors, establishment of guardianship, arrangement for Bellor’s marriage later (“with the counsel of the said guardians and administrators and also the mother”), and finally “as to each and every [item] contained and likewise expressed in the same testament.”

A closing statement allows “that if anyone can show he has a greater claim on the goods of Salamó” than Bellor, in any way or reasoning, this confirmation cannot be cited to the prejudice of such claims, which may be freely brought before the king’s bailiff or vicar of Barcelona. Bellor is then put under crown protection in the usual formulas of the safeguard called a guiatge. Bailiffs and vicars of Barcelona, present or future, must respect the testament or “incur Our anger and indignation.” The document so clearly brings together the themes of bilingual wills and crown intervention that it is presented below in full transcription (see appendix, doc. 2). It does not illuminate the problem of form in such double wills; presumably the Latin notary drafted his text in Roman law forms (as Latin wills themselves show), while the Hebrew text would have displayed the mentality and expressions traditional to Hebrew wills. There would thus have been three texts and “languages”—the megatext of the testator, devised mentally in Romance, the notary’s translation into Latin language and legal structure, and the Hebrew scribe’s translation of the underlying megatext into his traditional forms and language. The original expression of the testator himself, as will be seen below, was probably informal oral dictation.^[49]

Another will of 1263, just five months later, survives because a copy came to rest at Santa Anna, a church of the Canons of the Holy Sepulcher in Barcelona. Probably because the clerics had come into possession of one or more of the will’s properties, they had a notarized copy of it drafted in July 1293 and deposited in their archives. The deponent was Astruc “Scandarini,” elsewhere “Ascandarini,” son of Abraham of Alexandria (Latin de Alexandria). Joaquim Miret i Sans and Moïse Schwab, who encountered this single will in compiling their collection of Jewish documents from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, were puzzled by the strange surname. Leila Berner found other notices of the family in Barcelona and confirmed the spelling. The name of Astruc’s father, Abraham of Alexandria, however, provides a clue to its meaning. Al-Iskandarīya is the Arabic name for the great Egyptian port of Alexandria, where Catalan commercial connections and influence were then dominant and where an ancient Jewish community still flourished under the early Mamluks. The Latin Ascandarinus corresponds to the Arabic nisba or epithet-name of origin Iskandarānī (variant al-Iskandarārī). The Latin Scandarini corresponds to an Arabic variant Sikandarānī resulting from confusion of Is and As with an elided Arabic article as-. Thus the son’s name reflects an Arabic variant of the father’s Latin name.^[50]

Astruc Scandarini was very ill when he appointed three relatives or perhaps in-laws (cognati) and left most of his wealth to his daughter, Bonasenyora or Bonadona (Latin Bonadomina). This legacy included houses in the Jewish quarter, a vineyard in the Mogoria district just southwest of Barcelona, and 800 gold morabatins, or something over 3,200 Barcelona sous. Astruc also left her “twenty-four Hebrew books and the place I have in the synagogue” (such a seat was highly negotiable). If Bonadona should die unmarried, or married and childless, all these properties “are to be converted into alms for the salvation of my soul,” distributed at the executors’ discretion but with 400 of the gold morabatins going into the executors’ pockets. Finally, the executors were to pay Astruc’s debts and also to transfer the rents from a special farm called Queralt d’Almoina, in two segments, half in alms for the executors to distribute in the Jewish quarter and half “to the Jew who collects the alms of the Jews of Barcelona.” Three Jews signed in Hebrew as executors and three more in Romance as witnesses. Three Christian notaries signed as verifying the copy. Unlike most Latinate wills, this lacks Christian witnesses, while the executors use Hebrew letters. The testament invokes no universal heir or other themes and formulas from Roman law, suggesting that the original 1263 will was not Latinate itself but Hebrew. The notarized copy thirty years later would have corresponded to the will’s provision for selling off or “converting” the bulk of the properties if and when the heiress daughter died either unmarried or childless. For that occasion a fully notarized version in Latin would have served as documentation for the religious order purchasing some of that property. Thus Astruc’s will may also serve as a model for a type of Hebrew will.

A century ago the prolific English scholar Joseph Jacobs examined a number of crown documents on Jews, including some on wills. From a small sampling he projected a series of general conclusions, all accumulating to make “a lode of Jewish law and custom.” He believed, for example, that Jewish wills required the king’s confirmation. There is no evidence for this statement, other than the several extant confirmations. Against the argument is the actual rarity of royal confirmations. Even if one argues that entering a will in the Christian notary’s codex was reductively a crown confirmation (a very improbable position), there are simply not enough wills to accommodate the presumable number of dying Jews for a given year. The early registers with their many thousands of charters (thousands for Jews alone) display a large number of guiatges or documents granting royal protection, in striking contrast to the number of wills confirmed. Indeed it would seem that some reason was needed for such crown intervention. The same skepticism applies to Jacobs’s other general conclusions: that property inherited had to be confirmed by the king, that the crown normally appointed guardians for heirs, that “the king settled the alimony of heirs,” or that a Jew needed special permission “to transmit farms to his heirs.” Jacobs also seems to have confused the ubiquitous heredad (estate, farm, property) with an inheritance; such a holding might be inherited, given by the king, bought, or otherwise acquired.^[51]

The dynamics of royal intervention, except when invited by some public scandal or uproar or when the crown’s finances were entwined with those of the suddenly deceased, would plausibly have followed the pattern of crown intervention in general. Crime and crown business aside, such intrusion was generally invited. A faction, an aggrieved heir, a favored courtier, a procurator for the community, or simply a situation too knotty to be handled at the local level could ask for the attention of the king and the king’s courts. As the surviving descriptions of procedure indicate, a large and complicated investigation might ensue, the whole affair tapering off into an arbitration, a waiver/pardon, a fine, or dismissal. The Jewish and Christian communities intersected at this legal level in the case of certain wills; the convergence was even more common at the level of entering a will for a fee into the Christian notary’s public record. But most Jews presumably arranged their last dispositions in more traditional manner within their local community.

Testaments were not the only, or even the most usual, legal bridge on which the two peoples interacted. Business and loan contracts between them and before a notary were enforceable at law. Jews and Christians met before the various courts in the realms—municipal, royal, and even episcopal. An amusing example of the last category is the lawsuit transcribed in document 44 below, where Isaac and Abraham Astruc sued before the bishop of Gerona and forced a delinquent creditor to surrender “three copper pots” he had put up as security.^[52] Few such occasions involved Jewish law or documentation, however, in the manner in which they intertwined in Latinate testaments. Nor were such occasions invested with the solemnity and the psychological intimacy of actions at law involving a last testament.

Notes