The Anti-Jewish Bookcase at the Time of Benedict XIII. André Dias de Escobar’s Unedited Treatise De publicatione haeresum (ca. 1417) and Its Talmudic Sources

André Dias de Escobar (c. 1357-1448) was a central figure in the history of the Church during the fifteenth century. While his life in the service of various popes reflects the turmoil of the Western Schism, his works and his engagement – as a participant and a theoretician – in the major councils of his day clearly express his determination to contribute to a reform of the Church. This article focuses on a neglected work of his, to wit, the anti-Jewish treatise De publicatione haeresum contentarum in Talmud, which André wrote after spending time at the court of the (anti) pope Benedict XIII in Tortosa (1414). During his sojourn, André attended the last sessions of the so-called Disputation of Tortosa, a Christian-Jewish debate on the Talmud convened by Benedict XIII. As we show by means of philological analysis, De publicatione, which has not yet been edited, turns out to be something of a treasure trove for scholars of anti-Talmudic Christian polemic literature. Compiling a wide range of both known and unknown sources, it seems to draw to a large extent on Pope Benedict’s rich anti-heretical and, more specifically, anti-Jewish library. The article thus contributes to our understanding of the textual and doctrinal context of one of the major anti-Jewish disputations of the Middle Ages, while it also sheds new light on the history of Benedict’s anti-heretical library.