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Peyrehorade

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Cantonal chief town of the department of Landes, France. A number of Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal settled in this vicinity toward the close of the fifteenth century, and founded a small community which they called "Beth-El." Placed at first under the community of Bayonne, they later refused to submit to its authority, and were, therefore, threatened with excommunication. In 1680 a Jew of Peyrehorade, Juan Ibanès, called also Luiz Ordenez and Juan or Abraham de Paredès, who had returned from Spain, was seized by the Inquisition and condemned to the stake. A decree of the council of state, dated 1684, banished from the kingdom ninety-three Jewish families living at Peyrehorade, Bordeaux, Dax, Bayonne, and Bidache; and in 1749 the King of France, on the petition of certain of the Jews themselves, compelled seventy-eight of their poorer coreligionists to leave the cities of Bayonne, Bidache, and Peyrehorade within the space of one month.

The cemetery of Peyrehorade was one of the first in the department of Landes. It was situated in 1628 "on the road lying between the river which flows from Vignons, the vineyard of Messaultié and the Vergeras, and the foot of the hill of Aspremont." At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was replaced by a piece of land situated in the quarter of Lembarussant; and in the early part of the nineteenth century by another plot on the road to Lapuyade. Only two or three Jewish families now (1904) remain in Peyrehorade.