Chapter XV
NEW POSITION OF THE JEWS IN CHRISTIAN LANDS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Effects of the Death of Maimuni--Abraham Maimuni, the son of Maimuni--Hostility of the Papacy against the Jews-- Pope Innocent III--The Albigenses--Emigration of Rabbis to Palestine--The Lateran Council and the Jewish Badges-- Synod of Rabbis at Mayence--The Dominicans and the Rise of the Inquisition--King Jayme of Aragon and his Physician Benveniste--Stephen Langton and the Jews of England-- Gregory IX and Louis IX of France--The Jews of Hungary.
1205-1232 C. E.
Maimuni, the most intellectual rabbi and the deep religious philosopher, constitutes the zenith in mediæval Jewish history, and soon after his death the shadows begin to incline. Gradually the sunshine lessens, and gives way to dismal gloom. His intellectual bequest produced a far-reaching cleavage, which divided Judaism, or its leaders, into two hostile camps, and aroused a weakening, factional spirit which presented points of attack to deadly foes. The Church, whose arrogance was constantly gaining ground, interfered in the disputes of Judaism, and brought into play against the refractory Synagogue seductive allurements, terrifying punishments, secret poison, or blazing fire. Maimuni's death and the ascendancy of the papacy were two misfortunes for Judaism which removed it from its lofty position to the deepest degradation.
Maimuni's death not only produced a gap and a standstill in the spiritual aspirations of the Jews, but deprived them of a dignified and mighty leader, who had been able to bring together under one standard a people scattered all over the world. To him the congregations in the East and West had freely submitted, he had had prudent counsel for every contingency; but after his departure the Jews stood without a leader, and Judaism without a guide. His son, Abulmeni Abraham Maimuni (born 1185, died 1254), certainly inherited his deep sense of religion, his amiable, peace-loving character, his high dignity as supreme head (Nagid) of the Egyptian Jews, and his position as court physician to Saladin's successors; but his intellect and energy were not transmitted to him. Abraham Maimuni was skilled in medicine, was physician in ordinary of the Sultan Alkamel--a brother of Saladin--and presided over the hospital at Cairo, together with the physician and Arabic historian Ibn-Abi Obsaibiya. He was likewise a Talmudical scholar, defended the learning of his father with Talmudical weapons, and delivered rabbinical judgments. He was also well versed in philosophy, and composed a work to reconcile the Agada with the philosophical ideas of the time. But Abraham Maimuni was a man of learning, not of original, intellectual power. He followed with slavish fidelity in the footsteps of his great father, and appropriated his method of thought, surrendering his own intellectual independence. Abraham made the Maimunist system of teaching his own. Hence it happens, that what is striking originality in the father, appears in the son as a copy and an insignificant commonplace. Abraham Maimuni, it is true, enjoyed wide-spread esteem, but he was by no means an authority compelling attention and claiming submission.
In Europe, too, there were no men of commanding influence after the death of Maimuni. There appeared local, but not generally recognized authorities. There existed no man who could step into the breach to pronounce the right word at the proper moment, and point out the right way to wavering minds. If Maimuni had had a successor of his own spirit and character, the dissensions between the faithful and those who interpreted the Bible literally would not have effected such great disasters, nor would mysticism have been able to lure men's minds into its web.
Whilst Judaism was thus left without a leader, there sprang up against it, in the early part of the thirteenth century, a power, exercising ruthless, inexorable oppression, such as had not been practised against it since the time of Hadrian. The pope Innocent III, who was the father of all the evils experienced by the European nations up to the time of the Lutheran reformation: the tyrannical domination of the Roman Church over princes and peoples, the enslaving and abasing of the human mind, the persecution of free thought, the institution of the Inquisition, the auto-da-fé against heretics, i. e., against those who dared doubt the infallibility of the Roman Bishop;--he was also the pope Innocent III who was an embittered enemy of Jews and Judaism, and dealt severer blows against them than any of his predecessors.
The little band of Jews was like a thorn in the side of the mighty potentate of the Church, who enthroned and dethroned kings, distributed crowns and countries, and who, through his army of papal legates, spies, Dominican and Franciscan monks, with their bloodthirsty piety, had subjugated the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic ocean to Constantinople, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions. This handful of human beings, with their clear intellect, their purified faith, their moral force and their superior culture, was a silent protest against Roman arrogance. At the beginning of his reign, Innocent, although not exactly well-disposed to the Jews, was at least ready, like his predecessors, to protect them from unjust treatment. New crusades were now being preached against the Sultanate of Egypt, which had declined in power since the death of Saladin, in order to wrest from its control the Holy City. The crusaders, now that they had obtained a remission of sins, might say, "We may commit offenses, since the taking up of the Cross has absolved us from all sins, ay, and even enables us to redeem the souls of sinners from purgatory." Jew-baiting, compulsory baptism, plundering and assassination, were once more the order of the day. The Jews, seeing that they needed special protection, appealed to Innocent to curb the violence of the crusaders. Most graciously did he vouchsafe them that which the leader of any respectably organized band of brigands would not have refused. The Jews were not to be dragged by force to be converted, neither were they to be robbed, injured, or killed without judicial sanction. They were not to be molested during their festivals by being whipped, and having stones thrown at them; and, lastly, their cemeteries were to be respected, and their dead were neither to be disinterred nor dishonored. So much had Christianity degenerated, that decrees like these, and a constitution (Constitutio Judæorum) like this, had to be promulgated for the sake of the Jews. So deluded were its leaders, that the head of the Church passed these resolutions, not from the simple motive of humanity, but from a perverse notion that the Jews must be preserved, so that the miracle of their general conversion to Jesus might have an opportunity of being accomplished.
The Jews, who by the experience of a thousand years had learnt the art of recognizing foes and friends behind their masks, were by no means mistaken as to the real sentiments of Innocent towards them. When Don Pedro II, King of Aragon, returned home from his journey to Rome (Dec., 1204), where he had caused himself to be anointed and crowned by the Pope, receiving at the same time his territory as tributary to Peter's chair, the Aragonian congregations were in great anxiety as to what might befall them. Don Pedro had taken an oath, that he would persecute all heretics then in his country, defend the liberties and rights of the Church, and faithfully obey the Pope. What if the liberty of the Church should be interpreted thus: That the Jews were either to be driven out of the land, or degraded to the position of bondmen! The Aragonian Jews, apprehending something of the sort, appealed to their God in fervent prayer, appointed a general fast, and, with a scroll of the Torah, assembled to meet the king on his return. Their fear on this occasion, however, was groundless. Don Pedro, who was not very warm in his allegiance to the Pope, and was intent only on strengthening his own power, had no thought of persecuting the Jews. Besides, owing to his periodic money difficulties, he could not do without them; he had become their debtor. Innocent, however, watched the princes with a jealous eye, lest they should concede to the Jews anything beyond the bare right to live. The French king, Philip Augustus--the arch-enemy of the Jews, who, having tortured and plundered them, had driven them out of his country, and recalled them only because of his pecuniary embarrassments--was reprimanded by the Pope for favoring the Jews. The Pope wrote that it offended his sight that some princes should prefer the descendants of the crucifiers to the heirs of the crucified Christ, as if the son of the bond-woman could ever be the heir of the son of the free-woman; that it had reached his ears that in France the Jews had obtained possession, through usury, of the property of the Church and of the Christians, and that, in spite of the resolution of the Lateran Council, under Alexander III, they kept Christian servants and nurses in their houses; and further, that Christians were not admitted as witnesses against the Jews, which was also contrary to the resolution of that assembly; and again, that the community of Sens had built a new synagogue which was situated higher than the church of that neighborhood, and in which prayers were read, not quietly, as before the expulsion, but so loudly as to interrupt the divine service in the church. Lastly, Innocent censured the king of France for allowing the Jews too much liberty. They had the audacity during the Easter week to appear in the streets and villages, scoffing at the faithful for worshiping a crucified God, and thus turning them away from their faith. He vehemently repeated the diabolical calumny that the Jews secretly assassinated Christians. As to the public and daily murders of Jews, the chief of the Church had little to say. He exhorted Philip Augustus to maintain true Christian zeal in oppressing the Jews, and did not fail to mention at the same time that the heretics in his country ought to be exterminated. The spiritual ruler of Europe could find no rest while Jews and heretics remained. In the same year (May, 1205), Innocent wrote a sharp pastoral letter to the king of Castile, Alfonso the Noble, a protector of the Jews, because he would not suffer the priests to deprive the Jews of their Mahometan slaves by causing them to be baptized, or to collect tithes from the farms of Jews and Mahometans. The Pope threatened the proud Spanish king with the displeasure of the Church, if he should continue to allow the Synagogue to thrive, and the Church to be reduced. Innocent insisted upon the Jews' paying tithes to the clergy on all lands which they had acquired from the Christians, so that the Church, whose power depended so much on money, should suffer no loss. His plan of coercion, to give force to his directions, was indirect excommunication. As he could not punish Jews with excommunication, he threatened to inflict that penalty on Christians who carried on any intercourse with such Jews as would not humor his apostolic caprice.
The deep prejudice of Innocent against the Jewish race was made still more evident by a denunciatory letter which he wrote to Count Nevers, who was favorably disposed to the Jews. Because this count did not embitter the lives of the latter, and abstained from molesting them, the Pope wrote to him thus (1208): "The Jews, like the fratricide Cain, are doomed to wander about the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces must be covered with shame. They are under no circumstances to be protected by Christian princes, but, on the contrary, to be condemned to serfdom. It is, therefore, discreditable for Christian princes to receive Jews into their towns and villages, and to employ them as usurers in order to extort money from Christians. They (the princes) arrest Christians who are indebted to Jews, and allow the Jews to take Christian castles and villages in pledge; and the worst of the matter is that the Church in this manner loses its tithes. It is scandalous that Christians should have their cattle slaughtered, and their grapes pressed by Jews, who are thus enabled to take their portion, prepared according to their religious precepts, and hand over the leavings to the Christians. A still greater sin is it that this wine prepared by Jews should be used in the church for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Whilst the Christians are excommunicated for favoring the Jews, and their land is laid under the ban, the Jews are all the time laughing in their sleeves at the fact that, on their account, the harps of the Church are hung on willows, and that the priests are deprived of their revenues." Innocent in his pastoral letter threatened Count de Nevers, as well as his supporters, with the severest punishment which the Church was capable of inflicting in the event of their continuing to favor the Jews. He was the first pope who directed against the Jews the burning fury and inhuman severity of the Church. Everything provoked his wrath against them; he begrudged them the very air and light, and only a delusive hope restrained him from openly preaching a crusade and a war of annihilation against them. Innocent was well aware why he so thoroughly abhorred Jews and Judaism. He hated those among them who indirectly agitated against the rotten form of Christianity, upon which the papacy had built its power. The aversion of the truly God-fearing and moral Christians to the arrogance, unchastity, and insatiable covetousness of the hierarchy had in some measure been prompted by the Jews. The Albigenses in southern France, who were branded as heretics, and who were the most resolute opponents of the papacy, had imbibed their hostility from intercourse with educated Jews. Amongst the Albigenses there was a sect which unhesitatingly declared the Jewish Law preferable to that of the Christians. The eye of Innocent was, therefore, directed to the Jews of the south of France, as well as to the Albigenses, in order to check their influence on the minds of the Christians. Count Raymund VI of Toulouse and St. Gilles, styled by the troubadours and singers of that time "Raymund the Good," who was looked upon as a friend of the Albigenses, and consequently cruelly harassed, was also credited by the Pope with favoring the Jews. In the list of transgressions which he drew up against the count, Innocent charged him with the crime of employing Jewish officials in his state, and of generally favoring the Jews. In the bloody crusade which the Pope opened against him and the Albigenses, the Jewish communities of southern France necessarily came in for their share of suffering. Raymund was humbled, and had to submit to being dragged into the church naked, and scourged by the papal legate, Milo. He was also forced to confess that, amongst other sins, he had committed the gross crime of entrusting public offices to Jews. Thereupon the legate ordered him, under penalty of losing his dignity, to humbly take an oath that he would discharge all Jewish officials in his country, that he would never again appoint them, and never admit any Jews to either public or private offices. The unfortunate prince was compelled, the sword being pointed at his breast, to make and to repeat this declaration (June, 1209). Thirteen barons who were connected with Raymund, and were regarded as protectors of the Albigenses, were similarly forced by Milo to give an assurance on oath that they would depose their Jewish officers, and that they would never again place any public trust in their hands. In the meantime, a fanatical crusading army was organized against the Albigenses at the instigation of the Pope and the bloodthirsty monk, Arnold of Citeaux. It was led by the ambitious and rapacious Count Simon de Montfort, and it marched against the Viscount Raymund Roger and his capital Béziers. Roger was doubly hated by the Pope and his legate as the secret friend of the Albigensian heretics, and as the protector of the Jews. On the 22d July (1209) the beautiful city of Béziers was stormed, and its inhabitants were massacred in the name of God. "We spared neither dignity, nor sex, nor age," wrote Arnold, the man of blood, to the Pope, "nearly 20,000 human beings have perished by the sword. After the massacre the town was plundered and burnt, and the revenge of God seemed to rage upon it in a wonderful manner." Even orthodox Catholics were not spared, and to the question of the crusaders as to how the orthodox were to be distinguished from the heretics, Arnold answered, "Strike down; God will recognize His own." Under these circumstances, the flourishing and cultured Jewish communities of Béziers had still less reason to hope for any indulgence. The result was that two hundred Jews were cut down, and a large number thrown into captivity. The Jews, on their side, marked this year of the Albigensian crusade as a "year of mourning."
In consequence of the diplomatic victory over Raymund of Toulouse, and the military victory over Raymund Roger of Béziers, the intolerant Church had acquired supremacy not only in the south of France, but everywhere else. The audacity of free-thinkers, who claimed the right to form their own opinion upon religion, the Holy Scripture, or upon the position of the clergy, was punished by bloodshed. In the Church language of that epoch, the Pope had to wield the spiritual and the secular sword. Those who thought rationally were killed, and independent thinking was branded as a crime. The disciples of the philosopher, Amalarich of Bena, who maintained that Rome was licentious Babylon, and the Pope, the Antichrist; that he dwelt on the Mount of Olives, i. e., in the luxury of power, and that intelligent men, who considered that to build altars for saints, and to worship the bones of martyrs was idolatry, were burnt as blasphemers in Paris. Philosophical writings which were brought over to France from Spain, and which might have enriched or fertilized Christian theology, amongst others the works of the great Jewish philosopher, Solomon Gebirol, which had been translated by order of an archbishop, were interdicted, and forbidden to be read by the Parisian synod. The light which was just dawning on the nations of Europe was extinguished by the representatives of the Church.
The Jews of southern France and of Spain were the only apostles of higher learning. But the Church begrudged them even this glory, and worked with all its might to degrade them. The Council of Avignon (Sept. 1209), presided over by the papal legate, Milo, at which Count Raymund was again laid under the ban, and at which the severest measures were passed against heretics, resolved that all barons of free cities should take an oath that they would entrust no office whatever to Jews, nor allow Christian servants to be employed in Jewish houses. One of the ordinances of this council prohibited the Jews from working on Sunday and all Christian holidays, and also forbade them to eat meat on Christian fast-days. Everywhere the Jews felt the heavy hand of the Romish Church, which stretched forth unhindered to degrade them to the dust.
In England, the Jews had at that time three enemies: the licentious, unprincipled John Lackland, who shrank from no expedient to extort money from them; the hostile barons, who saw in them the source of the king's wealth, by depriving them of which they thought to gain the means of damaging the power of the king; and, lastly, Stephen Langton, whom the Pope had appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and who had introduced the tyrannical spirit of the Church into England. At the beginning of his reign, King John assumed the appearance of friendship towards them, for as he had usurped the crown of his nephew, and in consequence had France and a part of the English nobility against him, he naturally sought to win over to his side the moneyed classes of the people. He appointed a Talmudical scholar, Jacob of London, as chief rabbi over all the English communities (presbyteratus omnium Judæorum totius Angliæ), and all his subjects were warned against attacking either his property or his dignity. The king called this chief rabbi his "dear friend." Every outrage that was offered to the latter was looked upon by the king as a personal insult to himself. He further renewed and confirmed the privileges and liberties of the Jews which they had received from Henry I, including the remarkable provision that a Christian was bound to prefer his complaint against a Jew before a Jewish tribunal. The Jews, it is true, had to pay much money--4000 silver marks--for these generous concessions. But it was a great boon that they received protection and freedom of movement in return for their money. When the Jews were in peril from a London mob, John wrote a threatening letter to the authorities of the capital, reproaching them with the fact that, whilst the Jews in other parts of England were unmolested, those of London were exposed to injury, and stating that he would hold them responsible for all bodily and material damage suffered by the Jews. As, however, John proceeded to quarrel more and more with his barons, and became involved in oppressive money difficulties, he gradually abandoned his mild demeanor, which had never been genuine, and adopted a totally different attitude towards the Jews. On one occasion he imprisoned all the English Jews in order to extort money from them (1210), and he demanded from one Jew of Bristol alone the sum of 10,000 marks of silver. As the latter could not, or would not pay, John had his teeth extracted one by one.
The crushing antipathy against them from all sides, and their yearning for the Holy Land, which the poet Jehuda Halevi had aroused, induced more than 300 rabbis of France and England to emigrate to Jerusalem (1211). The most renowned of them were Jonathan Cohen of Lünel, who had been in correspondence with Maimuni, and was one of his admirers, and Samson ben Abraham, an opponent of the school of Maimonides. Many of the emigrants stopped on their way at Cairo in order to make the acquaintance of Maimuni's son, who received them with great respect and joy. Only Samson ben Abraham, the exponent of a one-sided Judaism, avoided meeting the son of the man whom he considered almost a heretic.
The French and English emigrants, who were honorably received, and provided with privileges by the Sultan Aladil, Saladin's able brother, lost no time in building houses of prayer and learning in Jerusalem, and transplanted the Tossafists' method of exposition to the East. Intellectual activity, even in the field of the Talmud, did not, however, thrive in the Holy City. It seemed as if the curse of heaven had fallen upon this once glorious, and now distressed city, for since the Roman legions, under Titus and Hadrian, had struck down her noblest sons, she had become altogether barren. Not a single man of importance had sprung up in the city since the destruction of the Synhedrion. Jerusalem, like the whole of Palestine, was notable only on account of its illustrious dead. Pious men, who yearned for the home of their ancestors, searched only for their graves, for living fountains were no longer there. Jonathan Cohen and his associates conscientiously visited the spot upon which the Temple had once stood, the graves of the patriarchs, kings, prophets and doctors of the Mishna, and wept, and prayed upon the ruins of departed glory. They met the Exilarch David, of Mosul, who bore a letter of recommendation from the Caliph Alnasir Ledin Allah, which secured him free access to every place of interest. In the East the Jews were still allowed to maintain a certain show of dignity; caliphs and sultans, the wielders of the spiritual and the worldly might, granted them so much--for money. In Europe, however, the very lives of the Jews were continually in peril from a fanaticism which was ever being goaded into activity.
The Almohade Prince of the Faithful, Mahomet Alnasir, of northern Africa, had called to arms the entire male population at his disposal for a holy war against the increasing power of the Christians in Mahometan Spain, and led at least half a million warriors across the sea into Andalusia. The strong city of Salvatierra, in spite of the gallant defense of the knightly order of Calatrava, fell into the hands of the Mahometans (September, 1211). In this long siege, the Jewish community of Salvatierra was destroyed, and a remnant fled to Toledo. The Christian kings of Spain, terrified by this danger, laid aside their mutual hostilities in order to oppose the powerful enemy with united forces. But as the Christian population of Spain did not feel itself strong enough to undertake a war against the Mahometans, Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile, appealed to Innocent to decree a general crusade against the Crescent, and the Pope very readily consented. Thus it was that many European warriors crossed the Pyrenees, amongst them the bloodthirsty Cistercian monk, Arnold, with his troops, who had assured themselves of future bliss by all sorts of barbarities practised on the Albigenses and the Jews of the south of France. The wrath of the Ultramontanes, as they were called, in contradistinction to the Spanish warriors, against everything that was not Roman Catholic had risen to the point of frenzy; they took umbrage at the comparatively happy state of the Jews in the Spanish capital, at their wealth, their freedom, and their importance at court. These foreign crusaders, animated by Arnold's violent fanaticism, suddenly attacked the Jews of Toledo, and killed many of them (June, 1212), and all the Jews would have fared very badly, had not the noble Alfonso interfered in their behalf, and had not the Christian knights and citizens of Toledo, animated by a sense of honor, repelled the attacks of the fanatics. This was the first persecution of the Jews in Castile, the attack, however, being made by foreigners, and disapproved by the natives.
The Church, however, soon educated the Spanish kings and the people to become the enemies of the Jews. The extraordinary change of sentiment towards the Jews which had set in since Innocent's pontificate was shown by a resolution of the Synod of Paris of the same year. King Louis VII, and even his son Philip, had stoutly resisted the canonical institute which provided that the Jews were not to employ Christian servants. But now the French councils, under the presidency of the papal legates, and with the consent of the king, sought to extend this narrow-minded provision, so that not only was a Christian woman prohibited from nursing a Jewish child, but a Christian midwife was not even allowed to attend upon a Jewish woman in confinement, because Christians, who stayed with Jews, took a liking to Judaism. It was with reason, therefore, that the Jews, on hearing of the formation of a new council, were greatly alarmed lest they should be subjected to a new species of tyranny. When, therefore, the papal legate, Peter, of Benevento, convened a synod in Montpellier (beginning of 1214), to which he invited priests and laymen, in order completely to divest the Count of Toulouse of his dominions, and hand them over to Simon de Montfort, and to adopt the severest measures against the remnant of the Albigenses, the Jews of the south of France felt that a great danger was menacing them, and at once took steps to avert it. At the instance of the illustrious Don Isaac (Zag) Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king of Aragon, many Jewish congregations sent each two deputies to use their influence with clergymen and laymen, that no new restrictions might be imposed upon the Jews. And it seems that they succeeded in warding off the danger; for the council of Montpellier omitted all mention of the Jews in its deliberations.
Hardly had this local danger been averted, when another and more general one appeared to be advancing. This threw all those Jews who received tidings of it into the greatest consternation. Innocent III had, through an encyclical, pastoral letter, convoked to Rome the representatives of entire Christendom for a general Œcumenical Council, at which the energetic prosecution of the crusades against the Mahometans in the Holy Land, in the Pyrenean peninsula, and against the heretics of the south of France, was to be decided upon; the deposition of the Count of Toulouse, and the transference of his estates to Simon de Montfort were to be ratified, and the reformation of the Church, i. e., the extension of her power in the states, was to be promoted. The congregations of the south of France, who had been informed that a severe blow was about to be dealt the Jews at the meeting of this council, were completely staggered. Isaac Benveniste accordingly invited Jewish deputies to the town Bourg de St. Gilles, in order to select certain influential and able men as deputies to Rome, who should endeavor to prevent the enactment of resolutions against the Jews. The names of the delegates chosen for this purpose are unknown, because their labors proved fruitless. The great Fourth Lateran Council was presided over by Pope Innocent III, and comprised over 1200 deputies from many Christian states, both churchmen and laymen. At this council, the papacy was permitted to make the greatest demands ever preferred by it. To its action is due the founding of the two orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, distinguished by their hatred of freedom and their bloodthirstiness. This council, which wrapped round Christian Europe the ignominious coil of spiritual servitude, and threw it back into the ignorance of barbarism, inflicted deep wounds on Judaism. On the feast of the Maccabees, during which the children of Jacob celebrated their deliverance from Syrian tyranny, this council, which placed the yoke of the deepest degradation on the posterity of the Maccabean heroes, brought its deliberations to a conclusion (30th November, 1215). Though in the midst of gigantic undertakings, the Pope and the Elders of the Council nevertheless did not forget the Jews. Four of the seventy canonical decrees then passed dealt with the Jews. One canon set forth that Christian princes should keep strict watch over the Jews, lest they exact too high an interest from their Christian debtors. This restriction is not altogether unjustifiable--although, indeed, the Christian clergy and laity promoted Jewish usury, and profited by it; and Christian companies, like the Lombards and the Caorsini (called also Ultramontanes), practised usury on an enormous scale. The Church did not take any notice of the financial needs of the time, and kept to the strict letter of the Bible. The council, from its point of view, was also in a measure justified in forbidding baptized Jews to retain Jewish customs, because it would have been suicidal to the Church to allow freedom of conscience. If the accusation was true that some Jews at that time mocked at the Christian processions at Easter, then the authorities of the Church were partly right in forbidding them to show themselves openly on that day; although equitable legislation would not place restrictions on a whole community on account of the transgressions of a few indecorous members. Still more unjust was the canon which not only decreed that the Jews should give tithes of their houses and property, but also that the head of every Jewish family should pay a yearly tax at the Easter festival. The Catholic clergy considered themselves lords, to whom the Jews, their subjects, were to bring tribute. But it was characteristic of the spirit of Innocent, the persecutor of the Albigenses, that the law was renewed, that "no Christian prince shall bestow any office on a Jew." The transgressor of this rule was to be punished with excommunication, and every Jewish official was to be excluded from the society of Christians until he resigned his office in disgrace. The council, however, was unable to bring forward even a show of reason for this canonical decree; neither the New Testament, nor the Fathers of the Church, however much they hated the Jews, had offered a precedent for it. The Lateran Synod was compelled to go back to the Provincial Council of Toledo, under Recared, king of the Catholic Visigoths, in order to find a precedent for this scandalous law. The depth of the degradation of the Jews, however, was reached by the decision of the council that Jews in all Christian countries and at all times should wear a dress differing from that of the Christians. The reason urged was that in many countries where Jews (and Mahometans) wore the ordinary costume, intermarriages took place between the Jews and the Christians. By a sophistical argument it was shown that this law was contained in the Bible, and that Moses had commanded the Jews to wear a peculiar dress. Therefore it was decreed that, from the twelfth year of their age, Jews were to wear a peculiar color as a badge of their race, the men, on their hats, and the women, on their veils. This stigma on the Jews was an invention of Pope Innocent and of the Fourth Council assembled at Rome. It cannot, however, be strictly called an invention, because the pope borrowed the idea of forcing the Jews to wear a peculiar badge from the fanatical Mahometans. The Almohade Prince of the Faithful of Africa and southern Spain, Abu-Yussuff Almansur, had forced those Jews who had adopted the Mahometan faith through compulsion to wear a hideous dress, heavy clothes with long sleeves, which almost reached the feet, and instead of turbans, large bonnets of the ugliest shape. Said this fanatic: "If I knew that the converted Jews had adopted the Mahometan belief with an upright heart, then I would allow them to intermarry with the Mussulmans. If, on the other hand, I were convinced that they are still sceptics, I would put the men to the sword, enslave their children, and confiscate their goods. But I am doubtful about this point; therefore they shall appear distinguished by a hateful uniform." His successor, Abu-Abdullah Mahomet Alnasir, allowed them to change this mean apparel for yellow garments and turbans. By this color the class of people who were outwardly Moslems, yet in their heart of hearts still Jews, was characterized in the first decade of the thirteenth century in the kingdom of Morocco. This barbarous treatment of the Jews, Pope Innocent III now imitated, and their greatest humiliation during six centuries of European life dates from November 30th, 1215.
Provincial councils, assemblies of estates and royal cabinets thenceforward, in addition to their deliberations on the exclusion of the Jews from all honors and offices, determined on the color, form, length and breadth of the Jew-badge, with pedantic thoroughness. The Jew-badge, square or round in form, of saffron yellow or some other color, on the hat or on the mantle, was an invitation to the gamin to insult the wearers, and to bespatter them with mud; it was a suggestion to stupid mobs to fall on them, to maltreat, and even kill them; and it afforded the higher class an opportunity to ostracize the Jews, to plunder them, or to exile them.
Worse than this outward dishonor was the influence of the badge on the Jews themselves. They became more and more accustomed to their ignominious position, and lost all feeling of self-respect. They neglected their outward appearance, because they were nothing but a despised, dishonored race, which could not have even the least claim to honor. They became more and more careless of their speech, because they were not admitted to cultured circles, and in their own midst they could make themselves understood by means of a jargon. They lost all taste and sense of beauty, and to some extent became as despicable as their enemies desired them to be. They lost their manliness and courage, and a child could place them in terror. The punishment which Isaiah had prophesied for the house of Jacob was fulfilled to the letter: "Thou shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust." The great misery of the Jews during the Middle Ages began with Pope Innocent III. In comparison with their subsequent sufferings, all foregoing persecutions from the beginning of the Christian domination seemed like innocent bantering. But the Jews did not readily comply with the decree which forced them to wear the mark of shame. This was especially the case with the communities in Spain and southern France, which, having held an honorable position, would not suffer themselves to be humiliated without a struggle. Besides, there were influential Jews at the courts of Toledo and Saragossa, either as ambassadors to foreign courts or as treasurers of the royal coffers, who exerted their utmost efforts to prevent the enforcement of the decree. When Pope Innocent III died (1216), and Pope Honorius III, who was of a mild temperament compared with Innocent, ascended the papal throne, the Jews hoped for a repeal of this canonical law. Isaac Benveniste seems to have been particularly active in this direction, as he had been in trying to ward off the disgrace when first contemplated. They were successful in delaying the enforcement of the canonical decree. At least, King Alfonso IX of Leon did not compel the Jews of his land to wear the badge, and Pope Honorius was compelled to exhort the bishop of Valencia and two brother bishops to see that the decree was duly enforced, and that all Jews were excluded from offices of honor. The communities of southern France viewed with joy the victorious progress of the army of the repeatedly excommunicated Raymund VII of Toulouse against the crusading army and Simon de Montfort, because their security depended on the victory of the Albigenses. The Duke of Toulouse and his barons, in spite of their oaths, continued to promote Jews to offices, for they saw that their administrative policy would lead to their advantage. It may be that it was on account of the secret and open devotion of the Jews for Raymund that Simon de Montfort's wife Alice of Montmorency, ordered all the Jews of Toulouse--of which town she had charge--to be arrested, offering them the choice between death and conversion, although her husband, as well as his brother, had sworn to the Jews that their lives would be safe, and that freedom should be allowed them for the due exercise of their religion. At the same time, Alice ordered that Jewish children under the age of six should be torn from their parents, and given over to the priests in order to be baptized and brought up as Christians. The heartless woman had no feeling for the pangs that the Jewish mothers suffered. In spite of this, the majority of the members of the Toulouse community refused to become Christians.
When, however, Simon de Montfort heard of this cruel persecution of the Jews by his wife, he ordered the prisoners to be released, and to be allowed to practise their religion in freedom. The joy of the unhappy people when they were told of this deliverance (1 Ab--7th July, 1217) was great, but it was mixed with sadness, for the Cardinal-Legate Bertrand had decided that the children that had been baptized should not be allowed to return to their parents. The legate also insisted upon the Jews' wearing the distinctive badge. In the meantime, there came a counter-command from the Pope, that the decree should not be too strictly enforced, but the cause of this change in the papal policy is unknown. In Aragon the Jews obtained the same immunity from the indignity of the Jew-badge through the untiring efforts of Isaac Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king, Jayme I (Jacob). This illustrious man had rendered the king such important services that the latter, with the consent of the bishops of the country, recommended him to the Pope, and strove to obtain for him recognition from the papal chair. Wonderful to relate, Honorius took up the matter, and, in recognition of his merits in eschewing usury, and zealously assisting Catholics, sent Isaac Benveniste a diploma that he should in nowise be molested. For his sake also the Jews were exempted from wearing the badge (1220).
However friendly Honorius affected to be in this matter, he was nevertheless far from being disposed to countenance the appointment of Jews to posts of dignity. In an autograph letter of the same year, he exhorted King Jayme of Aragon not to entrust any Jew with the office of ambassador to a Mahometan court, for it was not probable "that those who abhorred Christianity would prove themselves faithful to its professors." In this spirit the pope wrote to the archbishop of Tarragona, to the bishops of Barcelona and Ilerda, to prevail on the king of Aragon to employ no Jews in diplomatic legations, and to abolish a practice so perilous to Christendom. The pope also exhorted the Church dignitaries of Toledo, Valencia, Burgos, Leon, and Zamora, to use their influence with the kings of Castile, Leon, and Navarre for the same purpose. How little did the pope know the incorruptible fidelity of the Jews towards their sovereigns, and their love for the land of their birth! So far from abusing the trust reposed in them, the Jewish ambassadors applied the utmost zeal in executing their commission successfully. But since Innocent III, it had become a fixed principle of the Church to degrade and humiliate the Jews. Although Honorius had exempted the Jews of Aragon from wearing the badge of disgrace, he insisted that those of England should not be released from it.
In that country, Stephen Langton, who had been appointed archbishop by the Pope, held the reins of government, after the death of the mad tyrant John Lackland, and during the minority of his son Henry III. This prelate exercised his power as if he were the wearer of the crown. At the council of Oxford, which he summoned in 1222, several decrees with reference to the oppression of the Jews were promulgated. They were not to keep any Christian servants, and were not to build any new synagogues. They were to be held to the payment of the tithe of their produce and the Church taxes, according to the decision of the Lateran council. Above all things they were to be compelled to wear on the breast the disgraceful badge, a woolen stripe four fingers long and two broad, of a color different from the dress. They might not enter the churches, and still less, as had hitherto been their custom, might they place their treasures there for security from the attacks of the brigand nobles. These restrictions were imposed on the English Jews because they had been guilty of monstrous crimes, and had proved themselves ungrateful; but the nature of their crime is not mentioned. Was perhaps the fact that a deacon had in the same year gone over to Judaism, laid to their charge? In after years such an occurrence caused the expulsion of the Jews from England. This time the deacon was summarily burnt at the stake for his apostasy. The Church knew no more effective means of refuting a heresy than the blazing fire.
It is remarkable that the hostile measures of the Pope against the Jews at that time had least effect in Germany, and that under Emperor Frederick II they enjoyed a comparatively favorable position. It is true that they were "servi cameræ" of the empire and the emperor, and were even so called; but nevertheless princes, especially the archdukes of Austria, now and again entrusted into their hands important offices. Those Jews who had access to the courts of the princes always labored to free themselves from the Jew-tax, and to obtain privileges from their patrons. As, however, it was the custom in the German congregations to distribute the tax among all the members of the congregation in proportion to their means, it happened that if the richer and more influential men obtained exemption from it, the poorer members found themselves greatly encumbered, and accordingly complaints were made about it to the rabbinical authorities of that time. A synod of rabbis, which met at Mayence (Tammuz--July, 1223), discussed this question, for the purpose of adjusting it. There were at this synod, which numbered more than twenty members, the most influential rabbis in Germany: David ben Kalonymos, of Münzenburg (in Hesse-Darmstadt), a famous Tossafist; Baruch ben Samuel, of Mayence, composer of a Talmudical work; Chiskiya ben Reuben, of Boppard, the courageous champion of his persecuted co-religionists; Simcha ben Samuel, of Speyer, likewise a Talmudical author; Eleazar ben Joel Halevi, called Abi-Ezri, from his Talmudical works; lastly, the German Kabbalist, Eleazar ben Jehuda of Worms, called Rokeach, a prolific author, who, through his mysticism, helped to obscure the light of thought in Judaism.
This rabbinical synod of Mayence renewed many ordinances of the times of Rabbenu Tam, and established others besides. Its decisions mark the condition of the German Jews in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The synod enacted that Jews should on no account incur blame by dishonorable dealings with Christians, or by the counterfeiting of coin. An informer was to be compelled to make good the loss which he had caused by his information. Those who had freedom of access to the king (emperor), were none the less under the obligation to bear the communal burden in raising the tax. He who received a religious office through Christian authorities incurred the penalty of excommunication. In the synagogues, devotion and decorum were to prevail. The brother-in-law was to complete the release of his widowed sister-in-law from her levirate marriage without extortion of money and without trickery, and he was not to keep her in suspense. He who would not submit to the regulations of the synod, or did not respect a sentence of excommunication, was to be delivered over to the secular power. The determination of disputed cases was left to the rabbinate and the congregations of Mayence, Worms, and Speyer, as the oldest German Jewish communities.
In spite of the many exertions of the cultured Jews to avert the disgrace of wearing the badge, papal intolerance gradually gained the ascendancy, and the edict of the Lateran Council of 1215 henceforth had sway. Even Emperor Frederick II, the most intelligent and enlightened prince that Germany ever had, whose orthodoxy was more than doubtful, had at length to bow to the will of the papacy, and introduce the Jew-badge by law in his hereditary provinces of Naples and Sicily.
In southern France, where, in consequence of the war against the Albigenses, the spirit of persecution had been intensified among the clergy more perhaps than in other Christian countries, the edicts of Innocent III for the degradation and humiliation of the Jews found only too zealous supporters. At a council at Narbonne (1227), not only were the canonical ordinances against them confirmed, the prohibition of taking interest, the wearing of the Jew-badge, the payment of a tax to the Church, but even the long-forgotten decrees of the ancient time of the Merovingian kings were renewed against them. The Jews were not allowed to be seen in the streets at Easter, and they were prohibited from leaving their houses during the festival.
In the next year the Albigensian war came to an end, and the horrors of a blind, revengeful, bloodthirsty reaction began. The preacher-monks, the disciples of Domingo, glorified Christianity through the agonies of the rack and the stake. Whoever was in possession of a Bible in the Romance (Provençal) language incurred the charge of heresy at the court of the Dominicans, who had the exclusive right to bloodthirsty persecutions. Their allies, the Franciscans or Minorites, energetically seconded them. It was not long before these destroying angels in monks' cowls placed their clutches upon the sons of Jacob.
Four men appeared simultaneously on the stage of history, who were thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, and especially with its oppressive, unlovely, inhuman form, and they rendered the life of the Jews in many countries an inconceivable torture. The first was Pope Gregory IX, a passionate old man, the deadly enemy of Emperor Frederick II, whose sole ambition was the extension of the power of the Church and the destruction of his opponents, who cast the torch of discord into the German Empire, and annihilated its unity and greatness. The second was King Louis IX of France, who had acquired the name of "the Saint," from the simplicity of his heart and the narrowness of his head; he was a most pliant tool for crafty monks, a worshiper of relics, who was strongly inclined to adopt a monk's cowl, and most readily assisted in the persecution of heretics, and who hated the Jews so thoroughly that he would not look at them. Similar to him was his contemporary Ferdinand III of Castile, who inherited also the crown of Leon, and was likewise recognized by the Church as a saint, because he burnt heretics with his own hand. Lastly, the Dominican-General Raymond de Penyaforte (Peñaforte), the most frantic oppressor of the heretics, who applied all his efforts to convert Jews and Mahometans to Christianity. In this spirit he exercised his influence upon the kings of Aragon and Castile, and caused seminaries to be established, where instruction in Hebrew and Arabic was given, in order that these languages might be employed for the conversion of Jews and Saracens. These tyrannical, pitiless enemies, furnished with every resource, were let loose upon the Jews. Gregory IX exhorted the bishop of Valencia (1229) to crush the arrogance of the Jews towards the Christians, as if the Church were hovering in the greatest peril. Consequently, under Jayme I, of Aragon, the position of the Jews of Aragon and of the provinces belonging to it took an evil turn. Spurred on by clerical fanaticism and by greed for gold, this king declared the Jews to be his clients, i. e. in a manner, his "servi cameræ."
Everywhere the hostile spirit which first proceeded from Innocent, and was spread by the Dominicans, assumed the form of severe laws against the Jews. At two Church assemblies, in Rouen and Tours (1231), the hostile decrees of the Lateran Council against the Jews were re-enacted, and at the latter meeting another restriction was added, the Jews were not to be admitted as witnesses against Christians, because much evil might arise from the testimony of Jews.
The narrow-minded disposition of the Church towards the Jews was felt, through the increased power of the papacy after Innocent, even by the Jews dwelling on the banks of the Lower Danube and the Theiss. In Hungary they had settled at a very early date, having immigrated thither from the Byzantine and Chazar empires. Since there were many heathen and Mahometans among the dominant Magyars, the kings had to be very tolerant towards them; besides this, the Christianity of the Magyars was only superficial, and had not yet affected their feeling and mode of thought. Consequently, the Jews of Hungary from time immemorial had had the right of coinage, and were in friendly relations with their German brethren. Till the thirteenth century, Jews as well as Mahometans were farmers of salt mines, and of the taxes, and filled various royal offices. Mixed marriages between Jews and Christians also occurred frequently, as the Church had not yet established itself in the country. This enjoyment of dignities by the Jews in a country only half Christian, could not be tolerated by the Church: it was a thorn in its side. Accordingly when King Andreas, who had quarreled with the magnates of the country, and had been compelled to issue a charter of liberty, applied to Pope Gregory IX for help, the latter, in a letter to Robert, Archbishop of Gran, ordered him to compel the king to deprive both Jews and Mahometans of their public offices. Andreas at first submitted to the papal will, but did not carry out the orders of the Pope zealously, because he could not well dispense with his Jewish officials and farmers. On this account and for other grounds of complaint, the archbishop of Gran passed sentence of excommunication on the king and his followers by order of the Pope (beginning of 1232). By various strong measures, Andreas was at last compelled to obey, and, like Raymund, of Toulouse, solemnly to promise (1232) that he would not admit Jews or Saracens to offices, nor suffer any Christian slaves to continue in their possession, nor allow mixed marriages, and lastly that he would compel them to wear a badge. The same oath had to be taken, by order of the papal legate, by the crown prince, the king of Slavonia, and all the magnates and dignitaries of the kingdom.
XVI. THE MAIMUNIST CONTROVERSY AND THE RISE OF THE KABBALA
The Opposition against Maimuni--Maimunists and anti-Maimunists--Meïr Abulafia--Samson of Sens--Solomon of Montpellier--Excommunication of the Maimunists--David Kimchi's energetic Advocacy of Maimuni--Nachmani--His Character and Work--His Relations to Maimuni, Ibn-Ezra, and the Kabbala--Solomon of Montpellier calls in the aid of the Dominicans--Moses of Coucy--Modern date of the Kabbala --Azriel and Ezra--Doctrines of the Kabbala--Jacob ben Sheshet Gerundi--The Bahir--Three Parties in Judaism --Last flicker of the Neo-Hebraic Poetry--The Satirical Romance: Al-Charisi and Joseph ben Sabara.
1232-1236 C. E.
As misfortunes never come singly, but draw others after them, so besides the insults and humiliations which the Jews suffered from without, there now arose alarming disunion within their ranks. Remarkably enough, this intestine war was associated with Maimuni, whose aim, during his whole life, had been to effect union and complete finality in Judaism. But in undertaking to explain philosophically the intellectual side of Judaism, he established principles which did not by any means bear a Jewish stamp on them, nor were they in consonance with the Bible, and still less with the Talmud. Those scholars whose learning was entirely confined to the Talmud ignored the philosophical discussion of Judaism, considered it sinful to be occupied with other branches of knowledge, even when applied to the service of Judaism, and took their stand, right or wrong, on the Talmudical saying, "Withhold your children from excessive reflection." Even intelligent men, and such as were philosophically trained, recognized that Maimuni, in his endeavor to reconcile religion with the philosophy of the age, had made the former subservient to the latter, and had made the mistress over the mind a slave. Articles of belief and Scriptural verses, which do not admit of philosophical justification, have no value according to Maimuni's system. Miracles were not inevitable in Maimuni's philosophy; but attempts were made to reduce them as far as possible to natural causes, and to interpret in a rationalistic manner the Biblical verses which contain them. Prophecy and direct communication with the Deity, as it is taught in the Bible, Maimuni refused to accept, but explained them as subjective occurrences, as effects of an over-heated imagination, or as dream-phenomena. His doctrine of immortality was not less in contradiction with the belief of Talmudical Judaism. It denies the existence of a paradise and a hell, and represents the purified soul as becoming fused with the original spirit. His method of explaining many ceremonial laws especially provoked contradiction, because, if accepted, these laws would lose their permanent value, and have only temporary importance. And the manner in which Maimuni expressed himself on the Agada, a constituent part of the Talmud--which he either explained away or rejected--was in the eyes, not only of the strict Talmudists, but also of more educated men, an heretical attack upon Judaism, which they believed it was their duty to energetically repel. Thus, besides enthusiastic worshipers of Maimuni, who religiously adopted his doctrine as a new revelation, there was formed a party, which assailed his writings, and combated particularly the "Guide of the Perplexed" (Moré), and the first part of his Code (Madda). The rabbis and the representatives of the Jewish congregations in Europe and Asia, consequently became divided into Maimunists and opponents to Maimuni (Anti-Maimunists). Such of the latter as were his contemporaries, still full of the powerful impression which Maimuni's individuality and activity had produced, fully acknowledged his genius and piety, and blamed or criticised his views only, and the writings which contained them.
The opposition to his philosophical doctrines had begun during Maimuni's life, but it remained quiet and timid, unable to assert itself against the enthusiasm of his admirers. A young, intellectual, and learned man, Meïr ben Todros Halevi Abulafia, of Toledo (born about 1180, died 1244), had, at an early period, expressed his religious objections to Maimuni's theory in a letter to the "wise men of Lünel," which was intended for publication. Maimuni's doctrine of immortality forms the central point of Abulafia's attack. He made, however, but little impression by this letter, for although Meïr Abulafia was descended from a highly respectable family, and enjoyed considerable authority, still his hostile attitude towards science, and his tendency towards an ossified Judaism, isolated him even in his own circle. Apart from this, he was possessed of overweening arrogance, a quality not calculated to win adherents and organize a party. Instead of finding supporters, Meïr met with a sharp rebuff from the learned Aaron ben Meshullam, of Lünel, who was master of the sciences and the Talmud, and a warm adherent of Maimuni. He charged him with presumption in venturing, though unripe in years and wisdom, to pass an opinion on the greatest man of his time. The Talmudists of northern France, led by Samson of Sens, to whom every letter of the Talmud was an embodiment of the highest truths, and who would not countenance any new interpretations, thoroughly concurred with the inquisitor Meïr Abulafia. Meïr was looked upon in his time as chief of the Obscurantists. The aged Sheshet Benveniste, of Barcelona, ever a warm friend of free research, composed a sarcastic epigram upon him:
"You ask me, friends, why this man's name, Seeing he walks in darkness, should be Meïr.[4] I answer, the sages have called the night 'light,' This, too, is an example of the rule of contraries."
Another poet directed the arrows of his wit against Abulafia, but its points are untranslatable. The Maimunists were generally vastly superior to their adversaries in knowledge and speech, and they could expose the enemies of light to ridicule.
The hostility against Maimuni appeared also in the East, but not so strongly. A learned Talmudist, Daniel ben Saadiah, a disciple of the Samuel ben Ali who had conducted himself so maliciously against the sage of Fostat, had settled in Damascus, and animated by the spirit of his master against the Maimunist tendency, he conceived it his duty to continue to make it the target of his hostility. Daniel, in the first place, impugned Maimuni's Talmudical decisions in order to weaken the position on which his commanding influence rested, for it was through Maimuni's acknowledged rabbinical authority that his philosophical, or according to his opponents, his heretical, doctrines found such dangerous and general acceptance. Daniel, however, thought it advisable to maintain a respectful tone towards him; he even sent his polemic to Abraham Maimuni for examination. Afterwards Daniel, in an exegetical work, allowed himself to make veiled attacks upon Maimuni's orthodoxy, and curiously enough reproached him with not believing in the existence of evil spirits. His main argument, however, was not strictly concerned with the existence or non-existence of demons, but sought to demonstrate that Maimuni was a heretic, because he had refused to acknowledge unconditionally, as correct and true, utterances which occur in the Talmud. Maimuni's admirers, however, were greatly exasperated at these attacks of Daniel, and Joseph Ibn-Aknin, Maimuni's favorite pupil, urged Abraham Maimuni to pass sentence of excommunication on Daniel ben Saadiah. Abraham, however, who had inherited his father's disinterestedness and love of justice, would not hear of it. He expressed himself on the subject with meritorious impartiality, saying that he did not think it right to excommunicate Daniel, whom he considered a religious man of pure belief, who had only made a mistake in one point; moreover, that as he was a party in this controversy, he did not feel himself empowered to excommunicate an antagonist in a matter that was to some extent personal. Maimuni's admirers, and especially Joseph Ibn-Aknin, were not, however, disposed to take the same view. They labored to induce the Exilarch David of Mosul to exclude from the community the blameless and esteemed scholar of Damascus, until he should humbly recant his strictures upon Maimuni. Daniel was excommunicated, and died of grief, and all opposition to Maimuni in the East was silenced for a long time. The Asiatic Jews were still so overpowered by the glamour of his name, that they could not think of him as a heretic. Nor were they learned enough to grasp the range of Maimuni's ideas, and to perceive their incompatibility with the spirit of the Talmud. It may also be that his admirer, Jonathan Cohen, who had emigrated to Palestine, had won the pious to his side, and had defeated the party of Samson of Sens, which was inimical to him.
Very different was the state of affairs in Europe, especially in the south of France and in Spain. Here Maimuni's theories had taken root, and dominated the minds of the learned and of most of the influential leaders of congregations; henceforth they regarded the Bible and the Talmud only in the Maimunist light. The pious Jews of Spain and Provence endeavored to reconcile the contradictions between Talmudical Judaism and Maimuni's system, by a method of interpretation. The less religious used his system as a support for their lukewarmness in the performance of their religious duties; they expressed themselves more freely about the Bible and the Talmud, practically neglected many precepts, and were bent on re-organizing Judaism on a rationalistic basis. Among the Jews of southern Spain, this lukewarmness towards the Law went so far that not a few contracted marriages with Christian and Mahometan women. The excessively pious, whose whole life was absorbed by the Talmud, mistaking cause for effect, considered these distressing occurrences as a poisonous fruit of the philosophical seed, and prophesied the decay of Judaism, if Maimuni's theories should gain the ascendancy. Nevertheless considerable time elapsed before any one ventured to make a decisive stand against them. The rabbis of northern France, who were of the same way of thinking as Samson of Sens, knew little of Maimuni's philosophical writings and their effects, while the rabbis of southern France and of Spain, who were guided absolutely by the Talmud, may have thought it dangerous and useless to try to stem the overwhelming flood of free thought.
It was, therefore, looked upon as a most audacious step, when a rabbi of the school which followed the Talmud with unquestioning faith, openly and recklessly declared war against the Maimunists. This was Solomon ben Abraham, of Montpellier, a pious, honorable man, learned in the Talmud, but of perverted notions, whose whole world was the Talmud, beyond which nothing was worthy of credence. Not only the legal decisions of the Talmud were accepted by him as irrefutable truths, but also the Agadic portions in their naked literalness. He and his friends conceived the Deity as furnished with eyes, ears, and other human organs, sitting in heaven upon a throne, surrounded by darkness and clouds. Paradise and Hell they painted in Agadic colors; the righteous were to enjoy, in the heavenly garden of Eden, the flesh of the Leviathan and old wine, stored up from the beginning of the world in celestial flasks, and the godless, the heretics, and the transgressors of the Law were to be scourged, tortured, and burnt in the hell-fire of Gehenna. The rabbis of this school believed in the existence of evil spirits; it was in a manner an article of faith with them, for the Talmudical Agada recognizes them as existing.
Adopting a theory so gross and anthropomorphic, Solomon of Montpellier could not help finding nearly every word in Maimuni's compositions un-Jewish and heretical. He felt it incumbent on him to make reply; he saw in the toleration of the Maimunist views the dissolution of Judaism, and he entered the lists against their exponents and champions. But with what weapons? The Middle Ages knew of no more effective instrument than excommunication to destroy ideas apparently pernicious. He attempted to compel men, who towered head and shoulders above their contemporaries, and held different opinions on religion from the thoughtless crowd, to seal up their ideas in themselves, or to recant them as vicious errors, by shutting them off from all intercourse with their co-religionists. At about the same time Pope Gregory directed the University of Paris, the upholder of the free philosophical spirit till the rise of the Dominicans and Franciscans, to adhere strictly in its curriculum to the canon of the Lateran Council, and on peril of excommunication, to avoid using those philosophical writings which had been interdicted by it. This precedent, together with his bigoted, passionate nature, may have induced Solomon of Montpellier to introduce a censorship of thought into the Jewish world, and to crush the Maimunist heresy by excommunication. But to appear single-handed against the Maimunists, whose number was large, and who ruled public opinion, could but ruin his cause. Solomon sought for allies, but could not find a single rabbi in southern France who was ready to take part in the denunciation of the Maimunist school. Only two of his pupils came to his aid--Jonah ben Abraham Gerundi (the elder) of Gerona, a blind zealot like his master, and David ben Saul. These three pronounced the ban (beginning of 1232) against all those who read Maimuni's compositions, especially the philosophical parts (Moré and Madda), against those who studied anything except the Bible and the Talmud, against those who distorted the plain literal sense of Holy Writ, or, in general, expounded the Agada differently from Rashi. Solomon and his allies explained the reasons for their sentence of excommunication in a letter to the public, and laid special stress on the point that Maimuni's line of argument undermined Talmudical Judaism. They did not hesitate even to vilify the venerated sage: it might be true, they said, that he had once lived strictly in accordance with the Talmud, yet instances were known in which still greater men had become renegades from the Law in their old age. Solomon at first thought of invoking the secular power of the Christian authorities to aid him in oppressing free thought. For the present, however, he looked for supporters among the rabbis of northern France. These, belonging to the acute but one-sided Tossafist school, and having grown hoary in the Talmud, did not for a moment appreciate the necessity of establishing Judaism on a rational and scientific basis, and nearly all of them adopted Solomon's opinion, and took sides against the Maimunists.
The sentence of excommunication, the proscription of science, and the defamation of Maimuni, excited the violent indignation of his admirers. It seemed to them unheard-of audacity, unparalleled impudence. The three chief congregations of Provence, Lünel, Béziers, and Narbonne, in which the Maimunists were in power, rose against this presumption of the Obscurantists, and on their side excommunicated Solomon and his two disciples, and hastened to urge the other congregations of Provence to unite in rescuing the honor of the great Moses. In Montpellier the congregation was divided into two parties; whilst the ignorant multitude remained by their rabbi, the learned renounced their allegiance, and violent frays between them were not infrequent. The flame of discord blazed up, and spread over the congregations of Provence, Catalonia, Aragon, and Castile. The contest was carried on by both sides with intense passion, and not entirely with honorable weapons. Simple faith and a philosophical apprehension of religion, which had till then maintained friendly relations, now met in a conflict, which threatened to lead to a complete rupture and to schism. The worst of it was, that the parties were both justified, each from its own point of view; both could appeal to old and respected authorities, some of whom maintained that the Bible and the Talmud must be believed in without investigation and strained interpretation, while others held that reason also had a voice in religious matters.
Two men, whose names are celebrated in Jewish literature, took part in this passionate quarrel: David Kimchi and Nachmani. The former, already an old man and at the zenith of his fame as a grammarian and expositor of the Bible, was an enthusiastic admirer of Maimuni, and a friend of free investigation. He was consequently an object of suspicion to the Obscurantists, and the rabbis of northern France appear to have excommunicated him, because he had explained the vision of Ezekiel concerning the throne-chariot of God in a Maimunist sense, i. e., philosophically, and because he had maintained that Talmudical controversies would have no significance in the Messianic period, or in other words, that the Talmud has no right to advance pretensions to perpetual authority. Kimchi accordingly took up the cudgels for Maimuni all the more promptly, as he had at the same time to defend his own cause. Old and weak as he was, he nevertheless did not hesitate to undertake a journey to Spain, in order personally to bring the congregations of that country over to the side of the Provençals against Solomon of Montpellier.
Another man of commanding influence in this struggle was Moses ben Nachman, or Nachmani (Ramban) Gerundi, a fellow-citizen and relative of Jonah Gerundi (born about 1195, died about 1270). Nachmani, or as he was called in the language of the country, Bonastruc de Porta, was a man of sharply-defined and strongly-marked individuality, with all the strength and weakness of such a character. Whilst of pure moral temperament and conscientious piety, mild disposition and acute understanding, he was completely governed by the belief in authority. The "wisdom of the sages" appeared to him unsurpassed and unsurpassable, and their clear utterances were neither to be doubted nor criticised. "He who occupies himself with the teachings of the sages, drinks old wine," was Nachmani's firm conviction. The whole wisdom of the later generations, according to his view, consisted entirely in fathoming the meaning of their great ancestors, to acquire a knowledge of it, and derive precedents from it. Not only the Holy Writ in its entire scope, and the Talmud in its entire range, but even the Geonim and their immediate disciples till Alfassi, were for him infallible authorities, and their conduct worthy of emulation. Within this compass he had intelligent notions, correct judgments and a clear mind, but beyond it he could not proceed, nor could he start from an original position. Nachmani was a physician, and had, therefore, studied science a little; he was learned in other branches, and familiar with philosophical literature. But metaphysical speculation, to which he would not or could not apply himself, remained strange to him. The Talmud was for him all in all; in its light he regarded the world, the events of the past and the shaping of the future. In his youth, the study of the Talmud and the vindication of assailed authorities were Nachmani's favorite occupations. In about his fifteenth year (1210), he elaborated several Talmudical treatises, following the style and method of Alfassi.
In these works he shows so astounding an intimacy with the Talmud that no one would recognize them as the productions of a youth. They bear the stamp of complete maturity, show command over the subject, and reveal profound acumen. Not less splendid in its way was the second work of his youth, in which he sought to justify Alfassi's Talmudical decisions on questions of civil and marriage laws against the attack of Serachya Halevi Gerundi.
Nachmani had already commented upon several Talmudical treatises, and he continued this labor indefatigably, till he had furnished the greatest portion of the Talmud with explanations (Chidushim). Important as Nachmani's contributions may be in this province, they are in nowise original. The Talmud had been investigated too thoroughly during the centuries since Rashi and Alfassi, for Nachmani, or indeed any one else, to be able to establish anything absolutely new. Maimuni had seen clearly, with the insight of a comprehensive mind, that it was at length time to close accounts with commentaries on the Talmud, to declare for or against, and bring the whole to a conclusion. Nachmani did not pay attention to this result; Maimuni's gigantic religious code did not exist for him.
If he did not sympathize with Maimuni in his treatment of the Talmud, still less did he agree with him in his philosophical views on religion. Maimuni proceeded from a philosophical basis, and everywhere applied reason as the test of Judaism. Nachmani, on the other hand, like Jehuda Halevi, took as his starting-point the facts of Judaism, including even the narratives of the Talmud. For Maimuni the miracles of the Bible were inconvenient facts, and he endeavored as much as possible to reduce them to natural causes; the Talmudical miracle-tales he refused to consider. For Nachmani, on the other hand, the belief in miracles was the foundation of Judaism, on which its three pillars rested: the creation from nothing, the omniscience of God, and divine providence. But, although Nachmani shunned philosophy, he nevertheless advanced new ideas which, though not demonstrated by logical formulæ, deserve recognition. The ethical philosophy of Maimuni sought to elevate man above the accidents of life, by reminding him of his higher origin and his future bliss, and arming him with equanimity in order to render him insensible to pleasure and to pain. Nachmani, from his Talmudical point of view, strongly combated this philosophical or stoical indifference and apathy, and opposed to it the doctrine of Judaism, that "man should rejoice on the day of joy, and weep on the day of sorrow." Maimuni assumed, with the philosophers, that the sensual instincts are a disgrace to man, who is destined for a spiritual life. Nachmani was a strenuous opponent of this view. Since God, who is perfect, has created the world, it must all be good as it is, and nothing in it should be regarded as intrinsically objectionable and hateful.
Nachmani, who started from quite different principles, had consequently but very few points of agreement with Maimuni. Had they been contemporaries, they might have been attracted to each other by this very dissimilarity. If Judaism was for Maimuni a cult of the intellect, for Nachmani it was a religion of the feelings. According to the former, there was no secret in Judaism which could not be disclosed to thought; according to the latter, the mystical and the unknown were the holiest elements of Judaism, and were not to be profaned by reflection. The difference in their method is well illustrated by their views on the belief in demons. According to Maimuni, it is not only superstition but even heathenism to ascribe power to evil spirits. Nachmani, on the other hand, was firmly attached to this theory, and allowed the demons considerable place in his system of the world. Whilst he occasionally expressed his disapproval of Maimuni's views, paying him at the same time the greatest respect, he had a decided antipathy towards Ibn-Ezra. This exegetist, with his sceptical smile, his biting wit, and his scorn for mystery, was calculated to repel Nachmani. In his attacks upon Ibn-Ezra, Nachmani could not preserve the serenity of his temper, but used violent expressions against him, regarding him as the supporter of unbelief. But though Nachmani waged war against the philosophy of his age, as destructive of revealed Judaism, and denounced Aristotle as the teacher of error, he nevertheless looked with disfavor on blind belief and the exclusion of every rationalistic conception in religious matters. On this point he diverged from the teaching of the rabbis of northern France, whose strictly Talmudical tendency he otherwise followed. He was too much a son of Spain, in a manner enveloped by an atmosphere of philosophy, to be able to dismiss metaphysical research with contempt. His clear mind and his Spanish education would not permit Nachmani to follow the rabbis of northern France through thick and thin, nor to accept the Agadas in their literal sense, with all their anthropomorphic and offensive utterances. But on this point he became involved in self-contradiction. He could not reject the Agadic statements in toto, for he was too strongly dominated by belief in authority, and respect for the Talmud. If, when constrained by necessity, he here and there conceded that many Agadic sayings were to be considered only as rhetorical metaphors, as homiletic material, and that it was not a religious obligation to believe in them, he must not be supposed to be in full earnest. But, if the Agada is not to be believed in literally, it must be interpreted. This, however, was to make concessions to the Maimunist school. Accordingly, there was no escape from this dilemma except to admit that the Agada must be explained, but deny that Maimuni's mode of explanation was correct. There came to his aid the Kabbala, a new secret lore which claimed to be a primitive divine tradition, and it relieved his embarrassment in respect of the obnoxious Agadas. By means of this mystical theory, that which, from the point of view of the literalists, appears blasphemous, or meaningless and childish, was invested with deep, mysterious, and transcendental sense. Nachmani did not even shrink from justifying the perverse notion that the whole text of the Torah was simply the material made up of letters, out of which mystical names of God might be composed.
At the time when the sentence of excommunication was uttered against Maimuni's philosophical writings, Nachmani was not yet forty years old, but he even then was of such importance that even the haughty Meïr Abulafia paid him the tribute of his respect. He could, therefore, as rabbi of the congregation of Gerona, support either the one party or the other. He decided in favor of his friend Solomon and his nephew Jonah. As soon as he learnt that the former was excommunicated by the congregations of Provence, he hastened, without waiting to be properly informed of the whole affair, to send a missive to the communities of Aragon, Navarre, and Castile, saying, in substance, that they should not be carried away by the "hypocritical, false" Maimunists; but that they should wait till the opposite party had spoken its mind. Nachmani indeed regretted, in this letter, that the unity of Judaism, which from time immemorial had been maintained in all countries of the dispersion, should, through this controversy, threaten to be destroyed, and he recommended, on that account, prudence and calm deliberation. He himself, however, did not maintain this impartial attitude, but inclined more to the side of the party hostile to science. "If the French masters, at whose feet we sit, obscure the sunlight at mid-day, and cover the moon, they may not be contradicted"; thus he expresses himself at the very commencement.
But the majority of the congregations of Spain refused to be led into darkness. The chief congregation of Aragon, with its leader, the physician in ordinary and favorite of King Jayme, Bachiel Ibn-Alkonstantini, declared itself decisively in favor of Maimuni, and laid Solomon and his two allies under the ban, as long as they continued in their perverseness. Bachiel, his brother Solomon, and ten other influential men and leaders, sent a letter (Ab--August, 1232) to the congregations of Aragon, urging them to join their party, and repudiate those men "who have dared appear against that great power which has rescued us from the floods of ignorance, error and folly." The Maimunists in Saragossa pointed out that the opponents of science had put themselves in opposition to the Talmud. "Our sages teach us that we should philosophically explain to ourselves the unity of God. We ought to be acquainted with profane sciences, in order to know how to reply to the enemies of religion. Astronomy, geometry, and other branches which are so important to religion, cannot be learned out of the Talmud. The great doctor of the Talmud, Samuel, said of himself, 'that he knew the courses of the stars as well as the streets of his native place.' From these remarks it is evident that it was deemed a religious duty to acquire general knowledge. And now there appear three corrupters and misleaders of the people, who stain the reputation of the great Maimuni, wish to lead the communities into darkness, and forbid the reading of his philosophical writings, and the study of science generally." Bachiel Ibn-Alkonstantini, as the most influential man in Aragon, in a letter, summoned the congregations to strenuously oppose those who do not believe in God and his servant Moses (Maimuni). In consequence of this action, the four great congregations of Aragon--Huesca, Monzon, Calatayud, and Lerida--agreed with the Saragossa congregation to pass the sentence of excommunication upon Solomon and his two supporters. The eyes of the Maimunists and their adversaries were, however, turned to the congregation of Toledo, which was the largest, richest, most important and most educated in Spain. Its decision was able to incline the balance in favor of either the one side or the other. Here Jehuda bar Joseph, of the highly influential family of Ibn-Alfachar, who was probably physician in ordinary of King Ferdinand III, possessed the greatest authority. Hitherto he had not expressed his opinion either for or against Maimuni, but had observed a discreet silence. But the zealous rabbi of Toledo, Meïr Abulafia Halevi, the old antagonist of the Maimunist tendency, loudly raised his voice. He replied to the letters of Nachmani and of the Gerona congregation that they might make their minds easy, that neither he nor his friends would follow the "law-defiers of Provence," that there were certainly many in the congregation of Toledo who were infatuated by Maimuni and his philosophical writings, that he could not alter their mind, but if they should declare themselves against Solomon of Montpellier, he would repudiate them altogether, and acknowledge no community with them. For he considered Solomon's action a meritorious one. He himself had long recognized the dangerous character of the doctrines laid down in Maimuni's "Guide of the Perplexed"; they certainly strengthen the ground of religion, but destroy its branches; they repair the breaches of the building, but tear down the enclosures. "The exalting of God's name is on their lips, but also poison and death lurk on their tongues." He had always kept himself remote from this bottomless heresy, and had sent a letter to the Lünel community more than thirty years since, to counteract the enthusiasm for Maimuni, but his effort had been fruitless.
Besides this heavy-armed conflict of the two parties, with mutual denunciations of heresy and thunders of excommunication, there was carried on a light skirmish with sarcastic verses. An opponent of Maimuni's "Guide" and its adherents threw off the following satire:
"Thou Guide to doubt, be silent evermore; Thy sinful folly shall remain unheard, That makes of Bible-fact but metaphor, And to a dream degrades the prophet's word."
Whereupon a Maimunist retorted:
"Thou fool profane, be silent! Nevermore Dare, sandaled, upon holy ground to stand; What dost thou know of fact or metaphor? Nor dream, nor prophet canst thou understand."
Another epigram condemns Maimuni himself:
"Forgive us, son of Amram, be not wroth That we should call this fool by thy great name; Prophet the Bible calls God's messengers, The servants of false Baal it calls the same."
The Maimunists, however, were much more energetic than their opponents; they used all their efforts to alienate the French rabbis from Solomon, and to bring the chief congregation of Spain over to their side. A young scholar, Samuel ben Abraham Saporta, addressed a letter to the French rabbis, and tried to convince them that in their eagerness to support Solomon, they had taken a precipitate step in denouncing Maimuni and the followers of his views as heretics. "Before you passed a judgment upon them, you ought to have examined the contents of his writings properly; but it appears that you know nothing about the writings which you have condemned. Your business is the Halacha, to determine what actions are forbidden or permitted by religion. Why do you venture beyond your province to express an opinion on questions about which you know nothing at all? In your worship of the letter, like the heathen, you imagine the Deity in human form. What right have you to call us heretics who cling as firmly as you to the Torah and tradition?" Saporta's letter, in addition to other influences, made so deep an impression upon some of the French rabbis that they renounced Solomon. They soon notified the Provençal congregations of their change of opinion. This change was undoubtedly due in great measure to Moses, of Coucy (born about 1200, died about 1260), one of the youngest Tossafists, who, although a brother-in-law of Samson of Sens, and a pupil of the over-pious Sir Leon, of Paris, nevertheless cherished great reverence for Maimuni, and made his Halachic works the subject of study. Nachmani was extremely vexed at this change of opinion, and, sorely distressed at the widening of the breach, he elaborated a scheme of reconciliation, which seemed to him calculated to restore peace. He wrote a well-meant, but bombastic letter to the French rabbis, wherein he first of all expressed his dissatisfaction with them for having put the readers of Maimuni's compositions under the ban: "If you were of the opinion that it was incumbent on you to denounce as heresy the works of Maimuni, why does a portion of your flock now recede from this decision as if they regretted the step? Is it right in such important matters to act capriciously, to applaud the one to-day, and the other to-morrow?"
Finally, Nachmani explained his plan of compromise. The ban against the philosophical portion of Maimuni's Code was to be revoked; but, on the other hand, the condemnation of the study of the "Guide," and the excommunication of the rejectors of the Talmudical exposition of the Bible was to be strengthened. This sentence of excommunication was not to be passed by the one party only, but the Provençal rabbis, and even Maimuni's son, the pious Abraham, were to be invited to support it with their authority. In this manner the gate would be closed to disaffection and unbelief. Nachmani, however, ignored the fact that the assailed compositions were all of one cast, so that it was not possible to anathematize the one and canonize the other. Nachmani fell into the mistake of thinking that it was possible to check free philosophical inquiry. The two tendencies, each legitimate in its way, could not but conflict with each other, and the struggle had to be protracted, and could not be ended by a compromise. Consequently, the fight continued on both sides, and Nachmani's proposal was utterly disregarded. The longer it lasted, the more the controversy inflamed men's feelings, the more participants were drawn into the arena.
The aged David Kimchi wished to undertake a journey to Toledo, in order to induce that great congregation to join his party against Solomon and his adherents, and through their weight completely to crush their opponents. When he arrived at Avila, he became so ill that he had to abandon the journey, but on his bed of sickness he wrote with trembling hand to the chief representative of the Toledo congregation, Jehuda Ibn-Alfachar. He blamed him for his obstinate silence in an affair which concerned the French and Spanish communities so deeply, and importuned him to persuade his congregation to make common cause with the Maimunists. Unfortunately, however, he had approached the wrong man; for Jehuda Alfachar had made up his mind decisively against the Maimunists. He had thoroughly mastered Maimuni's system, and had concluded that, if carried to its logical conclusion, it was calculated to subvert Judaism. Ibn-Alfachar was a thoughtful man, and of more penetration than Nachmani. The defects of Maimuni's theory were quite palpable to him, but even he was misled by the thought that it was possible to exorcise the spirit of free-thought by anathemas. Alfachar paid such deference to the sentence of excommunication uttered by the French rabbis, that at first he would not reply to Kimchi at all, but when ultimately he decided to do so, he treated him in his answer in so contemptuous a manner, that the Maimunists who expected the support of Toledo were quite disconcerted at the result.
In the meantime, the sympathy of such influential personages as Alfachar, Nachmani, and Meïr Abulafia, proved to be of little value to Solomon's cause. The feeling of the people in his native place and in Spain was against him. The French rabbis, on whose support he had reckoned, gradually withdrew from a controversy, the range of which they began to perceive, and which threatened to expose the participators to peril. Solomon of Montpellier complained that no one besides his two disciples sided with him, but the maladroitness with which he conducted his cause was chiefly responsible for the want of sympathy that he encountered. Thus forsaken of all, and hated most bitterly in his own congregation, he resolved on a step which led to the most deplorable results, not only for his own party, but for the whole Jewish people.
Pope Gregory IX, who was eager to extirpate the remnant of the Albigensian heretics in Provence, root and branch, about this time established the permanent Inquisition (April, 1233), and appointed the violent Dominican friars as inquisitors, as the bishops, who had till then been entrusted with the persecution of the Albigenses, did not seem to him to treat the heretics with sufficient severity. In all the large towns of southern France where there were Dominican cloisters, in Montpellier among others, there were erected bloody tribunals, which condemned heretics or those suspected of heresy, and often quite innocent people, to life-long imprisonment or to the stake.
With these murderers, Rabbi Solomon, the upholder of the Talmud and of the literal interpretation of the Holy Writ, associated himself. He and his disciple Jonah said to the Dominicans: "You burn your heretics, persecute ours also. The majority of the Jews of Provence are perverted by the heretical writings of Maimuni. If you cause these writings to be publicly and solemnly burnt, your action will have the effect of frightening the Jews away from them." They also read dangerous passages from Maimuni's compositions to the inquisitors, at which the infatuated monks must have felt a shudder of holy horror. The Dominicans and Franciscans did not wait for a second invitation to interfere. The papal Cardinal-Legate, who was of the same fanatical zeal as Gregory IX, promptly took up the matter. The Dominicans may have feared that the fire of the Maimunist heresy might set their own houses ablaze. For the "Guide" had been translated by an unknown scholar into Latin during the first half of the thirteenth century. This translation was probably done in southern France, where Maimuni's philosophical composition had its second home, and where educated Jews were conversant with the Latin language. Maimuni might with justice appear to the guardians of Catholic orthodoxy to have deserved damnation for his religious philosophy. Thinking about religion in those days was looked upon in official Christendom as a capital sin. If the inquisitors had at that time possessed power over the persons of Jews, the Maimunists would have fared ill indeed; as it was, the persecution extended only to parchment. Maimuni's works, at least in Montpellier, were sought out in the Jewish houses, and publicly burnt. In Paris also, Maimuni's antagonists caused a fire to be kindled for the same purpose, and it is said to have been lit by a taper from the altar of one of the principal churches. The enemies of Judaism congratulated themselves that confusion now prevailed among the Jews, who till then had been united and compact, and thought that they were approaching their decay. The anti-Maimunists, however, were not yet satisfied. Confident in the support of those in power, they calumniated their opponents before the authorities, so that many members of the congregation of Montpellier were placed in great danger.
These proceedings naturally excited the horror of all the Jews on both sides of the Pyrenees. Solomon and his partisans were generally condemned. To invoke the aid of the temporal power, and moreover of a clergy which was swollen with hatred of the Jews, was, in the Jewish world, justly considered the most outrageous treachery; and to make the Dominicans judges of what was or was not consistent with Judaism, was to introduce the heathen enemy into the Holy of Holies. Samuel Saporta denounced this conduct in a letter to the French rabbis. Abraham ben Chasdaï of Barcelona, an enthusiastic admirer of Maimuni, who had censured Jehuda Alfachar for his insulting treatment of Kimchi, and for his espousal of the cause of Solomon, dispatched a letter denouncing Solomon's action in unmeasured terms, to the communities of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Leon. When Kimchi, who was in Burgos on his homeward journey, heard of this affair, he inquired of Alfachar, whether he still thought of keeping the informer and traitor, Solomon, under his protection. The intelligent followers of the latter, Nachmani and Meïr Abulafia, were deeply abashed, and remained silent. Public opinion condemned Solomon and the cause he represented. A poet of the Maimunist party composed on this occasion a very fine epigram:
"What thought ye to burn, when ye kindled the pyre For writings more precious than gold? Lo, truth is a flame--will ye quench it with fire? In a chariot ablaze like the Tishbite of old, It rises to Heaven. O, bigots, behold-- God's angel appears in the fire!"
By some secret power the system of informing in Montpellier through false witnesses, to which the adherents of Maimuni were exposed, was put an end to. More than ten of Solomon's partisans, who had been convicted of slander, were punished in the most cruel manner. Their tongues were cut out. But rarely does the gloom clear up in which these incidents are veiled. The fate of Solomon, the cause of all these events, is uncertain. The Maimunists observed with a certain malicious joy the severe punishment of their adversaries in Montpellier. A poet, probably Abraham ben Chasdaï, wrote an epigram upon it, which was soon in everyone's mouth:
"Against the guide of Truth, A false pack raised their voices. Punishment overtook them; Their tongue was directed to heaven, Now it lies in the dust."
With this tragic issue the struggle was still far from being at an end. The parties were more than ever embittered against each other.
When Abraham Maimuni learnt, with indignation, of the hostility towards his father, and the sad termination of the conflict which had broken out (January, 1235), he wrote a little book on the subject, entitled "War for God" (Milchamoth), in order to repel the attack upon the orthodoxy of his father, and to denounce the conduct of his opponents. This composition, directed, in the form of a letter, to Solomon ben Asher (in Lünel?), justified Maimuni's system on Maimuni's lines, and is valuable only on account of its historical data.
Solomon's effort to silence the free spirit of research in the province of religion was thus overthrown, and had met a lamentable end. Another French rabbi, of mild character and gentle piety, attempted another method of procedure, with greater success. Moses of Coucy, who, although of the Tossafist tendency, had held Maimuni in high esteem, undertook the task of fortifying the drooping spirit of religion among the Provençals and the Spaniards by delivering sermons and spirited exhortations. Moses was undoubtedly inspired in his attempt by the example of the preacher-monks, who aimed at overcoming the disbelief in the Roman Church by preaching in village after village, and who, to some extent, were successful. In the same manner the rabbi of Coucy traveled from one congregation to another in southern France and in Spain (1235), and was accordingly called the "preacher." But there was an important difference between the Jewish expounder of the law and the Catholic order of preachers. The one acted in genuine simplicity of heart, without any ambitious motives, with mildness on his lips and mildness in his heart. The Dominicans, on the other hand, put on their humility and poverty only for show, and behind them there lurked the devil of arrogance. They flattered their patrons in sermons, and humiliated their opponents unsparingly; they gained inheritances surreptitiously, and filled their cloisters with treasures; they nourished a bloody fanaticism, and strove after power and authority.
Moses of Coucy succeeded in bringing many thousands who had neglected several rites (Tephillin), or had never observed them, to repentance and atonement, and in persuading them to remain constant in their practice. In Spain he even succeeded in influencing those who had contracted mixed marriages with Christian or Mahometan women, to divorce themselves from their strange wives (1236). It was, of course, not only his sermons which brought about this sudden conversion, but the superstitious fear of evil dreams and extraordinary celestial phenomena, by which at that time Jews and Christians were seized. Moses of Coucy, in the meantime, preached to his brethren not only to observe the ceremonies, but also to be truthful and upright in their dealings with non-Jews. In his pulpit he laid stress upon the virtue of humility, which was all the more becoming to the children of Israel, seeing that they had God ever present before them, who hates the proud, and loves the meek. Far from kindling fanatical zeal, Moses ever took peace and friendliness as his text. He helped to conciliate many by acknowledging Maimuni's greatness, and putting him on a level with the Geonim.
Evil consequences now began to develop within Judaism from this controversy in regard to the value or worthlessness of free inquiry, the effects of which lasted for centuries, and have not yet died away. Maimuni aimed at unifying Judaism, and produced division; he had sought to give it transparent clearness and general simplicity, and only caused misunderstanding and complication. It was his ambition to establish peace, but he kindled war--so little can even the greatest of mortals calculate the consequences of his actions. His system of philosophy had divided Judaism, separated the simple believers from thinking men, and aroused a commotion, which in its violence far overstepped the borders of moderation. Through the rupture that arose from the conflict for and against Maimuni, there insinuated itself into the general life of the Jews a false doctrine which, although new, styled itself a primitive inspiration; although un-Jewish, called itself a genuine teaching of Israel; and although springing from error, entitled itself the only truth. The rise of this secret lore, which was called Kabbala (tradition), coincides with the time of the Maimunistic controversy, through which it was launched into existence. Discord was the mother of this monstrosity, which has ever been the cause of schism. The Kabbala, in its earliest systematic development, is a child of the first quarter of the thirteenth century. The early adherents of this occult lore, when asked to confess honestly from whom they had first received it, answered in plain terms: "From Rabbi Isaac the Blind, or perhaps from his father, Abraham ben David, of Posquières, the antagonist of Maimuni." They frankly confessed that the Kabbalistic doctrine does not appear either in the Pentateuch or in the Prophets, in the Hagiographa, or in the Talmud, but rests on scarcely perceptible indications. Of the Kabbalistic utterances of the founder of the Kabbala, Isaac the Blind (flourished about 1190-1210), there are only fragments extant, from which but little can be inferred. The darkness of his physical vision was said to have been illuminated by an inner light. He adopted as an article of faith the doctrine of Metempsychosis, which had been condemned and ridiculed by Jewish thinkers. His disciples said that he had the power of discerning whether men possessed a new and fresh soul, coming directly from the world of heavenly spirits, or an old soul which was migrating from body to body, trying to recover its purity. Two of his disciples, Azriel and Ezra, were the first who reduced the Kabbala to a coherent system. They were so like-minded, that they have often been confounded, and certain writings and doctrines have at times been ascribed to the one, and again, to the other. These twins in thought, perhaps brothers in blood, are consequently reckoned in the history of the Kabbala as only one person; they complement one another.
But little is known of the life of this pair, and it is reported of one of them (it is uncertain whether Ezra or Azriel) that he died at the age at least of seventy, a few years after the commencement of the Maimunist schism. Of Azriel, rather more is known. He relates how, from his earliest youth, he traveled about from place to place, in search of a secret art, which could give satisfactory conclusions about God and creation. Certain men, who were in possession of this lore, had taught it to him, and he was firmly convinced of its truth. He had, therefore, himself spread this Kabbalistic doctrine among the congregations which he visited during his wanderings; but was laughed to scorn by the philosophical scholars in Spain (Sevilla?). Thus, one of the earliest mystics confessed that the Kabbala had met with opposition at the very outset of its career, and that the antiquity of its subject-matter was emphatically denied. Azriel and Ezra, however, were not disturbed by this opposition, but labored to make good their position and spread their doctrines. They developed their peculiar theory in their explanations of passages in the Agada, the prayers, and the Song of Solomon, which is a mine for every kind of mysticism. Azriel endeavored to convince also philosophical scholars of the truth of the Kabbala, and clothed its doctrines in the language of logic. But as soon as this secret lore steps out of its obscurity into the light of the sun, it shows its nakedness and deformity. It is certain that the Kabbala was intended as a counterpoise to the growing shallowness of the Maimunists' philosophy. That Judaism should teach nothing more than Aristotelian philosophy was an abomination to those whose deep piety regarded every word of the Bible and the Talmud as a divine truth. There is a way of escape from the philosophical consideration of God and Judaism, i. e. to receive everything in naïve faith. This was the method of the Jews of Germany and northern France; it was the rigid Tossafist tendency. But the pious Jews of southern France and of Spain, who, as it were, breathed everywhere an atmosphere of philosophy, could not be satisfied with dull literalness. Judaism appeared to them without meaning, if not permeated with deep thought. The religious injunctions of the Law, the ceremonies, must have a higher, ideal meaning. The anti-Maimunists themselves had admitted, that the precepts of Judaism could on no account be accepted as arbitrary decrees of a despot, but, being divine ordinances, must have an intelligent basis; and as the apparently meaningless laws of the Bible, and the obscure verses of Scripture, so also the Agadic utterances of the Talmud must contain a higher sense, otherwise they would be without rhyme or reason. The Kabbala is a daughter of embarrassment; its system was the way of escape from the dilemma between the simple, anthropomorphic interpretation of the Bible and the shallowness of the Maimunist philosophy.
The secret doctrine, first completely developed by Ezra and Azriel, established not a new, but at any rate a peculiar philosophy of religion, or, more correctly, theosophy, which, advancing from one inconceivable statement to another, finally soared into the misty region where all thinking ceases, and even imagination droops its wings. It started from a basis which at that time was considered unimpeachable, but made bold deductions from it, which clashed with its underlying principle. Unity was transformed, by sleight-of-hand, into a plurality, spirituality into a coarse materialism, and refined belief into extravagant superstition. The original Kabbala established the following principles: the Deity is elevated above everything, even above existence and thought. Consequently, we have no right to say of Him that He speaks or acts, and still less that He thinks, wills and designs. All these qualities, which are human, imply some limitation, and God is unlimited, because perfect. Only one attribute can be assigned to Him--He is unconditioned or infinite. The Kabbala accordingly confers on God the title of Eternal (Hebrew, En-Sof). This was its first innovation. In His unthinkable universality, God, or the En-Sof, is hidden and inconceivable, and consequently, in a manner, non-existent; for that which cannot be recognized and conceived by the thinking mind does not exist for it. The universal existence, the En-Sof, consequently is identical with the non-existent (Ayin). Hence in order to make His existence known, Deity was obliged or wished to make Himself visible and recognizable; He had to become active and creative, so that His existence might be perceived.
But the lower world in its depravity and decrepitude could not have been produced or created by the En-Sof, for the Infinite and Perfect cannot directly bring into existence the finite and imperfect. The Deity, therefore, is not to be regarded as the immediate Creator of the world; the process of creation must be conceived in quite a different manner. The En-Sof, by means of His infinite wealth of light, radiated from Himself a spiritual substance, a force, or whatever it is to be called, which, flowing directly from Himself, partakes of His perfection and infinity. On the other hand, this radiation or emanation cannot be like the En-Sof, its creator, in all points, for it is not absolutely original, but derivative. This power, springing from the En-Sof, is, therefore, not identical with Him, but only similar to Him, i. e., it has besides an infinite, also a finite side. The Kabbala calls this first spiritual child of the En-Sof the first Sefira, a name possibly adopted as suggestive at once of number and of sphere. This first spiritual power radiates from itself a second force, and this latter a third, and so on, so that altogether ten spiritual substances, or forces, or intermediate entities, or organs (as they are in turn called), were successively revealed, and became active. These ten powers the Kabbala calls the Ten Sefiroth.
The ten substances are parts of one another and of the En-sof, and only represent different sides (or phases) of the same being, as fire produces both flame and sparks, which, although appearing different to the eye, nevertheless indicate the same thing. The Ten Sefiroth, which are distinguished from one another like different colors of the same light, being emanations of the Deity, are dependent on one another, and consequently are conditioned. Only in the degree in which the En-Sof endows them with force, can they continue to act. Their action is shown in the creation of the material and spiritual world in their own image, in their eternal support of the world with which they are in union, and in their ever communicating to it the gracious gift of divine life.
The Kabbala divides the ten Sefiroth into three groups of three each, and these nine Sefiroth would have been sufficient to exhaust all the powers needed by the system, but the Kabbala could not forego the number ten, it was too important. The Ten Commandments, the Ten Declarations, by means of which the Agada explains the creation of the universe, the Ten Spheres, what a world of meaning is therein hidden! The Kabbala was bent on keeping the tenth power, but could not consistently introduce it into its scheme, however it might eschew strict logic; hence it floundered about amidst a variety of conceptions. Close thinking is no concern of the Kabbala; it is satisfied with fantastic pictures and symbols, however unsubstantial. With this number ten the Kabbala sported in a most capricious manner. By means of the Sefiroth, God can make Himself visible, and even invest Himself with a body. When it is said in Holy Writ: God spoke, descended to the earth, or ascended, it is not to be understood, as the strict literalists or the Agadists take it, as referring to the Deity Himself, or to the sublime En-Sof, but to the Sefiroth. The incense which mounted from the altar, and became sweet savor, was not inhaled or absorbed by the Deity Himself, but by the intermediate beings. In this manner the Kabbala thought that it had overcome the difficulties which the notion of the absolute spirituality of God and the Biblical method of representation of God offer. The Deity is incorporeal and infinite, has no corporeal functions, and is not affected by anything corporeal. But the Sefiroth, which in addition to their infinite side, have also a finite, and as it were, a corporeal side, can also perform corporeal functions, and enter into relation with corporeal things.
The Kabbalistic theory of the creation is equally fantastic. God, or the En-Sof, did not create the visible world immediately, but entirely by means of the Sefiroth. All things in the lower world, both classes and individuals, have their original form (types) in the higher worlds, so that there is nothing without a purpose, but everything has a higher significance. The universe resembles a giant tree with a wealth of branches and leaves, whose roots are the Sefiroth; or, it is a closely wrought chain, the last link of which hangs on to the higher world; or, a great sea, which is constantly filled from an eternally flowing source. The human soul in particular is a privileged citizen of the higher world, is in immediate connection with all the Sefiroth, and consequently it can exert some influence on them, and even on the Deity. By virtue of its moral and religious conduct the soul can increase or diminish the flow of grace from the Deity, through the channel of the intermediary beings, its good actions causing an uninterrupted flow, and its evil conduct occasioning its discontinuance.
The people of Israel were specially chosen to promote the fulness of grace, and therefore the preservation of the world. For that purpose, they received the Revelation and the Law, with its 613 religious ordinances, in order to act on the Sefiroth through every religious act, and, so to speak, compel the dispensing of their bounty. The ceremonies consequently have a deeply mystical meaning and imperishable importance: they constitute the magic means whereby the whole universe is supported, and blessed. "The righteous man is the foundation of the world." The Temple, and the sacrificial service especially, had a particularly deep significance in keeping alive the connection of the lower world with the higher. The earthly Temple corresponded with the heavenly Temple (the Sefiroth). The priestly blessing, which was pronounced with the ten fingers raised, prompted the Ten Sefiroth to pour out their gracious gifts upon the lower world. After the destruction of the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and accordingly prayer has a peculiar, mystical importance. The prescribed ritual has an unfailing effect, if the worshiper knows how to address himself, on any particular occasion, to the proper Sefira, for prayer must be addressed only to it, and not directly to the Deity. The mystery of prayer assumes an important place in the Kabbala. Every word, even every syllable in the prayers, every movement made during worship, every ceremonial symbol is interpreted by the Kabbala with reference to the higher world. The Kabbalists took a special interest in the mystical explanation of the religious laws of Judaism. This was the center of gravity of their system; by its means they could oppose the Maimunists. Whilst the latter, from their philosophical point of view, declared certain precepts to be meaningless and obsolete, the mystics treated these ordinances as of the highest moment. They were therefore considered the preservers of Judaism.
The vital importance to Judaism of the doctrine of retribution and the inquiry into the condition of the soul after death had been too strenuously asserted by Maimuni for the Kabbala to omit to drag them also into the province of its theory. The Kabbala claimed great antiquity for its views on these questions; but their youth and derivation from another system of thought are obvious. Starting from the doctrine that all souls had been created in the beginning, the Kabbala taught that these souls were destined to enter upon an earthly career, to pass into bodies, and to remain connected with them for a certain period of time. The soul during its earthly life was subjected to the test whether, in spite of its connection with the body, it can keep itself pure from earthly grossness. If it can do this, it ascends purified after death to the domain of spirits, and becomes a part of the world of the Sefiroth. If, on the other hand, it becomes tainted with earthliness, it is compelled to return to the bodily life (but not more than three times) till, after repeated tests, it can soar aloft in a pure state. On the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, an important point of the Kabbala, was based its doctrine of reward and punishment. The sufferings to which the pious, apparently without cause, are subjected on earth, serve the purpose of purifying their souls. God's justice, therefore, ought not to be questioned, if the righteous are unfortunate, and the godless are prosperous. As most souls during their earthly existence become lost in sensuality, forgetting their heavenly origin, and therefore are obliged to wander through new bodies, it happens that the larger number of souls are such as are born again, while new souls rarely come on earth. Through the sinfulness of man, whereby the same souls repeatedly enter bodies, the great redemption is postponed, for the new souls cannot come into existence, the world being almost entirely filled by old ones. The great time of grace, the spiritual completion of the world, cannot come until all created souls have been born on earth. Even the soul of the Messiah, which like others abides in the spiritual world of the Sefiroth in its pre-mundane existence, cannot appear until every soul has dwelt in a body. The soul of the Messiah will be the last of the souls, and the Messiah therefore will come only at the end of days. Then at length the great jubilee will arrive, when all souls, purified and refined, will have returned from earth to heaven. The furthering and hastening of this time of grace depends, therefore, on the wisdom and religious conduct of the righteous. The adepts in Kabbala thus acquired extraordinary importance; they were sureties, not only for Israel, but for the whole order of the world, for through their conduct they might hasten the birth of the soul of the Messiah, the last in the storehouse of souls.
The Kabbala boasted that it had disclosed the secret of Judaism much better than Maimuni, and had shown its relation to the higher world, and to the shaping of the future. The Kabbala had unlimited play for its fantastic interpretations. In distortion of the Scriptures, the Kabbalists out-ran the Alexandrine allegorists, the Agadists, the Church Fathers, and the Jewish and Christian religious philosophers. Azriel, indeed, coquetted with philosophy, and endeavored to make the Kabbala acceptable to thinkers. But another Kabbalist of this time, Jacob ben Sheshet Gerundi, of Gerona (who wrote in about 1243 or 1246), deliberately opposed his secret lore to the explanations of the philosophers. He repudiated any truce with them, and could not find scorn enough for philosophical "heretics and despisers of the Law." Gerona, the native place of Ezra and Azriel, of Jacob ben Sheshet, and Nachmani, was the first warm nest for the fledgeling Kabbala. This occult science, which made its appearance with a flourish, rests on deception, at best, on the self-deception of its founders. Its theory is not old, as it pretended, but very modern; at any rate it is not found in Jewish antiquity, but dates from the twilight of Greek philosophy. The Kabbala is a grotesque distortion of Jewish and philosophical ideas. In order to make it appear ancient and authentic, the compilers had recourse to fraud. They circulated a Kabbalistic manuscript which purported to have been composed by an honored Talmudical doctor, Nechunya ben ha-Kana, and others. In vain the highly respected Meïr ben Simon and Rabbi Meshullam of Béziers called attention to this forgery, which bore the title Bahir (Luminous), and condemned it to be burnt, as it contained blasphemies against the greatness of God; the book Bahir maintained its ground, and was in later times used as evidence of the great age of the Kabbala.
The labors of Azriel and Ezra in behalf of the secret science might have had but poor results, if Nachmani had not ranged himself under their banner. At first blush, it is indeed hard to conceive how this clear, keen-witted, subtle thinker, who, in the province of the Talmud, had the ability to shed light upon every obscurity, could be induced to join the votaries of the Kabbala, and permit himself to be blinded by the false light of the Bahir. But on deeper examination of his way of thinking, this phenomenon ceases to be a paradox. Nachmani belonged to that numerous class of men who can form a correct judgment on single objects, but are unable to comprehend a great whole. Maimuni's philosophical line of argument repelled him on account of its prosaic nature; the Kabbala, on the other hand, attracted him because his belief in miracles and respect for authority found nourishment therein. When he, a pious rabbi and deep Talmudist, had acknowledged the truth of the Kabbala, its authority became established; where Nachmani believed unconditionally, those less gifted dared not doubt. A poet, Meshullam En-Vidas Dafiera, an opponent of the Maimunists, accordingly ranges him with Ezra and Azriel, as a defender of the truth of the secret lore.
"The son of Nachman is our stronghold sure, Ezra and Azriel know the hidden things. They are my priests; my altar they illume; They are my stars that never cease to shine; They can compute the meanings of God's words, Only from fear of scoffers are they silent."
Thus Nachmani became a chief pillar of the Kabbala, the more so because he spoke of it only casually, and concealed more of it than he revealed.
Thus, within barely four decades after the death of Maimuni, Judaism was divided into three parties; and this was the beginning of a retrograde movement which led to degradation. A marked division was established between the philosophical school, the strict Talmudists and the Kabbalists. The first named, who regarded Maimuni as their chief, strove to interpret the doctrines of Judaism in a rational manner; they either adhered to the arguments of their leader, or deduced, from his premises, bold conclusions which had escaped his notice, or which he had not desired to infer, and they almost entirely broke away from the Talmud. The strict Talmudists occupied themselves exclusively with Halachic controversies, and had no desire to become acquainted with philosophical notions; they were averse to science and to inquiry in the domain of religion, and they interpreted the Agadas in a purely literal sense, but they also turned aside from the Kabbala. Lastly, the Kabbalists were prejudiced against both the literal Talmudists and the rationalistic Maimunists. At first, they maintained friendly terms with the Talmudists because their numbers were few, and the conclusions, at variance with Judaism, which could be drawn from their system, were not yet recognized, for both had to combat a common enemy. Hence the Kabbalists at first directed their attacks solely against the Maimunists, but before the end of the century the Kabbalists and the Talmudists had become enemies, attacking each other as vigorously as they had formerly assailed their common opponents, the philosophers.
The consequences, on the one hand, of the degradation of the Jews, through the papacy, and on the other, of the internal discord, soon made themselves felt, and produced an unhappy condition of affairs. The happy contentment, the joyousness, the delight in original, intellectual work, which, combined with spiritual activity, had borne such beautiful fruit, had all long since passed away. Sad earnestness filled the hearts of the Spanish and Provençal Jews, and weighed down, as with lead, every lofty aspiration of their souls. The joyous singers became silent, as if the icy breath of the gloomy present had suddenly caused their warm blood to freeze. How could a Jew pour forth merry strains of song with the badge of dishonor on his breast? The neo-Hebraic poetry, which, for three centuries, had produced such noble works of genius, perished altogether, or bore only faded leaves. The satires and epigrams which the Maimunists and anti-Maimunists hurled against each other were the last products of the neo-Hebraic muse of Spain. But these verses no longer bubbled over with laughter and merriment; they were full of earnest logic and argument. They were no longer like the epigrams of the flourishing era of poetry, which resembled prattling maidens, but were like quarrelsome scolds who had lost the charm of youth. Poets themselves felt that the source of the neo-Hebraic poetry had been exhausted, and they fed on the memories of its Golden Age.
The last representatives of the neo-Hebraic poetry were Jehuda Alcharisi, the untiring translator and warm partisan of Maimuni, then Joseph ben Sabara, and lastly Jehuda ben Sabbatai. These three men, as if acting in collusion with one another, created the satirical romance. This consisted in the introduction of fictitious characters, and the use of exuberant rhetoric; but there is more of strained attempt at wit than of graceful skill in their poems. Alcharisi, in his romance, "Tachkemoni," under the disguise of Heber the Kenite, and in dialogues with the poet, introduces a variety of subjects, both humorous and serious, intermingling rhymed prose with verse, and interweaving little episodes. This method was pursued also by the poet, Joseph ben Sabara, probably a physician in Barcelona, in his romance, "Diversions" (Shaashuim). The third poet of this class, Jehuda ben Isaac ben Sabbatai, also of Barcelona, was considered by Alcharisi to be one of the best masters of the art; his performances, however, do not in any way justify this opinion. His dialogue, "Between Wisdom and Wealth," is very poor in poetical ideas. His satirical romance, "The Woman-hater," is not much better; he lacked entirely the broad conceptions of his contemporaries.
The decay of the neo-Hebraic poetry was very rapid. After the death of Sabbatai it fell into a yet more forlorn condition, and a century passed before a worthy successor made his appearance. Original power of poetic production had died out, and those who were acquainted with the manipulation of language, and could construct tolerably good rhymes, merely imitated the work of their predecessors. Abraham ben Chasdaï, a Maimunist, of Barcelona, re-wrote, from an Arabic translation, a moral dialogue between a worldly-minded and a penitent man. This he put into a Hebrew form under the title of "The Prince and the Nazarite."
A poor copyist, Berachya ben Natronaï Nakdan, called in the dialect of the country Crispia (flourished about 1230-1270), turned his attention to fables, which had been popular among the ancient Hebrews. He was, however, unable to invent, but chiefly elaborated in the neo-Hebraic form the productions of earlier fabulists. Among his one hundred and seven Fox Fables (Mishlé Shualim) there are very few original ones. Berachya desired to hold a mirror up to his contemporaries, "who spurned the truth, and held out the golden scepter to falsehood"; plants and animals were employed to describe the perversity and depravity of mankind.
The only merit possessed by the fables both of Berachya and of Ibn-Sahula, a minor poet of northern Spain (1245), who also moralized in perfervid words in the "Fables of Ancient Times" (Mashal ha-Kadmoni), as also by the moral tale, "The Prince and the Dervish" of Abraham ben Chasdaï, consists in the happy imitation of the Biblical style, and in the ingenious application of the verses of Scripture to an entirely different line of thought. This it is which, in the eyes of scholars, imparts to their language an air of uncommon wit, attractiveness and piquancy. It is doubtful whether Joseph Ezobi should be included among the poets of the time. It is showing too much honor to his writings to term them poetry; and they would be silently ignored when neo-Hebraic poetry is referred to, were it not that, through frequent transcripts and the multiplication of copies in Latin and French translations, the attention of the historian of literature has been drawn to them, and they have acquired a certain fame. Joseph Ezobi (or Esobi) ben Chanan, of Orange (near Avignon, about 1230-1250), dedicated to his son Samuel an epithalamium, called "The Silver Dish" (Kaarat Kesef), in which he laid down admonitions and rules of life. Among other things, he commanded him "to hold aloof from the wisdom of the Greeks, which resembled the vine of Sodom, and implanted the seeds of disease in the mind of man." He suggested to him to study Hebrew grammar and the Bible; but to devote his attention chiefly to the Talmud. This is sufficient to characterize the man and the bent of his mind. Joseph Ezobi's verses show a fair command of language, but they are deficient both in power of expression and in gracefulness; he is one of those versatile poetasters who arose at this time in large numbers, especially in Provence.
The various branches of learning degenerated in the post-Maimunic time even more than the art of poetry. How could a sound exegesis flourish when both philosophers and Kabbalists vied with each other in subtilizing and misinterpreting the meaning of Holy Writ, so as to obtain Biblical support for their theories? Hebrew grammar at the same time also fell into decay, under the subtle quibblings of the philosophers and the Kabbalists; the excellent productions of earlier days sank into oblivion. David Kimchi was the last exegete and grammarian for a long space of time. Nachmani, it is true, occupied himself with the exposition of the Scriptures, and very often called in the aid of grammar, and displayed traces of correct philological theory; he did not, however, cultivate these branches for their own sake, but in the service of a prejudiced opinion, and especially in controverting the views of an opponent. Thus, the magnificent garlands of Jewish learning that had been woven by the Jewish Spanish thinkers and inquirers after truth gradually faded.
XVII. PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS, AND THE BURNING OF THE TALMUD
Pope Gregory IX--Emperor Frederick II and the Jewish Scholars, Jehuda Ibn-Matka and Jacob Anatoli--The Jewish Legislation of Frederick of Austria--The Martyrs of Aquitaine and Gregory IX--Louis IX of France and his Enmity to the Jews--Attacks on The Talmud--The Apostate Nicholas-Donin --Disputation at the French Court between Yechiel of Paris and Nicholas-Donin--Judah of Melun--The Talmud burnt at Paris--The Church and Jewish Physicians--Moses Ibn-Tibbon and Shem-Tob Tortosi--Papal Bull acquitting Jews of the Blood-accusation--The Last French Tossafists--The Jews of England--The Jewish Parliament--Alfonso the Wise and the Jews of Spain--Meïr de Malea and his Sons--The Jewish Astronomers Don Judah Cohen and Don Zag Ibn-Said--The Jews of Aragon--De Penyaforte and the Apostate Pablo Christiani-- The First Censorship of the Talmud--Nachmani's Disputation with Pablo--Influence of Nachmani--The Karaites.
1236-1270 C. E.
Whilst these internal divisions continued, the poisonous seed that had been scattered abroad by the papacy was producing abundance of evil fruit. Persecutions of the Jews, which had hitherto been merely local, began to spread like a contagion, and became every year more violent and general. Innocent III, it is true, did not aim at the complete annihilation of the Jews, but only at their degradation. He desired to crush them down to a state lower than that of the rustic serfs, for which purpose the whole weight of the society of the Middle Ages, consisting of princes, nobles of high or low rank, the clergy of every degree, burghers and peasants, was to bear heavily upon them, to afflict them grievously, and to reduce them to a most pitiable condition. The humiliation of the Jews afforded great pleasure to the lower grades of the people, who were rejoiced to behold a class of human beings, sunk yet lower than themselves, against whom they could use their clumsy wit and rough fists. This people, which was branded with a distinguishing badge by the Church and society, was regarded by the ignorant mob as a race of outcasts, who might be put to death like filthy dogs, without any feeling of remorse. All sorts of crimes were attributed to the Jews, and credited. Fierce attacks on the Jews were repeated from time to time, and in various places, on the plea of child murder, and with such an air of truth in the charge that even well-disposed Christians were filled with doubts, and were inclined to believe the tissue of lies. It happened once that the body of a Christian was found between Lauda and Bischofsheim (in Baden). Who were the murderers? Jews, of course. On this altogether groundless accusation, the Jewish men, women and children of both towns were attacked by the mob and the clergy, and, without being brought to trial, were put to death. Then eight learned and pious men were brought up to answer for the supposed assassination of a Christian (on the 2d and 3d January, 1235); they were put to the rack, and, probably in consequence of the confessions wrung from them by the torture, they were executed. The plundering of Jewish houses was the invariable accompaniment of such massacres. The Jews in the neighboring districts thereupon implored Pope Gregory IX to grant them a charter, which might protect them against the arbitrary action of the murderous mob and the bigoted judges. In reply, he issued a bull to all Christendom (on the 3d of May, 1235), which repeated and confirmed the constitution of Pope Innocent III. So little sense of justice existed that it was the opinion of many that the Vicar of Christ had allowed himself to be induced to publish this bull by a bribe of a large sum of money from the Jews. However, whether this papal decree had emanated from love of justice, or had been the outcome of bribery, like many previous ones in favor of the Jews, it remained a dead letter. The spirit of intolerance and of Jew-hatred which was taught in the schools, and was preached in the pulpit by the Dominicans, became infused into the very blood of men, and the noblest natures were not able to escape contamination. Of what advantage was it to the Jews that they produced comparatively the largest number of scholars, who first rendered science accessible to Christians, either by means of translations and expositions of didactic writings in foreign languages, or through their own activity and discoveries, especially in medicine? They received no benefit from providing the marts of trade with wares, and the book market with works of genius, for the Christians would acknowledge no thanks to them for their labor, or repaid them by splitting their skulls.
As an eloquent illustration of the attitude of the Middle Ages with regard to the Jews, the conduct of the greatest and most cultured German emperor towards them may be instanced. Frederick II, the last of the Hohenstaufen line of emperors, was the most genial and unprejudiced monarch of the first half of the thirteenth century. A Sicilian rather than a German, he had a liking for the sciences, and supported men of genius with princely liberality. He took an interest in having writings on philosophy and astronomy translated from the Arabic, and for this purpose he employed many learned Jews. The emperor carried on a correspondence with a young Jewish scholar, Jehuda ben Solomon Cohen Ibn-Matka, of Toledo (born in about 1215, and wrote in 1247). His learning produced so deep an impression on Emperor Frederick that he submitted a number of scientific questions to him, and expressed pleasure at the answers returned to them. The emperor then probably induced him to come to Italy (Tuscany). Jehuda Ibn-Matka possessed the right of free entry to the imperial court.
The emperor invited another Jewish sage, Jacob Anatoli (Anatolio), to leave Provence and take up his residence in Naples. He granted the scholar an annual stipend, so that he might be at leisure to apply himself to the translation of Arabic works of a scientific character. This man, whose full name was Jacob ben Abba-Mari ben Simon, or Samson (flourished about 1200-1250), was the son-in-law of the prolific translator but sterile author, Samuel Ibn-Tibbon, who was praised by the Maimunists, and hated by the strict Talmudists. Anatoli resembled him as a son resembles his father, and in a manner continued his work of translation. Like Ibn-Tibbon he did not possess any creative genius, but was, so to speak, a handicraftsman in philosophy, who translated Arabic writings on this subject into Hebrew. He had undergone special training for this work with his father-in-law and his Christian friend, Michael Scotus. He had so exalted a reverence for Maimuni that he placed him in the rank of the prophets, and was naturally full of wrath against those who termed him a heretic. "These malicious bigots," he remarked, "would have condemned even David and Asaph, had they lived in these times." By the aid of philosophical catchwords, he interpreted Holy Writ in the spirit of Maimuni. He also tried to refer miracles, as far as possible, to natural causes, and was, in short, one of those men who divested Judaism of much of its mystical character. Following this method, he delivered public discourses on Sabbaths and festivals, which he collected into one volume (Malmed), which, in spite of its mediocrity, became the cherished book of the orthodox Provençal congregations. Frederick II entrusted him with the task of translating the writings of Aristotle, with the commentaries of the Arabic philosopher Averroës (Ibn-Roshd), hitherto unknown to Christians. A Christian doctor, probably Michael Scotus, the court astrologer of the emperor, translated these works into Latin, probably under the supervision of Anatoli.
From all this it might be expected that the emperor Frederick entertained a favorable feeling towards the Jews, especially as, if only a portion of the accusations which his contemporaries leveled against his orthodoxy be true, he was by no means convinced of the truths of Christianity. Pope Gregory IX, his mortal foe, frankly reproached him with having said in public that the world had been deluded by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, of whom two had died an honorable death, but the third had ended his days on the cross. The emperor can, therefore, hardly be supposed to have taken deep offense at the unbelief of the Jews; yet in spite of all this, the emperor Frederick was no whit less an enemy of the Jews than his antipode, the bigoted Saint Louis of France. A bitter enemy to the papacy, which hindered his undertakings in every possible way, he nevertheless executed in his realm the canonical decree which excluded all Jews from public offices, making an exception only in the case of a certain Jewish clerk of the mint at Messina. In his capital, Palermo, he shut the Jews up in a Ghetto, an act of intolerance which far outstripped that of the popes of the time. In Austria, the Jews were permitted to fill public offices, under the rule of the Princes of Babenberg. The Archduke Frederick I, the Valiant, recognized the worth of the Jews as promoters of wealth, entrusted the care of his finances to Jewish officials, and granted to them titles of honor. Two brothers, Leblin and Nekelo, were officially styled chamberlains of the Duke of Austria. Frederick I of Austria (in 1244) granted a royal decree to the Jews of his domain, which appears to have been inspired by a love of justice and humanity, and which became an example for other similarly disposed potentates who desired to protect their Jewish subjects from injury and violence. This statute, which consisted of thirty clauses, aimed especially at affording protection to the Jewish inhabitants of Austria against murder and assault. If a Christian killed a Jew, he was to suffer the extreme penalty of the law; if he wounded him, he was to be compelled to pay a heavy fine, or lose his hand. If the murderer of a Jew could not be convicted by means of direct proof of the commission of the crime, but strong circumstantial evidence fixed the deed on him, then the relatives or friends of the Jew could appoint a champion to meet the accused in a duel. A Christian who made a murderous attack upon a Jewess was sentenced to the loss of his hand. Grave charges involving the persons or property of Jews were not to be determined by the evidence of a Christian, unless a Jewish witness confirmed the misdemeanor. A Christian who kidnapped a Jewish child for the purpose of compulsory baptism, was to be punished as a thief. The statute of Frederick the Valiant also allowed the Jews to exercise their own jurisdiction, so that the judges of the land could have no power over them. The synagogues and cemeteries of the Jews were also to be respected by Christians, and the latter were liable to heavy punishment for any outrage upon them. The statute further guaranteed to all Jews the privilege of free passage and free trading throughout the country, and the right to loan money on pledges. The rates of interest were limited, but were permitted to be sufficiently high. The right of accepting pledges, which had been granted to members of the Jewish religion, was strictly regulated as an object of vital importance for both the Jews and the Duke. This decree, moreover, shielded them against paying extortionate sums to the Christians for the conveyance of Jewish corpses from place to place. The Archduke Frederick remarked that he conceded these privileges to the Jews, in order that "they also might participate in his grace and good wishes." This statute also proved beneficial to the Jews of other lands, for within twenty years it was introduced into Hungary, Bohemia, Greater Poland, Meissen, and Thuringia, and later on into Silesia.
A duke of inferior rank thus set the example of protecting the Jews against caprice by means of fixed laws. The powerful emperor Frederick II thereupon censured Frederick the Valiant for his friendly attitude towards the Jews, and he, who himself had been expelled from the Church, published an edict that the Jews of Austria should be rigorously excluded from all public offices lest the race, condemned to perpetual slavery, oppress the Christians through its office-holding members. With particular satisfaction he pronounced the sentence that the Jews, wherever they were located, were the "servi cameræ" of the emperor. He adhered so strictly to the canonical decrees of the Lateran Council against them, that he was even more rigorous than the kings of Spain in executing the law which compelled the Jews in his hereditary provinces to wear a distinguishing badge, and he crushed them under a load of taxes. It is true that he permitted those who had come to Sicily from Africa (whence they had fled before the fanatical fury of the Almohades), to take up their residence under his sway. But whilst he remitted taxes from other colonies for ten years, he at once burdened the Jewish immigrants with heavy imposts, and restricted them to agricultural pursuits. He, indeed, promised his "servi cameræ" especial protection, but nevertheless he treated them as a despised race of human beings. Henceforward the three powers of Christianity, the princes, the Church, and the people, combined to utterly destroy the feeblest of nations.
When Pope Gregory IX gave orders for another crusade to be preached, the warriors of the cross assembled in Aquitania, made an attack upon the Jewish communities of Anjou, Poitou, in the cities of Bordeaux, Angoulême, and elsewhere, in order to compel them to accept baptism. But as the Jews remained steadfast to their faith, the crusaders acted with unprecedented cruelty towards them, trampling down many of them beneath the hoofs of their horses. They spared neither children nor pregnant women, and left the corpses lying unburied, a prey to wild beasts and birds. They destroyed the sacred books, burnt the houses of the Jews, and possessed themselves of their property. On this occasion, more than three thousand persons perished (in the summer of 1236), whilst more than five hundred accepted Christianity. Once again did the surviving Jews complain to the pope of this unendurable cruelty. The pope felt himself obliged to send a letter about the matter to the prelates of the Church in Bordeaux, Angoulême, and other bishoprics, and also to King Louis IX of France (September, 1236), in which he deplored the events that had taken place, and signified that the Church desired neither the utter annihilation of the Jews, nor their compulsory baptism. What, however, could occasional letters of admonition avail against the bitter feeling of abhorrence towards the Jews that had been stirred up by the Church? The otherwise noble and well-disposed monarch, Louis IX, was so ruled by his prejudice that he could not bear to look at a Jew. He encouraged the conversion of the Jews in every way, and permitted the children of converted fathers to be torn away from their mothers, who still adhered to Judaism. The Jews had only one means wherewith to appease the rage that was kindled against them, and that was--money. In England, by its influence, they induced King Henry III to proclaim throughout his territories that no one should offer any injury to a Jew. But this means proved to be a double-edged sword that turned against the very people it was intended to benefit. In order to raise large sums of money, the Jews were compelled to charge extortionate interest, and even to have recourse to fraud. In this way, they incurred the hatred of the populace, and subjected themselves to further outrages. The repeated complaints about their usury prompted Louis IX to fix the rate of interest, and in many cases to remit a portion of the debts owing to Jews. But when this same king determined to repress usury, and called together a number of barons to decide upon the matter, the latter asserted that the peasants and merchants were unable to dispense with loans from the Jews, and that the Jews were preferable to the Christian money-lenders, because the latter oppressed their Christian debtors with still higher rates of usurious interest.
In the midst of all these troubles, petty inflictions and persecutions, there was only one spot in which the Jew might feel himself quite happy, and was able to forget his sufferings. The house of learning, where young and old gathered together in order to study the Talmud, was their only haven of peace. Absorbed in their study, the Talmud enthusiasts became entirely oblivious of the outer world, with its bitter hate, its malicious laws and its cruel tortures. Here they were princes, the majesty of thought cast a halo about their brows, and their delight in spiritual activity transfigured their features. Their whole happiness consisted in solving some difficult problem in the Talmud, or in throwing light upon some obscure point, or in discovering something new which had escaped the notice of their predecessors. They looked neither for office nor honor in reward for their profound studies, and received no tangible recompense for their nocturnal vigils. They desired only to gratify their intense longing for knowledge, to satisfy their sense of religious duty, at best, assure themselves of reward in the hereafter. The all-important occupation for all was study, and the flower of all scholarship was the Talmud. As soon as a child was able to lisp, he was led on the morning of Pentecost from his house to the synagogue or "school," with his eyes veiled, in order that they might not encounter anything profane. There the Hebrew alphabet, in its usual and also in a reversed order, and some appropriate verses were read to him. He was rewarded with a honey cake and an egg, with Scriptural verses inscribed on them. The day on which the child was first introduced to the Law was celebrated by his parents and the whole congregation as a festive occasion. If he proved at all intelligent, he was allowed to begin the Talmud, after having spent some time over the Bible. To be a student of the Talmud was esteemed the highest honor. Disgrace was the portion of the ignoramus (Am ha-Arez). A studious youth passed many years in the house of learning even till the time of his marriage; and to the end of his life the earning of his livelihood was held to be of secondary importance, and the study of the Talmud the aim of his existence. This absorbing study of the Talmud was certainly one-sided, but there was something ideal about it. The hand of the enemy had up to this time not violated this inner sanctuary. The temporal authorities did not concern themselves about the matter, the clergy had no power over the domestic affairs of the Jews; here excommunication itself proved ineffectual.
This domestic peace of the Jews was, however, soon to be destroyed; even from their intellectual asylum they were to be driven forth. The leader in the movement was a baptized Jew, who incited the temporal and the spiritual powers against his former co-religionists. A man, named Donin (or Dunin), a Talmudist from La Rochelle, in the north of France, conceived doubts of the validity of the Talmud and the oral law. For this he was excommunicated by the French rabbis. Having no position either among Jews or among Christians, Donin determined to accept baptism, and assumed the name of Nicholas. Filled with hatred against the rabbis and the Talmud, the apostate determined to revenge himself on both. Probably urged on by the clergy, he became the instigator of the great autos-da-fé of the Jews and their writings, and it was he that occasioned the bloody persecution in Poitou. His appetite for revenge was, however, not yet satiated. Donin or Nicholas betook himself to Pope Gregory IX, and brought charges against the Talmud, saying that it distorted the words of Holy Writ, and that in the Agadic portions there were to be found disgraceful representations of God; that in spite of this, it was held in higher estimation by the rabbis than the Bible, and finally that it was filled with abuse against the founder of the Christian religion and the Virgin. Donin demonstrated to the pope that it was the Talmud which prevented the Jews from accepting Christianity, and that without it they would certainly give up their unbelief. The excess of veneration paid by the compilers of the Talmud to earlier lawgivers caused cruel suffering. Without considering the sage remark of Abtalion, "Ye wise men, be cautious with your words," they, in their desire to immortalize every utterance, every familiar conversation, every trivial controversy, and even every joke made by one of the Tanaïm or Amoraïm, had incorporated these in the Talmud, thinking that the outer world would be none the wiser. But the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children. On account of various unguarded statements, the Talmud was dragged before the judgment-bench to answer these charges, and the whole of the Jewish world, which had accepted the Talmud as its guide in life, was made responsible for its contents. This was the first time that it was thus accused, but in the course of the century the charge was repeated frequently and in a more bitter spirit. The apostate had made extracts from the Talmud, and formulated thirty-five articles, upon which he based his charges. Some of these alleged that the Talmud contained many gross errors and absurdities, and also rank blasphemies against God; in others, it was stated that it upheld dishonesty and duplicity in intercourse with Christians; others again asserted that the Talmud insulted and blasphemed Jesus, the Virgin, and the Church. Compared with the spiteful attacks which the Evangelists, the Church Fathers down to Hieronymus and Augustine, and various ecclesiastical scholars have made, with the intention of humiliating and injuring the Jews, the few passages in the Talmud concerning Jesus seem harmless jests; but the Church was waging successful war against the Synagogue, and was very sensitive to any disrespectful utterance. In his charges against the Talmud, Nicholas-Donin had, however, distorted the truth. He had stated that the Talmudical writings taught that it was a meritorious action to kill even the best among the Christians; that a Christian who rested on the Sabbath day or studied the Law was to be punished with death; that it was lawful to deceive a Christian; that Jews were permitted to break a promise made on oath; and he had made many other lying assertions.
The guilt of the Talmud, which implied that of the Jews, seemed unmistakable to Pope Gregory, for whom the apostate had drawn up these grounds of accusation, and to whom he had communicated them both by word of mouth and in writing. He immediately dispatched to the heads of the Church in France, England, Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, transcripts of the list of charges tabulated by Nicholas, and commanded them to confiscate all copies of the Talmud--on the morning of the first Saturday in Lent, when the Jews assembled in their synagogues--and to hand them over to the Dominicans and Franciscans. He also wrote to the monarchs of those countries, and called upon them to support the Church with their temporal power. The pope further admonished the provincials of the two orders of monks, who had inquisitorial power over books and doctrines, to submit the contents of the Talmudical writings to an examination; and if their judgment corroborated the charges of Nicholas-Donin, they were to burn the volumes of the Talmud (9 June, 1239).
Thus a new weapon for the destruction of Judaism was brought into play, and had this papal decree been rigidly executed, the spiritual life of the Jews, which was intimately bound up with the Talmud, would have been endangered in its most vital part. The pope gave Nicholas a special letter to be delivered to William, Bishop of Paris, which charged him with the vigorous persecution of the Talmud in France, the chief seat of Talmudical erudition, and the original home of the Tossafists.
However, when the pope's edict was to be executed, it appeared that the pretended Vicar of God upon earth did not really possess, even in the zenith of his power, the great influence he was supposed to have. Only in such places where personal interests and passions were concerned did the princes thoroughly carry into effect the violent policy of the pope; otherwise, unless the rulers were particularly bigoted, but little heed was paid to papal decrees even in the Middle Ages. The command of Gregory to confiscate the Talmud was entirely disregarded in Spain and in England, at least there is no record of any hostile measures in these countries. Only in France, where the priest-ridden and weak-minded Louis IX, having attained his majority, had nominally assumed the reins of government, was the Talmud really confiscated. The Jews were compelled under penalty of death to surrender their copies (March, 1240). The Talmud was then put on trial. Four distinguished rabbis of northern France were commanded by the king to hold a public disputation with Nicholas, either to refute the imputations leveled against the Talmud, or to make confession that it contained abuse against Christianity and blasphemies against God. Each of these rabbis was to be examined separately, and to give replies to the accuser.
The four rabbis who were summoned to act as advocates on behalf of the Talmud were Yechiel (Vivo) of Paris, Moses of Coucy, who had returned from his embassy to Spain, Jehuda ben David of Melun, and Samuel ben Solomon of Chateau-Thierry. Yechiel, who was more eloquent than his associates, and, besides, had more frequently entered into theological discussions with antagonists who belonged to the Church, was first called, unaccompanied by his friends. He was not asked to controvert the accusations made against them, but to confess that these were founded on truth. The disputation was held in Latin at the royal court (on the 5th of Tamuz--25th June, 1240), in the presence of the bishops of Paris and Senlis, of many Dominicans, and of the wise queen-mother Blanche, who for all practical purposes was at the head of affairs. At first Yechiel refused to answer. He based his objection upon the constitution of the popes, which had assured independence to the Jews in their domestic concerns. He remarked that the Talmud was the very essence of their life, in behalf of which numbers of Jews were prepared to die. The queen, however, allayed his fears by assuring him that their lives were in no danger; she would protect them, and he was only required to answer the questions asked of him. When Nicholas demanded that Rabbi Yechiel should take an oath to answer to the best of his knowledge and ability, as otherwise he might attempt to pervert the truth by subtleties and evasions, the rabbi refused to do so. He said that never, in the course of his life, had he taken an oath, and that he would not invoke the name of God in vain. Thereupon the queen released him from the necessity of taking an oath. The discussion which now took place turned upon the two points, whether there were in the Talmud immoral sentiments and offensive passages against the Deity, and whether it contained insulting remarks concerning Jesus. Yechiel disproved the charge of blasphemy and immorality. With regard to the second of the accusations, he asserted that there could be no doubt that many odious facts were related in the Talmud concerning a Jesus, the son of Pantheras; these, however, had no reference to Jesus of Nazareth, but to one of a similar name who had lived long before him. He himself believed that this declaration was true, and affirmed it with the solemnity of an oath. Tradition and Talmudical chronology had misled him into believing that the Jesus whose name occurred in the Talmud was not identical with the founder of Christianity. Yechiel also contended, among other things, that the Father of the Church, Hieronymus, and other Church Fathers, who were acquainted with the Talmud, had never asserted that it contained sentiments hostile to the Christian faith, and that Nicholas was the first one to raise these false imputations, inspired as he was with feelings of malice and revenge against his former co-religionists, who had expelled him from their community on account of his heresy.
The examination of Yechiel of Paris lasted two days, during which the Jewish congregations fasted, and offered up prayers to God to avert misfortune from their heads. On the third day, the second rabbi, Judah of Melun, was examined, without having been previously allowed to confer with Yechiel, who was kept in custody. In the main, he agreed with the statements of Yechiel, that the defamatory passages in the Talmud concerning Jesus did not refer to the man who was held in such great honor by the Christians, and that the Talmud was indispensable to the religious life of the Jews. The two remaining rabbis were not required to undergo an examination. As the result of this three days' discussion (25th-27th June, 1240), the commission, which had been appointed to make an inquiry into the Talmud, condemned it to be burnt, on the ground that Yechiel and Judah of Melun had been compelled to admit the truth of several of the charges. The sentence of condemnation, however, remained unexecuted. It appears that Archbishop Walter (Guatier) Cornutus, of Sens, a prelate influential with the king, had interceded on behalf of the Jews, and had succeeded in having many of the confiscated volumes restored to their owners. From a Christian source of information, which was intended to calumniate the Jews, but which only points conclusively to the corruptibility of the Church dignitaries of the time, it is gleaned that this prelate was won over to the side of the Jews by a bribe. The French Jews were filled with great joy at the unexpected issue of this event which was of such vital importance to them, and celebrated the day on which the copies of the Talmud were restored to them as a day of rejoicing. But they had begun to exult too early.
The prelate who had raised his voice in favor of the Jews died suddenly; the fanatical monks saw in this a heaven-sent punishment for his befriending the Jews, or persuaded the weak-minded and docile monarch that it was so. Thereupon he commanded that the volumes of the Talmud and similar writings should be sought for, and taken away from their possessors by force. Four-and-twenty cartloads of them were brought together in one spot in Paris, and committed to the flames (Friday, Tamuz--June, 1242). Two young men, one a Provençal and the other a German, named respectively Abraham Bedaresi and Meïr, of Rothenburg, wrote each an elegy upon this event. The French Jews or the French students of the Talmud, who imagined that they could as little exist without the Talmud as without their souls, did not remain passive in quiet endurance of their grief. They turned to Pope Innocent IV, the successor of Gregory IX, and begged that they might be permitted to retain their Talmudical writings, without which they could not fulfil their religious obligations. Their petition was acceded to. The new pope promulgated a decree that they were not to be deprived of those writings which contained nothing antagonistic to Christianity (1243), and under this description the Talmud could be included, as the Christian clergy were unable to discriminate between one work and another. The fanatics, however, among whom was the papal legate, Odo, of Chateauroux, continued to agitate against this edict, till they induced the pope to give his sanction to the sentence of condemnation that had been passed upon the Talmud.
The grief of the French Jews on account of these events was heartrending. They felt as if their very hearts had been torn from them. The pious men among them kept the anniversary of the burning of the Talmud as a fast. One good effect, however, sprang from these wholesale methods of destruction. The opponents of the Maimunists were, to a certain extent, disarmed, and the fierce passions of the parties engaged in internal conflict were stilled for the moment. Jonah Gerundi was the sole survivor of the chief antagonists of the Maimunist teaching. But a short time before he had given the writings of Maimuni to the Dominicans and the Franciscans in Paris to be thrown into the flames. As soon as Jonah became aware of the bitter hostility of the monkish orders of the Inquisition to the Talmud, which was so highly revered by him, he very deeply regretted that he had employed them as the instruments of his hate against Maimuni, and beheld in the burning of the Talmud a divine punishment for his having allowed the writings of Maimuni to be consumed by fire. He was so overwhelmed by the sense of his injustice that he publicly, in the synagogue, confessed his sincere repentance, and announced his intention of making a pilgrimage to the grave of Maimuni, there, veiled in mourning, to prostrate himself and, in the presence of ten persons, to implore the pardon of this great and pious man. For this purpose he set out on a journey, left Paris, and stopped at Montpellier, where he also made public confession of his remorse for his procedure against Maimuni. This act reconciled the two parties. The opponents cast aside all feelings of rancor, and treated each other as brethren. In his discourses, he repeatedly mentioned the name of Maimuni with the respect due to that of a holy man. This conversion possessed so much the greater importance, as Jonah was a rabbinical authority, and the author of several Talmudical works, which were held in high estimation.
From this time forward the whole history of the Jews alternated between restrictive laws and bloody persecutions, which were repeated from year to year, now at one place, now at another, but principally in Germany, where the intolerant Church had transformed the naturally mild-tempered people into tigers. When the Mongols and Tartars, the savage warriors of Jenghis-Khan, made their inroads into Europe, ravaged Russia and Poland, and penetrated to the borders of Germany, the Jews were accused of having secretly aided this enemy of Christianity. Instead of directing their charges against Emperor Frederick II and the pope, who, engaged in an obstinate feud, looked on quietly whilst the savage conquerors were advancing, the rage of the deluded populace, based upon groundless imputations of guilt, was directed against the Jews of Germany. There were, indeed, Jewish soldiers among the Mongols, from the independent tribes of Khorasan, or, as the legends call them, the remnant of the Ten Tribes who were shut in by the Caspian mountains. Had the German Jews any knowledge of their kinsmen among the Mongol hordes? Had they any secret understanding with them? The story was circulated in Germany that the Jews had offered to supply the Mongols with poisoned provisions. Under this pretext they had attempted to provide them with weapons of all kinds enclosed in casks. A vigilant guard at the borders, having his suspicions aroused, insisted on having the casks opened, whereupon the plot was revealed. This tale was received with general credulity, and was the cause of much suffering to the German Jews.
As if the representatives of the Church had not yet done sufficient harm to the Jews, they determined to deprive them of their only remaining position of influence in Christian society. The practice of medicine was in the hands of Jews principally; indeed, nearly every prince and noble had his private Jewish physician, who possessed more or less influence over the mind of the one whose body was entrusted to his skill. The clergy, who were seldom gentle as doves, but often full of cunning, could not suffer this influence of the Jews over the powerful rulers of the land. The Church council at Béziers was the first to pay special attention to the question of Jews' practising the medicinal art. Under the presidency of the Archbishop of Narbonne, this council, which also inflicted all kinds of hardships upon the Albigensian heretics, renewed many ancient restrictions. They enacted that Jews should not be allowed to possess Christian servants or nurses, and that they should not be eligible to offices of trust. They were not to leave their homes during Passion Week; they were to pay to the Church an annual sum of six dinars for each family. Upon their breasts they were bidden to wear a distinctive badge, that of a wheel, and they were forbidden to sell meat in public. To these laws there was added a canonical decree that Christians should not seek the services of Jewish physicians, under penalty of excommunication (May, 1246). These restrictive enactments were repeated by a council held in the south of France, in which district the Jews had conferred distinction upon the healing art. Three generations of the Tibbon family had acted as instructors to Christian physicians, and now the third member of the family, Moses (who flourished 1250-1285 in Montpellier), the translator of philosophical and medical writings, was commanded to discontinue practising among Christian patients. Another writer on medicine, and a practical physician, Shem-Tob ben Isaac of Tortosa (born 1206, composed his works about 1261-1264), delivered public discourses on the healing art to Christian audiences in Marseilles, and made them acquainted with the results of the Arabic schools. This physician presents an instructive instance of the Jewish zeal for knowledge. In his youth he was taught exclusively in the Talmud; later he forsook this study, and became a merchant, making journeys across the sea, and going as far as the last remaining seat of the former Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Jean d'Acre (Accho). Here one of his co-religionists, who was engaged in the study of mathematics, upbraided him for having considered science subordinate to the earning of a livelihood. Owing to this rebuke, although over thirty years of age, Shem-Tob Tortosi changed his plan of life, hastened from Accho to Barcelona, and made study his primary pursuit, and the earning of his livelihood a subsidiary one. He studied medicine, and became so proficient that he was able to translate the writings of the best Arabic physicians, and to deliver lectures upon the healing art. These and many other Jewish physicians were now, in pursuance of the edict of the council at Béziers, to be driven forth from the temple to which they alone, it may almost be said, in all Christendom possessed the key.
However, although the Church held the souls of the faithful captive and in a state of mystification, yet their bodies remained rebelliously opposed to her and her decisions. This canonical law could not, therefore, long retain its force. In sickness even the most bigoted Christian called in the aid of the clever Jewish physician. When Alfonso, Duke of Poitou and Toulouse, the brother of the fanatical king, Louis IX, under whose patronage the anti-Jewish councils at Béziers and Alby had taken place, was afflicted with some disease of the eye, he was perforce obliged to invoke the assistance of Abraham of Aragon, a skilful Jewish oculist. The lord of Lünel was driven to use great efforts, and to seek the good offices of his Jewish agent, in order to induce the wealthy and independent Jewish physician to attend to the French prince. In Montpellier, the seat of a famous college of medicine, Jewish physicians continued for a long time to be permitted to take the examinations, to practise, and even to give instruction.
The frequent massacres of the Jews, which for ten years had been taking place in Germany and France, especially on the charge of the murder of Christian children, induced the German and French congregations to apply for protection to Pope Innocent IV, and to explain to him that the charge that they employed the blood and hearts of human beings was a lying invention, concocted solely for the purpose of seeking an occasion for murder and robbery. At this time, Innocent lived in partial exile at Lyons, whither he had been forced to retire owing to his dispute with Emperor Frederick II. He yielded to the entreaty of the Jews, either because he deemed it necessary, in view of his strained relations with nearly all the temporal powers, to appear just, or because the Jews had liberally supplied him with the means of which he was so covetous, to enable him to overcome his bitter opponents. His greed for money was the subject of a biting satire, describing how the goddess Pecunia rules the world, the Church never closing its doors against her, and the pope willingly receiving her in his arms. Innocent IV dispatched a bull from Lyons (July 5, 1247) to the Church dignitaries of France and Germany, in which, for the first time, the repeated baseless and fiendish imputations against the Jews were officially contradicted. "Certain of the clergy, and princes, nobles and great lords of your dioceses have falsely devised certain godless plans against the Jews, unjustly depriving them by force of their property, and appropriating it themselves; they falsely charge them with dividing up among themselves on the Passover the heart of a murdered boy. Christians believe that the Law of the Jews prescribes this to them, whilst in their Law the very reverse is ordained. In fact, in their malice, they ascribe every murder, wherever it chance to occur, to Jews. And on the ground of these and other fabrications, they are filled with rage against them, rob them of their possessions without any formal accusation, without confession, and without legal trial and conviction. Contrary to the privileges graciously granted to them from the Apostolic chair, and opposed to God and His justice, they oppress the Jews by starvation, imprisonment, and by other tortures and sufferings; they afflict them with all kinds of punishments, and sometimes even condemn them to death, so that the Jews, although living under Christian princes, are in a worse plight than were their ancestors in Egypt under the Pharaohs. They are driven to leave in despair the land in which their fathers have dwelt since the memory of man. Since it is our pleasure that they shall not be distressed, we ordain that ye behave towards them in a friendly and kind manner. Whenever any unjust attacks upon them come under your notice, redress their injuries, and do not suffer them to be visited in the future by similar tribulations." One would imagine that so decisive a condemnation of the blood-accusation would once for all have disposed of these false charges. But the papacy had so impregnated men's hearts with the feeling of hatred against the Jews, that a mild expression of opinion from one or the other of the popes passed idly away as a breath of wind.
The so-called St. Louis was literally more papal than the pope himself. His weak mind lent its ready aid to all the fanatical measures taken against the Jews. When the wild idea occurred to him of entering upon a new crusade, he confiscated the property of certain Jews in order to obtain money for the campaign. Whilst waging war in Egypt in furtherance of the crusade, he was taken prisoner (April-May, 1250). He was jeered at by the Mahometans, because he, the most Christian king, suffered the enemies of Christianity to remain in his kingdom. He thereupon, on his release, promulgated an edict for the banishment of all Jews, with the exception of handicraftsmen, from his hereditary lands. However, his prudent mother, the queen Blanche, probably paid little heed to this reckless command. On her death, however, and the subsequent return of Louis to France (December, 1254), the king seriously set about expelling the Jews. Their landed property, synagogues and cemeteries, were forfeited to the crown. What Philip Augustus had done from apparently political motives, Louis, the saint of the Church, did from fanaticism. But on this, as on the former occasion, the period of exile was not long. As before, the edict affected only those Jews who dwelt in the king's own territories; and even then those who lived by the labor of their hands were excepted. A few years later, permission was granted to the exiles to return, and their synagogues and cemeteries were restored to them.
It is a noteworthy fact that the spiritual activity of the French Jews, the ingenious exposition of the Talmud by the Tossafists, in no degree ceased on account of these miseries, but continued undisturbed for some time longer. The Talmud was burnt; the teaching of it was again prohibited by Louis, and still, in this very time, the pious itinerant preacher, Moses of Coucy, composed his great work on the Law. In this he combined, in a clear, synoptical manner, the elements of the Talmud with the religious ordinances of the Bible, proceeding on the basis of the Code of Maimuni. Another famous Talmudist, Samuel ben Solomon Sir Morel, of Falaise, prepared a new collection of Tossafoth, just at the time when the Talmud was proscribed (1252-1259); he possessed no copy of the Talmud to work from, because the Dominican spies had deprived him of it, and he was compelled to rely upon his memory. Moreover, Yechiel of Paris had three hundred students of the Talmud in his academy, to whom he delivered discourses, probably from memory. But this activity could not long continue; there were too many obstacles to be encountered. The French congregations had become impoverished by the frequent demands for money and the confiscation of their property. Whilst formerly France had sent money for the support of the Jews in Asia, Yechiel was now compelled to send a messenger to Palestine and the neighboring lands to procure supplies for the maintenance of his academy. Yechiel felt himself obliged to leave his native land and to emigrate to Palestine (to Jean d'Acre). He was one of the last representatives of the French Tossafist school, which had developed so much ingenuity and critical acumen, but was now gradually declining and approaching its fall. The Church was succeeding in altogether destroying the Talmudical spirit which had its chief home in France. The last followers of the school of Tossafists in France were only compilers, who endeavored to bring the results of the labors of past scholars into proper form and order. Prompted by the conviction that the study of the Talmud was declining, and that even the rabbis were at a loss for correct decisions, Isaac ben Joseph, of Corbeil, the disciple and son-in-law of Yechiel of Paris, wrote a concise manual of such religious duties as were of practical importance to the Jews in their dispersion (Semak). He strove to render his book as popular and pleasing as possible, for he could not at that time depend upon its being easily understood by the bulk of the people in any other form, and he sent a letter to the congregations of France and Germany asking them to make copies of his work, and to spread the knowledge of it. The Tossafist method of study perished before the fanaticism of the mendicant friars and the bigotry of King Louis IX.
In England, throughout the long reign of King Henry III (1216-1272), the condition of the Jews grew worse and worse. Henry, indeed, was not a tyrant like his father, John Lackland, and was at first kindly disposed towards the Jews. During his minority, whilst the regent held the reins of office, the Jews were treated with great indulgence. Commands were given to the sheriffs to protect them against the violence of the mob; and distinct and impressive orders were given to the clergy not to assume any power over the Jews. Henry, or the regent, permitted foreign Jews to land and settle in any part of England without paying any special tax for the privilege; and he forbade the native Jews, not, indeed, from any particularly tender feeling towards them, to quit the country. Henry, as his father had done, appointed a chief rabbi over all the Jewish congregations (presbyter Judæorum). The first man to hold this office was Joceus (José?); Aaron of York succeeded him, and the last to hold the post was Elias, of London. This appointment was for life. The English chief rabbi possessed very great authority over the members of his community. He was at the same time royal overseer (justitiarus) of the revenues of the crown which were obtained from the Jews. He, together with certain Jewish and Christian colleagues, had to keep a register of the property of the English Jews in the Rolls (rotuli); to see also to the payment of the Jew-tax into the treasury, called the Exchequer of the Jews; and also to deliver up to the royal exchequer the property of men who had died without heirs, this property escheating to the crown. If the chief rabbi did not wish to occupy himself with financial matters, he could appoint a substitute with full powers. Finally, he was invested with the authority to excommunicate members of his community who refused to obey his decrees, or who would not contribute towards the burdens of the congregation. Henry III at first energetically restrained the intolerance of the Church. On one occasion, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to prevent intercourse between Christians and Jews, issued a decree prohibiting all Christians, on pain of ecclesiastical censure, from selling any kinds of food to Jews, the king countermanded the interdict. Whilst the French Jews were being robbed and massacred by the crowds of crusaders, Henry exerted himself to prevent the spreading of this spirit of fanaticism over his domains.
But this considerate treatment of the Jews did not last long. Henry III was of a reckless, thoughtless nature, and very extravagant. He lent a ready ear to all that his friends advised. He was especially guided by the legates and financial agents of the pope, who had been sent to loot this rich land, and who, like a long-enduring epidemic, caused much injury to England, and stirred up revolts and civil war. On the one hand, he was in great need of a very large sum of money, and on the other, the influence of the Church was continually growing stronger. In order to replenish his almost empty coffers, Henry levied a poll-tax upon the Jews, even upon newly-born infants. A portion of every debt contracted between Jews and Christians was to be paid into the royal treasury. The bonds for debts owing to Jews were therefore registered and examined with suspicious care, lest an attempt be made to defraud his majesty. The bonds had to be attested by several witnesses, and a copy of them deposited in the city archives. The ordinary Jew-taxes, however, did not long satisfy the king, who was involved in debt, and very lavish in his expenditure. Enormous sums were extracted from the congregations, now under one pretext, now under another. The clergy furnished the opportunities. Sometimes the Jews were accused of making away with their baptized brethren, and of circumcising Christian boys. Upon such charges, individuals or even whole congregations were cast into prison, and released only on payment of a heavy ransom. All this, however, presents no novel features. Something entirely new and original was done when the king summoned a Jewish Parliament. He issued writs to all the English communities, commanding the larger ones to return six representatives from among their distinguished men, and the smaller ones two, who were to assemble before the king, in Worcester, on the Sunday before Lent. The Jewish Parliament in Worcester numbered over one hundred members. The king in his message stated that they were to take counsel together for their own and his majesty's welfare. But it is scarcely possible that the Jews allowed themselves to be lulled by the deceptive promise that liberties would be conceded to them. Henry assembled his ordinary Parliament only when he was in urgent need of supplies. Accordingly, he informed his Jewish Parliament that it was to collect large sums of money for him, and the Jews dared not make any objections. Finally, the Parliament elected trustworthy men to assess the money for each congregation, and to see to its payment. If the apportioned sums of money were not forthcoming, the collectors were made answerable, on penalty of imprisonment of themselves, their wives, and their families. When at length, Henry had extorted enough from the Jews, and a feeling of shame prevented him from demanding any more money from them, he pledged them, on certain conditions, to his brother Richard, who had even less consideration for them.
The Church now began her canonical extortions and cruelties. The clergy prevailed on the king, who was their puppet, to prohibit the Jews from erecting any new house of prayer; they were not to utter their prayers aloud in their synagogues, and especially they were to wear the conspicuous Jew-badge on their garments. Many other enactments to a similar effect were passed. The life of the Jews became so intolerable by reason of this double tyranny of Church and State, that their chief rabbi Elias, together with a few colleagues, twice declared to the king, in the name of the congregations, that they could not pay the taxes that were continually being demanded from them, and they must ask leave to quit the country. However sorry they might be to depart from their native land and to forsake their homes, they preferred it to the miserable condition in which they now were. But it was of no avail. The Jews were obliged to remain in England against their will; they were forced to surrender their last farthing, and to resort to usury in order to replenish their coffers. An account, which is still extant, gives some idea of the exactions made by Henry III. The Jews were required to collect within seven years the sum of £422,000 sterling. One Jew, Aaron of York, was compelled to pay to the king, in seven years, the sum of 30,000 marks of silver, besides 200 marks of gold to the queen. As the chief rabbi Elias was not sufficiently severe in raising money for the king, Henry deposed him, and granted the Jews the privilege, on payment of a certain sum, of electing their own spiritual leaders.
Meanwhile, in England also, the usual charge of child-murder was made against the Jews. The Dominicans, with their poisonous eloquence, zealously called for their punishment. Several of them were thrown into prison; but they were freed by the Franciscans. Matthew Paris, the malicious chronicler of the period, remarks, concerning the affair, "Dame Rumor has it that the Minorites' friendship for the Jews was bought by a bribe." This statement does not, indeed, go to prove the guilt of the Jews in the charge of child-murder, but that the Franciscans had for once permitted themselves to be bought for a just cause. The constant agitation of the fanatical Dominicans against the Jews had filled the people with deep hatred against this race. At the time when the Commons were admitted by law as the Third Estate, and rose against the despotic rule of the monarch, they made an attack upon the Jews in London, pillaged their treasures, and murdered 1500 of them (Easter week, 1264). The surviving Jews fled for safety to the Tower, where the king granted them his protection; their houses, however, fell into the hands of the plundering barons. The Jews became so impoverished by these assaults that they were not able to pay the ordinary taxes, and Henry was obliged to remit payment for the space of three years, in order to avoid reducing them to a state of total destitution (1268). Besides, the king and the Parliament forbade their buying fee estates, or, in general, real property from Christian owners (1270).
Superficially compared with their brethren in England, France and Germany, the Jews in Spain at this time appeared to be living in paradise. In Castile, Alfonso X (1252-1284), who was called the Wise, even by his contemporaries, was king. He had a veritable and strong affection for science, and encouraged its pursuit. He emulated the fame of his Mahometan predecessors, Abderrahman III and Alhakem. His father, Ferdinand the Holy--a title always synonymous with the Intolerant--was not particularly gracious towards the Jews, but the son, who in no respect was in accord with him, appeared desirous of pursuing another course of action. In the war against Seville, which he conducted whilst still heir-apparent, there were many Jewish soldiers in his army. When this city was captured, and the district was being partitioned among the warriors, the Infante Alfonso looked well to the interests of his Jewish allies. He allotted to them certain lands, where they might form a village exclusively Jewish (Aldea de los Judios). He transferred three mosques, which they turned into synagogues, to the Jews of Seville. The latter had probably helped him in the capture of the city, as they had been very wretched under the rule of the Almohades, having been compelled to live as Mahometans. A large portion of the town, which was separated from the rest of the city by a wall, belonged to them (under the name of Parternilla de los Judios). Out of gratitude towards the victor, the congregation of Seville presented him with a valuable, artistically wrought key, with a Hebrew and Spanish inscription, which ran as follows:--"The King of kings opens, the king of the land will enter." When Alfonso ascended the throne, he entrusted many important official positions to the Jews. Don Meïr de Malea, who was a cultured man, and a student of the Talmud, was treasurer to this monarch, and bore the title of Almoxarif. He appears to have performed his functions in this office in so excellent a manner that his son, Don Zag (Isaac), succeeded him in the position. It became the custom in Castile for a long space of time to select Jews as Chancellors of the Exchequer, not only because they were better informed on financial matters than the Spanish hidalgos, but because they managed in a more trustworthy and skilful manner. Many other Jews were admitted to the court of Alfonso. He employed a Jewish physician, Don Judah ben Moses Cohen, who at the same time was his astronomer and astrologer. The king, who was himself engaged in the study of astrology and alchemy to a great extent, had astronomical works, and a book upon the qualities of certain stones, translated by learned Jews, from Arabic into Castilian. At this period, as in earlier times, there were very few Christian scholars acquainted with Arabic, although they were surrounded by Arabs, and the Jews here, as in most places, had to furnish the means of communication. Churchmen who had not forgotten their Latin then translated the Castilian version made by the Jews into the language of the Church. The king was accustomed to call the reader of prayers in the synagogue of Toledo "his sage." This man was Don Zag (Isaac) Ibn-Said (Sid), one of the most distinguished astronomers of his age. Alfonso commissioned this precentor, Don Zag, to draw up astronomical tables, which work renders the name of this sovereign more famous than his warlike deeds and his political wisdom. Up to the time of the recent discoveries in astronomy, those engaged in this study made use of the "Tables of Alfonso," which more appropriately should be termed the tables of Zag or of Said. There was a third Jewish scientist at the court of Alfonso, Samuel Halevi, whose name is associated with an ingenious water-clock, which he invented, and fashioned at the order of the king. The representatives of the Church were naturally very much incensed that the Jews held these important positions at court, and the Pope Nicholas III thereupon, with characteristic selfishness and presumption, reproached the king with a long list of sins, and pointed out that many evils arose because Jews were preferred to Christians.
However, although Alfonso admitted many cultured and able Jews to court, and employed their talents, yet the condition of the Jews of Castile under his rule was by no means so favorable as one might at first sight expect. Alfonso was not altogether free from the prejudices of his time. The spirit of hatred of the Jews, which had been stirred up by Innocent III, had taken its hold upon him, as upon Emperor Frederick II, whose place he had been elected to fill by a certain faction. Alfonso deserved the honorable title of "the Wise" only in a limited sense, seeing that he acted very unwisely in political matters, and in his relations with the Church was by no means so enlightened as Frederick II. As a favor to the clergy, or because he was a bigot, he placed many restrictions upon the Jews, and reduced them to a degraded condition. It is not quite certain whether the Visigothic collection of laws (called Forum Judicum, fuero juzgo) was translated into Castilian by Alfonso or by his father. From this collection the Spaniards acquired their ineradicable hatred against the Jews. Whether Alfonso is responsible for this or not, it is nevertheless well known that he aimed at reducing the Jews to a miserable state by a series of enactments of his own.
He compiled for all the peoples of his kingdom a bulky code of laws, divided into seven groups, and written in Castilian (1257-1266). In this work there are many references to the Jews, in fact a whole section of the code treats solely of them. It is there stated: "Although the Jews deny Christ, they are suffered in all Christian countries, so that they may remind everybody that they belong to that race which crucified Jesus. Since they are merely tolerated, they must keep themselves quiet and unobtrusive, must not openly preach the doctrines of Judaism, nor attempt to make any converts to their religion." The law of Alfonso attached the penalty of death to the conversion of a Christian to Judaism. It asserts that in ancient times the Jews were held in respect, and called the people of God, but by their wickedness against Jesus, they had forfeited this distinction, and no Jew was ever to obtain any dignity or fill any public office in Spain. Alfonso included in his code of laws every possible restriction which fanaticism and hatred had ever devised against the Jews. They were prohibited from building new synagogues, from having Christian servants, and from intermarriage with Christians. Jews and Jewesses were to wear a peculiar mark upon their head-dress, and any person who was seen without this mark was condemned to pay a fine of ten pieces of gold, or if he was poor, to receive ten stripes with the scourge. Jews and Christians were not to take their meals together, nor bathe in company. Alfonso also incorporated the ordinance that Jews should not appear in the public streets on Good Friday. The wise Alfonso gave credence to the lying story that the Jews every year, on Good Friday, crucified a Christian child, and therefore framed a law that whoever was found guilty of this crime, or whoever crucified a wax figure on this day, should be put to death. In vain had Pope Innocent IV declared the falsehood of this accusation, and proved the innocence of the Jews. When a pope was heard to speak in a favorable manner of the Jews, his infallibility was discredited, even by a cultured monarch who held intercourse with Jews. It is hard to believe that the king who kept a private Jewish physician promulgated a law to the effect that no Christian should take any medicine prepared by a Jew. It must be considered a great concession to the Jews, that Alfonso decreed that their synagogues were not to be profaned or dishonored, that they were not to be coerced to undergo baptism, were not to be summoned before a court of justice on their festivals, and were simply to take the oath upon the Torah, without any further degrading ceremony, such as was sometimes added in Germany.
The laws of Alfonso with regard to the Jews had no practical importance for the time being; his code obtained the force of law only at a much later date. Alfonso himself transgressed the very laws concerning the Jews which he had laid down, when he permitted Jews to hold offices of trust. Nevertheless, his collection of laws exercised a most prejudicial effect upon the Jews of Spain. It set up the canonical standard as that of the state, and contributed towards transforming their paradise into a veritable hell. The laws of Alfonso are in force at the present day in Spanish America, whilst his astronomical tables have been forgotten.
The Jews in the kingdom of Aragon suffered even worse treatment than those of Castile. Here, two influences were at work, making their condition a most humiliating one. The king Jayme (Jacob I), who reigned for a long time, had possessions in the south of France, and often came into contact with the bigoted St. Louis and his councilors. From them he acquired the theory of the proper treatment of Jews. He also looked upon them, with all their possessions, as the chattels of the sovereign, his "servi cameræ," serfs. No Jew was allowed to place himself under the protection of a nobleman. There was an advantage in this: it withdrew the Jews from the jurisdiction of the clergy. A law was made by Jayme which expressly stated that the Jews were not to be treated either as prisoners or as slaves. They were nevertheless exposed to the arbitrary action of the reigning sovereign, which was not limited by any law or custom. The second pernicious influence emanated from the Church and its blind zealots. The general of the Dominicans was Raymond de Penyaforte, the collector of the papal decretals, the precursor of Torquemada, whose whole soul was absorbed by the task of elevating the power of the papacy and of the infallible Church above that of the state. This gloomy and evil-minded monk was the confessor of King Jayme. The king of Aragon had loved much, and sinned greatly, and was thus in constant need of his father-confessor, and dependent on him; and though he did not always obey his will, in his treatment of Jews and Mahometans, he did his bidding gladly. The main purpose of Penyaforte's exertions was to convert Jews and Mahometans. In the higher schools, conducted by the Dominicans, Penyaforte had also Hebrew and Arabic taught, so that the preaching friars might use their knowledge of those languages in effecting conversions.
A young man of this order, named Pablo Christiani, a baptized Jew, who was like Nicholas-Donin in disposition, was the first missionary preacher for the conversion of the Jews. He journeyed about in the south of France and in other places, invited the Jews to enter into discussion with him, and sought to demonstrate to them that the Messianic character and the divinity of Jesus were confirmed in the Bible and the Talmud. As his mission was crowned with little or no success, De Penyaforte resolved on arranging a public disputation on the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity at the royal court, between Pablo Christiani and Moses Nachmani, the most famous rabbi in Spain. If the rabbi was converted, Penyaforte hoped to effect without any difficulty the wholesale acknowledgment by the Jewish communities of the truths of the Christian faith. Nachmani received a letter of invitation from King Jayme to come to Barcelona and enter upon a solemn discussion (1263).
Nachmani made his appearance, and, contrary to his desire, was obliged to declare himself willing to take part in the disputation. However, he did it with dignity, and represented the religion of his fathers before a Christian king in as honorable a manner as Philo of Alexandria had done twelve hundred years before, in the presence of a heathen emperor. At the outset Nachmani told Jayme and his confessor Penyaforte that he was ready to take part in this contest only on the condition that complete freedom of speech be granted him, so that he might meet his opponent on a footing of equality. The king consented to this stipulation. When Penyaforte thereupon remarked that he must not avail himself of this liberty of speech to revile and blaspheme Christianity, he replied, with dignity, that he knew the rules of common courtesy. The discussion between Nachmani and Pablo Christiani, if compared with that between Yechiel and Nicholas-Donin, clearly reveals the superiority of the Spanish Jews over their brethren of northern France. The rabbi of Paris and the Dominican Donin fought like two fierce pugilists, assailing each other with heavy blows of the fist, accompanied by words of abuse; the rabbi of Gerona and the Dominican Pablo, on the other hand, met like two cultured noblemen, who dealt blows with an air of politeness, and with due observance of the etiquette of refined society.
This disputation at Barcelona lasted for four days (beginning on the 20th July). It took place in the palace of the king, and in the presence of the whole court and of many distinguished ecclesiastics, knights and citizens. Many Jews were probably among the audience. Nachmani at the very beginning clearly defined the points to be discussed. The points of difference between Judaism and Christianity were so numerous, he remarked, that it was advisable to pay attention only to the most essential among them. The topics of discussion which he suggested were, first, whether the Messiah had appeared or not; next, whether the Messiah, according to the prophecies of the Bible, was to be considered as God, or as a man born of human parents; and finally, whether the Jews or the Christians were in possession of the true faith. The king and all those interested in the matter expressed their approval of this proposed plan. It is peculiar that whilst Nicholas-Donin accused the Talmud on the ground that it contained scurrilous attacks upon Jesus and the Christians, Pablo Christiani based his argument on the opposite contention, that the Talmud recognized Jesus as the Messiah. This statement it was, of course, easy for Nachmani to refute. Pablo's chief proof rested upon Agadic passages, but Nachmani had at the beginning of the discussion carefully guarded against this method of attack, by emphatically asserting that he did not believe in these and other Agadic stories. The Dominican now declared that an interpretation such as he suggested was heresy, as though he knew better than the rabbi what was orthodox in Judaism and what infidelity. His Jewish antagonist, however, would not allow himself to be disconcerted by such remarks, and said in justification of his position that it behoved a Jew to believe in the truth of the Bible and in the exposition of the Talmud in all points of religious practice; but, on the other hand, he was perfectly at liberty to reject or accept the Agadic interpretations, which were to be regarded only as sermons (sermones), as they were conformable or opposed to his views. Nachmani made another bold remark. He said "that he had more regard for the Christian monarch than for the Messiah." This statement he justified by saying that it was more meritorious for himself and for all Jews to keep the precepts of their religion whilst under a Christian ruler, in exile, and suffering humiliation and abuse, than to observe them when dwelling in prosperity and freedom under a powerful Jewish king. The Messiah was to be regarded as nothing more than a king of flesh and blood. Nachmani did not neglect to bring forward an important objection to the Messianic character of Jesus, which had been employed by ancient polemical writers. All the prophets had foretold, that at the time of the Messiah a more elevated standard of morality would prevail among mankind, and especially that all war and bloodshed would cease. But since the appearance of Jesus, the world had really become filled with violence and injustice. The Christians were considered to be the most warlike among the nations, that is to say, the people that shed most blood. Then turning to the king, Nachmani said, "It behoves thee, and thy knights, O king, to put an end to all thy war-making, as the beginning of the Messianic era demands."
When Nachmani had been debating for three days, with candor combined with dignity, about the doctrines of Christianity, the Jews of Barcelona entreated him to break off the disputation, as they feared the persecution of the Dominicans. Many knights and clergymen also warned him against being carried too far by his frankness. The Christian inhabitants of Barcelona interested themselves in behalf of the Jews, and desired to avoid all provocation. Nachmani told the king of the feeling that prevailed, but he wished the disputation to continue. The intellectual tournament was therefore resumed. Nachmani finally proved victorious, as Pablo could not cope with his well-directed arguments. At the end of the discussion, the king said to Nachmani in a private audience, that he had never heard so unjust a matter defended so skilfully. The Dominicans, however, sought to spread the report that Pablo Christiani had contrived to outwit his opponent so cleverly that the latter, overwhelmed with shame, had secretly fled. So far from running away, Nachmani remained in Barcelona for another week, as a rumor had got abroad that his majesty and the Dominicans intended to visit the synagogue on the following Saturday. They did really appear in the synagogue, and Penyaforte resumed the disputation there. He illustrated the doctrine of the Trinity by wine, which possesses the qualities of color, taste and smell, and is yet a unity. It was an easy task for Nachmani to offer a complete reply to these and similar analogies, and he at last drove the confessor of the king to make the dangerous acknowledgment that the idea of the Trinity was so profound a mystery that even the angels were unable to comprehend it. Thereupon Nachmani remarked, "If this is really the case, then no reproach ought to be made to men, if they cannot surpass the angels in wisdom." Before his departure, Nachmani was again admitted to an audience with the king, and dismissed with a friendly farewell. The king gave him three hundred maravedis as a mark of respect.
The consequences of this disputation at Barcelona were by no means harmless. De Penyaforte was resolved upon compassing the conversion of the Jews, and permitted nothing to turn him from his fixed determination. He obtained from King Jayme a letter of protection which would enable his protégé Pablo Christiani to go on long missionary journeys, and thus the Jews were exposed to the caprice of the Jewish Dominican friar. What had failed of success in Barcelona, with an antagonist like Nachmani, might perhaps be successful in other places with less skilful opponents. Strict commands were issued to the congregations in Aragon, and in the adjoining districts of southern France, to enter into discussion with Pablo Christiani at his invitation. The Jews were to listen to him quietly, either in their synagogues or wherever they chanced to be, to answer his questions meekly, and to hand over to him all such books as he required for his demonstrations. They were also to defray the expenses of his mission. The despair of the Jews at such demands may well be imagined. Whether victorious or defeated, they were subjected to torments and extortion.
As in spite of the protection granted to him by the king, Pablo Christiani did not meet with a hearty welcome among his former co-religionists, he followed in the footsteps of Nicholas-Donin, and denounced the Talmud, asserting that it contained passages of hostile import directed against Jesus and Mary. He went to Pope Clement IV, and repeated to him the charges against the Talmud. The pope, at his request, issued a bull (1264) to the Bishop of Tarragona, commanding him to confiscate copies of the Talmud, and to submit them to the examination of the Dominicans and Franciscans; if found to be blasphemous, they were to be burnt. Pablo Christiani, the apostate, in person brought this bull to Spain. Thereupon King Jayme ordered (1264) that the Talmud be examined, and the passages containing abuse and slander be struck out. The duty of acting as censors was entrusted to the Bishop of Barcelona, De Penyaforte, and to three other Dominicans, together with Pablo Christiani. This commission marked the passages in the Talmud which were to be obliterated, and thus for the first time censorship was exercised by the Dominicans against the Talmud in Spain. The censorship was on the whole less destructive in Aragon than in France, where the whole Talmud was condemned to the flames. The reason of this comparative mildness was explained by the fact that Raymond Martin, a member of the Dominican order and of the board of censors, and the writer of two anti-Jewish works, was convinced that several passages in the Talmud bore witness to the truth of Christianity, and were certainly traditions derived from Moses, and that therefore the Talmud should not be utterly destroyed.
The hurtful effects of the disputation of Nachmani have not yet been enumerated. They even affected the man himself, who was the accredited representative of Spanish Judaism in the post-Maimunic age. Nachmani found himself obliged to publish, for his co-religionists, a true and accurate report of the proceedings at Barcelona, in order to oppose the missionary machinations of Pablo Christiani, and to rebuke the unjustifiable vainglory of the Dominicans over the victory, which they declared that they had gained at the disputation held at the court.
He made no secret of the matter, but gave a copy of his pamphlet to the Bishop of Gerona, and as the latter raised no objection, copies of the account of this disputation were dispatched to various countries where Jews dwelt (about 1264). As might have been expected, Nachmani by this proceeding drew down upon himself the still fiercer hatred of the Dominicans. Pablo Christiani, who obtained a report of the disputation, and who understood Hebrew, selected from it passages that contained gross blasphemies against the Christian religion, and notified De Penyaforte, his superior, the fanatical general of the Dominicans, of them. The latter then, in conjunction with a brother friar, instituted a capital charge, and lodged a formal complaint with the king against the author and his work. Don Jayme was obliged to assent to the charge; but he did not entrust the trial to a court composed of Dominicans, but called together an extraordinary commission, and invited Nachmani (or as he was called by the Christians, Bonastruc de Porta) to defend himself, and ordered that the proceedings be conducted in his presence. Nachmani was in a very unpleasant position, but his staunch truthfulness did not fail him. He admitted that he had stated many things against Christianity in his pamphlet, but he had written nothing which he had not used in his disputation in the presence of the king; and he had asked from the king and the general of the Dominicans for liberty of speech to utter these things, and had obtained permission. He ought not to be made answerable and condemned for expressions in his written account which had remained unrebuked in his oral defense.
The king and the commission acknowledged the justice of his vindication; nevertheless, in order to avoid provoking the order of the Dominicans or De Penyaforte, Nachmani was sentenced to exile from his native land for two years, and his pamphlet was condemned to be burnt. The Inquisition had not yet attained an all-powerful position. The Dominicans were, however, by no means satisfied with this comparatively mild sentence, as they had expected a much more severe punishment. It appears that they intended to summon Nachmani before their own tribunal, where they would undoubtedly have condemned him to death. King Jayme offered energetic opposition to this project. He gave to Nachmani a sort of charter, which stated that he could be accused in this matter only in the presence of the king (April, 1265). The Dominicans were naturally very much enraged at the mildness of the king, and at the apparent encroachment on their judicial prerogative to decide upon questions of life and death. They appealed to Pope Clement IV, complaining that the king had permitted the author of a pamphlet which grossly insulted Christianity to go unpunished. The pope, who at that time was harboring other grudges against the king of Aragon, addressed a very severe epistle to him. He upbraided him for a number of sins, ordering him to deprive Jews of public offices, and to inflict heavy punishment on that arch-villain who, after taking part in a religious discussion, had published a pamphlet as a trophy of his heresy (1266). It cannot be fully ascertained whether the king obeyed the pope regarding Nachmani or not, or what his sentence was. At any rate, it appears that one punishment was meted out to him, namely, that he was to be banished from the country. At the age of seventy, Nachmani left his fatherland, his two sons, his school and his friends, and went into exile. He made his way to the Holy Land, being filled with the same intense longing as his spiritual kinsman, Jehuda Halevi. He went a step further than the latter, maintaining that it is the religious duty of every Jew to dwell in Judæa. Thus fate had done him a kindness, assisting him in the performance of a command, and helping him to fulfil his ardent desire. He set out on his journey by ship, and landed at Jean d'Acre (1267), which at that time was still in the hands of the Christians. Thence he made haste to start for Jerusalem (9th Ellul--12th August).
Nachmani's feelings were deeply stirred on beholding the condition of the Holy Land and the Sacred City. He suffered even keener disappointment than Jehuda Halevi. The Mongols or Tartars, under the Sultan Hulagu, had committed fearful ravages in the land a few years previously (1260). This savage monarch, after conquering the eastern Caliphate, had turned his attention to the Sultanate of Egypt, captured the fortresses on the Euphrates, Damascus, Aleppo, and Baalbek, and forced his way into Palestine. Jerusalem was transformed into a heap of ruins; all its inhabitants had forsaken it (1260). The Jews had connected these extraordinary events with their hopes for the Messiah. The "hateful, deformed men of the East," who had subdued both the oppressors of Israel, the followers of Jesus and of Mahomet, might perhaps bring near unto Israel the hour of redemption. An enthusiast circulated a new revelation said to have been given through Simon bar Yochaï, the medium so frequently appealed to by mysticism, and it declared that the devastations of the Mongols were the sufferings which must precede the coming of the Messiah.
Nachmani entered Palestine a few years after the Mongols had been expelled from the country by the Sultan of Egypt. He beheld many ruins, and apostrophized them in eloquent words, saying, "The more holy the place, the greater its desolation; Jerusalem is more desolate than the rest of Judæa, and Judæa in turn more desolate than Galilee." The Jews of the Holy City had either been slain or scattered; the scrolls of the Law had been rescued by some who fled to Shechem. Two thousand Mahometans and three hundred Christians had again settled in Jerusalem, but only one or two Jewish families were discovered there by Nachmani, and, as before, they enjoyed the privilege of farming the dye-works. The Jewish pilgrims, who had come to Jerusalem from Syria, erected a synagogue at Nachmani's suggestion. Upon Mount Olivet, opposite the ruins of the Temple, Nachmani breathed forth his deep distress over the desolation of the Holy City; but it was not the song of Zion that arose from his excited mind. Nachmani did not possess that divine gift of grace, the poetical genius of Jehuda Halevi, the fancy that is able to re-people deserts, re-establish destroyed kingdoms, chasten sorrow, and ease the heart from pain. He uttered his lament in the verses of other poets.
This exile from Spain did not rest content with erecting synagogues and organizing congregations in the land which for a long time had been his spiritual home, but he also founded in it a home for the study of Jewish science, which had died out there since the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders. He gathered a circle of pupils around him, and people came in crowds even from the district of the Euphrates to hear him. Even Karaites are said to have sat at his feet, as for instance Aaron ben Joseph the Elder, who became famous in later times. Although he was no friend of free scientific thought, and thoroughly adhered to Talmudic Judaism, yet Nachmani, as a son of Spain, had obtained sufficient general culture to fertilize the desert of the Oriental Jews. Even his theory of the Kabbala, which he first transplanted into Palestine, where it afterwards spread far and wide, had at least the merit of presenting new points of view, of which his co-religionists, either on account of their ignorance or their partiality for the Talmud, had no idea. He strove at least to explain the irrational in a rational manner, and thus combated stupidity and indifference. He was particularly successful in arousing an interest in the exposition of Holy Writ, of which the Oriental Jews were entirely ignorant. With this end in view, Nachmani composed his Commentary to the Bible, and especially his chief work, the Exposition of the Pentateuch. In this work he brought into play his peculiar genius, his warm and tender disposition, his power of clear thinking, and his mystical dreams. Like numberless men before and after him, he discovered his own philosophy in this Book of books, and interpreted it from his point of view. He did not make much of the Kabbala in his Commentaries; merely touched upon it lightly. But precisely by his careless allusions, he magnified its importance. Narrow, enthusiastic minds searched eagerly for the hidden meaning of these suggestions, and took more notice of Nachmani's Kabbalistic hints, than of the clear ideas to be found in his work.
Nachmani's method of exegesis did not altogether escape the reproach of his contemporaries, chiefly because in his Commentary he made attacks upon Maimuni, and spoke still more violently against Ibn-Ezra. A devotee of philosophy and two enthusiastic students of it wrote a refutation of his works, prefacing it by a satire, in which the mysticism of Nachmani was especially made ridiculous. Pious men, on the other hand, held him in high honor as a particularly orthodox rabbi, and just as his Talmudical works were diligently read and used, so his Commentary became a favorite study of the mystics.
During his three years' stay in Palestine, Nachmani kept up a correspondence with his native land, whereby Judæa and Spain were brought into closer connection. He sent copies of his works to his sons and friends, and gave them descriptions of the condition of their ever unhappy ancestral country. He thus once again awoke an ardent longing for the Holy Land, and induced several persons of an enthusiastic turn of mind to emigrate thither. Nachmani died after having passed the age of seventy (about 1270), and his remains were interred in Chaifa, next to the grave of Yechiel of Paris, his companion in misfortune, who had gone into exile before him.
Nachmani exercised more effect upon his contemporaries and the succeeding age by his personality than by his writings. His numerous pupils, among whom the most renowned was Solomon ben Adret, made the teaching of Nachmani predominant among the Spanish Jews. Inspirited and unwavering attachment to Judaism, a deep regard for the Talmud and complete resignation to its decrees, a dilettante knowledge of the science of the time and of philosophy, the recognition of the Kabbala as extremely ancient tradition, to which was given respect, but not research, these are the distinctly characteristic traits of the Spanish rabbis, and of the representatives of Judaism in the succeeding age. Henceforth Spanish rabbis seldom occupied themselves with philosophy or with any other branch of learning, or even with the exposition of the Bible. Their minds were devoted only to the Talmud, whilst the sciences were cultivated only by non-rabbinical scholars. The simple method of Biblical interpretation taught by Ibn-Ezra and Kimchi was completely neglected.