Narbonne

At the heart of Septimania, on the road that linked Italy to Hispania, Narbonne held throughout the Middle Ages a signal place in the spiritual geography of Western Judaism. Former capital of Gallia Narbonensis, port and commercial crossroads, the city saw the flourishing of a Jewish community whose influence reached far beyond the walls of Languedoc. As early as the twelfth century, Narbonne was one of the principal centers of Jewish learning; the scholars and the "great ones" of Narbonne are frequently mentioned in talmudic works. According to Abraham ibn Daud of Toledo, they held a position akin to that of the exilarchs of Babylonia.

What sets Narbonne apart from all the communities of the Midi rests on an institution without true equivalent in the West: the dignity of nassi, a Jewish prince reputed to be of Davidic lineage, whose holders formed a local dynasty. Around this figure crystallized a tenacious legend, blending Charlemagne, the caliphs of the East, and the messianic promise of a restored royalty. The present work seeks to disentangle the history from the legend, to retrace the intellectual greatness of the Narbonne academy, and to follow the community down to the twilight of the fourteenth-century expulsions.

Jewish presence in Narbonne sinks its roots into Late Antiquity. Jews were established there as early as the fifth century. Settled in a city still marked by its Roman heritage, they took part in the Mediterranean trade that made Narbonne an active port between Italy, Spain, and the Gaulish hinterland [Jewish Encyclopedia].

Coexistence with Christian neighbors was, on the whole, peaceful, though crossed by canonical tensions. The Jews lived, in sum, on good terms with their Christian neighbors, although in 589 the Council of Narbonne imposed restrictions upon them. This conciliar measure belongs to the policy of the Visigothic Church, which over the sixth and seventh centuries multiplied discriminatory provisions against the Jewish communities of the kingdom. The Jewish tombstone of Narbonne, dated to the seventh century and bearing a trilingual inscription, remains one of the oldest epigraphic testimonies of Jewish presence in Gaul [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The settlement of the community in Septimania, a borderland disputed among Visigoths, Franks, and later Muslims, set the stage for a particular status. At the time of the Arab-Berber conquest of the early eighth century, and then of the Frankish reconquest, the Jewish population of Narbonne found itself entangled in the political stakes of a pivotal region, which would later nourish the account of its royal favor.

It is around the Frankish conquest of Narbonne, in the middle of the eighth century, that the founding narrative of princely dignity takes shape. According to a medieval tradition, Charlemagne, grateful to the Jews of Narbonne for their role in the reconquest of the city, is said to have granted them unique privileges. Foremost among these privileges was the exceptional right to have a leader of their own bearing a quasi-royal title.

The legend took on considerable scope in medieval sources. The narrative relates the legend, taken up in several medieval sources, of a Jewish kingdom in eighth-century France. The Frankish kings are said to have wished to see a Jew of noble blood preside over the community; this man was Rabbi Makhir, a renowned Babylonian scholar who was brought to Narbonne to found a school of Talmudic studies there. According to the account, Makhir was a prince — in Hebrew nassi — of Davidic descent and, as a member of the Jewish royal family, could lay claim to this honorific position.

Modern historiography carefully distinguishes the part of symbol from that of fact. The historian Gérard Nahon places this account on the side of tradition, in which history becomes legend, and legend, politics. The same prudence is found in the classic study of the medieval rabbinate: Charlemagne confirmed — symbol rather than historical fact — the Nassi of Narbonne in his rights and privileges, and established Kalonymos of Lucca in the Rhineland. Thus, whether or not it rests on a kernel of real events, the Carolingian legend served above all to establish, in law and in memory, the authority of the Narbonne princely house.

From the eleventh century onward, the title of nassi became in Narbonne the exclusive prerogative of a single lineage. What is striking in the case of Narbonne is that the title of Nassi was exclusively reserved for the family of the community's leaders, who claimed descent from the lineage of King David, and thus from biblical royalty. This Davidic claim lent the dignity a unique coloring, halfway between communal office and messianic hope.

The singular character of this institution did not escape historians. The use of this title in Narbonne, from the eleventh century until the beginning of the fourteenth century, represents a different phenomenon owing to its particular content, to the point that it must be regarded as a case sui generis. The family of the nassi, identified with the house of Kalonymos, exercised an authority recognized both by the community and by the seigneurial powers of the city.

The position of the nassi was reflected even in the urban topography. The Jewish community of Narbonne found itself divided topographically into two groups: one, the greater part, comprising the court of the Nessiim and the premises of the school, came under the viscomital seigneury, while the Jewish inhabitants of the new northern quarter, Belvèze, depended on the archiepiscopal seigneury. The court of the nassi thus formed a genuine institutional center, linking the government of the community to the two seigneuries that shared the city between them. Among the known holders, the sources mention Kalonymos ben Todros, active in the second half of the twelfth century [Jewish Encyclopedia].

The greatness of Narbonne is measured not only by the dignity of its princes, but by the brilliance of its school. The city became one of the major seats of Jewish study in the West, rivaling the great academies of the East. According to Abraham ibn Daud, its scholars held a position comparable to that of the exilarchs of Babylonia, a judgment that underscores the recognized prestige of Narbonnese teaching.

The list of masters who taught there forms a veritable pantheon of medieval erudition. Moshe ha-Darshan, in the eleventh century, was head of the yeshiva of Narbonne; his exegetical and homiletic work durably nourished midrashic literature. In the following century, the academy remained flourishing: Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef directed the talmudic academy of Narbonne in the twelfth century, and Kalonymus ben Todros, who died around 1194, was a Provençal rabbi who distinguished himself at Narbonne in the second half of the twelfth century.

To these figures is added the great lineage of decisors: Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne, known as the Rabad II, author of the Sefer ha-Eshkol and president of the rabbinical court (av beth din), whose halakhic authority set the standard throughout the Midi [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Narbonnese culture was, moreover, not limited to the religious domain alone. Bonfilh, a Jewish troubadour, was a native of the city, testimony to the integration of Narbonnese Jews into Occitan poetic life. This abundance makes Narbonne an essential link in the transmission that connects the Babylonian academies to the schools of Provence and Catalonia.

The Jewish community of Narbonne lived within a city divided between the authority of the viscount and that of the archbishop, a configuration that shaped its spatial and legal organization. The division between the old quarter, falling under the viscomital lordship, and the Belvèze quarter, dependent on the archiepiscopal lordship [see chap. 3], illustrates the way Jews were embedded within the urban feudal fabric, subject to distinct protections and taxations according to their place of residence [Persée, Aryeh Graboïs].

This dual guardianship, far from being merely a constraint, guaranteed a certain stability: the economic and fiscal value of the community gave the lords an incentive to protect it. The Jewish history of Narbonne thus belongs to a continuous centuries-old presence. The community's trajectory recounts two thousand years of Jewish presence and history in Narbonne, dating back to antiquity and the Visigothic period and reaching its zenith in the Middle Ages.

Daily life was organized around the synagogue, the school, charitable institutions, and the trades — commerce, medicine, lending, craftsmanship — that tied the Jews to the economic fabric of the port city. Coexistence, generally peaceful in the early centuries, was nonetheless weakened as royal and ecclesiastical policies toward the Jews of the kingdom of France hardened in the thirteenth century [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The intellectual and institutional zenith did not spare Narbonne from the fate shared by the Jewish communities of France. The progressive incorporation of Septimania and Languedoc into the Capetian crown subjected the Jews of Narbonne to royal legislation, increasingly restrictive and fiscally despoiling over the course of the thirteenth century [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The end of the use of the princely title coincides with this decline. As we have seen, the use of the title of nassi in Narbonne extends to the beginning of the fourteenth century [see chap. 3], the moment when the community confronted the great trials of Capetian rule. The tradition of a Jewish kingdom, born in the eighth century, thus spanned several centuries before dying out. The general expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom of France, ordered by Philip the Fair in 1306, struck Narbonne as it did the other communities and led to the confiscation of property and the dispersion of the inhabitants [Jewish Encyclopedia; Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The recalls and renewed expulsions that punctuated the fourteenth century did not allow for the lasting reconstitution of the great center of former times. The dignity of nassi, the Talmudic academy, and the princely court now belonged to memory. What remains are the topographical traces of the old Jewish quarter, the manuscripts produced by its schools, and the memory of a unique institution, which made Narbonne, for the span of a few centuries, the supposed seat of a "king of the Jews" in the lands of the West.

The Jewish history of Narbonne in the Middle Ages unfolds along a twofold thread: the factual one, of an ancient, wealthy, and learned community, and the legendary one, of a Davidic principality born from Carolingian recognition. The claim to a lineage tracing back to King David, and the exclusive use of the title of Nassi from the eleventh century to the early fourteenth, make Narbonne a sui generis case in the history of the Jewish communities of the West. That the share of symbol prevails over that of verifiable event, as modern historians emphasize, takes nothing away from the significance of this narrative, which expressed the aspiration to a dignity and an autonomy out of the ordinary.

Beyond the legend, it is the brilliance of the Talmudic academy, the authority of its decisors, and the integration of its Jews into Occitan urban and poetic life that secure Narbonne a lasting place in the great narrative of the diasporas. The brutal end of this community, swept away by the expulsions of the fourteenth century, marks the close of a golden age whose memory the manuscripts and the recollection still keep alive.