La communauté juive de Salon-de-Provence d'après les actes notariés 1391-1435 (review)

Reviews 177 syntactical, textual, lexical and the commentary glosses that draw so heavily on Isidore's Etymologiae. Her conclusion addresses such broader matters as the relation between text and gloss, the peculiarities of English manuscripts and the audience of theriddles.The appendices are especially useful. T w o indices of the Latin-Latin lexical glosses are provided, listed under both lemma and gloss, and an alphabetical list of the O E glosses in Appendix C is complemented by an analysis of the same material ananged in order of appearance in the manuscript on pp. 52-4. A n index to the commentary glosses is followed by an index of sources, a comprehensive bibliography and a general index. This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive edition of Aldhelm's text with full apparatus and notes. Rather the focus isfirmlyon the gloss material and its relation to the text in a single manuscript. Thus her edition presents an innovative reconstruction of each manuscript page with both interlinear and marginal glosses carefully located and clearly and accurately set out. The measure of her success with the layout can be gauged by comparison with the frontispiece plate, which reproduces folio 83r of the manuscript. Stork's edition allows us to read an important school text in the pedagogic context in which it was studied in later Anglo-Saxon England. Paul Sonell Department of English Otago University Wernham, Monique, La communauti juive de Salon-de-Provence d'apres les actes notaries 1391-1435 (Studies and Texts 82), Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987; paper; pp. xviii, 303; 57 tables, 21 maps and graphs; R.R.P. CAN$35.00. Monique Wernham's fine study of a Jewish community in a medium-sized Provencal town in the late Middle Ages is a product of her thesis for the doctoral de troisieme cycle submitted in 1979 at Aix-en-Provence. However, it has obviously been much reworked in the years between 1979 and 1987 and does not suffer from the sins of style and commission characteristic of so many theses worked up into books. The volume is a welcome addition to the corpus of studies of the Jews of Provence and Languedoc now available: Emery on Perpignon (1959), Delpal on Avignon (1968 thesis), Azemard on Montpellier (1924), Regn£ on Narbonne (1908-12, article in several parts), Iancu-Agou on Aix-en-Provence (many articles from 1975 onwards), Castellani on Carpentras (1970 thesis), Shatzmiller on Carpentras (1973), Benichou-Sportouch on Marseilles (1969 thesis), and many more general works and articles on specific topics. Wernham's study was made possible by the splendid series of notarial registers and other cartularies which survive in the Archives departementales des 178 Reviews Bouches-du-Rhone, the Archeveche d Aries, and the Archives communales de Salon-de-Provence. The period chosen for the study was determined by the dates after which the survival of Salon notarial registers becomes sufficiently regular to permit detailed study and before which they begin to survive in such huge numbers that they become unmanageable. The book is divided into two sections: a study of the structures of the Jewish community at Salon, and a study of the economic activities of the Jews. The description of the Juzateria at Salon, which dated from at least the early fourteenth century, is fascinating. The total Jewish population was probably between 115 and 180 persons, about a twentieth of the total population of the town. But the Juzateria was not a ghetto. It also had Christians living in it and Jews lived outside it. The quarter had its own cemetery, bath, mill, oven, synagogue, kosher butcher, two hospitals (one for each sex), and also owned houses. There were three elected baylons who acted either collectively or individually on behalf of the community and there were also other officials charged with specific duties. The Jews themselves were very variegated socioeconomically , ranging from poor people exempt from taxation to very prosperous families. The community was continually impoverished as a result of heavy charges laid upon it by the Archbishop of Aries and the Count of Provence. It had constant resource to loans from the wealthy Jews among it in order to...