Tomb for Boris Davidovich

Dogs and Books

In the year of Our Lord 1330, on the twenty-third day of the twelfth month, it came to the vigilant ears of the Most Venerable Father in Christ, Monsignor Jacques, by the grace of God Bishop of Pamiers, that Baruch David Neumann, a refugee from Germany and a former Jew, had abandoned the blindness and perfidy of Judaism and been converted to the Christian faith; that he had received the sacrament of holy baptism in the town of Toulouse at a time of persecution, at the instigation of the devout Pastoureaux; and that afterward, "like a dog who goggles his vomit", this Baruch David Neumann used the opportunity-since in the town of Pamiers he had lived like a Jew with other Jews-to return to that sect offensive to God, and to his former Jewish ways, so that His Excellency the Bishop ordered that he be arrested and thrown in the dungeon.

Finally, he ordered that he be brought to him, and Baruch Neumann appeared before him in the Bishop's great hall, the left wing of which opened onto the torture chamber.

Monsignor Jacques gave the order that Baruch be brought through this chamber to remind him of the instruments God has mercifully placed in our hands in the service of His Holy Faith and for the salvation of the human soul.

Monsignor Jacques had beside him at the table as his helper Friar Gaillard de Pamiers, the representative of the Inquisitor of Carcassonne. Also present were the Magistrate Bernard Faissasier of Pamiers and the Magistrate David de Troyes, a Jew who had been called in as interpreter to His Excellency the Bishop, in case Baruch was brazen enough to touch on dogma and the Law, since he was known to be a specialist in the Old Testament, Jewish Law, and the Book of the Evil One.[10]

Monsignor Jacques began, therefore, to question Baruch about all these things, since the Jew swore on Moses' Law that he would tell only the truth, primarily about himself but also about others, living and dead, whom he would call as witnesses.

When this came to pass, he said and confessed as follows:

This year (on last Thursday it was exactly a month) the devout Pastoureaux arrived in Grenade armed with long knives, spears, and whips, with crosses made out of goatskin sewn to their clothes, carrying rebel flags and threatening to exterminate all Jews, Solomon Vudas, a young Jew, then found the Grand Defender of Grenade in the company of his scribe, the Jew Eleazar, and asked him, as he told me later, whether he would protect him from the devout Pastoureatix. He said that he would. However, since the Pastoureaux kept arriving in ever-increasing numbers and began searching even the houses of Christians and prominent citizens, he told Solomon that he would not be able to protect him any longer, and advised him to take a boat down the Garonne to Verdun, to a larger and safer castle belonging to a friend. So Solomon took the boat and set off downstream toward Verdun, When the Pastoureaux saw him from the bank, they also got a boat and oars, pulled him out of the water, and, after tying him up, took him to Grenade, all the while telling him he must be either converted or killed. The Grand Defender, who was watching all this from the bank, his hand on his forehead, approached them and said that if they killed Solomon, it would be as if they cut off his own head. They answered that if this were so, they would carry out his wish. Solomon said he did not wish the judge to be hurt in any way because of him, and asked the Pastoureaux what they wanted of him. They repeated: he must be either converted or killed, Solomon declared that he would rather be converted. At once they baptized him in the murky waters of the Garonne, along with Eleazar the scribe, since they had with them a young priest who surely knew the procedure. Two pious women sewed crosses of goatskin on their clothes and then they were let go.

The next day Solomon and Eleazar came to see me in Toulouse, told me all that had happened, and said that they were converted, but not of their own free will; if they could, they would like to revert to their own faith. They also said that if one day Yahweh mercifully opened their eyes and showed them that the new laws were better than the old, that the soul sinned less toward man and beast in the fold of the new faith, then they would convert of theft own free will, sincerely. I answered that I did not know what to advise them; perhaps they could, I told them, return unpunished into the fold of Judaism if their souls were freed from Christian laws, and that I would consult Friar Raymond Leinach, assistant to His Excellency the Inquisitor of Toulouse, who would certainly be able to give them advice and absolution. So together with Bonnet, a Jew from Ageo, I went to see Friar Raymond and the attorney Jacques Marques, notary to His Excellency the Inquisitor of Toulouse. I described the misfortune that had befallen Solomon, and asked them whether the conversion of someone against his will was licit, and whether faith accepted through naked fear for one’s life had any value. They told me that such a conversion was illicit, I returned at once to Solomon and Eleazar and brought them the message from Friar Raymond and attorney Jacques that their conversion did not have the force of true faith, and that they could return to the faith of Moses. Solomon subsequently delivered his person into the hands of Monsignor the Councillor of Toulouse, so that the latter would obtain for him the opinion of the Roman Curia about the efficacy of this conversion, since Solomon feared that his return to Judaism could be interpreted as a sign of hypocrisy.

When all this was done, Solomon and Eleazar returned to the faith of Moses, and according to Talmudic doctrine had the nails on their hands and feet cut off with sharp scissors, their heads shaved, and their entire bodies washed with spring water in the same way that, according to the Law, the body and soul of a foreign woman is cleansed before she marries a Jew.

The following week Master Alodet, assistant to the Mayor of Toulouse, brought in twenty-four cartloads of Pastoureaux, whom he had seized for the massacre of 152 Jews of various ages, in Castelsarrasin and the surrounding area. By the time the carts had arrived at the castle of the Count of Narbonne, and twenty were already inside the gate, a great mob of the people of Toulouse had swarmed to the place. The Pastoureaux in the rear carts began to shout for help, claiming that they were being taken to the dungeon, although they had committed no sin but, rather, had avenged Christ's blood, which cries to the heavens for revenge. Then the mob, enraged by the injustice committed, cut the ropes the avengers were tied with, pulled them out of the carts, and shouted loudly: "Death to the Jews!” The mob poured into the Jewish quarter. I was busy reading and writing when a great number of these men burst into my chamber, armed with ignorance blunt as a whip, and hatred sharp as a knife. It wasn't my silks that brought blood to their eyes, but the books arranged on my shelves; they shoved the silks under their cloaks, but they threw the books on the floor, stamped on them, and ripped them to shreds before my eyes. Those books were bound in leather, marked with numbers, and written by learned men; in them, had they wanted to read them, they could have found thousands of reasons why they should have killed me at once, and in them, had they wanted to read them, they could also have found the balm and cure for their hatred. I told them not to rip them apart, for many books are not dangerous, only one is dangerous; I told them not to tear them apart, for the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred. But they said that everything was written in the New Testament, that it contains all boob of all times, and therefore the rest should be burned; even if they contained something this One did not, they should be burned all the more since they were heretical. They did not need the advice of the learned, they said, and shouted: "Convert, or we'll knock out of your head the wisdom from all the books you've ever read!"

Witnessing the blind fury of this mob and seeing them kill before my eyes the Jews who refused to be converted (some out of faith, and others from that pride which can sometimes be perilous), I answered that I would rather be converted than killed, since, in spite of everything, the temporary agony of being is mote valuable than the ultimate void of nothingness. Then they seized me and pushed me out of the house, without even allowing me to change my house cloak for more fitting attire, and led me as I was to the cathedral of Saint-Etienne. Two priests showed me the corpses of Jews strewn about in front of the church; the bodies were disfigured and the faces covered with blood. Then they showed me a stone in front of the church, and the sight petrified me; on the stone rested a heart, which looked like a bloody ball. "Look,” they said, "this is the heart of one who would not be converted." A mob of people had gathered around the heart, staring at it with astonishment and disgust.

When I closed my eyes not to see, someone hit me over the head with a rock or a whip and accelerated my decision. I said I would be converted, but I had a friend who was a priest, Brother Jean, called "the Teuton," and that I wanted him to be my godfather. I told them this, hoping that if I fell into the hands of Brother Jean, a great friend of mine, with whom I used to have long discussions on faith, perhaps he could save me from death without my having to be converted.

The two priests decided to take me out of the church and escort me to the house of Jean the Teuton because he was their superior and they feared they might do him injustice, When we came out of the church, I smelled smoke and saw flames rising over the Jewish quarter. Then they slaughtered before my eyes Asser, a twenty-year-old Jew, and said to me, "This one followed your teachings and your example," Pointing to another young man, who I later learned was from Tarascon, they said; "Your delay is killing those who believed in your teachings and followed your example". They released him, and the young man fell to the ground with his face toward me; since I had not yet uttered a word, they killed him by a deadly blow from behind. The people who were swarming in front of the church and witnessed the scene asked my escorts whether I had already converted; they said I hadn't, although, when we had started from the church, I begged them that if someone should ask, they would say that I was, but they had refused. Someone from the mob again hit me over the head with a whip, and I thought that the eyes would pop out of my head from the blow; I felt the spots but there was no blood, only a Jump, which had healed of itself, without the help of bandages, medicine, or other balms. They continued to kill Jews, and I heard their lamentations, and since the two priests told me they couldn't protect me from the fury of the mob or escort me to the house of the Confessor, because I would be killed before we reached the street, I asked them for advice. They said, “Walk the road we all walk, and we will help you." They also said, “Do not seek other paths besides the one on which everyone walks." And they also said, "Following your example, many have perished." Then I answered, “Let us return to the church."

We went back into the church, where candles were flickering and the people, their hands smeared with fresh blood, were kneeling in prayer. I asked my two keepers to wait a while longer, for I wanted to see whether my sons would come.[11] They waited, but when my sons didn't show up, they told me they couldn't wait any longer, and that I had to make a decision: to submit to conversion or go out to the front of the church where the undecided were still being slaughtered.

Then I told them that I would like to have the Vicar of Toulouse as my godfather, thinking of the court notary, Pierre de Savardun, one of my good friends, who could surely save me from death and conversion. I was told that the Vicar was unavailable, because that day he had brought the Pastoureaux in from Castelsarrasin, and was resting from the long journey. Some of those kneeling in the church rose up and grabbed me from all sides and pushed me toward the stone baptistry; as they forced my head under the water, I managed to utter the word "Vicar", but after that I wasn't able to say anything; they held me under until I thought they would drown me like a dog in the holy water of the baptistry. Next they led me to the stone stairs and forced me to my knees among those who were already kneeling; I don’t know how many were there or who they were, since I never looked anyone in the face; my eyes were lowered to the stone. The priest then performed, or so I think, all the ceremonies connected with baptism. However, before the priest began to read the baptismal service, one of the friars bent over and whispered into my ear that I must freely accept the ceremony of baptism or I would be killed. So I confirmed that everything I was doing was of my free will, although I thought otherwise. They named me Johan, or Jean; the people beside me rose and moved away.

When all this was over, I asked the two friars to accompany me home, to see whether anything was left of my possessions. They said they couldn't because they were tired and dirty. Instead I went with them to drink wine from their cellar in honor of my christening, I drank the wine without saying a word; I didn’t want to discuss questions of faith, although they continued to challenge me. They accompanied me after all to my house, to see if anything was left; we found my books mutilated and burned, my money stolen, and only seven rolls of cloth left, some of which were pledges and others mine, and one bedspread of Mavar silk. The friar who now called himself my godfather put the rolls of cloth in a sack. As we were leaving, in front of the house we ran into a municipal official whom my recently acquired godfather knew, and who was armed and responsible for the protection of the Jews still alive. So my godfather told the guard: "This one has been baptized; he is a good Christian.” The guard nodded, and I found a way to get closer to him. "Do you want to be a good Jew?" he asked me in a whisper, I answered, "Yes." Then he said, "But do you have enough money for that?” “No,” I said, “bur, here, take this.” I gave him the sack that contained the rolls of cloth. He handed the sack over to one of his men and said to me: "Well then, you have nothing to be afraid of, and if someone asks you, say you’re a good Christian, and you'll save your head.”

Some distance from my house, my godfather and I met ten municipal officials, accompanied by numerous armed guards. One of them took me aside and asked in a whisper, "Are you a Jew?” and softly, so the friar couldn't hear me, I told him that I was. This official told the friar to let me go, and handed me over to a soldier who had the rank of sergeant, ordering him to guard me as he would himself, in the name of the municipal administration and municipal authorities, The sergeant took me by the arm, When we were in the vicinity of the town hall, I told everyone who asked that I was a Jew; but when we passed through notorious narrow streets and people asked the sergeant if I wasn't perhaps a Jew who had refused baptism, he told them as I advised him: that I had been baptized and was a good Christian.

The killing and looting of the Jews lasted well into the night; the town was lit by dames, the dogs were howling on all sides. In the evening, when the streets looked deserted again, I told the sergeant that my conscience was troubling me and that I would like to go to the Vicar of Toulouse to ask him whether or not baptism accepted under the threat of death was licit. When we arrived at the Vicar's he was earing dinner, and the sergeant said in my name: "Here I’ve brought you a Jew who wants you personally to baptize him." The Vicar answered, “We are dining now. Sit down at the table and join us." Since I didn't want to eat, I looked around the table, and among the many guests spotted my old friend Pierre de Savardun. I signaled to him and we stepped aside. I told him I didn't intend to undergo baptism, and asked him to tell the Vicar cot to force me, since such a baptism would not be licit. He did this for me, and whispered my words into the Vicar’s ear. Then he told the sergeant to go, for now he himself would guard me. He handed me over to another sergeant, one of his trusted men, with whom I was to go to the castle of Narbonne, to see if any of my sons were among the slaughtered Jews whose bodies were kept in the castle's yard. When we came back to the table, the Vicar asked me: “Do you want to be baptized now or would you rather wait until tomorrow?” Then Pierre de Savardun took him aside and discussed something with him in a confidential tone. I don’t know exactly what he told him, but the Vicar replied: "Naturally I don't wish to baptize anyone by force, whether he be a Jew or anyone else.” From that I concluded that the baptism to which I had been subjected by force could be considered invalid.

When this was resolved, I asked Pierre de Savardun for advice: should I stay on in the castle of Narbonne or leave? Since Pierre told me that all Jews who took shelter in the castle would be either baptized or killed, we decided that I should leave for Toulouse. Pierre gave me three shillings and accompanied me to the crossroads, from where the main road leads to Montgiscard. He told me to walk as fast as possible, and to speak only German if I met anyone.

So I hurried to reach Montgiscard as soon as possible. When I finally arrived and was crossing the town square, suddenly a mob of people armed with whips and knives poured out of nowhere, seized me, and asked me whether I was a Jew or a Christian. I asked them to tell me who they were themselves, and they said, '"We are the devout Pastoureaux, in the service of Christ’s Faith,” They also said to me, “In the name of the paradise of both heaven and earth, we shall exterminate all those who do not follow His road, both Jews and non-Jews." I told them that I was not a Jew and said to them: "Can the paradise of heaven and earth be reached by blood and flames?" And they replied: "Even a single unbelieving soul is enough to deprive us all of hope and paradise, as one mangy sheep is enough to infect the entire flock." They also said, “Isn't it better to slaughter one mangy sheep than to allow the whole flock to become tainted?" And they shouted, "Arrest him! His words reek of doubt and disbelief!” So they bound my wrists and took me away. I also asked them, “Is your power over people such that you can dispose of their freedom?” And they said, “We are Christ's soldiers, and have final authority to separate the diseased from the healthy, the infidel from the faithful.”

Then I told them that faith was born of doubt and I told them that doubt was my faith, and that I was a Jew, because I hoped they wouldn’t kill me with my hands bound. The mob now dispersed, not caring for learned discussion and dialectic, and instead went toward a certain dark street where they had caught another victim. They took me to a large house and lowered me into the cavernous cellars, where there were some ten Jews, including the learned Bernardo Lupo and his daughter, called "La Bonne" because of her goodness. We spent the night and the next day in prayer, and decided that we wouldn’t let them baptize us, but would persist in our own faith. Our prayer was interrupted only by rats, which, heavy and well fed, were squeaking in the corners and running around the cellar all night long. The next day they brought us out and sent us under guard to Mazeres and from there to Pamiers.[12]

"Did you revert to the Jewish faith in Pamiers or anywhere else, and according to the Law of Moses?"

"No, Under Talmudic doctrine, only when someone is converted willingly and by Christian rules, and then wants to revert to his old faith again, must he submit to the procedure I have already described-the cutting of nails and hair, and washing of the entire body-since he is considered unclean. But when he is not converted willingly and according to all the Christian rules, but by force, then this procedure doesn't apply, and such a conversion is considered invalid."

"Did you tell one or more persons who were baptized under the threat of death that their conversion was invalid, so that they could, unpunished and in peace, revert to Judaism?”

"No. Except for what I said a while ago about Solomon and Eleazar"

“Did you tell one or more Jews to accept baptism only to avoid death and afterward to revert to Judaism?”

"No."

"Were you ever present at the ceremony of the return of a converted Jew to Moses' faith?"

"No."

"Do you consider your own conversion invalid?”

"Yes."

"Why do you willingly expose yourself to the danger of heresy?”

“Because I wish to live in peace with myself and not with the world."

"Explain.”

"Since I don't know what Christians believe and why, since on the other hand I do know what Jews believe and why, and since I consider their faith to be proven by the Law and the Prophetic Books, which I have studied as a doctor for some twenty у eats, I say that, until it is proven to me by my Law and my Prophets that the Christian faith conforms to them, I will not believe in Christianity, despite the security offered me in the fold of that faith, I would rather die than abandon my faith."

This was the beginning of the debate over Christian faith with Baruch David Neumann, who continued to resist with the strength of his arguments, while the Most Venerable Father in Christ, Monsignor Jacques, by the grace of God Bishop of Pamiers, showed boundless patience in bringing the said Baruch to the Truth, sparing neither time nor effort. The Jew, however, obstinately clung to his belief, relying on the Old Testament and rejecting the light of Christian faith which Monsignor Jacques was so mercifully bestowing on him.

On August 16, 1330, Baruch finally wavered, confessed, and affirmed that he had renounced the Jewish faith. Since they had read to him the record of the hearing, the said Neumann, when asked whether he had made his confession under torture or immediately thereafter, answered that he had made his confession immediately thereafter, about three o'clock in the morning, and on that same day in the evening hours he made the same confession without having been first brought into the torture chamber.

This hearing took place in the presence of Monsignor Jacques, by the grace of God Bishop of Pamiers, Friar Gaillard de Pamiers, the Magistrate Bernard Faissasier, the Magistrate David de Troyes, a Jew, and us, Guillaume-Pierre Barthes and Robert de Robecourt, notaries of the Inquisitor of Carcassonne.

It is known that Baruch David Neumann appeared before the same tribunal on two more occasions: the first, in the middle of May of the following year, when he declared that after a rereading of the Law and the Prophets he had again swayed in his faith. There followed a long debate over the Hebrew sources; the patient and prolonged arguments of Monsignor Jacques led Baruch again to renounce Judaism. The final sentence carries the date of November 20, 1337, The record of the hearing, however, has not been preserved, and Duvernoy offers the logical hypothesis that the unfortunate Baruch had most likely died under torture. Another source tells of a certain Baruch who was sentenced for the same offense of thinking and burned at the stake some twenty years later. It is difficult to imagine that this reference is to the same person.

A NOTE

The story of Baruch David Neumann is actually a translation of the third chapter of the Registers of the Inquisition (Confessio Baruc olim iudei modo baptizati et post modum reversi ad iudaismum), in which Jacques Fournier, the future Pope Benedict XII, entered scrupulously and in detail the confessions and testimony given before his tribunal. The manuscript is preserved tn the Fondi Latini of the Vatican library, number 4030. I have made only certain minor omissions in the text, where there is a discussion of the Holy Trinity, Christ as the Messiah, the Fulfillment of the Word of the Law, and the denial of certain assertions of the Old Testament The translation is based on the French version by Monsignor Jean-Marie Vidal, former vicar of the church of Saint Louis in Rome, as well as on the version of the Catholic exegete, the Honorable Ignacio von Dollinger, published in Munich in 1890. These texts, with their useful and learned commentaries, have been reprinted many times-most recently, as far as I know, in 1965. The original manuscript (“a beautiful parchment scroll with a scribal hand in two columns”) reaches the reader as a triple echo of a distant voice-Baruch’s, if we include his voice in the translation, like a reverberation of Yahweh's thought.

The sudden accidental discovery of this text, the discovery that coincided with the happy completion of the story entitled "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich," left me with a feeling of miraculous illumination: the analogy with the story already told is obvious to such a degree that I see the identical motives, dates, and names as God's part in creation, la part de Dieu, or the devil's, la part du diable.

The consistency of moral beliefs; the spilling of the sacrificial blood; the similarity in names (Boris Davidovich Novsky; Baruch David Neumann); the coincidence in dates of the arrests of Novsky and Neumann (on the same day of the fatal month of December, but with a span of six centuries: 1330–1930)-all this suddenly appeared in my consciousness as an enlarged metaphor of the classical doctrine of the cyclic movement of time: "He who has seen the present has seen everything, that which happened in the most distant past and that which will happen in the future” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, 37). Polemicizing with the Stoics (and even mote so — with Nietzsche), J. L. Borges formulates their teachings as follows: “From time to time the world is destroyed by the flame that created it, and then is born again to experience the same history. Again the same molecular particles fuse, again they give form to stones, trees, people-even to virtues and days, because for the Greeks there is no noun without substance. Again each sword and each hero, again each trivial sleepless night."

In this context the sequence of variability is without great significance. Nevertheless, I chose the sequence of spiritual rather than historical dares: as I have said, I discovered the history of David Neumann after writing the story of Boris Davidovich.