Paul of Burgos

Paul of Burgos (Burgos, c. 1351 – 29 August 1435) was a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, lord chancellor, and exegete. He is known also as Pablo de Santa Maria, Paul de Santa Maria, and Paulus episcopus Burgensis. His original name was Solomon ha-Levi.

He was the most wealthy and influential Jew of Burgos, an erudite scholar of Talmudic and rabbinical literature, and a rabbi of the Jewish community. His father, Isaac ha-Levi, had come from Aragon or Navarre to Burgos in the middle of the fourteenth century. Solomon ha-Levi also apparently filled the office of tax-farmer at the same time.

His scholarship and intelligence, no less than his piety, won the praise of Isaac ben Sheshet, with whom he carried on a learned correspondence.

He received Christian baptism on 21 July 1391 at Burgos, taking the name Paul de Santa María. French historian Leon Poliakov writes that he converted in the aftermath of the great massacres of Jews which began on 6 June 1391. He himself said that he had been convinced by the works of Thomas Aquinas. At the same time his brothers Pedro Suárez and Alvar García, his sister María Nuñez, and his children, one daughter and four sons, aged from three to twelve years, were baptized. His wife, Joanna, whom he had married in his twenty-sixth year, remained faithful to Judaism, dying in that faith in 1420; she was afterward buried in the Church of S. Pablo, built by her husband.

Following his conversion, Paul, like fellow convert Joshua ha-Lorki (Gerónimo de Santa Fe) took an active role in persecuting Spanish Jews. Kenneth Levin has stated that when a wave of forced conversions of Jews to Christianity began in 1411, Paul "took a leading role in the assault on Spain’s remaining Jews and was responsible for drawing up edicts that isolated the Jews, stripped them of many communal rights, and, most importantly, deprived them of almost all means of earning a living, leaving them with the choice of death by privation for themselves and their families or conversion." Historians have strongly suggested that Paul converted for social and economic (as opposed to religious) reasons following a wave of anti-Jewish violence and forced conversions throughout Spain in 1391.

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