Synagogue of Clermont (Clermont-Ferrand)

RESUMEN

La historia de Synagogue of Clermont (Clermont-Ferrand)

Clermont, the Roman Augustonemetum and the late antique civitas of the Arverni, had Jewish residents by about 470, when Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris mentioned them in his letters, the oldest written references to Jews in what is now France. A century later the community had a synagogue, whose existence is recorded only because of its destruction. Gregory of Tours, who had grown up in Clermont and regarded Bishop Avitus as his teacher, tells the story in his Histories (book V, chapter 11), placing it in the year after the death of King Sigibert, that is 576. Avitus had long urged the city's Jews to accept Christ. After one Jew was baptised at Easter and another poured rancid oil on his head at the city gate, the tension broke on Ascension Day: the whole crowd following the bishop's psalm-singing procession from the cathedral to a basilica rushed upon the synagogue and destroyed it so completely that, in Gregory's words, the place was made like a level field. The next day Avitus sent the Jews a message: become one flock under one shepherd, or leave. On the third day they asked for baptism, and at Pentecost more than five hundred were baptised; those who refused went to Marseille. At Gregory's request Venantius Fortunatus celebrated the event in a poem addressed to him. Nothing is known of the building's date, size, form or exact location.

UBICACIÓN

Where it stood

Historic: Arverna (Clermont), civitas of the Arverni, Merovingian Gaul; exact site unknown. Today: Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme; placeholder pin at the city centre (approximate).

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La comunidad judía

Clermont's Jews are the earliest attested in France. The Encyclopaedia Judaica article by Bernhard Blumenkranz cites letters of Sidonius Apollinaris showing Jews in the city by about 470, and describes relations with the sixth-century bishops Gallus and Cautinus as fairly friendly. Gregory of Tours confirms this for Cautinus, bishop from the 550s until he died of plague: he writes in book IV, chapter 12, that Cautinus was very close to the Jews and deferred to them, buying costly goods, spices in particular, from them. Gregory disapproved, seeing a pastor who treated them as suppliers rather than souls to be won. His figure of more than five hundred baptised in 576, besides those who left for Marseille, implies a sizeable community; Mónika Mezei, in a study of Jewish communities in Gregory's towns, finds this implausible for a city of a few thousand people and suggests the community may have numbered only fifty to a hundred. Fortunatus describes the people of Clermont as split in two by the conflict. No individual member of the congregation is named in either source.

Arquitectura y diseño

No description of the building survives. Gregory of Tours calls it simply the synagogue of the Jews, and his only physical detail is the result of the attack: it was destroyed from its foundations, so that the site was made like the flat surface of a field. Venantius Fortunatus uses the same image, saying that the people tore down the Jewish temple and that open ground lay where the synagogue had been. This suggests a modest building that a crowd could pull down in a single day, but neither writer says whether it was of stone, timber or both, how large it was, or how it was arranged inside. Its position in the town is not recorded. Gregory says only that the procession was moving from the cathedral church to a basilica when the crowd turned on the synagogue, which may imply it stood near that route, though this is an inference. No remains have been identified archaeologically, and no image, plan or inscription of the building is known.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

Nothing is recorded directly about worship, officers or teaching in the Clermont synagogue. What the sources do show is the pressure under which the congregation lived in its final years. Gregory says Bishop Avitus repeatedly urged the Jews to lay aside the veil of the law of Moses and to read Christ in their scriptures, and that they resisted. The baptism at Easter 576 of one of their number, who then walked in white robes in the Christian procession, was a public challenge to the community; the response of another Jew, who poured foul-smelling oil on the convert's head as the procession entered the city gate, shows how strongly that defection was felt. The Christian crowd wanted to stone him, and Avitus prevented it. In Fortunatus's poem, written for Gregory, the Jews are portrayed as more defiant: after the synagogue fell a Jewish band, roused by rebellious fury, was gathered together and shut up in a house, and the poet adds that if they had raged they would have fallen by the sword. Mezei notes that Fortunatus frames the episode more as a revolt than Gregory does.

Destrucción

Gregory of Tours dates the destruction to Ascension Day in the year that Childebert II began to reign after the death of his father Sigibert, which the Jewish Encyclopedia gives as 576. Bishop Avitus was leading a psalm-singing procession from the cathedral to a basilica. Gregory writes that 'the whole crowd of those following' rushed upon the synagogue of the Jews and destroyed it from its foundations, so that the place was made level like a field. The perpetrators were therefore the Christian crowd in the bishop's procession, acting after weeks of Avitus's preaching and the oil incident at Easter. Gregory does not say that Avitus ordered the attack, but he records no rebuke. Fortunatus's poem says the people, armed by faith, tore down the Jewish temple and left a field where the synagogue had stood. The day after the attack Avitus sent messengers telling the Jews that he did not force them, but that they must become one flock under him as shepherd or leave the place.

El destino de la comunidad

According to Gregory, the Jews hesitated for two days and on the third sent word that they believed in Jesus and asked for baptism. On the night of the Pentecost vigil Avitus went out to the baptistery outside the walls, where the whole group prostrated themselves and asked for baptism; he baptised and anointed them and led them into the cathedral, and Gregory counts more than five hundred. Those who refused left the city and went to Marseille. Fortunatus, in the poem Gregory commissioned, celebrates the baptisms with a great number at the new Pasch and orders those who will not convert to give back the place and take their contagion away with them. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that a new Jewish community existed in Clermont by the tenth century at the latest, remembered in the names Fontgiève (Fountain of the Jews) and Montjuzet (Mountain of the Jews). Whether anyone from the community of 576 later returned to Judaism is unknown.

El lugar hoy

The site of the synagogue is unknown. Neither Gregory of Tours nor Venantius Fortunatus names its street or its distance from the cathedral, and no archaeological find in Clermont-Ferrand has been identified with it. Late antique Clermont occupied the hill on which the Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption now stands, and Gregory says the procession was going from the cathedral church to a basilica when the crowd attacked, so the building probably stood somewhere in or near the walled town, but this cannot be pinned down. Nothing of the building survives above ground. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Clermont-Ferrand and does not mark the synagogue's location.

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