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Concept
Paul of Burgos
Summary
Paul of Burgos (Burgos, 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 María. 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 to Burgos in the middle of the fourteenth century. Solomon ha-Levi also apparently filled the office of tax-farmer at the same time.
According to Graetz, his scholarship and intelligence, no less than his piety, won the praise of Isaac ben Sheshet, with whom he carried on a learned correspondence. This assertion is disputed by Atlas and Hershman as anachronistic; "...the disparity in age between Paul de Burgos and Perfet renders the assumption of Graetz untenable."
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. The official Catholic Church records show that he had converted to Christianity a year earlier (at 21 July 1390), but studies attribute this record forgery to Paul himself, who wanted to show that it wasn't the pressure of the massacre that instigated his baptism. 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 Benvenisti, 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.In 1406, following a law allowing Jews to return to Judaism, their daughter Beatrice and their youngest son Todros returned to Judaism.
Official source
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