Hasdai Crescas, the last important successor of…

1411 CE

Hasdai Crescas, the last important successor of Maimonides, undertakes a critique of Aristotle in the interest of simple faith, and in an attempt to show that Aristotelian rationalism is far from infallible.

The Spanish Jewish philosopher deplores the fact that Maimonides, whose scholarship and honesty he otherwise admires, seemed to make Greek philosophy the basis for Jewish doctrine.

Coming from a family of scholars, he had been a disciple of the Talmudist and philosopher Nissim ben Reuben, known as The RaN (for the Hebrew acronym of his name).

Following in the footsteps of his teacher, he had become a Talmudic authority and a philosopher of great originality.

He is considered important in the history of modern thought for his deep influence on Baruch Spinoza.

While Crescas does not occupy an official position as rabbi, he seems to have been active as a teacher.

Among his fellow students and friends, Isaac ben Sheshet (known as the RIBaSH), famous for his responsa, takes precedence.

Joseph Albo is the best known of his pupils, but at least two others will win recognition, Rabbi Mattathias of Saragossa, and Rabbi Zechariah ha-Levi.

Crescas, a man of means, had been appointed sole executor of the will of his uncle Vitalis Azday by the King of Aragon in 1393.

Although Crescas enjoys the high esteem even of prominent non-Jews, he had been imprisoned upon a false accusation in 1378, and suffers personal indignities because he is a Jew.

His only son had died in 1391, one of many thousands of martyrs for his faith during the anti-Jewish persecutions of this year in Iberia; Crescas had nevertheless kept his faith.

Notwithstanding his bereavement, his mental powers had remained intact: after that terrible year he wrote the works for which he will become celebrated.

He is said to have become one of the adherents of the pseudo-Messiah of Cisneros, Moses Botarel, a “miracle-worker” who had announced himself as the Messiah in Cisneros in the year 1393, but this allegation may be a spurious one.

In 1401-02, Crescas had visited Joseph Orabuena at Pamplona at the request of the King of Navarre, who paid the expenses of his journey to various Navarrese towns (Jacobs, l.c.

Nos.

1570, 1574).

He was at that time described as "Rav of Saragossa."

His works on Jewish law—if indeed ever committed to writing—have not survived, but his concise philosophical work Or Adonai, (The Light of the Lord) will become a classical Jewish refutation of medieval Aristotelianism, and a harbinger of the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century.

He dies in 1410 or 1411.