Provincial councils, assemblies of estates and royal cabinets thenceforward, in addition to their deliberations on the exclusion of the Jews from all honors and offices, determined on the color, form, length and breadth of the Jew-badge, with pedantic thoroughness. The Jew-badge, square or round in form, of saffron yellow or some other color, on the hat or on the mantle, was an invitation to the gamin to insult the wearers, and to bespatter them with mud; it was a suggestion to stupid mobs to fall on them, to maltreat, and even kill them; and it afforded the higher class an opportunity to ostracize the Jews, to plunder them, or to exile them.
Worse than this outward dishonor was the influence of the badge on the Jews themselves. They became more and more accustomed to their ignominious position, and lost all feeling of self-respect. They neglected their outward appearance, because they were nothing but a despised, dishonored race, which could not have even the least claim to honor. They became more and more careless of their speech, because they were not admitted to cultured circles, and in their own midst they could make themselves understood by means of a jargon. They lost all taste and sense of beauty, and to some extent became as despicable as their enemies desired them to be. They lost their manliness and courage, and a child could place them in terror. The punishment which Isaiah had prophesied for the house of Jacob was fulfilled to the letter: "Thou shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust." The great misery of the Jews during the Middle Ages began with Pope Innocent III. In comparison with their subsequent sufferings, all foregoing persecutions from the beginning of the Christian domination seemed like innocent bantering. But the Jews did not readily comply with the decree which forced them to wear the mark of shame. This was especially the case with the communities in Spain and southern France, which, having held an honorable position, would not suffer themselves to be humiliated without a struggle. Besides, there were influential Jews at the courts of Toledo and Saragossa, either as ambassadors to foreign courts or as treasurers of the royal coffers, who exerted their utmost efforts to prevent the enforcement of the decree. When Pope Innocent III died (1216), and Pope Honorius III, who was of a mild temperament compared with Innocent, ascended the papal throne, the Jews hoped for a repeal of this canonical law. Isaac Benveniste seems to have been particularly active in this direction, as he had been in trying to ward off the disgrace when first contemplated. They were successful in delaying the enforcement of the canonical decree. At least, King Alfonso IX of Leon did not compel the Jews of his land to wear the badge, and Pope Honorius was compelled to exhort the bishop of Valencia and two brother bishops to see that the decree was duly enforced, and that all Jews were excluded from offices of honor. The communities of southern France viewed with joy the victorious progress of the army of the repeatedly excommunicated Raymund VII of Toulouse against the crusading army and Simon de Montfort, because their security depended on the victory of the Albigenses. The Duke of Toulouse and his barons, in spite of their oaths, continued to promote Jews to offices, for they saw that their administrative policy would lead to their advantage. It may be that it was on account of the secret and open devotion of the Jews for Raymund that Simon de Montfort's wife Alice of Montmorency, ordered all the Jews of Toulouse – of which town she had charge – to be arrested, offering them the choice between death and conversion, although her husband, as well as his brother, had sworn to the Jews that their lives would be safe, and that freedom should be allowed them for the due exercise of their religion. At the same time, Alice ordered that Jewish children under the age of six should be torn from their parents, and given over to the priests in order to be baptized and brought up as Christians. The heartless woman had no feeling for the pangs that the Jewish mothers suffered. In spite of this, the majority of the members of the Toulouse community refused to become Christians.
When, however, Simon de Montfort heard of this cruel persecution of the Jews by his wife, he ordered the prisoners to be released, and to be allowed to practise their religion in freedom. The joy of the unhappy people when they were told of this deliverance (1 Ab – 7th July, 1217) was great, but it was mixed with sadness, for the Cardinal-Legate Bertrand had decided that the children that had been baptized should not be allowed to return to their parents. The legate also insisted upon the Jews' wearing the distinctive badge. In the meantime, there came a counter-command from the Pope, that the decree should not be too strictly enforced, but the cause of this change in the papal policy is unknown. In Aragon the Jews obtained the same immunity from the indignity of the Jew-badge through the untiring efforts of Isaac Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king, Jayme I (Jacob). This illustrious man had rendered the king such important services that the latter, with the consent of the bishops of the country, recommended him to the Pope, and strove to obtain for him recognition from the papal chair. Wonderful to relate, Honorius took up the matter, and, in recognition of his merits in eschewing usury, and zealously assisting Catholics, sent Isaac Benveniste a diploma that he should in nowise be molested. For his sake also the Jews were exempted from wearing the badge (1220).
However friendly Honorius affected to be in this matter, he was nevertheless far from being disposed to countenance the appointment of Jews to posts of dignity. In an autograph letter of the same year, he exhorted King Jayme of Aragon not to entrust any Jew with the office of ambassador to a Mahometan court, for it was not probable "that those who abhorred Christianity would prove themselves faithful to its professors." In this spirit the pope wrote to the archbishop of Tarragona, to the bishops of Barcelona and Ilerda, to prevail on the king of Aragon to employ no Jews in diplomatic legations, and to abolish a practice so perilous to Christendom. The pope also exhorted the Church dignitaries of Toledo, Valencia, Burgos, Leon, and Zamora, to use their influence with the kings of Castile, Leon, and Navarre for the same purpose. How little did the pope know the incorruptible fidelity of the Jews towards their sovereigns, and their love for the land of their birth! So far from abusing the trust reposed in them, the Jewish ambassadors applied the utmost zeal in executing their commission successfully. But since Innocent III, it had become a fixed principle of the Church to degrade and humiliate the Jews. Although Honorius had exempted the Jews of Aragon from wearing the badge of disgrace, he insisted that those of England should not be released from it.
In that country, Stephen Langton, who had been appointed archbishop by the Pope, held the reins of government, after the death of the mad tyrant John Lackland, and during the minority of his son Henry III. This prelate exercised his power as if he were the wearer of the crown. At the council of Oxford, which he summoned in 1222, several decrees with reference to the oppression of the Jews were promulgated. They were not to keep any Christian servants, and were not to build any new synagogues. They were to be held to the payment of the tithe of their produce and the Church taxes, according to the decision of the Lateran council. Above all things they were to be compelled to wear on the breast the disgraceful badge, a woolen stripe four fingers long and two broad, of a color different from the dress. They might not enter the churches, and still less, as had hitherto been their custom, might they place their treasures there for security from the attacks of the brigand nobles. These restrictions were imposed on the English Jews because they had been guilty of monstrous crimes, and had proved themselves ungrateful; but the nature of their crime is not mentioned. Was perhaps the fact that a deacon had in the same year gone over to Judaism, laid to their charge? In after years such an occurrence caused the expulsion of the Jews from England. This time the deacon was summarily burnt at the stake for his apostasy. The Church knew no more effective means of refuting a heresy than the blazing fire.
It is remarkable that the hostile measures of the Pope against the Jews at that time had least effect in Germany, and that under Emperor Frederick II they enjoyed a comparatively favorable position. It is true that they were "servi cameræ" of the empire and the emperor, and were even so called; but nevertheless princes, especially the archdukes of Austria, now and again entrusted into their hands important offices. Those Jews who had access to the courts of the princes always labored to free themselves from the Jew-tax, and to obtain privileges from their patrons. As, however, it was the custom in the German congregations to distribute the tax among all the members of the congregation in proportion to their means, it happened that if the richer and more influential men obtained exemption from it, the poorer members found themselves greatly encumbered, and accordingly complaints were made about it to the rabbinical authorities of that time. A synod of rabbis, which met at Mayence (Tammuz – July, 1223), discussed this question, for the purpose of adjusting it. There were at this synod, which numbered more than twenty members, the most influential rabbis in Germany: David ben Kalonymos, of Münzenburg (in Hesse-Darmstadt), a famous Tossafist; Baruch ben Samuel, of Mayence, composer of a Talmudical work; Chiskiya ben Reuben, of Boppard, the courageous champion of his persecuted co-religionists; Simcha ben Samuel, of Speyer, likewise a Talmudical author; Eleazar ben Joel Halevi, called Abi-Ezri, from his Talmudical works; lastly, the German Kabbalist, Eleazar ben Jehuda of Worms, called Rokeach, a prolific author, who, through his mysticism, helped to obscure the light of thought in Judaism.
This rabbinical synod of Mayence renewed many ordinances of the times of Rabbenu Tam, and established others besides. Its decisions mark the condition of the German Jews in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The synod enacted that Jews should on no account incur blame by dishonorable dealings with Christians, or by the counterfeiting of coin. An informer was to be compelled to make good the loss which he had caused by his information. Those who had freedom of access to the king (emperor), were none the less under the obligation to bear the communal burden in raising the tax. He who received a religious office through Christian authorities incurred the penalty of excommunication. In the synagogues, devotion and decorum were to prevail. The brother-in-law was to complete the release of his widowed sister-in-law from her levirate marriage without extortion of money and without trickery, and he was not to keep her in suspense. He who would not submit to the regulations of the synod, or did not respect a sentence of excommunication, was to be delivered over to the secular power. The determination of disputed cases was left to the rabbinate and the congregations of Mayence, Worms, and Speyer, as the oldest German Jewish communities.
In spite of the many exertions of the cultured Jews to avert the disgrace of wearing the badge, papal intolerance gradually gained the ascendancy, and the edict of the Lateran Council of 1215 henceforth had sway. Even Emperor Frederick II, the most intelligent and enlightened prince that Germany ever had, whose orthodoxy was more than doubtful, had at length to bow to the will of the papacy, and introduce the Jew-badge by law in his hereditary provinces of Naples and Sicily.
In southern France, where, in consequence of the war against the Albigenses, the spirit of persecution had been intensified among the clergy more perhaps than in other Christian countries, the edicts of Innocent III for the degradation and humiliation of the Jews found only too zealous supporters. At a council at Narbonne (1227), not only were the canonical ordinances against them confirmed, the prohibition of taking interest, the wearing of the Jew-badge, the payment of a tax to the Church, but even the long-forgotten decrees of the ancient time of the Merovingian kings were renewed against them. The Jews were not allowed to be seen in the streets at Easter, and they were prohibited from leaving their houses during the festival.
In the next year the Albigensian war came to an end, and the horrors of a blind, revengeful, bloodthirsty reaction began. The preacher-monks, the disciples of Domingo, glorified Christianity through the agonies of the rack and the stake. Whoever was in possession of a Bible in the Romance (Provençal) language incurred the charge of heresy at the court of the Dominicans, who had the exclusive right to bloodthirsty persecutions. Their allies, the Franciscans or Minorites, energetically seconded them. It was not long before these destroying angels in monks' cowls placed their clutches upon the sons of Jacob.
Four men appeared simultaneously on the stage of history, who were thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, and especially with its oppressive, unlovely, inhuman form, and they rendered the life of the Jews in many countries an inconceivable torture. The first was Pope Gregory IX, a passionate old man, the deadly enemy of Emperor Frederick II, whose sole ambition was the extension of the power of the Church and the destruction of his opponents, who cast the torch of discord into the German Empire, and annihilated its unity and greatness. The second was King Louis IX of France, who had acquired the name of "the Saint," from the simplicity of his heart and the narrowness of his head; he was a most pliant tool for crafty monks, a worshiper of relics, who was strongly inclined to adopt a monk's cowl, and most readily assisted in the persecution of heretics, and who hated the Jews so thoroughly that he would not look at them. Similar to him was his contemporary Ferdinand III of Castile, who inherited also the crown of Leon, and was likewise recognized by the Church as a saint, because he burnt heretics with his own hand. Lastly, the Dominican-General Raymond de Penyaforte (Peñaforte), the most frantic oppressor of the heretics, who applied all his efforts to convert Jews and Mahometans to Christianity. In this spirit he exercised his influence upon the kings of Aragon and Castile, and caused seminaries to be established, where instruction in Hebrew and Arabic was given, in order that these languages might be employed for the conversion of Jews and Saracens. These tyrannical, pitiless enemies, furnished with every resource, were let loose upon the Jews. Gregory IX exhorted the bishop of Valencia (1229) to crush the arrogance of the Jews towards the Christians, as if the Church were hovering in the greatest peril. Consequently, under Jayme I, of Aragon, the position of the Jews of Aragon and of the provinces belonging to it took an evil turn. Spurred on by clerical fanaticism and by greed for gold, this king declared the Jews to be his clients, i. e. in a manner, his "servi cameræ."
Everywhere the hostile spirit which first proceeded from Innocent, and was spread by the Dominicans, assumed the form of severe laws against the Jews. At two Church assemblies, in Rouen and Tours (1231), the hostile decrees of the Lateran Council against the Jews were re-enacted, and at the latter meeting another restriction was added, the Jews were not to be admitted as witnesses against Christians, because much evil might arise from the testimony of Jews.
The narrow-minded disposition of the Church towards the Jews was felt, through the increased power of the papacy after Innocent, even by the Jews dwelling on the banks of the Lower Danube and the Theiss. In Hungary they had settled at a very early date, having immigrated thither from the Byzantine and Chazar empires. Since there were many heathen and Mahometans among the dominant Magyars, the kings had to be very tolerant towards them; besides this, the Christianity of the Magyars was only superficial, and had not yet affected their feeling and mode of thought. Consequently, the Jews of Hungary from time immemorial had had the right of coinage, and were in friendly relations with their German brethren. Till the thirteenth century, Jews as well as Mahometans were farmers of salt mines, and of the taxes, and filled various royal offices. Mixed marriages between Jews and Christians also occurred frequently, as the Church had not yet established itself in the country. This enjoyment of dignities by the Jews in a country only half Christian, could not be tolerated by the Church: it was a thorn in its side. Accordingly when King Andreas, who had quarreled with the magnates of the country, and had been compelled to issue a charter of liberty, applied to Pope Gregory IX for help, the latter, in a letter to Robert, Archbishop of Gran, ordered him to compel the king to deprive both Jews and Mahometans of their public offices. Andreas at first submitted to the papal will, but did not carry out the orders of the Pope zealously, because he could not well dispense with his Jewish officials and farmers. On this account and for other grounds of complaint, the archbishop of Gran passed sentence of excommunication on the king and his followers by order of the Pope (beginning of 1232). By various strong measures, Andreas was at last compelled to obey, and, like Raymund, of Toulouse, solemnly to promise (1232) that he would not admit Jews or Saracens to offices, nor suffer any Christian slaves to continue in their possession, nor allow mixed marriages, and lastly that he would compel them to wear a badge. The same oath had to be taken, by order of the papal legate, by the crown prince, the king of Slavonia, and all the magnates and dignitaries of the kingdom.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MAIMUNIST CONTROVERSY AND THE RISE OF THE KABBALA
The Opposition against Maimuni – Maimunists and anti-Maimunists – Meïr Abulafia – Samson of Sens – Solomon of Montpellier – Excommunication of the Maimunists – David Kimchi's energetic Advocacy of Maimuni – Nachmani – His Character and Work – His Relations to Maimuni, Ibn-Ezra, and the Kabbala – Solomon of Montpellier calls in the aid of the Dominicans – Moses of Coucy – Modern date of the Kabbala – Azriel and Ezra – Doctrines of the Kabbala – Jacob ben Sheshet Gerundi – The Bahir – Three Parties in Judaism – Last flicker of the Neo-Hebraic Poetry – The Satirical Romance: Al-Charisi and Joseph ben Sabara.
1232–1236 C. E
As misfortunes never come singly, but draw others after them, so besides the insults and humiliations which the Jews suffered from without, there now arose alarming disunion within their ranks. Remarkably enough, this intestine war was associated with Maimuni, whose aim, during his whole life, had been to effect union and complete finality in Judaism. But in undertaking to explain philosophically the intellectual side of Judaism, he established principles which did not by any means bear a Jewish stamp on them, nor were they in consonance with the Bible, and still less with the Talmud. Those scholars whose learning was entirely confined to the Talmud ignored the philosophical discussion of Judaism, considered it sinful to be occupied with other branches of knowledge, even when applied to the service of Judaism, and took their stand, right or wrong, on the Talmudical saying, "Withhold your children from excessive reflection." Even intelligent men, and such as were philosophically trained, recognized that Maimuni, in his endeavor to reconcile religion with the philosophy of the age, had made the former subservient to the latter, and had made the mistress over the mind a slave. Articles of belief and Scriptural verses, which do not admit of philosophical justification, have no value according to Maimuni's system. Miracles were not inevitable in Maimuni's philosophy; but attempts were made to reduce them as far as possible to natural causes, and to interpret in a rationalistic manner the Biblical verses which contain them. Prophecy and direct communication with the Deity, as it is taught in the Bible, Maimuni refused to accept, but explained them as subjective occurrences, as effects of an over-heated imagination, or as dream-phenomena. His doctrine of immortality was not less in contradiction with the belief of Talmudical Judaism. It denies the existence of a paradise and a hell, and represents the purified soul as becoming fused with the original spirit. His method of explaining many ceremonial laws especially provoked contradiction, because, if accepted, these laws would lose their permanent value, and have only temporary importance. And the manner in which Maimuni expressed himself on the Agada, a constituent part of the Talmud – which he either explained away or rejected – was in the eyes, not only of the strict Talmudists, but also of more educated men, an heretical attack upon Judaism, which they believed it was their duty to energetically repel. Thus, besides enthusiastic worshipers of Maimuni, who religiously adopted his doctrine as a new revelation, there was formed a party, which assailed his writings, and combated particularly the "Guide of the Perplexed" (Moré), and the first part of his Code (Madda). The rabbis and the representatives of the Jewish congregations in Europe and Asia, consequently became divided into Maimunists and opponents to Maimuni (Anti-Maimunists). Such of the latter as were his contemporaries, still full of the powerful impression which Maimuni's individuality and activity had produced, fully acknowledged his genius and piety, and blamed or criticised his views only, and the writings which contained them.
The opposition to his philosophical doctrines had begun during Maimuni's life, but it remained quiet and timid, unable to assert itself against the enthusiasm of his admirers. A young, intellectual, and learned man, Meïr ben Todros Halevi Abulafia, of Toledo (born about 1180, died 1244), had, at an early period, expressed his religious objections to Maimuni's theory in a letter to the "wise men of Lünel," which was intended for publication. Maimuni's doctrine of immortality forms the central point of Abulafia's attack. He made, however, but little impression by this letter, for although Meïr Abulafia was descended from a highly respectable family, and enjoyed considerable authority, still his hostile attitude towards science, and his tendency towards an ossified Judaism, isolated him even in his own circle. Apart from this, he was possessed of overweening arrogance, a quality not calculated to win adherents and organize a party. Instead of finding supporters, Meïr met with a sharp rebuff from the learned Aaron ben Meshullam, of Lünel, who was master of the sciences and the Talmud, and a warm adherent of Maimuni. He charged him with presumption in venturing, though unripe in years and wisdom, to pass an opinion on the greatest man of his time. The Talmudists of northern France, led by Samson of Sens, to whom every letter of the Talmud was an embodiment of the highest truths, and who would not countenance any new interpretations, thoroughly concurred with the inquisitor Meïr Abulafia. Meïr was looked upon in his time as chief of the Obscurantists. The aged Sheshet Benveniste, of Barcelona, ever a warm friend of free research, composed a sarcastic epigram upon him:
"You ask me, friends, why this man's name,
Seeing he walks in darkness, should be Meïr.4
I answer, the sages have called the night 'light,'
This, too, is an example of the rule of contraries."
Another poet directed the arrows of his wit against Abulafia, but its points are untranslatable. The Maimunists were generally vastly superior to their adversaries in knowledge and speech, and they could expose the enemies of light to ridicule.
The hostility against Maimuni appeared also in the East, but not so strongly. A learned Talmudist, Daniel ben Saadiah, a disciple of the Samuel ben Ali who had conducted himself so maliciously against the sage of Fostat, had settled in Damascus, and animated by the spirit of his master against the Maimunist tendency, he conceived it his duty to continue to make it the target of his hostility. Daniel, in the first place, impugned Maimuni's Talmudical decisions in order to weaken the position on which his commanding influence rested, for it was through Maimuni's acknowledged rabbinical authority that his philosophical, or according to his opponents, his heretical, doctrines found such dangerous and general acceptance. Daniel, however, thought it advisable to maintain a respectful tone towards him; he even sent his polemic to Abraham Maimuni for examination. Afterwards Daniel, in an exegetical work, allowed himself to make veiled attacks upon Maimuni's orthodoxy, and curiously enough reproached him with not believing in the existence of evil spirits. His main argument, however, was not strictly concerned with the existence or non-existence of demons, but sought to demonstrate that Maimuni was a heretic, because he had refused to acknowledge unconditionally, as correct and true, utterances which occur in the Talmud. Maimuni's admirers, however, were greatly exasperated at these attacks of Daniel, and Joseph Ibn-Aknin, Maimuni's favorite pupil, urged Abraham Maimuni to pass sentence of excommunication on Daniel ben Saadiah. Abraham, however, who had inherited his father's disinterestedness and love of justice, would not hear of it. He expressed himself on the subject with meritorious impartiality, saying that he did not think it right to excommunicate Daniel, whom he considered a religious man of pure belief, who had only made a mistake in one point; moreover, that as he was a party in this controversy, he did not feel himself empowered to excommunicate an antagonist in a matter that was to some extent personal. Maimuni's admirers, and especially Joseph Ibn-Aknin, were not, however, disposed to take the same view. They labored to induce the Exilarch David of Mosul to exclude from the community the blameless and esteemed scholar of Damascus, until he should humbly recant his strictures upon Maimuni. Daniel was excommunicated, and died of grief, and all opposition to Maimuni in the East was silenced for a long time. The Asiatic Jews were still so overpowered by the glamour of his name, that they could not think of him as a heretic. Nor were they learned enough to grasp the range of Maimuni's ideas, and to perceive their incompatibility with the spirit of the Talmud. It may also be that his admirer, Jonathan Cohen, who had emigrated to Palestine, had won the pious to his side, and had defeated the party of Samson of Sens, which was inimical to him.
Very different was the state of affairs in Europe, especially in the south of France and in Spain. Here Maimuni's theories had taken root, and dominated the minds of the learned and of most of the influential leaders of congregations; henceforth they regarded the Bible and the Talmud only in the Maimunist light. The pious Jews of Spain and Provence endeavored to reconcile the contradictions between Talmudical Judaism and Maimuni's system, by a method of interpretation. The less religious used his system as a support for their lukewarmness in the performance of their religious duties; they expressed themselves more freely about the Bible and the Talmud, practically neglected many precepts, and were bent on re-organizing Judaism on a rationalistic basis. Among the Jews of southern Spain, this lukewarmness towards the Law went so far that not a few contracted marriages with Christian and Mahometan women. The excessively pious, whose whole life was absorbed by the Talmud, mistaking cause for effect, considered these distressing occurrences as a poisonous fruit of the philosophical seed, and prophesied the decay of Judaism, if Maimuni's theories should gain the ascendancy. Nevertheless considerable time elapsed before any one ventured to make a decisive stand against them. The rabbis of northern France, who were of the same way of thinking as Samson of Sens, knew little of Maimuni's philosophical writings and their effects, while the rabbis of southern France and of Spain, who were guided absolutely by the Talmud, may have thought it dangerous and useless to try to stem the overwhelming flood of free thought.
It was, therefore, looked upon as a most audacious step, when a rabbi of the school which followed the Talmud with unquestioning faith, openly and recklessly declared war against the Maimunists. This was Solomon ben Abraham, of Montpellier, a pious, honorable man, learned in the Talmud, but of perverted notions, whose whole world was the Talmud, beyond which nothing was worthy of credence. Not only the legal decisions of the Talmud were accepted by him as irrefutable truths, but also the Agadic portions in their naked literalness. He and his friends conceived the Deity as furnished with eyes, ears, and other human organs, sitting in heaven upon a throne, surrounded by darkness and clouds. Paradise and Hell they painted in Agadic colors; the righteous were to enjoy, in the heavenly garden of Eden, the flesh of the Leviathan and old wine, stored up from the beginning of the world in celestial flasks, and the godless, the heretics, and the transgressors of the Law were to be scourged, tortured, and burnt in the hell-fire of Gehenna. The rabbis of this school believed in the existence of evil spirits; it was in a manner an article of faith with them, for the Talmudical Agada recognizes them as existing.
Adopting a theory so gross and anthropomorphic, Solomon of Montpellier could not help finding nearly every word in Maimuni's compositions un-Jewish and heretical. He felt it incumbent on him to make reply; he saw in the toleration of the Maimunist views the dissolution of Judaism, and he entered the lists against their exponents and champions. But with what weapons? The Middle Ages knew of no more effective instrument than excommunication to destroy ideas apparently pernicious. He attempted to compel men, who towered head and shoulders above their contemporaries, and held different opinions on religion from the thoughtless crowd, to seal up their ideas in themselves, or to recant them as vicious errors, by shutting them off from all intercourse with their co-religionists. At about the same time Pope Gregory directed the University of Paris, the upholder of the free philosophical spirit till the rise of the Dominicans and Franciscans, to adhere strictly in its curriculum to the canon of the Lateran Council, and on peril of excommunication, to avoid using those philosophical writings which had been interdicted by it. This precedent, together with his bigoted, passionate nature, may have induced Solomon of Montpellier to introduce a censorship of thought into the Jewish world, and to crush the Maimunist heresy by excommunication. But to appear single-handed against the Maimunists, whose number was large, and who ruled public opinion, could but ruin his cause. Solomon sought for allies, but could not find a single rabbi in southern France who was ready to take part in the denunciation of the Maimunist school. Only two of his pupils came to his aid – Jonah ben Abraham Gerundi (the elder) of Gerona, a blind zealot like his master, and David ben Saul. These three pronounced the ban (beginning of 1232) against all those who read Maimuni's compositions, especially the philosophical parts (Moré and Madda), against those who studied anything except the Bible and the Talmud, against those who distorted the plain literal sense of Holy Writ, or, in general, expounded the Agada differently from Rashi. Solomon and his allies explained the reasons for their sentence of excommunication in a letter to the public, and laid special stress on the point that Maimuni's line of argument undermined Talmudical Judaism. They did not hesitate even to vilify the venerated sage: it might be true, they said, that he had once lived strictly in accordance with the Talmud, yet instances were known in which still greater men had become renegades from the Law in their old age. Solomon at first thought of invoking the secular power of the Christian authorities to aid him in oppressing free thought. For the present, however, he looked for supporters among the rabbis of northern France. These, belonging to the acute but one-sided Tossafist school, and having grown hoary in the Talmud, did not for a moment appreciate the necessity of establishing Judaism on a rational and scientific basis, and nearly all of them adopted Solomon's opinion, and took sides against the Maimunists.