Resurgence of Controversy: R. Shlomo Petit vs. R. Hillel of Verona & R. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera
🎓 In the late 1280s, the attempt to ban Sefer ha-Madda and Moreh ha-Nevuchim resurfaced—but was firmly stamped out by Maimonideans, east and west.
My apologies that this newsletter is going out a little late—the next one will be out later this week in time for Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan (it’s going to feature a medieval rabbi we haven’t yet met!)
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In this issue:
Despite the shock of the burning of the Moreh in Montpellier in the 1230s, just over half a century later, there arose another effort to ban Rambam’s philosophical works. Like the earlier efforts of R. Shlomo ben Avraham and, before him, the Ramah, this new movement sought to cordon off what it saw as dangerous philosophical works, even if written by a master, by means of bans against the study of his philosophical output. By the late 1280s, however, the Jewish world had undergone significant changes from even earlier in the century. For one, the involvement of friars in the movement, both theoretical and pragmatic, to convert Jews had grown considerably, making conversionary sermons (which Jews were forced to attend), public disputations, and other such performative polemical events a commonplace. In addition, the office of the Inquisition, initially an arm of the papacy and largely staffed and controlled by the mendicant orders, matured; it was initially convened to stamp out intra-Christian heresy, a stance which it would officially maintain, even at the time when its most frequent victims would come to be Conversos accused of Judaizing.
Furthermore, controversy about philosophy and its espousal or encouragement of heretical ideas roiled the Christian world in which the anti-Maimonideans tended to live, at least in their formative years. Scholastic procedure, developed in the nascent universities of Europe and used also in anti-Jewish conversionary efforts, was marshalled against Aristotelian philosophy in particular, with bans coming down from the popes and at the University of Paris from mid-century on. This cultural climate of religious embattlement and suspicion of rationalist thought was by no means simplistic or reactionary; from our vantage point in history, as short-sighted and retrograde as we might deem such efforts, we cannot but recognize that the controversialists had a point: reliance on pure (formal) logic and human reason—what we today call the scientific method—is an open-ended methodology which could and indeed would, in time, bring down the theological edifice erected so skillfully by generations of Christian dogmatists and theologians, perhaps most preeminently by Thomas Aquinas (a.k.a. Tommaso d’Aquino), himself accused of heresy before he was sainted.
Though Judaism was less concerned with dogmas—ironically, perhaps, its greatest dogmatist could be said to be Rambam himself, his particular dogmatic conclusions being no small part of the ire he attracted—it was (and remains) extremely concerned with revelation and revelatory truths. To these, rationalism too was a fraught danger. Though rationalist Jewish polemicists would strive to demonstrate that revelation was consistent with logic (in that it did not require belief in logical impossibilities, unlike, they claimed, Christianity), they were necessitated to argue that natural impossibilities were within the purview of G-d. Some rationalists, indeed, went further, proposing naturalistic interpretations of Biblical miracles and suggesting, following Rambam (as they understood him) in maintaining that the literal meaning of the texts was intended only as a teaching tool for the masses. On this fault line, thinkers less suffused by philosophical culture were apt to press. Why was it necessary to use a double-edged tool at all? Why not better to hew to traditional modes of inquiry, exegetical, midrashic, Talmudic, and otherwise?
And finally, though certainly not least, the Jewish world of the 1280s began to see trickles of one of the more potent texts in the Jewish canon: Sefer ha-Zohar, which surfaced in Castile around that decade. These remained for many years esoteric and largely secreted from the Jewish world, and would hardly have been known by the controversialists we’ll meet today. It is nonetheless significant that the circle of the Zohar was active in exactly the same years as the controversy of the 1280s-1290s raged. People were seeking greater meaning in familiar texts, and there were two new ways of finding them: Kabbala in its medieval form, and Maimonidean rationalism. The two could be intertwined—in this century Kabbalists were not infrequently inspired by the Moreh, writing Kabbalistic commentaries on it—but ultimately were to engage differing aspects of religious experience and to attract fundamentally disparate personalities. So, too, would rationalism and Kabbala endure differing fates, with Kabbala emerging the grand victor in the long view of history, although in the late decades of the long thirteenth century, it was philosophy who could claim the title of champion.
Resurgent Efforts to Ban the Moreh by R. Shlomo Petit
Like Ramah and R. Shlomo ben Avraham of Montpellier before him, R. Shlomo Petit arose as an anti-Maimonidean agitator seeking to ban the philosophical works of Rambam. Unlike his predecessors, however, R. Shlomo Petit was not a moderate coming from within Maimonidean culture: he was, rather, a northern French Tosafist and Kabbalist who viewed rationalism as an outsider. R. Shlomo Petit was also the teacher of R. Yitzchak de-min Akko (of Acre), who mentions that he heard from R. Shlomo the (oft-repeated in the Middle Ages) cautionary tale of Aristotle’s admonishment of his (supposed) pupil Alexander the Great. The great philosopher felt that his student was insufficiently focused on the sober discipline of philosophy, but Alexander only suffered because he listened to his teacher, ultimately being humiliated by his wife (or perhaps the wife of his father), generally known as Phyllis. In other words, an anti-philosophical tale.
R. Shlomo Petit began advocating for a ban against the Moreh in France and Germany, where he, not unpredictably, was met with affirmation. In 1288, however, following in the steps of earlier Franco-German Tosafists and especially the great Ramban, R. Shlomo made aliyah, settling in Akko (Acre), like Ramban. There he initiated a circle of Ramban’ students in Kabbala, including the aforementioned R. Yitzchak de-min Akko. In this Ashkenazi bubble, R. Shlomo presumably thought that his campaign would receive an equally warm reception as it had in Europe, and continued his advocacy on behalf of a ban on the study of Rambam’s philosophy. He was now, however, in Eretz Yisrael, a region culturally and politically under the purview of the remaining Geonim in Babylonia and of the Egyptian nagid—an office dominated by Rambam’s progeny.
R. David Maimuni in the East and R. Hillel of Verona in the West Rush to Rambam’s Defense
R. David Maimuni, son of R. Avraham Maimuni (ben ha-Rambam) and grandson of Rambam, had been instated as nagid, or (somewhat titular) communal leader, of Egyptian Jewry at the young age of sixteen in 1238, just years after the close of the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s. In his maturity, like his father, R. David proved an able defender of his grandfather’s legacy, especially politically. He directly countered R. Shlomo Petit’s activities in Akko, personally leaving Egypt to see to the counter-campaign and styling Petit as a current-day Biblical Korach, who attempted to buck Moshe’s authority (with Rambam in the role of Moshe). The hands-on approach was successful, and Jewish leadership across the Middle East—in Tzfat (Safed), Damascus, Mosul, and Baghdad—proclaimed personal bans against R. Shlomo Petit. (These bans also stipulated the destruction of the anti-Maimonideans’ writings, meaning that we have relatively little documentation from this controversy.) The activities of R. David Maimuni and the counter-bans impelled R. Shlomo Petit to return to Tzarfat and Ashkenaz to shore up support, but he couldn’t marshal it in his adopted Middle Eastern milieu.
Then, R. Hillel of Verona entered the scene. R. Hillel was not himself from Verona; like many medievals who bore a place-name moniker, it referred to a city in which his ancestors dwelled. It seems, in fact, that his family originated among the Ashkenazi Tosafists, though his grandfather, R. Eliezer ben Shmuel, settled in Verona (northern Italy, the same place where Shakespeare would several centuries hence lay the scene of Romeo and Juliet). R. Hillel himself lived in Rome and then southern Italy, steeped in its philosophical culture. In the same years that he participated in the Maimonidean Controversy, R. Hillel wrote his primary work, a paraphrastic compendium of philosophical works on the soul, Sefer Tagmulei ha-Nefesh.
In defending Rambam, R. Hillel would write a relatively prolix (and not entirely accurate, as we can see from our privileged position) history of the Maimonidean controversies to his good friend R. Yitzchak b. Mordechai ha-Rofeh (Maestro Gaio), physician to Pope Nicholas IV, which began:
אחי שאל נא לימים ראשונים ושנים קדמוניות זה ששים שנה אשר התעוררו קצת מחכמי פרובינצא וקטלונייא על ספרי רבינו ולא כוונו בזה לכבוד אמונת התלמוד ושום דבר אמונה אלא בעבור שנתחדשה שנאה וקנאה ביניהן ולא היו יכולים להנקם איש מאחיו ולכן מצאה כת אחת תואנה על האחרת באמור הם מינים ועוסקים בספרי מינים והוליכו עמהם כמה וכמה כרכים מספרי מדע ומורה והלכו אל צרפת והלשינו את הכת האחרת לפני חכמי צרפת בדברי מינות וכפירה ושהם עוסקים בספרים פלוניים שרובם דברי מינות והוציאום וקראו בהם לפני אותם החכמים ופירשום לגנאי ולבזיון כרצונם ואותם החכמים המשולחים לא דקדקו בספרים ונתנו אוזן אל אותם המדברים והחליטו גזרתם לבער ספרי המורה והמדע בכל אשר ימצאו שם וכל ההוגה בהם יחרם הוא וכל רכושו ויבדל מקהל הגולה ולא היה דיים בזה אבל נתנו למאכולת אש לעיני השמש כל אותם הכרכים ולא דים בתבערה לבד אמנם עוד האש אשר בה שרפום הבעירוהו מן הנר הגדול שהיה דולק בבית הכומרייא הגדולה של פריש לפני המזבח והכומרים הבעירו אש ונתנוה עליהם ונשרפו הספרים ברחוב עיר פריש לעיני כל העם וכל זה עשו להשמיע קול שאון הכפירה והמינות ולהבזות ספרי רבינו ושלחו הנידויים והגזרות בכל קהילות פרובינצא ובזה נתנו חרב חדה איש באחיו ברוב הקהלות ותהי הרעה הולכת וגדלה עד ששתי הכתות נלחמו במונטפליר בהכה ופצוע והוצאת שם רע ולעזים מגונים
My brother, ask now about the early days and past years, some sixty years ago, when some among the sages of Provence and Catalunya awakened against the books of our Rabbi [Rambam]. They did not mean by this to defend the honor of the Talmud or any kind of core belief, but rather it was because of renewed hatred and zealotry among them. Because they were not able to seek revenge on their fellows, one faction raised an allegation against the other, saying that they were heretics (minim) who busied themselves with heretical books, carrying about with them some volumes of the Sefer ha-Madda and the Moreh. They went to France (Tzarfat) and informed on the rival faction before the sages of France regarding their [alleged] heresy (minut) and denial (kefira), that they were dealing with certain books that are mainly heretical. They took them [the books] out and read from them in front of those same sages, interpreting them falsely and disgracefully according to their will. Those sages [of France] did not examine the books closely and listened to those speakers [from Provence]. They decided their decree to burn the Moreh and Sefer ha-Madda, all the copies they found there, and anyone found possessing them was to be excommunicated, him and all his belongings, such that he be separated from the Jewish community [literally, the community of the exile]. They did not suffice with this but gave over to the consuming fire in broad daylight all those same volumes, nor did they suffice with merely burning them but furthermore the fire with which they burned them was taken from the great lamp that was lit in the large monastery of Paris1 in front of the altar. The friars lit the fire and passed it to them and the books were burned in the streets of the city of Paris before the eyes of all the Jews. This is they did in order to make a tumult heard about that denial and heresy and to defame the books of our rabbi [Rambam]. They sent the bans and the decrees out among all the communities of Provence and in so doing put their fellow Jews to the sharp sword in most of the communities. The wickedness grew until the two factions physically fought in Montpellier, hitting and injuring one another and spreading rumors in offensive vernacular.
Letter of R. Hillel of Verona to R. Yitzchak ben Moredechai ha-Rofeh
For his own time, R. Hillel pledged:
ואני לכבוד רבינו שמתי אל לבי זה ימים רבים לחקור על כל המקומות שאפשר למתפקר לטעון עליו שקר וקבצתי כל נפזרים והסירותי כל הספיקות הנופלים עליהן ובארתי כל תעלומם
And I, in the honor of our rabbi [Rambam], have taken it upon myself these many days to study all the places which could arouse a heretic to claim lies against him. I gathered all the various sections and removed all the doubts that fall upon them and clarified all their mysteries.
Here and in his opening statement, in which he implies that there could be principled criticism of Rambam’s philosophy, R. Hillel reveals his own medial position. In fact, another epistolary interlocutor of R. Hillel’s, one R. Zerachia, would prove to be a stauncher Maimonidean still, disagreeing querulously with R. Hillel. Still, R. Hillel remained a strong and effective defender of Rambam, eliciting, too, counterbans against R. Shlomo Petit.
R. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera’s Last, Triumphant Stand
R. Hillel’s largely effective defense of Rambam was joined by that of R. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, a consummate Maimonidean from a prominent family from Tudela, Spain. R. Shem Tov passed away around 1290, at the tail end of the present controversy; he left behind nearly two dozen works, not all of them extant today but which we know of through R. Shem Tov’s own enumeration as well as from citations by others. In these he proved himself an immensely knowledgeable and capable encyclopedist, poet, ethicist, translator, paraphraser, and commentator. Tarnished as an epigone by an earlier generation of scholars,2 Ibn Falaquera’s intellectual prowess and even, at times, originality has come to be appreciated by scholars. His personal mission, it seems, was to make philosophy more accessible, particularly by writing in Hebrew and in approachable genres such as the dialogue and the maqama (ornamental metered prose poetry popular in its day), following his belief that philosophy was fundamentally harmonious with Torah. The latter was expressed forcefully in the hypothetical debate between a chasid (pious man) and a chacham (sage, philosopher) in Igeret ha-Vikuach (Epistle of the Disputation), which may have been inspired by the events of earlier Maimonidean controversies.
An elderly R. Shem Tov came out of retirement, so to speak, to pen a public letter in defense of Rambam and philosophy, known as Michtav al Devar ha-Moreh. Like R. David Maimuni before him, R. Shem Tov portrayed R. Shlomo Petit as a latter-day Korach; like R. Hillel, he played on Petit’s name and the Hebrew peti, “fool.” In particular, R. Shem Tov sought to show that anti-Maimonideans were operating out of a position of ignorance due to their amateur knowledge of philosophical subjects and lack of knowledge of the original Arabic (he includes interesting observations about the two circulating Hebrew translations of the Moreh, those of R. Shmuel Ibn Tibbon and of R. Yehuda al-Harizi, both of which he considered inadequate for different reasons). By 1290, the forces of philosophical enlightenment, under the tutelage of Ibn Falaquera, emerged triumphant. Maimonideanism was ascendant, though not uncontested; but when the next controversy would surface just short of fifteen years after, it would no longer concern Rambam’s works but non-Jewish philosophy only. The Moreh had staked its place on the Jewish bookshelf, never to be toppled (or burned) again.
Reads and Resources
R. Hillel of Verona’s letter can be found on Sefaria.
As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, it is likely that R. Hillel is here conflating the burning of the Talmud, which occurred in Paris in the 1240s, with the burning of the Moreh, which probably occurred in Montpellier in the 1230s.
Though not the pioneer of academic Jewish Studies, Dr. Leopold Zunz, who wrote a dissertation on Ibn Falaquera, nor Dr. Salomon Munk, who in 1857n used Ibn Falaquera’s paraphrase of Fons vitae/Mekor Chayim to prove that R. Shlomo Ibn Gabirol was its author.
About your note (1), in re conflating the burning of the Talmud with the burning of the Moreh...
I'm struggling with that.
I mean, how can two things be "conflated" when they are, essentially, the very same thing? 🤔