Where Books Burn: The Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s

🎓 The controversy about Rambam's theological stances, halachic method, and legal rulings, which simmered from the time of Raavad and Ramah, exploded in the 1230s with a fierce cross-communal debate.

Body of a letter (beginning: “G-d will castigate you, Satan,” University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Ms. Oct. 99, f. 8v (letter runs from ff. 7r-8r).

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In this issue:

• Part 1: R. Shlomo ben Avraham min ha-Har (of Montpellier) Opens the Controversy in Provence

• Part 2: After a Shift to France, Radak Enters the Fray

• Part 3: Ramban Intervenes as the Moreh Burns

  Reads and Resources

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Before we begin, a note on sources. On the one hand, the sources from the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s are well-known; there have been hundreds of scholarly articles written about them. Most articles cite them from their nineteenth- or twentieth-century printed editions, rarely returning to the manuscript sources, with the exception of the publication of several new materials and reassessments in the late twentieth century. At the same time, the sources from the controversy are scattered and not usually critically edited (meaning edited according to scientific principles of textual criticism to reflect the various manuscript sources). They are not as easily accessible, in the way that Ramah’s Kitab al-Rasail or the later collection of letters by R. Abba Mari ha-Yarchi are. We do have a partial edited collection, known as Igrot Kenaot from its inclusion (as part three) in the Leipzig 1859 edition of Rambam’s teshuvot (responsa). These were published from a late (sixteenth- or seventeenth-century) manuscript, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest Ms. Kaufmann A 188. In addition, the sources we have are largely undated, meaning that there is ambiguity in the reconstruction of the events, and multiple positions on the unfolding of the cross-cultural debate.

Part 1: R. Shlomo ben Avraham min ha-Har (of Montpellier) Opens the Controversy in Provence

R. Shlomo ben Avraham min ha-Har (“from the mountain,” a reference to the southern French city of Montpellier) is known to us through the admiring words of his colleagues, including Ramban and R. Menachem ha-Meiri among others, but mostly through his involvement in the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s. He was, it appears, a relatively prominent Provençal halachist who commanded respect and represented the old school of Provençal learning culture dominated by currents from the north. Grounded in traditional study, he was less well-versed in the new philosophical currents entering Provence from Sefarad, at a time when many of his colleagues were creating a synthesis between Sefardi and Ashkenazi influences that greatly appreciated the potential of rationalistic inquiry.

Nevertheless, despite the attempts of his detractors to paint him as such, R. Shlomo was not a reactionary but, like most instigators of controversy about the works of Rambam, a traditionalist moderate whose respect for Rambam was manifest, hardly just lip service. However, his respect ended at Rambam’s halachic work. Rambam’s philosophical works, including the Moreh ha-Nevuchim, which was translated by R. Shmuel Ibn Tibbon in Provence in 1204, the year of Rambam’s death, as well as the Sefer ha-Madda, the theological opening book of Mishneh Torah, were an impediment to earnest faith as best, and an incitement to heresy at worst. Whether or not R. Shlomo from the beginning sought a communal ban on the reading of these works and/or on philosophical works in general is a matter of heated debate among scholars. But sometime before 1230, R. Shlomo ben Avraham began speaking publicly, first in his hometown of Montpellier, about the dangers of philosophy and the need to curb access to it.

He soon turned to other Provençal communities for support in his campaign against the dangers of philosophy, including laxity in the performance of the commandments, dispatching letters to Lunel, Narbonne, and Béziers, the venerable center of medieval Jewish settlement in Provence. On the face of it, this was a logical move: the three cities were home to long-standing academies and had been dominated by the traditional learning culture of Tzarfat to their north through most of the twelfth century. However, times had changed, and even these old centers were coming under the sway of Sefardi appreciation of rationalism and its ability to explain the world outside, and the world within. R. Shlomo had miscalculated, and the response he received from Lunel was openly hostile.

Part 2: After a Shift to France, Radak Enters the Fray

Unstymied, R. Shlomo, like Ramah before him, turned to allies less conversant with contemporary philosophical currents, dispatching his leading students, the Kabbalist R. Yonah Gerondi and one R. David ben Shaul, to rally the rabbis of northern France. Here R. Shlomo was right on the mark, and the Tzarfati rabbis responded stridently. They shared his alarm and went further, instituting a ban against the study of philosophy in some capacity—we do not possess the text of the ban, so we unfortunately are not able to know its exact parameters. This caught the attention of the already-irritated Provençal contingent, and led to no less a luminary than the then-elderly Radak, R. David Kimchi (c. 1160–c. 1235), entering the fray.

Radak, a noted commentator on Tanach, was the the son of R. Yosef Kimchi, an emigre from Sefarad who fled the advances of the Muwahhidun (Almohads) in the mid-twelfth century, settling in Narbonne. R. Yosef Kimchi was one of several Sefardim that functioned as an important cultural vector bringing new ideas into Provence, a legacy he passed along to his sons, R. Moshe and R. David. (Another was the Ibn Tibbon family, which included the aforementioned translator of the Moreh, R. Shmuel Ibn Tibbon.) Radak came out swinging against R. Shlomo ben Avraham of Montpellier; he found support forthcoming in Provence, but caught the ire of his eminent colleague in Toledo, R. Yehuda Ibn Alfakhar (d. 1235).

Castile, with Toledo as one of its leading cities, was somewhat more conservative than Catalunya already in this period, and to Radak’s chagrin, R. Yehuda responded with a full-throated defense of the effort to curtail philosophy, arguing in several extant letters that philosophy is fundamentally incompatible with the Masora, or Jewish revelatory tradition. R. Meshullam da Piera, a countercultural poet (in that he bucked the conventions of classical Sefardi metered poetry) and associate of Rabbenu Yonah and Ramban, even entered the arena with searing anti-rationalist poems. (He later recanted, at the urging of his mentor, Ramban.) Undeterred, Radak and his allies in Provence in short order achieved a victory, as a counter-ban was declared in 1232 at Zaragoza (Saragossa, in the kingdom of Aragon) against R. Shlomo and his compatriots. This ban was a personal cherem against named individuals, aimed at underscoring their overreach and undermining their campaign and the force of their own ban.

The strongly Maimonidean redactor of Igrot Kenaot summarized the events this way in his introduction to the letters he collected:

כי קמו במונפילי"ר אנשים בני בליעל רב אחד עם שני תלמידיו המו כדובים והחטיאו את הרבים לעשות חונף ולדבר תועה על יי' ועל משיחו רבינו משה בן הרב רבינו מיימון זצ"ל עד אשר קנאו חכמי בדר"ש ונרבונה ויתר קהלות פרובינצ"ה לאלהיהם ונדו והחרימו ג' החטאים האלה בנפשותם וכראותם כי כלתה אליהם הרעה עם שכניהם שלחו אחד מהם עם כתביהם לצרפת לחכמים הנמהרים אשר שם והסיתו אותם והטיחו דבריהם באזניהם עד אשר שמעו לקולם ויענו אותם כרצונם ויפתום לשלוח לקהלות פרובינצ"ה נדויים וחרמות וכראות החכמים ההם כי נשקה ביעקב האש הגדולה הזאת בחרו אחד מהם מחכמיהם ואדיריהם הוא החכם הישיש רבי דוד בן קמחי ז"ל וישלחו אותו ליתר הקהלות להקהל ולעמוד על נפשם מיד כל מדינה ומדינה וכל עיר ועיר ממשלת קטילוני"א וממלכת ארגו"ן לא התמהמהו לשלוח מצודים וחרמים לרגלי המורדים והפושעים כאשר יראה מטופס כתביהם: וגם רבני הצרפתים שבו מדרכם הרעה ונחמו מאשר עשו ובושו מאשר כתבו ושלחו כתבים להתנצל לפני חכמי פרובינצ"ה ושם אב הטומאה המעורר מדנים שלמה ב"ר אברהם מונפילי"ר לאחר זקנותו נזרקה בו מינות

There arose in Montpellier people, the sons of devil, including one rabbi with two of his students [R. Shlomo ben Avraham and his students Rabbenu Yonah Gerondi and R. David ben Shaul], who fawned and spoke erringly of G-d and of his anointed, our rabbi Moshe, the son of our rabbi Maimon of blessed memory, arousing the zeal of the sages of Béziers and Narbonne and the other communities of Provence for their G-d. They banned and excommunicated these three sinners individually. When they [the three excommunicated rabbis] learned that this misfortune had befallen them among their fellows, one of them was quickly dispatched with their letters to Tzarfat [northern France] to the scholars there. He incited them and hurled words in their ears until they listened to them, and responded according to their will. They [the rabbis of France] then sent to the communities of Provence bans and writs of excommunication. When those rabbis [of Provence] saw that there was a great conflagration, they chose one among them, one of their sages and leading men, the veteran scholar Rabbi David ben Kimchi of blessed memory. They sent him to travel to the communities, and to gather them to the cause, from each region and each city of the Kingdom of Catalunya and the Kingdom of Aragon. They did not hesitate to send out bans against the rebels and transgressors when they saw the documents they had written. Even the French rabbis returned from their evil way, regretting what they had done and embarrassed by what they had written, and sent letters apologizing to the sages of Provence. But there, the “father of impurity” [root cause of wrongdoing] who instigated the controversy, Shlomo the son of R. Avraham of Montpellier, in his old age, heresy arose in him…

Igrot Kenaot, Introduction

Part 3: Ramban Intervenes as the Moreh Burns

It was at this point that the great Ramban entered the debate, in an equivocal letter that has been the subject of intense scholarly dissection, not least because its textual recension is in question (the most widely published version of it is probably a poor version). He is at once conciliatory, a voice for tempering the high heat of the debate and finding common ground, and at the same time essentially a traditionalist who advocates for a pragmatic solution while agreeing with the thrust of the original ban. There is some ambiguity about Ramban’s ultimate position on a ban against the study of philosophy, but it has been argued convincingly that he sought a ban on group study and the revoking of the ban against the works of Rambam themselves by individuals. In Ramban’s words:

ויצא דבר מלכות מלפניכם ותהיו לאנודה ולקשר של קימא לאבד זרוע רמה להחרים לנדות ולשמת כל לשון מדברת גדולות אשר האלהים יצמת המלעיג על ההגדות או מרחיב פה על האסמכתות ואל עוסקי ספר מורה הנבוכים כתות כתות תשימו יד מוראכם אל פיהם, נוהיא מן המדהז כי מצות הרב הגדול המחברו הוא לאמר: “לא תפרשוהו ולא תפרסמוהו”.

Let a royal command issue forth from you as you become a single group and a lasting bond to destroy an upraised arm, to excommunicate, ban, and place under a curse every tongue speaking arrogantly which G-d will destroy, one who mocks the aggadot or opens his mouth against asmakhtot. As for those who study the Guide of the Perplexed in groups, place your fearsome hand to their mouth, for the command of the great rabbi who wrote it was, “Do not interpret or publicize it.”

Chavel’s text of Ramban’s letter, as reproduced and translated by David Berger in “How Did Nahmanides Propose to Resolve the Maimonidean Controversy?,” in Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), pp. 138-139.

Sometime between late 1232 and 1235, one of the disputants in the controversy informed Christian authorities, including the Dominicans and the cardinal of Montpellier, that Moreh ha-Nevuchim included heresy. In a public square in Montpellier (probably),¹ copies of the Moreh were consigned to flame. Radak would lay the blame for informing squarely on the shoulders of R. Shlomo ben Avraham, although the evidence does not permit us to evaluate the accuracy of the claim. In any case, both pro- and anti-Maimonideans were severely chastened by the involvement of the friars and the burning of Rambam’s work.

Reads and Resources

• Although published in a poor edition, as pointed out by Dr. David Berger, R. Chaim Chavel’s collected works of Ramban include Ramban’s letter on the matter of the Maimonidean controversy, both in Hebrew and, in the English volumes, in English translation.

• A trove of letters (in Hebrew) can be found in the third section of Abraham Lichtenberg’s Leipzig, 1859 edition of the letters of the Rambam, available here in the original printing or here on Sefaria.

1. R. Hillel of Verona, who we’ll meet in short order, would later place the site of the burning as Paris, but the earlier account that places it at Montpellier is both more contemporary and more likely. It is possible that R. Hillel confused the burning of the Moreh with the burning of the Talmud in Paris in the following decade.