Censorship: Books, the Halakhah, and Jewish Continuity, A Synoptic Overview

From Firenze University Press Journal: CROMOHS

Kenneth Stow, University of Haifa

When he condemned the Talmud in 1558, the Udinese jurist Marquardus de Susannis referred to a compilation of three otherwise unnoted Venetians, Benedict Valerio, Marcus Centani, and Franciscus Longo. Their work, composed in 1553, had persuaded him that the Talmud corrupts the true meaning of the law and the prophets. Its deliriums prove the Jews’ blindness and insanity and have made of them ‘carnal Idumeans.’No wonder Justinian prohibited deuterosisin his Novel 146, which, de Susannis, as others, took to mean the Talmud (in fact, it was probably midrash, or even, as per Fausto Parente, a Greek translation of the Pentateuch that did not square fully with the Septuagint).2De Susannis’s perceptions were ‘the common opinion,’a legal as well as emotional term, albeit de Susannis himself had taken the time to read what others were saying. He likely also read the condemnations in the 1555 De sola lectione(of the Bible) by the Jesuit Francisco de Torres. In the same tones, the theologian of Valencia Juan Luis Vives (1494–1540) wrote to say that the fabulous and blasphemous nature of the Talmud was common knowledge. Anxiety, joined with repulsion, was everywhere; and this widespread negativity may help explain why, exceptionally, the Venetians did not delay in following papal orders. On 21 October 1553, barely a month after the order issued by the Inquisition to burn the Talmud (12 September 1553), the Doge followed suit, repeating the demand for Padua four days later. Further stimulating the Venetian order was a report issued the same October day by three otherwise unknownfrati, Don Leonardo, a canon regular, a brother Thomas, a Dominican, and Juan Battista di Freschi Olivi, a theologian. We know only their names. Whereas de Susannis referred to the Talmud in an all-inclusive sense, however, these three gave jurisconsults particulars, saying that they took cognizance of the opinion of three utriusque iuris, the Reverendissimo domino Vettor da Pozzo, Vicar of the Patriarch of Venice, Don Annibale Grisonio, and the priest Lacomo Liunnerio. From them they had learned that the Talmud is called theScithasider, the six orders of the Babylonian Talmud, divided into texts called mishnaiothin Hebrew, along with questions covering a part of ten works called Ghemara in Hebrew, with many comments, questions and additions. The name Talmud also applied to a Jerusalem Talmud, ‘qual è molto breve.’Need one say that they had no inkling of what they were talking about? And it became worse: ‘Per ciascaduna parte di quello se intende ogni una delle ditte cose, che si contieneno in ditto volume da per se com Misnaioth, da per se cioèi dittitexti Pirtheavoth (!)’Even Moritz Stern, who first published this gibberish, could not follow it.5We are reminded of the words of Johannes Reuchlin who, in his 1510 confrontation with the legist Ulrich Zasius, said that the Talmud is a book that everybody criticizes, but no one has read — which, he admitted, included himself.6We should not be surprised. Look at what Giuseppe Petrai says about censors in his own day, in his 1896 Anecdotes of Rome: how fatuous they were, removing words like ‘aristocracy’lest anyone take offense or become angry.7What happened to rabbinic literature was an exaggeration of this kind on steroids. Petrai’s reductio ad absurdumis a good window into what was happening centuries earlier, which helps explain why the Talmud’s assumedperniciousness was blamed for obstructing Jewish conversion. In the words of the Jesuit Francisco de Torres, closely paraphrasing anti-Pope Benedict XIII: ‘The prime cause of Jewish blindness[…] is a certain perverse doctrine that was formulated after Christ and which the Jews call Talmud[…] We have decreed that no one […]should presume to hear, read, or teach that doctrine.’A blanket condemnation. Did it matter what exactly the Talmud contains or that Pope Benedict said he had the Talmud examined? The inquisitional decree of 1553 went a bit further than both, saying that ‘nothing would be more conducive to their [the Jews’]illumination’than burningthe work, which would remove ‘the veil from their eyes.’The determination was great. So was the apprehension. In the words of de Torres: ‘If you do not interdict’all the remaining commentaries of the Jews, ‘I fear you will be charged with their blindness at the horrible judgment of the last day.’Removing the books will open their eyes. They will understand that the rabbis are not the duces de femore Judae(Gen. 49:10). Allowing the Jews the Talmud and commentaries makes one guilty of ‘allowing them that which teaches them insanity.’8De Torres was fantasizing. And yet he was not alone in imagining Jews actively claiming sovereignty for themselves, a sovereignty which would counter that staple of Christian theology, the assertion that the Shiloh of Gen. 49 had indeed been realized in Christ, the messiah. De Susannis spoke at length, negating further Jewish claims to sovereignty of any stripe. Antonio Ricciullo in the eighteenth century was still harping on the theme. Jews, themselves (sometimes) referred to the Babylonian Geonim as possessing the powers of rulers, but in the sixteenth century they knew well that the Geonic period was long past.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/cromohs-14238

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