The Doctor and the Notary: A Latinate Jewish Will from Fourteenth-Century Catalonia

On 28 June 1346, a Jewish physician named Duran de Sant Ponç made his will with the assistance of Christian notary Pere Mateu. Very few medieval Catalan Jews chose to make Latin wills, but the accidents of survival have made such wills disproportionately important sources. The reasons these few medieval Jewish testators chose to make their wills with Christian notaries remain very imperfectly understood. In this article, I offer Duran’s will as a case study, arguing that its purpose was to disinherit a convert to Christianity. This was a questionably legal move that had a greater chance of success with Christian cooperation and within a Latin notarial framework. The logic of Duran’s choices in the moment of his willmaking reveal the complex layering of trust and mistrust inherent in the “convivencia” of medieval Catalonia.