y King!

O thou, who makest guilt to disappear,
My help, my hope, my rock, I will not fear;
Though thou the body hold in dungeon drear,
The soul has found the palace of the King!

Everything that Nachmanides wrote is warm with tender love. He was an
enthusiast in many directions. His heart went out to the French
Talmudists, yet he cherished so genuine an affection for Maimonides that
he defended him with spirit against his detractors. Gentle by nature, he
broke forth into fiery indignation against the French critics of
Maimonides. At the same time his tender soul was attracted by the
emotionalism of the Kabbala, or mystical view of life, a view equally
opposed to the views of Maimonides and of the French school. He tried to
act the part of reconciler, but his intellect, strong as it was, was too
much at the mercy of his emotions for him to win a commanding place in
the controversies of his time.

For a moment we may turn aside from his books to the incidents of his
life. Like Maimonides, he was a physician by profession and a Rabbi by
way of leisure. The most momentous incident in his career in Barcelona
was his involuntary participation in a public dispute with a convert
from the Synagogue. Pablo Christiani burned with the desire to convert
the Jews _en masse_ to Christianity, and in 1263 he induced King Jayme I
of Aragon to summon Nachmanides to a controversy on the truth of
Christianity. Nachmanides complied with the royal command most
reluctantly. He felt that the process of rousing theological animosity
by a public discussion could only end in a religious persecution.
However, he had no alternative but to assent. He stipulated for complete
freedom of speech. This was granted, but when Nachmanides published his
version of the discussion, the Dominicans were incensed. True, the
special commission appointed to examine the charge of blasphemy brought
against Nachmanides reported that he had merely availed himself of the
right of free speech which had been guaranteed to him. He was
nevertheless sentenced to exile, and his pamphlet was burnt. Nachmanides
was seventy years of age at the time. He settled in Palestine, where he
died in about 1270, amid a band of devoted friends and disciples, who
did not, however, reconcile him to the separation from his Spanish home.
"I left my family," he wrote, "I forsook my house. There, with my sons
and daughters, the sweet, dear children whom I brought up on my kn