CHAPTER XLIV
MOSES MAIMONIDES (MUSA IBN MAIMUN) 1135-1204
His life—His works in the west—His works in Latin—Attitude to science and religion—Attitude to magic—Towards empiricism—Abuse of divine names—Occult virtue and empirical remedies in his work on poisons—Attitude to astrology—Divination and prophecy—Marvels in the Aphorisms.
His life.
In this chapter we turn to consider perhaps the leading representative of Hebrew learning in the middle ages, Moses Maimonides[619] or Musa ibn Maimum or Moses ben Maimon, as he is variously briefly styled, not to entangle ourselves in the intricacies of his full Arabic name. In the Latin versions of his works he is spoken of as Rabbi Moyses of Cordova[620] or is made to call himself an Israelite of Cordova, [621] but it seems to have been not much more than the scene of his birth and childhood, since the invasion of the fanatical Almohades in 1148 forced his father to flee with his family first from place to place in Spain, in 1160 to Fez, later to Syria and Egypt. From about 1165 on Maimonides seems to have lived most of the time at Cairo and there to have done most of his work. After the deaths of his father and brother forced him to earn a livelihood by practicing medicine, he became physician to the vizier of Saladin and head of the Jewish community in Cairo.
His works in the west.
Whether or not he returned to Spain before his death in 1204, he was certainly known to the western world of learning. In 1194 he wrote a letter on the subject of astrology in response to inquiries which he had received from Jews of Marseilles.[622] In it he tells them that his Repetition of the Law (Iteratio legis) has already spread through the island of Sicily. But he apparently was still in Cairo, where in July, 1198, he wrote his treatise on Poisons for the Cadi Fadhil.[623] After his death, however, it was between the conservative and liberal parties among the Jews of France and Spain that a struggle ensued over the orthodoxy of his works, which was finally settled, we are told, by reference in 1234 to the Christian authorities, who ordered his books to be burned. His Guide for the Perplexed, first published in Egypt in Arabic in 1190, had been translated into Hebrew at Lunel in southern France before the close of the twelfth century, and then again by a Spanish poet.[624] But the rabbis of northern France opposed the introduction of Maimonides’ works there and, when they were anathematized for it by those of the south, are said to have reported the writings to the Inquisition. The Maimonist party then accused them of delation and several of them were punished by having their tongues cut out.[625]
His works in Latin.
If certain Christian authorities really did thus burn the books of Maimonides, their action was unavailing to check the spread of his writings even in Christian lands, and certainly was not characteristic of the attitude of Christian Latin learning in general. The Guide of the Perplexed had already been translated into Latin before 1234,[626] and we find Moses of Cordova cited by such staunch churchmen as Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus,[627] Thomas Aquinas, and Vincent of Beauvais. It was for Pope Clement V himself that Ermengard Blasius of Montpellier translated at Barcelona Maimonides’ work on Poisons at the beginning of the fourteenth century from Arabic into Latin.[628]
Attitude to science and religion.
It was not surprising that Albert and Aquinas should cite Maimonides, for he did for Jewish thought what they attempted for Christian, namely, the reconciliation of Aristotle and the Bible, philosophy and written revelation. If he anteceded them in this and perhaps to some extent showed them the way, we must remember that William of Conches, who was earlier than he, had already faced this difficulty of the relations between science and religion, the scriptures and the writings of the philosophers, although he of course did not know all the books of Aristotle. As for Maimonides, continuing the allegorical method of Philo, he tried to discover in the Old Testament and Talmud all the Aristotelian philosophy, and was convinced that the prophets of old had received further revelations of a philosophical character, which had been transmitted orally for a time but then lost during the periods of Jewish wandering and persecution.[629] He defended Moses from the slurs of Galen who had charged the lawgiver with an unscientific attitude.[630] He denied the eternity of matter[631] and of the heavens,[632] but held that the celestial bodies were living animated beings and that the heavenly spheres were conscious and free.[633] He spoke of belief in demons as “idle and fallacious,” holding that evil is mere privation and that the personal Devil of Scripture was an allegory for this, while the possession by demons was merely the disease of melancholy.[634] Yet he believed that God does nothing without the mediation of an angel and that belief in the existence of angels is only second in importance to a belief in God.[635] Thus the rationalism and scepticism which modern Jewish admirers have ascribed to Maimonides had their decided limitations.
Attitude to magic.
An interesting discussion of magic occurs in the Guide for the Perplexed[636] in connection with the precepts of the Mosaic law against idolatry. Maimonides holds that magicians and diviners are closely akin to idolaters, and this part of his discussion is very similar to patristic treatments which we have already encountered. He goes on, however, to say that astrology and magic were especially characteristic of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Canaanites, and to distinguish three varieties of magic: one employing the properties of plants, animals and metals; a second determining the times when these works should be performed; a third employing gesticulations, actions, and cries of the human operator himself. Thus he recognizes the three elements of materials, times, and rites in magic. He sees that they may be combined in one operation, as when an herb is plucked when the moon is in a specified degree. He notes that magic is largely performed by women, towards whom men are more merciful than towards their own sex. He also notes that magicians claim to do good or at least to ward off evils such as snakes and wild beasts or the blight from plants. But the lawgiver forbade “all those practices which contrary to natural science are said to produce utility by special and occult virtues and properties, ... such forsooth as proceed not from a natural cause but a magical operation and which rely upon the constellations to such a degree as to involve worship and veneration of them.”[637]
Towards empiricism.
But then Maimonides goes on to say that “everything is licit in which any natural cause appears.” And he goes farther than that. He says that the reader need not feel uneasy because the rabbis have allowed the use in suspensions of a nail from the yoke worn by criminals or the tooth of a fox. “For in those times they placed faith in these things because they were confirmed by experience and served in the place of medicine.” Similarly in Maimonides’ own day Galen’s remedy of the suspension of a peony from the patient’s neck was employed in cases of epilepsy, dog’s dung was used against pustules and sore throat, and so forth. “For whatever is proved by experience to be true, although no natural cause may be apparent, its use is permitted, because it acts as a medicine.” Thus he condemns magic, but approves of empirical medicine as well as of natural science, and evidently does not regard the employment of occult virtues as necessarily magical and forbidden.
Abuse of divine names.
In another passage of the Guide Maimonides cautions, however, against the abuse of divine names, and, while he holds to the Tetragrammaton “which is written but is not pronounced as it is spelled,” deplores the many inventions of meaningless and inefficacious names which superstitious and insane men have too often imposed upon the credulity of good men as possessed of peculiar sanctity and purity and having the virtue of working miracles. He therefore warns his readers against such “amulets or experimental charts.”[638]
Occult virtue and empirical remedies in his work on poisons.
Maimonides again approves of empirical remedies and of occult virtues in his treatise on poisons. He holds that counter-poisons do not act by any physical or chemical quality but by their entire substance or by a special property.[639] Lemon pips, peeled and applied in a compress; a powdered emerald, which should be a beautiful green, quite transparent, and of good water; and the animal bezoar, which comes from the eyes or gall bladder of deer; these are antidotes whose efficacy is proved by incontestible experimentation. When terra sigillata cannot be had, a powdered emerald of the sort just described may be substituted for it as an ingredient in the grand theriac.[640] Maimonides believes that this last named remedy is the outcome of experiments with vipers carried on through the course of centuries by ancient philosophers and physicians.[641] As for the stone bezoar, the writings of the moderns are full of marvelous tales concerning it, but Galen does not mention it, and Maimonides has tried all the varieties which he could obtain against scorpion bites without the least success. But experience confirms the virtue of the bezoar of animal origin, as has been stated. Maimonides’ observations concerning cures for the bites of mad dogs are interesting. He states that at first the bite of a mad dog does not feel any different from that of a dog who is not mad. He also warns his readers not to trust to books to distinguish between the two, but unless they are sure that the dog was not mad, to keep on the safe side by taking the remedies against the bite of a mad dog.[642] He also states that all of the various remedies listed for the cure of the bite of a mad dog must be employed before hydrophobia manifests itself, “for after the appearance of that symptom, I have never seen a patient survive.”[643] In speaking of sucking the venom from a wound, Maimonides affirms that it is better to have this done by a fasting person, since the spittle of such a person is itself hostile to poisons.[644]
Attitude to astrology.
That Maimonides was well acquainted with the art of astrology may be inferred from his assertion that he has read every book in Arabic on the subject.[645] Maimonides not only believed that the stars were living, animated beings and that there were as many pure intelligences as there were spheres,[646] but he states twice in the Guide for the Perplexed[647] that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of generation and corruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the celestial spheres. While their influence is diffused through all things, each star or planet also has particular species especially under its influence. According to Lévy[648] he further held not only that the movement of the celestial sphere starts every motion in the universe, but that every soul has its origin in the soul of the celestial sphere. In his letter on astrology to the Jews of Marseilles he repeats that all the philosophers have held, and that Hebrew masters of the past have agreed with them, that whatever is in this inferior world the blessed God has brought about by that virtue which arises from the spheres and stars. As God performs signs and miracles by angels, so natural processes and operations by the spheres and stars which are animated and endowed with knowledge and science. All this is true and in no way derogates from the Jewish faith. But Maimonides regards as folly and not wisdom the doctrine found in Arabic works of astrology that a man’s nativity compels everything to happen to him just as it does and in no otherwise. He regards this doctrine as derived from the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Canaanites and makes the rather rash assertion that no Greek philosopher ever wrote a book of this sort. This doctrine would make no distinction between a man whom a lion meets and tears limb from limb and the mouse which a cat plays with. It would make men warring for kingdoms no different from dogs fighting over a carcass. These illustrations may seem to the reader rather favorable to the doctrine which Maimonides is endeavoring to combat, but he upholds human free will and man’s responsibility for his actions, which he declares are fundamental tenets of the Jewish law. For some reason which is not clear to me he identifies the doctrine of nativities and the control of human destiny by the constellations with the rule of blind chance and the happening of everything fortuitously, which would seem quite a different matter and third alternative.[649] Maimonides holds that God planned all human affairs beforehand, and that just as He planned the course of nature so as to allow for the occurrence of miracles, so He planned human affairs in such a way that men could be held responsible and punished for their sins. Maimonides regards the rule of chance and the doctrine of nativities as incompatible with this.
Divination and prophecy.
Yet Maimonides believed in a human faculty of natural divination, stating that the ability to conjecture and divine is found in all men to some degree, and that in some imagination and divination are so strong and sure that they correctly forecast all future events or the greater part of them.[650] The difference between true prophets and the diviners and observers of times “is that the observers of times, diviners, and such men, some of their words may be fulfilled and some of them may not be fulfilled.”[651]
Marvels in the Aphorisms
In his Aphorisms which are drawn largely from the works of Galen Maimonides repeats many marvelous stories, instances of belief in occult virtue, and medical methods bordering upon the practice of magic.[652] Most of these have already been mentioned in our chapters upon Galen and need not be reiterated here. It is perhaps worth noting that Maimonides displays some critical sense as to the authenticity of works ascribed to Galen. He does not accept as his a treatise forbidding the burial of a man until twenty-four hours after his supposed death, although the patriarch who translated it from Greek into Arabic regarded it as Galen’s. Maimonides suggests that it may be by some other Galen than the great physician “whose books are well known.” Maimonides also notes that in the work of Hippocrates on female ailments which Galen commented upon and Hunain translated there have been added many statements of a marvelous character by some third hand.
[619] In English, besides the article on Maimonides in the Jewish Encyclopedia, there is a rather good essay by Rabbi Gottheil in Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature. Recent works in French and German are: L. G. Lévy, Maimonide, 1911; Moses ben Maimon, sein Leben, seine Werke, und sein Einfluss, zur Erinnerung an den siebenhundertsten Todestag des Maimonides, herausg. v. d. Gesell. z. Förderung d. Wiss. d. Judenthums durch W. Bacher, M. Brann, D. Simonsen, J. Guttmann, 2 vols., containing twenty essays by various contributors, Leipzig, 1908 and 1914. L. Finkelscherer, Mose Maimunis Stellung zum Aberglauben und zur Mystik, Breslau, 1894; a Jena doctoral dissertation, full of somewhat juvenile generalizations, and which fails to appraise Maimonides’ attitude towards magic, astrology, and superstition comparatively. See also D. Joël, Der Aberglaube und die Stellung des Judenthums zu demselben, 1881-1883. Other older works on Maimonides are listed in the bibliography in the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nebukim) was translated by M. Friedländer, second edition, 1904, and I have also used the Latin translation of 1629. The Yad-Hachazakah was published in 1863; The Book of Precepts, in 1849; the Commentary on the Mishnah, in 1655. Other works will be listed in the four following foot-notes.
[620] “Rabymoyses Cordubensis,” fols. 1r and 13v of the Latin translation of his work on Poisons by Ermengard Blasius of Montpellier in an Oxford MS, Corpus Christi College 125.
[621] “Moysi israhelitici,” on the first page of a Latin translation printed in 1477 (?)—numbered IA.27063 in the British Museum—from his “Yad Hachazakah,” under the title, “De regimine sanitatis omnium hominum sub breviloquio compilatus.” In the Latin version of the Aphorisms printed in 1489 (numbered IA.28878 in the British Museum), “ait Moyses filius servuli dei israeliticus cordubensis,” and “Incipiunt aphorismi excellentissimi Raby Moyses secundum doctrinam Galieni medicorum principis.”
[622] Moses ben Maimon, De astrologia ... epistola, 1555, Hebrew text and Latin translation.
[623] See the preface as given in the French translation by I. M. Rabbinowicz, Paris, 1865. There is a German translation by M. Steinschneider, Gifte und Ihre Heilungen, Berlin, 1873.
[624] Lévy (1911), 237.
[625] Lévy (1911), 233, who cites “pour le détail” Kobéç III; Henda ghenonza, 18, Königsberg, 1856; Taam zeqanim, Frankfurt, 1854.
[626] Lévy (1911), 261, “Le Guide avait dû être traduit en latin au début du XIIIe siècle, attendu que, dès ce moment, on relève des traces de son influence dans la scolastique.... Moïse de Salerno déclare qu’il a lu le Guide en latin avec Nicolo Paglia di Giovenazzo, qui fonda en 1224 un convent dominicain à Trani.”
According to Gottheil, it was this Latin translation of the Guide which the Jewish opponents of Maimonides’ teaching induced the church to consign to the flames.
The Latin translation in CUL 1711 (Qi. I. 19), fols. 1-183, is ascribed in the catalogue to Augustinus Justinianus, Nebiensium Episcopus, and is said to have been printed in Paris, 1520.
[627] M. Joël, Verhältnis Albert des Grossen zu Moses Maimonides, 1863. A. Rohner, Das Schöpfungsproblem bei Moses Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, und Thomas von Aquin, 1913.
[628] See his preface in Corpus Christi 125, fol. 1r.
[629] Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 74.
[630] Aphorismi (1489), partic. 25. “Et ostendam hac demonstratione quod insipientia quam attribuit Moysi erat attribuenda ipsi Galieno vere et ponam dictum meum inter eos sicut inter duos sapientes unum compilatiorem alio....”
[631] JE, p. 77.
[632] Lévy (1911), p. 86.
[633] Lévy (1911), p. 84.
[634] Finkelscherer (1894), pp. 40-51.
[635] Lévy, pp. 89-90.
[636] More Nevochim (1629), III, 37.
[637] “... interdixit omnia ea quae contra speculationem naturalem specialibus et occultis viribus ac proprietatibus utilitatem afferre asserunt ... talia videlicet quae non ex ratione naturali sed ex opere magico sequuntur et stellarum dispositionibus ac rationibus innituntur, unde necessario ad colendas et venerandas illas devenitur.”
[638] More Nevochim (1629), I, 61-62.
[639] French translation (1865), p. 26.
[640] Ibid., pp. 27-28, 53-4.
[641] Ibid., p. 38.
[642] Poisons (1865), p. 43.
[643] Ibid., p. 40.
[644] Ibid., p. 21.
[645] So he states at the beginning of his De astrologia (1555).
[646] Lévy (1911), pp. 84-5.
[647] II, 5 and 10.
[648] Lévy (1911), p. 87.
[649] And the following passage seems quite confused and illogical; but perhaps the fault is with the Latin translator: “Ad haec omnes illae tres sectae philosophorum qui asseverant omnia per sphaeras et stellas fieri etiam dicunt quicquid mortalibus contingit id casu temere et fortuito fieri et nullam de supernis causam habere, nec ea in re quicquam.”
[650] More Nevochim (1629), II, 38.
[651] Yad-Hachazakah, (1863), I, i, x, pp. 63-4.
[652] These occur in the 24th section which is devoted to medical marvels: “Incipit particula xxiiii continens aphorismos dependentes a miraculis repertis in libris medicorum.” It is rather to Maimonides’ credit that he segregated these marvels in a separate chapter.