Paris Dispute

Social background

The fight against Jewry in the Middle Ages , and even later, was generally a fight against the Talmud. Justinian I forbade on February 23, 553 (short story 146) “Deuterosis” (the second law, that is, Talmud), which he called “fiction ... husbands who speak in the wilderness and have nothing divine in themselves” (“inventum ... virorum in sola terra loquentium nihil divini in se habentium "). Later, many opposed the Talmud, accusing him of containing the reproaches of the Christian church, as a result of which various popes and secular rulers decreed the destruction of the Talmud. And in Jewry itself, a sharp opposition arose against the Talmud, now rebelling against its authority, now completely rejecting it.

Reason

The reason for the dispute was the reaction of Pope Gregory IX to what he received from a Jew who converted to Christianity and became a Franciscan monk, Nicolas Donin , a report on the content of the Talmud .

In 1239, Donin went to Rome and submitted to the Pope a report consisting of 35 chapters in which he accused the Talmud of scolding Christianity, blasphemy , hostility to Christians and others. The report contained excerpts from the Talmud translated into Latin .

The report made a strong impression on Pope Gregory IX. He sent demands to Christian kings and archbishops , in which he requested the seizure of copies of the Talmud, to transfer them to the Franciscans and Dominicans for study, and if they confirm that they contain anti-Christian information and calls to destroy. In his letter to kings and archbishops, Gregory IX in particular wrote:

If what is said about the Jews of France and other lands is true, then no punishment will be large enough and worthy enough, taking into account their crimes. Because they, as we have heard, are not satisfied with the law that was transmitted by God through Moses in writing. They even completely ignore him and claim that God transmitted another law called the Talmud or Teaching, which was communicated verbally to Moses. They falsely claim that this law was implemented in their minds, and was preserved in an unwritten form until the people whom they called "Sagas" or "Pisari" appeared. Fearing that this law would be lost from people's consciousness through oblivion, they brought it in writing, the volume of which far exceeds the text of the Bible. It contains material so insulting and ineffably outrageous that it brings shame to those who mention it and horror, to those who hear it ^[1] .

The calls of the pope were answered by the French king Louis IX . Copies of the Talmud were seized and handed over to the monks of the Franciscan and Dominican orders , who began to study them, during which they also talked with the leading rabbis of France. Subsequently, in the presence of the king, a dispute took place between rabbis and Christians.

The dispute took place in the presence of the king between the four leading rabbis, led by Ichiel of Paris , and the Christians, among whom was Nicolas Donin . Ichiel’s companions were Cusí , and .

Blame

The prosecution claimed that the Talmud perverts the word of God , preaches hatred of Christians and mocks the founder of Christianity.

Protection

The rabbi sought to prove that Jesus ben Pantira , who is vilified in the Talmud, is a different Jesus than revered by Christians, and that all the laws and insults to the Gentiles given in the Talmud do not apply to Christians.

According to the Catholic version, the rabbi admitted that a blasphemy against Jesus was being raised in the Talmud; but pointed out that this Jesus, although he was the son of Mary and was born in Nazareth , is still a different Jesus. Jews believed that they had won in the debate.

Sentence

The Catholics found the rabbi's arguments false and unconvincing. As a result, the court decided to burn all copies of the Talmud.

June 17, 1242 in Paris on Grevskaya Square 24 burnt copies of the Talmud were burnt ^[1] .

Abraham Bedaressi and Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg laid an elegy about this sad event.

The second debate on the Talmud (1262), as well as the third, which lasted from February 1413 to November 1414 and required 86 meetings, had no bad consequences for the Jews. Disputes have become commonplace; In Jewish literature, manuals for disputants with draft answers to the attacks of Christian monks who studied Jewish language and Jewish literature for propaganda have been preserved.

It has become unsafe to have the Talmud; that is why in the first decade after the opening of Jewish printing (1474-1484) not a single treatise of the Talmud was published. It was only begun to be printed in 1484, and before 1520 25 treatises were produced, and even that was secretly, since the official ban had not yet been lifted.

When interest in the Talmud increased greatly in Christian Europe due to a polemic between the humanist Reichlin , who gave him a favorable review, and the Dominicans, who sought his condemnation, and when the Emperor Maximilian himself, who almost condemned the Talmud for reporting the Dominicans, wished to see him in a Latin translation ( his life doctor , the baptized Jew Ricius, first translated three Mishna’s tracts and several passages of the Babylonian gemara ), then Pope Leo X lifted the ban from the Talmud, and from 1520 to 1548 four Babylonian editions appeared one after another th Talmud and one - Palestinian. All these publications were printed in Venice by Christian typographers Daniel Bomberg (1st ed. Of the Babylonian T. 1520-22, 2nd ed. 1528-31, 4th ed. 1548 and 1st ed. Palestinian T. , 1523-24) and Giustiniani (3rd ed. Babylon. T., 1546); all of them were free from censorship changes and blots, which can be said only about one Amsterdam edition of 1752–65.

In 1553, Pope Julius III again imposed a ban on the Talmud, and many of its copies were burned in Rome in 1559 .

• Talmud // Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron . - SPb. , 1908-1913.
• Talmud // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.