LEVI, JUDAH:
Influential Jew at Estella, Navarre, from 1380 to 1391. In 1380 and the following years he was commissioned, with Samuel Amarillo, to collect the tax of five per cent on all real estate in the district of Estella which within the preceding fifty years had been sold or rented by Jews to Christians or Moors without the permission of the king. In 1391 he, with Yuze Orabuena and Nathan Gabay, occupied the position of farmer-general of taxes. He was engaged also in banking and exchange. He appeared frequently at court in connection with business of the king's, and always took the part of his coreligionists. He was utterly impoverished during the last years of his life, as may be seen from the letter of Benveniste ibn Labi (Vienna MSS. p. 205). The king, in view of Levi's needy condition and in recognition of his services, granted him a yearly pension of sixty florins from the state treasury. After his death, which occurred about 1392, he was unjustly stigmatized as a heretic.
- Jacobs, Sources, Nos. 1458, 1477, 1533, 1536;
- Kayserling, Gesch. der Juden in Spanien, i. 57, 89;
- Grätz, Gesch. viii. 413.
