The Errores Iudaeorum by friar Thibaud de Sézanne

A critical working edition

Abstract

The thirteenth century witnessed a great interest in the Talmud among Christian polemicists. In 1239, the convert Nicholas Donin submitted to Pope Gregory IX thirty-five articles decrying the Talmud and Rabbinical Judaism. Thisled to the Paris Disputation in 1240 and the ensuing condemnation of the Talmud to the stake. In this context, several anti-Talmudic works were prepared by Christians. This article aims at providing the first working edition of the ErroresIudaeorum, a thirteenth-century anti-Jewish work which was written by the Dominican friar Thibaud de Sézanne and is preserved in roughly one hundred manuscripts and mostly accompanied by the Pharetra fidei, another anti-Jewish Latin work that supplies numerous Christological arguments opposing Judaism in support of Christianity. The content of the Errores draws on anti-Jewish Latin material that apparently goes back to the almost contemporary thirty-five articles by Donin which triggered the Paris Disputation against the Talmud as well as to the famous Dialogus by Petrus Alfonsi, among others.
Keywords: Errores Iudaeorum, Thibaud de Sézanne, Medieval Christian Disputations, adversus Iudaeos-Literature, Talmud