Yehuda Cresques

Statue of Jehuda Cresques in Plaça del Temple in Palma

Jehuda Cresques (* around 1350 in Mallorca ; † around 1427 in Sagres ), also Jafuda or Judah Cresques or Jaume Riba , Jacomé Ribas (Latin: Jacobus Ribus), was a Jewish cartographer of the Catalan school. He is considered a teacher and mediator between the Catalan cartographers and the emerging Portuguese school of cartography in Sagres under Heinrich the Navigator .

Part of the Catalan World Atlas

Jehuda Cresques was born as the son of another well-known cartographer of the Catalan school, Abraham Cresques (around 1325-1387). Under the direction of his father, Jehuda Cresques was involved in the development of the famous Catalan Atlas , completed in 1375 (today in the French National Library ). The specialty of the “Catalan Atlas” was that in addition to the results of the Catalan “ portulani ” (detailed nautical maps mostly of the lake areas of the Mediterranean Sea), the findings of Marco Polo's trips were processed for the first time .

In the following years, Jehuda Cresques worked as a well-paid cartographer and produced various maps and the like. a. for the kings of Aragon and France . He became known beyond Mallorca as "lo Juen buscoler" (the card Jew) or "el Judio de la brujelas" (the compass Jew).

In 1391 a Dominican , Vicente Ferrer , called in public sermons in the Kingdom of Aragon that all Jews should be baptized. In the Balearic Islands alone, around 300 Jews were killed in violent clashes. Jehuda Cresques converted and took the Christian name Jaume Riba or Jacomé Ribas.

In 1419 Heinrich the Navigator founded his royal observatory in Sagres and called Jehuda Cresques to Sagres in the early 1920s, who answered this call. The majority of researchers agree that under the name Mestre Jaime (Jacomé) de Maiorca he became the father of the Sagres cartography school. Due to the treatment of the maritime knowledge of the Portuguese as a state secret, none of the maps drawn by Jehuda Cresques in Sagres have survived.

See also

• History of the Jews in Spain
• Juderia
• Xueta

swell

• Jewish Encyclopedia
• Jehuda Cresques - Biography

Web links

Commons : Catalan World Atlas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jehuda Cresques in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography Jehuda Cresques (Portuguese)
• The Catalan Atlas, 14th century. (BNF, ESP 30) - further images from the Catalan World Atlas (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris)
• The Cresques Project