The Talmud Trial of 1240 in Paris: the Vikuach of R. Jehiel and the Sefer Ha-Misvot of R. Moses of Couci

The historical events that led to the burning of the Talmud in 1242 in Paris and various texts in Latin and Hebrew that record the event have been analyzed by scholars. In this chapter, the author introduces into discussion two additional Hebrew texts that are still in manuscript. The first text was discovered in the Moscow National Library by Joseph Shatzmiller in the 1980s and was described briefly by the late Israel Ta-Shma, but has not received much attention since. The second text, actually a mere fragment, consists of just ten lines and is found in a manuscript in the Vatican Library. This study attempts to resolve two primary questions: which of the two versions of the Vikkuah, the standard Grũnbaum one or that of the Moscow manuscript, is more original? and what is the relationship between the three Hebrew versions of the events of 1240 and the Latin one?.