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INTERFAITH DIALOGUE THROUGH THE RED HEIFER (NUM. 19): IMMANUEL OF ROME’S EXEGESIS AND MEDIEVAL BIBLICAL COMMENTARY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2025
Abstract
This article explores medieval Jewish and Christian interpretations of an enigmatic biblical commandment—the mandate to incinerate a red heifer to produce waters of expiation (Num. 19)—as a case study to examine interreligious dialogue in medieval exegesis. It features a critical edition and translation of one such reading by the fourteenth-century Italian poet and intellectual, Immanuel of Rome. Immanuel’s commentary is contextualized both in his own oeuvre as well as in the broader field of contemporary Jewish thought. The article also examines Immanuel’s red heifer exegesis as a unique example of a biblical passage glossed differently in two of the author’s commentaries, which sheds new light on his exegetical methodology. As a biblical precept no longer observed after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the red heifer serves as a useful tool to demonstrate the approaches of Jewish scholars who insisted on the integrity of the biblical commandments but grappled to rationalize an especially cryptic ceremony. On the other hand, it also exhibits various exegetical modalities adopted by Christian glossators who struggled to discern the precept’s literal meaning in light of a predominant tradition of allegorical interpretation. When contextualized within the environment of medieval Jews, Christian scholastics, and the mendicant orders, readings of the red heifer rite highlight the interchange of approaches that transcended religious and even temporal boundaries. The article concludes by demonstrating the impact of mendicant vernacular preaching on Jews of the Italian peninsula, focusing on the red heifer interpretation as an example of such dialogue.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fordham University
Footnotes
I am deeply grateful to my writing group partners, Rachel Furst, Marc Herman, and Maud Kozodoy, for their thoughtful comments and intellectual companionship. I owe a special and profound debt of gratitude to Lucy Pick, whose generosity, erudition, and unwavering support have shaped both the argument and the spirit of this article in countless ways. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for offering incisive feedback and constructive suggestions, which helped to strengthen and clarify the final version of this piece.
References
1 Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides (Oxford, 2005); Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought (Princeton, 2014); Joel Kraemer, “Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait,” and Aviezer Ravitsky, “Maimonides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. K. Seeskin (New York, 2005), 10–57 and 300–23, respectively; and Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, 2009).
2 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Red Heifer 3:4. In recent times Israeli religious-nationalist factions have stirred political controversy through their attempts to raise a red heifer because they view the distillation of expiatory waters as the first step to a rebuilt Temple. See Motti Inbari, “Religious Zionism and the Temple Mount Dilemma: Key Trends,” Israel Studies 12 (2007): 29–47, esp. 30.
3 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1989); and Michael A. Singer, “Restoring the Narrative: Jewish and Christian Exegesis in the Twelfth Century,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering (New York, 2003), 70–82.
4 Examples of such works are the commentary on Leviticus by Ralph of St. Germer of Flaix and William of Auxerre’s Summa Aurea. See Beryl Smalley, “William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law,” in eadem, Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning: From Abelard to Wyclif (London, 1981), 121–82.
5 Lucy K. Pick, “Members of the Covenant of the Guide: Reading Maimonides in Christian Toledo,” Traditio 78 (2023): 215–61, esp. 255–56, where Pick explores the collaboration between Michael Scot and Samuel Ibn Tibbon within the textual community of Toledo.
6 For this definition and a fuller discussion of statutes in the panorama of medieval Jewish law, see Warren Zev Harvey, “Law in Medieval Judaism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law, ed. Christine Hayes (Cambridge, 2017), 157–86, at 159.
7 Bamidbar Rabbah 19:8.
8 Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:23:4; and Yalkut Shimoni On Torah, Hukat, 759.
9 Sifrei, Numbers, 123–25.
10 Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, Hukat, 759.
11 Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, Hukat, 759. This explanation rests on the vision of the biblical prophet Hosea, who compares the Israelites to a stubborn cow in Hosea 4:16.
12 Rashi on Num. 19:2
13 For an equation of sinfulness with redness, see Isa. 1:18
14 Rashi on Num. 19:2
15 BT Yoma 67b recounts the details around the ceremony of the scapegoat on Yom Kippur. Lest some question the sensibility of pushing a goat off a cliff to secure communal absolution, the Talmud declares it to be a divine decree (gezerah), which should not be questioned.
16 They do this by expanding God’s statement in Lev. 18:5 (“I am the Lord”) to mean “I, the Lord, decreed it, and you have no right to question it.”
17 For more on Rashi as a polemicist, see Avraham Grossman, Rashi and the Jewish-Christian Polemic (Ramat Gan, 2021) [Hebrew]. Although Grossman does not cite this textual reference, the overwhelming evidence of Rashi’s polemical engagement with Christians supports a polemical reading here as well. See Marc Saperstein, “The Method of Doubts: Problematizing the Bible in Late Medieval Jewish Exegesis,” in With Reverence for the Word, ed. McAuliffe, Walfish, and Goering, 133–56.
18 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, The Book of Purity, Laws of the Red Heifer, 1–15.
19 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed 3.25, ed. and trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963), 504.
20 Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandments, Mitzvah 113.
21 BT Sanhedrin 21b.
22 Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, Negative Commandments, Mitzvah 365. My thanks to Dr. Marc Herman for sharing this passage with me. For Maimonides’s view of the commandments, see Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 3.26 and 3.31, ed. and trans. Pines, 506–10 and 523–24. See also Howard Kreisel, “Reasons for the Commandments in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and in Provençal Jewish Philosophy,” in idem, Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in Maimonides and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers of Provence (Boston, 2015), 361–95.
23 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, 3.29–49, ed. and trans. Pines, 514–613.
24 The section examining the commandments can be found in Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 3.29–49, ed. and trans. Pines, 514–613.
25 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed 3.47, ed. and trans. Pines, 597.
26 There are some post-Maimonidean Jewish thinkers who maintain a similar reticence, often citing the midrashic anecdote about Solomon. The author of Sefer ha-Ḥinukh, a work that expressly explores commandments and their reasons, notes the physical symptoms of his fear to offer any rationalization of this precept. He states, “even though my heart was filled to write the connotations of the reasons for the commandment that are foremost through peshat, with this being successful in the work of educating my children and their youthful friends to keep this mitzvah, my hands became weak, and I became afraid to open my mouth about it at all, even about the plain meaning (peshat), for I saw that our rabbis, their memory be a blessing, spoke at length about the depths of its secrets and the vastness of its points, to the point that they said that King Solomon understood, with all his vast wisdom, all the reasons for the mitzvot, except for this one, as he said about it, ‘I said, I will understand, and it was distant from me (Eccles. 7:23)’.” See Sefer Ha-Ḥinukh 397:1.
27 On Maimonideanism, see James Robinson, “Maimonides, Samuel Ibn Tibbon, and the Construction of a Jewish Tradition of Philosophy,” in Maimonides after 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 291–306; and idem, “We Drink Only from the Master’s Water: Maimonides and Maimonideanism in Southern France, 1200–1306,” Studia Rosenthaliana 40 (2007): 27–60.
28 Haim Kreisel, “Philosophical Interpretations of the Bible,” in The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, Volume 1: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, ed. Steven Nadler and T. M. Rudavsky (Cambridge, 2009), 88–120; and Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed. Robert S. Cohen, H. Levine, and Kostas Gavroglu (Dordrecht, 2000), 173–226.
29 Carlos Fraenkel, “From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: Interpreting Judaism as a Philosophical Religion,” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought, ed. James T. Robinson (Leiden, 2009), 177–211.
30 Aviezer Ravitsky, “Maimonides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin (Cambridge, 2006), 300–23. One example of the chasm between elite and popular is the adaptation of Maimonides’s theological doctrinal principles into a versified poem to be chanted by the masses. For more on this process, see Avraham Melamed, “Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles: From Elite to Popular Culture,” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism, ed. Robinson, 171–90.
31 On Immanuel’s sonnets, see Dvora Bregman, “Immanuel of Rome and Petrarch: The Formation of the Classical Sonnet,” in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division C: Jewish Thought and Literature, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1990), 1:298–304; eadem, “On the Acceptance of the Sonnet in Hebrew Poetry,” Tarbiz 56 (1986): 109–24; and eadem, The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque, trans. Ann Brener (Tempe, 2006). For a translation of Immanuel’s sonnets into English, see Yehudah B. Cohn, Mine is the Golden Tongue: The Hebrew Sonnets of Immanuel of Rome (New York, 2023). For more on the celestial tour and its connection to Dante, see Dana W. Fishkin, Bridging Worlds: Poetry and Philosophy in the Works of Immanuel of Rome (Detroit, 2023), 85–208.
32 Dana W. Fishkin, “A Lifetime in Letters: New Evidence Concerning Immanuel of Rome’s Timeline,” Jewish Quarterly Review 112 (2022): 406–33.
33 Historically, Immanuel’s biography was constructed using information extracted from his fictional poetry. I challenge this method in Fishkin, Bridging Worlds, 21–37.
34 For a closer examination of Immanuel’s Italian poetry, see Fabian Alfie, “Immanuel of Rome, alias Manoello Giudeo: The Poetics of Jewish Identity in Fourteenth-Century Italy,” Italica 75 (1998): 307–29.
35 Joseph Karo, Shulhan Arukh (Krakow, 1578), Orah Hayim, law 307, paragraph 16, 50a.
36 All of Immanuel’s extant commentaries are currently unpublished. For a comparison of Immanuel’s multi-modal reading techniques to Latin scholastic authors, see Deborah Schechterman, “The Philosophy of Immanuel of Rome in Light of his Commentary on the Book of Genesis” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1984) [Hebrew].
37 Immanuel, Commentary on Genesis 2:10, in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3220, fols. 229r–228v.
38 Immanuel, Commentary on Genesis 2:10–14, in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3220, fol. 108v.
39 James T. Robinson, “The ‘Secret of the Heavens’ and the ‘Secret of Number’: Immanuel of Rome’s Mathematical Supercommentaries on Abraham Ibn Ezra in His Commentary on Qohelet 5:7 and 7:27,” Aleph 21 (2021): 279–308. A part of Immanuel’s commentary on Song of Songs was published in Israel Ravitsky, “R. Immanuel b. Solomon: Commentary to the ‘Song of Songs’: Philosophical Division” (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1970), 18 [Hebrew].
40 Marie Thérèse Champagne, “Christian Hebraism in Twelfth-Century Rome: A Philologist’s Correction of the Latin Bible through Dialogue with Jewish Scholars and their Hebrew Texts,” Studies in Church History 53 (2017): 71–87.
41 Immanuel learned psychology through Hillel of Verona’s Hebrew Tagmule Ha-Nefesh (On the Recompense of the Soul), an accessible and organized handbook that summarized Aristotle’s De Anima, including significant excerpts from Thomas Aquinas, Averroes, the Latin translation of Avicenna’s book on the soul, Liber Sextus Naturalium, Dominicus Gundissalinus’s Liber de Anima, and Three Treatises on the Intellect by Averroes and his son.
42 Possibly Immanuel’s relative, although the exact relationship is still unknown, Judah is the subject of a lengthy panegyric chapter and the recipient of a coveted spot in the heaven of Immanuel’s celestial tour. See Immanuel, Maḥberot ‘Immanu’el, ed. D. Jarden (Jerusalem, 1957), 217–31; and Moses Rieti, Mikdash Me’at (Vienna, 1851). Judah’s writings and translations appear prominently in Immanuel’s commentaries and poetry, mostly unattributed, leading to a heartfelt confession by Immanuel’s literary persona, who, in the twelfth maḥberet, admits to his plagiarism. See Immanuel, Maḥberot Immanuel, ed. Jarden, 219. The authoritative work on Judah Romano’s corpus remains Caterina Rigo, “The Be’urim on the Bible of R. Yehudah Romano: The Philosophical Method which Comes Out of Them, their Sources in Jewish Philosophy and in Christian Scholasticism” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1996).
43 The most dramatic spotlight on Immanuel’s philosophical commentaries appears in his tour of heaven, where the biblical authors, one after the other, commend Immanuel’s persona for his deep understanding of their books. See Fishkin, Bridging Worlds, 200–203.
44 Fishkin, Bridging Worlds.
45 In its desire to imitate the unmoved mover, a Separate Intellect contemplates the Unmoved Mover’s (God’s) essence and generates a celestial Sphere. The Intellect also contemplates its own essence, which generates the Separate Intellect below it. Immanuel explains this process in his gloss of Ps. 18 and 19 in Commentary on Psalms. See Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2843, fols. 45r and 50r–53v; and David Blumenthal, Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion (Ramat Gan, 2006), 53–56. David Blumenthal uses the word “Godself,” which best conveys the human inability to know God.
46 Immanuel, Commentary on Song of Songs 1:2, in London, BL, Harley 5797, fol. 78r.
47 Immanuel, Commentary on Song of Songs 1:4, in London, BL, Harley 5797, fol. 80v.
48 Immanuel, Commentary on Psalms 68:14, in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2843, fol. 182v.
49 Immanuel, Commentary on Proverbs 31, in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2966, fol. 142v.
50 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed 3.8, ed. and trans. Pines, 432.
51 Maimonides, Eight Chapters 7, in Ethical Writings of Maimonides, trans. Raymond L. Weiss and Charles Butterworth (New York, 1975), 82–83.
52 Alfred Ivry claims that Maimonides offers conjunction as a remote ideal toward which people should strive. See Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, ed. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Len Goodman, and James Allen (Albany, 2009), 51–60, at 56.
53 Immanuel, Commentary on Song of Songs 1:2, in London, BL, Harley 5797, fol. 79r.
54 Immanuel, Commentary on Genesis, in D. Goldstein, “The Commentary of Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome on Chapters I–X of Genesis: Introduction, Hebrew Text, Notes” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1966); and Immanuel, Commentary on Proverbs 4:11, in The Book of Proverbs with the Commentary by Immanuel of Rome, Naples ca. 1487, ed. D. Goldstein (Jerusalem, 1981), 24.
55 Giuseppe Sermoneta, “La dottrina dell’intelletto e la ‘fede filosofica’ di Jehudàh e Immanuel Romano,” Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 6 (1965): 3–78.
56 Sermoneta, “La dottrina dell’intelletto,” identifies three elements necessary for such a formal association: a theurgical reading practice of Liber de Causis, consistent symbolic imagery, and a biblical prooftext. Sermoneta notes the presence of all three elements in the writings of Judah Romano.
57 James T. Robinson, “Philosophy and Science in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Bible,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Cambridge, 2012), 454–75, at 466.
58 Moscow, Russian State Library, Guenzburg 133, fols. 159r–160r; London, The Montefiore Library 485, fols. 24v–26v; London, The Montefiore Library 504, fols. 3r–5r; Oxford Bodleian Library, Opp. 25/254, fols. 357r–360r; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mich. 304, fols. 175v–181v; Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3098, fols. 140r–144r; Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Cod. 102 Sup, fols. 58r–v; Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Plut.I.26, fols. 120v–125r; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Add. 539, fols. 168r–v; Budapest, The Jewish Theological Seminary - University of Jewish Studies, K 100, fols. 8r–18v; and Jerusalem, Meir Benayahu Collection, O 38, fols. 1r–3v.
59 Although Immanuel’s interpretations of these themes are firmly grounded in the vocabulary and ideology of Maimonidean rationalism, several manuscripts that preserve his biurim are kabbalistic in nature. One example of this phenomenon can be found in Moscow Russian State Library, Guenzburg 133, fols. 159r–160r.
60 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad Ha-Talmidim (Lyck, 1866). The classic work about Anatoli remains Martin L. Gordon, “The Rationalism of Jacob Anatoli” (Ph.D. diss., Yeshiva University, 1974). Recently, Anatoli’s Malmad has been critically studied by Gadi Charles Weber, “Studies on R. Yaaqov Anatoli’s Malmad Ha-Talmidim” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019). For more about Jacob Anatoli as a skeptic, see Yehuda Halper, “Dialectic and Metaphysical Skepticism in Jacob Anatoli,” Theoria 88 (2022): 143–64.
61 Parshat Parah, or the Heifer Portion, refers to the Jewish custom to read Num. 19:1–22 aloud in the synagogue on the Sabbath preceding the festival of Passover. This is an extra Torah reading added to the standard portion reading (parsha) of the week.
62 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 88b.
63 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 88b. Jews in the Italian peninsula were exposed to the parable of the dwarves riding on the shoulders of giants through a comment of the medieval halakhist, Rabbi Isaiah di Trani. This parable is further explored in Abraham Melamed, On the Shoulders of Giants: The Debate between Moderns and Ancients in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought (Ramat Gan, 2003), 177–81.
64 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 89b.
65 The question of the animal’s sex is discussed in Midrash Tanhuma, Ḥukat, 8. Since the red heifer is the only sacrifice in which a female cow is specified, one of the sages concludes that the heifer atones for the golden calf like a mother cleans up her son’s mess.
66 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 86b: ונאמר שפסוק זה נאמר להסיר מבוכה גדולה מלבות בני אדם הנבוכים בהשגחת השם בעולם בראותם צדיק ורע לו רשע וטוב לו.. For more general remarks about Jacob Anatoli’s sermons, see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800 (New Haven, 1989), 15–16 and 111–23.
67 For Jewish reactions to the First Crusade, see Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia, 2004), esp. 55–69.
68 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 86b.
69 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad HaTalmidim, Parshat Parah, 86b.
70 Steven Harvey, “Did Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon Determine which Philosophers Would Be Studied by Later Jewish Thinkers?” Jewish Quarterly Review 83 (1992): 51–70.
71 According to the chronology presented by Gadi Weber, the sermon for Num. 19 (Parshat Parah) was composed in Italy. See Gadi Weber, “Studies on R. Yaaqov Anatoli’s Malmad Ha-Talmidim” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 2019), 136.
72 Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, Sendschreiben an Joseph Kaspi, ed. Joseph Perles (Munich, 1879), 6.
73 Howard Kreisel, “Reasons for the Commandments,” 374–76. Scholars still debate the identity of the Sabians in Maimonides’s writings. See Jonathan Elukin, “Maimonides and the Rise and Fall of the Sabians: Explaining Mosaic Laws and the Limits of Scholarship,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002): 619–37; Haggai Mazuz, “The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights,” in Jewish Philosophy: Perspectives and Retrospectives, ed. Raphael Jospe and Dov Schwartz (Boston, 2012), 233–54; and Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World, 84.
74 For a detailed examination of Rashi’s comments on the heifer, see above.
75 See n. 43, above.
76 Hanna Kasher and Uri Melamed, “The Emergence of the Piyyut Yigdal Elohim Hay,” in Jewish Prayer: New Perspectives, ed. Uri Ehrlich (Beer Sheva, 2016), 155–71.
77 Mishna Yoma 6:2–6.
78 See n. 7, above.
79 כי ראיתי דברי רז"ל שלפי פשוטם הם רחוקים מן השכל מאד. ואען ואומ’ דע כי יש לחכמים סודות נשגבו ממני ולא אדעם .ואמנם לפי הפשט נ"ל כי הכונה היא בעבור שהשכל האנושי ימשך אחר הפעולות המעשיות, והיום ההוא יום הדין כדי שיתעורר האדם לשוב מחטאיו קודם שימות ולחשוב לעת קצו in Kasher and Melamed, “The Emergence of the Piyyut Yigdal Elohim Hay,” 174.
80 Kasher and Melamed, “The Emergence of the Piyyut Yigdal Elohim Hay,” 176.
81 ואפר הפרה מטהרת את הטמאי’, כי הרשעי’ ביודעם משפטי האיש הזה , שלא עבר עבירות הוא נשרף ונדון בגיהנם זמן קצוב — יאמרו בלבם: ’איך נעשה אנחנו, שעברנו עבירות רבות ורעות?’ ויתחרטו מעוונותיהם וישובו תשובה שלימה ויטהרו, כי יהיו במדר[י]גת הצדיקי’ והחסידי’.
In Kasher and Melamed, “The Emergence of the Piyyut Yigdal Elohim Hay,” 176–77.
82 Kasher and Melamed, “The Emergence of the Piyyut Yigdal Elohim Hay,” 172–83.
83 Immanuel of Rome, Mahberet 4, in Maḥberoth Immanuel HaRomi ed. Dov Jarden (Jerusalem, 1957), 90–94; and Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Immanuel of Rome and Other Poets on the Jewish Creed,” Jewish Quarterly Review 5 (1915): 529–42.
84 Fishkin, “A Lifetime in Letters.”
85 Immanuel of Rome, Biur on the Red Heifer, in London, The Montefiore Library 485, fol. 25r.
86 The first Mishna in Massekhet Karetot lists thirty-six Biblical sins that confer the penalty of karet. Massekhet Mo’ed Katan 28a defines it as a heavenly death penalty or a punishment in which a transgressor dies before one’s time. See Sifra, Emor 14.4.
87 Maimonides maintained that the soul’s afterlife was completely immaterial because only the immaterial rational faculty of the human soul could be rendered immortal and transcend corporeal death. For a fuller exploration of this tension, see Fishkin, Bridging Worlds, 39–58.
88 Immanuel of Rome, Biur on the Red Heifer, in London, The Montefiore Library 485, fol. 25v.
89 Immanuel of Rome, Biur on the Red Heifer, in London, The Montefiore Library 485, fol. 25v.
90 Immanuel of Rome, Biur on the Red Heifer, in London, The Montefiore Library 485, fol. 26r.
91 Howard Kreisel, “Nissim of Marseille and His Radical Philosophic Commentary on the Torah,” in idem, Judaism as Philosophy, 161–206, at 197; and idem, Maaseh Nissim by R. Nissim of Marseilles (Jerusalem, 2000), 421–22.
92 Smalley, “William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle, and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law,” 130.
93 Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 23.
94 Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 83–111.
95 Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 85.
96 Hugh’s Notulae on Numbers are found in PL 175, cols. 84–86. For more on Hugh’s exegetical activities and the Notulae, see Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 98–106. Some of Smalley’s conclusions have been challenged by H. J. Pollitt, “Some Considerations on the Structure and Sources of Hugh of St. Victor’s Notes on the Octateuch,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 33 (1966): 5–38.
97 See n. 40, above.
98 Beryl Smalley explains the Bible masters’ embrace of the literal sense as a response to the Cathars in southern France and northern Italy, who rejected the Hebrew Bible. Condemned as heretics by the church, the Cathars were dualists who attributed the Hebrew Bible to the god of evil. Their attacks on the Bible compelled university masters to emphasize the divine origin and soundness of the Bible, a tall order in the face of centuries of non-literal biblical exegesis and polemics. See Smalley, “William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law.”
99 Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 33.2, ed. Walter Groß, in Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, Fragen Zum Heptateuch: Zweisprachige Ausgabe, Teil 2: Levitikus-Richter (Boston, 2018), 236.
100 Paris, BnF, Fr. 9561, fol. 93r. Yves Christe maintains that the Bible moralisée of Naples reflects a lost manuscript that dates from 1225–30. See Yves Christe, “La Bible du Roi: Le livre des Nombres dans les Bibles moralisées et les vitraux de la Sainte-Chapelle,” Studi medievali, 3rd series, 45 (2004): 923–46. I am indebted to Lucy Pick for referring me to this article.
101 Thank you to Pierre Savy for his help with this text.
102 Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 21: “Vaccam quippe mactamus cum carnem a lasciuia uoluptatis exstinguimus,” ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 143, 3 vols. (Turnhout, 1979–1985), 1:326. I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Dr. Katja Vehlow, whose tenacity helped me to locate this citation when I was unable to access a library. I also thank John D’Angelo at Fordham University’s Walsh Library for his invaluable assistance in tracking it down.
103 The text attributed to Gregory is found in Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps (Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81), ed. Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson, 4 vols. (Turnhout, 1992), 1:321.
105 Pick, “Members of the Covenant of the Guide,” 218.
106 Paris, Sorbonne 601, fol. 15ra, cited in Pick, “Members of the Covenant of the Guide,” 223. This passage, in which Scot cites the Hebrew translation of Samuel Ibn Tibbon, serves as evidence for Pick’s argument that Michael Scot and Samuel Ibn Tibbon collaborated on the Liber de parabolis et de mandatis project.
107 Pick, “Members of the Covenant of the Guide,” 241 n. 25.
108 Pick, “Members of the Covenant of the Guide,” 255. For a biographical sketch of William’s life and work, see Lesley Smith, Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life (Chicago, 2023).
109 William of Auvergne, De legibus 10, in Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Paris, 1674), 1:41–42.
110 William of Auxerre, Summa Aurea: Liber Quartus, ed. Jean Ribaillier (Paris, 1980), 18–20. This passage is cited from Smalley, “William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law,” 130.
111 William of Auxerre, Summa Aurea: Liber Quartus, ed. Ribaillier, 18–20.
112 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae, q. 102, a. 5.
113 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae, q. 102, ad. 5.
114 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae, q. 102, ad. 5. Aquinas’s exposition echoes an earlier gloss by Alexander of Hales in his Summa Halensis 765 and 776. See Summa Theologica Halensis: De legibus et praeceptis, ed. Michael Basse (Berlin, 2018), 1652–54 and 1692–97.
115 Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2007), 5.
116 Deeana Copeland Klepper, “Nicholas of Lyra and Franciscan Interest in Hebrew Scholarship,” in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Boston, 2000), 289–311.
117 Nicolas de Lyre, Ottaviano Scoto, and Bonetus Locatellus, Postilla Super Totam Bibliam, 3 vols. (Venice, 1488), 1:227–28.
118 Nicolas de Lyre, Postilla Super Totam Bibliam, 1:227: “quia imolabatur pro purificatione totius populi ut posset accedere ad cultum dei qui cultus in sacra scriptura vocatur religio et ideo hec victima specialiter nominatur nomine religionis.”
119 Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers, 117–31.
120 Michael Robson, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), 48–57.
121 Bert Roest, “Ne effluat in multiloquium et habeatur honerosus: The Art of Preaching in the Franciscan Tradition,” in Franciscans and Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came About through Words, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden, 2012), 383–412, at 383–84.
122 Cesare Vasoli, “Arte della memoria e predicazione,” Lettere Italiane 4 (1986): 478–99; and Francis Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966), 84–85.
123 After he delivered his sermon on the red heifer, Bruno di Segni was appointed bishop of Segni. For more on this, see William North, “Reforming Readers, Reforming Texts: The Making of Discursive Community in Gregorian Rome,” in Urban Developments in Late Antique and Medieval Rome: Revising the Narrative of Renewal, ed. Ann van Dijk and Gregor Kalas (Amsterdam, 2021), 299–330, at 317 and 320.
124 Giovanni da San Gimignano, Summa de exemplis ac similitudinibus rerum 5.123 (Venice, 1497), 219v–220r.
125 Sylvain Piron, “Chronologie des écrits de Pierre de Jean Olivi, Première partie: Avant 1279,” Oliviana 6 (2020): http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1035.
126 See David Burr, The Persecution of Peter Olivi (Philadelphia, 1976); and idem, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadelphia, 2016).
127 Elsa Marmursztejn, “Olivi on the Hebrew Bible and the Jews: Scholastic Texts from Languedoc in the 1290s,” Speculum 97 (2022): 77–111; and Robert Lerner, “Peter Olivi on the Conversion of the Jews,” in Pierre de Jean Olivi: Pensée scolastique, dissidence franciscaine et société, ed. A. Boureau and S. Piron (Paris, 1999), 207–16.
128 Elsa Marmursztejn, “The Old Law, the New Law, and Christian Norms in Thirteenth-Century Scholastic Theology,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 228 (2011): 509–39.
129 Peter di John Olivi, Tractatus cerimonialium 5, ed. Elsa Marmursztejn, in Sur les lois de l’Ancien Testament: Quatre questions disputées, Traité sur les préceptes judiciels, Mystère du parcours de la Loi et de la Synagoque (Paris, 2022), 470–76; English translation: Peter of John Olivi: On the Laws of the Old Testament, trans. Elsa Marmursztejn (New York, 2023), 231–32. I thank Dr. Elsa Marmursztejn for generously sharing her edition of Olivi’s treatise before and after its publication.
130 Peter di John Olivi, Tractatus cerimonialium 5: “Christi autem humanitas per vitulam significatur,” ed. Marmursztejn, Sur les lois de l’Ancien Testament, 472; trans. Marmursztejn, 231–32.
131 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “Mendicants and Jews in Florence,” in The Jewish-Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching, ed. J. Adams and J. Hanska (London, 2015), 282–95.
132 Daniel E. Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, 1994).
133 See n. 95, above.
134 Joachim of Fiore, Tractatus in expositionem vite et regule beati Benedicti 3.3, ed. Alexander Patschovsky (Rome, 2008), 219. I thank Dr. Patschovsky for sharing this citation and his expertise.
135 For the Hebrew text of Immanuel of Rome’s Biur on the Red Heifer, see the Appendix, below.
136 See n. 116, above.
137 Immanuel of Rome, Mahberoth Immanuel, ed. D. Jarden (Jerusalem, 1957), 24 (line 338).
138 This transcription is based on London, The Montefiore Library 485, fols. 24v–26v; and London, The Montefiore Library 504, fols. 3r–5r. The text has been checked for accuracy against all the other manuscripts mentioned in n. 58, above. For more information about the Montefiore manuscripts, see H. Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. of the Montefiore Library (London, 1904), 149–50 and 155.
139 This line comes from Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart, The Gate of Asceticism 9, but it refers to wine as the world’s greatest ailment. Here, Immanuel changes the subject to pride. See Binyamin Abrahamov, The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart by R. Bahya Ibn Paqud (Jerusalem, 2019), 294–313 [Hebrew].
140 BT Rosh Hashana 17a.
141 TB Tractate Rosh Hashana 17b.
142 On Michael as the heavenly high priest, see Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, 31.