The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus. Maud Kozodoy

garments regarded as useful in astrological divination.⁵⁹

      At the very end of this work, Duran again makes reference to the Urim and Tummim, in a similar context:

      And with this, what was intended [in this book] has been completed. It will suffice for the whole time that this exile continues, until the [high] priest stands at the Urim and Tummim, and also [it will be useful] in those days, [because] in that time I think that the fixed [times] for the festivals of the Lord will continue, according to the secret of the above-mentioned intercalation, for its foundation is in the mountains of true investigation, and its reasons were explained, [reasons] that stand as [long as] the days of the sun upon the earth, and they indicate its perpetuity, like the perpetuity of the Torah, and all the more so, according to the opinion of the one who says that it is an inheritance for us from Moses our Teacher, peace be upon him.⁶⁰

      Here Duran evidently associates the Urim and Tummim specifically with the restoration of the Temple service. Strongly evocative of his rationalist suppositions is the suggestion that because the Jewish calendrical rules are based on “true investigation” (presumably, astronomy), which is as enduringly true as the Torah itself, they will remain valid into the messianic age.

      Finally, Duran includes in his introduction to Ḥeshev ha-Efod a direct reference to his pseudonym and its relation to the year of the riots: “And as for me, from the day when the Lord poured out his anger like water upon the exile of Jerusalem which is in Sefarad, this is my name forever, in the efod is its surrogate [temurah]. Therefore have I called it Ḥeshev ha-Efod.”⁶¹ In its biblical context (Lev. 27:10), temurah, “surrogate” or “substitute,” refers specifically to the exchange of one sacrificial animal for another. Duran is signaling that his personal Hebrew acronym, Efod, is also a token of his new identity, not only a way of atoning or offering up a sacrifice for an apparent desertion of the faith but an actual surrogate for the Honoratus de Bonafide he has become in the eyes of society. It is as the Efod that Duran writes his postconversion works; he titles them according to his new identity, The Cincture of the Efod (Ḥeshev ha-Efod) and The Work of the Efod (Ma‘aseh Efod).

      In the poem quoted above, Duran dedicates Ḥeshev ha-Efod to an individual named Moses of the house of Hasdai, a Levi.⁶² It is possible though by no means certain that the Hasdai here refers to Hasdai Crescas. Duran does mention students of his, also “of the sons of Hasdai,” who are again labeled Levites in his introduction to Ma‘aseh Efod (1403), but these are equally difficult to identify.⁶³

      Dedicatees are not necessarily friends, or even acquaintances, but there are in fact a number of individuals whom we can associate with Duran. These are his correspondents, whom we know from the epistles addressed to them. Since they sometimes refer to each other in their letters, they constitute a kind of “circle.”

      For example, Duran wrote a letter concerning an astronomical question to a Shealtiel Gracian.⁶⁴ In that letter, Duran refers to an En Meir Crescas, apparently known to both of them, who had in his hands a discussion of the quadrant about which Shealtiel Gracian had inquired. Another, unnamed student, in a manuscript recording astronomical notes, many of which derive from Duran, includes an excerpt from the technical section of Duran’s letter to Shealtiel. Solomon Bonafed (1370/1380–c. 1445) of Zaragoza, a poet and avid correspondent, circa 1413 addresses a poem to Profayt Duran, and mentions him in a letter to their apparently mutual friend Shealtiel Gracian.⁶⁵ In 1393, Duran composed his eulogy for Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi of Girona and sent it to the rabbi’s son, Joseph; Meir Crescas transcribed a copy of this eulogy into a manuscript of his own. David Bonet Bonjorn, the son of the famous Perpignan astronomer, was the “addressee” of Al tehi ka-avotekha, and the astronomically inclined student mentioned above seems to have been working with a manuscript that had been copied by David Bonjorn’s father, Bonet David Bonjorn (Jacob ben David Po‘el, Perpignan, fl. 1361), as we will see in the following chapter.

      Duran seems also to have been acquainted with the two sons of Benveniste ben Lavi (d. 1411). Introducing Duran’s explication of one of Abraham ibn Ezra’s riddle poems, Meir Crescas mentions the request his master received from “two golden cherubs, youngsters, from among the great ones of the land, and from its noble ones, the great sons of Benveniste.”⁶⁶ One of these sons was the poet Vidal de la Cavalleria (otherwise known as Joseph ben Benveniste ben Lavi, or Vidal Abenlavi, d. between 1445 and 1456), also of Saragossa. He, too, was a friend of Solomon Bonafed,⁶⁷ and is known to have converted to Christianity at some point before May 22, 1414. About Joseph ben Lavi’s brother, little is known beyond his name: “Juan de la Cavalleria, also called Bonafos.”⁶⁸

      Four acquaintances of Duran bore the name of Joseph. First is Joseph ben Lavi (Benveniste). There is, second, a student “Joseph,” who composed an introductory poem to his copy of Duran’s Ḥeshev ha-Efod,⁶⁹ but we have no way of identifying him. Then there is Joseph, son of Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi of Girona. And fourth is the Joseph Zarch/Zarqo found in Italy using Duran’s name as a passport to the good graces of Yeḥiel of Pisa.⁷⁰

      All of these individuals make up what we know for certain of Duran’s circle of students and correspondents, which was probably considerably larger.

      LATER CAREER

      At some point, Duran seems to have left Perpignan to work as a doctor among the wealthy and influential members of Christian society, first as a royal physician in Navarre and later returning to the Crown of Aragon. It is easy to imagine the professional and political connections with influential Aragonese that Duran might have developed after twenty years serving the royal house. His connections would have meant lucrative work as physician to notables in northern Iberia. Between 1404 and 1411 there is no record of Duran’s presence in Perpignan.⁷¹ In 1406 a maestre Honoratus Bonafidey was summoned from Tudela, where he was living, to Pamplona to aid in treating the king of Navarre, and retained at an annual salary of 300 florins. He remained at the Navarrese court until, it seems, the second half of 1408.⁷² These moves should not on the face of it be too surprising. In general, Catalonian Jews were highly mobile and many belonged to extended families with branches in numerous cities and smaller towns.⁷³

      After returning to Perpignan in 1411, probably for business reasons, Duran appears again as a medical professional with connections to centers of power. On April 22, 1412, he was a minor participant in the events of the so-called Compromise of Caspe, a town close to Saragossa and about halfway between Perpignan and the city of Valencia. There, nine representatives, three from each of the Aragonese realms (Catalunya, Valencia, and Aragon proper), were to choose a new king. After a chaotic two-year interregnum, succession to the Crown of Aragon was finally settled, ultimately in favor of the Trastamaran Fernando I.

      At some point during the proceedings, one of the Valencian representatives, Giner Rabasa, was declared incompetent due to advanced age; one of the two physicians testifying to Rabasa’s mental state was magister Honoratus Bonefidei of Perpignan.⁷⁴ The other was magister Jerónimo of Alcanyís (magistrum Geronimum, ville Alcanicii), whom we should identify as the former Jew Joshua ha-Lorqi, mentioned above. Joshua ha-Lorqi was a native of Alcanyís, he was a doctor, and as noted he adopted the name Jerónimo de Santa Fe upon his conversion to Christianity.⁷⁵ It is even thought that ha-Lorqi’s conversion to Christianity took place in 1412 in the town of Alcanyís itself, approximately eighteen miles from Caspe, and under the sponsorship of none other than the preacher and anti-Jewish agitator Vicent Ferrer.⁷⁶ Indeed, Ferrer was the second representative from Valencia, and a partisan of Fernando. At this point in April 1412, ha-Lorqi’s conversion would have been quite recent, and it would have been natural for him to have accompanied Vicent Ferre to Caspe.

      It seems almost too much to contemplate these two famous converts working together on a medical case, consulting each other’s professional opinion and presumably making some sort of conversation while in each other’s company. One of them, whatever his state of mind at that point in 1412, had spent years being internally loyal to Judaism; the other had just completed his voluntary and evidently sincere conversion to Christianity. Did the two conversos