13th–14th centuries
Trial and auto-da-fé of the Talmud at Place de Grève, following the Disputation of 1240
17 juin 1242·Paris
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
approximately twenty cartloads, ~10,000 volumes burned
Two years earlier, a convert named Nicolas Donin had brought before the pope a list of articles accusing the Talmud of blasphemy against Christ. Grégoire IX ordered the sovereigns of the West to seize all copies; only Louis IX complied.
The disputation was held in Paris before the court: Yehiel de Paris, Moïse de Coucy, Juda de Melun, and Samuel ben Salomon were required to answer article by article. The judgment rendered condemned the books. The auto-da-fé took place at the place de Grève: chroniclers speak of cartloads of manuscripts, handwritten and often unique.
Meir de Rothenburg, then a student in Paris, composed an elegy — *Sha'ali serufah ba-esh*, "Ask, you who were burned by fire" — which entered the liturgy of the 9th of Av. The destroyed copies were long missed by the schools of France; the event marks the moment when Christian censorship ceased to target persons and began to target books.
- Period :
- 13th–14th centuries
- Type :
- Trials and executions
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- France
Procès-verbal de la disputation de 1240 ; Meir de Rothenburg, élégie « Sha'ali serufah ba-esh » ; lettres de Grégoire IX et d'Innocent IV.