Jewish convert to Christianity, accuser of the Talmud
Nicholas Donin
Active
1236
In 1236 he brought the pope 35 accusations against the Talmud, which led to the trial and burning of manuscripts in Paris.
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The same Gregory IX opened a fresh phase in the clash with Judaism when he answered a charge brought in 1236 by Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Donin wrote a text of 35 accusations against the Talmud, portraying it as blasphemous, insulting to Christianity and proof that Jews had strayed from the books of the Old Testament. The pope wrote to the kings of Catholic Europe asking them to seize every copy, but only in Paris did anything follow.
In 1242 a trial of the Talmud was staged in Paris. The Inquisition, predictably, found the charges well founded, and twenty-four cartloads of Talmud manuscripts and other rabbinic works went up in flames in public.
In later medieval Europe some Jews who converted to Christianity became polemicists against Judaism. Nicholas Donin brought the pope, in 1236, thirty-five charges against the Talmud; the Paris trial (1242) ended with the public burning of manuscripts. Pritz cites Donin and, later, Pfefferkorn as examples of converts hostile to the tradition they left.