Showing posts with label Disputation of Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disputation of Paris. Show all posts

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Louis the Saint

Louis IX of France (1214 - 1270) was crowned at the age of 12 after his father Louis VIII "The Lion" died of dysentery coming back from fighting the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. His mother, Blanche of Castile, acted as his regent and made sure he was educated, having him taught Latin, rhetoric, writing, and the arts of war and government. Part of his reading instruction was through the Psalter of St. Louis. Through her influence he became very devout. His mother's influence was strong, but when he reached the age of 20 she seems to have become more a counselor than a regent.

Louis' devotion led him to go on two Crusades. He could not convince any of the rulers of Europe to go on Crusade, so he organized and funded the 7th Crusade himself; it did not go very well. The 8th Crusade went even more poorly, and he died while on it.

His failure at Crusading enhanced rather than tarnished his reputation, however, since it showed his religious devotion to one and all. He also built the Sainte-Chapelle ("Holy Chapel") solely to house the Crown of Thorns, which he had received from Baldwin II by paying off a debt of Baldwin for 135,000 livres.

Louis also presided over the Disputations of Paris (parts one and two) in which Jewish leaders were forced to respond to charges of anti-Christian passages in the Talmud, copies of which he would have collected and destroyed. Along with this, he expanded the Inquisition.

Part of his devotion was because he considered French to be foremost in protecting the Church, since the first Christian named "Holy Roman Emperor" was Charlemagne of the Franks. He though France had an obligation as the "eldest daughter of the Church" to lead in Christian behavior, proselytizing, and freeing the Holy Land.

He died in 1270 at Tunis, and the body to be transported from the north coast of Africa to Sicily, thence through Italy, across the Alps, and most of France until they reached St.-Denis. He was declared a saint in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.

Here's a question: if someone dies while traveling, what s done with the body? A person of no status might be buried right there. Maybe they'd be wrapped in canvas, or a coffin would be procured. What about a royal personage, though, one for whom you have great respect? How do you prepare a body? Let's talk about that tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Book Burning

The rounding up and burning of the Talmud and other important Jewish works, and the Disputation of Paris, in France in the early 1240s were not the only events of their kind. Western civilization had a tradition of harassing Jews by denying them their sacred and important texts.

Emperor Justinian in 553 forbade Jews to use the Secunda Editio (Latin: "Second Edition"), apparently referring to the Midrashic commentaries on Scripture. Centuries later, Crusaders marching through Germany decided to defend Christianity long before reaching the Holy Land by confiscating Jewish works as they passed through cities, leaving behind them piles of ash.

A decade before the Disputation of Paris, a public burning of Maimonidean writings took place in Montpellier France. Like the Disputation, this was started by an "internal" dispute. Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier was extremely orthodox and was opposed to Moses ben Maimon's philosophy, so he invited Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors to look at the writings of one whom Solomon considered a heretic. The burning took place in December 1233. The inquisitors did not stop there. About a month after the Montpellier event, the Talmud became a target; copies of it and others—an estimated 12,000 volumes—were burning publicly in Paris.

The burning of the Talmud became a common event. Louis IX ordered more confiscations in 1247 and 1248; he produced an ordinance about this in 1254, which was upheld by Philip III in 1284 and Philip IV in 1290 and 1299.

In July 1263, the Disputation of Barcelona took place at the court of King James I of Aragon between another convert from Judaism to Christianity, the Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, and the leading Jewish scholar Moshe ben Nachman, called Nachmanides. The debate was chiefly on the question "Was Jesus the Messiah?" The Disputation is a play by Hyam Maccoby, based on the Disputation; it was made into a film in 1986 starring Christopher Lee. You can watch it on YouTube.

The Christians claimed victory, but King James gave Nachmanides 300 gold coins, and to explain that, I should next tell you about James of Aragon.

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

The Disputation of Paris, Part Two

The Disputation of Paris, a debate between four rabbis and a Jew-turned-Franciscan, began on 12 June 1240. There were 35 charges against the Talmud that the Franciscan, Nicholas Donin, had brought before Pope Gregory IX. Among blasphemous statements about Jesus and Mary, there were passages that supposedly allowed Jews to kill non-Jews, to lie to Christians, and to violate promises without guilt. In France, all copies of the Talmud were confiscated and prepared for burning pending the outcome of the Disputation: if the charges against the Talmud were proven, then the copies were to be destroyed. 

Rabbi Yechiel of Paris headed the defense. In many cases, the charges that Jesus was blasphemed against came from folklore about people named "Jesus" (Yeshu) which was not a unique name. One tale was about a Jesus who was boiled in excrement for all eternity in Hell. Another was of a Yeshu who was executed for sorcery. Yechiel pointed out that these were not the Jesus of the New Testament, and that not everyone named "Louis" was King Louis. Another Jewish folktale suggested that Adam, prior to being given Eve, tried copulating with the animals in Eden.

Although some witnesses believed that the rabbis were successful in their defense, there was little doubt that the Disputation was a formality encouraged by Blanche of Castile, the mother of King Louis IX of France. The Talmud was condemned.

On 17 June 1242, 24 wagon loads containing thousands of volumes of the Talmud and other Jewish works were burned. Since the printing press (as we know it) did not exist, these documents represented countless hours of work to create. The loss was incalculable, and replacement unimaginable.

This was not the last event of its kind. There was another one a generation later that was even turned into a movie with Christopher Lee. I'll talk about that next, and a little more on the history of Christianity's attitude toward Jewish written works.

Monday, February 14, 2022

The Disputation of Paris, Part One

This blog made a reference to the Disputation of Paris years ago, but never got around to any details. The Disputation was a debate between rabbis in France and a Franciscan friar, Nicholas Donin. How did it come about?

Donin had not always been a Franciscan, or even a Christian. He was a Jew who was excommunicated by Rabbi Yechiel of Paris. Why was he excommunicated? Donin followed Karaite Judaism, which taught that the only true commandments from God were the Torah, and that any additional oral law codified in the Talmud or Midrash was not authoritative. Rabbi Yechiel was a follower of Rabbinic Judaism, who studied and taught and enforced the Talmud.

After living ten years as an excommunicate, Nicholas Donin converted to Christianity and joined the Franciscan Order. Possibly to ingratiate himself to his new community, possibly to strike back at Rabbinic Judaism, he went through the Talmud and found 35 instances that were damaging to the reputations of Jesus and Mary and Christianity. Donin presented these to Pope Gregory IX in 1238. Gregory ordered that all copies of the Talmud were to be seized and examined by the authorities of the Church; if the allegations were found to be true, the Talmuds were to be burned.

Only France cared about the order. Louis IX ordered the four most prominent rabbis in France to dispute Donin's charges in public: Moses of Coucy, Judah of Melon, Samuel ben Solomon of Chateau-Thierry, ... and Rabbi Yechiel of Paris.

This is where Blanche of Castile (from yesterday's post) comes in. She guaranteed the safety of the rabbis, although there were limitations put on what they were allowed to say. The outcome was probably a foregone conclusion, with the copies of the Talmud at stake. I'll tell you what happened tomorrow.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Talmud Compromise

Although Pope Gregory IX felt it his duty to protect the Jews, he had issues with their Talmud, the collection of Jewish laws and practices. Was it harmful and heretical, or simply a way of life that was different?

A converted Jew had presented to Gregory 35 places in the Talmud that he considered blasphemous to Christianity. This led to the Disputation of Paris (about which I really should write a post soon). After the Disputation, a tribunal was assembled to decide whether the Talmud was dangerous to Christianity. One of the men involved, Odo of Châteauroux (c.1190 - 25 January 1273), was chancellor of the University of Paris. The decision of Odo and the tribunal was that the Talmud was heretical and should be burned.

Burning the Talmud
In 1242, 24 cartloads of copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books were burned at a ceremony in Paris. Skip forward to 1243, however, and Pope Innocent IV was on the throne of Peter. At first, he continued the policy of Gregory, and Talmuds were gathered to be destroyed. He began to question, however, whether this policy was not in opposition to the Church's traditional stance of tolerance for Jews.

In 1247, the pope listened to complaints brought to him by some Jews, and he asked Odo to take a second look, but this time to try to see it through the eyes of the Jewish rabbis. Was the Talmud truly heretical and a danger to Christianity, or merely misguided and could be treated simply as an error-prone text and studied as such, the way philosophy would be treated. He thought that the Talmud might prove harmless, and that the confiscated copies might be returned.

Odo was having none of it, and he condemned the Talmud again, in May 1248. Innocent listened carefully, and also listened to the rabbis who claimed that they could not understand the Bible if they did not have their Talmud, which was so intertwined with the Old Testament. Against the objections of Odo and others, Pope Innocent decreed that the Talmud should not be burned, merely censured as erroneous insofar as Christianity is concerned. He decreed that the Talmuds in possession should be returned to their owners.

The popes after Innocent continued this policy.