Benveniste

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Benveniste, also Benvenist (in Catalonia), Benvenisti, Benvenista, Benvenisto, Ben-Veniste, Beniste or Benisti (in North Africa) (Spanish bien venida = welcome) is the surname of a Jewish family of Narbonne, France from the 11th century. The family was present in the 11th to the 15th centuries in Provence, France, Barcelona, Aragon and Castile' Spain. Family members received honorary titles from the authorities and were members of the administration of the kingdom of Aragon and Castile. They were the Baillie ("Bayle") - the Tax Officer and Treasurer, Alfaquim - Senior Advisor to the King and Royal Physician in Barcelona and Aragon in the 12th and 13th centuries. They held the title of "Nasi" (prince in Hebrew), a name given to members of the House of David, in the Jewish communities (mainly Barcelona) and were prominent religious and secular leaders in the 11th to the 14th centuries. In the 14th to the 15th century they held the titles of "de la Cavalleria"—"of the knights" (a name given by the Templars to their treasurers and tax collectors) and Don—a noble person in Aragon and Castile. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 they were dispersed to mainly Portugal, Greece - Salonica other parts of the Turkish Empire and North African countries. In Portugal they were forced to convert to Christianity in 1497 and became one of the rich traders and bankers (the Mendes family) of Europe. Today the name is borne by families in Europe, the Americas and Asia. It was also used as a prænomen.[1]

People

  • Isaac ben Josef iben Benveniste Nasi, was called Iben Barun, (c. 11th century). Hebrew grammarian, lexicographer and a poet. He lived in Saragossa (during the Islamic era) and Málaga and associated with the poets Moses ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi.[2]
  • Sheshet Benveniste Nasi, (c.1131-1209) ben Isaac ben Joseph. He was a physician, writer and a political advisor and diplomate to the kings of Aragon. The son of Isaac Benveniste Nasi (prince) the physician of the king of Aragon that came to Spain from Narbonne France in the 12th century. The Narbonne Jewish center was established, according to Jewish and Christian sources, by prominent Jews from Bagdad at the request of the Carolingian kings in the end of the first millennium AD. The Babylonian names of Makhir, Hasdai, Sheshet and Shealtiel are the names of chief rabbis and leaders - Nasi (considered by the Jewish tradition as descendents of king David) of the Jewish center. They appear together with the name Benveniste in documents of Narbonne and Barcelona from the 11th-13th century AD with the name Nasi added.[3][4] Sheshet received his education at Narbonne, his probable birthplace, afterward he lived at Barcelona, and later at Saragossa, in which city he died. He practiced medicine, and was the author of a medical work, manuscript copies of which are still extant at Oxford and Munich. Such was his reputation as a physician that patients came long distances to consult him.
  • Isaac ben Joseph Benveniste Nasi (died 1224), physician of the king of Aragon. He was the leading figure in the representative congresses of the Jewish communities convened at Montpellier and Saint-Gilles in 1214 and 1215 to consider protective measures in view of the approaching Lateran Council . Subsequently he secured for the Aragonese communities a temporary suspension of the obligation to wear the Jewish badge.[5]
  • Vidal Benveniste de Porta (died 1268), Jewish Bailie ("bayle") - the tax officer and treasurer of Barcelona, Girona and Lerida, Spain. His brother was Bonastruc ça (de) Porta, Nahmanides, (in Hebrew Ramban), also known as Rabbi Moses ben Nahman Girondi. (1194–1270). He grew up, studied and lived in Girona. He was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Catalonia rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator. He participated in 1263 in the Disputation of Barcelona before King James I of Aragon.
  • Don Vidal Benveniste (de la Cavalleria) was a prominent Spanish Jewish scholar who lived in Saragossa in the beginning of the second half of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century. The honor 'de la Cavalleria', according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, was given to the family by the knights Templar who protected the family and the family in turn administered the tax system of the Templars. His family was connected to the development of the town of Saragossa in the 14th century, and members of the family Benvenist de la Cavalleria were financiers of the local kings.[6] He was elected, by the notables of the Jewish communities of Aragon, as the speaker before the pope at the beginning of disputation of Tortosa (1413).[7]
  • Don Abraham Benveniste (Bienveniste) (died in c. 1450) of Soria and Toledo, Spain. Statesman and chief rabbi (or "court rabbi") of Castile during the reign of Juan II, (1406–54). He was also entrusted with the public finances of the kingdom together with Don Yosef Nasi. Under the presidency of Benveniste a Jewish synod in Valladolid in 1432 drew up a statute called the "Takḳanoth," which was to serve as a basis for the administration of the Jewish communities in Spain. It dealt with the divine service, with the glorification of the study of the Law, with state taxation, and with the welfare and progress of the communities.[3][8]
  • Don Judah Benveniste and Don Samuel Benveniste Sons of Don Meir Benveniste of Toledo. Grandsons of Don Abraham Benveniste the court rabbi of Castile. They immigrated to Salonica in 1492 with other Jewish Spanish exiles, and with them they founded the Sephardic community in that city. They succeeded in preserving a share of their great patrimony sufficient for the purchase of a large collection of books. Several experienced scribes were always employed in copying the Mishnah, the Talmud, and other works at their homes, which was the center of the scholarly Spanish exiles.[3]
  • Don Vidal Benvenist (de la Cavalleria) Grandson of Don Abraham Benveniste was a prominent and a wealthy man in Spain in the second half of the 15th century. Together with his brother Abraham [9] they negotiated a compact with the King of Portugal to allow 120,000 of the Jewish exiles from Spain in 1492 to stay in Portugal for six months. The Jewish exiles had to pay one ducat for every soul, and the fourth part of all the merchandise they had carried with them when they entered Portugal.[10]
  • Francisco Mendes (Tzemah Benveniste in Hebrew) one of the wealthiest traders and bankers in Europe in the first half of the 16th century. He was the great grandson of Don Abraham Benveniste. His family was forcibly converted Jews known as Conversos (also called Crypto-Jews, Marranos and Secret Jews). While still Jewish, they had fled to Portugal when the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, expelled the Jews in 1492. Five years later, in 1497, they were forcibly converted to Catholicism along with all the other Jews in Portugal at that time. Francisco Mendes|Benveniste directed, along with his brothers Diogo Mendes (Meir Benveniste) and Goncalo Mendes, from Lisbon and later from Antwerpen,[11] a powerful trading company and a bank of world repute with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean. The House of Mendes|Benveniste probably began as a company trading precious objects. Following the beginning of the Age of Discovery and the finding, by the Portuguese, of a sea route to India, Goncalo Mendes financed ships (and possibly participated) in the Vasco di Gama missions. They became particularly important as one of the six families that controlled the spice trade in the Portuguese India Armadas (the kings of black pepper). They established with the other families a trading post in Antwerpen from where they controlled the distribution of black pepper in Europe. They also traded in silver - the silver was needed to pay the Asians for those spices.[12] They financed the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain, England, the Flanders and the popes in Rome.[13]
  • Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510–1569) a Marrano-Jewish-Portuguese businesswoman (Micas|Nasi). Was married to Francisco Mendes (Tzemah Benvenisti), inherited the Mendes|Benvenisti fortune and became one of the wealthiest women in Europe of the middle 16th century. She returned to Judaism in Ferrara in the 1550s together with members of the Henriques|Nunio|Benveniste family (Meir, Abraham and Reina Benveniste). In 1553/4 she left Fererra together with her daughter Brianda (Reina), son in law Don Joseph Nasi and the Henriques|Nunio|Benveniste family to Istanbul where they settled at the invitation of Sultan Suleiman I. They were very active in trade, finance and in local and international Jewish life. [14]
  • Imanoel Benveniste (1608–1664) a notable printer from Amsterdam that printed many books in Hebrew among them the Bible and the Talmud. He was from Venice. Indirect information point to his origin as a marano that converted back to Judaism and possibly as a member of the Mendes|Benveniste family from Venice (see Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi).[15]
  • Don Vidal Benveniste From Aragon settled in Constantinople after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. A writer of a book published in 1512.[16]
  • Moses Benveniste (second half of the 16th century). The physician of the Grand Vasir Siavouch Pasha in Constantinople. Political advisor and diplomate. Negotiated peace with Spain. Died in exile in Rodes.
  • Joshua ben Israel Benveniste (c. 1590 – c. 1668), Physician and rabbi in Constantinople
  • Chaim Benveniste (1603–1673), Brother of Joshua, rabbinical authority at Constantinople and later at Smyrna.
  • Asa Benveniste (1925–1990), American poet
  • Émile Benveniste (1902–1976), French structural linguist
  • Jacques Benveniste (1935–2004), French immunologist
  • Richard Ben-Veniste (born 1943), American lawyer
  • Guy Benveniste (born 1927), French and American educator and planner

Benvenisti

This page or section lists people with the surname Benveniste. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.

References

  1. ↑ Moritz Steinschneider, "Cat. Bodl." No. 7348; Loeb, in "Rev. des Etudes Juives", xxi. 153
  2. ↑ "Encyclopaedia Judaica". accessdate=2012-03-24. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Narbonne - Jewish Encyclopedia". accessdate=2012-02-18. 
  4. ↑ Trigano - The Conventionalism of social Bonds and the Strategies of Jewish Society in the Thirteenth Century; Byrd - The Jesus Gene: A messianic Bloodline, the Jews and Freemasonry; Klein - Jews, Christian society, and royal power in medieval Barcelona accessdate=2012-02-16
  5. ↑ "Encyclopaedia Judaica". accessdate=2012-03-24. 
  6. ↑ "Baer - A History of the Jews in Christian Spain Vol II, p. 57". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  7. ↑ "Baer - A History of the Jews in Christian Spain Vol II". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  8. ↑ "Baer - A History of the Jews in Christian Spain Vol. II, pp. 259-270". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  9. ↑ "Baer - A History of the Jews in Christian Spain Vol II, p. 317". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  10. ↑ "Jewish History Sourcebook: The Expulsion from Spain, 1492 CE". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  11. ↑ "Antwerpen - Jewish Encyclopedia". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  12. ↑ The Long Journey of Dona Gracia. accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  13. ↑ "Mendes - Jewish Encyclopedia". accessdate=2012-02-09. 
  14. ↑ The Hebrew Portuguese Nations In Antwerp And London. accessdate=2012-04-08. 
  15. ↑ Fuks & Fuks-Mansfeld - Hebrew typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585-1815. accessdate=2012-02-23. 
  16. ↑ Rosanes S.A., Histoire des israelites de turquie, Sofia 1934.

Sources

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