Morvedre hebreu (segles XIII-XVI)

ISBN:

2009, 430 pp. Prologue by Enric Guinot

This work is an interpretation of the history of the town of Morvedre (the former Saguntum, now Sagunt) and its territory in the Late Middle Ages, from a Hebrew point of view. The book shows the prominence of Jews and converts in the conquest, colonization, and the roots in the administration created by the king James I the Conqueror in the kingdom of Valencia. Starting from the making of an important database and from exhaustive information about urban geography of Sagunt and the Camp de Morvedre region, the most important places for the Jewish community are identified: men synagogue, women room, micvé, school, the Seat of the council of the aljama, Jewish hostel, Jewish butcher’s, ancestral homes, Jewish necropolis, etc. The author documents them, dates them and approaches the evolution of the Jewish quarter and the vast necropolis from the ancient hypogeum and cave graves to burials, from the Sem Tov’s pantheon to Isaac Azar’s mausoleum. He also studies the Jewish population and its evolution, the dynamism of the community, the most distinguished Jewish and converted families, feudal lords with Jewish origins, connivance and clash between Jews and converts, the repression and the persuasion, the privileges obtained by conversion and finally, the converts’ social work. He follows the traces of some converted families since today through the Confraria d’Ofici de Paraire and the Confraria de la Puríssima Sang de Jesucrist.