AVNER [OF BURGOS?]

(1260/70–c. 1340)

Toward the end of the thirteenth century, pietistic and mystical trends took hold of Spanish Jewry and Christianity: the central work of the Qabbala, The Zohar, was composed between 1280 and 1286 in central Castile, and like contemporary Christian mystical movements, it espoused humility, poverty, and closeness to nature. In addition to advancing an implicit critique of the Spanish-Jewish aristocracy, which the qabbalists—and some of the Hebrew poets of the day—considered arrogant and corrupt, The Zohar and other related mystical texts of the time spoke of the imminent spiritual triumphs of a messianic age, against the backdrop of Christian persecution. Great fervor followed in the Jewish community, though not always along lines the qabbalists had envisioned. In the summer of 1295, at the urging of a self-styled prophet from Avila, Jews dressed in white and gathered in synagogues—as on the Day of Atonement—hoping to hear a blast from the Messiah’s shofar, or ram’s horn, which would signal the start of the End. Instead, as Christian tradition has it, a hail of crosses fell from the sky, appearing on the worshipers’ garments and in their homes. Some of the people who had seen the vision of the crosses came for treatment to a prominent local physician by the name of Avner. Already troubled by the theological implications of Jewish suffering in exile, Avner, like many members of the Jewish community, was greatly disturbed by the mysterious events and for the next twenty-five years he wrestled with his belief in Jewish teachings. Finally, in 1320, writing in Hebrew, he professed his Christian faith in a work that was then translated into Spanish, and Avner was baptized and given the name Alfonso of Valladolid. He spent the rest of his life as a minor church official, launching a series of vitriolic attacks on Jews and Judaism as a whole, though his particular brand of Christianity incorporated many Jewish, and even qabbalistic, elements.

His polemics (all of which were conducted in Hebrew, even after the conversion) reveal Avner/Alfonso to be a sharp thinker and a gifted writer. In 1961 a manuscript was discovered that included a long and highly unusual poetic confession—technically a baqasha—by a paytan named AVNER. The work’s peculiar intensity and embodiment of an acute sense of guilt, evident in the excerpt translated here, have led scholars to attribute the poem to Avner of Burgos, prior to his conversion.

THE LAST WORDS OF MY DESIRE