Burning of the Talmud in Paris

In 1238 Nicholas Donin, a Jew of La Rochelle who had been excommunicated and later became a Franciscan, brought 35 charges against the Talmud to Pope Gregory IX, accusing it of blasphemy against Christianity. In 1239 the pope ordered the kings of Europe to seize Jewish books on the first Sabbath of Lent 1240; only Louis IX of France obeyed. In June 1240 a disputation was held in Paris before the queen mother, Blanche of Castile, in which Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, the head of the city's yeshiva, defended the Talmud, with Rabbi Moses of Coucy and others. The Talmud was condemned, and in June 1242 about twenty-four cartloads of manuscripts, thousands of volumes copied by hand, were burned in the Place de Grève.

Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, then a young student in France, saw the fire and wrote the elegy "Sha'ali Serufah Ba'esh", recited on Tisha B'Av. Some communities fast on the Friday before the Torah reading of Chukat in its memory. The burning crippled the Tosafist academies of France, and Rabbi Yechiel later settled in Acre.