1. Most nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholars, including Graetz, Renan, Gross, Schorr, and Dubnow, portrayed the conflict in pure ideological lines as a battle between progressive champions of a rational faith and fanatical obscurantist reactionaries. Yitzhak Baer, in an interesting yet unsubstantiated variation on this theme, maintained that Provence was used as a pretext by Adret, whose real purpose was to combat “Averroism” in Spain; seeA History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia, 1961), I, 290, 293–94, and the critique by Charles Touati in “La controverse de 1303–1306 autour des études philosophiques et scientifiques,”REJ, 127 (1968): 34. Joseph Sarachek and, more recently, Abraham Halkin have argued that the Jewish conflict at the beginning of the fourteenth century reflected the triumphs of orthodoxy over rationalistic tendencies in Islam and especially in thirteenth-century Christendom; see Sarachek,Faith and Reason: The Conflict over the Rationalism of Maimonides (Williamsport, Pa., 1935), pp. 2–13 and 167; Halkin, “Ha-Herem al Limud ha-Pilosofiah”,Peraqim (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 52–55, and “Yedaiah Bedershi's Apology”, inJewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 181–84. Some scholars have tended to view this conflict alongside that of the 1230s as a reflection of socio-economic cleavage in Jewish society, with the lower classes spearheading the opposition to philosophy as manifest in the life-style of the courtier class; for a recent statement, see H.H. Ben-Sasson,Peraqim be-Toldot ha-Yehudim bi-Mei ha-Beinayim (Tel Aviv, 1969), pp. 224–26 and 230–32, andA History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, 1976), p. 543.
2. InTeshuvot ha-Rashba (Benei Beraq, 1958): Perpignan (III, 11; I, 388 and 1249); Montpellier (I, 363 and 395; III, 237); Narbonne (I, 259 and 287); Carcassonne (III, 214 and 280); Marseilles (III, 132 and 160); Avignon (III, 350). For a listing of individuals mentioned, see J. Perles,R. Salomo ben Abraham ben Adereth: Sein Leben und seine Schriften (Breslau, 1963), pp. 9–11. On local custom:Teshuvot ha-Rashba, III, 394; against imposing of will: III, 401; on a subject of another kingdom: III, 440.
3. Abba Mari of Lunel,Minhat Qena'ot (henceforthMQ) (Presburg, 1839), pp. 22, 23, 52, 72, 104, 118, 133, 135, 137. Cf. Joseph Shatzmiller, “Bein Abba Mari le-Rashba: Ha-Masa ve-ha-Matan she-qadam le-herem be-Vartselonah”,Mehqarim be-Toldot am Yisrael ve-Eretz Yisrael, Vol. 3 (Haifa, 1974), p. 131. Here and throughout this article, when speaking of the Jewish communities I have used the term “Provence” loosely as a synonym for southern France including Languedoc. Provence and Languedoc were juridically separate, but the broad usage is consistent with that in most medieval Hebrew sources.
4. MQ, pp. 54, 94; Adolph Neubauer, “Ergänzungen und Verbesserungen zu Abba Maris Minhat Kenaot aus Handschriften,Israelitische Letterbode 4 (1878):127 and 5 (1879):55.
5. MQ, pp. 32, 167; Menahem Me'iri,Hoshen Mishpat, ed. D. Kaufman,Zunz Jubelschrift (Berlin, 1884), Hebrew section, p. 149.