Note 55 — RABBINICAL LEGENDS, TALES, FABLES, AND APHORISMS.

In midsummer, 1244, twenty waggon loads of copies of the Talmud were burnt in France. This was in consequence of, and four years after, a public dispute between a certain Donin (afterwards called Nicolaus), a converted Jew, with Rabbi Yehiel, of Paris, on the contents of the Talmud.—See Journal of Philology, vol. xvi, p. 133.—In the year 1569, the famous Jewish library in Cremona was plundered, and 12,000 copies of the Talmud and other Jewish works were committed to the flames.—The Talmud, by Joseph Barclay, LL. D., London, 1875, p. 14. Return