Last Synagogue of Girona

The Jewish community

Girona was the second-largest Jewish community in Catalonia and reached about 1,000 people in the thirteenth century, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica. It was the first centre of Kabbalah in the Iberian Peninsula and the home of Nahmanides and Jonah Gerondi, and it took in Jews expelled from France in 1306. In 1391 most of its members were killed rather than convert, while a few were baptised or fled; the community was reconstituted by 1392 but declined throughout the fifteenth century. In 1415 the Jews were confined to a walled area east of Carrer de la Força, their quarter was reduced again in 1442, and in 1486 they were barred from keeping shops facing the main street. By the time of the expulsion only about twenty families remained, according to the Museum of Jewish History. The aljama was governed by elected rectors and secretaries; those who signed for it in 1492 were Lleó Aninay, Salamó Esdrà, Salamó Samuel and Leví Issach.

Architecture and design

No drawing, plan or description of the prayer hall has been found, so its size, style and builder are unknown. The notarial deeds of 1492 and later describe a group of four adjoining buildings: the synagogue proper, called 'les scoles' of the aljama; a separate 'school of the women'; a hospital or almshouse; and baths that contained the mikveh. A courtyard lay to the south of the school and baths, the lane of Sant Llorenç ran along the north side, and the house of Lleó Aninay adjoined on the east. Archaeologists place the complex in the north-east part of the present Centre Bonastruc ça Porta. Excavations in 2014 and 2015 found the mikveh: a square stone pool reached by steps and a landing on its south side, fed with rainwater filtered through a rectangular collecting basin of about 110 by 160 cm in the courtyard, with a small vestibule floored in red tiles and a doorway whose lintel springers survive.

Life inside the synagogue

The museum describes the arrangement usual in Catalan synagogues: wooden benches around a central platform, the bimah, from which the cantor and readers led the service, and a Torah cupboard on the east wall. Women sat apart, behind a window or screen, and in Girona's last synagogue they had a separate building, the women's school, named in the deeds of 1492. The complex also served the community's welfare and ritual needs. Its hospital or almshouse cared for the poor and travellers, and its mikveh was, in the excavators' words, the last official ritual bath of the city, in use from 1435 to 1492; before it was built the community had no proper place for ritual immersion. Ceramics from Manises dumped into the rainwater collector as filter material date from the first third of the fifteenth century. No rabbi, cantor or teacher who served in this building is named in the sources read.

Destruction

The synagogue was not wrecked in a riot; it was closed by the Crown. The royal expulsion decree of 31 March 1492, issued under King Ferdinand II, ordered the Jews to convert or leave, and Girona's council proclaimed it on 20 June 1492. Forced to sell, the aljama's rectors Lleó Aninay, Salamó Esdrà, Salamó Samuel and Leví Issach sold the synagogue, women's school, hospital and baths on 9 July 1492, before the notary Pere Escuder, to Jordi Rafart, a beneficed priest of Girona Cathedral, for 32 lliures. Other cathedral clergy bought the houses of departing Jews in the same weeks. The museum gives the price as 300 pounds and calls the buyers the cathedral canons, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica says the remains went to a canon for ten florins. The property passed to Guillem Saguer in 1498 and to the priest Jaume Verdera in 1544. Early in the sixteenth century the mikveh was dismantled and turned into a cistern. When and by whom the prayer hall was pulled down is unknown.

The community’s fate

The expulsion ended Jewish life in Girona. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says that only a small community remained by 1492 and that most of its members went into exile; the Museum of Jewish History writes that the last Jews of the city were baptised or expelled. The community's buildings were sold in the summer of 1492, and its other property passed to cathedral clergy, a municipal notary and other citizens. The house of the secretary Lleó Aninay, next to the synagogue, went to the priest Miquel Escola, and canon Antoni Baldomar bought the house of Jucef de Piera and the garden of Bonastruch Benvenist. Where the Girona exiles went is not stated in the sources read. No Jewish community existed in Girona in the following centuries, and the area of the former quarter was rediscovered and restored only from 1987, when the city began acquiring the buildings on Carrer de Sant Llorenç and Carrer de la Força.

The site today

The site lies within the Centre Bonastruc ça Porta, the complex on Carrer de la Força and the lane of Sant Llorenç that has housed the Museu d'Història dels Jueus since the city acquired the buildings between 1987 and 1990. According to the excavators, nothing remains of the synagogue hall or of the almshouse. What does survive is the mikveh of the synagogue complex, found in February 2014 at the far end of the courtyard. Its pool, converted into a cistern in the early sixteenth century and given a wall and stone parapet in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, still holds water and is displayed on the upper floor of the museum, together with the rainwater collector and the vestibule found in 2015. The former butcher's shop area is now the courtyard. A facsimile of the 1492 deed of sale is shown in the museum.

Notable names