The Maimonidean Controversy

Maimonides left two things hard to reconcile in one reader: the Mishneh Torah, a code of the whole law without a single reference to the disputes behind it — and the Guide of the Perplexed, in which the Torah is explained in the language of philosophy and bodily expressions about God are read figuratively.

The controversy came in waves — in the 1180s, the 1230s, at the end of the century and the start of the next. The main wave fell in 1230–1235. Solomon of Montpellier and his students led the opposition, and Rabbeinu Yonah of Gerona stood with them; on the other side were the Provençal rationalists, among them Radak, who set out for Spain to gather support, fell ill on the road, never arrived, and conducted his defence by letter.

The argument was not about details. The question was whether the literal sense binds where it contradicts reason — and whether a book explaining the Torah through Aristotle may be put into a student's hands at all.

In 1232–1233 the Dominicans burned Maimonides' books at Montpellier. Here begins the part usually retold with confidence and better told with caution: that Maimonides' opponents themselves denounced the books to the Inquisition. Historians neither confirm nor refute it; the sources are late and partisan, and the question is treated as open. It is left open here.

Nine years later, in 1242, the Talmud itself was burned in Paris — twenty-four cartloads of manuscripts. Tradition says Rabbeinu Yonah saw in this an answer to the burning of Maimonides' books and repented publicly; that account too is thinly attested and may have been composed by the other side.

How the controversy ended can be seen on the bookshelf: the Mishneh Torah is printed with Raavad's objections directly beneath the text, and the Guide is studied with commentaries both for and against. Neither side was struck out.