Pablo de Santa María

Origins and early life

Pablo de Santa María was born about 1351 at Burgos as Salomón ha-Leví, son of Isaac ha-Leví, and was the rabbi of the aljama of Burgos, a scholar of the Talmud who corresponded with the leading Jewish minds of Castile; he was, in short, a Jew of the first rank in his own community before he was anything else.

Work and career

This fiche states plainly what happened next: on 21 July 1390 he was baptized at Burgos together with his brothers and his children, taking the name Pablo de Santa María, while his wife Juana refused and remained a Jew until her death; the date puts the conversion a year before the massacres of 1391, though a minority of sources place it after them, and historians have argued ever since over how far conviction, ambition or the visible approach of catastrophe moved him.

He studied theology at Paris, was ordained, and rose with extraordinary speed: bishop of Cartagena in 1402, chancellor of Castile, tutor and then regent's counsellor to the young John II, bishop of Burgos from 1415, papal legate. He wrote the Scrutinium Scripturarum, a dialogue arguing Christianity from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, and additions to the standard biblical commentary of Nicholas of Lyra, and he supported legislation restricting the Jews of Castile — a fact this fiche does not soften.

His family became one of the most remarkable in Spain: his son Alonso de Cartagena, bishop and humanist, his son Gonzalo García de Santa María, and his brother Álvar García de Santa María, royal chronicler, all have their own fiches on this site, and all descended from the rabbi of Burgos. He died at Burgos on 29 August 1435.