The beginning - Narbonne, Aragon and Barcelona , including
Septimania The first appearance of the name Benveniste was in the 11th century in southern France (present-day
Septimania and
Provence). Earlier, in the 8th century, the region was shaped by
Charlemagne from the
Frankish Kingdom of the
Carolingian. The big Narbonne Jewish center was established, according to Jewish and Christian sources by prominent Jews from
Bagdad at the request of the
Carolingian kings. The
Babylonian names of
Makhir,
Hasdai,
Sheshet and
Shealtiel are the names of chief rabbis and leaders - Nasi (considered by the Jewish tradition as descendants of King David) of the Jewish center. The numerically literate
Sephardim assisted the Crowns of the
Kingdom of Aragon and the
County of Barcelona as tax collectors and advisers. In 1150 Aragon and Barcelona were united by the marriage of their rulers. The Sephardic Jewish families appear together with the name Benveniste in official and Jewish documents of Narbonne, Barcelona and Aragon from the 11th-13th century AD with the title Nasi added to their names. They appear in the travel books of
Benjamin of Tudela from the 12th century. •
Isaac ben Josef iben Benveniste Nasi, also called as Iben Barun (), was a Hebrew grammarian, lexicographer and poet. He lived in
Zaragoza (during the Islamic era) and Málaga and associated with the poets
Moses ibn Ezra and
Judah Halevi. ,
County of Barcelona and the
Kingdom of Castile (Castilla) in 1037 • Isaac Benveniste Nasi was the physician of the king of Aragon that came to Spain from
Narbonne, France, in the 12th century. The father of Sheshet Benveniste Nasi. •
Sheshet Benveniste Nasi (-1209) was a physician, writer, political advisor and diplomate to the kings of Aragon. He came to Spain from Narbonne, France, with his father in the 12th century. Sheshet received his education at Narbonne, his probable birthplace, afterward he lived at Barcelona, and later at Zaragoza, 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) was the 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. 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 (1412). • Abraham Benveniste (Bienveniste) (died in ) 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
Joseph 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. • Vidal Benveniste (de la Cavalleria) was the grandson of Abraham Benveniste was a prominent and a wealthy man in Spain in the second half of the 15th century. Together with his brother Abraham 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. •
Solomon ha-Levi (de la Cavalleria Benveniste), cousin of Abraham Benveniste, was the most wealthy and influential Jew of
Burgos, an erudite scholar of
Talmudic and rabbinical literature, and a
rabbi of the Jewish community. His father, Isaac ha-Levi was bailiff of
Alfonso IX and had come from
Aragon to Burgos in the middle of the fourteenth century where he married Maria Benveniste, sister of Abraham Benveniste's father. He converted in the aftermath of the great massacres of Jews which began on 6 June 1391 and changed his name to Paul of Santa Maria. His intelligence and scholarship, as well as his gift of oratory, won the praise of
Isaac ben Sheshet and also gained for him the confidence of King
Henry III of Castile, who in 1406 appointed him keeper of the royal seal. In 1416 King Henry named him
Lord Chancellor. After the King's death Archbishop Paul was a member of the council which ruled
Castile in the name of the regent
Doña Catalina, and by the will of the deceased king he was tutor to the heir to the throne, the later
John II of Castile. His family and descendants used the last name
de Cartagena and became the most powerful and "prolific converso family in Spanish history".
Sephardim in Portugal • Francisco Mendes (Tzemah Benveniste in Hebrew) was one of the wealthiest traders and bankers in Europe in the first half of the 16th century. He was the great-grandson of Abraham Benveniste. His family was forcibly converted Sephardic 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 founded and directed the
Mendes Bank, along with his brothers Diogo Mendes (Meir Benveniste) and Goncalo Mendes, from
Lisbon and later from
Antwerp, 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 Antwerp 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. They financed the kings and queens of
Portugal,
Spain,
England,
Flanders and the
popes in
Rome through the Mendes Bank, which became one of largest banks in the world of the 16th century along with the Fugger and Welser family. •
Gracia Mendes Nasi - Benveniste - Beatriz de Luna - (1510–1569) (Doña Gracia) was a
Sephardic-Jewish-Portuguese businesswoman. She was the daughter of Philipa Mendes|Benveniste and Alvaro de Luna. She was married to her uncle Francisco Mendes (Tzemah Benveniste), inherited the Mendes|Benveniste fortune and due to her exceptional business acumen, became one of the wealthiest women in Europe of the middle 16th century. She returned to Judaism in
Ferrara in the 1552 together with members of the Henriques-Nunes-Benveniste family (Meir, Abraham and Reyna Benveniste). In 1553/4 she left Ferrara together with her daughter Ana (Reyna) and (soon to be) son-in-law
Don Joseph Nasi and the Henriques-Nunes-Benveniste family to Salonika and 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. • Don
Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos - diplomat, statesman and financier, nephew of
Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, and an influential figure in the
Ottoman Empire during the rules of both
Sultan Suleiman I and his son
Selim II. He was a great benefactor of the Jewish people. A
court Jew, he was appointed the lord of Tiberias, with the expressed aim of resettling Jews in
Ottoman Syria and was appointed to the
Duchy of the Archipelago from 1566 to 1579, a title usually only bestowed upon Muslims. In around 1563,
Joseph Nasi secured permission from Sultan
Selim II to acquire Tiberias and seven surrounding villages to create a Jewish city-state and encourage industry there. He hoped that large numbers of Jewish refugees would settle there, free from fear and oppression; indeed, the persecuted Jews of Cori, Italy, numbering about 200 souls, decided to emigrate to Tiberias. Nevertheless, a number of factors during the following years contributed to the plan's ultimate failure. This project of
Gracia Mendes Nasi and Joseph Nasi was the only practical attempt to establish some sort of Jewish city-state between the 7th and 19th centuries.
Greece, Italy and Turkey •
Joshua ben Israel Benveniste ( – ), physician and rabbi in Constantinople •
Chaim Benveniste (1603–1673), brother of Joshua, rabbinical authority at Constantinople and later at Smyrna
Other countries •
Immanuel Benveniste (1608–1664), printer from Amsterdam •
Émile Benveniste (1902–1976), French structural linguist •
Jacques Benveniste (1935–2004), French immunologist •
Asa Benveniste (1925–1990), American poet •
Richard Ben-Veniste (born 1943), American lawyer •
Guy Benveniste (1927–2022), French and American educator and planner •
David Benvenisti, (1897–1993), from Salonica and Jerusalem, Israeli educator and geographer, Israel Prize recipient, father of Meron and Refael and grandfather of Eyal •
Meron Benvenisti (1934–2020), Israeli historian and journalist •
Refael (Rafi) Benvenisti (born 1937), Israeli economist, brother of Meron. •
Eyal Benvenisti (born 1959), Israeli law professor, son of Meron •
Baruch Epstein (1860–1941), Lithuanian Rabbi, original family name was Benveniste == See also ==