Jehuda Cresques - Biography

Jehuda Cresques (1360-1410), also known as Jafudà Cresques, Jaume Riba, and Cresques lo Juheu ("Cresques the Jew") was a Catalan cartographer, and was once believed to be the man who coordinated the discoveries of the Portuguese naval school at Sagres in the early 15th century.

Son of Abraham Cresques, a famous Jewish cartographer, he was born in Majorca in present-day Spain. Together he and his father were the probable authors of the famous Catalan Atlas of 1375.

Cresques' work was highly sought after; in 1390 John I of Aragon paid the princely sum of 60 livres and 8 sous for one of his maps. After the Aragonese persecutions of 1391 he converted to Christianity, at which time he took the name Jaume Riba (Jacobus Ribus, in Latin). he appears to have remained in Majorca for a considerable time and to have become known to the people there as "lo Juen buscoler" (the map Jew), or "el jueu de les bruixoles" (the compass Jew).

It has long been believed that Jehuda Cresques is the same person as 'Mestre Jacome', a Majorcan cartographer induced by the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator to move to Portugal in the 1420s to train Portuguese map-makers in Majorcan-style cartography. 'Jacome of Majorca' is even sometimes described as the head of Henry's legendary observatory and "school" at Sagres. The identification of "Mestre Jacome" with Jehuda Cresques" is principally due to the Catalan historian Gonzalo de Reparaz (1930). However, more recent researches argue that Jehuda Cresques already dead by 1410, and "Mestre Jacome" must have been someone else (identity still indeterminate; Majorca had many skilled Jewish cartographers.)

Bibliography

• Quadrado, in Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, xix.299, 309;
• Hamy, in Bulletin de Géographie, 1891, pp. 218-222;
• Meyer Kayserling, Christopher Columbus, pp. 5-8;
• Jacobs, Story of Geographical Discovery, pp. 60-62.
• Reparaz, Gonzalo de (1930) Mestre Jácome de Mallorca: Cartógrafo do Infante Coimbra (offprint from Biblias journal of the Faculty of Letters of Coimbra).
• Rey Pastor and García Camarero, La Cartografía Mallorquina, 1960, pp. 56-61.
• Riera i Sans, Jaume, "Jafudà Cresques, jueu de Mallorca", in Randa n. 5 (1977) 51-66. (English translation online)
• Riera i Sans, Jaume - Gabriel Llompart, "Jafudà Cresques i Samuel Corcós. Més documents sobre els jueus pintors de cartes de navegar (Mallorca, s. XIV)", in Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana n. 40 (1984) 341-350. (English translation online)
• www.cresquesproject.net --Translation in English of the works of Riera i Sans and Gabriel Llompart on the Jewish Majorcan mapmakers of the Late Middle Ages