The Polemic Against the Talmud in Latin Europe between 1240 and 1415

The 1240 trial against the Talmud in Paris and the Disputation of Tortosa, which ended with the proclamation of the bull 'Etsi doctoris gentium' by Benedict XIII in 1415, are two landmarks in the complex history of Christian anti-Judaism. Taking these two historical references as a temporal framework, the project proposes to study the textual and historical (dis)continuities of the anti-Jewish and, more specifically, anti-Talmudic polemic in medieval Europe. To this end, critical editions will be produced of essential works belonging, respectively, to the Paris and Tortosa contexts, namely, the materials of the Latin Talmud Dossier of the 1240s and the work 'De publicatione haeresum contentarum in Talmud' by André Dias de Escobar, who was an eyewitness to the Disputation of Tortosa, presided over by Benedict XIII. At the same time, we will reconstruct the evolution of the anti-Talmudic discourse from a comparative perspective based on the works of notable polemicists from the Iberian Peninsula, such as Pau Cristià (1263), Ramon Martí (13th century), Abner of Burgos (14th century) and Jerónimo de Santa Fe (15th century). In this part of the project, detailed studies will be carried out on the use of key passages from the Talmud that were recurrently treated in the polemical works of these authors, in order to describe the historical dynamics and the hermeneutical categories that shaped the Christian interpretation of the Talmud in a particularly turbulent time for European Jewish communities. TaLatEu addresses vital questions about Jewish and Christian identities, which are still relevant in the 21st century and can only be carried out by an interdisciplinary research team that includes specialists in Latin Philology, Jewish Studies and the History of Medieval Thought.