as many as two thousand people were burned to death under
his regime, and many thousands of others suffered imprison-
ment, confiscation of their property, and various other forms
of harassment and indignity. Papal efforts to moderate the
inquisitorial zeal in Spain were usually ineffectual, because
the Spanish Inquisition, as Torquemada fashioned it, was an
instrument to secure the racial and religious uniformity that
was a primary concern of the Catholic kings and of Spanish
policy for a long time afterward.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two classic works include treatments, hostile, of Torquemada:
Henry C. Lea’s A History of the Inquisition in Spain, 4 vols.
(1907; reprint, New York, 1966), and Juan Antonio Llo-
rente’s Discurso sobre el orden de procesar en los tribunales de
Inquisición (Paris, 1817); an English translation and abridg-
ment of Llorente’s work (London, 1823) has been many
times reprinted. A good brief study is A. S. Turberville’s The
Spanish Inquisition (1932; reprint, London, 1949), and a
popular account of a special subject is Thomas Hope’s Tor-
quemada, Scourge of the Jews (London, 1939).
MARVIN R. O’CONNELL (1987)
TORTOISES SEE TURTLES AND TORTOISES
TOSAFOT [FIRST EDITION]. Tosafot is the He-
brew word that designates the glosses printed alongside the
commentary of Rashi (Rabbi Shelomoh ben Yitsh:aq, elev-
enth-century French sage and commentator) in most edi-
tions of the Babylonian Talmud. Yet these tosafot are only
a fraction of those composed by the French and German
scholars (tosafists) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The descendants of Rashi and his students edited his com-
mentaries and added glosses to them. Even after these addi-
tions became much more extensive than the original com-
mentaries, they continued to be called tosafot (additions).
The tosafot emerged from disputations in the Talmudic acad-
emies that were recorded by teachers or by students under
their direction. Students traveled from place to place record-
ing the novel interpretations of their rabbis, and an academy
of study acquired a good name based on the collections of
tosafot available there.
EMERGENCE OF THE TOSAFOT. The beginnings of this new
literary form are discernible already in the commentaries of
Rashi’s son-in-law Yehudah ben Natan, and even more so
in the commentaries of his other son-in-law, MeDir ben She-
muDel, and those of the latter’s son, Rashbam (Rabbi She-
muDel ben MeDir), who wrote addenda to Rashi’s commen-
taries on the Talmud. The new style can be seen also in the
works of RivaD (Rabbi Yitsh:aq ben Asher), who was Rashi’s
student in Troyes, France, and who later settled in Speyer,
in southwestern Germany. While Rashi’s commentaries gen-
erally explain each sugyah (Talmudic discussion of a specific
subject) where it occurs (i.e., on the same page), in the works
of these others the dialectical and polemic tendency and the
trend to comparison predominate.
In the establishment and perfection of the distinctive
style of the tosafot a decisive influence was exercised by
Rashi’s grandson, YaEaqov ben MeDir, known as Rabbenu
(“our teacher”) Tam (after Genesis 25:27). With his immense
breadth of knowledge and his sharp and penetrating mind,
Tam influenced the scholars of his generation. The students
who came to learn with him in his academy in Ramerupt
adopted his method of study. His students were subsequent-
ly active in all regions of France, in England, in the commu-
nities on the Rhine, and in southern Germany, Bohemia,
Carinthia, and Hungary, and in Kiev. Many others who
never studied under him personally accepted his authority as
binding and were influenced by his method.
Rabbenu Tam’s successor was his nephew, generally
known by the acronym Riy (Rabbi Yitsh:aq [ben ShemuDel]).
Students flocked to Riy’s academy in Dampierre from every
country in Europe that was inhabited by Jews, including
Spain. Moses Nahmanides, known as Ramban (Rabbi
Mosheh ben Nah:man), the thirteenth-century rabbi and
commentator from Barcelona, described the influence of
Rashi and his successors thus: “The French sages... they
are our teachers, they the instructors; they reveal to us every-
thing that is hidden” (DinaD de-garmi, intro.). The academy
of Riy could be considered the forge of the tosafot. His work
and that of his disciples established the method for writing
tosafot: verification of the text of the Talmud and clarifica-
tion and analysis of each sugyah through comparison of paral-
lel passages in the Babylonian Talmud with the rest of the
halakhic and aggadic sources, thus uncovering and resolving
contradictions and fixing methodological principles. Few of
Riy’s tosafot have reached us in their original formulations,
but they were included in the collections compiled by his stu-
dents—his son Elh:anan, Rash (Rabbi Shimshon [ben
Avraham]) of Sens and his brother Yitsh:aq, Yehudah ben
Yitsh:aq of Paris (also known as Rabbi Yehudah Sir Leon),
EliEezer ben ShemuDel of Verona, Barukh ben Yitsh:aq of
Worms, and others. Riy’s teachings were recorded in their
works and, through them, in the tosafot of later generations.
TYPES OF TOSAFOT. The greatest of the teachers edited col-
lections of their tosafot, but their disciples did not consider
these closed collections. On the one hand, they abridged
long tosafot, while on the other, they added to the collections
more recent novellae. As a result, the students appended
glosses in the margins of the tosafot, which copyists subse-
quently introduced into the body of the text.
The disciples of Riy did not simply record his teachings.
Moreover, they did not all study with him at the same time,
and later students often added to the tosafot of their predeces-
sors the new explanations that grew out of their discussions
and decisions of their master, which were rendered to them
orally or in writing. Even within the works of given individu-
als we can sometimes discern development. The tosafot of
Rash of Sens to tractate Ketubbot (modern edition, Jerusa-TOSAFOT [FIRST EDITION] 9243