David ben Yom Tov
David ben Yom Tov, also David Bonjorn del Barri, was a Catalan Jewish astronomer and astrologer who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century. He is reported to have been born at Cotlliure in Catalonia in around 1300, and to have died in Barcelona, probably before 1361. In the past some scholars, including the nineteenth century scholar Moritz Steinschneider, have identified ben Yom Tov with the Portuguese Jewish scholar David ben Yom Tov ibn Bilia; this is now considered unlikely. Life Sobrequés estimates that David ben Yom Tov was born at Cotlliure in about 1300. He was also called David Bonjorn, Bonjorn being a literal Catalan translation of the Hebrew Yom Tov, i.e. "good day". His father was Bonjorn del Barri, a wealthy merchant of the province of Roussillon just north of the Pyrenees, which at that time was part of the Catalan Kingdom of Majorca. In 1323 del Barri is recorded as having been granted permission by King Sancho of Majorca to join the council of the Jewish community of Perpignan; and to travel and trade freely throughout the country, without having to wear a yellow badge or any other symbol to mark him out as a Jew. However by 1327 del Barri was dead, and David Bonjorn appears successfully petitioning James II of Aragon to relax various provisions of his father's will, including requirements on him to move from Cotlliure and reside in Perpignan for two years; to lend no money to the new king of Majorca or his courtiers until the king's twentieth birthday; nor to provide guarantees for anyone, apart from his own sisters; nor to take a lease on any royal incomes. Bonjorn appears to have been the only male heir; but his sisters mentioned in the document include one called Venges, who went on to become the wife of the celebrated Jewish author Joseph Caspi. Ben Yom Tov himself had first married a Jewish woman from the town of Arles, in Provence. The marriage was dissolved without being consummated, because the wife was declared mad. In 1332 Alfonso IV of Aragon granted permission for a new marriage to Esther, the daughter of Astruc Caravita, a wealthy merchant of Girona. The marriage was turbulent however, and by 1337 Esther was demanding divorce, and the return of her dowry to her family. David refused to consider it, until Esther had all his books and instruments removed from his study and hidden. "So dear were they to my eyes, that she could hardly have forced me and obligated me with any other kind of coercion better than my interest, desire and longing for them," David complained. He duly presented the required statement of renunciation before the Jewish Beth Din at Perpignan; but then sought to cancel various clauses of the court's decision, presumably those relating to the dowry. David called in legal experts from the king of Majorca to try to sway the court; in response the authorities of Esther's home town, Girona, weighed in