Documentos hebreos conservados en la Catedral de Tarazona
Archivo
Documentos hebreos conservados en la Catedral de Tarazona
Archivo
There were found numerous jewish manuscripts in the Cathedral of Tarazona.
PATRIMONY - A research initiated by the Moshe de Portella Association of Tarazona found almost fifty Jewish manuscripts. According to first studies, most of them are from the 14th century.
03/12/2001
MARIANO GARCÍA .
Heraldo de Aragón. Zaragoza
The "Moshe de Portella" Association of Tarazona which was founded in February 2000 in order to recover the Jewish roots of this locality, decided to start searching some documental testimony of the Hebrew culture. In close collaboration with the bishopric of Tarazona, the chapter of the cathedral and the archivist Juan Cruz Martínez, we were searching patiently among hundreds of antique volumes treasured at the cathedral. The results have been positive. "Our idea was to search for some testimony which could remit us to the Translator School of Tarazona", tells us Javier Bona, secretary of the Association. "The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and the inquisition ordered to confiscate all their books and documents. Therefore only few testimonies of this kind could be recovered in Spain".
Sephardic calligraphy
The existence of dozens of parchments found among the recovered documents was known before - they were published in a scientific magazine - but they were kept in a safe which key had been lost a long time ago. Nevertheless, among them we found about 25 more documents which were not known until now. "We knew that the only reason to keep
these documents was to use the sheets of those Jewish books for binding later Christian books, which was usual at that time", states Javier Bona. And this was what ocurred.
The historian Migual Angel Motis, expert in Hebrew culture and history, just started studying the found items. "Almost all can be dated from the 14th century", he states, "and
they are written with brown vegetable ink and in square writing characters of the sephardic type which constitutes one of the most beautiful calligrafies". Regarding the, "a great part of the written sheets pertain to biblical codexes with "masora" or notes by the rabbis.
There are parchements which correspond to the "Psalms", to the "Deuteronomy" and "Ecclesiastes". Moreover there are fragments of haftarot, or books for liturgical use of
the cycle of the profets as Josuah o Jeremias; some text seems to be from the Talmud; a fragment of "Mo'ed qatam", a treatise about the agricultural cycles with personal annotations by the proprietor of the book; and text pages of scientific character which could be from a work of Jento ben Isaac Xaprut (famous physisian and theologian
of the 16th century, who entered in 1375 in polemics with Pedro de Luna, time cardinal at that time), or with somebody of his school".The research is about to be finished, but we do not exclude to find more documents. "With these discoverings Tarazona becomes one of the most important archive cores of the Jewish culture in Aragón on the same level as the Cathedral of Zaragoza or the collection of the Aljama of Jaca which are kept at the DPH". The "Moshe de Portella" Association has planned to incorporate reproductions of these manuscripts in the future Museum
for Jewish Culture to be created in Tarazona. For this purpose, the European program ASOMO (Leader II) granted a contribution of three millions of Spanish Pesetas.
Discovered numerous Jewish manuscripts in the Cathedral of Tarazona
Descubiertos varios manuscritos judíos en la catedral de Tarazona.
INSTITUTE OF MICROFILMED HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
The Jewish National and University Library
P.O.B. 34165 Jerusalem 91341 FAX 972-2--6511771
Tel. (02)6585022 (02)6585853
E-mail: richler@vms.huji.ac.il
Web Site: http://sites.huji.ac.il/jnul/imhm/March 15, 2001
Here are the descriptions of the Hebrew fragments. .Catedral de Tarazona
The numbers below refer to the picture:
3-8, 22-23 Bible
3. Exodus 29:9-29:16
4. 29:22-29:36
5. 27:10-28:5
6. 27:9
8: 26:33-27:10
22 Genesis 2:21-3:3; 8:11-9:5
23 9:11-9:14; 9:18-9:23; 2:2-2:5
9; 14 Fragments from a Torah Scroll
9. Deuteronomy 28:41-28:52
14. 28:64-29:1; 29:15-29:2110-13 Bible
10 Genesis 45:27-46:3; 46:7-46:10
11 46:17-46:20; 46:26-46:29; 41:45-41:48
12 46:25-46:27; 46:31-46:34; 41:50-41:52
13 42:16-42:18; 46: 5-6; 46:14-46:1715-16, 26- 28 35 Fragments from a Bible
15-16 Jeremiah 6:22-6:30. Continuation until 7:6 in PIC 17
26-27 Deuteronomy 5:27-6:10; 1:32-1:46
28 4:21-4:32; 3:12-3:24
35 28:67-29:2417,18, 24 25, 39-42, 428 Fragments from a medical work in Arabic in Hebrew characters.
20 Binding
21 Bible, cannot be deciphered
31-32 Midrash Bamidbar (=Numbers or Numeri) Rabbah. Fragments from parashah 9
33 Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) Moed Katan 17a-17b
34 Leviticus 19:16-19:32; 25:3-25:10
37-38 Fragments from the Passover (pessach) Haggadah.
