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Cadenet

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Small village in the department of Vaucluse, France. Like all places situated along the river Durance, Cadenet had a Jewish community in the Middle Ages. A document of the year 1283 states that this community, together with those of Aix, St. Maximin, Lambesc, Pertuis, Istres, Tretz, and Lanson, was permitted to have a synagogue and a cemetery on paying an annual tax of two pounds of pepper to the archbishop of Aix (Charter of 1283; compare Depping, "Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age," p. 197).

In 1385 a remarkable lawsuit arose in Arles, relating to an alleged marriage (described in all its details by Gross, in "Monatsschrift," 1880, pp. 404 et seq.). The plaintiff was Maestro Duran of Cadenet. In order to be revenged on Meirona, daughter of En Salves Cassin of Arles, who had refused him, Duran declared that he had married her in the presence of two witnesses, Vidal Abraham of Bourrin and Bonfilh or Bonfils Crégud. These witnesses were later convicted of perjury.

The case was taken in turn before the rabbinical colleges of Arles, Nîmes, Montpellier, and Perpignan, and in the last instance, upon the demand of Don Salemias Nasi of Valence, was submitted to R. Isaac ben Sheshet, who pronounced severe judgment against Duran and his fellow-conspirators, and bitterly reproached the community of Arles that it had not done its utmost to prevent such a scandal from becoming public. A Jew, Mosson of Cadenet by name, lived at Carpentras in 1404 ("Revue Etudes Juives," 12:196); and two others, Salvet of Cadenet and Vidalon of Cadenet, were sheriffs of that community in 1460 (ib. p. 176).