Notes
1. Antoni M. Udina i Abelló, “El testament català en el segle XIII: Supervivencies i innovacions,” XIIe Congrés d’història de la Corona d’Aragó, 3 vols. (Montpellier, 1987–1989), 2:157–165; see especially his more general La successió testada a la Catalunya altomedieval (Barcelona, 1984), a thorough study and edited collection of the surviving 137 wills up to 1025, with excellent bibliography; chap. 2 reviews the subject of wills in early Europe. See also Jean Bastier, “Le testament en Catalogne du IXe au XIIe siècle: Une survivance wisigothique,” Revue historique du droit français et étranger 3 (1973): 374–417. Manuel M. Pérez de Benavides, El testamento visigótico: Una contribución al estudio del derecho romano vulgar (Granada, 1975). Of related interest is Joana Canals i Ramon, L’hereu—una institució en crisi? (Barcelona, 1985). For a systematic survey of wills in Spain, in 33 sections with bibliographical orientation, see Alfonso García-Gallo, “Del testamento romano al medieval: Las lineas de su evolución en España,” Anuario de historia de derecho español 47 (1977): 425–497. Two recent contributions on Castilian wills are Jesús Coria Colino, from wills at Zamora in Castile in 1220–1533, “El testamento como fuente sobre mentalidades (s. XIII al XV),” Miscelánea medieval murciana 9 (1982): 193–219; and A. L. Molina Molina and Amparo Bejarano Rubio, “Actitud del hombre ante la muerte: Los testamentos murcianos de finales de s. XV,” ibid., 12 (1985): 185–202, from 78 wills in the Murcian region. For Catalonia see Jordi Günzberg, “Testamentos del siglo XIV del Archivo histórico de protocolos de Barcelona (AHPB) y su applicación a la demografía histórica: Estudio archivistico-metadológico,” Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia 10 (1989): 89–98; Imma Ollich, “La història medieval i les noves tècniques d’anàlisis per ordinador: Els testaments de Vic del segle XIII,” ibid., 1 (1980): 11–27; and the thorough book-length analysis of testamentary formulas, item by item through 50 wills, by M. J. Arnall i Juan, “Testaments de fons monacals gironins existents a l’Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (segles XI–XV),” De scriptis notariorum (s. XI–XV), ed. Josefina Mateu Ibars (Barcelona, 1989), 39–159. An intensive analysis of some two thousand wills before 1200 is N. L. Taylor, “Medieval Catalonian Wills: Family Charter Evidence in the Archives,” in Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992, ed. L. J. McCrank (Binghamton, N.Y., 1994), chap. 3. For a detailed analysis of an elaborate thirteenth-century will, see Robert I. Burns, S.J., “Daughter of Abū Zayd, Last Almohad Ruler of Valencia: The Family and Christian Seigniory of Alda Ferránis, 1236–1300,” Viator 24 (1993): 143–187.
2. Alfonso X el Sabio, Las siete partidas, 3 vols. (Madrid, [1807] 1972), Partida 6: e.g., drafting a will (law 303); anyone can make a will unless expressly forbidden (law 13); a Christian who becomes a Jew cannot make a will (law 9). Some aspects of succession and inheritance not touched on in this partida can turn up indirectly in others. For background see Robert I. Burns, S.J., ed., Emperor of Culture: Alfonso the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1990), chaps. 1, 12, and index under “law.”
3. Fori antiqui Valentiae, ed. Manuel Dualde Serrano (Madrid, 1967), rubrics 82 (38 laws), 85 (9 laws), 86 (39 laws), 87 (7 laws), 88 (7 laws), 89 (4 laws), 90 (6 laws), 92 (20 laws). The full Puigcerdá schedule is in Sebastià Bosom i Isern and Salvador Galceran i Vigué, Catàleg de protocols de Puigcerdà (Barcelona, 1983), 14–16.
4. On the Muslim scribe, see R. I. Burns, S.J., Islam under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton, 1973), 398–399, with appointments to the post and a surviving exemplar from Murviedro. See also R. I. Burns, S.J., Society and Documentationin Crusader Valencia (Princeton, 1985), 126, 132, and the edition by Burns and Paul Chevedden in “Al-Azraq’s Surrender Treaty with Jaume I and Prince Alfonso in 1245: Arabic Text and Valencian Context,” Der Islam 66 (1989): 1–37. Wilhelm Hoenerbach has an introductory essay on the “notarial” Islamic scribe and on the kātib in his Spanisch-islamische Urkunden aus der Zeit der Naṣriden und Moriscos (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), xxi–xxxv. M. C. Barceló Torres has collected 270 published and unpublished Mudejar/Morisco Arabic documents from 1366 to 1595, not all of course from public scribes, in Minorías islámicas en el país valenciano: Historia y dialecto (Valencia, 1984); on the post or function of translator of tax and public records from Arabic, see pp. 138–139; on Muslims’ declarations before Christian notaries, see p. 414; and on those who wrote “de pròpria mà,” see pp. 141–143. For background in Hispano-Arabic “notarial” practice (shurūṭ) see the edition by Pedro Chalmeta and Federico Corriente of Ibn al-‘Aṭṭār (d. 1009), Kitāb al-Wathā’iq wa-siǧillāt, in Arabic with extensive Spanish introduction as Formulario notarial hispano-árabe por el alfaquí y notario cordobés Ibn al-‘Aṭṭār (s. X) (Madrid, 1983).
5. Ibn ‘Abdūn, Séville musulmane au début du XIIe siècle: Le traité d’Ibn ‘Abdūn, ed. Évariste Lévi-Provençal (Paris, 1947), pp. 27–28, no. 17. Cf. Burns, Islam under the Crusaders, 398–399. For Canellas López, see his “El notariado en España hasta el siglo XIV: Estado de la cuestión,” in Notariado público i documento privado: De los orígines al siglo XIV (VII Congreso Internacional de Diplomática), 2 vols. (Valencia, 1989), 1:104 (“curiosamente en Hispania adquiere singular difusión”). Francesc Carreras i Candi, “Desenrotllament de la institució notarial a Catalunya en lo segle XIII,” I Congrés d’història de la corona d’Aragó, 1 vol. in 2 (Barcelona, 1909–1913), 765. For Jews commissioned for Arabic contracts, see below, pp. 35, 40–41.
6. Arch. Crown, reg. 21, fols. 10v-11 (31 August 1271), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 9, for Jaume’s Muḥamad. Ibid., reg. 40, fol. 166 (1 October 1278): “tibi Foçan filio de Pharach Avinlatro Sarraceno Cesarauguste donacionem quam dominus Iacobus inclite recordacionis rex Aragonum pater noster tibi fecit de alcaydia et scribania Sarracenorum Cesarauguste et omnium terminorum Cesarauguste et de faciendis omnibus instrumentis sarracen[ic]is et açidaqes…Teneas eciam et habetis alhabeçes; et omnia iura alcaidie et scribanie integriter percipias.” Angel Canellas López publishes this document, with slight differences from my transcription, in his Colección diplomática del consejo de Zaragoza, 2 vols. and album (Zaragoza, 1972–1975), vol. 2, p. 84, doc. 59; my supplied date differs from his “October 1–5.” Sixteen years later in 1294 these same offices are linked in a tax report from Borgia’s Muslims: “los officios de alfaquinado e de çabçla e de escrivania e de alaminatge de los moros” (Burns, Islam under the Crusaders, 379, 383, 386, and Society and Documentation, 127n.).
7. Arch. Crown, reg. 41, fol. 16 (20 November 1278), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 22. The appointment itself for life to the “scribaniam Osce et terminorum suorum” is on fol. 161.
8. See both crown charters cited in Burns, Society and Documentation, 126–127.
9. Arch. Crown, reg. 40, fol. 262v (27 September 1278), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 21. The same ‘Alī appears again on fol. 161v (21 October 1279).
10. Ibid., reg. 19, fol. 161v (17 August 1274): “vobis universis et singulis Sarracenis habitantibus seu habitandis in civitate Ilerde: quod si forte contigerit aliquem Sarracenum masculum vel mulierem in Ilerda habitantem seu habitaturum mori sine herede, quod medietas tocius omnium bonorum ipsius Sarraceni sine herede morientis devolvatur ad nos et nostros, et alia medietas devolvatur ad [al]jamam predictorum Sarracenorum Ilerde.” The full document, with some variant readings from my own, is now in Josefa Mutgé i Vives, L’aljama sarrïna de Lleida a l’edat mitjana: Aproximació a la seva història (Barcelona, 1992), p. 199, doc. 8.
11. Basañez Villaluenga, La aljama sarracena de Huesca en el siglo XIV (Barcelona, 1989), 16–20, 27–29, with archival references (docs. of 1301, 1340, 1361, 1370–1371). See especially in her documentary appendix doc. 86 (20 June 1391) where the Huesca aljama wins from the crown the permanent right to refuse to serve as substitute scribe, amīn, or qāḍī for the absentee holder of those titles; and doc. 90 (24 November 1391) dismissing ‘Alī Bellvis from all three offices for “excesses and crimes” including immoderate fees “pro scripturis eciam et contractibus, qui nostris provisionibus sunt taxati.” Barceló, Minorías, 137–139. Mutgé, L’aljama sarrïna de Lleida, 40, 197–198, 348–349. Mercedes García Arenal and Béatrice Leroy, Moros y judíos en Navarra en la baja edad media (Madrid, 1984), 37–38. John Boswell, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven, 1977), 92–95, 457–458, 491–492. M. T. Ferrer i Mallol, Les aljames sarrïnes de la governació d’Oriola en el segle XIV (Barcelona, 1988), 24, 292–295.
12. Asunción Blasco Martínez, “Notarios mudéjares de Aragón (siglos XIV–XV),” Aragón en la edad media (Homenaje a la profesora emérita María Luisa Ledesma Rubio) 10–11 (1993): 109–133, quotations from pp. 110, 113, 114, 123, 124. On the Mudejar faqīh see Burns, Islam under the Crusaders, 220–223, 378, 382–384.
13. David S. Powers, Studies in Qur’an and Ḥadīth: The Formation of the Islamic Law of Inheritance (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986), with background references to the books of Asaf Fysee (1974) and Noel Coulson (1971), quotations from pp. 9–10. The first quotation is from Shlomo Goitein (above, in introduction, n. 2) who applies his phrase both to Muslim and Jewish wills. Ibn Khaldūn’s quote is from his Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, 1967), 3:22–23, cf. pp. 127–129. See also now Un tratado catalán medieval de derecho islámico: El Llibre de la Çuna e Xara dels moros, ed. Carmen [M. C.] Barceló (Córdoba, 1989), on wills pp. 26–34 (chaps. 105–133), 58 (chap. 222), 63–65 (chaps. 238, 240–241), 83 (chap. 291), and 93 (chaps. 329–330).
14. On the disposition and respective characters of the several Mudejar populations in each kingdom and region of the realms at this time, see Burns, “Muslims in the Thirteenth-Century Realms of Aragon: Interaction and Reaction,” in James M. Powell, ed., Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100–1300 (Princeton, 1990), 57–102. The Eslida-Uxó case and appeals or Christian intervention are discussed at length in Burns, Islam under the Crusaders, chap. 11, “Christians and the Islamic Judiciary.” Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: 1967–1993), 5:131–132 (quote), and 542 n. 19.
15. See the review of this office and introduction to its extensive bibliography in Burns, Society and Documentation, chap. 5 (“The Notariate”), chap. 6 (“Chancery Procedures”), and chap. 22 on rhetoric and style. Other chapters treat script, mechanics such as chronology and onomastics, use of paper, witnesses, authentication, and the like. See too the magisterial study and bibliographies of José Bono, Historia del derecho notarial español, 2 vols. to date (Madrid, 1979–1982), with various sections on Arago-Catalan regions. The seventh Congreso Internacional de Diplomática, at Valencia in 1986, brought together experts on all aspects of the notariate up to the fourteenth century, its acts published as Notariado público (see above, this chap., n. 5), over half on Spain by some two dozen scholars, though virtually nothing was offered on Jewish or Muslim scribal analogues (see 1:104, 308). Especially relevant to the present paper are the introductory “Estado de la cuestión,” by Canellas López (1:99–139); Rafael Conde with Francisco Gimeno, “Notarías y escribanías de concesión real en la corona de Aragón” (1:281–329), especially the typology of crown notaries on pp. 284–285; and the more local “El documento notarial en derecho valenciano hasta mediados del siglo XIV” by Arcadio García Sanz (1:177–199). The I Congrés d’Història del Notariat Català was held in November 1993 under the auspices of the Fundació Noguera. Publication of its acts and those of subsequent congresses will mark a turning point for Catalan notarial history. For the upland Kingdom of Aragon proper, see especially Angel Canellas López, “El documento notarial en la legislación foral del reino de Aragón,” Medievalia 10 (1992): 65–81. (Estudios dedicados al profesor Federico Udina i Martorell, 4). In the Siete partidas (part 3, title 18, law 8) the king invests each new notary with a writing case and pen as symbols of office.
16. Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 3d ed. rev. (New York, 1988), 15. Steven Epstein, Wealth and Wills in Medieval Genoa, 1150–1250 (Cambridge, 1984), 60–61, including a breakdown table of 431 wills by hour and site of drafting. Bensch, Barcelona and Its Rulers,1096–1291 (Cambridge, 1995), 39–41, 378. Josiah Cox Russell’s Medieval Regions and Their Cities (Bloomington, 1972) assembles the evidence and methodologies by which the Barcelona population can be reckoned, estimating 48,000 souls “just before the plague” (p. 170). Though somewhat late for our present focus, see the model study by Benjamin Kedar, “The Genoese Notaries of 1382: The Anatomy of an Urban Occupational Group,” The Medieval City, ed. H. A. Miskimin et al. (New Haven, 1977), 73–94.
17. Arch. Crown, reg. 41, fol. 138 (10 January [1278] 1279), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 23. The vicariates shifted in this formative period. Not given here are Gerona (with Besalú), Tárrega, Tortosa, and of course such Pyrenean areas as Seo de Urgel and Cerdanya, then under the kingdom of Majorca. Some of the missing may have been subvicariates or dependencies of others given here. Presumably a similar series went to the Aragon and Valencia kingdoms.
18. Ibid., reg. 48, fol. 15v (12 May 1280): “testamenta et instrumenta matrimonialia.” On February 20 the king wrote to the people of Manresa that he had just learned that their church held the right to appoint their own notary; they could continue the practice until the king arrived to sort things out personally (fol. 43v). After a general letter on notaries, with consequent uproar among Barcelona’s notaries, the king similarly advised them to continue as before “donec simus Barchinone personaliter constituti” to take up the matter with “universis tabellionibus Barchinone” (reg. 41, fol. 38v). On notarial powers and procedures for a cleric within his own parish, as well as notaries of the bishop’s curia, the deans and the like, see the detailed treatment by Kristine Utterback, Pastoral Care and Administration in Mid-Fourteenth Century Barcelona: Exercising the “Art of Arts” (Queenston, Canada, 1993), 71–73 and, on testamentary practice, 164–178.
19. Ibid., reg. 12, fol. 142v (9 February [1263] 1264), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 4. On other special notariates, as for saltworks, a group of royal mills, or each war galley, see Burns, Society and Documentation, 37 and note. The name “Azcarel” has a soft c, biblical Azarel.
20. Arch. Crown, reg. 21, fol. 71v (5 November 1272), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 14. Joseph Jacobs’s suggestion that Mossé’s name is from Nieto in Murcia doesn’t seem to fit its form or spelling.
21. Antoni Rubió y Lluch, Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1908–1921), 1:11–12, doc. 12 (13 December 1294): “conficiendum instrumenta debitoria, arabice facienda per Sarracenos, per illos scilicet qui profici[sc]untur ad partes Sarracenorum vel qui se obligant aliquibus personis pro certis quantitatibus in ipsis partibus exolvendis, et instrumenta ipsa melius exponi et intelligi apud dictos Sarracenos si scripta fuerint arabice pocius quam latine.” On the name Bonsenyor see below, chap. 3, n. 21.
22. See, for example, the notarial appointments transcribed by Conde and Gimeno, “Notarías y escribanías,” appendix, doc. 3 (28 March 1263), though the notary must sign all the documents; doc. 4 (27 April 1263): “tenere discipulos scriptores quoscumque…per te vel per ipsos,” the notary again signing all; doc. 5 (28 June 1263): “possis habere sub manu tua quoslibet scriptores qui loco tui et nomine et auctoritate tuo instrumenta…redigant in publica forma et scribant”; doc. 6 (9 April 1274): “possis substituere scriptores qui loco et vice tua subscribant”; doc. 8 (8 January 1258): “quod tu et ille ac illi quos tu ibi posueris loco tui scribatis et conficiatis”; doc. 14 (8 June 1294): “vos vel quem volueritis loco vestri”; doc. 16 (8 March 1264): “in officio scribanie predicte curie…possis ponere et constituere scriptorem sive scriptores qui, tam in absencia quam in presencia tui, scribant et conficiant vice et nomine tuo scripturas ad dictas curias necessarias.”
23. A number of these have been edited, excerpted, or studied. See, for example, Montserrat Casas i Nadal, “El ‘Liber Iudeorum’ de Cardona (1330–1334), ediciò i estudi,” Miscel·lània de textos medievales 3 (1985): 121–350.
24. Ambrosio Huici Miranda, ed., Colección diplomática de Jaime I, el Conquistador, 3 vols. in 6 (Valencia, 1916–1920), vol. 2, p. 147, doc. 681; in new edition by M. D. Cabanes Pecourt, Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 5 vols. to date (Valencia, 1976– ), vol. 3, p. 326, doc. 882 (19 December 1257): “omnia instrumenta debitorum vestrorum facta et facienda per manus presbiterorum vel quarumlibet aliarum personarum ecclesiasticarum ad scribanie officium constitutarum et firmamenta eciam…plenam roboris obtineant firmamentem [= firmamentum] in omnibus tam in iudicio quam extra iudicium ac si essent facta per manus publicorum tabellionum in curiis nostris iuratorum.”
25. Huici Miranda, Colección, vol. 2, p. 221, doc. 778; Huici-Cabanes, Documentos, vol. 4, p. 132, doc. 1042 (9 August 1258); “universitati Barchinone, christianorum scilicet et iudeorum, salvare et conservare pristinas libertates”; “cum quibuscumque tabellionibus sive notariis volueritis Barchinone, non obstante aliqua concessione a nobis facta alicui de scribania speciali; nos enim revocamus de presenti collacionem sive concessionem quam feceramus de scribania speciali iudeo[rum] Petro de Columbario et quamcumque aliam donacionem alicui fecimus de speciali scribania in Barchinona…christianorum seu eciam iudeorum”; any future attempt by himself or his successors will be “irritam et inanem.” This transcription from Arch. Crown, reg. 9, fol. 62v, is to be preferred over that of Francesc Carreras i Candi from the municipal archives, whose infelicities include a missing phrase of fourteen words (“Institució notarial,” p. 774, doc. 2; reprinted in his Miscelanea histórica catalana, 2 vols. [Barcelona, 1905], 2:346).
26. Arch. Crown, reg. 11, fol. 224v (10 August 1260), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 1.
27. Ibid., reg. 12, fol. 131v (1 December 1263), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 3.
28. Ibid., reg. 20, fol. 298 (14 November 1275), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 20.
29. Ibid., reg. 21, fol. 38 (23 May 1272), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 11.
30. David Abulafia, “From Privilege to Persecution: Crown, Church, and Synagogue in the City of Majorca, 1229–1343,” in Church and City 1000–1500: Essays in Honor of Christopher Brooke, ed. David Abulafia et al. (Cambridge, 1992), 115n. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:15 and 3:52, on the origins and early context of aljamiado texts, and the role of Aramaic, in ancient times the language of the Jewish courts, as a safeguard for formulas. See too the chapter “Language” in Paloma Díaz-Mas, Sephardim: The Jews from Spain (Chicago, 1992); aljamiado writings are not to be confused with the artificial Ladino, “really a calque-language of Hebrew” to translate liturgical texts (pp. 75–77). The surviving partial will in Hebrew in the early realms is above in chap. 1, n. 20.
31. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:14–15, on the language of the Jewish courts in Arabic lands in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; 2:179 for quotes on extent of writing; 2:228–230 on scribes; 3:348–349 on al-Wuḥsha; and 3:109, 354–357 on literacy. See Neuman, The Jews in Spain: Their Social, Political and Cultural Life during the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1948), 2:94, the negative testimony of Mordecai Qimhi and Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth century against the more sanguine eleventh-century Moses Ibn Gikatilla on Catalan Jews’ proficiency in Hebrew. J. R. Magdalena Nom de Déu argues that outside the liturgical, scholarly, and literary use of Hebrew in the several realms of Arago-Catalonia the “ordinary” man in the street had “a limited, sometimes rudimentary, knowledge of Hebrew” for personal or professional notes: “The majority learned the Hebrew alphabet at an early age.” It is difficult to guess how good was this popular Hebrew, and it is “impossible to estimate even in approximate fashion the percentage of Jews who wrote in Hebrew.” See his introduction to Judeolenguas marginales en Sefarad antes de 1492: Aljamía romance en los documentos hebraiconavarros (siglo XIV), ed. Yom Tov Assis et al. (Barcelona, 1992), 7–8. See also Jordi Ventura i Subirats, “El coneixement de l’hebreu entre els conversos valencians de la fi del segle XV,” Revista de llengua i dret 20 (1993): 7–48.
32. Bodies of formal replies by eminent rabbinic scholars to halakhic and other religious queries from near and far.
33. Isidore Epstein, The “Responsa” of Rabbi Solomon Ben Adreth of Barcelona (1235–1310) as a Source of the History of Spain (New York, [1925] 1968), 40–42. On the Jewish “notary,” especially in the late fourteenth century, see the brief segment by Jaume Riera i Sans, “Notaris jueus i sarrïns,” in M. T. Ferrer i Mallol and J. Riera i Sans, “Miscel·lània de documents per a la història del notariat als estats de la corona catalano-aragonesa,” Estudios históricos y documentos de los archivos de protocolos (Miscelànea en Honor de Raimundo Noguera de Guzmán) 4 (1974): 434–438; and Asunción Blasco Martínez, this chap., below, n. 50. In her exhaustive bibliographical-thematic “Los judíos del reino de Aragón” in the I Col·loqui d’història dels jueus a la Corona d’Aragó (Lérida, 1991), Blasco Martínez remarks that “de los notarios [ judíos] escribanos apenas se sabe nada” (p. 70). The judgment is echoed by David Romano in his “Els juheus de Lleida” in the same colloquium: “del segle XIII, no tenim dades de notaris jueus, tampoc en queda cap del segle XIV” (p. 119). See also the very late notice in Miguel Motis Dolader, “Los notarios i la documentación judía a través de las Taqqanot otorgadas por el infante Alfonso V y la aljama zaragozana en 1415,” El patrimonio documental aragonés y la historia, ed. Guillermo Pérez Sarrión (Zaragoza, 1986), 261–271.
34. As in the Hebrew will above, p. 26. The celebrated cartulary Liber feudorum maior at the Arch. Crown has a set of instructions about calendars for Christian royal scribes, describing also the Jewish calendar: “Del compte del canelar [= calendar] dels juheus: le compte del kalendari dels jueus es del començēnt del mon, e es tro al primer dia de Septembre del any MCCCLXII compt<e hom> que ha cinch milia cent vint tres anys.” I have not been able to find this late note in the published version of the manuscript.
35. María Cinta Mañé, comp., The Jews in Barcelona 1213–1291: Regesta of Documents from the Archivo Capitular, ed. Yom Tov Assis (Jerusalem, 1988), p. 21 and docs. 149, 379, and 398.
36. Fidel Fita and Gabriel Llabrés, eds., “Privilegios de los hebreos mallorquines en el códice Pueyo,” Boletín de la Real academia de la historia 36 (1900): 387–388, doc. 88 (23 June 1372): “recepistis ab eis [secretariis] certos libros administrationum secretariorum preteritorum aljame ipsius,” to make copies; “portari faciatis ad communem sinagogam ipsius aljame et immitti intus aliquam caxiam inibi existentem, quam claudi volumus, et super ipsius clausura vestrum sigillum apponi.”
37. Josep Pons i Guri et al., eds., “Manual d’Alcover (anys 1228–1229),” in De scriptis notariorum (s. XI–XV), ed. Josefina Mateu Ibars (Barcelona, 1989), Rubrica 3, p. 182.
38. Bono, Historia del derecho notarial español, 1:334.
39. Fori antiqui Valentiae, see especially rubrics 43 (De peticione hereditatis), 49 (De divisione coheredum), 62 (De testibus), 82 (De tutela testamentaria), 85 (Qui facere testamenta possunt), 86 (De testamentis), 87 (De intestatis), 88 (De heredibus instituendis), 90 (De repudianda hereditare), 92 (De legatis et fideicommissis). The seven witnesses expected by the code of the emperor Justinian and reflected in the Siete partidas code of King Alfonso X of Castile in our period or the five witnesses stipulated by the code of the emperor Theodosius tended to beome fewer under the influence of medieval canon law, which allowed three. Louis de Charrin in his study of medieval wills at Catalan (and later, French) Montpellier found that the number of witnesses fell from seven to three, with most wills before 1340 having three to five witnesses, rising only thereafter to six to seven. Roman law required only males and excluded the immediate family and legatees. See Charrin, Les testaments de la région de Montpellier au moyen âge (Ambilly, 1961), 44, 50.
40. Arcadio García Sanz, “El documento notarial en derecho valenciano hasta mediados del siglo XIV,” in Notariado público y documento privado: De los orígenes al siglo XIV, VII Congress Internacional de Diplomática, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1989), 1:188. This is true of the Valencian Repartiment codex, for example, but the ubiquitous notarial codices surviving from the late thirteenth century onward seem to hold the main juridical entry, abbreviating only some negligible formulas.
41. Neuman, Jews in Spain, 1:117.
42. Epstein, Responsa of Ben Adreth, 47–48, 55.
43. Arch. Crown, reg. 37, fol. 26v (4 September 1271), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 10. The odd and perhaps unique Latin adjective christianicus has no corresponding English “Christianic” but obviously does not translate as simply “Christian.” Like its correlative here, ebraycus, the term designates a category at once linguistic and legal. In that context christianicus seems a Latinization of Old Catalan crestianesch, meaning proper to Christian language and culture.
44. Blasco Martínez, “Judíos del reino de Aragón,” 71, on crown references; and Nirenberg, “A Female Rabbi in Fourteenth-Century Zaragoza?” Sefarad 51 (1991): 180 and n. Asher b. Yehiel around 1300 defined the Sephardic rabbi as a sage “whose occupation is the learning of the law, and who makes it permanent and [makes] his trade part-time, and who studies the Torah continuously and does not interrupt it in order to deal with futile objects but only to pursue his livelihood…[that man] belongs to the class of the rabbis”; see Simon Schwarzfuchs, A Concise History of the Rabbinate (Oxford, 1993), 66. Ibn Adret distinguished such men from “rabbis who have been appointed by the king and cannot study or teach [the law] properly” (Schwarzfuchs, Rabbinate, 48); see chap. 6 on the very different evolution and meanings of the Sephardic rabbi as against the Ashkenazic, with no specialization (p. 74) and with a common distinction between the rabbinic judge or dayyan (Catalan jutge o rap) and the synagogue rabbi. Cf. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:211–212, “rabbi” in the East not as spiritual leader but “a prominent scholar whose legal opinions were regarded as authoritative.” Cf. also the spiritual leader of the Jews at Vich in Catalonia in a document of 1336: “per eorum rabinum sive capellanum” (in Ramon Corbella i Llobet, L’aljama de jueus de Vic (Vich, [1909] 1984), p. 202, doc. 50.
45. Arch. Crown., reg. 197, fol. 106rv (21 April 1300), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 34.
46. Ibid., reg. 232, fols. 352v-353 (23 February [1317] 1318), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 41. The Hebrew name Adar (feminine Adara) means “noble”; the a ending here may be a scribal or Latinate addition. The ms. has Acdarra here but Adarra in doc. 43. The surname may be the distinguished Judeo-Arabic Adar‘i family of Moroccan origin which had representatives in Barcelona.
47. Ibid., reg. 229, fol. 274v (1 April 1327), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 43.
48. Yitzhak Baer transcribes fourteenth- and fifteenth-century documents on the Arago-Catalan Jewish notariates: Die Juden im christlichen Spanien: Urkunden and Regesten, 3 vols. (Farnborough, [1929–1936] 1970), vol. 1, p. 202, doc. 164 (Játiva, 15 January 1311), on “Rabi Joce Avenjacob, scrivano dela dita aljama” (Joce being an Aramaic variant of Hebrew Yosef, popular in Spain); p. 290, doc. 210 (Zaragoza, 31 January 1340); p. 388, doc. 272 (Zaragoza, 16 October 1364): “judei parrochiani synagoge maioris judeorum Cesarauguste” on the “officia judarie civitatis Cesarauguste, sicut notarii, albedin, et el rabi qui decollat in macello, et los rabis qui faciunt orationem in synagogis”; p. 515, doc. 342 (Valencia, 10 March 1382): “salaris de avocats, escrivans”; p. 765, doc. 472 (Barcelona, 25 June 1400): “hauran a fer necessariament cartes e scriptures judaycas”; p. 854, doc. 531 (1423); p. 858, doc. 534 (1431). Documents for Navarre follow: see, e.g., p. 941, doc. 584 (1265); p. 946, doc. 585 (1270); pp. 1026 and 1028 (fueros). The Uncastillo case is in Ferrer Mallol and Riera i Sans, “Miscel·lània de documents,” pp. 444–445, doc. C-2 (16 February 1391), to Zecharya Sarug (“Zaquariam Ceruc”): “sis rabinus aljame…et scriptor etiam instrumentorum…inter judeum et judeum,” a monopoly enforced by a penalty of a hundred gold florins per violation. On Ceruc see also Irene Garbell, “The Pronunciation of Hebrew in Medieval Spain,” in Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1954–1956), 688.
49. Arch. Crown, reg. 211, fol. 220 (24 October 1314), transcribed below in appendix, doc. 40. Azariya/Azaria is a biblical Hebrew name.
50. Asunción Blasco Martínez, “Notarios-escribanos judíos de Aragón (siglos XIV–XV),” Rashi 1040–1990, hommage à Ephrïm E. Urbach: Congrès europé des études juives, ed. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Paris, 1993), 645–656; “una tema sistemáticamente marginado” (p. 645), and see the four-page commentary of Riera above in this chap., n. 33. The appointment of March 1424 is transcribed in an appendix: “te dictum Açach in çoferium seu notarium aljame judeorum”; cf. also n. 19 of the article (1400). Of the doubly recognized sōfer-notary given authoritative standing by the king, Blasco Martínez concludes that at first in the fourteenth century some communities had one and some not; some chose their own, others received the person or office from the king; some acted for council or courts, others for private business; some were entrepreneur appointees who hired qualified experts for the actual work, while others were true sōferīm who might also appoint assistants. In 1380 at Zaragoza the clerk-recorder in court received no salary but took fees from both litigants (p. 648n.). In 1410 there a debt-receipt was cited as “scripto en ebrayco et romanceado en christianego” (p. 652n.). And in 1405 the testament of the Jew Sento “fue reduzido de ebrayco en romanç” at the order of Huesca’s justiciar (p. 653n.).
51. Neuman, Jews in Spain, 1:152.
52. Arch. Cath. Barc., perg., 1-6-384 (18 August 1273): “ego Bonyuas nutrita quondam Bondie Farnerii confiteor,” with her signum below. Maria Cinta Mañé, comp., The Jews in Barcelona 1213–1291: Regesta of Documents from the Archivo Capitular, ed. Yom Tov Assis (Jerusalem, 1988), no. 304, reads Bonaivas, but the accented y is clear. Bonjudà(s) or Bonyueu was a not uncommon Catalan Jewish name.
53. Arch. Cath. Barc., perg. 1-6-181 (28 June 1290): “cursores publici et iurati civitatis Barchinone”; “de precio domorum et orti…in burgo eiusdem civitatis Barchinone prope ecclesiam Sancte Marie de Mari”; “et Issachus Levi Iudeus.” Leila Berner’s “A Mediterranean Community: Barcelona’s Jews under James the Conqueror” (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1986, soon to be published, will transcribe the document in full and contextualize it). The document’s cursores publici et iurati civitatis were the corredors de Consell; there were several subdivisions of brokers, such as corredors de comerç and corredors de canvi. The Mañé Regesta, no. 483, makes both principals Jews, but “Iudeus” is singular while Romeu de Sabadell is anyway a Christian name. The Jew “Rouen” is Catalan Rubén and Rovén, biblical Reuven.
54. Arch. Cath. Barc., perg. 1-6-374 (19 June 1286 within doc. of 30 June 1290). Berner transcribes and contextualizes this charter too in “Barcelona’s Jews.”
55. Arch. Cath. Barc., perg. 1-6-569 (4 August 1278): “confitemur et recognoscimus tibi Salamoni filio quondam Abrahe de Adreto…de pecunia heredum Isachi Adreti quondam.” Hebrew letters are on the dorse (reverse of the parchment) but difficult to see. Berner treats the episode fully in “Barcelona’s Jews.”
56. On the courtesy title En, see my introduction above, “Names.” The Arxiu Diocesà of Gerona contains similar documentation connected with Christian, and sometimes Jewish, wills. See the catalog entries in Documents dels jueus de Girona (1124–1595): Arxiu històric de la ciutat, Arxiu diocesà de Girona, ed. Gemma Escribà i Bonastre and Maria Pilar Frago i Pérez (Gerona, 1992), especially docs. 1 (1124), 52 (1295), and 65 (ca. 1320). Careful search in it to the mid-fourteenth century reveals no Jewish wills, but doc. 149 (1 September 1339) shows the bishop, on appeal from two Jewish minors, removing for fraud one of three administrators designated by a previous Hebrew will. The notarial codex for 1351 recently published, El protocol del notari Bonanat Rimentol (1351), ed. Laureà Pagarolas i Sabaté (Barcelona, 1991), has many documents on or for Jews but no Latinate testaments that year; it does offer Jewish post-testamentary materials, sometimes in business involving Christians (see docs. 31, 47, 49, 143, 165, 166, 192).