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Angoulême, France

ANGOULÊME, capital of the department of Charente, western France. It seems from a missive addressed by Pope Gregory IX in 1236 to the bishop of Angoulême and other prelates that the crusaders had committed excesses against the Jews there. In about 1240 Nathan b. Joseph *Official engaged in a controversy with the bishop of Angoulême. The Jewish cemetery was situated between the city wall and the abbey, and the synagogue near the present Place Marengo. The "Rue des Juifs" (now Rue Raymond-Audour) began at Rue des Trois-Notre-Dame and ended at the Place du Palet. A second "Rue des Juifs" in Faubourg l'Houmeau is mentioned for the first time in 1811. The community seal represents a crescent moon and a six-pointed star with the encircling inscription S[igillum] Iudaeorum.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Gross, Gal Jud, 62–63; A.F. Lièvre, Angoulême (Fr., 1885), 132–3; Blumenkranz, in: Archives Juives, 2, no. 4 (1966), 2; S. Grayzel, Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (1933), 226–9.

[Bernhard Blumenkranz]


Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.