OCAÑA:

By: Joseph Jacobs, Meyer Kayserling

Town of Castile which had a Jewish community at an early date. When the Jews, who had previously enjoyed full privileges, began to be oppressed and curtailed in their liberties by the Christian population of the city, D. Fernando IV. ordered the municipal council of Ocaña to leave them undisturbed in the enjoyment of the rights granted them by the preceding kings. Here, as in other places, the Jews were accused of ritual murder. A Christian killed the three-year-old son of a woman with whom he was at enmity, and, to divert suspicion from himself to the Jews, threw the body into the house of a Jewish neighbor; his stratagem, however, miscarried. During the great persecution of 1391 many Jews were killed at Ocaña, while others were forcibly baptized. Abraham Naḥmias b. Joseph, the translator of Thomas Aquinas' "Commentarii in Metaphysicam," was living at Ocaña shortly before the general expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

J. M. K.