The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240

• Religious history (c. 500-1500)
• Judaism
• Historiography (c. 500-1500)
• France (c. 500-1500)

The Trial of the Talmud that took place in Paris in 1240 has been the subject of a number of trenchant studies over the years. The present volume, with its felicitous, annotated translations of the Hebrew protocol along with a series of crucial papal letters and other church documents, places before an English-language readership for the first time a corpus of the essential primary texts that have framed the earlier scholarly discussions and analyses. The masterful overview by Robert Chazan effectively locates this disputation in its historical and literary contexts through a deft, critical synthesis of the previous studies; it also offers new insights which will undoubtedly serve to shape further discussion of this episode. This volume should be of great interest to scholars and students of Jewish history and thought, Jewish–Christian relations, and polemical literature of the middle ages.

-Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University

« Le volume sera donc précieux pour les enseignants et leurs étudiants, mais aussi pour les chercheurs s’intéressant à la polémique entre juifs et chrétiens, à la place des juifs dans la société majoritaire ou encore aux fondements religieux et politiques de la royauté capétienne (…). » (Pierre Savy, dans la Revue des études juives, 175/3-4, 2016, p. 479)