Journal Article

Authors, Collators, and Forgers: Recovering Rabbinic Culture in Late Medieval Avignon

Roth, Pinchas

2022

Overview

For the Jews of Avignon and its environs, as for the Jews of western Europe in general, the closing years of the fourteenth century were marked by crisis and calamity. The plague that first arrived in 1347 struck Avignon again in 1372, 1373, 1374, 1382, 1388, 1397, and 1399. In 1391, mobs viciously attacked the Jewish communities of Aragon and Castile--a tragedy that resonated in Provence due to a description sent to the Jews of Avignon from Saragossa by Hasdai Crescas. The Kingdom of France expelled them again in late 1394. As these communities to the north and west suffered, the Jews of Avignon felt their pain and grew increasingly isolated. For Christians during this same period, Avignon was a highly significant city that served as the seat of the Pope during the fourteenth century. Jews living in the city surely felt the ramifications of this lengthy sojourn, which turned Avignon into an international center of political and intellectual life. Here, Roth explores the works of four Jewish intellectuals who lived in or near Avignon at the end of the fourteenth century: Isaac de Lattes, Joseph Kimhi, Eliezer Crescas, and Jacob Salomon.

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Subject: 14th century / Christians / Crescas, Eliezer / de Lattes, Isaac / Intellectuals / Jewish people / Kimhi, Joseph / Middle Ages / Pain / Plague / Popes / Salomon, Jacob / Suffering / Tragedy