CHAPTER XI FROM RASHI'S DEATH TO THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE The preceding chapters show how voluminous and varied was Rashi's work. And yet we are far from possessing everything he wrote; a number of texts have disappeared, perhaps are lost forever. But this fertility is not Rashi's sole literary merit. If the excellence of a work is to be measured not only by its intrinsic value, but also by its historical influence, by the scientific movement to which it has given the impulse, by the literature which it has called into being, in short, by its general effect, no work should receive a higher estimate than that of Rashi, for, it may be said without exaggeration, no other work was ever the occasion of so much comment and discussion, and none exerted an influence so far reaching and enduring. From the moment of their appearance his writings spread rapidly, and were read with enthusiasm. After profoundly affecting his contemporaries, Rashi continued to guide the movement he had started. His influence upon rabbinical literature is comparable only with that of Maimonides. Indeed, it was more wholesome than his. The Talmudic codex established by Maimonides aimed at nothing less than to shut off the discussions and to give the oral law firm, solid shape. Rashi, on the contrary, safeguarded the rights of the future, and gave his successors full play. Again, not having introduced into his work philosophic speculations, he was shielded against criticism, and his renown was therefore more immaculate than that of the author of the Mishneh Torah, who had to undergo furious attacks. Rashi dominates the entire rabbinical movement in France and Germany. Generally, the influence of a writer wanes from day to day; but as for Rashi's, it may he said to have increased by force of habit and as the result of events, and to have broadened its sphere. Limited at first to French, Lotharingian, and German centres [centers sic] of learning, it soon extended to the south of Europe, to Africa, and even to Asia, maintaining its force both in the field of Biblical exegesis and of Talmudic jurisprudence. Since it is impossible to mention all the authors and works following and preceding Rashi, it must suffice to point out some characteristic facts and indispensable names in order to bring into relief the vitality and expansive force of his achievement, and to show how it has survived the ravages of time, and, what is more, how it has overcome man's forgetfulness - <I>edax tempus, edacior homo.</I> We shall see that Rashi directed the course of the later development at the same time that he summed up in his work all that had previously been accomplished.