also have been taken from a second- or third-hand source.12 If he did know some Arabic, his familiarity would most likely have been connected to his training as a physician.
For, again like many of his class and education, Duran was a physician.13 Through the fourteenth century in the Crown of Aragon, Jews made up close to a third of all urban physicians, of whom, in this same period at least fifty are recorded as living or practicing in Perpignan. In addition to earning a substantial livelihood, successful Jewish physicians enjoyed high social status as well as privileges that included exemption from taxes, the right to move freely at night, and the right not to wear the Jewish badge while traveling.14 In Perpignan, as in Provence, physicians seem to have formed a large part of the wealthiest stratum of the Jewish community, and were hence in possession of the necessary capital to be active in moneylending.15 Well educated, they were often the guardians and perpetuators of Jewish scientific, philosophical, and literary culture.16
Beginning in 1387, the archives refer to Duran variously as magister, phisicus, and medicus. In Hebrew manuscripts by copyists and contemporaries, his name likewise appears often with the title—maestre—of a medical professional. At some point he composed a brief, explanatory Hebrew commentary on the first book of the Canon of Medicine by ibn Sina (Avicenna, c. 980–1037).17 Certainly his philosophical writings disclose a broad familiarity with medical issues. For example, in Ma‘aseh Efod, Duran uses frequent medical examples and illustrations, includes an aside on the biblical disease of tzara‘at, and inserts medicine into his general pedagogic curriculum, pointing to it as a science that conduces to spiritual and religious perfection and defending it vigorously against Naḥmanides.18 His eulogy for Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi of Girona begins with an extended medical parable comparing the suffering Jewish people to a patient in agonizing pain, a pain that is resistant to healing both because of the faulty temperament of the patient and because of the grievousness of the wound.19
Although all of this, with the possible exception of the commentary on the Canon of Medicine, is certainly consistent with a medical professional, nowhere is there an indication of substantially greater knowledge than might be expected from a well-educated member of the intellectual elite. For Duran, like many others of that Jewish elite, the practice of medicine formed part of his professional identity, and its principles formed part of his education, but his writings do not reveal any deep concern for medicine as a field of inquiry or of theory. He may have belonged to the medical profession, but his scientific activity was focused beyond it, toward such topics as mathematics, the calendar, astronomy, and Hebrew grammar.
Astronomy in particular seems to have spurred his independent intellectual activity. As we will see below, over the course of his life Duran studied an impressive roster of technical astronomical works: among others, Ptolemy’s Almagest, ibn Rushd’s Epitome of the Almagest, Jābir ibn Aflaḥ’s Correction of the Almagest, al-Farghānī’s Elements of Astronomy, Levi ben Gerson’s Astronomy (part of his Wars of the Lord), and Joseph ibn Naḥmias’s Light of the World.
During his early years Duran also pursued philosophical studies, acquiring a thorough grounding in the rationalist intellectual culture of late medieval Iberian Jewry. Later in life, he reflected that he had spent too much time in philosophy as a young man: “Perhaps one will speak and object … that I inclined to the study of the books of the philosophers more than was proper, since apprehending it was easy, and I neglected study of the Torah, which is my life…. I too acknowledge that I strayed in this from the path of intellect and did not listen to the voice of my teachers.”20
Distinguishing among Jewish philosophical cultures in the late Middle Ages, Dov Schwartz has remarked that Iberian thinkers tended toward synthesis and interdisciplinary activity (combining philosophy, science, and kabbalah), whereas Provençal thinkers adopted “extreme and sharply defined positions.”21 In addition, in Schwartz’s view, while Iberian writers were open to their Provençal coreligionists and freely cited them, the reverse was not true.22 In both of these respects, Duran belongs to the Iberian Jewish philosophical culture.
Duran studied the Guide of the Perplexed intensively, writing a now well known commentary on the book discussed in Chapter 3. From references to Rabbi Nissim of Girona (1320–c. 1380), in terms indicating that he is still alive, we may conclude that at least part of the commentary was written at some point in Duran’s twenties.23 He had not yet become a doctor but was nearly mature enough to be appointed consiliarius of the Perpignan aljama (which happened in 1381).24
It is also possible that he wrote a commentary to Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, if one relies on the evidence of a few glosses in one manuscript, perhaps excerpted from a longer work. Those glosses refer to passages from the beginning of book II and, since they also allude to the Guide, suggest a date later than his Guide commentary.25 Like Duran’s glosses to the Guide, those on the Kuzari form a running commentary aimed primarily at clarifying vague referents and awkward syntax. Strikingly, in one of his final comments, referring to a series of passages in the Kuzari that deal with the Jewish calendar, Duran writes that the topic is “a hidden matter that should properly have a treatise of its own devoted to it.” This helps to place the Kuzari glosses earlier than Duran’s 1395 calendrical work Ḥeshev ha-Efod. Indeed, it may have been his study of this particular passage in the Kuzari that led Duran to attempt a full discussion of the subject.
Of Duran’s remaining two commentaries, one, very brief, is on the first book of ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine , and the other is on the Hebrew translation of the Epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest by ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198), a nontechnical summary of the primary textbook of medieval astronomy. The latter commentary will be discussed in Chapter 2.
It is likely that Duran’s commentaries arose directly out of his own pedagogical activity. His remarks on ibn Rushd’s Epitome of the Almagest, for example, seem to have been taken down by his students in the margins of manuscripts and later collected in more elaborate form in a single text.26 Distinctive to all of Duran’s commentaries, in striking contrast to his epistles and independent treatises, is that none opens with an introduction. This, too, suggests that the commentaries derive from marginal glosses and were not conceived as independent works, where, by contrast, Duran is unfailingly conscientious about introducing the subject and clarifying important premises and definitions. Another distinguishing mark is that all are attributed to the Efod, and not (as in the case of several other works) to “Profayt Duran ha-Levi.” This again points to the likelihood that they originated as marginal glosses, which, as noted, were normally signed with an acronymic abbreviation of the glossator’s name, preceded by an alef for amar (“he said”). Stylistically, too, they are all similar: Duran’s glosses are often mere restatements, rephrasing or summarizing difficult sentences and providing cross-references to other relevant works and clarifications of vague allusions and referents.
At some point before 1382, Duran married a woman named Astrugua.27 In the second half of the thirteenth century, Perpignan Jews had tended to marry at about the age of eighteen, sometimes younger; a century later, Duran may have done so as well.28
Like most Jews with some wealth to exploit, Duran lent money to Christians. Starting in the 1370s, both alone and in joint ventures, he did so regularly. Over the next couple of decades, and especially in 1389, 1390, and the early part of 1391, references to him in the archival records frequently concern such transactions.29 This activity, though curtailed after his conversion, continued throughout his life; as late as 1409, he is found collecting old debts through his proctor Cresques Alfaquim. Duran also appears in the archives in a variety of other economic transactions, as witness or proctor
