The Richest Abbey, Part 2*

We started on Glastonbury yesterday. Glastonbury was popular and wealthy and a target for others' attempts at acquisition. The bishop of Bath and Wells in 1197, Savaric FitzGeldewin, offered Bath to John Lackland (standing in for his brother, King Richard Lionheart, who was first on Crusade and then was captured on the way home by Leopold of Austria) if John would make him abbot of Glastonbury.

Pope Celestine III supported this, as did Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert Walter. Dioceses and monasteries were different species, however, and the monks of Glastonbury did not want a bishop making decisions for them. King John may have been all right with this, but before long he was no longer on the throne: Richard was released (thanks to Celestine excommunicating Leopold for interfering with a Crusader), and supported the monks. Richard let them choose their own abbot instead of FitzGeldewin. They chose William Pica.

Then Richard died in 1199, John became rightful king, Bishop FitzGeldewin forced his way into the abbey, set himself up there as the seat of his bishopric, and excommunicated William Pica. The monks sent word to the pope, who at this time was now Innocent III. Pica also headed to Rome to appeal to the pope, but died in 1200. For some reason Innocent changed his mind and reinstated FitzGeldewin.

FitzGeldewin, happy with his successful power play, tried to assume control of other monasteries, but died soon. His successors used the title "Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury" until 1219.

As for being the "richest abbey," only Westminster was wealthier. The magnificence of Glastonbury is attested to by the ruins of the Abbot's Kitchen: the kitchen was obviously enormous, needing to serve a large community. The ability to do so meant they also had enormous stores of food.

So what happened? Well, Henry VIII happened. Tomorrow I'll tell you about Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, who thought that loyalty between a subject and a king would go both ways.

He was wrong.

*If you were looking for a Christmas-themed post, try 2022 or 2018 or 2015 or 2013 or 2012.

The Richest Abbey, Part 1

I've mentioned Glastonbury Abbey before, most notably here and here, but it was important for more than its legend as the dubious discovery of the burial place of King Arthur.

The legend of its founding by Joseph of Arimathea has been easily proven wrong by the complete lack of archaeological evidence that anything Christian existed there in the 1st century CE. Robert de Boron connects Glastonbury to King Arthur and the Holy Grail, but his mention of Joseph does not include bringing Joseph to Glastonbury.

The earliest evidence for an abbey comes from the 7th century. William of Malmesbury records a grant of land made to the "old church" at Glastonbury in 601 from King Gwrgan of Damnonia. The town of Glastonbury fell into Saxon hands in c.660 when they defeated the Britons of Somerset. The Saxon leader, Cenwalh of Wessex, was a Christian, so the abbey was not harmed.

King Ine of Wessex a couple decades later made gifts to the monks at Glastonbury Abbey and directed that a stone church be built. It was enlarged in the 10th century by Abbot (later Saint) Dunstan, who made it a Benedictine monastery.

The abbey instituted some projects to drain excess water from the surrounding Somerset Levels, a coastal plain and wetland area that covers about 160,000 acres. This made the land more suitable for farming. The Abbey also created the Glastonbury Canal to link it with the River Brue (a little more than a mile away) to more easily transport goods to and from the Abbey. The Abbey was important and prosperous enough to import ceramic wine jars from the Mediterranean.

William the Conqueror wanted to control the wealth of Glastonbury, so in 1086 he appointed a Norman named Turstinus as its abbot. Turstinus expanded the church. In Domesday Book, Glastonbury Abbey was listed as the richest monastery in the country.

How did it go from the richest in the country to the ruin we see in the illustration? Well, of course we'll go into that tomorrow.

Glastonbury Tor

I mentioned yesterday the earthquake of 1275 that brought down St. Michael's on Glastonbury Tor. It was a wooden structure of which we know little, but post holes have been discovered for it as well as evidence of monks' cells, two hearths, and a forge. It was re-built in stone in the 14th century, but now only a tower remains after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Glastonbury area was inhabited in Neolithic times, evidenced by the discovery of flint tools from the top of the Tor. Occupation during the 5th through 7th centuries left more evidence.

So far as we know, however, it didn't have a name until the Saxons in the 7th and 8th centuries called it in Anglo-Saxon Glæstyngabyrig. The "byrig" element is fairly straightforward, referring to a burh or fortified place. The first part is unclear, and might have been a personal name. It might be linked to a legend from the Life of St. Patrick: Patrick resurrected a swineherd named Glas mac Caise (Gaelic glas means "green/grey-green"), who then went to (what is now) Glastonbury. There are other theories as well, none definitive.

Glastonbury Tor at one point was considered a gathering place for fairies; St. Michael was the Christian main defense against evil entities, so the chapel (later the church) may have been built to guard against the supernatural.

I have previously mentioned William of Malmesbury's reference to Glastonbury, and the remains of an early glass factory there. Robert de Boron added significance to the area when he had the Holy Grail brought there.

Mystical legends, such as the Glastonbury Thorn tree which sprang from Jospeh of Arimathea's staff (even though the origin of that story is de Boron who does not have Joseph actually making it to Glastonbury), and the purported zodiac built into the landscape around the town (for which there is no convincing evidence) have made Glastonbury seem very mystical. The New Age movement of the 20th century embraced Glastonbury—as seen by the number of esoteric book and gift shops—and each summer sees an enormous Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arts. Its identification as Avalon in the Arthurian legends was also a big inspiration for its current reputation.

Glastonbury was also the location of one of the most famous abbeys in England, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

Earthquake!

I told of a specific earthquake that was particularly destructive 11 years ago (and could happen again, eventually), but there were many recorded in history, of course.

One of the worst in England took place in 1185 in the East Midlands (see illustration), as recorded by the Abbey of St. Werburg in Chester:

Prima quoque die post ramis Palmarum id est, feria secunda hoc est xvij kal. Aprilis, magnus terre motus plerisque locis Anglie et ut aiunt quidam omni particulariter orbis climate hora diei sexta contigit.

"On the first day after Palm Sunday, that is on Monday, April 15, there was a great earthquake in very many places in England, and as some say particularly, in every region of the earth; it happened at the sixth hour of the day."

Difficult to know where the epicenter was, but the villages of Raleigh and Danethorpe in Nottinghamshire were completely destroyed. Houses made of masonry were less resilient than wood and fell down. Parts of Lincoln Cathedral fell, creating a question: was the damage because the earthquake was very intense, or because construction was less than stellar.

The British Isles had another major earthquake 90 years later, recorded in the Annals of Oseney and the annals of Waverley Abbey in Surrey. On 11 September 1275 between the first and third hour of the day it was felt in Canterbury, London, Wales, and Winchester. Osney recorded that homes and churches were downed and people were killed.

This earthquake caused the 11th-century timber church dedicated to St. Michael on top of Glastonbury Tor. I think Glastonbury Tor is where we'll go next.

The Earthquake Synod

The Earthquake Synod was held on 21 May 1382 in London, England. It was called by Archbishop of Canterbury William Courtenay to address 24 of the theses put in writing in recent years by John Wycliffe.

During the meetings, an earthquake in the Dover Straits happened at 3:00pm with an estimated intensity of VII to VIII on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale, which runs from I (so mild it is felt by no one, perhaps only detectable by instruments) to XIII (which represents total destruction).

The earthquake destroyed the bell tower of Canterbury Cathedral. A manor house and church in Kent were damaged. In London, some miles away, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral also sustained damage.

At the Synod in London, the monastery where it was being held felt the shaking which alarmed many of the participants. The archbishop cleverly used the earthquake as a sign of favor, declaring:

This earthquake portends the purging of the kingdom from heresies. For as there are shut up in the bowels of the earth many noxious spirits, which are expelled in an earthquake, and so the earth is cleansed, but not without great violence: so there are many heresies shut up in the hearts of reprobate men, but by the condemnation of them the kingdom is to be cleansed, but not without irksomeness and great commotion.

Of the 24 theses, 10 (such as his rejection of transubstantiation) were considered heretical. The rest (for example, criticizing Church hierarchy and matters of wealth vs. poverty) were considered simply erroneous and should be ignored.

The synod decreed that those who professed any of the heretical 10 ideas should be prosecuted. For this to happen, though, needed the cooperation of secular authority, but the House of Commons rejected the bill that would have made it into law. In November he was summoned to stand before a synod at Oxford, where many of his colleagues were sympathetic to his views. Again, the secular powers would not condemn him and he kept his freedom and his views.

He was summoned to Rome in 1383, but he had a stroke and could not travel; he died in the following year. The Church did not succeed in getting him declared outright as a heretic until years after his death, in 1415 at the Council of Constance (probably called because Wycliffe's ideas were being spread by Jan Hus). In order to deal with things definitively, the order was given to burn Wycliffe's books along with his body. His corpse was exhumed (but, burials being what they were, there is a theory that the body dug up was a man who had been buried next door), burned, and the ashes scattered in the river. (The illustration shows his burning from a 16th century book on martyrs.)

For a change, let's talk about earthquakes in the Middle Ages next time. See you then.

Wycliffe and Controversy, Part 2

After getting in trouble for his writings and being told officially not to discuss the points he raised, John Wycliffe decided he would raise different points.

After being released from confinement in Black Hall at Oxford, he wrote (in both Latin and English for wider awareness) De incarcerandis fedelibus ("On the Incarceration of the Faithful"). In it he declared that excommunication and incarceration were wrong, and those treated with such punishments should be allowed to appeal to the king.

The nobility and the mainstream population liked his reasoning, but the Church of course objected to the idea that the king could overrule their punishments. Pope Gregory XI, who had written against Wycliffe earlier, died before he could respond to this new essay.

Wycliffe then started speaking out even more strongly against the institution of the papacy and other Church practices than he had earlier. He argued before Parliament that those who sought sanctuary in churches could be forcibly removed. Excommunication, he believed, should require a trial before Parliament and a Synod. He repeated his contention that the Church should divest itself of wealth and property, that priests should be poor.

In 1381, he went too far (again) with his ideas about the Last Supper, rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation. This was indeed a step too far, in that he lost the support of men like John of Gaunt, the young King Richard II's powerful uncle.

This happened in the summer of 1381, and from May to October the peasant uprisings collectively called the Peasants Revolt occurred. Wycliffe's teachings, spread about in English and emphasizing egalitarianism, certainly helped to fire up the countryside to rebel against the hierarchy that they recognized as oppressive. Wycliffe did not approve of the destruction caused by the Revolt, but he was often referenced by followers who took part. One of the most egregious acts during the Revolt was the killing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury.

Sudbury was succeeded by William Courtenay, who had been Wycliffe's enemy for awhile. In 1382 Courtenay called an assembly in which he was going to deal with Wycliffe. This led to the interestingly named Earthquake Synod. Let me tell you how that went down (that's an earthquake joke) tomorrow.

Wycliffe and Controversy, Part 1

The Middle English Bible translated from the Vulgate (supposedly by John Wycliffe) wasn't in itself controversial. But Wycliffe wrote De civili dominio ("On Civil Dominion") in 1377, advocating that the Church divest itself of property and live in poverty. He had a powerful ally in John of Gaunt, who disliked the power many clergy had because of revenues from property. This revenue could have instead gone to support royal military needs (the Hundred Years War was an ongoing concern for England).

Pope Gregory XI censured 19 of the points in De civili dominio. The Bishop of London, William Courtenay, summoned Wycliffe to a convocation at St. Paul's Cathedral (shown above in a mural by Ford Madox Brown [link]). Wycliffe was accompanied by an armed John of Gaunt and other nobles. An argument between Gaunt and the bishop took place over whether Wycliffe would be allowed to sit during his investigation. Gaunt made it clear that he supported Wycliffe's suggestions on limiting the clergy and stormed out with Wycliffe.

The Church had its supporters, of course, and there were riots attacking Gaunt's disrespect of the clergy that started the next day.

That was in February. In May, the pope sent a papal bull against Wycliffe to five people, including King Edward III and the chancellor of Oxford. When Wycliffe returned to Oxford he was confined for a time to Black Hall (a college building now memorialized in Blackhall Road in central Oxford). Wycliffe's friends eventually obtained his freedom.

In March 1378 he was again summoned to be questioned for his views. King Edward had died, and his very young grandson Richard II was king. Sir Lewis Clifford confronted the investigation on behalf of the new king's mother, Joan of Kent, and forbade the assembled clergy from condemning Wycliffe. The clergy simply forbade him from speaking out on his controversial views.

Wycliffe instead decided to make new controversies. I'll talk about them tomorrow.

Wycliffe's Bible

John Wycliffe (c.1324-1384) was one of my very earliest posts (before I started to include illustrations because they were boring). My post referred to him as a reformer, but he was also a philosopher, a scholastic, a priest, and a professor of theology and Master at Balliol College at the University of Oxford.*

He was a prolific author, and because of this he is credited with authorship of the earliest English translation of the Bible. Whether he was responsible for translating all of it from Latin into English, he may have been a driving force behind the work. (There are a couple other men whom scholars say would have been part of the translation project to spread his ideas.)

The followers of his ideas were later derogatorily called Lollards. He and they believed that there should be less hierarchy in a world where all men were created by God to be equal in His sight. Wycliffe questioned the legitimacy of a papacy, the importance of sacraments, and many policies of the Church.

Because he believed in the "democratization" of religion, he wanted a Bible that could be read by (or perhaps more commonly to) those who did not know Latin. Hence the Wycliffe Bible or Middle English Bible (MEB). Translations of the Vulgate (the 4th-century Latin version attributed to St. Jerome) appeared over the course of several years, starting near the end of Wycliffe's life through 1395. More manuscripts of the MEB exist from the Middle Ages than those of any other religious text. Not all are complete, and if you collate several manuscripts to include any material that exists in any of them, you have a very long work that includes material not generally found in a modern Bible. You can find a "complete" version here.**

Tomorrow I'll talk about the official attitude toward this Bible.

*In my second Chaucer novel that you see to the right, the young Geoffrey encounters him. (Balliol is also where Lord Peter Wimsey got a first in History.)

**I have currently finished a 100,000-word novel (and am 45,000 words into a sequel) about the lives of Jews who converted to Christianity and joined Henry III's Domus Conversorum. All quotations I use from the Bible—and there are many—are from Wycliffe.

What is in Tanakh?

Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible. Christians might ask "isn't that just the Old Testament?" Well, yes and no. They contain many of the same books, but the organization of them is different. The Christians add more books.

The name Tanakh is an acronym for the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible. They are the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. The Torah includes the five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The Nevi'im ("Prophets") includes the books of the prophets: the former prophets in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the latter prophets in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 minor prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi) combined into a single book.

The Ketuvim or "Writings" include three divisions: Psalms, Proverbs, and Job as a group, followed by a group of five that are the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. The final division contains Danuel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

The middle division of the Ketuvim ties into several of the Hebrew festivals. The Song of Songs connects to Passover, Ruth to Shavuot, Lamentations to Tisha B'Av (which is like a Jewish Valentine's Day), Ecclesiastes to Sukkot, and Esther to Purim.

Because some of these are combined, the total number of books in the Hebrew Bible is 24. The Christian Old Testament breaks these up into 39 books. You can see the divisions and the different ordering of the books in the illustration. If it is illegible, you can see the original and much more information about their differences here.

One Christian Bible, however, contained 48 books in its Old Testament. Truth be told, I use it for medieval research. I'll explain next time.

What is in Halakha?

Halakha comes from the Hebrew root halakh,which means "to walk" or "to go." Halakha therefor means "the way to walk/go." It is the collected body of Jewish religious laws, coming from the Torah and developed through rabbinic tradition. So what does it include?

The Torah is first and foremost. It is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. This is the Written Torah, along with 613 commandments (mitzvot) that are found throughout the Torah. Of the 613, 248 are positive commandments to do something; 365 are negative commandments, things not to do.

Next comes the Talmud, the Oral Law developed by rabbis over the ages to interpret the Torah to determine proper rules when new situations arise.

Then there are rabbinic decrees about public welfare. These are called Gezerah and Takkanah. Gezerah are called a "protective fence" around Torah Law, decisions created to make sure of adherence to Torah Law. One example is the sabbath prohibition against cooking, because cooking would require lighting a fire and kindling a fire is a Torah prohibition on the sabbath. Takkanah (from the word for improvement) is a revision of a law to satisfy new conditions, or to avoid a greater problem. For example, commandments to fast on certain holy days are overridden for the sickly who need food.

There are also Minhag, from the word for "custom," a long-standing tradition. The order of prayers at some celebrations is a Minhag, not laid down by anything in the Torah or Talmud. For example, on the seventh day of Sukkot there is a custom to beat willow branches. This is believed to date to the time of the Hebrew prophets, though there is no law that demands it.

There is also the Tanakh to be taken into account. I'll explain that tomorrow.

The Maimonidean Controversy, Part 2

European Jews were not accustomed to contemplating either Arabic philosophy or what they called "Greek wisdom," the works of Aristotle, Plato, etc. Those texts were only slowly transmitting across Europe in the 13th century. They were therefore unprepared for some of the conclusions that Maimonides (seen here as a statue in his hometown of Cordova) came to with his rationalistic-philosophical approach to questions of the divine.

One of the controversies was Maimonides' statement that since God created the laws of Nature, He would not violate them. Therefore, once a body starts to putrefy, bodily resurrection was not to be expected. Instead, there would be a spiritual resurrection, but the body remained corrupted. This did not sit well with some.

But Maimonides' blend of Aristotelianism with Jewish tradition, "reason versus revelation" so to speak, was becoming more widespread at the same time that Christian Europe was asserting itself on the Arabic/Muslim world via the Crusades and the effects of the Reconquista were being felt in the Iberian Peninsula. This was also right at the height of the Albigensian Crusade, with its desire to stamp out any deviation from "accepted religious policy" by any means possible. You had many groups all feeling threatened by "The Other," and wanting to take great lengths to prevent other doctrines from gaining ground.

This is also the time, in 1232, when Yonah Gerondi and others convinced secular (Christian) authorities to round up and burn Maimonides' work in Montpellier, causing the men to be condemned by followers of Maimonides and inspiring secular authorities to later burn several wagonloads of Talmud (and no doubt related Jewish documents).

By 1300, however, men like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus read and quoted The Guide For the Perplexed. Aquinas was interested in using reason to prove the existence of God, and quoted Maimonides' Guide several times (although Aquinas misunderstood a lot of Maimonides, according to what I see here.)

Being quoted by an eminent theologian of the 14th century helped bring Maimonides into the mainstream without the threat if having his books burned. The influential "Rabbi of Spain," Shlomo ibn Aderet, who was dabbling in the Kabbalah, was more accepting of thoughts outside the mainstream and saw no reason why Maimonides' works ran counter to the collective body of Halakha, Jewish religious law. The modern view coincides with Aderet's, and Maimonides is considered a valuable voice in Jewish thought.

About Halakha: what does it contain? What besides the Torah and Talmud gets counted as important? Since I'm currently interested in this topic myself, I'm going to look into it and get back to you.

The Maimonidean Controversy, Part 1

Recent posts have talked about different individual's attitude toward Maimonides and what they did about it—sometimes with radical consequences.

Besides studying all the known Jewish religious texts, Moses ben Maimon (1138 - 1204) was a rabbi, knew medicine (he was the personal physician of Saladin) and astronomy. He became well-known and liked in Egypt (he lived in Cairo for a time), but he also had some very vocal critics.

The chief issue is that he took a rationalist-philosophical approach to the world and came to conclusions that were contradictory to what many believed. A couple that I have mentioned before were:

•The power of prophecy does not require intervention by God. Any human being, through the application of logic and reason, study and meditation, has the potential to become a prophet.

•In a treatise on resurrection, he emphasizes that God would not violate the laws of Nature which He has created, and therefore any bodily resurrection would only be temporary; true resurrection to come is spiritual.

He really got under people's skin when he criticized the Geonim, the rabbinic scholars who took donations from sponsors. Maimonides felt they should learn a profession and support themselves, as he did.

After his death, his The Guide for the Perplexed was translated into Hebrew (he had been writing in Arabic). Jewish scholars around the Mediterranean who were familiar with Arabic philosophy could see and parse the influences on Maimonides' work, but when his work became accessible to European Jews it kicked off a new stage of controversy.

In the early13th century, European scholars were unfamiliar with concepts of science and philosophy. Aristotle's works were just being re-discovered in the West thanks to Arabic translations in Spain from the original Greek versions. Other works of philosophy were starting to spread because 1204 was not only Maimonides' death but also the Sack of Constantinople, which started bringing Greek treasures—including intellectual treasures—to the West.

I'll go into more about how the controversy heated up in Europe tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can read a little more about Maimonides and the intellectual evolution of Western Europe in my post on Scholasticism.

Learning a Lesson

Yonah Gerondi had an Italian student in Barcelona named Hillel ben Samuel (c.1220 - c.1295) The grandson of a known Talmudic scholar, Hillel grew up to be a physician and Talmudic scholar himself. While practicing medicine in Rome, he became friends with Maestro Isaac Gajo, the pope's physician.

Hillel was strictly orthodox in his Judaism, proclaiming his absolute belief in the miracles outlined in the Torah and Talmud, despite some of these stories being considered more symbolic by other scholars. He wrote a book that covered the philosophic works of the time from Arabs, Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

He also translated some of the works of Thomas Aquinas into Hebrew, accepting Aquinas' idea of the soul's immortality. He referred to Aquinas as the "the Maimonides of his age."

Hillel had originally been opposed to Maimonides, but changed after he saw his teacher, Gerondi, change his attitude toward Maimonides. Gerondi had been opposed to Maimonides' rationalist approach to religious questions, and had caused the authorities of Paris to round up copies of Maimonides' works and burn them, specifically the Guide for the Perplexed. Gerondi regretted convincing the Christian leaders to take such a bold action against Jewish literature, especially when years later they burned all the copies they could find of the Talmud. Hillel saw Gerondi's regret, and how he radically hanged his attitude toward Maimonides.

Hillel moved to Forli in northern Italy when he was much older. While there he learned that a Tosafist (someone known for writing commentaries on the Talmud), a French Jew named Solomon Petit, was speaking out strongly against Maimonides. Aware of how Gerondi's anti-Maimonidean crusade turned out, Hillel addressed two long letters to his friend Isaac Gajo, explaining what had happened and asking him not to give any support to Petit's complaints.

What was the problem with Maimonides? What was the controversy about? I'll give you a taste of that tomorrow.

Burning the Talmud

Yonah Gerondi, or Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (c.1200 - 1263), was a 13th century rabbi from Catalonia in Spain. He was a cousin of Nachmanides and one of the teachers of Shlomo ibn Aderet.

He was part of a faction that was opposed to Maimonides, whose Guide for the Perplexed was very popular. The Guide's logical and philosophical examination of concepts such as whether God was corporeal or whether something could be created from nothing contradicted many earlier scholars.

Gerondi organized a victory over Maimonides' teaching by convincing the authorities in Paris to round up any copies of the Guide for the Perplexed and burn them. Unfortunately for Gerondi, this attack on the works of a fellow Jew inspired anger of local Jews against Gerondi. Some years later, on the same public spot where Maimonides' works had been burned, the authorities burned several wagonloads of the Talmud and other works.

Gerondi felt remorse, blaming himself for originally bringing Christian authorities into the philosophic debate between Jews. In the synagogue at Montpellier in France he proclaimed publicly his shame at fighting against Maimonides.

Vowing to do penance by traveling to Israel and prostrating himself on Maimonides' grave, he left France but was stopped at Barcelona and then in Toledo. He stayed in Toledo and became known as a great Talmudic scholar who also frequently quoted Maimonides. He died suddenly in 1263, some said because he never finished his vow to do penance in Israel.

His attitude toward Maimonides and the shift after the burning of the Talmud is told to us by his student, Hillel ben Samuel. Hillel was not only a Talmudic scholar but also a physician. Tomorrow I'll tell you how he learned his lesson from Gerondi's story.

The Rabbi of Spain

Born in 1235 in Barcelona, Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet became known as the Rabbi of Spain because of his reputation for knowledge and wisdom. He had famous teachers: Nachmanides and his cousin, Yonah Gerondi.

Aderet became a banker, but was an expert on the Talmud and was treated as the leader of Spanish Jewry. He was rabbi of the Barcelona Synagogue for 50 years. People came from all over to hear him lecture on the Talmud. His fame spread to the point that questions were sent to him from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Three thousand of these questions and his responses still survive.

He was a great defender of Judaism from external and internal forces. When the Dominican Raymond Martini read the Talmud and found passages that he believed supported Christianity, he also found passages that he said blasphemed. Martini wrote a document condemning the Talmud. Aderet wrote a response to this document. On the other hand, when a Muslim attacked Christian priests for falsifying the Bible, Aderet refuted his statements.

Aderet cared about authenticity, and "pure Judaism." Although he defended Maimonides when he got into trouble with authorities for some of his interpetations, Aderet did not approve of Maimonides' philosophic-rationalistic approach that saw reason as the best tool in understanding the divine rather than faith. In fact, Aderet was part of the beth din (the rabbinical court of law) in Barcelona that forbade men younger then 25 from studying secular philosophy or natural science, lest they be led astray by worldly thinking. (They were allowed to study medicine.) He was quite adamant about avoiding being led astray, writing: 

In that city [Barcelona] are those who write iniquity about the Torah and if there would be a heretic writing books, they should be burnt as if they were the book of sorcerers.

Trying to enforce this ban created much hostility in his final years as rabbi. He was also sympathetic to those who wanted to study Kabbalah. but spoke out against people who took it to an extreme and considered themselves more than just men, namely people like Nissim ben Abraham of Avila and Abulafia.

Aderet died in 1310. Some of his students became famous in their own right. But I want to say something more about one of his teachers, Yonah Gerondi, who got involved in a religious controversy that led to an anti-jewish event I've mentioned before. I'll explain tomorrow.