LATE MEDIEVAL JEWISH WRITERS on MAIMONIDES Angel Sáenz

LATE MEDIEVAL JEWISH WRITERS ON MAIMONIDES Angel Sáenz-Badillos Maimonides had a profound infl uence on every medieval Jewish intellectual. For more than two hundred years after his death it was almost impossible to disregard him or to overlook the great debates that he had provoked in his time. In the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, the Jewish writers of the fi fteenth century felt morally obli- gated to adopt an attitude in favor of or against Maimonides’ ideas.1 Here I will focus my attention on several Catalan authors of the fi rst and second half of the century, and I will try to trace different patterns of attitudes of respect to the Rambam. In view of the many facets of these debates, I will consider in particular the relations between faith and reason, Torah and the philosophy and science of the Greeks, and the role played by logic for these authors that not only lived at the same epoch in the same kingdom, the Crown of Aragon, but had also in common a certain familiarity with Latin, and with Christian Scholasticism.2 The name of Maimonides was not only associated with Aristotle, but also with Averroes. In his letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, ha-Rambam recommended Averroes as one of the best commentators of Aristotle. Many of Averroes’ commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus were trans- lated from Arabic into Hebrew, and commented on by Jewish philosophers during the fourteenth century. At the end of this century and the beginning of the fi fteenth, Averroes was more popular in Jewish circles than Aristotle himself. At the same time, some of his most disputed views invoked strong reactions against him among Jewish philosophers. During the fi fteenth century there were still many Jewish thinkers that followed Averroes’ theories, but his authority as commentator on Aris- totle was gradually weakened, in the fi eld of logic in particular. In any 1 Cf. Harvey S. 2001: 127. 2 Cf. Baer 1939–40: 205; Pines 1967: 1 ff.; Manekin 1997: 351 f. It has been said that “Scholastic infl uences upon fourteenth and fi fteenth-century Jewish philosophy can be seen in the increased attention paid to Scholastic logic . .” (Rudavski 2003: 345). Other very interesting thinkers of the time could of course be added to this study. 224 angel sáenz-badillos case, Jewish thinkers of this period felt the need to search for alternative approaches in the different branches of Philosophy. The sociological conditions of the time had a strong infl uence on the intellectual atmosphere. It is no wonder that the events of 1391 provoked the reaction of some infl uential Jews of the epoch against the philosophical rationalism that was a part of the education of the most cultivated Jewish families. They saw in it what had troubled the minds of the communities and originated the conversion of many of their educated and wealthy members. It should not be a surprise that Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides were harshly combatted at that time by spiritual leaders of Judaism like Hasdai Crescas, or other traditionalist thinkers.3 In Aragon and Catalonia, at the turn of the fourteenth century and the fi rst decade of the fi fteenth, the authority of Hasdai Crescas, the “philosophic critic”,4 was unquestionable. Hasdai, seeing the commotion suffered by the Jewish communities, tried to establish a new foundation of Jewish thought and halakah leaving aside the system of Maimonides and, in general, Aristotelian philosophy.5 For Crescas, the cause of all Maimonides’ errors, and those of his successors, was that Aristotle’s science had replaced the traditional Jewish perspective. It seemed nec- essary to overturn Maimonides’ philosophy using philosophical tools.6 Taking some elements from the new Physics of Occam, he tried to lay the basis of a more traditional Judaism, with a new doctrine inspired by some trends of Christian theology. There are researchers that tend to reduce the infl uence of Crescas’ attitude in the intellectual life of the Crown of Aragon, seeing it as too obscure and denying its success and continuity.7 But the way of thinking that Crescas represented would be shared by many Catalan-Jewish thinkers during the fi fteenth century. 3 “Aristotelian philosophy was accused of having troubled the minds of the people, causing the leaders of the communities, wealthy and generally acquainted with philosophical ideas, to be among the fi rst to convert instead of providing an example of heroic conduct. This accusation, which has been taken up again by contemporary scholars such as I. Baer, is presented in the work of Shem Tov”. (Sirat 1990: 346). 4 Harvey W. 1998: XI. 5 C. Sirat states that his “aim was to replace the work of Maimonides, from both the philosophical and halakhic points of view . According to Crescas, the very foundation of Maimonidean thought is false. The way that leads to God is not the knowledge of the intelligibles but the fear and love of God . .” (Sirat 1990: 358). 6 Lasker 1997: 403. 7 “His rejection of all the commonly accepted notions, and especially of Mai- monides, aroused astonishment and indignation. Many scholars, who in fact admired .

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