Great Synagogue of Valencia

The Jewish community

Jews lived in Valencia under Muslim rule, and the historian E. Ashtor estimated that there were 162 Jewish families in the city at the time of the Christian conquest of 1238, about 6.5 per cent of its population. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that a quarter was assigned to them in 1239, bounded by stretches of the old city wall and the gate later called the Puerta de la Ley; it was enclosed by a high wall in 1390, with three gates closed at night. Around the end of the thirteenth century about 250 tax-paying families lived in Valencia, and Hasdai Crescas, writing after 1391, put the community at about 1,000 householders. Its rabbis included Amram ben Nathan Efrati and, from 1385 until 1391, Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet. Among its leaders was the king's physician Omar Tahuel. The quarter was enlarged in 1390 towards the parish of San Andrés, an enlargement that local historians think was never completed.

Architecture and design

No description, plan, drawing or photograph of the synagogue has been found. Sources say only that it was the largest of Valencia's synagogues and stood near the long main street of the Jewish quarter, with its principal entrance, according to recent local writing, on the calle del Mar. Its builder, date of construction, size, seating capacity and style are all unknown. A late account reported by Rubén Gregori Bou says that the small wooden statue of St Christopher venerated after 1391 was found at the foot of the synagogue's main altar, meaning presumably its ark platform; that statue's head survives in the Real Monasterio de San Cristóbal. Because the building served first as a church and then as part of a convent for more than four centuries before it was pulled down in 1869, it is unknown how much of the medieval synagogue fabric still stood at the time of demolition, and no archaeological record of it has been found.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the building itself. No source read describes its services, officials or furnishings, or says how the community's rabbis used it. Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet was appointed rabbi of Valencia in 1385 and held the post until the destruction of 1391; the Jewish Encyclopedia also names Amram ben Nathan Efrati as having held the rabbinate for four decades. After 1391 the building's use was reversed: the Encyclopaedia Judaica and José Hinojosa Montalvo say it became the meeting place of the newly baptised converts, whose confraternity of St Christopher had its ordinances approved by King Martin I in 1399 and was allowed its own burial ground in 1403.

Destruction

The synagogue was lost in the anti-Jewish riots of 1391. On Sunday 9 July, St Christopher's Day, Valencia's Jewish quarter was attacked: the Encyclopaedia Judaica names rioters who had arrived from Castile and soldiers stationed in the port, while the Jewish Encyclopedia describes forty to fifty youths who forced their way in and whom the infante Martin tried in vain to restrain. Between 230 and 250 Jews were killed, others fled or hid, and most were baptised. A convert later claimed to have seen St Christopher on the roof of the great synagogue. On 16 July the king ordered that the synagogue must not be turned into a church, but it was: Gregori Bou says it was purified and consecrated the day after the attack, and Hinojosa records King John I founding a benefice in the new church of San Cristóbal on 8 November 1392. Ninety rioters were arrested but later amnestied.

The community’s fate

The community never recovered. Many survivors were baptised, among them leading figures such as Samuel Abravalia and the royal physician Omar Tahuel, and Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet fled, possibly after a forced conversion. The Jewish quarter was formally dissolved on 2 October 1392 and refounded on 31 December 1392 on a much smaller area. In 1393 Hasdai Crescas was asked to select sixty families to resettle Barcelona and Valencia, and Simeon ben Zemah Duran mentions Jews living in Valencia at the end of the century, but the Jewish Encyclopedia says the old quarter was never re-established and that Jews later needed the bailiff's permission to stay in the city for more than a few days. In 1492 Valencia was a port of embarkation for Jews leaving Spain after the expulsion, among them Isaac Abravanel and his family.

The site today

Nothing of the synagogue survives above ground. The church of San Cristóbal that replaced it became part of the convent of Augustinian canonesses founded on the calle del Mar in 1409. After the Junta Revolucionaria expelled the nuns on 28 September 1868, the convent was demolished a year later, in 1869, for the opening of the calle de la Paz. The site lies in the Ciutat Vella district, roughly between the calles de Medina and Ruiz de Lihory; only the name of the nearby calle de San Cristóbal recalls the church. Possible traces of a well have been noted in a restaurant on calle del Mar where the synagogue is thought to have stood. The convent community moved elsewhere, and its successor, the Real Monasterio de San Cristóbal, keeps the head of the fourteenth-century statue of the saint.

Notable names