Monieux (; ) is a commune in the

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.

department in the

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (commonly shortened to PACA), also known as Région Sud, is one of the eighteen Regions of France, administrative regions of France, located at the far southeastern point of the Metropolitan France, mainland. The main P ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...

in southeastern

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Geography

The commune of Monieux is located on the plateau of the Mounts of Vaucluse, near to the commune of Sault. It shelters on its territory part of the classified as sites “Reserve of Biosphere” of the Ventoux Mount.

Hydrology

La Nesque flows through Monieux.

Climate

The commune is located in the zone of influence of the Mediterranean climate. The summers are hot and dry, related to the increase in altitude of the subtropical anticyclones, intersected with stormy episodes sometimes violent one. The winters are soft. Precipitations are not very frequent and rare snow. It there 275 days of sun per year.

Demography

Agriculture

It primarily confines in an activity of medium mountains of the type of Provence with a production of lavender, of lavandin, of old variety of wheat and of the derivative products. Sheep breeding and the production of honey holds also an important place.

History

The town of Monieux is the possible site of a medieval

pogrom A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...

that occurred at the end of the 11th century, as determined by Historian

Norman Golb Norman Golb (15 January 1928 – 29 December 2020) was a scholar of Jewish history and the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Life Golb was born in Chicago, Ill ...

, but Dr
Ben Outhwaite
Head of the Geniza Research Unit of Cambridge University, summarized the findings of Hebrew University researchers Edna Engel and Yoseph Yahalom that strongly suggest the correct location of this attack is not Monieux at all, rather Muño, in northern Spain. The sole evidence of this attack by Crusaders on the community is indicated through the discovery of a manuscript in the

Cairo Geniza The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Judaism, Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the ''genizah'' or storeroom of the Ben Ezra ...

. When Jacob Mann first translated the beginning portion of the document in 1931, the location of the attack described was misinterpreted as taking place in the province of Anjou. In 1969, however, when Norman Golb retranslated the document, he discovered that the referral to the pogrom’s location as a town did not coincide correctly with Mann’s assessment of the locale as Anjou, which was recognized as a province during the time period. Through further inspection, he found that an improper reading of the Hebrew script had led Mann further astray in his translation; Golb, therefore, ultimately published his translation of the document in its entirety, highlighting that Monieux and not Anjou was the site of the attack. The document, a vellum-inscribed letter written in Hebrew by Joshua B. Obadiah of Monieux, France, exposes the severe maltreatment of the Jewish people when their small community in southeastern France was attacked during the

First Crusade The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Muslim conquest ...

of 1096–1099 CE. The manuscript itself serves a unique purpose in that it was not written in the context of memoirs such as those of

Usama Ibn Munqidh Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni al-Kalbī (also Usamah, Ousama, etc.; ) (4 July 1095 – 17 November 1188) or Ibn Munqidh was a medieval Arab Muslim poet, author, '' faris'' (knight), and diplomat from the Ban ...

and

Fulcher of Chartres Fulcher of Chartres ( in or near Chartres – after 1128; ; ) was a priest who participated in the First Crusade. He served Baldwin I of Jerusalem for many years and wrote a Latin chronicle of the Crusade. Life Fulcher was born . His appointment ...

, but was constructed as a letter of recommendation for a woman of note who was living in the community of Monieux during the time of the pogrom. Obadiah’s writings feature an account of the profound misfortune of a proselytess, a woman who, having left her homeland after converting to Judaism, first took refuge in Narbonnne, France. There, she married R. David, a member of a well-respected family in the region. When she began to fear that her relatives would find her via the established Christian authority in

Narbonne Narbonne ( , , ; ; ; Late Latin:) is a commune in Southern France in the Occitanie region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. It is located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and was ...

, she left the city and settled in the remote village of Monieux, France, roughly six years prior to the arrival of the Crusaders. Obadiah writes of the harrowing fate of the proselytess during the severe attack on the Jews by the French Crusaders, in which her husband was murdered in the synagogue and her two young children, a boy and a girl, were taken captive—likely to be converted to Christianity by the enemy. Left to care for her infant son, Obadiah describes the woman as penurious and “in thirst and nakedness, lacking all provisions, and with no fund to pay for her (daily needs) and (those of) her son.” With only a small number of Jews remaining after the pogrom, “a few from many,” the residents of Monieux no longer had the means to care for the widowed proselytess. This letter, therefore, written by a literate community member in Monieux, provides a full breadth of the woman’s hardships in hopes that she could present it to members of another Jewish community and be taken in there. The discovery of the letter in Egypt suggests that the woman may have travelled far eastward from Monieux after the pogrom, ultimately settling in the flourishing Jewish community of Cairo, where she could be cared for effectively.Golb, Norman. New Light on the Persecution of French Jews at Time of the First Crusade. Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, vol. 34, 1966.

City sites and monuments

*Vestiges of an old castle / medieval tower dated from the 12th century *Saint-Pierre Church, Roman style, 12th century *Saint Michel Chapel(1643) *Saint-Roch Chapel (1632). *Saint-André Chapel *Distillings of lavender factories *Gorges of Nesque image:Monieux - église.JPG, Saint Pierre Church image:Monieux - St Roch.JPG, Saint Roch Chapel image:Monieux - Chapelle ND des Abeilles.JPG, Notre Dame des Abeilles image:Monnieux by JM Rosier.JPG, village of Monieux