Medieval Sourcebook:
Barcelona Jewish Court Documents:
A Daughter's Inheritance, 1293
A: Bonadona
The following document was produced in 1293 by the Jewish court in Barcelona at the
request of Bonadona, daughter of Samuel [Astrug] Ascandrani. The document is simply an
official copy of a document produced by a different court a year earlier (the embedded
copy of the earlier text is indented for clarity).
We the undersigned court [state]: the Lady Bonadona, the wife of R. Judah b. R. Jucifia
Saporta came before us and said to us, "please make a official copy of this record of
a legal decision for Estevan deSpelugis, monk of Santa Anna, since he bought from me a
vineyard which is mentioned in the record, since the purchaser did not want to give me the
money until I hand over to him the official copy of this decision which was handed down
about this vineyard, along with the rest of my property." We saw her words [to be
reasonable] and heard her request [lit: voice] and we made an official copy of it for the
aforementioned monk and this is the copy, letter for letter and word for word, without
addition or subtraction:
We the undersigned court [state]: it happened that Lady Bonadona, the wife of R. Judah
b. R. Jucifia Saporta came before us and said to us, "since my father, R.
Samuel b. R. Abraham Ascandrani made a will concerning his
possessions at the time of his death and he had no heir but me and he gave me as his heir
the houses which I live in today in the Jewish quarter, and a vineyard at the edge of this
city [Barcelona] near Mogoria, and a seat in the synagogue in the courtyard of the
Israelites [i.e. in the men's section of the synagogue] in this city and he said at that
time that if (heaven forbid) I should die without children then the aforementioned
property should revert to a charitable trust; now I need to sell [the property] in order
to support myself and I am afraid that I will not find a buyer since everyone knows that
this property is mortgaged to the charitable trust because of my father's will. Please
consider the laws and examine my father's will and determine for me whether my father's
words giving the possessions after my death, are valid or not. We looked in her eyes
(?) and heard her voice [request] and we took the will of her father from her and went
over it in detail and discussed what was written in it, and all three of us were of one
mind after we went over it about the law, and with the agreement and advice of our
teacher and rabbi, R. Solomon b. R. Abraham ben Adret we made a judgment about the law
that the charitable trust has no right to any of the aforementioned possessions, even if
the Lady Bonadona should die without children, since her father ordered that she should
have title to the possessions as an heir all the days of her life, and even though
he ordered that they should return to the charitable trust after her death if she should
die without children, he did not have the power to make such a condition since
inheritance has no interruption [i.e., an heir's possession of his inheritance
cannot be interrupted by the wishes of the person who bequeathed the property]. In order
for Lady Bonadona to have it as a proof, we signed our names here in the month of
Elul, in the year 5052 since the creation of the world (August 15-Sept 12, 1292), as we
reckon it here in Barcelona, and it is valid and binding: Judah
b.R. Solomon (may God protect him); Samuel b.R. Joseph (may his Rock and Redeemer protect
him); Judah b.R. Yeshua (may he rest in peace).
This is the record of the legal decision and the court which signed it which we copied
for the aforementioned monk on the orders of the Lady Bonadona; we examined the signatures
of the court and we know that these are their signatures and we have written and signed
and given it to the aforementioned monk to be evidence of his purchase and it is valid and
binding: Hosea b.R. Joseph (may he be remembered for the life of the world to come); Hiyya
b.R. Solomon (may his Rock and Redeemer protect him); Solomon b. R. Samuel Saporta [not
apparently a close relation to Bonadona's husband].
Source: "Documents des Juifs Catalans," document no. 36, Revue
des Etudes Juives, 68 (1914).)
A facsimile of the original is found in Joaquim Miret y Sans and Moise Schwab,
"Documents des Juifs Catalans," Revue des Etudes Juives, 68 (1914),
document no. 36.
B: Letter
The following is an abridgement of the letter from Adret to the Barcelona court
about Bonadona's problem. It is found in Adret's responsa, vol. 1, no. 704.
Question: You asked [about] a person on his deathbed who made his will in gentile
script (i.e. Latin), namely he ordered that his words be written as a will by X and Y in
[both] Hebrew and Latin so that it would be effective. Does it matter that they wrote them
as a will after his death? Do we say that these people are the agents of the dying man,
given that an agent cannot act after death [of the one who empowered him] or shall we say
that he is only like one who conveys his intentions to them, to carry them out as long as
they wish, even after his death? If you say that they can write them, tell us about his
instruction that it should be effective in Hebrew and Latin: should [we take it] literally
so that if their language is sufficient in Hebrew (for complete fulfillment of what he
said), would they be forbidden from writing it in Latin; or perhaps he meant only that it
should be effective, even if it is not effective in Latin?
Moreover, your brother also asked in your name about the substance of the will which
the dying man made: he bequeathed what he had to his daughter and he even went so far as
to specify that if she should die with no surviving child that some of the property should
revert to his brother(s) and some to a charitable trust and moreover, even if the daughter
gave [her bequest] as a gift [he stipulated] that none of it should come to her husband,
nor income from it, nor income from its income -- is this provision valid or not?
Answer: First of all, I will discuss general principles and afterwards, I will deal
with the particulars. Even though [the sages] said that "the words of a dying man are
as if they were written and conveyed," (Baba Batra 151a, 175a; Gittin 13a, 15a) they
only intended this to apply to the words which he said, not to add to his words or take
away from them in order to put them into effect, even though he revealed his intentions
[i.e. if what he ordered could have legal effect, we do it, but we do not modify his
requests even when it is clear what he wanted to achieve by them]. . . . Now I will
explain the specifics which emerge from these principles. Consider that since the dying
man intended for his daughter to inherit all the property from him, it immediately became
hers by biblical law as it says in scripture, "and on the day that he wills to his
sons" (Dt 21:16). So long as he does not recover and revoke the gift, it is entirely
the property of the heir and if he makes any conditions about it afterwards, he is making
conditions about the property of the heir [over which he has no control]. . . Thus the
reservation which he made in the daughter's bequest that the husband would have no share
in the property is meaningless, as we learn in the Talmud, "if she only receives what
she consumes [her husband gets nothing]" but here he did not say so. Moreover, I
already said that we never reduce his gift, so that she only gets some small part of the
property in order to fulfill his purpose and his orders; especially since the daughter
alone inherits all the property left by the father, anything left her as a [mere] gift
comes to her with the force of inheritance, . . . therefore there is no vestige of support
for what he ordered and bequeathed, including all of those reservations and conditions
which he made. . . . It is clear that after his death no one can add to or subtract from
[what he said], and every thing [else] he said would be of no effect, even if he were
still alive, [since] he insisted on this exact language and ordered thus, even though this
is a deathbed bequest. Especially since if he said, "write and seal and give it"
[i.e. he gave specific instructions about the writing] we worry lest the acquisition can
only be completed in a document, and one cannot issue a document after death, as it says
in Baba Batra ch. 8 and ch. 9. Especially in the case of this man who commanded that his
words be put in an effective document perhaps it was the document which he wanted.
Source.
translated by Elka Klein elka@yossi.com
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Paul Halsall, November 1998
halsall@fordham.edu
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