Person
Benvenida Abravanel בנבנידה אברבנאל
head of the Abravanel house, who ransomed captives by the hundred
At Naples she was tutor to Eleonora di Toledo—the future wife of Cosimo de' Medici—and the friendship survived every expulsion. When the Jews were driven from Naples the house moved to Ferrara; after her husband's death in 1547 she defended the inheritance and won the right to keep five banks in the duchy of Florence.
Reuveni, the seeker of the ten tribes, was her guest and had money and a silk banner from her; he also recorded that she ransomed a thousand captives. The sources give no year of birth; she died about 1560.
On the timeline
5252 · 1492 CEThe Expulsion of the Jews from Spain5260 · 1500 CEWhere the Exiles Went: The Turning Point of the Diaspora
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The diary of David Reuveni — the thousand ransomed captives and the silk banner
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Naples, Ferrara, the five banks and the window of years
Basis: Talmud and midrash.