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CHAPTER 2

Scientific Transmission

Outside the University

As was the case in general for the Iberian Jewish elite, Duran’s education included basic scientific knowledge. But scientific activity, in particular astronomy, was also unusually central to Duran’s thought and made up a large proportion of his writings. He taught mathematics and astronomy at a practical level, studied more advanced texts, and corresponded on astronomical and numerological issues with his peers.

Histories of early modern science in the Iberian Peninsula depict a rich legacy of empirical, experimental, and practical activity.¹ The imperatives of Spanish and Portuguese overseas commerce and empire building encouraged such fields as cartography and navigational instrumentation.² Redrawing the map of the world, Iberians made extraordinary progress in the utilitarian and commercial sciences of “metallurgy, medicine, agriculture, surgery, meteorology, cosmography, cartography, navigation, military technology, and urban engineering.”³

The achievements of sixteenth-century Spain, while spurred by the discoveries of the New World, did not emerge from a vacuum. As early as the end of the thirteenth century, with the colonization of the Balearic Islands, an extensive maritime trade began to be carried out by Catalan merchants in networks centered in Barcelona and Perpignan, reaching beyond the Balearics to southern Italy and Sicily. One result of this political and economic expansion and its consequent technical needs was that by the end of the fourteenth century, the Kingdom of Aragon-Catalonia had become a center of scientific activity, and by the fifteenth century Spain and Portugal were the most technically developed countries in Western Europe.⁴ This progress continued until the seventeenth century, when Spanish scholars would choose to rework medieval philosophy and science rather than to replace them with the new theoretical systems of the scientific revolution.

In the creation of late-medieval Iberian science, the royal court, however peripatetic in reality, was a primary source of patronage.⁵ For in contrast to the rest of Europe, scientific production in Iberia from the first quarter of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century seems to have taken place primarily outside the universities.⁶ In Aragon-Catalonia, for example, Pere III “The Ceremonious” (r. 1335–1387), seeming consciously to model his court on the glorious thirteenth-century Castilian court of Alfonso X (1221–1284),⁷ commissioned scientific works and astronomical tables as well as scientific and philosophical translations. Pere’s son, Joan I “The Hunter” (r. 1387–1396), followed in his father’s footsteps while also favoring astrology and other divinatory arts in his court.⁸ Under his patronage and even under that of his somewhat less enthusiastic brother Martí (r. 1396–1410), mathematics, medicine, astrology, and astronomy flourished in Perpignan as well as in Barcelona, the commercial center of Aragon. Royal patronage by the fourteenth-century kings of Aragon led in turn to the employment of Jewish translators, instrument makers, physicians, cartographers, astrologers, and scientific craftsmen, laying the foundations for the important role Jews and conversos would play in Iberian science of that and following centuries.⁹

If the role of the court was conspicuous in the production of Jewish science in late medieval and early modern Iberia, the role of the city was no less so. Scientific writings in this period emerged nearly exclusively from urban centers that had attained a certain level of economic and commercial importance. In the sixteenth century, for example, most scientific texts were produced in Seville, the main port and commercial gateway for ships traveling to and from the New World. Madrid, the second most vibrant center of scientific publications at the end of the century, achieved this status precisely because Felipe II (1527–1598) made it his new capital. The urban nature of early modern Iberian science is expressed also in the social position of its practitioners, who (apart from some nobility and members of the clergy) came primarily from the urban literate strata of artisans, merchants, craftsmen, and scribes. Significantly, the overwhelming majority of scientific writings, whether or not in the field of medicine, were the work of physicians.¹⁰

Each of these factors helps explain the striking presence of Jews in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century science. The last factor is especially noteworthy, for the Jews were an almost completely urban group; indeed, Jews made up a disproportionate fraction of literate urban society. Moreover, from the early fourteenth century through the fifteenth, Jews were especially well represented in the medical profession. A third of the doctors appearing in the archives of Barcelona were Jews, though the Jewish population in that city made up no more than 5 percent of the total. The proportions were similar in the city of Valencia. In Huesca, a far smaller town where Jews comprised 10–15 percent of the population, more than half the doctors were Jews; in the years 1310 and 1311, they all were. The fifteenth century was no different.¹¹

Patterns of scientific activity are shaped by a wide array of considerations, including the nature of scientific patronage, how society is structured, what communication networks are used to spread scientific knowledge, which institutions of learning are available, and the prevailing religious culture and its attitude to scientific investigation. Using Duran as an illustrative example, I will consider how the social milieu and intellectual and religious culture of the late medieval Iberian Jewish elite conditioned their scientific endeavors, and how, in particular, Duran’s scientific practice may have been shaped by and have itself shaped his Jewish identity.

First, a caveat: medieval science is not modern science. Not even in theory does it rest on the examination of a problem, the formulation of a falsifiable hypothesis, or the conceiving and carrying out of an accurate and isolated experiment that will either confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. The word “scientist” itself is an artifact of the nineteenth century. Two modern terms often favored by historians of medieval science, are “philosopher-scientist” and “natural philosopher” (as in one who examines the natural world using the tools of philosophy).

Both of these terms suggest a particular approach to the study of the natural world that may misrepresent some of the motivations of Jewish astronomers, astrologers, physicians, and even mathematicians. Thus, while it may be appropriate to term the Christian scholastic Nicole Oresme a natural philosopher, it is more difficult to apply the same term to the Jew Hasdai Crescas, whose investigations of motion and critique of Aristotelian physics were not aimed in the least at learning about the natural world but rather at countering the radical philosophical tendencies he believed were undermining Jewish faith in his time. In addition, the more technological and number-reckoning sides of science, such as those involved in constructing astrolabes and quadrants and making and using astronomical tables and ephemerides, or, for that matter, professional engagement in medicine or astrological prognostication, are also excluded by the designations “philosopher-scientist” and “natural philosopher.”

Here I will instead employ the words science and scientific activity with the understanding that, depending on the context, they may indicate vastly differing levels and registers of work and study. Where possible, in order to avoid the strong associations of the word “scientist” with modern ideas of science, I will use more specific terms like astronomer, instrument maker, astrologer, physician, and so on.

The Duran-related texts examined below are by individuals whom we can place in a particular world and culture. They include letters copied and preserved outside their original context, scientific texts with marginal notations, a collection of writings by Duran put together by one of his students, and a rare example of class notes jotted down by another student. The texts are closely tied to their time and place, a part of material culture containing the physical trace of human hands as well as of a human mind.

MS PARIS BNF HÉB 1023

Our first source is a manuscript that contains approximately thirty folios of notes taken down by a student of Duran.¹² Preceded by two astronomical works—a commentary on the ninth-century Elements of Astronomy by al-Farghānī (Kitāb fi-l-ḥarakāt al-samāwīya wa-jawāmiʿ ʿilm al-nujūm, a nonmathematical summary of Ptolemaic astronomy translated into Hebrew by Jacob Anatoli) and an abridgment of that same work—and followed by a selection in Hebrew translation of treatises by well-known Arabic philosophers, the notes record brief mathematical techniques: how to multiply spherical fractions, how to find a square root, and so forth, often illustrated with diagrams or examples. There are also numerous comments on how to use astronomical tables or observational instruments. Marginal notes in the student’s hand are also found on the first item in this manuscript, the commentary on al-Farghānī.

The student who recorded these notes seems to have been working from other texts, sometimes extracting passages from them. When extracts are presented, a heading notes the source and sometimes indicates whether the manuscript is in the author’s or another’s hand. For example, an anonymous commentary on the twelfth-century work on planetary astronomy by the Barcelona astronomer and astrologer Abraham bar Ḥiyya (Ḥeshbon mahalakhot ha-kokhavim [“Calculation of the Paths of the Planets”])¹³ is said to come from a book of Duran’s “in the handwriting of someone else,”¹⁴ suggesting that the student is extracting the glosses from a manuscript Duran himself had copied (or perhaps just purchased), and that the marginal comments are in someone else’s handwriting. Again, comments on what look to be Gersonides’ astronomical tables are said to be from a book of Bonet Bonjorn, written with “his [own] fingers.”¹⁵ Some of these constitute very brief snippets from works like Ptolemy’s Almagest, while others are longer extracts from, for example, a letter by Duran himself on the true and median conjunctions.

It is not possible to say whether these jottings were the work of days or weeks or years. The hand is the same throughout, but with sufficient deviations in ink, pen, and speed to make it clear that the notes were not copied formally and sequentially from a preexisting text but added as the material came to hand. The diagrams tend for the most part to be fitted into the text, with the words flowing around them. What we seem to be seeing is the progress of a student’s learning. While there are no explicit references to other students, sometimes the writer varies the first person singular—“a question that I asked”—with the first and third person plural—“we wanted to find” or “the doubt that they raised with him”—suggesting that he was not working alone.

Evidence from the University of Paris shows that medical students in that highly institutionalized setting took notes in a wide variety of formats, one of which was loose sheets, sometimes two to three folios kept as flyleaves in manuscripts; that is likely what we are seeing here as well.¹⁶ They also took notes in the margins of their texts, again seen here. What we do not find in this manuscript, however, are the sorts of study aids that Paris medical students added to their textbooks: titles given in running heads, marks for chapters and subdivisions, quick reference signs, or schematic diagrams of a work’s contents for help in memorization.

Traces of face-to-face encounters do appear in these pages, as when the student reports that “I heard [it] from the Efod” or “from the mouth of the Efod” or “as the Efod taught me about the doubt which I asked him” or “this too I heard from him.”¹⁷ Sometimes a source is only cryptically indicated, as in the case of an otherwise unidentified maestre Bonjudas¹⁸ who has provided mathematical techniques to find the square of a number that is a multiple of one hundred, the square of a number that is between one and one hundred, and a rule regarding the ratio of a number to its square.¹⁹

The same Bonjudas is also the source of two separate groups of brief astronomical answers. One covers the following subjects: why we see the moon as full one or two days before it is actually full; why we don’t see it at all at the time of the conjunction; a question about the term for the ecliptic; and why up to four hours can elapse between the true and the median conjunction.²⁰ The student has appended to these passages an extract from the letter Duran wrote to Shealtiel Gracian on just this topic of the difference between the true and median conjunctions. Maestre Bonjudas himself is cited with no comment beyond his name, suggesting perhaps that he was so well known to our student that no more need be said; perhaps he, too, was part of the study group. Later comments are headed by even less easily identifiable acronyms.²¹

In this particular class, Duran was instructing students on such matters as the multiplication of spherical fractions; checking work by “casting out nines”; using astronomical tables and their canons for calculating the position of the sun and moon; taking account of error in observations using an astrolabe, a quadrant, or a saphea; gelosia (lattice) multiplication; and other highly practical astronomical techniques.²² Given what we know about the practical needs of astrologer-astronomers, it is thus likely that the students were acquiring the skills necessary to practice astrology either as an independent activity or, presumably, as a supplement to medicine. The material is highly pragmatic in purpose, and indeed reflects a relatively “low” register of scientific activity. All the more fascinating, then, since this level of activity and learning does not usually leave traces in the written record.

Although the language of the notes is Hebrew, there is no other overt sign of the Jewishness of either teacher or pupils. Only once does a “religious” reference appear, when the note taker mentions giving thanks to “the Creator of the universe,” and even there he is quoting from his source.²³ Names of Jewish astronomers and mathematicians are given in their Catalan form next to citations of Ptolemy and al-Battani, and much of the extracted scientific material appears without reference to the nature or background of its source. This is Jewish science, then, only in the banal sense that it is being done by Jews. And yet the fact that they write their mathematics in Hebrew rather than in the vernacular of their everyday lives should not be dismissed. In itself it constitutes a sign, unspoken and perhaps even to some extent unconscious, of Jewish identity.

MS PARMA BIBLIOTECA PALATINA 2290

A second source is a collection of Profayt Duran’s writings put together by another student, in this case one whose name we know: Meir Crescas.²⁴ Crescas’s interests seem to have pointed him to material quite different from that just discussed: specifically, the numerological legacy of Abraham ibn Ezra. The compilation includes an eight-line poem by ibn Ezra built around the first ten numbers; according to Crescas, the poem was customarily recited in Barcelona at the afternoon service of Yom Kippur. It is accompanied by Duran’s explanation of the poem’s meaning, an explanation said here to have been written at the request of the two sons of Benveniste (ben Lavi). Crescas follows this with letters by Duran sent in response to two queries: one about the mystical and numerical qualities of the number seven (discussed in detail in Chapter 6 below) and the other, which I touch on in Chapter 4, about prophecy, prompted by a confusing phrase in the magical text Sefer ha-Tamar (“Book of the Date-Palm”). Another riddle poem by Abraham ibn Ezra, this time about the metaphysical significance of the Hebrew letters appearing in the divine names, is likewise explicated by Duran. There are also two explanations of opaque comments by ibn Ezra on passages in the Pentateuch and an additional comment, not by Duran, again relating to the significance of the number seven in the Hebrew Bible. Finally, there appears Duran’s lengthy eulogy for Abraham ben Isaac of Girona, dated to the end of 1393.

Meir Crescas’s notes differ in style from the informal, hurried, and economical notes of our first, anonymous student. In this case, he has made a clear attempt at uniformity and legibility, possibly so that others might ultimately read what he has written. It is also conceivable that he copied the material within a relatively contained period of time, perhaps from an earlier notebook collection. Nevertheless, these notes, too, represent the record of a study group.

Crescas writes: “Said the scribe [that is, Meir Crescas himself]: I did not think it proper to copy more from his explanation of this section from the notebook of one of the companions, as we hear the words of the sage [only] sometimes and rarely. And this [passage] indeed, with difficulty and with great labor [is still] ambiguous, since in what remains I am not certain it agrees with the opinion of the sage and it was not clear to me that it comes from his mouth. And I shall pass to what I have attained from him regarding the section ‘Speak to the priests’ [Lev. 22:26–23:44], along with the rest of the faithful companions.”²⁵

These lines, like the class notes of our first student, evoke a scene of several adult disciples studying together, sometimes with and sometimes without their master, each perhaps with a notebook that may be shared with other members of the group. Something similar may have taken place among the circle of students led by the Provençal astronomer and philosopher Levi ben Gerson in the mid-fourteenth century, whose “school” has been described by Ruth Glasner.²⁶ They too termed their master moreinu or ḥakham, and they too appear to have considered themselves a group of companions (ḥaverim), with Levi ben Gerson himself referred to as he-ari she-ba-ḥavurah, “the lion in the company.”²⁷ The main difference is that here Profayt Duran does appear to have attended the class in person on at least some occasions, while there the students gathered as a group but without the teacher’s presence. Another example may be that of Abraham Rimoch who explains in the introduction to his commentary on Psalms that he has “settled down with [his] few disciples who have stayed with [him].”²⁸

In these student groups we might be glimpsing a model for the “circles” of scholars whose importance in the development of philosophical thought in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries has been stressed by Dov Schwartz.²⁹ The existence of such study circles and groups of individuals separated in space but in contact on topics of mutual interest illustrates how scattered members of the Jewish elites—a very small subset of an already small and marginal group—could and did maintain a sense of cultural identity and cohesion.

As for when this manuscript might have been written, Crescas refers consistently to Duran as maestre Profayt Duran ha-Levi or maestre Profayt ha-Levi, that is, by his preconversion name. Still, it is in the 1393 eulogy, the last text of the set copied here, that Duran announces his new Hebrew name as “Efod.” The manuscript was clearly completed after that year, and thus at minimum a year or two after Duran’s conversion. Moreover, at the end of the explanation just mentioned, Meir writes that “this is what was transmitted to us of this explanation in secrecy and hiding.”³⁰ It sounds very much as though Duran were communicating with his students while at the same time living as a Christian. Did they meet clandestinely? Did Duran write out his explanations of ibn Ezra and pass them secretly to one of his students? Striking, too, is the fact that Duran’s students do not seem to have been particularly disturbed by the fact of his baptism. That he was concurrently pretending to be a Christian (and attending mass?) did not apparently disqualify him from providing teachings on biblical interpretation; it only seems to have made their meetings more difficult and so less frequent.

As I have mentioned, Meir Crescas also chose to add one passage not by Duran. To all appearances Crescas’s own, it is a further comment on the appearances of the number seven in the Bible and in particular two aspects of that number that he has found in Duran’s epistle on the hebdomad. The first is that seven represents rest in this harsh world, like the holiday of Shemini Atzeret on the seventh day of Sukkot; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the seventh month; the shemittah year, which takes place every seventh year; and the Jubilee year, occurring once every forty-nine (seven times seven) years. His second point is that the square of seven is forty-nine, which represents a cycle of return. Then he offers his own opinions, gleaned from “books and his own mind.” First: seven represents the creation of the world. Second: since man is a social creature, he must devote six days to maintenance of the body, the house, or the city. The Sabbath, on the other hand, is one day set aside from the week to contemplate metaphysics and to cleave to the separate intellect. Meir Crescas would thus seem to share Duran’s philosophical rationalism, a rationalism that thinks of the Sabbath as inculcating belief in God’s creation of the world (through its association with the number seven), and the Sabbath as a time for metaphysical study.

Who were these students of Duran? Although it was common enough for parents who could afford the expense to hire tutors for their young children, it seems plain that Duran’s disciples were long past that age. Meir Crescas himself was no child: in the opening to his essay on the number seven, Duran twice addresses him as gevir, “master,” and treats him in terms of respect and flattery that one can hardly imagine a teacher employing toward a youngster (unless, perhaps, he were of a truly exalted station in life).

Aside from study circles and personal correspondence, another method of transmitting scientific knowledge was via the learned epistle. These, like the letters Duran sent to Meir Crescas, were evidently circulated among interested parties and copied into notebooks or manuscripts.³¹ One example is Duran’s Ḥilluf ha-yamim ve-haleilot (“The Variation of the Days and the Nights”), a brief treatment of the equation of time—that is, variations in the length of the day according to the time of year and the latitude. The text explains why and how the true solar day varies over the course of the year, and why it is necessary to define a mean solar day for astronomical measurements. Another is his letter to Shealtiel Gracian on the differences between the true and the median conjunction, which, just like the question about the equation of time, explains why astronomy, for its own computational purposes, defines the “mean” behavior of the celestial motion and how this mean relates to the actual, true motion of the earth and planets.

In both these epistles, Duran displays his understanding of the geometrical models used in medieval astronomy. Both topics may have been related to understanding the workings of astronomical tables, which could include tables for the equation of time as well as tables of eclipses (which, when they take place, do so either at conjunction or opposition). The tables of Jacob Bonjorn, for example, astronomer to Pere III, specified for an observer in Perpignan the true conjunctions and oppositions of the sun and moon for the years 1361 through 1391, including the date and time for each conjunction (and opposition), a correction for finding the time of the true conjunction in previous or later cycles, and the true positions of the sun and moon at the time of the conjunction.³²

* * *

Current scholarship has argued that in general the imprint of the court as a locus of scientific activity was less important in early modern Spain than it was in Renaissance Italy, Spanish science being more strongly shaped by the needs of a specifically maritime empire.³³ In the case of the Jews, however, the court seems to have been the primary factor. Although the flourishing of an important family of Jewish cartographers in fourteenth-century Majorca would seem to offers a prime example of Jewish science shaped by the needs of a maritime kingdom, the Jews in question, as Gabriel Llompart and Jaume Riera have shown, were not cartographers but rather illuminators of maps of the world and nautical charts.³⁴ In this particular case, many of their maps (and elaborately painted compass cases) seem to have been produced as courtly gifts or fashionable luxuries rather than as practical charts used for actual navigation.

Of course, that the Aragonese kingdom drew much of its wealth and prestige from maritime trade and exploration was clearly a factor in the courtly interest in such maps and charts. But in the case of late medieval Iberian Jews, the role of the court in shaping scientific activity seems to have been more direct. Jewish astronomers, physicians, astrologers, instrument makers, clockmakers, and more were all employed by the Iberian monarchs, and royal interest in their skills was precisely what enabled their scientific activity. Jacob Bonjorn, though we know relatively little about him other than his astronomical tables, seems himself to have been a beneficiary of such royal patronage at the Aragonese court in Perpignan.

Joan I’s court was particularly open to the occult and to astrological divination. Profayt Duran’s appointment as astrologer reflects that openness. The skills needed for the practice of astrology—namely, knowledge of the principles of astronomy, the use of observational instruments, and the reading of astronomical tables—are precisely what some of Duran’s students were interested in.³⁵ In the medieval Islamic world, too, scientific work was done for “rulers whose primary interests lay in the practical benefits promised by the practitioners of medicine and astronomy and astrology and applied mathematics.”³⁶ Reflected very clearly in the class notes discussed above are both the technical nature of the science being imparted and the pragmatic nature of what appear to be the students’ scientific ambitions, as well as the fact that they were engaged in using and understanding astronomical tables. Duran’s teaching activities in these documents are thus emblematic of the kind of extrauniversity transmission of knowledge, court patronage, and utilitarian focus that seems to have characterized Iberian science (both Jewish and non-Jewish) at this period. Yet as we will see in Chapter 5, Duran’s scientific correspondence with peers also reflects a nonpragmatic preoccupation—for example, with the relation between the mathematical models of the heavens and sensible reality—that seems to stem from more theoretical and possibly theological concerns. In fact, Duran engaged in scientific activity at many levels, reflecting the interplay of social and economic factors with theological rationalizations and issues of Jewish identity.

One commonly recognized characteristic of the sciences in the Iberian Peninsula is their continued reliance on Arabic astronomy well into the sixteenth century, a conservatism usually attributed to the area’s geographical proximity to North Africa and to what has been called “indelible Arabic cultural influences.”³⁷ In the case of Duran, it is important to point out that Catalonia had no history of Muslim domination, or significant Muslim population. Still, the same conservative impulse has also been associated with Jewish and converso prominence in these fields, since, wherever in Iberia they lived, Jews were presumably the custodians of Arabic science. Indeed, recent quantitative studies confirm a decided preference among Jewish scholars for Arabic over Latin sources when it came to translating philosophical and scientific texts into Hebrew, a preference holding steady in Iberia up to the fifteenth century, when there appears a flurry of Hebrew translations of Latin philosophical texts.³⁸

On this point, what Duran and his students were studying is entirely congruent with the common perception. Apart from the obvious Ptolemy, their sources can be categorized as primarily ninth- through twelfth-century Arabic writers: al-Farghānī, al-Farabi, ibn Sina, ibn Aflaḥ, and ibn Rushd. These basic texts were supplemented by two twelfth-century Iberian Jewish astronomers, Abraham bar Ḥiyya and Abraham ibn Ezra. Finally, their contemporary (fourteenth-century) sources were also Jews: Levi ben Gerson and Jacob ben David Bonjorn. There is little sign of any knowledge of or interest in current Latin astronomy.

A single exception to the rule lies in a commentary by Duran on a short treatise on asymptotes called On Two Lines, which was probably translated into Hebrew from Arabic at the beginning of the fourteenth century.³⁹ Duran’s commentary exists in two manuscripts, and has itself been shown to rely heavily on a Latin paraphrase of the Latin version of On Two Lines.⁴⁰ That Duran’s scientific writings do not quote Latin astronomers thus does not mean he was not reading Latin scientific works, but it does suggest that in his view, as far as contemporary astronomy was concerned, the finest work was being done by Jews: Gersonides and Jacob Bonjorn in particular.

In passing I must note that Duran’s interest in the question of asymptotes seems to have arisen from his study of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed; there Maimonides mentions the concept of two lines that approach each other infinitely closely, but never actually touch, as being in the category of things that are ungraspable but true.⁴¹ Duran explicates this point in Guide I.73 in a passage that has been shown to be taken nearly exactly from a text attributed to Jacob Bonjorn and found in one manuscript of his Astronomical Tables.⁴² The passage has been described as “confused,” and Duran may have thought that he needed further explication of the question, spurring him to read the treatise On Two Lines and assimilate the material of the Latin paraphrase.

To recapitulate briefly: from the traces of the scientific activity of Duran and his students left in their notebooks and letters, manuscripts and marginalia, we have learned a certain amount about the methods of scientific teaching and study undertaken in Jewish communities outside the university setting. These students shared material from books and notebooks. They studied manuscripts together and recorded the comments of their teacher in the margins. Sometimes the glosses might be incorporated into and become part of the transmitted text, or sometimes the students might shape their informal marginal glosses into a formal commentary, copied independently of the text. In many cases, students paid careful attention to and noted down the reliability of their sources of information. Our exploration of the scientific activity of these groups of Jews illustrates not the production of new knowledge or new texts but another aspect of Jewish scientific activity: the transmission and consumption of known science.

In John E. Murdoch’s view, “the predominant social factor effecting intellectual development and change in the Middle Ages [was] the university.”⁴³ While Jewish scholarship was not entirely divorced from university learning, a very different dynamic was at work in determining the direction of its scientific and philosophical investigation. Murdoch has also argued for what he calls “the unitary character of late medieval learning,” by which he means that theological issues were closely linked to the questions pursued in natural philosophy; in the institutional setting of the university, the various schools were in conversation with each other.⁴⁴ As for the Iberian Jewish intellectual elite, its members were neither attached to a university nor entirely independent from each other. By means of the communication networks of scholarly epistles and the circulation of manuscripts, they were able to engage in issues of common interest. The settings where Jewish knowledge transmission took place were flexible and varied, ranging from study groups that could mix correspondence and personal encounter to exchanges of formal essay-like letters among groups of peers who shared questions and concerns. These networks of communication share some characteristics with the circulation of rabbinic responsa, exchanged by figures who typically knew each other, often by means of designated couriers. In certain respects, the two may indeed be considered parallel phenomena.⁴⁵

Transmission of information among Jews was thus largely ad hoc, responding to the interests and needs of individuals rather than to a set curriculum. What spurred these interests could vary from a practical need for valued technical skills to the intellectual need for careful exploration of lines of scientific or mathematical research, in this case often suggested by Maimonides. Indeed, for Duran and his circle, and for the Iberian Jewish rationalist elite as a whole, I would suggest that Maimonides’ Guide served as a base text, shaping the interests and motivations of Jewish scholars in a manner parallel to the way in which the Christian university curriculum shaped the interests and motivations of Christian scholars. Just as within the university context theological concerns could impress themselves on the study of natural philosophy, so too the intensive study of Maimonides tended to filter science through the lens of the master’s theological considerations.⁴⁶

As we will see, this is also very much true of Jewish philosophy as a whole.