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7/29/2019 The Hebrew Bible as Weapon of Faith in Late Medieval Iberia- Irony, Satire, And Scriptural Allusion in Profiat Duran

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The Hebrew Bible as Weapon of Faithin Late Medieval Iberia: Irony, Satire, and Scriptural

Allusion in Profiat Durans Al Tehi ka-Avotekha

Maud Kozodoy

Between the spring of 1391 and the following spring – a period of anti-

Jewish riots and mass forced conversions across the Iberian peninsula –

Profiat Duran, a physician and resident of Perpignan in the Crown of

Aragon, converted to Christianity, taking the name Honoratus de Bona-

fide.1 According to archival documents, Duran remained in Perpignan

for years afterward, conducting business transactions under his Chris-

tian name, achieving the medical degree of magister in medicina (avail-

able only to Christians), and being named familiar to the royal court asan astrologer.

In light of this royal appointment and his ongoing business activities,

we may presume that Duran conducted himself outwardly as a Chris-

tian. But at the same time that he was living as Honoratus de Bonafide,

Duran wrote several works in Hebrew, of which two were anti-Christian

treatises. One of these, Kelimat ha-goyim, was based on extensive reading

in Latin and demonstrated an unusually deep exposure to Christianreligious doctrine. The other, known as Al tehi ka-avotekha (Be not

like your fathers), was composed approximately three years after his

conversion.2 It takes the form of a satirical epistle to another recent

New Christian, one David Bonet Bonjorn, who had converted out of a

professedly sincere desire to embrace Christianity.3 The work attacks the

Jewish Studies Quarterly, Volume 18 (2011) pp. 185—201

' Mohr Siebeck — ISSN 0944-5706

1 See Richard Emery, “New Light on Profayt Duran The Efodi,” JQR 58 (1967–

68) 328–337.2 See (Frank) Ephraim Talmage, ed., The Polemical Writings of Profiat Duran

[Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1981). Kelimat ha-goyim: pp. 3–67; Al tehi ka-avotekha: pp. 73–84.

3 The “traditional” interpretation of this letter is that it was written by one forcedconvert (Duran) to another (Bonjorn) who had begun to look favorably upon his newfaith. Yet there is no reference to forcible conversion in the text; Duran cites only aletter in which Bonjorn has expressed his new convictions and was likely merelyresponding to Bonjorns announcement of voluntary conversion.



irrationality of Christian dogma and points up the absurdity of a philo-

sophically-educated Iberian Jew converting to a religion based on faith.

Durans letter savages Bonjorn personally for his betrayal of their

shared Iberian Jewish values, values expressed in particular throughpride in “lineage and excellence in language and philosophy,” as Eleazar

Gutwirth has written.4

Following recent steps toward contextualizing fifteenth-century

Hebrew literature in its Aragonese cultural milieu,5 this paper will exam-

ine both the technique and the form of Al tehi ka-avotekha in order to

situate it within late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth century Iberian writ-

ing in general. Although anti-Christian polemic would seem an improb-able place in which to find influences from the Christian literary tradi-

tion, in this case the improbable is made less so by the fact of Durans

contact with the court and his demonstrable awareness of Latin scrip-

tural and scholastic texts. Indeed, some attempts have already been

made to connect passages in Durans writing to contemporaneous cur-

rents within courtly literary culture.6 At the same time, we will keep in

mind the works essential character as a response to the particular his-torical circumstances that shaped Durans life.

An ornate and allusive Hebrew, Durans language recalls medieval

Hebrew maqa ma literature, formal epistles, and poetry, whose authors

regularly embedded biblical verses in their texts to create a variety of

artful, and often humorously satiric, effects. Aside from its allusive lan-

guage, to which we shall return, what is immediately striking about Al

tehi ka-avotekha is the rhetorical masquerade adopted by the speaker.

The letter is framed in the form not of an attack but of felicitation to

Bonjorn for his decision. But the posture is just a pose. Every word

praising Bonjorn intends its opposite, and every compliment to the

Christian religion is a sly aggression. Mockingly, Duran begins nearly

every section of the letter with the words “be not like your fathers,” the

phrase that has come to serve as the works title.7 Ostensibly, the phrase

means to encourage Bonjorn, as a new Christian, to persevere in his

laudable resolve to repudiate his Jewish forebears; beneath the surface,

the message is one of derision and condemnation.

186 Maud Kozodoy JSQ 18

4 Eleazar Gutwirth, “From Jewish to Converso Humor,” BHS 67 (1990) 223–233;228.

5 See, in particular, Arturo Prats, “La satira y la invectiva en el diwan de R. Selomobar Reuben Bonafed,” Sefarad 66 (2006) 69–88; “A Letter of Consolation by SolomonBonafed (Fifteenth Century),” Comparative Literature Studies 45 (2008) 182–209.

6

See the numerous articles by Eleazar Gutwirth.7 For mockery as a characteristic mode of irony, see Dilwyn Knox, Ironia: Medieval and Renaissance Ideas on Irony (Leiden: Brill, 1989) 87–89.



While appearing haphazard in its arguments, the work is actually

tightly structured. This is particularly true of the first half, whose major

theme is the putative wisdom of Bonjorns choice of Christian faith over

Jewish reason. Here Duran contrasts belief in the unity and oneness of God with belief in the Trinity, belief in the incorporeality of God with

belief in the incarnation of Jesus, and reliance on philosophical exegesis

of the Bible with the mix of overly literal and wholly fanciful readings

that for him make up the substance of Christian interpretation. In brief,

within the satirical scheme of the letter, the former set of doctrines and

methods of proof are to be deemed inferior because rational, the latter

superior because irrational.Before he gets down to cases, Duran pauses for an extended “cri-

tique” of Bonjorns Jewish forefathers and their tradition of philosophi-

cal and scientific expertise:

Do not be like your fathers, who were brought by the principles of Rea-son ineluctably to the natural, theological, logical, and mathematicalaxioms, and from these generated theorems according to their kind and ontheir foundations; in the mountains of reason they built towers with turrets;8

they deepened their discussion in the apprehension of the ways of logic andits orders; and in order to distinguish between types of demonstrative syllo-gism and [those that are] not, they gave a large portion [of their study] to theEight Books [of Aristotles Organon]; and to precious mathematics they gavetheir attention, they said things and revealed secrets for praise and forthanksgiving. From the depths of the sea of the science of number [arith-metic] and geometry they raised up pearls,9 and on the table of the science of astronomy of the spheres they ate delicacies; on the high mountains of nat-

ural science they set up waymarks;10 and in theology they achieved hiddensecrets, gold cannot equal them,11 nor sweetmeats. This is their way in theirfolly,12 my brother.13

Cataloguing the Jews attainments in logic, mathematics (arithmetic and

geometry), astronomy, physics, and metaphysics, Duran is careful to pre-

face his recitation with the refrain “Do not be like your fathers” and to

end with “This is their way in their folly, my brother.” But what lies

between those two phrases is a barely-concealed hymn of praise thatstrains against the limits of Durans mock-congratulatory mode of

(2011) The Hebrew Bible as Weapon of Faith in Late Medieval Iberia 187

8 Song of Songs 4:4: “Thy neck is like the tower of David built with turrets, onwhich there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.”

9 Cf. Proverbs 8:11 and Job 28:18.10 Jeremiah 31:20: “Set up waymarks for thyself, make thee signposts.”11 Job 28:17: “But where shall wisdom be found? … Gold and glass cannot equal it;

and the exchange of it shall not be for vessels of fine gold.”12 Psalms 49:14.13 Al tehi ka-avotekha, 75–76.



address. Indeed, the passage stands out from much of the rest of the

letter both in its eloquence and its flashing disclosure of the speakers

true attitude.

Following this preface is the main section of the letters first half. The

sciences, having been enumerated in good Aristotelian order, from logic

through metaphysics, are now going to be raised one after another as

standards by which to judge Christian dogma, and in particular the

doctrine of transubstantiation. First, logic. A logical syllogism is the

following: if the father equals God and God equals the son, then the

father equals the son. To reject that equation, as belief in the Trinity

seems to require, is a violation of the rules of logic. Next, mathematicsis violated in its turn by the need to identify the full-grown body of the

messiah with the small body of a wafer, or the single body of the messiah

with a multitude of wafers. Physics is violated by identifying the station-

ary celestial body of the messiah with wafers subject to motion, or by

the idea that the words of an ordinary priest, sober or drunk, virtuous or

wicked, have the power to transform a wafer into the body of the mes-

siah. Metaphysics is violated by the concept that the substance of thebody of the messiah can take on the accidents of the wafer (how it looks,

tastes, and feels).

For each example, Duran simply states the Christian proposition,

while only occasionally adducing its rational counter-principle in Juda-

ism – as if to suggest that the statement itself is self-evidently risible. On

one such occasion he focuses on the belief of Bonjorns fathers in Gods

oneness, citing the words from the shema, the fundamental statement of

Jewish faith – the Lord is One – and defining those words in terms taken

from the Greco-Arabic philosophical tradition: “one” means that there

is no compositeness in God; God is the sole member of his species; God

is not dependent on any other thing for his existence. The implied mean-

ing of the lines is that Bonjorn, the new Christian, has come to believe in

a God who is no longer One but composite (made up of three persons),

multiple in kind (there being three members of the divine species), multi-

ple in relation (the son being causally related to the father, for instance),

and multiple in number (there being two others added to a single God).

“Be not like your fathers, who believed in God of simple unity only, and

utterly negated multiplicity, and erroneously asserted Hear O Israel, the

Lord our God, the Lord is One (Deut 6.4), and understood from the

One what is taught about it in the true definition – not One in compo-

siteness or in kind or in relation or in anything added to its number.”14


14 Al tehi ka-avotekha, 74–75.



Here Durans implicit argument relies on three axioms: a) there is only

One God; b) Gods oneness is properly defined by the philosophical

tradition; and c) according to this definition the central statement of

the Jewish faith, the shema, is true. With these he can prove that d)the Christian belief in a triune deity violates the principles of philosophy,

while Jewish belief does not.

After this series of rationally structured demonstrations of the irra-

tionality of Christian belief – posed within a framework lauding the

superiority of irrational belief – Duran turns in the second half of the

letter to issues of religious values and practice. Here again Duran pro-

vides a short preface that, were it not for the line with which it begins –“do not be like your fathers” – might again be taken as an encomium: in

this case, to the Jews devotion to Torah as both an object of study and a

source of eternal religious law. He lists some of the transgressions of this

law in which Bonjorn can now indulge and thereby avoid – in other

words, fall into – “shame.” These involve abandoning the laws of cir-

cumcision, family purity, and marriage; observance of the Sabbath and

the festivals; and the various regulations of kashrut. Once again argu-ment is minimal, as if merely to enumerate the forbidden activities will

suffice to evoke revulsion in the reader. The one exception concerns a

point central to Durans other anti-Christian polemic, Kelimat ha-

goyim, expressed here as an off-hand “doubt” that Jesus himself actually

abrogated the law of the Torah; to the contrary, Duran suggests, both he

and his disciples were careful to observe the commandments even after

baptism. In line with the motif of uncleanness and impurity, Duran also

touches on the veneration of saints relics, in particular the kissing of

human bones.

So much for a brief summary of the letters polemical contents. When

it comes to method, Durans practice, as we have seen in the case of the

preface, is to construct whole sections out of strings of biblical quota-

tions. Often, however, an awareness of the full context of a particular

verse casts significant new light on the surface point that the author

seems to be making – sometimes, indeed, radically undermining it. So

deft is the humor that it is not always possible, especially at this distance

in time, to tell which out of several potential readings of a passage the

author intends us to understand as his own. Making matters more com-

plicated (no doubt deliberately so), Duran is apt to switch back and

forth from “straight” allusion, in which the full context of a scriptural

verse is in fact compatible with the surface meaning of the specific words

or phrases being quoted, to allusions in which the unquoted contextcontradicts or contrapuntally plays off of the outer meaning.




Duran introduces his multivalent and frequently subversive use of

quotation at the very outset by addressing his letter to “David, when

he changed his demeanor before Avimelekh.”15 This, a quotation from

Psalms 34:1, is traditionally understood to refer to an episode in ISamuel in which the young David feigns madness. Duran is almost cer-

tainly implying here that Christianity is itself crazy, but, with a wink to

readers other than Bonjorn, he may also be signaling his recognition

that many of those who have converted to Christianity have done so

only as a pretense.16 In any case, this is but the first of several such

allusions to a running motif in the letter: namely, the distinction between

external action and inner belief. The same distinction is embodied inDurans consciously duplicitous text itself, whose feigned external sense

(praise of Christian doctrine) is in direct opposition to its real, inner

meaning (the vehement rejection of Christianity).

When placed in the context of religious polemic, issues of quotation

become issues of interpretation. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centu-

ries, Iberian Jewish polemicists wrote bitterly about having to trade

scriptural prooftexts with Christians, with each side accusing the otherof corrupting or misunderstanding the text. Hayim ibn Musa, for exam-

ple, warned his fellow Jewish polemicists to rely on quotations from the

Hebrew Bible only, and in particular only according to the simple mean-

ing.17 Devoting the final chapter of Kelimat ha-goyim to Jeromes errors

of translation, Duran would himself insist on the same stipulation, on

the grounds that the “deceivers” only wanted to cite scripture according

to the Vulgate.18 In Al tehi ka-avotekha, in an example of his sensitivity

to the polemical resources of the Hebrew language, Duran digresses at

one point from discussing the logical impossibilities of the incarnation

to address the issue of virgin birth:

Believe that [Jesus] was incarnated in the stomach of a “maid,” referringin the Hebrew language to a pure virgin, and about which it is taught, they


15 Al tehi ka-avotekha, 73.

16 Near the end of the letter, the speaker asserts that he himself has never “changedhis demeanor”: “Pure I am in my faith with the Lord my God with all my heart andwith all my soul forever and ever and in his righteous messiah who is called by hisname …. Also, ever since I clung to this faith, a new opinion has not sprung up in mefor even one day, and my demeanor has not changed, and that which I believe now iswhat I have believed these twenty years.” Al tehi ka-avotekha, 83

17 Haim ibn Musa, Magen ve-romah, A. Posnanski, ed. (facsimile, Jerusalem:Hebrew University, 1970) 2–3.

18 Kelimat ha-goyim, 64; Duran also used chapter 10 of Kelimat ha-goyim to list the

errors made by Jesus and his disciples when quoting scripture. These errors he attri-butes to their being illiterate and knowing their biblical verses only from listening to(and mishearing) public sermons. Kelimat ha-goyim, 49.



say “the way of a man with a maid.”19 …. The labor was not hard for her,20

she did not cry out in her labor-pains like a woman with child, 21 pangs didnot take hold of her,22 nor was she in anguish as a woman who gives birth toher first child,23 and there was in her the contrary of women24 and she

became as she was before.25

In this passage, Duran refers to the fact that Bonjorn, as a Christian,

must believe that Jesus was born to a virgin, an <almah – a word that “in

the Hebrew language,” he says, means virgin. Here he seems to be

accepting the Christian translation of the word < almah as it appears in

Isaiahs famous prophecy (“Behold a virgin shall conceive,” 7:14). But

the prooftext cited by Duran is an obvious polemical rebuttal of any

such rendering. It is from Proverbs 30:19: “the way of an eagle in the

air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of

the sea; and the way of a man with a maid [<almah].” In Jewish anti-

Christian polemic, this verse, with its unequivocal reference to a man

having his way with a young woman, is itself often adduced as demon-

strating conclusively that, in using the same word as that found in Pro-

verbs, Isaiah could not possibly have meant that the future redeemer

would be born of a virgin.26 The whole passage also illustrates Duransrapier-like use of biblical allusion. Piling up no fewer than four scrip-

tural references to the suffering of a woman in childbirth, he then, in

contradistinction to this compound biblical testimony to the universal

presence of pain in childbearing, asserts of Mary that “there was in her

the contrary of women” – namely, that unlike Eve and all her descen-

dants, Mary did not suffer the pangs of childbirth. But again the scrip-

tural context from Ezekiel 16:34 hardly corroborates any such claim:“And the contrary of women is in thee from other women, in that

thou didst solicit to harlotry and was not solicited.” Mary, in short,

has just been labeled a harlot, in silent reference to standard anti-Chris-


19 Proverbs 30:19.20 Genesis 35:16: “And Rachel travailed and she had hard labor.”21 Isaiah 26:17: “Like a woman with child that draws near the time of her delivery, is

in pain and cries out in her pangs.”22 Isaiah 21:3: “Pangs have taken hold of me as the pangs of a woman in travail.”23 Jeremiah 4:31: “For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as

of her that brings forth her first child.”24 Ezekiel 16:34.25 Al tehi ka-avotekha, 75. 1 Kings 13:6: “The kings hand was restored him again,

and became as it was before.” This phrase can be read in two ways. Either it means thatMary was like the first woman, Eve, who, before her punishment and expulsion fromEden, presumably would not have suffered pains in childbirth had she had any chil-

dren. Or – and this is more likely given the context from I Kings – it would indicate thatMary became again physically a virgin after the birth of Jesus.

26 Duran uses it himself in Kelimat ha-goyim, 49.



tian accusations that, as a married woman, she covered up an act of

adultery by claiming God as the father of her child.

Still another instance of multivalent quotation occurs in the epistles

concluding “blessing”: “Let Jesus, the messiah, whom you chose, makehis face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee – he and not another

– and give you peace and bless you.27 The mouth that speaks28 loves you

forever, for thou makest thy ways perfect.”29 In calling down divine

favor upon Bonjorn, Duran invokes the phrasing of the biblical priestly

blessing, adding the stipulation that Jesus himself perform the blessing,

“and not another,” the other presumably being the true God; thus he

turns the putative blessing into a curse. The next allusion, “the mouththat speaks,” recalls appropriately enough the great moment of reconci-

liation between Joseph and his brothers in Genesis 45:14: “And he fell

on his brother Binyamins neck, and wept; and Binyamin wept on his

neck.” But this may also be a neat allusion to Durans own position as a

Joseph, one who has taken on the outward appearance of an Egyptian

prince but who is inwardly faithful to his people and his God. The final

biblical citation, “thou makest thy ways perfect,” is from Job, a biblicalbook hardly without its own quotient of sarcasm. In Job 22:3 Eliphaz

asks of Job: “Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous?

or is it any gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?” Durans

invocation of the phrase suggests that the “perfect” ways and “right-

eousness” of Bonjorn give neither pleasure nor benefit to Duran, let

alone to the true God.

A final example: as a new convert, Duran urges, Bonjorn should not

take offense when Christians refer to him disparagingly as a “t vul yom.”

A slight knowledge of Jewish law reveals the poignancy of this use of a

term whose neutral meaning might be construed simply as “one recently

immersed” (i. e., in the baptismal waters). According to the Mishnaic

discussion (Toharot) of the laws of purity in Leviticus, if an Israelite

became tamei , unclean, because of contact with the dead or for some

other reason, he was not permitted to offer a sacrifice in the sanctuary

or, later, the Temple in Jerusalem. He had to immerse himself in the

mikveh and at sundown would be considered pure. A t vul yom was

one who had already immersed but was waiting to be declared pure.


27 Numbers 7:22–26: “And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Speak to Aaron and tohis sons, saying, In this way you shall bless the children of Israel, saying to them, TheLord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and begracious to thee; the Lord lift up his countenance to thee and give thee peace.”

28

Genesis 45:12: “And behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin,that it is my mouth that speaks to you.”

29 Job 22:3.



This identification of baptism with Jewish ritual immersion and of the

Church with the mikdash holds its own bit of daring turn-the-tables

humor, but the real sting lies in the mordant implication that, baptism

or no, recent converts to Christianity were still considered too “unclean”to enter the Church.

In the arguments it advances against Christianity, Al tehi ka-avotekha

does not diverge from other medieval Hebrew philosophical polemics.30

But it is set apart from these works not only by its specific techniques,

preeminently the barbed biblical allusion, but by the genre-driven frame-

work in which those techniques operate to utmost effect. It is a work not

of philosophy but of sarcasm, pitched at a high level and sustained overan entire work. Or at least sarcasm is the term we would employ today.

To medieval rhetoricians, sarcasmos was generally characterized as

direct “derision of the harshest kind.”31 By contrast, they would have

considered Durans work, which is anything but direct, to be a classic

type of irony.32 Dennis Green, in his study of this form in the medieval

romance, defines its modern understanding as “a statement, or presenta-

tion of an action or situation, in which the real or intended meaningconveyed to the initiated intentionally diverges from, and is incongruous

with, the apparent or pretended meaning presented to the uninitiated.”33

In Durans time, the term was far more narrowly defined. In medieval

irony, the intended meaning could not just “diverge” from the stated

meaning; rather, it was the opposite of the stated meaning.34 As recent

scholarship has shown, irony was used predominantly “as a vehicle of

mockery,”35 and its model form was “criticism through feigned praise.”36

This is precisely how Durans letter works. So far as I know, it is

almost unique in medieval Hebrew for its nearly perfectly consistent

pose of praise intended to convey contempt. Its closest parallel may be


30 See Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in theMiddle Ages (New York: Ktav, 1977; repr. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization,2007).

31 Knox, Ironia, 172. Knox quotes Isidore of Seville (c. 570–636) as giving thedefinition: sarcasmos est hostiles inrisio cum amaritudine (Etym. I.37.29), p. 173.

32 Numerous contemporary studies on irony in medieval literature have drawn adistinction between the modern conception and that known to rhetoricians andemployed by writers and poets in the late medieval period. A few examples are DennisGreen, Irony in the Medieval Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979);Simon Gaunt, Troubadours and Irony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989),and Dilwyn Knox, Ironia.

33 Green, Irony, 934

Knox, Ironia, 177.35 Knox, Ironia, 92.36 Gaunt, Troubadours and Irony, 10.



the letter composed by Solomon ha-Levi of Burgos before his conver-

sion, implicitly complaining – through skillful use of biblical and talmu-

dic allusions – about the lack of kosher wine to drink at court.37

Another and perhaps even more obvious parallel is a polemical letterin rhymed prose from Solomon Bonafed to the convert Francesc de

Sant Jordı, composed later than and clearly indebted to Al tehi ka-avo-

tekha.38 Bonafed had a pronounced taste for satire, and in his letter he

draws on Durans style and language. But although he clearly under-

stood Durans intention and appreciated his biting style, Bonafed does

not follow Durans example; instead of employing the disguised, ironic

form throughout, he states his true meaning explicitly at the outset.39

As the reference to Bonafed suggests, Al tehi ka-avotekha was not

the only Hebrew polemical letter exchanged between Jews and converts

to Christianity around the turn of the fifteenth century in Christian

Iberia.40 Nor were such letters meant solely for the eyes of the addressee.

Instead, they served as part of an ongoing, quasi-public debate over the

validity of the respective religious traditions. While formally addressed

to an adversary, they are thought to have been sent as well to high-placed Jewish officials, such as Meir Alguadex. Additional copies were

presumably perused by individuals, sometimes read aloud in synago-

gues, and perhaps discussed in the marketplace. Indeed, Durans letter

makes some textual references to the letter sent by Joshua ha-Lorqi to

the convert Solomon ha-Levi of Burgos, a letter mentioned by Haim ibn

Musa as well.41 This suggests that Duran expected not only that his

readers might be familiar with ha-Lorqis letter, but that his own letter

would become similarly known. And so it was, as the use Bonafed made

of it suggests.

The existence of this semi-public epistolary debate meant that Duran,

in writing, had his eye not only on the sincere New Christian whom he

addressed but also on the Jewish community that would shortly consti-

tute its larger audience, a community that might include insincere con-

versos as well. Judging from the number of extant copies, Al tehi ka-


37 See Gutwirth, “From Jewish to Converso Humor”; also Elliott S. Horowitz, Reck-less Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 2006) 256–257.

38 Frank Talmage, ed., “The Francesc de Sant Jordi-Solomon Bonafed Letters,” inStudies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979) 337–364.

39 Frank Talmage, ed., “The Francesc de Sant Jordi-Solomon Bonafed Letters,”350.

40

See Ram Ben Shalom, “Between Official and Private Dispute: The Case of Chris-tian Spain and Provence in the Late Middle Ages,” AJS Review 27 (2003) 23–72.

41 Haim ibn Musa, Magen ve-romah, 1.



avotekha was relatively popular, and it is likely that in this popularity its

satirical humor played a large role.42 Mobilizing rhetoric and mocking

allusion in the service of polemical firepower, the allusive wit functions

to draw an audience together, implicitly identifying those, whether for-mally converted or not, who can smile at the in-jokes as members of a

single cultural community.

The subtext (or intertext, to be precise) of Al tehi ka-avotekha was

open to those with an excellent knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, some

awareness of the polemical tradition of interpretation of the Bible,

some Talmud, and Jewish law. These were the cultural identifiers to

which Profiat Duran appeals. Later, Duran would compose Ma asehefod , a treatise on Hebrew grammar, precisely, he explains, to enable

Jews to understand their own scriptures according to the truth of the

language, and to protect themselves from the erroneous interpretations

of anti-Jewish polemicists, especially former Jews. To Duran, true knowl-

edge of and devotion to the Hebrew scriptures were unfailing signals of

Jewish identity; in his judgment, they even provided a path to salvation.43

There is also a wider literary context to consider. The mocking, derisive,ironic letter that praises in order to condemn would become especially

popular among Christians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, pre-

sumably thanks in part to the rediscovery by Renaissance humanists of

ancient and late-antique satires in Greek and Latin.44 But the form was

not without precedent in fourteenth-century European literature as well.45

In 1381 there circulated in Paris a Latin letter purporting to be from

the devil, congratulating his disciples on earth, “the prelates of the

church,” for perpetuating the schism that saw one pope ruling the

Church from Rome and another from Avignon.46 The diabolical speaker


42 There are 18 mss of Al tehi ka-avotekha in the Institute of Microfilmed HebrewManuscripts in Israel listed as dating from the fifteenth century, of which half are in aSephardic hand. Curiously, according to the same catalogue, there is only one ms of Kelimat ha-Goyim dated as early as “15th–16th century.” By far the majority comefrom sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.

43 See my forthcoming book on Profiat Duran.44 See the satirical dialogues of Lucian (2nd c.) and the 6th century epistolographi-

cal work by pseudo-Libanius, which included a sarcastic letter. Knox, Ironia, 88.45 By the mid-fourteenth century, the word “ironia” appears in an Occitan work, Las

flors del gay saber (c.1323) III, 258. Gaunt, Troubadours and Irony, 204, n. 1.46 “Epistola diaboli Leviathan ad Pseudoprelates Ecclesie pro scismate confir-

mando” in Peter von Ailli (Petrus de Alliaco): zur Geschichte des grossen abendl ä n-dischen Schisma und der Reformconcilien von Pisa und Constanz, ed. Paul Tschackert(Gotha: F. A. Perthes, 1877) 15–21, English trans. by Irving W. Raymond in “DAillys

Epistola Diaboli Leviathan,” Church History 22 (1953) 181–191. For other such letters,see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer, the Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N. Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1984) 87–89.

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is “Leviathan,” who opens his address to the prelates of the Church with

a short historical overview of his own reign and subsequent overthrow,

written in a quasi-allegorical mode and picturing the world or Church

as a city (Jerusalem) and Christians as citizens of that city. Leviathan,often interpreted by medieval Christian exegetes as a demon, or satanic

figure, here plays Satan himself, who had happily set up an earthly king-

dom of Babylon when the seductive son of a carpenter came along and

invaded the realm, establishing his own city of Jerusalem. Jesuss army

was led by a captain of the guards, Peter, and with him on the walls was

Paul, who, it is noted innocently, had specifically warned against schisms

within the church. In the words of the author, quoting 1 Corinthians:“solliciti sitis servare unitatem spiritus in vinculo pacis, ut in id ipsum

dicatis omnes et jam non sint in vobis scismata.” (Be careful to keep the

unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. See that you all speak the same

thing and that there be no schisms among you.) Ever since then,

Leviathan has been hoping to sow strife. And now that the prelates

of the Church have failed to follow proper procedure, the whole city

has been thrown “into turmoil.” To Leviathan, the rivalry betweenfollowers of Urban and followers of Clement is cause for rejoicing,

except for one potential problem: the crawling rats and croaking frogs

who call for a general council. Those “base men,” presumably of low

family, are “contemptible in the eyes of the world.” Leviathan con-

cludes by recalling the “first schism” in which he himself rebelled and

fell from the ranks of the angels. A final, intense peroration to his

prelates completes the letter.

Although the authorship of this letter has been disputed, it is most

commonly attributed to Pierre dAilly, active in the conciliarist move-

ment to resolve the schism. The similarities between it and Durans

epistle are numerous. Both clearly fall into the medieval category of

“ironia”47 in which statements are intended to convey the opposite of

their surface meaning. Both combine narratives of past history and

recent events with praise of and blessings upon the addressees as well

as extensive exhortation in the second person. The unspoken purpose of

each is to demonstrate the grave error committed by the addressees, and

to this end both employ humorous, allusive language, direct quotation

of scriptural prooftexts, and rational argument.


47

In the manuscript of dAilly

s letter is found the following subscription: “Explicat

ironica epistola ad impediendum generale concilium sub nomine Leviathan diaboli infer-nalis directa ejus ministries.” Tschackert ed., 21, n.



Had Duran heard of dAillys satiric Latin letter? It is certainly con-

ceivable: many ties connected the Jews of Perpignan with France, and as

a familiar of the royal court in Perpignan, Duran was close to the Pro-

vencal world where the letter may have circulated. Knowing Latin, hecould even have read dAillys epistle and admired its rhetorical power.

Not that he needed an actual example before him – for the form, as

mentioned, is well attested in medieval Latin rhetoric.

But for all the similarities between the two works, there are also tell-

ing divergences, and not only the obvious ones of language and intended

audience. One such difference can be seen in dAillys use of scriptural

citation. While Leviathan shares with the speaker in Al tehi ka-avotekhaa mastery of biblical allusion, the two deploy their scriptural material at

instructively different levels of complexity. Thus, in a paragraph near the

end of the letter, the devil issues final instructions to his disciples:

Demum vero, ne diutius vos protraham, haec erit vobis summa exhortatio-num mearum: nunquam rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem, sed facite, utregnum ejus in se divisum bellorum turbine desoletur, ut non sit vobis domus dei domus orationis, sed domus negotiationis; nec vera, sed vana loquatur unus-quisque ad proximum suum; ducite in bonis laute dies vestros et non praetereatvos flos hujus temporis; dilatate phylacteria vestra et magnificate fimbrias;amate primos discubitus in coenis, primas cathedras in synagogis, salutari in

foro et vocari ab hominibus Rabbi …48

But to conclude, so as not to weary you, let this be the last of myexhortations to you: never pray for the peace of Jerusalem,49 but act insuch wise that its kingdom, divided against itself, be desolated by a whirl-wind of wars, that the house of God be not to you a house of prayer50 but

one of commerce; let no one speak true but vain things to his neighbor;pass your days sumptuously in good things, and let not the flower of thetime pass by you;51 make broad your phylacteries, and enlarge the bordersof your garments.52 Love the uppermost places at feasts and the chief seats


48 Tschackert ed., 20–21. I have based the translation on that by Raymond (p. 190),but adjusted it to conform to the King James version of the quoted biblical text.

49 Psalm 122:6: “Rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem: et abundantia diligentibuste.” [Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.]

50 Matthew 21:13: “et dicit eis: Scriptum est: Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur:vos autem fecistis illam speluncam latronum.” [and said unto them, It is written, Myhouse shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.]

51 Wisdom 2:7: “vino pretioso et unguentis nos impleamus et non praetereat nos flostemporis.” [Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let not the flowerof the time pass by us.]

52 Matthew 23:5: “Omnia vero opera sua faciunt ut videantur ab hominibus: dilatant

enim phylacteria sua, et magnificant fimbrias.” [But all their works they do for to beseen of men: they make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their gar-ments.]



in the synagogues.53 Seek greetings in the market, and to be called of men,Rabbi.54

Here, as elsewhere in the epistle, the irony is straightforward and unmis-

takable. DAilly takes his language primarily from Matthew 23, anddeciphering his true meaning is a relatively simple task. First the devil

selects activities valued both in medieval culture and in the biblical con-

text and exhorts his followers not to perform them: do not pray for the

peace of Jerusalem, let not the house of God be a house of prayer to

you. Then in the second half of the passage, he cites activities censured

in the biblical context – specifically, conduct that Jesus decries in Phar-

isees – and exhorts the prelates to ape that conduct. The resulting pas-tiche of quotations and paraphrases may not be particularly witty, but it

clearly communicates his point: were it not for their love of power, pub-

lic honor, and money, the Pharisees of his day – namely, those church-

men who refuse to resolve the conflict in the church – would not be

doing the devils divisive work.

DAillys entire letter is constructed along similar lines, the irony

maintained strictly and steadily throughout. Since the speaker is thedevil, and thus evil by definition, no analysis need be provided for the

reader to grasp the true significance of his statements. What the devil

abuses we automatically understand to be praiseworthy; what the devil

praises we are meant to condemn. There is no ambiguity, no slippage of

tone. In comparison, Durans position is far less clear. We may identify

him with the speaker of his epistle, but we will not thereby be equipped

to assert at every point whether he is being serious or ironic. As we saw

above, Durans use of biblical quotation is itself far from straightfor-

ward. Within any given mosaic of scriptural allusions, the reader must

be exceptionally alert to the one or two that harbor the crucial sting. It

is perhaps because of the resultant possibility of being misunderstood, a

common pitfall of sustained irony,55 that Duran sometimes feels com-

pelled to come out from behind his linguistic shield and expose the

gleam of his sword. In general, though, he operates through cunning


53 Luke 20:46–47: “adtendite a scribis qui volunt ambulare in stolis et amant saluta-tiones in foro et primas cathedras in synagogis et primos discubitus in conviviis / qui devorant domos viduarum simulantes longam orationem hii accipient damnationemmaiorem.” [Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetingsin the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts];Matthew 23:6: “Amant autem primos recubitus in cœnis, et primas cathedras in synago-

gis.” [And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues.]54

Matthew 23:7: “et salutationes in foro, et vocari ab hominibus Rabbi .” [And greet-ings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi.]

55 Knox, Ironia, 40.



indirection and in an assured reliance on the high cultural abilities of his

addressee and of his wider Jewish and converso audience, both to follow

the drift of his meaning and to relish the artfulness of his pen.

Even within his own circle, Durans letter stands out in these same

respects. This we saw in comparing it with the rhymed prose imitation by

Solomon Bonafed, who does not pretend to conceal his derisive pur-

pose. But then, unlike Duran, Bonafed was not living as a Christian,

and in abusing the Christian religion he had far less to fear – a circum-

stance that brings us to a perhaps more relevant context in which to

place Al tehi ka-avotekha. For neither the rhetorical strategy nor the

bitter tone of this letter can finally be understood without attention tothe very particular situation of conversos at the turn of the fifteenth

century.

Strictly speaking, Al tehi ka-avotekha is not, or at least has not been

taken as, an example of “converso literature,” a term usually applied by

scholars to works written in the vernacular rather than in Hebrew. Yet

the extent to which Durans letter shares not only the basic aims but

many of the literary strategies of vernacular converso literature is unmis-takable. Although the scholarly debate over this literature cannot be

fully reviewed here, a common (albeit not universal) definition of a “con-

verso” text is one that presupposes a dual audience: the uninitiated

(Christian) reader, who understands only the surface meaning, and the

initiated reader, Jew or converso, who understands the text on two radi-

cally different levels. Then, too, Durans letter partakes of at least one of

the salient purposes of much converso literature, namely, in the words of

one scholar, “affirming Jewishness in crafty writing.”56 Moreover, as

Gutwirth has pointed out in connection with Duran, such crafty writing

often assumes the specific form of “a type of humor which excluded Old

Christians and was a linking factor to the conversos Jewish origin. Sty-

listically this humor hovers between sarcasm and irony.”57 Finally, in

deploying biblical allusion as a means of conveying his subversive mes-

sage, Duran was once again in conformity with converso norms. Gut-

wirth cites Inquisition archives from 1489 in which a converso and a

Jew are reported to have been heard discussing a Christian religious

painting.58 The converso quotes a phrase from Psalm 115 whose surface


56 Colbert I. Nepaulsingh, Apples of Gold in Filigrees of Silver: Jewish writings in theEye of the Spanish Inquisition (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1995) ix.

57 Gutwirth, “From Jewish to Converso Humor,” 230.58 This anecdote appears both in Gutwirth, “From Jewish to Converso Humor,” and

in his “Gender, History, and the Judeo-Christian Polemic,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancientand Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, eds. O. Limor and G. G. Stroumsa(Tubingen: Mohr, 1996) 260–261.



meaning is complimentary but whose original biblical context turns the

compliment into a barbed insult. Many sections of Al tehi ka-avotekha

offer an expanded and highly intensified version of this kind of

exchange, where Durans reliance on biblical quotation appears as a

weapon whose lethal power to skewer Christian doctrine could be appre-

ciated only by those to whom the Hebrew biblical text was quite famil-

iar.

Some scholars take irony to be a fundamental characteristic of con-

verso writing.59 Others, while accepting the idea of a converso “code,”

contend that the code was so transparent as to be comprehensible by

both Old and New Christian readers.60

Indeed, in the case of Durans

epistle we have only the word of the sixteenth-century printer Isaac Ak-

rish that Christians read it “innocently” – that is, according to its surface

meaning. Because Akrishs tale seems apocryphal and the letters sar-

casm is not perfectly veiled, the trend has been to reject the thesis of

Christian naivete. Still, if earlier scholars tended to accept Akrishs

story, they did so in part because it helped to explain why Profiat Duran,

a convert to Christianity, was not immediately arrested for Judaizing. Itmust be considered a real possibility that Duran chose this form because

– in literature as in life – it enabled him to camouflage the unyielding

tenacity of his Jewish beliefs.61 Whether or not a Christian would have

been fooled by his pose, maintaining it may have allowed him to pre-

serve what we would today call “deniability.”

In any case, to distinguish between Christian and Jewish readers may

be to draw the line in the wrong place. The ironic form and the com-

pressed and camouflaged allusions may or may not have functioned to

disguise the attack on Christianity, but among those whose ear was

indeed attuned to the Hebrew Bible – and here one must surmise a

mixed collection of Jews and former Jews, including both insincere

and sincere converts to Christianity – another sort of distinction would

have likely prevailed. Those loyal to Judaism would find Durans letter

funny, evocative, and convincing, while those otherwise disposed, like

Bonjorn, would find it galling. Or so Duran must have hoped. It is

reflective both of the confused and unstable nature of the Jewish and


59 See the discussions in Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Converso Dualities in the First Genera-tion: The Cancioneros,” JSS 4 (1998) 1–28; and Nepaulsingh, Apples of Gold .

60 Gregory B. Kaplan, The Evolution of Converso Literature: The Writings of theConverted Jews of Medieval Spain (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida,2002) 37.

61

See Daniel Lasker, “Popular Polemics and Philosophical Truth in the MedievalCritique of Christianity,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999) 243–259,256–7.

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converso communities during this period, and also of Durans own

developing understanding of Judaism, that his rhetorical approach

draws a line not between Jew and Christian but between Jew and loyal

converso on the one hand, and sincere convert to Christianity on theother.

In sum, Durans letter emerges from the personal experience of a

forced convert in Christian Iberia in the years shortly after the riots of

1391. Its coded language, the bitter emotion in its mockery of Christian-

ity, and the intentional ambiguity of the authors identity are closely

aligned with what we understand of converso existence. It may be that

Durans own situation as a converso – in which, by necessity, he had to

conceal his views from Christian society – brought him to write a letter

whose innovative form so perfectly mirrored the form of his life. To say

this is not to gainsay the striking formal resemblance Al tehi ka-avotekha

bears to the “ironic letter of feigned praise” – a literary model with

which Duran may have been familiar through dAillys epistle or some

other easily accessible source. In the end, we do not need to choose

among alternative scenarios. Living at the intersection of late-medievalJewish and Christian communities, Profiat Duran composed an epistle

that drew – in form as well as in content – from both.


the hebrew bible as weapon of faith in late medieval iberia- irony, satire, and scriptural allusion...

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