cover image A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain

A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain

Mark D. Meyerson. Princeton University Press, $47.5 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-691-11749-2

This prodigiously researched inquiry is an excellent addition to the history of Iberian Jews, prior to their expulsion in 1492. The author, a medievalist (Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel) and an associate professor at the Univ. of Toronto, has thoroughly examined Jewish life in the small Valencian town of Morvedre (now Sagunto) from 1391 until the exile. He demonstrates how the Jews in the area enjoyed a so-called""Renaissance"" after 1416, during which time they prospered economically and co-existed cooperatively with local Christians. He takes issue with other scholars who have concluded that after 1391, when Jews throughout Castile and the Crown of Aragon were attacked, murdered and forcibly baptized as conversos, those who remained lived only a marginal existence. Drawing on extensive archival material, the author details how the Jewish adjama (legal community) of Morvedre, who numbered 1/4; of the population, revitalized themselves by adjusting to the restrictions that prohibited them from supporting themselves as moneylenders, although they still made small loans. They prospered through wine-making, varied investments and the development of artisan silversmiths, whose outstanding work became justly famous. In accomplished prose, Meyerson also describes how Morvedre's Jews interacted with the conversos of Valencia, where the Jewish adjama had been eradicated, and their relationship with Muslims in the region. This is an arresting local study that should spur research into other individual medieval towns, but its heavily academic style may lose nonspecialists. B&w illus.