Nadene Goldfoot
It was in about 1979 that Professor Arthur J. Zuckerman did some research into medieval documents written in French, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and then wrote a book about these findings, published by Columbia University Press. With much advertizing, the book was forgotten about and became just another book written by an academic, not an exciting sexy novel. It was just a story of the kingdom of Septimania, a kingdom of retired Roman soldiers that was full of Jews.
The story actually was started by "Makhir ben Yehudah Zakkai of Narbonne (725-765 c.e.) who was a Babylonian-Jewish scholar and later, the supposed leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne in a region which at that time was called Septimania at the end of the eighth century. His descendants, according to certain scholars, were for many generations the nasi or leaders of that important community. Nasi means "Prince" in Hebrew. It's a Talmudic term for the president of the Sanhedrin, and who was also the spiritual head and later, the political representative of the Jewish people.
From the 2nd century on, the Nasi was always a descendant of Hillel, and was recognized by the Roman authorities as the Patriarch of the Jews. Later, the title was also used in some centers like Spain, to designate the lay leader of the Jewish community, and so it became his surname.
Narbonne is a southern French town. Many Jews lived there from at least the 5th century, but were expelled in the 7th by the Visigoth king, Wamba. Later on in the Middle Ages, the community was headed by a "Jewish King" by virtue of privileges said to have been granted in the 8th century by Charlemagne himself! It remained prominent until the expulsion from France in 1306.
Narbonne was the seat of a noted academy and many leading scholars lived there. All this is known history in our Jewish encyclopedia.
Here is what our scholar, Professor Arthur J. Zuckerman had discovered. Not all of it has been accepted by other scholars.
The king of the Franks was Pepin III (714-768 ) who needed to drive the Moors out of Southern France and Spain, but couldn't get past the walls of Narbonne after 7 years of trying with a siege. He had no navy and this was a seaport town, so the Moors couldn't be starved out. He offered the Jews of the city 50,000 marks with they would open the gates of the city for a few minutes so they could storm in, but they refused, with good reason. Failure in this act would mean the Moors would massacre the Jews. So Pippin made a 2nd offer of giving the Jews the land of Septimania as an independent Jewish kingdom with its own king and army-all Jewish, just for opening the gates.
It worked.
In creating Septimania, Pepin put a condition on the deal that the Jewish king had to be a descendant of King David of Israel. That was fine with the Jews of Narbonne, but none of the males had this lineage. They decided to send to Babylonia for a man to be their king who was a descendant and it was Natronai ben Zabinai, with a Persian name. He was a renowned scholar, elected Exilarch when in his 20's, already a king in exile, so to speak. He spoke 8 languages fluently, and had an eidetic memory so great that he had memorized the whole Babylonian Talmud. He was so amazing that the Nabonne community of Jews thought he was the Messiah and called him that.
Why? It had been 700 years since the Temple in Jerusalem had fallen to the Romans, and prophecies said that the Messiah would arrive to establish G-d's kingdom on earth.
Our Messiah, Natronai, had many other pressing thoughts on hand to deal with besides the claim of Messiah, however. As soon as he had arrived he was swamped with other demands, laws, levying taxes, establishing courts, raising an army, all the things needed to govern.
He was hit with a message from King Charles, the son of Pepin III. Natronai, who cast his Persian name aside and took the Hebrew name of Machir, had to give oaths of allegiance to this King of the Franks. King Charles also made an other request of him. He was to marry Charles's Aunt Alda. This was a command, of course.
King Charles, son of Pepin III, had his father's wishes up his own sleeve. All this planning was for a reason. Pepin had usurped the throne of the Franks from the MEROVINGIANS. There was no royal blood in their veins. Pepin had just used the title and no one had checked up on his pedigree! Charles needed to establish a legitimacy of their dynasty. This marriage of Alda to Machir, the direct descendant of King David, gave them royal blood for their descendants, they felt.
There's always a catch to the best of plans and this one was the fact that Aunt Alda was Catholic and Machir was Jewish. Priests and rabbis would not perform such a mixed marriage. They did it anyway somehow and managed to have a legitimate son making Jewish blood intermingle with the Carolingian kings of France. Now this is speulative. We have no idea how they managed to pull this off, if in fact they did. "Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, born before their canonical marriage."
At any rate, this closeness caused King Charles to ask Machir to work with him in his great campaign to drive the Moors from northern Spain. It could be that Charlemagne had a Jewish uncle and the Jewish kings of Septimania were related by blood to the Carolingian kings of France. Those of us into DNA studies know that they shared very tiny segments of DNA, if at all.
By 793, Machir fell in battle, with his men carrying his Lion of Judah banner from victory to victory.
According to Jewish history, Natronai was the Gaon of Pumbedita ( a Babylonian city on the Euphrates, seat of a famous academy founded by Judah ben Ezekiel in the middle of the 3rd century) in the early part of the 8th century, known as Rav Yenuka. He was most severe with the scholars of the academy, many of whom left for Sura, Persia. The Gaon of Sura was known from 853-6. He wrote many responsa, the top one being an arrangement of the daily 100 blessings prepared at the request of the community of Lucena, Spain. These and others of his served as the 1st complete Order of Prayer prepared later by Amram Gaon. He took a strong stand against the Karaites and their liturgy. His responsa include notes of tractates of the Talmud.
A Gaon is an intellectual leader, often with considerable temporal power, of the Babylonian Jewish community from the 6th to 11th centuries. They headed the 2 leading academies, SURA and PUMBEDITA, and their influence extended for the greater part of this period over all Jews.
Charlemagne or Charles the Great(2 April 742 – 28 January 814), numbered Charles I, was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor of the Romans from 800. During the Early Middle Ages, he united the majority of western and central Europe. He was the first recognised emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded is called the Carolingian Empire. He was later canonized by Antipope Paschal III.
Who were the Franks? "The Franks were a group of Germanic peoples, whose name was first mentioned in 3rd century Roman sources, associated with tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, on the edge of the Roman Empire. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They then imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples, and still later Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire.
Resource: THE JEWISH KINGDOM OF SEPTIMANIA NATRONAI BEN ZABINAI,MACHIR THEODORIC; MAY 14, 2015; MARCH 9, 2016 ISRAEL,RELIGION, THE TRUTH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhir_of_Narbonne
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrada_of_Laon
http://www.midi-france.info/1011_moors.htm
 |
| Septimania encompassed this area, the region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that was under the control of the Visigoths in 462. It was roughly the same region of Languedoc-Roussillon. Languedoc was a former southern French province where Jews lived from the early centuries CE. They were later persecuted by the Visigoths in the 6th and 7th centuries, but protected by the nobles and later joined the Christians in the fight against Arab invasion. These Jews were farmers, but also engaged in tax gatherers, bailiffs, etc. Toulouse, Narbonne, Lunel, Beziers, Posquieres, Nimes and Montpelier were center of Talmudic study. The land went to the Emirate of Cordoba in the 8th century then was conquered by the Franks, who called it Gothia or the Gothic March at the end of the 9th century. |
It was in about 1979 that Professor Arthur J. Zuckerman did some research into medieval documents written in French, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and then wrote a book about these findings, published by Columbia University Press. With much advertizing, the book was forgotten about and became just another book written by an academic, not an exciting sexy novel. It was just a story of the kingdom of Septimania, a kingdom of retired Roman soldiers that was full of Jews.
The story actually was started by "Makhir ben Yehudah Zakkai of Narbonne (725-765 c.e.) who was a Babylonian-Jewish scholar and later, the supposed leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne in a region which at that time was called Septimania at the end of the eighth century. His descendants, according to certain scholars, were for many generations the nasi or leaders of that important community. Nasi means "Prince" in Hebrew. It's a Talmudic term for the president of the Sanhedrin, and who was also the spiritual head and later, the political representative of the Jewish people.
From the 2nd century on, the Nasi was always a descendant of Hillel, and was recognized by the Roman authorities as the Patriarch of the Jews. Later, the title was also used in some centers like Spain, to designate the lay leader of the Jewish community, and so it became his surname.
Narbonne is a southern French town. Many Jews lived there from at least the 5th century, but were expelled in the 7th by the Visigoth king, Wamba. Later on in the Middle Ages, the community was headed by a "Jewish King" by virtue of privileges said to have been granted in the 8th century by Charlemagne himself! It remained prominent until the expulsion from France in 1306.
Narbonne was the seat of a noted academy and many leading scholars lived there. All this is known history in our Jewish encyclopedia.
 |
| Pepin III, father of Charlemagne, alias King Charles |
 |
| Moors in Seville, Spain |
In the West Moslem progress was checked at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel.
The king of the Franks was Pepin III (714-768 ) who needed to drive the Moors out of Southern France and Spain, but couldn't get past the walls of Narbonne after 7 years of trying with a siege. He had no navy and this was a seaport town, so the Moors couldn't be starved out. He offered the Jews of the city 50,000 marks with they would open the gates of the city for a few minutes so they could storm in, but they refused, with good reason. Failure in this act would mean the Moors would massacre the Jews. So Pippin made a 2nd offer of giving the Jews the land of Septimania as an independent Jewish kingdom with its own king and army-all Jewish, just for opening the gates.
It worked.
In creating Septimania, Pepin put a condition on the deal that the Jewish king had to be a descendant of King David of Israel. That was fine with the Jews of Narbonne, but none of the males had this lineage. They decided to send to Babylonia for a man to be their king who was a descendant and it was Natronai ben Zabinai, with a Persian name. He was a renowned scholar, elected Exilarch when in his 20's, already a king in exile, so to speak. He spoke 8 languages fluently, and had an eidetic memory so great that he had memorized the whole Babylonian Talmud. He was so amazing that the Nabonne community of Jews thought he was the Messiah and called him that.
Why? It had been 700 years since the Temple in Jerusalem had fallen to the Romans, and prophecies said that the Messiah would arrive to establish G-d's kingdom on earth.
Our Messiah, Natronai, had many other pressing thoughts on hand to deal with besides the claim of Messiah, however. As soon as he had arrived he was swamped with other demands, laws, levying taxes, establishing courts, raising an army, all the things needed to govern.
He was hit with a message from King Charles, the son of Pepin III. Natronai, who cast his Persian name aside and took the Hebrew name of Machir, had to give oaths of allegiance to this King of the Franks. King Charles also made an other request of him. He was to marry Charles's Aunt Alda. This was a command, of course.
King Charles, son of Pepin III, had his father's wishes up his own sleeve. All this planning was for a reason. Pepin had usurped the throne of the Franks from the MEROVINGIANS. There was no royal blood in their veins. Pepin had just used the title and no one had checked up on his pedigree! Charles needed to establish a legitimacy of their dynasty. This marriage of Alda to Machir, the direct descendant of King David, gave them royal blood for their descendants, they felt.
There's always a catch to the best of plans and this one was the fact that Aunt Alda was Catholic and Machir was Jewish. Priests and rabbis would not perform such a mixed marriage. They did it anyway somehow and managed to have a legitimate son making Jewish blood intermingle with the Carolingian kings of France. Now this is speulative. We have no idea how they managed to pull this off, if in fact they did. "Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, born before their canonical marriage."
Bertrada was born sometime between 710 and 727 in Laon, in today's Aisne, France, to Count Charibert of Laon. Charibert's father might have been related to Hugobertides. Charibert's mother was Bertrada of Prüm, who founded Prüm Abbey along with Charibert. Bertrada of Prüm was possibly the daughter of Theuderic III.
Marriage and children
Bertrada married Pepin the Short, the son of Charles Martel, the Frankish "Mayor of the Palace", in 741. However, Pepin and Bertrada were too closely related for their marriage to be legal at that time; the union was not canonically sanctioned until 749, after the birth of Charlemagne.
According to French historian Léon Levillain, Bertrada was Pepin's first and only wife. Other sources suggest that Pepin had previously married a "Leutberga" or "Leutbergie", with whom Pepin would have had five children.
Bertrada and Pepin are known to have had seven children: three sons and four daughters. Of these, Charlemagne (c. 742 – 814), Carloman (751–771)and Gisela (757–811) survived to adulthood. Pepin, born in 756, died in his infancy in 762. Bertrada and Pepin also had Berthe, Adelaide, and Rothaide. Gisela became a nun at Chelles Abbey.
Queen of the Franks[edit]
In 751, Pepin and Bertrada became King and Queen of the Franks, following Pepin's successful coup against the Frankish Merovingian monarchs. Pepin was crowned in June
At any rate, this closeness caused King Charles to ask Machir to work with him in his great campaign to drive the Moors from northern Spain. It could be that Charlemagne had a Jewish uncle and the Jewish kings of Septimania were related by blood to the Carolingian kings of France. Those of us into DNA studies know that they shared very tiny segments of DNA, if at all.
By 793, Machir fell in battle, with his men carrying his Lion of Judah banner from victory to victory.
According to Jewish history, Natronai was the Gaon of Pumbedita ( a Babylonian city on the Euphrates, seat of a famous academy founded by Judah ben Ezekiel in the middle of the 3rd century) in the early part of the 8th century, known as Rav Yenuka. He was most severe with the scholars of the academy, many of whom left for Sura, Persia. The Gaon of Sura was known from 853-6. He wrote many responsa, the top one being an arrangement of the daily 100 blessings prepared at the request of the community of Lucena, Spain. These and others of his served as the 1st complete Order of Prayer prepared later by Amram Gaon. He took a strong stand against the Karaites and their liturgy. His responsa include notes of tractates of the Talmud.
A Gaon is an intellectual leader, often with considerable temporal power, of the Babylonian Jewish community from the 6th to 11th centuries. They headed the 2 leading academies, SURA and PUMBEDITA, and their influence extended for the greater part of this period over all Jews.
Charlemagne or Charles the Great(2 April 742 – 28 January 814), numbered Charles I, was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor of the Romans from 800. During the Early Middle Ages, he united the majority of western and central Europe. He was the first recognised emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded is called the Carolingian Empire. He was later canonized by Antipope Paschal III.
Who were the Franks? "The Franks were a group of Germanic peoples, whose name was first mentioned in 3rd century Roman sources, associated with tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, on the edge of the Roman Empire. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They then imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples, and still later Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire.
Resource: THE JEWISH KINGDOM OF SEPTIMANIA NATRONAI BEN ZABINAI,MACHIR THEODORIC; MAY 14, 2015; MARCH 9, 2016 ISRAEL,RELIGION, THE TRUTH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhir_of_Narbonne
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrada_of_Laon
http://www.midi-france.info/1011_moors.htm
great find this amazing history wasn't it, nadene? glad you could gather lots of material for this very very interesting post!
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