Documents de jueus de Cervera (segle XV) que contenen títols de llibres

Abstract

A rather confusing article was published in 1974 entitled «Les juifs à Cervera et dans dautres villes catalanes» (Sefarad [Madrid], 34 (1974), p. 79-114) signed by A. Duran Sanpere and M. Schwab (despite the fact that the latter author had passed away in 1918!), discussing a list of books that had belonged to Jews in Cervera. The names of these books had been brought to light from a few documents dating back to the 15th century. Even though the texts that were transcribed and discussed in that article lacked any archival reference which might allow them to be tracked down, after persistent research in the Cervera archives we have succeeded in finding some of these texts again, which are appended to the present paper (numbers 1, 5, and 7) together with a few other 15th-century documents also dealing with books that were a part of the cultural heritage of the Jewish people of Cervera. Since knowledge of the books owned by Catalan Jews in the Middle Ages has is of undeniable cultural importance, we thought it would be proper to offer a transcription (in some cases only of the relevant passages) of the seven texts known to us, preceded by a few remarks about the works mentioned in these documents. The documents involved (dated between 1422 and 1484) are an estate inventory. a will, an acknowledgement of the payment of a debt, a summons, and the delivery of a bequest. It is worth pointing out that some Christians appear alongside the Jews as witness in these documents and that the Bible, as in many other Jewish documents in mediaeval Catalonia, is called Magdesia [< Miqda-Yah] in document number 5.