volumes of the Talmud, and polemical attacks in the form of forced sermons
and public disputations.
The impact of such attacks was enhanced because their initial appearance
coincided with a major internal Jewish dispute over the writings of
Maimonides during the 1220s, known as the Maimonidean Controversy. In
1205, Maimonides’ esoteric philosophical treatise Guide to the Perplexed, orig-
inally written in Arabic for a select audience, was translated posthumously,
against his instructions, into Hebrew, thus becoming available to a much
wider Jewish audience. This elicited criticism, particularly from antirational-
ist thinkers such as Abraham ben David of Posquierres. In the late 1220s,
Rabbi Shlomo of Montpelier (known also by the literary epithet RaShBaM)
condemned Maimonides’ allegorical understanding of the Bible and the
Midrash, especially his allegorizing of anthropomorphic images of God. He
then issued a ban on Guide to the Perplexed, and on “The Book of Knowledge”
section of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. Other rabbis, particularly in northern
France, supported the ban.
In response, rabbis in Provence defended Maimonides, and appealed to the
Jews of Spain to arbitrate the dispute. When the rabbis of Spain divided over
this issue, too, Jewish laity in Spain were asked to arbitrate; they, too,
divided. As the Jewish communities of France and Spain teetered on the
brink of a major schism, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman of Gerona (also known as
Nachmanides or Ramban) was asked to arbitrate. Initially an anti-Maimonist
who agreed that the study of philosophy could have deleterious effects on less
educated Jews, ultimately he elevated Jewish unity over the importance of
ideas by advocating a compromise. He ordered both sides to cease issuing
bans against the other. He concluded that, in moderation, philosophy could
be acceptable and even beneficial. He argued for a graded curriculum, mean-
ing that philosophy could be studied only by those who had already mastered
the fundamentals of rabbinic literature.
Yet the conflict did not end there. The pro-Maimonists sent David
Kimchi, a defender of Guide to the Perplexed, to gather renewed support among
lay leaders. The anti-Maimonists, fearing that the spread of philosophy would
lead to the allegorizing of biblical and rabbinic texts out of existence, turned
in 1233 to the Papal Inquisition, handing over Guide to the Perplexedand the
“Book of Knowledge.” The Inquisition ordered that these volumes be burned.
The internal mayhem over the writings of Maimonides coincided with an
external assault on Rabbinic Judaism. In 1239, the king of France ordered a
public disputation between Jews and Christians in Paris. While ostensibly an
open debate on the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, this disputation
devolved into an inquisition, with Rabbi Yechiel of Paris being interrogated by
the Jewish apostate-turned-Christian disputant Nicholas Donin. At the conclu-
sion of this disputation, the king declared Donin and the Christianity the
winner, and a year later ordered the burning of all volumes of the Talmud.
The Jews of medieval Christendom 89