Saint-Giles

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SAINT-GILES

SAINT-GILES , small town W. of Arles, France. The earliest implicit evidence of the presence of Jews in Saint-Giles dates from the beginning of the 12th century, with the polemic representation of an allegorical Synagoga on the abbey church (western face, southern door). About 1165 *Benjamin of Tudela found there 100 Jews (or heads of families). The community paid the abbot an annual tenure of 100 sols. In the autumn of 1215, Saint-Giles was the site of a meeting of delegates from communities between *Marseilles and *Narbonne who sought to forestall certain anti-Jewish canons which were being prepared for the Fourth *Lateran Council. After the expulsion of 1306, Jews of the locality took refuge in *Provence, and particularly in Marseilles. Scholars mentioned in Saint-Giles by Benjamin of Tudela are unknown from other sources.

bibliography:

Gross, Gal Jud, 650ff.; S. Kahn, in: Mémoires de l'Académie de Nîmes, 35 (1912), 1–23; B. Blumenkranz, in: Mélanges… R. Crozet (1966), 1155.

[Bernhard Blumenkranz]

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