1. On the peculiarities, uses, and limitations of medieval wills as well as their bibliography, see Steven Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa 1150–1250 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984); Michael Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England from the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Toronto, 1963); Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the Afterlife (Baltimore, 1988); Louis de Charrin, Les testaments de la région de Montpellier au moyen âge (Ambilly, 1961); and Jacques Chiffoleau, “Les testaments provençaux et comtadins à la fin du moyen âge: Richesse documentaire et problèmes d’exploitation,” in Paolo Brezzi and Egmont Lee, eds., Sources of Social History: Private Acts of the Late Middle Ages (Toronto, 1984), 132–152. For a wider context of perceptions and afterlife strategies, see Chiffoleau’s earlier La comptabilité de l’au-delà: Les hommes, la mort, et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du moyen âge (vers 1320–vers 1480) (Rome, 1980), and Michel Vovelle, La mort et l’occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris, 1983). See also the older Henri Auffroy, Évolution du testament en France des origines au XIII^e siècle (Paris, 1899). On Catalan wills see the works below in chap. 2, n. 1; on Aragonese wills see chap. 1, nn. 22–25, and text.

The past decade has suddenly seen a spate of books on wills in early modern Spain, especially in the eighteenth century, notably Carlos M. N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1995). By the sixteenth century, however, the societal and testamentary context had become radically different, while the profession of notary had split into categories such as the esteemed class of governmental bureaucrats and the unesteemed class of drafters of private contracts and testaments.

2. For coping with Jewish name forms, Benzion Kaganoff’s A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History (New York, 1977) is an essential starting point; Kaganoff’s charming and erudite essays survey the whole field. Simon Seror’s Les noms des juifs de France au moyen âge (Paris, 1989) is invaluable as a dictionary of each name and its variants, meticulously arranged by time and place, with source citation for each item. Seror is useful here especially for his Occitan resources, particularly for Catalan Roussillon and its neighboring regions. Very handy also is Alfred J. Kolatch, The Complete Dictionary of English and Hebrew First Names (Middle Village, N.Y., 1984); a more “popular” selection is in Kolatch’s The New Name Dictionary: Modern English and Hebrew Names (Middle Village, N.Y., 1989). For Judeo-Arabic families and their variant-named branches, the nearly 1,200 pages of Abraham I. Laredo, Les noms des juifs du Maroc: Essai d’onomastique judeo-marocaine (Madrid, 1978), include much Spanish and Catalan material, down to specific individuals in each branch. Shlomo D. Goitein also takes up Judeo-Arabic names in his 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), 1:357–358; 2:237; 3:6–14, 63–64, 314–319; 5:396–397. Joaquim Miret i Sans and Moïse Schwab have several pages of comment on difficult names of Catalan Jews at the end of their “Documents sur les juifs catalans aux XI^e, XII^e, et XIII^e siècles,” Revue des études juives 68 (1914): 190–196. The classic article by Irene Garbell, “The Pronunciation of Hebrew in Medieval Spain,” Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1954–1956), 1:647–696, touches throughout on names, including Catalan names. For the problems in translating Latin names into Catalan and the many resources, see Robert I. Burns, S.J., Society and Documentation in Crusader Valencia (Princeton, 1985), chap. 15.

3. Kaganoff, Jewish Names, 49. The phenomenon of widespread use of “gentile” names had its antecedents. Leonard Victor Rutgers presents a subtle revisionist examination of Jewish names in third- and fourth-century Rome, for example, where “the majority of names used were typically Late Ancient names rather than specifically Jewish ones” and that “typically Jewish names were not very popular.” He concludes that this practice shows “a lively interaction between Jews and non-Jews” but not assimilation or fundamental acculturation since it occurred in a context of strong consciousness of Jewish identity on the part of Jews and recognition of that identity by gentile observers. See his “The Onomasticon of the Jewish Community of Rome: Jews vis-à-vis Non-Jewish Onomastic Practices in Late Antiquity” in his The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden, 1995), 139–175, quotations from pp. xix, 97.

4. Jean Régné, comp., History of the Jews in Aragon: Regesta and Documents 1213–1327, ed. Yom Tov Assis, indexed and improved facsimile reprint of French entries of Régné’s “Catalogue des actes de Jaime I, Pedro III, et Alfonso III, rois d’Aragon, concernant les juifs (1213–1327),” Revue des études juives 60 (1910) to 70 (1920), with supplement for Jaime II, Revue des études juives 73 (1923) to 78 (1925) (Jerusalem, 1978). Assis’s list of Jewish names is in Régné, History of the Jews, 668–703. Joaquim Miret i Sans, Itinerari de Jaume I “el Conqueridor” (Barcelona, 1918), list on pp. 588–629.

5. Seror, Noms des juifs, xv.

6. On money of the realms and its bibliography, see Burns, Society and Documentation, 108–110; Burns, Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (Princeton, 1975), chap. 2, sec. 3, pp. 28–34; Miguel Crusafont i Sabater, Numismática de la corona catalano-aragonesa medieval (785–1516) (Madrid, 1982). See also the standard classics, Aloïss Heiss, Descripción general de las monedas hispano-cristianas desde la invasión de los árabes, 3 vols. (Madrid, [1865–1869] 1975), 2:182–190, and Joaquim Botet i Sisó, Les monedes catalanes: Estudi y descripció de les monedes carolingies, comtals, senyorials, reyals, y locals propries de Catalunya, 3 vols. (Barcelona, [1908] 1976), 2:47–50. The booklet by Leandre Villaronga, La moneda de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1976), is a useful overview. And Thomas N. Bisson, Conservation of Coinage: Monetary Exploitation and Its Restraint in France, Catalonia and Aragon (c. A.D. 1000–c.1225) (Oxford, 1979), provides thorough background.

7. Burns, Medieval Colonialism, 30–31 and passim.

8. Richard Emery, The Jews of Perpignan in the Thirteenth Century: An Economic Study Based on Notarial Records (New York, 1959), 129 (quote), 130 (table).