Papal Claims to Authority over Judaism 195
nevertheless, despite such sentiments, Peter the venerable did not connect his
views of Jewish blasphemy with the Talmud. only in the thirteenth century with
the convert from Judaism, the southern French Jew nicholas Donin, do we see a
new Christian awareness of the Talmud and of its implications for both Christian
and Jewish society, which led to its trial in 1240.212 long before Donin, Peter the
venerable had already made clear his unease at what he saw as Judaism’s blas-
phemous denigration of Chrisitianity.213 But it was only during the thirteenth
century that Christians became increasingly aware that Judaism had moved on
from the first century and that the Talmud had replaced the old Testament as the
primary focus of traditional Jewish study and the basic source of Jewish law. The
role of converts from Judaism to Christianity was absolutely crucial to this growing
awareness.
It was Gregory IX who ordered all Jewish books in France to be handed over to
the Dominicans or Franciscans in Paris to be inspected for alleged heresies and
blasphemies and called for the debate on the Talmud between Christians and Jews
which became known as the Paris Disputation.214 It is likely that rabbi Joseph ben
nathan official, from the famous official family, who, as we noted in Chapter
one, composed the Sefer Joseph Hamekane, a well-known and vigorous anti-
Christian polemic, was also the author of The Disputation of Rabbi Yeh’iel of Paris,
a detailed account recorded in two separate versions of this trial of the Talmud in
Paris in 1240.215 Some have argued that claiming an activist role for rabbi Yehi’el
is unlikely to be accurate, reflecting rather the author’s desire to spell out for Jewish
readers a useful line of argumentation.216 In the standard version of the account it
is unclear whether it is Yehi’el himself speaking or its ‘anonymous’ author.217 What
is clear, however, is that the author had the same aim as nachmanides when he
recorded the Disputation of Barcelona: both to purvey detailed information and to
address critical underlying issues.218 Hence he deliberately portrayed the rabbi as
turning recurrently to Blanche of Castile, the key secular figure at the encounter,
and appealing to her for assistance.219
rabbi Yehi’el’s Disputation is not our only source for the Talmud’s trial.220 We
know of it from the correspondence of Gregory IX, Innocent Iv, and the papal legate
212 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.16.
213 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews. History, p.301.
214 Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. H. Maccoby
(r utherford, london, 1982), pp.19–20; Dahan, Les Intelléctuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge, p.96;
Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, pp.319–25.
215 Piero Capelli, ‘rashi nella controversia parigina sul Talmud del 1240’, in Ricercare la Sapienza
di Tutti gli Antichi, Series 3, vol. 1. Miscellanea in Onore de Gian Luigi Prato, ed. M. Milani, M.
Zapella (Bologna, 2013), pp.441–2; The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.21; Judah
Galinsky, ‘The Different versions of the “Talmud Trial” of 1240 in Paris’, in New Perspectives on Jewish-
Christian Relations in Honour of David Berger, ed. E. Carlebach, J. Schachter (leiden, Boston, 2012),
p.136; pp.109–40.
216 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, p.49.
217 Galinsky, ‘The Different versions of the “Talmud Trial” of 1240 in Paris’, p.130.
218 robert Chazan, ‘The Hebrew report of the Trial of the Talmud: Information and Consolation’,
in Le Brulement du Talmud a Paris, 1242–1244, ed. G. Dahan (Paris, 1999), p.83.
219 Chazan, ‘The Hebrew report on the Trial of the Talmud’, p.90.
220 The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, ed. Chazan, pp.126–68.