Hi,
"In 1232 or 1233,
anti-Maimunists in Montpellier handed the more philosophical books of
Maimonides over to local friars present to eradicate heresy; the mendicants
then burned these texts. The papal court‘s interest in rabbinic texts boded ill
for the Jews, and this precedent made it all the easier for Gregory to take a
jaundiced view of the Talmud a few years later. According to [Yitzhak] Baer,
the 1240 Debate was, at least in part, an outgrowth of earlier inquisitorial
activities.
"However, the connection
between the Maimonidean controversy and the 1240 Debate is far from clear. In
all the papal literature surrounding the 1240 Debate and the subsequent burning
of the talmuds, the earlier burning of Maimonidian books goes unmentioned.
Association between the two Jewish book-burnings is largely absent in contemporary
Jewish literature as well. Three separate works, all written in response to the
Debate and the subsequent burning of rabbinic texts, failed to mention the
Maimonidean controversy or to connect it with the burning of the Talmuds…
"In fact, only one source
supports the relationship between the Maimonedian controversy in southern
France and the Paris debate and ultimate destruction of hundreds of Talmud
manuscripts. Writing some fifty years after the burning of the Talmud (or
thereabouts), the pro-Maimunist Rabbi Hillel of Verona writes that 'forty
days did not pass from the burning of [Maimonides‘s] works until that of the
Talmud…and the ashes of the Talmud were mixed with those of [Maimonides‘s
overtly philosophical works which were handed over to the ecclesiastical
authorities,] the Guide
for the Perplexed and the Book
of Knowledge, since there is still ash at the site.'
"Given the tendentious nature
of this source, Baer‘s claim that the Maimonidian controversy set a precedent
for subjecting rabbinic texts to inquisitorial authorities in 1240 is highly
tenuous. Hillel‘s immediate pro-Maimonidian bias aside, there are historical
issues of concern here as well, matters of time and place. It was not forty
days, but approximately ten years, between the confiscation of Maimonides‘s
writing and the burning of the Talmud. Furthermore,
Hillel‘s vivid and evocative imagery of the mixing of the ashes of Maimonidean
and Talmudic books notwithstanding, his words in no way comport with the facts;
Maimonides‘ writing was burned in Montpellier, the Talmud in front of the
Church of Notre Dame. Doubtless Hillel was aware of these discrepancies, and
chose to connect the two burnings for rhetorical purposes. Hillel‘s letter
cannot be taken at face value, as Baer would have it."
Have a good day,
Mordechai
