The Jewish Communities in the Social Fabric of Latin Greece 261
is lacking for the following century. In 1399 or somewhat earlier a Jewess sold
two contiguous houses situated along the city’s main street before moving to
Corfu.22 A scribe worked for a wealthy Spanish immigrant in 1410.23 Another
Jew appears as witness in 1424.24 In his description of the Byzantine siege of
1429 Georgios Phrantzes reports the existence of an Ebraike or Jewish quarter
outside the wall protecting the city and adjacent to a gate called the “Jewish
g a t e ”.25 The will of Bartolomeo Zane de Visdanelis, drafted in Patras in 1430,
provided for the reimbursement of two commercial loans granted by Jews.
One of the creditors was to obtain 1000 pounds of iron to be brought from
Lepanto, as well as a sum of money, while the other was entitled to a sum cor-
responding to the debt recorded in the testator’s account book.26 Some Jews
of Patras leased rural land. One of them held a plot turned into a garden in the
city’s vicinity before 1436.27 In 1440 another Jew held rural property at Longos,
some 25 kilometres east of Patras.28 Brisk economic activity in Patras suggests
the presence of Jews in the city throughout the Frankish and Venetian peri-
ods. The last testimonies point to the continuity of Jewish settlement after the
Byzantine conquest of the city in 1429.29
Jews resided in two other cities of the Frankish Principality of the Morea, in
which they settled only in the 13th century. Andravida became the main resi-
dence of the Frankish rulers after the conquest and, as result, attracted Latin
knights and commoners and developed into a sizeable consumption center.30
It had a structured Jewish community, headed by three leaders, one of them
22 Ernst Gerland, ed., Neue Quellen zur Geschichte des lateinischen Erzbistums Patras
(Leipzig, 1903), pp. 191–93, and for the location of the street, pp. 113–14.
23 Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium, pp. 86 and 296–97, no. 109.
24 Gerland, Neue Quellen, pp. 201–04.
25 Giorgio Sfranze, Cronaca, ed., Riccardo Maisano, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae
29 (Rome, 1990), p. 44, chap. xvii, 7–8.
26 Gerland, Neue Quellen, pp. 213 and 215, no. 17.
27 Gerland, Neue Quellen, pp. 218–20, no. 19; translation in Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium,
pp. 309–10, no. 130.
28 Gerland, Neue Quellen, pp. 224–27, esp. 225; see also pp. 120–23.
29 On the economy of Patras in these periods: Gerland, Neue Quellen, pp. 89–92, 149–71; see
also Hélène Sarandi-Mendelovici, “À propos de la ville de Patras aux 13e–15e siècles,” Revue
des Études Byzantines 38 (1980), 219–32.
30 David Jacoby, “Italian Migration and Settlement in Latin Greece: the Impact on the
Economy,” in Die Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft. Einwanderer und
Minderheiten im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Munich, 1997), p. 105, repr. in
David Jacoby, Byzantium, Latin Romania and the Mediterranean (Aldershot, 2001), ix.