Judaism discovered

In the Time of Nicholas Donin

Lying to "circumvent a Gentile" has a long patrimony in Judaism. Take for example the thirteenth century Talmud debate in Paris between Nicholas of Donin, a Judaic convert to Christianity, whom Hyam Maccoby admits had "a good knowledge of the Talmud," ⁷²⁹ and Rabbi ben Joseph Yehiel. Yehiel was not under threat of death, bodily injury, imprisonment or fine. Yet Rabbi Yehiel brazenly lied during the course of the debate. When asked by Donin whether there were attacks on Jesus in the Talmud, Yehiel denied that there were any. Donin, a Hebrew and Aramaic scholar, knew this to be false. Hyam Maccoby, a twentieth century Judaic commentator on the debate, defends Rabbi Yehiel's lying in this way: "The question may be asked, however, whether Yehiel really believed that Jesus was not mentioned in the Talmud, or whether he put this forward as an ingenious ploy in the desperate situation in which he found himself...It would certainly have been pardonable of the rabbi to attempt some condonation in which he did not fully believe, to prevent such tyrannical proceedings by one religious culture against another." ⁷³° This is how Judaic denial of the existence of hateful Talmud texts is justified to this day. A fanciful word for rabbinic lying is conjured ("condonation") and then deemed "pardonable" under the circumstances, while scrutiny of rabbinic holy books by Christian investigators is characterized as a "tyrannical proceeding."

William N. Grimstad offers further insight on these early Talmud debates: "Talmud exposures go back to the middle ages, and actually were

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touched off in a disastrous miscalculation by the Jews themselves. In 1233...rival rabbis denounced the revisionist writings of Moses Maimonides to the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which publicly burned them at Montpelier, France. The idea soon backfired on the rabbis, for Jews such as Nicholas Donin, Alfonso de Valladolid, Victor Von Carben and Johann Pfefferkorn, who had converted to Christianity, likewise began reporting to Church authorities what was actually said about Christians and their religion in the entire corpus of Jewish holy books. This led to public disputations in which the rabbis had to defend their texts against the exposures by the well-informed ex-Jews, followed in many cases by formal condemnation of the literature as criminally hateful by official juridical bodies. The most celebrated disputation occurred in the early 1500s when the convert, Pfefferkorn, successfully prosecuted the Talmud before Emperor Maximilian, who ordered the works seized and turned over to the universities for examination in 1509. Defending the Jewish literature was the famed, nominally Christian 'humanist,' Johann Reuchlin, in a famous polemical battle which went on for years and often is called the prelude to the Protestant Reformation. After due deliberation, the faculties of Paris, Louvain, Erfurt and Mogutina ruled against the Talmudists and also accused Reuchlin of being a Jewish propagandist. The condemnation of Jewish books never was executed however, as an appeal by the Reuchlinites to Pope Leo X ended with the Pontiff enigmatically ordering all parties to silence, but sparing the Talmud from the flames, a decision that has never been explained but which might relate to that pope's well-known 'edifice-complex' and constant need for money." ⁷³¹

As previously noted, Leo X was one of the Medici popes, a cardinal from the age of thirteen who studied as a youth under Ficino the Kabbalist, and was one of the directors of the traffic in indulgences and other forms of simony. According to the Judaic historian William Popper, "From this time (1232) on, the Dominicans showed themselves the consistent enemies of Hebrew literature; and the sternest among the Dominicans were the converted Jews. One of the first of these to cause trouble was Nicholas de Rupella, who as a Jew had borne the name of Donin. He was a Talmudic scholar and had expressed certain doubts as to the authority of that work and

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of oral teaching in general. As a result he was put under the ban by the French rabbis...In 1236 he went before (Pope) Gregory IX with a charge against the Talmud which contained no less than thirty-five points...he charged that the Talmud distorts the meaning of certain biblical passages...that it is yet esteemed by the Rabbis as of more value than the Bible; and, above all, that in many of its passages abusive language is used in speaking of Jesus and Mary..." Donin declared "that these very faults in the Talmud are the cause 'which especially keeps the Jews obstinate in their perfidy...'

"Gregory sent to the rulers, temporal and ecclesiastical, in France, England, Castile, Aragon, and Portugal decrees in which he cited twenty-five articles of complaint against the Talmud, and ordered that on the morning of the first Saturday in Lent, when the Jews would be at early service, all Talmud copies should be confiscated and handed over to the Dominicans and Franciscans. In the confiscation, the kings of the countries mentioned were to support the movement with all the temporal power at their command; the Provincial Superiors of both orders of monks, by this time in full charge of the Inquisition, were to have the contents of the Talmud examined, and, if Nicholas' charges should be found true, the Talmud was to be publicly burnt (May or June, 1239)...to France the Pope had paid special attention, and had directed his orders particularly to the Priors of the Order of Preachers and of the Minor Order of Paris. He had also given Nicholas Donin a personal letter to William, Bishop of that city, directing him to use the utmost zeal in France, the center of Talmud learning, the home of the Tosaphists ([also spelled Tosafist] disciples of Rashi whose elucidation of the Talmud [Tosaphot, also spelled Tosafot] came to be published with the Talmud). So here the decree of the Pope met with a ready response from the king, Louis IX and the Dominican, Henry of Koln...the officials forced the Jews to surrender their Talmud copies to await the result of an examination by a commission...Certain rabbis were summoned, therefore, to testify in answer to Donin's charges. They acknowledged some of the charges, controverted others, and finally urged that the Talmud was indispensable to the Jew for a correct understanding of the Bible. After this hearing, the tribunal gave its decision against the Talmud and consigned it to the flames.

"The Jews did their utmost to avert the calamity, and the affair dragged on for years. The first stay was gained when they.. .bribed a certain

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archbishop who stood high in royal favor, to secure an order that their books should be returned to them. Then this friendly archbishop died suddenly, in the very presence of the king. The latter, urged by...the repeated demands of the Dominican Henry and the apostate Donin, appointed a new tribunal to examine the Talmud. He ordered that Nicholas should repeat his charges before it, and that a defense might be made by four French rabbis. In the presence of the Queen-Mother Blanche, this debate was held on June 24, 1240, R(abbi) Jechiel (Yehiel) of Paris acting as spokesman. From an account of the affair which has come down to us it is worthwhile to quote the principal charges brought: (1) The Talmud is given an undue value and authority by the Jews; (2) It contains blasphemies against Jesus; (3) against God and morality; (4) against Christians.

"...After seeking to invalidate most of the charges, the Rabbis turned to the most important point, and acknowledged that the Talmud contained slighting references to a certain Jesus. But, by taking into account the dates mentioned in the Talmud, and other evidence furnished by the early Church Fathers themselves, they attempted to show that another Jesus, who had lived at some time earlier than Jesus of Nazareth, was the subject of these notices. They failed to convince the commission; the Talmud was once again sentenced to the funeral pyre, though it was sometime before the sentence was carried out.

"Involved in the fate of the Talmud was that of almost the entire Jewish literature, a fact which very soon became evident. One of the points in the charge of offense against morality mentioned above was now urged against the prayer-book (The Siddur) also, and Jechiel was compelled to defend in a similar manner a literary composition used in the ritual for the Day of Atonement, the Kol nidre. This is a prayer the purpose of which is to ask absolution from all vows (i.e. Kol nidre) unintentionally violated, and it closes with the formal declaration on the part of the congregation that all such vows are null and void. From very early times it had been taught that the prayer by no means meant to ask release from any duty which one knew he owed to his neighbor. But just this very interpretation was charged in 1240, and this charge is of importance as indicating a tendency which became very strong in later times to make also the prayer-book, because of this and other prayers, an object of the censor's persecutions.

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"...In 1243 Innocent IV was elected pope, and in the following year he called upon Louis IX to burn the Talmud wherever found in his domains. The Jews sought further delay by petitioning for another investigation; but finally the confiscation was carried out, and on a certain day, fourteen wagon loads (consisting of 12,000 volumes) of the Talmud and similar works collected by force from the Jews of France, were delivered in Paris. When, on another day, six more wagon loads had been added, Donin's desire was publicly fulfilled in Paris (Friday, June 17, 1244)...But no measure, however strict, could long keep the Jew from his books, and what happened at other times may well have happened now. Hidden in wells, buried among the roots of trees and snatched from the very flames, there were always some volumes saved. As soon as the watchfulness of enemies became a little relaxed, these treasures were brought from their hiding-places; others were smuggled into the city from distant lands by various devices; and still others...were bought from neighbors whose sense of duty, while it had urged them to aid in the acts of violence, was still not so strong as to prevent them from saving out of the general destruction a volume or two which they sold back to the eager Jews at a profit...R(abbi) Jehuda Lerma in Lehem Y hudhah: Then I found one book in the possession of Christians who had snatched it from the flames, and I secured it at a great cost'...Then it became a labor of love...to restore these manuscripts where injured, and faithfully to copy them for friends and scholars; so that half a dozen years had not passed before the careful work of pope and king, friar and soldier, was thus secretly all undone."⁷³²

In 1244 Pope Innocent IV correctly described the Talmud "as a book 'in which are manifest blasphemies against God and Christ and the blessed Virgin, intricate fables, erroneous abuses and unheard-of-stupidities." ⁷³³ Undoubtedly aware of the accurate assessment of the Talmud by their learned predecessor (author of the Commentaria super libros quinque decretalium⁷³⁴), Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI nevertheless entered the synagogues where the Talmud is taught, adored and glorified and proclaimed their solidarity with its adherents.

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In the Time of Pfefferkorn

"When printing was invented the Jews were quick to take advantage: on Feb. 17, 1475, probably the first Hebrew printed book—a commentary on Rashi to the Torah...appeared in Reggio di Calabria...Still, with all their liberty, events were taking place around them which warned them to be wary...their danger was indicated to them by the fact that, in 1488, attacks by the apostate Vicenza.,.upon certain of the Jewish prayers had to be answered. For this reason, when Gershom of Soncino published a few of the Talmud tracts at Soncino during the last decade of the fifteenth century, he took care not to restore any of the objectionable words omitted in the MSS. from which he printed...Thus, in the (Talmud) treatise Berakhoth 17a and Rashi 13a and 28b; in Sanhedrin 16a, the word 'Jesus' has been omitted, and a space about the size of one letter left blank, but the adjective 'Nazarene' had been retained. In other places, as Sanhedrin 43a, the whole phrase 'Jesus of Nazareth' is wanting, and the space left blank, while in the same treatise, 103a and 107b, the phrase is left complete. In the treatise Shabbath 67a, the phrase ' the son of Sateda, the son of Pandera' (names given to the mother and father of Jesus), is wanting...and when danger increased publishers not only retained this practice, but of themselves omitted additional passages which they thought might give offense.

"The history of all such troubles becomes now almost entirely a history of apostates...Such was the case with Victor von Karben, a German Jew who was converted...and much more certainly was the case with Joseph (baptized as Johann) Pfefferkorn of Moravia...in 1507 he published a tract (Das Judenspiegel) which was intended as the first of a series of attacks to culminate in a fatal blow to Judaism — confiscation of all Talmudic writings.⁷³⁵ Pfefferkorn began his work in Frankfort and immediately a violent protest was raised by Jews, supported by some friendly Christians...the Elector Mainz and the Archbishop Uriel of Gemmingen...On November 10, 1509, Pefferkorn went to the Emperor at Tyrol, and secured a decree from him that confiscation should be carried out. The Archbishop Uriel of Gemmingen however, was appointed to decide the issue in regard to the Talmud...the Jews again sent friendly Christians as delegates to the

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Emperor, to carry before him letters recommending leniency; among them was one from the Archbishop Uriel, who seems to have played a double role in the affair, but to have been more a friend than an enemy of the Jews. These delegates declared that Pfefferkorn's charges were false, and the Emperor was persuaded to issue a new decree ordering the return to the Jews of their confiscated books. Pfefferkorn answered with a letter printed in Latin and...broadcast throughout Germany; in it he reviewed the whole case and roused the German people to agitate against the Jews...

"A long controversy between Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn followed...Reuchlin was accused of heresy and a commission, appointed to investigate, determined to give its decision not only against him, but naturally against the Talmud and the whole of Jewish literature. But there was still a spirit of justice and broad-mindedness even in parts of Germany, and while the students of Mainz objected to the proceedings as illegal, men of influence likewise interfered. Even though preparations had been made for the audo-de-fe (of the rabbinic texts) and men were ready on the appointed days to light the fires, a hasty message from Archbishop Uriel postponed the carrying out of the sentence for one month; he ordered the commission to reopen the case after one month and threatened, if it refused, to nullify all its previous work and to deprive it of all power to act in the future. The case reopened, dragged along slowly and was carried to Rome. In November, 1513, Pope Leo X, beloved of the Jews in Italy, persuaded by his Jewish physician Bonet de Lates, ordered all former verdicts to be set aside...the Bishop of Speier himself decided that Reuchlin's writings were not heretical or false...A humanist party arose throughout Europe in support of Reuchlin, with whom, out of hated rivalry to the Dominicans, the Franciscans sided. As the conflict between the two parties spread from Germany to Paris to Rome, the Reuchlinists stood in these places naturally, if a little unwillingly, as friends of the Jews, the Talmud and all Hebrew literature." ⁷³⁶

Pfefferkorn was the nephew of Rabbi Meir Pfefferkorn. In spite of his heroic efforts to expose Judaism and his sincere conversion to Christianity, he was the victim of pig-headed racism on the part of some Christians. Some insulted him and accosted him as "the baptized Jew." Some of this harassment may have stemmed from occult double-agents or operatives allied

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with Renaissance humanists, and of course from Reuchlin himself, who, in 1513 went for Pfefferkorn's jugular in a vulgar and vicious manner, making fun of his baptism and painting him as "...a baptized Jew from Cologne by the name of Pfefferkorn...a no-good man, or rather a poisonous beast...that Jew sprinkled with water...the traitor...he is used to betraying others...that traitor Pfefferkorn..." ⁷³⁷ How is it that a true Christian such as Reuchlin claimed to be, takes the rabbinic position on Pfefferkorn's conversion to Christianity, regarding it as a betrayal and the act of a "traitor"? St. Peter and St. Paul must also have been traitors. Reuchlin's veneer is wearing thin.

Erasmus, an important ally of Reuchlin, attacked Pfefferkorn's Christianity, also on racial grounds: "...a man who is a layman, who has no shame, and who can hardly be called a half-Jew, for his actions show that he is a Jew and a half, whom no kind of misdeed could make worse than he already is...that fellow chose to be baptized for no other reason that to be in a better position to destroy Christianity, and by mixing with us, infect the whole people with his Jewish poison...he truly plays the Jew. Now at last he is true to his race. They have slandered Christ, but Christ only. He raves against many upright men of proven virtue and learning." ⁷³⁸

This is a clever, double-minded argument on the part of Erasmus. Pfefferkorn's campaign is against the Talmud and Kabbalah and those who advance those texts. In making his charges, Erasmus argues that Pfefferkorn is acting the typical part of a Judaic slanderer. But if slander is somehow typical of Judaics, how then can Pfefferkorn be wrong when he says the supreme holy books of the rabbis contain slander? Erasmus was not forced to account for this contradiction. Nota bene how anti-Judaic racism is used in the service of Judaism!

Erasmus went beyond invective, however. Those who know him only from modern history books which paint him as a humane reformer, friend of Thomas More and precursor of a more enlightened Christendom, will be dismayed to learn that Erasmus adamantly urged that Pfefferkorn be burned: "I am surprised, moreover, that the bishops are not more vigilant in this matter, that they do not burn this monster while there is still time...It would be better for an executioner to put an end to this madness. But this is

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the task of the bishops, the task of the most just Emperor Maximilian, the task of the authorities of the city of Cologne."⁷³⁹

One wonders on what basis Martin Luther could side with the Catholic Reuchlin in his controversy with Pfefferkorn, since Reuchlin, in singling out Pfefferkom's Judaic ethnicity for special racial vituperation, was impeding the evangelism of Judaics, which was precisely Luther's complaint against the Roman Catholic Church in his 1523 essay, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, which appeals to Christians to deal more kindly with "Jews" in the hope of converting them: "...I would request and advise that one deal gently with them and instruct them from Scripture; then some of them may come along. Instead of this we are...slandering them...If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law, but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially...that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life." Pfefferkorn was the Judaic whom Luther presumably had been seeking, yet Luther sided with the men who mocked and hated him, and in the case of Erasmus, sought to kill him. Reuchlin, who Luther admired and defended, sent a strongly pro-rabbinic message to the Talmudic/rabbinic community in Germany, to the effect that Judaics like Pfefferkorn who had converted to Christianity, were wicked men and "traitors." Luther's early defense of the well-known Kabbalist Reuchlin and his predecessor, Giovanni Pico della Mirandolla, is problematic. As early as 1494, Reuchlin penned On the Wonder-working Word, which attempts a synthesis of Christian belief and Judaic magic. Yet in 1514, Luther wrote to George Spalatin, chancellor of Elector Frederick of Saxony, "I hold Reuchlin in great esteem...in my opinion there is nothing in his counsel that is dangerous." ⁷⁴⁰ In 1517 Reuchlin published the pre-eminent Renaissance defense of the Kabbalah, De arte cabalistica. In 1520 Luther was still promoting Reuchlin: "Note what happened to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola...and most recently Johann Reuchlin...contrary to their intentions their well-meant words were perverted and made out to be evil." ⁷⁴¹

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The Lutheran academic John Warwick Montgomery in his 1970 book, In Defense of Martin Luther, seems to accept the Neoplatonic Renaissiance proposition that there is a legitimate "Christian" occult. Mirandola foisted a Christian Kabbalah on Rome and Montgomery writes of a "Christian" alchemy in Lutheran circles: "The specific significance of Lutheran doctrine for Reformation alchemy can be seen in the work of Michael Maier (1568-1622), Count Palatine, doctor of medicine and of philosophy who, along with Brahe and Kepler, served at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Maier produced numerous alchemical works and wrote in support of an evangelical Roiscrucianism. In his largest work, Symbola aureae mensae, Maier affirms the indissoluble connection between the cardinal Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence and the alchemical aim of transforming the external world through the discovery of the 'Philosopher's Stone,' i.e. through the discovery of Christ's presence in the macrocosmic and microcosmic reality. A woodcut (in Maier's book) depicts the Alchemist in full eucharistic vestments saying mass at the altar and the corresponding text indicates that, "He (Maier) saw the perfection of it (the hermetic 'work') in the birth of the Philosophic Stone in the Sacred Nativity...'

"The obvious movement in the direction of an existential Christ-mysticism in Maier is even more pronounced in the dazzlingly beautiful Chymical Wedding of 'Christian Rosencreutz,' a pseudonym of Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), who is best known for his 'decidedly Lutheran' Utopian work, Christianopolis...Luther's heraldic seal displays a rose and a cross, and Roman Catholic critics of Rosicrucianism during the Reformation period pointed to its connection with Lutheranism." ⁷⁴²

The Rosicrucian movement was a forerunner of Freemasonry and was steeped in Kabbalah, as were Maier and Andreae, who were occultists trying to subvert Lutheranism,⁷⁴³ as Reuchlin, Pico and Ficino and many others had infiltrated Catholicism. No one who is a follower of Jesus is involved with the occult. Comparing His Last Supper (viz. the "doctrine of the Real Presence;" John 6: 53-58), with alchemy and the "Philosopher's Stone," is a sacrilege. The counterfeiting of Christ is a prime directive of diabolism.

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Throughout the campaign against Pfefferkorn, snobbery was invoked to paint him as deficient in scholarship and intellect, while his opponents, as personified by Reuchlin, were portrayed as paragons of genius, learning and decency. This snob appeal was played up by Neoplatonic occult agents involved in the writing and circulation of the pro-Reuchlin pamphlet, Epistolae obscurorum vivorum ("Letters of Obscure Men") first published in Cologne in 1515 and reprinted with additional matter in 1517, which created a sensation and was promoted in intellectual circles and salons as a devastating and definitive demolition of Pfefferkorn's case. It was no such thing, but it acquired an aura of avant-garde defiance of the established order, and in particular of scholasticism. Epistolae obscurorum vivorum helped to weaken Pfefferkorn by falsely associating him with senile reaction. As Europe's intellectual vanguard processed toward humanism, and scholasticism began to fall into disrepute in rarined circles, the authors of these anonymous letters attempted to defeat Pfefferkorn's case by caricaturing it as fatuous and obtuse; not worthy of the brilliant Christian men of a new humanist age. The merits of Pfefferkorn's expert inside knowledge of Judaism's canonical books was not directly contested in the Epistolae obscurorum vivorum. The authors were too clever for that. We know now that the principal author of this anonymous pamphlet was the exceedingly slippery Catholic-Lutheran double-agent, one "Crotus Rubeanus," who, in 1517, was a doctor of theology at the University of Bologna, a humanist, later a convert to Lutheranism and one of the first Lutheran "missionaries to Prussia." Then, in 1530 "Rubeanus" reverted to Catholicism. Another author of the letters is said to have been Ulrich von Hutten, the man Emperor Maximilian crowned poet-laureate in 1517. The Epistolae obscurorum vivorum was written in a kind of pigden Latin to show up Pfefferkorn and his allies as low-bred dolts. It is written from the point of view of a paranoid Jew hater.

The behind-the-scenes maneuvering within the Roman Catholic Church and the Royal Court against the Judaic convert Pfefferkorn and in favor of the rabbis and Reuchlin, is labyrinth. In addition to the treachery of the Prince Archbishop Uriel (designated a prince because he was one of the seven "Electors" who chose the Emperor), we now know that Emperor Maximilian, who was supposed to be an ally of Pfefferkorn in Germany (in part, so the story goes, due to the appeals of Maximilian's devout sister, Kunikunde von

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Bayern), employed Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, one of the most fanatical Kabbalistic infiltrators of the age, as a spy in Spain and later in an important military capacity. ⁷⁴⁴

It also appears that Maximilian accepted bribes from Jonathan Levi Zion, one of the leaders of the Frankfurt Talmudists.⁷⁴⁵ Another supposedly stalwart Catholic monarch who betrayed Judaics who had converted to Christianity was the "Holy Roman Emperor" himself, Charles V.

"In 1530 he invited Jewish scholars to debate with the convert Antonius Margarita, who had revived the hostile notions of Pfefferkorn and claimed that Jewish writings were subversive. Accepting the defense of Jewish scholars, Charles turned against Margarita and had him arrested...In 1547, during the war against the Protestant League of Schmalkalden, Jewish communities contributed financially to the emperor's campaign..." ⁷⁴⁶

Leo X "silenced" Reuchlin, but this was merely a token gesture of necessity, to mollify the conservatives. Reuchlin— who, in the last years of his life was appointed professor at the University of Tubingen — and his cabal, were actually victorious and a "Golden Era" of Talmud publishing commenced. Evidence of this may be found in the datum that while the Vatican launched a draconian crackdown on Protestant books, an edition of the complete Talmud was published by the printing house of Bomberg from 1520-1522, with papal sanction:

"The natural liberality of Pope Leo X and the many influences friendly to Jews that surrounded him prompted his interest in Jewish literature and not only moved him to grant permission for a Jewish press at Rome but resulted in his open advocacy of the Talmud...Toward the beginning of the

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sixteenth century Joseph Pfefferkorn, a Moravian Jew, finding himself in straitened circumstances...embraced Christianity and, as a violent and bloodthirsty Jew hater, seems to have flourished for many years thereafter. We are not so much concerned with his successful method of earning a living as with the fact that his attacks on the Talmud, encouraged by the Dominicans of Germany, the most illiterate and stupid of all the monastic brethren, led to the conflict between the Humanists and Obscurantists, which brought out the noble Reuchlin's temperate and well-considered defense of the Jews and their literature. The charge of heresy brought against Reuchlin by the Dominicans raised the issue of the relation of the Talmud and rabbinical writings towards Christianity. The trial of the case dragged from Mainz to Speyer, and thence to Rome, but long before the final decision was rendered, Pope Leo X gave unmistakable indication of his position in the controversy between culture and ignorance. This noble son of Lorenzo di Medici, whose plastic intellect had been moulded by the master hand of Poliziano of Florence, who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Hebrew tongue and its literature, was deaf to the importunities of ignorant monks and overzealous apostates. To the great consternation of the faithful, he followed the suggestion of his friend, Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo, to permit the establishment of a Hebrew press at Rome and he officially endorsed Daniel Bomberg's project to print a complete edition of the Talmud...whereupon Messer Daniel, within five years, completed this magnificent work, sparing no expense...to the delight of Jews and Christian scholars and to the chagrin and despair of the pious multitude." ⁷⁴⁷

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According to Popper, rabbinic books were unmolested from the pontificate of Leo X until 1550 and the election of Pope Julius III. "..at the beginning of the pontificate of Julius III the Golden Era of Jewish literature continued as a reflection of the sunshine of papal favor.. .(Even) after the Pope had issued a bull on April 29, 1550, repealing all previous permission which might have been given to possess or read forbidden books, as far as the Jews were concerned he still acted generously, instructing cardinals and papal delegates to respect Jewish religious observances, and not to annoy them in any way." ⁷⁴⁸

Even under pressure from Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Caraffa of Naples, Julius III, as late as Dec. 5, 1553, renewed papal privileges for the rabbis of Ancona, "the Pope had shown himself especially friendly to the Jews of that city." Caraffa's plan for a "general destruction of Hebrew works...was clearly more than the Papal court at Rome had originally planned." ⁷⁴⁹

Haifa rabbinic loaf being better than none, Pope Julius III conspired to preserve one part of the Talmud from interdiction: "...in the catalogue of prohibited books which the Inquisition published in Milan and Venice in this year (1554), while the 'Talmuth' is mentioned as one of the works forbidden to the faithful, nothing is said of other Hebrew books...Julius III issued a bull on May 29, 1554 which cited the edict of the Inquisition directed against the 'ghemarat Talmud' and which ordered its surrender, under penalty of death. But by emphasizing the term 'gemarah,' (Gemara) the inference was allowed that other works, and even the mishnayoth (Mishnah) as such, were not subject to destruction..." ⁷⁵⁰

The Medicis were patrons of the Kabbalist -"humanist" infiltrators of the Church. "All Italians are warmly attached to their home and family. This characteristic, beautiful and noble in itself, but so harmful to many Popes, reached such proportions in Leo X that throughout his pontificate, the history of Florence and of the Medici was closely bound up with that of Rome...The independence of Florence was a mere form, and the house of Medici practically governed supremely...The Pope's cousin, Guilio de' Medici...was made Archbishop of Florence on May 9, 1513...(and later Cardinal)...In this

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his first creation of cardinals, three others, closely connected with the new pope, also received the red hat (including) Innocenzo Cibo, (and) Lorenzo Pucci...the eldest son of Franceschetto Cibo and Magdalena de' Medici, the sister of Leo X. Beyond this relationship he had no particular claim or merits...Lorenzo Pucci...was marred by the most execrable avarice, which he sought to satisfy by an unscrupulous traffic in the matter of indulgences..." ⁷⁵¹ Reuchlin "had become imbued with the doctrines of a fanatical theosophy, induced by the study of the Jewish Kabbala...his views were calculated to sow confusion in the brains of the youth of Germany, and give an impetus to an inclination, already existing among them, to cast themselves adrift, at the expense of Christianity...Several theologians spoke with disapprobation of Reuchlin's writings, and Jakob Hochstraten, a Dominican of Cologne, wrote an answer in 1519. The outcome of these literary publications was a long dispute about the authority of the Jewish books. Johann Pfefferkorn, a baptized Jew of Cologne, in his zeal for the conversion of his fellow-believers, had arrived at the conclusion that the chief cause of their obstinacy would be removed if they were compelled to give up all the Talmud books in their possession. Pfefferkorn demanded this in several works written in the years 1507-1509, and it was solely due to his efforts that an imperial mandate was issued on the 19th of August, 1509, commanding the Jews to produce before him all books opposed to the Christian faith and their own law. He obtained permission to take away such books and destroy them in any place in the presence of the parish priest and two members of the Council. ...The question of the Jewish books gave rise to a dispute which was most important to the religious and spiritual life of the nation.. .Reuchlin... attacked the Frankfurt theologians (charged with reviewing his works). Arnold von Tungern replied in a temperate Latin book...Reuchlin...published (1513) a Defense against the Cologne Calumniators, which is one of the most frantic libels of the age...Reuchlin now appealed to the Pope, and by means of a flattering letter gained the advocacy of the physician of Leo X, the influential Jew, Bonet de Lattes. Leo X handed over the case to George, Bishop of Spires...(who) passed on the

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decision to Canon Truchess, a disciple of Reuchlin (who) exonerated the Augenspiegel (Reuchlin's defense of his advocacy of the rabbinic writings) and censured Hochstraten for condemning it...Cardinal Grimani...summoned both parties to Rome in June, 1514. Hochstraten was bidden to appear in person, but Reuchlin, on account of his advanced age, was allowed to send an advocate to represent him. Hochstraten had started for Rome even before the summons reached him; but the affair dragged on year after year, for Reuchlin had many influential patrons at the Curia, and the Pope forebore from any interference....On both sides of the Alps rich patrons of Reuchlin's appeared" and Reuchlin "obtained, by a false statement, the appointment of a new judge at Spires...(who) was bold enough to acquit (Reuchlin's) book to the injury of the Catholic Church, the joy of the Jews, the detriment of the universities and their scholars and the grave and harmful scandal of the common folk." ⁷⁵²

Here we see the seeds of the philo-rabbinic wing of the Protestant Reformation being laid by Catholic partisans of Reuchlin and his network of Catholic Kabbalists inside the Vatican, in the pontificate of the pope who drove Luther out of the Church. Real history is a very different thing from the received opinions handed down to us and called history by various "authorities" and "experts." Protestantism didn't just spontaneously "appear" as a "biblicist" reaction to a traditionalist institution. Some Protestant factions and intellectual currents (not all!) were nurtured by well-placed Catholic agents. Here we obtain a glimpse of how allegiance to the Talmud and Kabbalah on the part of powerful Catholics who enjoyed the protection of certain popes and elements within the Vatican hierarchy, sowed the seeds of what would become the rabbinic wing of Protestantism.

We note that many orthodox Catholics protested the high level of favor and protection which the Talmud and Reuchlin enjoyed. "The University of Louvain, in a letter sent to the Pope, said that it looked on it as a sacred duty to care for the order and purity of the Catholic Church. In the condemnation of Reuchlin's book, Louvain had agreed with the other faculties, especially that of Paris. All who walked in the house of God had spoken unanimously. Yet no deicsion was given!...a Papal mandate, dated July, 1516, was issued, which deferred a decision...This did not make Hochstraten desist from his efforts. For another year he remained in Rome, and it was only in July, 1517,

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after more than three years' sojourn there, that he returned to Cologne without having succeeded in his object. While Rome hesitated, affairs on the other side of the Alps had taken a menacing turn. The younger humanists, now firmly united for the first time, made use of the Reuchlin dispute in their rebellion against the authority of the Church, especially against the doctrines of the Dominican Order, as being to them the chief representative of scholasticism. Under the leadership of Mutianus, who...took the side of Recuhlin...the younger humanists gathered around the latter and stirred him up to greater fury than before, against his opponents, while they poured forth scorn and satire on the theological teaching of the old school. In the years 1515-1517 the Letters, published under the title, Epistolae obscurorum virorum, appeared...The writers of this work did their utmost to defame their adversaries by the grossest accusations. The real motive of this shameful libel was hostility to the authority of the Church...What the humanists did now in respect to Reuchlin, they repeated when soon afterwards they espoused the cause of Luther..."⁷⁵³

Leo X did get around to a token censure of Reuchlin in June, 1520, years after Reuchlin's case had been made, his career and reputation secure and his book a cause celebre. By this Vatican stratagem, to those without knowledge of the details of the Vatican's years of machinations and delaying tactics in favor of Reuchlin, it can be baldly stated to a clueless posterity, "The record shows Reuchlin was censured by Leo X." Correct. However, this was done long after the censure no longer substantively mattered and the horse had been intentionally allowed out of the barn, on the eve of the publication of the Talmud in Italy: "...the Papal decision came too late...The Reuchlin dispute, thus decided all too late by Rome, was the forerunner of a far more important contest...⁷⁵⁴

Some conservative Catholics have a naive view of the historic papacy, believing that, with the exception of Pope Honorius I who condemned St. Athanasius, all other popes were faithful Christians, even if some personally strayed very far in the matter of sins such as avarice and concupiscence. In the case of Pope Leo X it seems we have an active player in the Neoplatonic conspiracy who helped to protect Reuchlin and publish the Talmud. Our

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surmise is that Luther was intentionally greeted with intransigence in order to procure the desired outcome: the shattering of the unity of the western Church. This stratagem appears to have come from inside the Vatican. A similar alchemical operation of the Coniunctiones Oppositorum involves Henry VIII of England, who was confirmed in his departure from the Catholic faith (with the exception of his nostalgia for the old Mass), not by a wild-eyed German Protestant, but by a cool and calculating Vatican insider and leading exponent of the syncretist philosophy, the Franciscan friar Francesco Giorgio⁷⁵⁵ (1466-1540), author of the occult classic, De Harmonia Mundi (Venice, 1525), disciple of Mirandola and close student and exponent of the Zohar.⁷⁵⁶ By furnishing the English King with a sophisticated esoteric synthesis of theology and philosophy, Giorgio encouraged Henry in his revolt. In 1529, emissaries of the —at that time —fledgling British Secret Service, among them Richard Croke, met with Giorgio in Venice. Part of their mission was to obtain a favorable halachic ruling on King Henry's divorce, which Giorgio arranged through his connections with Rabbi Elia Menachem Chalfan, son-in-law of the revered "Master Calo" (Rabbi Kalonymos ben David), scion of an esteemed Sephardic dynasty, and Latin translator of the works of Averroes. There are letters from Henry VIII thanking Giorgio for his valuable assistance in procuring a favorable rabbinic ruling on his behalf.⁷⁵⁷