CASTELLACCIO DA ASOLA – Locality near Mantua, Italy, where there was a great slaughter of Jews in 1547. Gershon Cantarini, the ancestor of the celebrated family of that name, was born there in 1546.Bibliography: Osimo Marco, Narrazione della Strage...
CASTELLAZZO – Italian-Jewish family which settled at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Cairo, where several members occupied the rabbinate with distinction. The most important were the following:1. Jehiel Castellazzo (called Ashkenazi...
CASTELLI, DAVID – Italian scholar; born at Leghorn, Tuscany, Dec. 30, 1836; died 1901. He was educated at the rabbinical college of Leghorn, and from 1857 to 1863 was teacher of Hebrew and Italian in the Jewish schools of that city; then he...
CASTELLO (CASTILHO), ABRAHAM ISAAC – Rabbi, preacher, and poet; born at Ancona 1726; died at Leghorn Aug. 1, 1789. At the age of thirteen he arrived, poor and destitute, in Leghorn, where, although he had previously intended to become a mechanic, his agreeable...
CASTELLO (CASTELO), JACOB (ANTONIO) – Poet at Amsterdam; died after 1684. He was a member of several academies of poetry in his native city, and was noted for his riddles. He is the author of verses on the "Coro de las Musas" of Miguel de Barrios, and the "Rumbos...
CASTELLO (CASTILHO), JOSEPH – Physician; born at Leghorn about 1746; son of Abraham Isaac. After studying medicine at Pisa, he returned to his native city, where he soon acquired a reputation as a physician. A medical work written by Castello and dedicated...
CASTELLON DE LA PLANA – City of Valencia. In 1320 the Jews of Castellon obtained permission to lay out a cemetery; and in 1432 to build a new synagogue. In 1391, in contradistinction to most of the other cities of Spain, at Castellon the magistrates...
CASTELNUOVO, SAMUEL DI – Secretary of the Jewish community of Rome; lived at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth. He edited and probably translated into Italian: (1) Judah ha-Levi's piyyuṭ, "Mi kamoka," Venice, 1609,...
CASTLES – See Defense.
CASTRO, ADOLF DE – Spanish historian; member of the Academia de la Historia of Madrid; lived in Cadiz; died there Oct., 1898. He wrote the first short history of the Jews in Spain, based on care ful studies; and this was so impartial and...
CASTRO, DE, FAMILY – The various branches of this family are all of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Soon after the establishment of the Inquisition, members of the family emigrated to Bordeaux, Bayonne, Hamburg, and other cities in the Netherlands,...
CASTRO SARMENTO, JACOB (HENRIQUEZ) DE – Physician, naturalist, and poet; born about 1691 in Bragança, Portugal; died at London in 1761. At the age of seventeen he entered the University of Evora, to study philosophy, and later studied medicine at Coimbra, receiving...
CASTRO TARTAS, DAVID B. ABRAHAM – Printer in Amsterdam from 1663 to 1695, and publisher of a number of rabbinical writings, including prayer-books and ritualistic works, in Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese. His brother, Jacob de Castro Tartas, participated in the...
CASTRO TARTAS, ISAAC DE – Marano and martyr; born at Tartas, Gascony, about 1623; died at Lisbon Dec. 15 (22), 1647. He was a brother ofDavid Castro Tartas, and a relative of the physician Elijah Montalto, and was himself trained in philosophy and in the...
CASTROJERIZ – Town in southern Castile, 18 miles west of Burgos. Jews lived there as early as the period of the Moorish rule. In the charter ("fuero") granted to the town in 974 by Garci Fernandez, count of Castile, it is ordered that the...
CASUISTRY – See Legalism.
CAT – There is no reference to the cat in the Old Testament, the domestication of that animal being later than the Bible, except in Egypt, where it was reverenced as a divine being, and probably thus became tame. Victor Hehn...
CATACOMBS – Underground galleries with excavations in their sides for tombs or in which human bones are stacked. The term is derived from "catacomba," a compound of the Greek κατά and the Latin "comba" ("cumba"), and means "near the...
CATALAN, ABRAHAM – Well-known Talmudist of the seventeenth century. He and his son, Abraham Catalan, and his brother, Elijah Catalan, were contemporaneous with R. Ḥayyim Shabbethai in Salonica.Bibliography: Conforte, Ḳore ha-Dorot, p. 45a.G. M....
CATALAN (CATALANO), ABRAHAM – Physician in Padua; died 1642. He is the author of "'Olam Hafuk," an unpublished manuscript treatise on the plague of 1630-31, during which time he was very active.Bibliography: M. Osimo, Narrazione . . . Cenni Biografici della...
CATALAN, ABRAHAM SOLOMON BEN ISAAC BEN SAMUEL – born in Catalonia; died 1492; author of a work treating of the eternity of the world, Providence, prophecy, immortality, and the resurrection, and also dealing with mathematical, physical, and cabalistic subjects. It appeared...
CATALAN, GERSON B. SOLOMON – Author; lived at Arles in the middle of the thirteenth century; died (possibly) at Perpignan toward the end of the thirteenth century. According to Abraham Zacuto and others, he was the father of Levi b. Gerson (Gersonides). He...
CATALAN, MOSES ḤAYYIM – Italian poet; born in Padua; son of the physician Abraham Catalan. He was rabbi in his native town, and died there at an advanced age in 1661. It was to him that the first letters of Isaac Vita Cantarini, whose teacher he was,...
CATALAN, SOLOMON – Probably a grandson of Gerson b. Solomon Catalan. He was rabbi in the city of Coimbra in 1360.Bibliography: Kayserling, Gesch. der Juden in Portugal, p. 24.G. M. K.
CATALOGUES OF HEBREW BOOKS – These were of frequent use among the Jews in the Middle Ages. Judah ibn Tibbon (about 1200) speaks in loving terms of his collection of books and of its catalogue, both of which he recommends tohis son Samuel. Specimens of old...