Susanna - a sad lesson for life

There was a Jewish girl in the Middle Ages called Susanna who is famous in Seville. She was the most beautiful girl in the city. She was romantically attached to a Sevillian soldier, one of the Spanish army resident in the city. Susanna's father was very unhappy with his daughter being in love with a Gentile and a soldier. The Jewish father was rich and well connected and he organised for a raid on the group of soldiers which included the boyfriend of his daughter. He wanted to kill them for stealing his daughter's heart.

Susanna decided she must warn her boyfriend of what was being planned. The consequence was that the soldiers attacked the father and killed him, and then the boyfriend disassociated himself from Susanna because he was ashamed of what he had brought upon himself and his fellow soldiers as a consequence of being involved with a Jewish girl.

Susanna had now not only lost her boyfriend but also her father. She lived a lonely life and died a sad spinster. She requested that her bones be displayed on the wall outside her house as a lesson to all Jewish children not to forsake your family or your people for the promise of love. Love is fleeting but family is forever, she said, and she had sacrificed her family for folly.

Her bones were on display for several centuries, but then they were taken down, and a plaque installed instead over the door of her house in the Jewish quarter. It is a famous landmark and still there today. The street, which is the Morte street meaning death, is also named Susanna Street in that section where her house is located.Read more