This inventory records the possessions of Bonafos Bonet, a citizen and resident of Marseille who died in the Black Death of 1348. Bonafos was married to Doneta, who apparently predeceased him by a few days. They were immigrants from a town in Languedoc named Lunel, located about 30 kms northeast of Montpellier. The inventory was made on 5 June 1348, in the waning months of the plague, by Bonet Vital, also a citizen and resident of Marseille. Bonet was an immigrant from the town of Uzès in a region of France known as Gard. Bonet Vital was acting as the guardian of Bonafos’s heir, a child named Benet Bensegnori. The Bonet family was Jewish, and the circumstances suggest that couple had left the Kingdom of France amid the expulsion of Jews in 1306 and had settled in Marseille, where they met Bonet Vital, another Jewish immigrant. The two lived comfortably with their son but the family was not especially well off; among other things, there was no gold or jewels and very little silver. There were a number of items made of silk and a Damascene lamp.
Jewish inventories are exceedingly uncommon; this is only one of half-dozen or so discovered so far in Marseille (see the collection Jewish Households). This one is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the material profile of Bonafos and Doneta's house, to judge by the items in the inventory, was nearly indistinguishable from that of their Christian neighbors. The inventory does include a number of brightly colored articles of clothing as well as children's things. One of the most unusual items is identified as "quendam rasali cirici," that is to say a type of fabric known in Iberia as a rançal made of silk. Inside a chest, Bonet discovered a set of deep blue garments lined with ruby red sendal and fringed with squirrel fur and tassels called "rapra." No kitchen items were listed in the inventory and the act ends abruptly, suggesting that the act may be incomplete. The register, however, shows no sign of having lost a folio.