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Schlagwort: Jewish History

Averroism in Iberia: Yitzhak Baer, Álvaro Pelayo and Questions about Jewishness

Thomas Hendrik Kaal, Queen Mary University of London

Zusammenfassung: Die erzwungene Konversionsbewegung von iberischen Juden im Jahr 1391 wirft nach wie vor viele Fragen auf. Warum konnten so viele Sephardim dazu gebracht werden, ihrem ererbten Glauben zu entsagen und Christen zu werden? Für Yitzhak Baer lag der Schlüssel zu dieser Frage in der Verbreitung des sogenannten Averroismus. Seine Ansicht nach hatte rationalistische Philosophie die religiösen Überzeugungen derart unterminiert, dass insbesondere die gebildeten Juden nicht mehr bereit waren, Vertreibung oder den Märtyrertod zu erdulden. Baers Hypothese ist bereits aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisiert wurden. Dieser Artikel eröffnet eine neue Sichtweise auf die Thematik, in dem er den Blick auf Averroismus in christlichen Quellen richtet. Den Ausgangspunkt der Überlegungen bildet das häresiologische Kompendium Collyrium fidei des Franziskaners Álvaro Pelayo.

Abstract: The forced mass conversion of Iberian Jews in 1391 continues to raise numerous questions. Why could so many Sephardim be brought to renounce their inherited faith and become Christians? Yitzhak Baer believed that the key to answering this question lay in the spread of Averroistic philosophy among the Sephardim. In his view, rationalist philosophy had so deeply undermined the religious faith of many Iberian Jews, particularly of the more educated, that they were no longer willing to endure expulsion or martyrdom. Baer’s interpretation of Averroism has been criticized from various perspectives. This article proposes a new approach to the subject, shifting the focus to the representation of Averroism in Christian sources, with the heresiological compendium Collyrium fidei by Franciscan friar Álvaro Pelayo serving as a starting point for further reflections.

In his famous study History of the Jews in Christian Spain, the German-Israeli historian Yitzhak Baer (1888–1980) suggested that Spanish Jewry in the Late Middle Ages was deeply influenced by a philosophical current known as “Averroism”.1 This tradition, named after Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), is said to be most notably characterized by the belief that religion and philosophy are entirely separate, enabling them to arrive at different conclusions without contradicting or undermining one another.2 Baer argued that this split between the realm of knowledge and the realm of faith weakened the Jewish community in Iberia, making them more vulnerable to conversionary pressure. For if one could no longer determine beyond reasonable doubt that Judaism was true, and Christianity false, then there was significantly less incentive for a Jew to remain faithful to his or her inherited religion. When many Jews at the end of the 14th century were confronted with the choice of either converting to Christianity or dying the death of a Jewish martyr, those affected by Averroism simply could not muster the strength to remain faithful to their religion but converted to Christianity in large numbers. Baer thus argued that Averroism was the key factor behind the mass conversions of Jews in Spain in 1391.3 Based on his thesis, Averroism has become a recurring theme in the academic debate about the converts and their numerous descendants, the so-called conversos. It is used to explain the deviant religiosity, unbelief and skepticism among the New Christians, which can be found in 15th-century sources, especially in inquisition records.4

Scholars have long criticized Baer’s thesis for lacking sufficient evidence.5 A Jewish convert who explicitly invoked Averroism as a justification for the pragmatic acceptance of Christianity has yet to be identified. While Baer cited the works of Jewish anti-philosophers to support his claims, Daniel J. Lasker demonstrated decades ago that the tenets of Averroism did not prevent authors from maintaining their belief in the rational superiority of Judaism. It was entirely possible to be both “an Averroistic philosopher and a loyal Jew”.6 So, considering the inner Jewish debate, the evidence for Baer’s thesis appears rather thin. But what about Christian sources? Baer suggested that Christian guardians of orthodoxy feared a rationalist undermining of their faith through the corrosive influence of Averroism in the guise of Jewish converts. The persecution of conversos by the Spanish Inquisition, therefore, appears to be a response to the realization that many of them were but “philosophical intellectuals, Averroists, and nihilists”.7 This raises the possibility of finding indications of the spread of Jewish Averroism in contemporary Christian sources. Yet, the representation of Jewish Averroism in Christian sources from the Iberian Peninsula has not yet been studied in depth. This article is part of an ongoing research project, offering a few initial observations drawn from a heresiological compendium titled Collyrium fidei by friar Álvaro Pelayo (1280–1350).

Collyrium fidei is a peculiar text. It shows Álvaro Pelayo as a particularly unforbearing persecutor of religious deviance.8 In Book V, Álvaro condemns the heresy of a certain Thomas Scotus, an intellectual Averroist par excellence: Thomas reportedly argued that the world should be governed by philosophy rather than religious laws. He held that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity were sinister machinations of three impostors—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. He rejected the virgin birth, did not believe in angels, demons, the sacraments, creation ex nihilo, or any notion of an afterlife. Thomas also thought that all miracles were either false or could be fully explained by natural processes.9 To modern readers, this may sound like the description of a skeptical, ‘enlightened’ intellectual. But this was not how Álvaro understood the position of his opponent. Rather, he was visibly concerned to connect Thomas’ Averroistic position with Judaism. The friar went to great lengths to argue that Thomas was, in fact, a Judaizer.

What can Collyrium fidei tell us about the perception of Averroism in late medieval Iberia? First, we learn that zealous friars like Álvaro Pelayo were definitely concerned about the detrimental impact of Averroistic philosophy. Secondly, Collyrium fidei evidences a strong discursive connection between Averroism and Judaism. However, it seems that this connection existed more in Álvaro’s mind than in reality. For the friar, any form of unbelief and questioning of Christian truth claims was automatically akin to Judaism. Judaism functioned as a hermeneutical lens through which Christian authors could recognize and condemn unwanted tendencies in society and even in their own thinking.10 Considering that Collyrium fidei was already written decades before the mass conversion of 1391, we can see it did not take a mass influx of Averroistic conversions, as envisaged by Baer, to establish a closeness between heterodox Aristotelianism and Judaizing in Christian Iberian heresiology. The idea that Spanish Inquisitors in the late 15th century out of the blue ‘discovered’ a connection between Judaizing conversos and Averroism is clearly mistaken. This observation calls us to further investigate the discursive identification of heterodox philosophical ideas with Judaism in contemporary Christian discourses, especially with regards to the so-called converso problem—the growing concern about the New Christian population in Iberia that ultimately led to the Spanish Inquisition. In doing so, one discovers that some of the essentialist notions of Jewishness evident in medieval sources continue to shape the scholarly debate on conversos, in Yitzhak Baer’s time as well as today.

Photo: Andrea di Bonaiuto, Triumph of St. Thomas and Allegory of the Sciences, 1365–1368, fresco, Cappella Spagnuola, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, in; Wikimedia Commons, URL: [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0] (20.08.2024).

  1. Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961), I, 240, 263, 290 and II, 52, 137–138, 253–259. [↩]
  2. This distinction is usually inferred from Averroes’ Kitab Fasl al-Maqal. On his attempt to reconcile the claims of reason with the demands of faith, see Diego R. Sarrió, ‘The Philosopher as the Heir of the Prophets. Averroes’s Islamic Rationalism’, Al-Qanṭara, 36 (2015), 45–68. [↩]
  3. Baer, A History of the Jews, 138: “Apart from material considerations, it was the Averroist outlook that in the main prompted the better educated Jews to choose the easiest way. […] Those individuals who habitually looked down upon the simple masses who scrupulously observed all the commandments, these same men, when the test came, lacked the spiritual fortitude to prefer death to apostasy. In much the same spirit as they had previously denied the authority of biblical law, they now accepted the rites and ceremonies of an alien religion; ultimately, they only remained faithful to their ‘religion of the intellect’.” [↩]
  4. See, among others, See Francisco Márquez Villanueva, ‘El caso del averroísmo popular español (hacia la Celestina)’, in José Luis Canet Vallés and Rafael Beltrán Llavador (eds.), Cinco siglos de “Celestina”. Aportaciones interpretativas (Valencia, 1997) and Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 44–5. [↩]
  5. See, for example, Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 61–5. [↩]
  6. Daniel J. Lasker, ‘Averroistic Trends in Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 304. [↩]
  7. Baer, A History of the Jews, II, 224, 274. [↩]
  8. Álvaro Pelayo, Collyrium fidei, ed. and trans. by Miguel Pinto de Meneses, Lisbon 1954–1956. [↩]
  9. For a summary of the accusations against Thomas see Michele de Araújo, Tradição e poder no colírio da fé: um estudo sobre heresiologia política medieval (Brasilia: University of Brasilia, 2015), 69–70. [↩]
  10. David Nirenberg, ‘Enmity and Assimilation’, Common Knowledge, 9 (2003), 151. [↩]

Aesthetics vs. Functionality in Shem Tov’s Debate between the Pen and the Scissors

Dr. Marina Aurora Garzón Fernández, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Abstract: In this teaser of her post-doctoral project, Dr. Garzón Fernández gives insight into the Debate between the Pen and the Scissors written in 1345 by the Castilian rabbi Shem Tov ben Isaac Ardutiel (known as Sem Tob de Carrión).1 This text, a maqama genre text which combines prose and verse, was written mirroring the traditional “Debates between Pen and Sword” common in Islamic and Hebrew literature. However, in this parody, instead of confronting the Pen and the Sword as metaphors for administrative power and military power, Shem Tov portrayed two instruments arguing about their writing abilities. The Debate is thus rich in content concerning the philosophy of writing. Starting with traditional topoi, like the of role of writing in the preservation of memory, it also gathers considerations on the use and relevance of both utensils, and it stands out for the aesthetic analysis of paper-cut calligraphy.

Shem Tov sets the event on a cold winter day when icy streets and frozen rivers locked the rabbi in his house with no one to keep him company. Isolated and lonesome, he remembers that he who can write is never alone. The Pen, a writer’s best friend, is ever present: “a pen that has no heart understands my thoughts, and without an ear hears what I am feeling”. However, this moment of joy crashes soon against a crude reality. The moment he begins to write, the Pen hits the frozen ink, black and hard as a rock. Secluded, betrayed, and irritated the rabbi sees the hours go by under the glacial sun. Suddenly, the voice of the Scissors takes him out of his lethargy: “If the intense cold has stolen away the waters of the ink, and there is no pen which flows like a fountain, take for yourself a pen of iron”. The Scissors present themselves as an instrument for writing, but not merely as a substitute in an hour of need, but rather the creators of a script of unparalleled beauty.

And thus, a debate begins.

The reader can almost perceive the anthropomorphized Pen rolling its eyes at the Scissors as they proclaim with arrogance that the beauty of their script exceeds that of the best embroideries and mosaics. The Scissors describe the papercut letters as “marvelous holes”, a “result achieved by a miracle”, a script that can be compared to the writing of the Lord on the Stone Tablets. What’s more, they state that the value of poetry is elevated by the beauty of the script. And while “the writing of pen and ink is superfluous”, the writing of the Scissors is “magnificent” and can draw from all the colors: “It has a time for greenness, for ruby, for topaz and emerald, sometimes white and sometimes black. It takes off one shape and then dresses in another”.

Nevertheless, the Pen is not impressed by these superficial arguments. The Pen has other priorities. It is first concerned by the destructive nature of the Scissors, who can only create by wounding the paper. Contrarily, it sees itself as a giver, who gives away everything it takes (the ink). The integrity of the paper is key for the Pen. It insists that, were the writing left to the Scissors, what remained thereafter would be a fragile material — void of the discretion that is inherent in a rolled-up sheet of paper. The Scissors cannot keep secrets: “secrets get out, and even without any wine going in”. This flaw is unacceptable for the Pen, who believes written documents should be able to conceal private matters and protect the secrets of the writer. In addition, the Pen finds the Scissors highly inefficient because they are slow writers: “The beginning of the word becomes already forgotten when it is still being begun. I hide by his hand in a dish, and before you write a line, I shall write out the books of Ezra and Daniel and every word in the Torah, with each word at the proper time and place”.

The Scissors respond gladly to these allegations. They are not interested in writing secrets; their script is precious, not meant to be hidden. “Shall we hide the glory of our deeds? Should he treat our document like a harlot? Treat it as he treats your document, which is not pleasing in the eyes of its master, and think it to be a harlot because it covers its face to hide its shame and its faults?” As for the speed, the Scissors aren’t ashamed of being slow and they even compare themselves to God: “For during the forty days and forty nights that Moses stood on the mountain he wrote nothing more than the two tablets of the Ten Commandments”. The Scissors cherish beauty and perfection, and they describe their work as “a piece of writing in their image and likeness [the Stone Tablets], completely beautiful and without blemish in it”.

Finally, the debate is settled by a third party. A poor man, “wise beyond all wisdom, a man of knowledge and intelligence”, is asked to sort through the different objects in the house and use each one for their natural task. After using the Pen for writing, the man grabs the Scissors and “with them he cut his fingernails, shaved his beard and trimmed his moustache”. The Pen wins the battle with honors.

The Debate between the Pen and the Scissors is a fascinating text that combines the Arabic appreciation and curiosity towards calligraphy with the Hebrew sensibility for everyday scenes, double entendres, and a refined sense of humor. Furthermore, the parody allows for an unusual discussion: the need and use of aesthetics and functionality. While the arguments of the Pen focus on pragmatism, the Scissors emphasize the superior beauty of their script over all. The aesthetic arguments gathered by Shem Tov about paper-cut calligraphy is what makes this text so unique. Not only does he insist (through the words of the Scissors), that the beauty of the script plays an important role on the perception of the text, but he also details the qualities that make paper-cut writing “a marvel”. He highlights the fragility of the object and says it is “a miracle” that those letters can stand by themselves: “But there is here no sorcery and no supernatural sign”. Finally, he points out that there exists no material more precious than the one that forms these letters that “blossom in the air”. The Scissors describe their script as immaterial: “I am precious to all that is spirit / For I am form without matter, and my body is made of nothingness. I am pure spirit”.

However, as compelling as their arguments were, the Scissors had no chance to win a debate that prioritized pragmatism. The question was never about which instrument achieved the most beautiful script, but rather which instrument was better for writing. No matter how close the Scissors were to the writing of God, they were never a convenient tool for calligraphy (except maybe in the case of extreme weather, when they were the only means that Shem Tov had on hand to write down his text). The Debate between the Pen and the Scissors was a debate about aesthetics versus functionality. The importance of functionality was so remarkable that, according to the text, after the battle was settled the king of the land ordered by royal decree that no one would be allowed to use a utensil for another purpose than the God-intended one. Fortunately, the royal decree was fictional, and it did not prevent calligraphers across the Mediterranean from creating miraculous papercut pieces, like the 15th century Egyptian papercut codex kept at the Gotha Library (Ms. Orient. A 42). During the Ottoman Empire the technique would flourish, becoming a signature craft of this period.2 Cut calligraphers, known as Kat’i, would create numerous pieces that can now be admired in museums across the world.3 The names of these calligraphers would be praised and immortalized in treaties, like Mustafas Ali’s “Epic Deeds of Artists”.4 Nevertheless, the maqama written by Shem Tov on a cold Castilian winter day remains the most significant testimony known to date about this extraordinary script “made of air”.5

My project “Writing with Scissors: a Calligraphy of Wonder”, funded by a post-doctoral Stipendium of the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation, seeks to study the art of paper-cut writing in the Middle Ages and analyze its aesthetic qualities. It is currently being developed in the context of the CRC 933 “Material Text-Cultures” at the University of Heidelberg.

Photo: Gotha papercut Codex (49v-50r), Egypt, 15th century, Gotha Research Library, University of Erfurt, Ms. Orient. A42. 

  1. Colahan, Clark (1979b): “Santob’s debate: Parody and political allegory. Conclusión”, Sefarad: Revista de Estudios Hebraicos y Sefardíes, 39, 2, pp. 265-308 [English translation from the Hebrew text: All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition]. [↩]
  2. Kurz (1972), “Libri cum characteribus ex nulla materia compositis”, Israel Oriental Studies II, pp. 240–247. [↩]
  3. Çagman (2014), Kat’i. Cut paper works and artists in the Ottoman world, Istanbul. [↩]
  4. Âli / Akın (2011), Mustafa Alī’s epic deeds of artists: a critical edition of the earliest Ottoman text about the calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world, Leiden / Boston. [↩]
  5. Garzón Fernández (2013), “Los escritos de tijeras: el arte de la caligrafía sin tinta”, in: Funciones y prácticas de la escritura: I Congreso de Investigadores Noveles en Ciencias Documentales.Escalona: Universidad Complutense de Madrid / Ayuntamiento de Escalona, pp. 103–108. [↩]