Beschreibung:

SANCHO IV OF CASTILE (1258-1295). Autograph document, decorated privilegio rodado on vellum, 18 May 1293. In Spanish, 530 x 490 mm, small neat semi-gothic hand in brown ink on vellum, blue and red central wheeled signed manual of Sancho IV of Castile, small ornamental monogram at top, the name of Sancho twice in large white capitals in colored panels, and 5 columns of names of witnesses bracketed in red and green, pendant seal attached with cord (a little creasing and wear, some holes in folds and elsewhere, somewhat contracted from damp especially at edges, pendant and cord aged); mounted and framed (not examined out of frame). Provenance : The Helmut N. Friedlaender Collection. An unrecorded royal document concerning the poll tax exacted on Jews in Spain . Following the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Archbishop of Toledo required citywide that every Jew over the age of 20 pay an annual tax, subject to judgment by a joint Jewish and Christian tribunal for any disputes over age. The tax had previously been paid on the Feast of St. John to two brothers, recently deceased without heirs; by the present document, Sancho IV re-assigns it to be paid to Archbishop Gonzalo Garcia Gudiel. Archbishop Gonzalo had been appointed Bishop of Cuenca 1272, Bishop of Burgos 1275, and Archbishop of Toledo in 1280. He would be appointed cardinal in 1298 and die in Rome the following year. The present document appears to be unrecorded, not listed in Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros's three volumes Historia del reinado de Sancho IV de Castilla (1922-1928) nor in F. Baer, Die Juden im Christlichen Spanien, I, Urkunden und Regesten (1936), which prints a number of similar decrees. Royal Spanish documents of any kind are extremely rare outside the national archives of Spain.