BRIVIESCA

BRIVIESCA , city in Castile, northern Spain. Briviesca Jewry was closely connected with the communities of *Burgos and *Miranda de Ebro. In 1240 Ferdinand iii of Castile ordered the community to continue to pay the amount of 30 denarii annually to the cathedral in lieu of the 30 shekels paid to Judas Iscariot. A number of Jews who had settled in the quarter of Santa Cecilia in Briviesca were conveyed in gift to the monastery of Huelgas by Alfonso x in 1270. Briviesca Jewry was annihilated during the civil war between Pedro the Cruel and Henry of Trastamara in 1366–69 but subsequently reestablished. Records of 1380–81 show Jews of Briviesca engaged in various tax-farming operations. In 1387 the Cortes convened in Briviesca and promulgated a series of anti-Jewish restrictions, including separation of the Jewish, Moorish, and Christian quarters. In 1414 a number of Jewish residents of Briviesca sold land in their possession to a monastery in neighboring Oña. The levy for the war with Granada imposed in 1485 on the Briviesca community and Jews in the vicinity totaled 127 Castilians. No information is available on the fate of the Briviesca Jews after the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

bibliography:

Baer, Urkunden, 1 pt. 2 (1936), index; Cantera, in: Sefarad, 2 (1942), 332, 337–8, 360–2; 12 (1952), 68, 71; Huidobro, ibid., 3 (1943), 157–9, 164–6; G. Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward iii and Richard ii (1955), 497; Suárez Fernández, Documentos, 66, 75; Baer, Spain, 1 (1961), 365, 420.

[Haim Beinart]