MANOSQUE

MANOSQUE, town in the department of Basses-Alpes, S.E. France. Jews are mentioned in Manosque from 1240. In 1261 the community was already sufficiently numerous to maintain two butcher's stores. Before the black death in 1348, there were about 30 Jewish families in Manosque. The Jews owned at least one synagogue and cemetery. They lived in their own street, the Carriera Judaica, on the site of the present Rue Bon-Repos. When an epidemic broke out in 1364, the services of a Jewish physician were still called for. However, from 1370 on there were frequent anti-Jewish disturbances, the most violent in 1455 and 1495. In 1498 the town expelled its Jews. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gross, Gal Jud, 361f.; E. Baratier, Démographie provençale… (1961), 70; C. Arnaud, Histoire d'une famille provençale (1888), 450f.; D. Arnaud, Etudes historiques sur… Manosque, 1 (1847), 51ff. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)