Abstract
In the thirteenth century, Paris became a laboratory for experimentation with power, where the political, religious, and scholarly elite began to develop institutional means of exercising authority.2 As a result, Paris became not only the most prominent European intellectual center of that time, but also the most organized, centralized, and scrutinized. This process emerged from an early medieval culture in Christian Europe that lacked coordinated mechanisms for inhibiting intellectual dissent: from the cases of Johannes Scotus Erigena and Berengar of Tours to Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert of Poitiers, we can trace a well-known and comparatively well-documented chain of events that demonstrates the inefficiencies that characterized institutional responses to the challenges posed by clerics belonging to the intellectual elite.3 This study analyzes the Talmud Trial and related events in Paris during the 1240s to describe the forms of control that became possible once intellectual restrictions and censorship traversed their academic boundaries and became integrated with clerical and political power. Such synchronized pressures were absent from other thirteenth-century Christian-Jewish confrontations, but became commonplace in the early fourteenth century (e.g., in prosecutions of the Talmud by inquisitors such as the Dominicans, Bernard Gui, and Jacques Fournier) and continued well into the early modern period.4
An earlier version of this chapter was presented during a conference at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, December 2012. At that time, I received many helpful comments from conference participants, including other Fellows at CAJS. I extend special thanks to William Jordan, Sara Lipton, Judah Galinsky, Piero Capelli, Elisheva Baumgarten, and the anonymous readers of this article.
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Notes
For the most detailed descriptions of those mechanisms of control, see Luca Bianchi, Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’université de Paris (XIII e –XIV e siècles) (Paris, 1999). However, Bianchi seems to pay less attention to royalty as an element in the development of Parisian methods of intellectual control, certainly during the thirteenth century. Two recently completed dissertations provide important analyses of the early thirteenth-century Parisian masters of theology, each focusing on different social and intellectual perspectives. In her study of the theory of knowledge, among other distinctive arts of academic self-ref lection, Ayelet Even Ezra significantly contributes to our understanding of Paris as a locus for blurred hierarchies in part due to the masters’ own intellectual and religious priorities; see The Discourse of Knowledge in the Faculty of Theology, Paris, 1220 — 1240 (PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2011), esp. 26–43. Slightly earlier, Spencer Young submitted his dissertation on this same theological community in Paris, though with an emphasis on different intellectual and social aspects. See Queen of the Faculties: Theology and Theologians at the University of Paris, c. 1215–c. 1250, (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2009). William Courtenay’s general observations on the early development of academic inquiry raise some crucial issues on the relationship between academic institutions and inquisitorial mechanisms but he seems to overlook the unique role played by Parisian masters. See his “Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities,” Church History 58 (1989): 168–181.
See Jürgen Miethke, “Theologenprozesse in der ersten Phase ihrer institutionellen Ausbildung: Die Verfahren gegen Peter Abaelard und Gilbert von Poitiers,” in Jürgen Miethke, Studieren an mittelalterlichen Universitäten. Chancen und Risiken (Leiden, 2004), 275–312;
R. I. Moore, The War on Heresy (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 29–31.
Of particular relevance to this question is Peter Godman, The Silent Masters. Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000). Although Godman’s perspective differs in many respects from the one presented here, his conclusions largely concur with my own, and see note 6.
See Y. H. Yerushalmi, “The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui,” Harvard Theological Review 63 (1970): 317–376;
Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982), 78–81;
Kenneth Stow, “The Fruit of Ambivalence: Papal Jewry Policies Over the Centuries,” in The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Context, Sources and Perspectives, ed. Stephan Wendehorst (Leiden, 2004), 3–17.
For a detailed description of Abelard’s process in the context of contemporaneous heresy trials, cf. M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, 1999), 288–325;
For Peter’s testimony, see Letter 98 in Giles Constable ed., The Letters of Peter the Venerable with introduction and notes (Cambridge, MA, 1967), I, 258f.
On the relationship between the Maimonidean controversy and the Talmud Trial see Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig, 18943), VII: 52–54; for a detailed analysis of Gregory’s Aristotelian politics, see Bianchi, Censure et Liberté, 110–116.
For a general overview of the reception of Maimonides’s Guide in the Latin West, see Jacob Guttmann, Die Scholastik des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts in ihren Beziehungen zum Judenthum und zur jüdischen Literatur (Breslau 1902; New York, 1970);
Jacob Guttmann, “Der Einfluß der maimonidischen Philosophie auf das christliche Abendland,” in Wilhelm Bacher et al., Moses ben Maimon. Sein Leben, seine Werke und sein Einfluss (Leipzig, 1908), I: 135–230.
Guttmann’s description has been revised and updated by Görge K. Hasselhoff, Dicit Rabbi Moyses. Studien zum Bild von Moses Maimonidesim lateinischen Westen vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert (Würzburg, 2005).
I intend to treat this topic in the near future, meanwhile see Azriel Shoḥat, “Berurim be-farashat ha-pulmos ha-rishon ‘al sifré ha-Rambam,” Zion 36 (1971): 27–60 [Hebrew]
and Joseph Shatzmiller, “Li-temunat ha-maḥloket ha-rishona ‘al kitvé ha-Rambam,” Zion 34 (1969):126–144.
I recommend Jeremy Cohen’s description and annotated bibliography on the variety of scholarly opinions on this topic, see Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 52–60. 10. Recently, the various texts related to this event were translated and published together with a comprehensive overview by Robert Chazan, see The Trial of the Talmud Paris, 1240 (Toronto, 2012).
See also Judah Galinsky, “The Different Hebrew Versions of the ‘Talmud Trial’ of 1240 in Paris,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, ed. Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schachter (Leiden, 2012), 109–140; I thank Piero Capelli for allowing me to read his yet unpublished paper, “Jewish Converts in Jewish-Christian Intellectual Polemics in the Middle Ages.”
It is noteworthy that Paris witnessed both approaches since Pablo later moved from Barcelona to Paris and attempted to apply that same method of disputation there as well, and see Joseph Shatzmiller, La deuxième controverse de Paris. Un chapitre dans la polémique entre Chrétiens et Juifs au Moyen Age (Paris-Louvain, 1994).
For an enumeration of Donin’s charges against the Talmud and a survey of his involvement in the Parisian Talmud controversy in 1240, see Chen Merchavia, Ha-talmud bi-re’i ha-natsrut (Jerusalem, 1970), 227–290.
For the biographical sources on Donin, see Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (Philadelphia, 1933), 339f.
For further discussion, see William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, 1989), 137–141;
Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2006), 280–284;
Yossef Schwartz, “Images of Revelation and Spaces of Knowledge, the Jew, the Christian and the Christian-Jew: Jewish Apostates as Cultural Mediators in Medieval Spain,” ed. A. Fidora and Matthias M. Tischler, Christian North—Moslem South (Münster, 2011), 267–287, esp. 278f. Judah Galinsky recently drew my attention to a late thirteenth-century legal Hebrew writ of divorce found in many medieval copies of the Semak in which one of the persons involved is named “Mattityah who is nicknamed (ha-mekhunne) Donin.” This may hint at Donin’s Jewish name, prior to changing it to Nicholas at the time of his conversion.
William Chester Jordan, “Marian Devotion and the Talmud Trial of 1240,” Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 4. (Wiesbaden, 1992): 61–76 [reprint in William C. Jordan, Ideology and Royal Power in Medieval France (Aldershot, 2001): XI].
Fritz I. Baer, “Le-vikkoret ha-vikkuḥim shel R. Yeḥi’el mi-Paris ve-shel R. Moshe ben Naḥman,” Tarbiz 2 (1931): 172–187, at 172–177.
Gilbert Dahan, ed., Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris 1242–1244, (Nouvelle Gallia Judaïca [1]) (Paris, 1999).
The very same mechanism is described by Jürgen Miethke, “Papst, Ortbischof und Universität in den Pariser Theologenprozessen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Jürgen Miethke, Studieren an mittelalterlichen Universitäten. Chancen und Risiken (Leiden, 2004), 313–359. The king is also an actor in some of the cases described by Miethke, and see ibid., pp. 338f., 342.
J. M. M. H. Thijssen, “Master Amalric and the Amalricians: Inquisitorial Procedure and the Suppression of Heresy at the University of Paris,” Speculum 71 (1996): 43–65.
J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, 1998), ix. Despite the chronology indicated in the title of this volume, most of Thijssen’s study is dedicated to the condemnation of 1277 and fourteenth-century developments;
for an account of earlier acts of censorship cf. Mary M. McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom and its Limitations in the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1977), 17f.
Henricus Denifle, ed., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1894–1897) (henceforth CUP).
On Jews being linked to philosophy and heresy in popular Christian imagery (e.g., preaching and visual images) from Paris during the first half of the thirteenth century, see Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance. The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley, 1999), 61, 70–77, 94–111.
CUP, I, n. 130, p. 173; McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom, 211, 424f., n. 181; F. Pelster, “Die Pariser Verurteilung von 1241. Eine Frage der Datierung,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 18 (1948): 405–417;
William J. Courtenay, “Dominicans and Suspect Opinion in the Thirteenth Century: The Cases of Stephen of Venizy, Peter of Tarentaise, and the Articles of 1270 and 1271,” Vivarium 32 (1994): 186–195, here 187–189.
Joseph Koch, “Philosophische und theologische Irrtumlisten von 1270–1329,” in Joseph Koch, Kleine Schriften, I (Rome, 1973), 423–450.
Despite its appearance as a “protocol” that was recorded as a single work, this codex is actually a compilation that was completed in its current form after 1248, as attested by the reference to Odo, “now the Bishop of Tusculum and the Legate of the Apostolic See to the Holy Land;” and see Isidore Loeb, “La controverse de 1240 sur le Talmud,” Revue des etudes juives 3 (1881): 39–57, here 55, quoting MS BNF lat. 16558, fol. 230d: “cancelarium Parisiensem, nunc autem Tusculanum episcopum et apostolice sedis legatum in Terra sancta.”
Tomae Cantipratani OP, Bonum universale de apibus, I, 3, Douai, Ex Typographia Baltazaris Belleri 1627, 17–18. The Dominican records describe this as an encounter between the King of France and the Dominicans (here represented by Henry of Cologne), without acknowledging any involvement from the Pope or the Bishop of Paris and depicting other church authorities (here represented by Walter de Cornut, Archbishop of Sens) in a wholly negative light. See Paul Lawrence Rose, “When Was the Talmud Burnt at Paris? A Critical Examination of the Christian and Jewish Sources and a New Dating: June 1241,” Journal of Jewish Studies 62 (2011): 324–339, here 329f.; Chazan, Trial, Condemnation and Censorship, 22. It is noteworthy that Tomas’s exemplum is part of an allegorical portrayal of the sins committed by the higher clergy that makes no attempt to accurately depict these events.
On the investigation sponsored by Freder ick, see Robert Chazan, Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, 1980), 123–126;
Ernst Kantorowitz, Frederick the Second (New York, 1957), 413f.; Yuval, Two Nations, 278.
William J. Courtenay, “Learned Opinion and Royal Justice: The Role of Paris Masters of Theology during the Reign of Philip the Fair,” in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, E. Ann Matter (Philadelphia, 2008), 149–163, esp. 150, 155, 159, here 162.
This same description also appears in his article in the volume of Miscellanea Mediaevalia on the theme, “A Historical Topography of 1308,” and see, William J. Courtenay, “The Role of University Masters and Bachelors at Paris in the Templar Affair, 1307–1308,” in 1308. Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit [Miscellanea Mediaevalia 35], ed. Andreas Speer and David Wirmer (Berlin and New York, 2010), 171–181. See also Jürgen Miethke’s article in the same volume, pp. 182–198.
Cohen also draws heavily on these passages by Hillel, see Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 59f.; cf. recently Reimund Leicht, “Miracles for the Sake of the Master of Reason. Hillel ben Samuel of Verona’s Legendary Account of the Maimonidean Controversy,” Micrologus 21 (2013): 579–598.
Hillel of Verona, Letter to Maestro Gaio, fol. 19a-b. Most scholars tend to discount Hillel’s evidence as either a highly manipulative polemic or a source that was written too late to be relevant (some fifty years after the events being described). Such dismissal of his writings overlooks the fact that Hillel relies on information that he received in Barcelona, directly from his teacher Jonah Girondi. Hillel’s encounter with Jonah has erroneously been dated to the 1260s; however, we have clear evidence that Jonah left Barcelona far earlier, during the early 1240s or early 1250s at the latest. According to this revised timeframe, whatever Hillel learned from Jonah would have been conveyed within a decade of the burning of these Jewish texts in Paris and, thus, might reflect the initial shock among the Jewish leadership. I am indebted to Judah Galinsky for the fruitful dialogue that led me to this realization. For the dates of Jonah’s residence in Barcelona, cf. Israel M. Ta-Shma, Ha-nigle she-banistar: le-ḥeker sheki‘é ha-halakhah be-sefer ha-zohar (Tel Aviv, 2001), 70;
Judah D. Galinsky, “Sefer arba‘ah turim ve-ha-sifrut ha-hilkhattit shel sefarad ba-me’a ha-14: hebbetim historiyyim, sifrutyyim ve-hilkhattiyyim,” (PhD dissertation, Bar Ilan University, 1999), 18, n. 18. The calculation that Hillel studied with Jonah during the 1260s comes from a misreading of information in this same letter: immediately after stating that he stayed with Jonah in Barcelona until his master left for Toledo, Hillel mentions Jonah’s death in Toledo. These contiguous comments led scholars to assume that Jonah had moved to Toledo just before his death (ca. 1264).
Amos Funkenstein, “Changes in Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Twelfth Century,” in Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, 1993), 172–201.
Cohen, Friars and the Jews; Cohen Jeremy, “Scholarship and Intolerance in the Medieval Academy: The Study and evaluation of Judaism in European Christendom„in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict. From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jeremy Cohen (New York and London, 1991), 310–341.
Anna Sapir Abulafia, “Jewish-Christians Disputations and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,” Journal of Medieval Studies 15 (1989): 105–125;
Gilbert Dahan, La polémique Crétienne contre le Judaïsme au moyen âge (Paris 1991); Yvonne Friedman, “Anti-Talmudic Invective from Peter the Venerable to Nicolas Donin (1144–1244),” in Le brûlement du Talmud, ed. Dahan, 171–189.
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Schwartz, Y. (2015). Authority, Control, and Conflict in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Contextualizing the Talmud Trial. In: Baumgarten, E., Galinsky, J.D. (eds) Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317582_7
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