“MEMBERS OF THE COVENANT OF THE GUIDE”: READING MAIMONIDES IN CHRISTIAN TOLEDO

Abstract

This article argues that Moses Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed first became known to a Latin Christian audience in Toledo before 1220, and that the section of it translated as the Liber de parabolis et de mandatis in 1223–24 (Guide III.29–49) is the work of Samuel ibn Tibbon and Michael Scot. Moreover, the introduction to exegesis that prefaces the translation reflects the work of ibn Tibbon. The article considers the impact early contact with the Guide had, first in Toledo, and then in Paris and Provence. The Guide presented a God who worked through the principles of Aristotelian physics, and offered an incentive to translate and study those works of Aristotle and his interpreters that illuminated these questions. Texts translated in Toledo under the inspiration of the Guide became core texts for Paris scholastics. William of Auvergne, the first Parisian scholar to use the translation, would play a key role in the trial of the Talmud. And Cardinal Romanus, to whom the Liber de parabolis et de mandatis was dedicated, is implicated in the controversy of the Guide itself among Jews at Montpellier.