ABSTRACT
Then I left Montpellier again. My fellow countrymen accompanied me as far as Castlenau. There we had a drink, and I rode on alone with my lackey through Faumanie, back toward Sommières. On 14 October, I rode through Saint-Mamert-du-Gard etc., taking the main road to the village of La Calmette, where I had the midday meal, and afterwards, by the route repeatedly described above, arrived again in Uzès that night. […] On 17 October, I sent my lackey to Avignon to find out if the noble Lasser von Lassereggs were still there. When I found out that they were, I began to prepare for the journey. On 19 October and the following days to the time of my departure, I collected final payments from my patients and made my good-byes. I also purchased much fruit and other unusual things. Together with my books, notes and clothing, I packed them in
1 Basle UL, MS.A l V.7-8: ff.237v, 238r, 239r, 239v, 241v-266r; Thomas Platter d.J, 285-308 (13 October – 24 December 1598, Avignon). As noted above (Chapter 5), Platter’s account of Avignon’s Jews draws heavily on a 561-page German language publication written by an academic colleague of Felix Platter (Buxtorf, Synagoga Ivdaica, Basle 1603). The bold passages in the present translation indicate equivalent or near-equivalent passages here quoted verbatim, as substitutes for literal modern English translations of Platter’s wording, from the 334-page English edition of this work (Buxtorf, The Jewish Synagogue, London 1663). The sequence of the quoted passages follows Platter, not Buxtorf, and the indicated omissions are not to Platter’s accounts of Jews and actors in Avignon in 1598, of which each included section is here represented in its entirety, but to the 1663 English edition of Buxtorf’s monograph. Titles of the omitted sections of Platter’s account of Avignon’s Jews, which also follow Buxtorf, are here footnoted, the first being ‘On several Jewish laws and practices’.
