The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus

Maud Kozodoy teaches in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

"Maud Kozodoy's book presents the first complete profile of Duran's life and thought. It is an exemplary work of intellectual history and a major contribution to scholarship on Duran and on converso literature. Her research emerges from a close reading of Duran's extant writings (published and unpublished) as well as archival materials, manuscript marginalia, student notes, contemporary accounts, and sources that offer historical parallels. By grounding Duran in his political, cultural, and intellectual contexts, Kozodoy peels back the layers of his Jewish identity and reveals the interconnections between that complex identity and his ideas." (Journal of Religion) "A long overdue study dedicated to a unique figure in late Iberian Jewish letters, Profayt Duran. Maud Kozodoy meticulously grounds her subject in the political, cultural, and intellectual history of his moment and moves carefully through Profayt Duran's major works, which are beautifully read, cited, and contextualized." (Susan Einbinder, University of Connecticut) "This rich and engaging work of intellectual and cultural analysis examines the inner and outer worlds of a key-yet hitherto relatively obscure-figure in late fourteenth-century Spain: the astronomer, philosopher, grammarian, theologian, and Jewish converso Profayt Duran. Through the careful study of Duran's wide-ranging oeuvre, Maud Kozodoy explores the links between Duran's scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas and his identity as a forced convert to Christianity, illuminating the complexities of converso identity before and after the mass forced conversions of 1391." (Paola Tartakoff, Rutgers University)