B. SALOSION (1.2 in) P prw p plan ritAm. The exact date of either the birth or death of this renowned author of the first Hebrew concordance, who traces his lineage to the royal family of David, has not as yet been ascertained. All that we know with certainty is, that he lived at Avignon, Montpellier, or Arles, in the time of Benedict XIII., and that his writings were called forth by the conduct of this anti-pope towards the Jews, which was as follows. This pope, Peter de Luna by name, who was declared a schis matic, heretic, and perjurer, and who was deposed by the council of Pisa (1409), but was still recognised on the Pyrenean peninsula, thought that he would secure the general recognition of his claims to St. Peter's chair if he could bring about the conversion of the Spanish Jews. Ile therefore issued a sum mons (1412) with the sanction of his patron, Fer dinand the Just, king of Aragon, to all the learned rabbins to hold a public controversy at Tortosa, and appointed the learned Jewish physician, Joshua Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fe, as he was called after his conversion, to prove to them from the Tal mud and other Jewish writings that the Messiah, whose advent the Jews were daily expecting, had already come in the person of Jesus Christ. To escape the threatening dangers, sixty of the most celebrated Jewish literati of Aragon answered the summons. They were headed by Don Bidal b. Benevenisti, Ibn Labi of Sarogossa, Joseph Albo, the famous author of the Ikarim, Sechariah Ha Levi Saladin, Astriic Levi, Bonastriic Desmaethe, Ihn Joseph, Ibn Jachja, etc., and this most famous controversy of Tolosa lasted fifteen months (from Feb. 1413 to Nov. 1414). Peter de Luna, or Benedict XIII. as he called himself, presided at the meetings, and Joshua Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fe, the anti-pope's champion, prepared for this controversy his celebrated two treatises, en titled Tractatus contra perfidiam yudayrum et contra Talmud, printed in the Bibliotheca Ilfaxima Patrum, torn. xxvi., and separately in Hebrao
mastix, Frankfort-on-the-Maine 1602. It was in reply to these tracts that R. Nathan wrote (t.) the work entitled urn nrvri, Correction of the Mis guide, which has not as vet been published. To the same cause is to be ascribed his (2.) Hebrew concordance, entitled 2'11) Pr? 11N, or n'Prn, which was designed to enable his brethren to rebut the attacks on by helping them to find easily the passages of the O. T. quoted in support of the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, and by aiding them to see what legitimate construction can be put on these passages in accordance with the context in which they occur. This concordance, to which R. Nathan devoted eight years of his life (1437-1445), and in which he adopted the plan of the Latin Concordance of Arlotti, general of the order of Minorites (circa 129o), first appeared with an elaborate introduction vannilplipri rrrnm) in Venice 1523, then again, with the introduction castrated by the inquisition, ibid. 1564, and Basil 1581," It was translated into Latin by Reuchlin, Basel 1556, and was inserted by the Minorite, Maria di Calasio, in his four-volume concordance, Rome 1602. R. Nathan's concordance is the basis both of Buxtorf's and Fiirst's concordances. Comp. Steinschneider, Catalogus Libr. Hebr. in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, col. 1141-1143 ; Ftirst, Bibli otheca yua'aica, iii. 22; Graetz, Geschichteder7redesz, vol. viii., p. 160-163, Leipzig 1864.—C. D. G.