ABSTRACT

By decree of the Roman Inquisition,1 the Talmud was publicly burned at Rome in the early Fall of 1553.2 In the succeeding months other Italian cities confiscated and burned the Talmud in compliance with this decree.3 Historians have commonly explained this decree as the result of a dispute between the two Venetian publishers, M. Giustiniani and E. Bragadoni. Both had published the Mishneh Torah in 1550, but Bragadoni’s edition also contained the recently completed commentary of R. Meir Katzenellenbogen of Padua. Commercial rivalry led Giustiniani to propose to ecclesiastical authorities that they scrutinize the commentary of R. Meir in Bragadoni’s edition for improprieties. He also hired apostates to argue his point. Bragadoni retaliated in kind. These apostates then exceeded their original commission, and, when the case was heard before the Inquisition, they attacked the Talmud on the grounds that it contained, blasphemies against Christianity. The Inquisition responded by condemning the Talmud and decreeing its destruction.4Eight months later Julius III issued the bull Cum sicut nupert5 to ensure the enforcement of the Inquisition’s decree. Hence, the 1553 burning has been identified as an attack on the Talmud’s alleged blasphemies. And like its thirteenth century predecessor, in which the papacy had

likewise significantly participated,6 it was also seen as a typical manifestation of the Church’s zeal to dispose of literature which both threatened7 and insulted8 Catholicism. An order to burn the Talmud was also issued in 1415. Although the instigator of this assault was probably the Franciscan, Vincent Ferrer9 the actual order to burn the Talmud was given by the Avignonese pope Benedict XIII in his bull Etsi doctoris10 Benedict’s primary concern in condemning the Talmud was not, however, identical with that of the thirteenth century Gregory IX and Innocent IV. Rather, Etsi doctoris aimed to establish machinery to effect the mass conversion of the Jews.11 Accordingly, Benedict declared:

But this supposition, that the prohibition of the Talmud would promote a radical increase in conversions, was never tested in practice. Instead, as in the 1260’s and 1270’s in Spain, copies of the Talmud were subjected to expurgation.13 Most likely, Benedict’s theory had encountered opposition from those who adhered to the principle developed by Raymond Martin in his Pugio Fidei14 that the Jews could be persuaded to convert if the truth of Christianity were proved to them from rabbinic literature. The compromise of expurgation was then effected.15 Even so, the fact remains that in 1415, actions taken vis-a-vis the Talmud, especially on the part of the papacy, were primarily directed toward the promotion of conversion and not toward the eradication of blasphemy and insult. The papal involvement in the burning of the Talmud in 1553 could thus have been motivated by two disparate, yet not mutually exclusive precedents. The decree of condemnation16 issued by the Roman Inquisition, which had been revived in 1542 as a direct arm of the papacy,17 reveals clearly which of these two precedents was considered the more cogent.