Was the attack on the Rambam connected to the Burning of the Talmud in Paris?

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."

(Dr. Saadia Eisenberg, Reading Medieval Religious Disputation, pp. 98-102)

Have a good day,

Mordechai

On the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1240

Hi,

"[T]he 1240 Debate represented a turning point in the history of the relations between Ashkenazi Jewry and Latin Christendom. An impressive event attended by an imposing array of dignitaries, this debate offered an opportunity for broad public display of new argumentation. While Donin‘s specific argumentation does not seem to have served as a model for other formal debates – Pablo Christiani, the Christian protagonist in the disputations in Barcelona in July 1263 and in Paris 1270, did not follow Donin‘s line of argumentation – the very assertion that the Church had the right to confiscate, examine, and destroy Jewish literature – specifically the Talmud – set a new tone for Christian-Jewish relationships in centuries to come…

"The clerical court found the Talmud guilty as charged and condemned it to flames. The Jews managed to forestall implementation of the sentence, but after a number of delaying machinations, twenty or twenty-four wagonloads of talmudic manuscripts – probably ten to twelve thousand volumes – were burned in Paris in the Place de Grève (the execution site which symbolized medieval French justice) over the course of one and a half days in 1242. The loss of books and resulting disruption of study among Jews contributed to the decline of the Jewish schools in northern France. Equally demoralizing for northern French Jewry was the vision of the Talmud, a symbol of Jewish history, accomplishment, tradition, values, and religion, going up in flames. From a long-range point of view Jews in Christian lands were now put in the position of having to respond to challenges to Talmudic law, ideology and literature proffered by antagonistic Christians, challenges which continued into the modern era."

(Dr. Saadia Eisenberg, Reading Medieval Religious Disputation pp. 2, 13-14)

Have a good day,

Mordechai