Chalon-Sur-Saône
CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE
CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE , French town in the former duchy of *Burgundy. Around 820, *Agobard, the archbishop of Lyons, tried to convert forcibly the Jewish children in the city to Christianity, and later instructed the bishop of Chalon to enjoin his flock to avoid all association with Jews. From the middle of the tenth century the records mention numerous Jews owning fields and vineyards in the environs of the town, which they cultivated themselves, notably at Sennecey-le-Grand, Fissey, Buxy, and Droux. The medieval community had numerous communal facilities, including a baking oven (Cartulaire Citeaux, no. 193, folio 62–63), a cemetery on the site of the present Rue des Places (where three tombstones were found in 1957), and a ritual bath in the close of the former Capuchin convent at Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. The vicus Judaeorum ("Street of the Jews") occupied the site of the present Grand'rue. Around 1306, just before the general expulsion of the Jews from France, the community in Chalon conducted important loan operations with credit amounting to 23,000 livres. In 1384 a certain number of Jewish families were again authorized to settle in Chalon until finally expelled from France in 1394. The scholar Eliezer b. Judah lived there in the second half of the 11th century. Scholars of the town took part in the *synod which met under the presidency of Jacob b. Meir *Tam and Samuel b. Meir. A new community was formed after 1871. The Jewish population in 1968 numbered 140.
bibliography:
Gross, Gal Jud, 590ff.; B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens… (1960), index; L. Armand-Calliat, in: Mémoires de la Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Chalon-sur-Saône, 34 (1955–57), 68–78.
[Bernhard Blumenkranz]