page_title: Ancient Diocese of Carpentras
section_title: The Jews of Carpentras: the Carrière
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Diocese of Carpentras / History / The Jews of Carpentras: the Carrière
caption_attribution_description: English: Synagogue in Carpentras, France Français&#160;: facade de la synagogue de Carpentras (Vaucluse, France Polski: Synagoga w Carpentras (Francja)
context_page_description: Carpentras was a diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the Provence region, from the later Roman Empire until 1801. It was part of the ecclesiastical province under the Metropolitan, the Archbishop of Arles. The bishop was a major figure in the Comtat Venaissin, and a member of the Estates of the Comtat. He was a direct appointee of the pope.
context_section_description: Already by the beginning of the sixth century, there were significant numbers of Jews in the Midi. The bishops, who met at Agde in 507, and those who met at Epaona in 517, considered it necessary to make canons concerning fraternization with Jews even more stringent. One of these was Bishop Julianus of Carpentras. It was already forbidden for clerics to dine with Jews, but the prohibition was also extended to laymen. The earliest reference to a Jewish community in Carpentras is found in a set of community statutes, approved by several prominent rabbis in France, including the Rabbi of Carpentras, who may have been Jacob Tam. These belong to the first half of the twelfth century. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the Jews were expelled from Carpentras, but they returned in 1263. Apparently they were able to reach an accommodation with Bishop Raimundus de Barjols, who unfortunately died in February 1275.
  Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, who ruled Provence in the name of his wife Joan of Toulouse, from 1249 until his death in 1271, was a vigorous persecutor of the Jews. In 1269 he issued an order for a general persecution of the Jews in his domains. In his Last Will and Testament, he left the Comtat Venaissin to the papacy, and though the rest of his Will was quashed, that one provision was allowed. In 1274, therefore, Pope Gregory X became the ruler of the Comtat, and in 1275 a new bishop of Carpentras was appointed, following the death of Bishop de Barjols. The political climate had changed. On 19 July 1275, the Papal Chamberlain and Provost of Marseille,  Berenguer de Séguret, was appointed sole judge in cases concerning the Jews, to the exclusion of all other magistrates. On 28 February 1276, shortly after the Comtat Venaissin became the property of the popes, the Jews of Carpentras entered into an agreement with the Bishop of Carpentras, Pierre Rostaing, in which they agreed to become his vassals in exchange for his protection. They agreed as well to pay to him and his successors a series of specified taxes, but the Bishop agreed not to impose any other additional taxes on them, to guard their property, and to protect them from violence and injustice. The document was signed by sixty-four heads of families. Carpentras thus became, along with Avignon, Cavaillon, and L'Isle-sur-Sorgue, one of the recognized cities of refuge from antisemitic persecution in the Comtat Venaissin.
  In 1320, a different Pope, John XXII (Jacques Duèse), agreed to defend the Jews of the Comtat from the murderous onslaught of the marauding bands of antisemitic shepherds, the Pastoureaux. Papal protection was not, however, without a price. In a bull of 12 April 1320 that same pope revoked the agreement between the bishops of Carpentras and their Jewish community, as he took the temporal power over Carpentras which had belonged to the bishops. The Pope was now the overlord of the Jews. And in 1322 he expelled the Jews and turned their synagogue into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This situation lasted for twenty years, until a new Pope, Clement VI revoked John XXII's expulsion order, and granted permission in 1343 for the rebuilding of the synagogue of Carpentras. The synagogue was completed in 1367, and rebuilt in 1741; it was repaired in 1784 and 1899. In 1403 Pope Benedict XIII claimed all of the taxes which the Jews had formerly paid to the bishops. Pope Clement VII confirmed their privileges in 1524, and Pope Paul III revoked them in 1539. By virtue of a bull of 26 February 1569, Pope Pius V expelled the Jews from Italian and French territory, which was immediately followed by an order of 3 August 1570 from the Legate of Avignon for them to leave by October. The Rector of the Comtat, however, permitted some of them to remain, and they eventually restored their numbers. The French Revolution brought about their complete emancipation, and after the annexation of the Comtat Venaissin in 1793 they became French citizens.
caption: The Synagogue of Carpentras
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