Jewish Seal Stamp

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 1166. Estimate $3000.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $2600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SPAIN, Castile & León. Eleazar bar Shlomo. 13th century. Æ Seal Stamp (13.30 g). : zwrwn \ (˜d)[ (wjw)n hmwlv : rb : rz[la k (eight-rayed star), lion passant left above triple-towered façade / Blank with attached suspension loop. Cf. Friedenberg 54. Superb EF, black-green patina with lighter green overtones.

Residing in Spain since at least as early as the Roman period, Jews formed no small and relatively somewhat-tolerated community in the Iberian Peninsula well into the time of the Visigothic kings. Known as Sephardim, or “Jews of the Spanish Rite,” they resided in most of the Spanish provinces, including Castile and León, and had particularly large comunities in many of the larger Spanish cities.

Following the conversion of the Recared and his family from Arianism to Catholicism in 587, the Visigothic kings adopted an aggressive policy concerning the Jews in Spain. The Sephardim experienced numerous difficulties, including expulsion, forced conversion, enslavement, and execution. They had become so embittered and alienated by Visogothic rule that, when the Muslims invaded in 711, the Sephardim welcomed them as liberators. The Muslims reciprocated by leaving many of the towns they conquered under the control of local Sephardim. For the next two centuries, this sympathetic relationship between Muslim and Jew resulted in the so-called “Golden Age” of Sephardic Jewry.

Following the defeat of the Muslim advance at the Battle of Tours in 732, Spanish Christian princes strove to wrest the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim control. Over the next several centuries, until the capture of the final Muslim stronghold of Granada in 1492, they slowly reconquered Muslim-held territories. Known as the Reconquista, sections of the Iberian Peninsula returned to Christian control and the Muslims and Sephardic Jews living in those areas were either forceably converted, expelled, or killed outright.

Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, the Sephardim enjoyed a period of toleration. Though he in tially continued the restrictive police s of his father, Alfonso VII soon relented and, for the better part of the next century, the rights of Sephardic Jews were not only increased, by many of the community’s more important members received prominent positions in the government.Moreover, many local Sephardic merchants and professionals like Eleazar bar Shlomo benefitted from this brief new economic and social milieu. Bye the end of the century, new restrictions were being reimposed and in the succeeding century, persecutions and stronger restrictions were implemented, paving the way for the forced conversions and expulsions of the time of Fernando and Isabel.