PEREZ BAYER, FRANCISCO°

PEREZ BAYER, FRANCISCO° (1711–1794), Spanish ecclesiastic and Orientalist; professor of Hebrew successively in Valencia and Salamanca. Francisco Perez Bayer was the most distinguished Spanish Hebraist of his day. He was the first person to study accurately the important historical inscriptions in the El Transito synagogue of Toledo (De Toletano Hebraeorum Templo, 1752 Ms.). His works on ancient Hebrew coinage (De Numis hebraeo-samaritanis, 1781), though later corrected in many details, laid the basis for the serious study of Jewish numismatics. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L.J. Gascía, Pérez Bayer y Salamanca (1918); F. Mateu y Llopis, in: Sefarad, 11 (1951), 37ff. (Cecil Roth)