Although Nahmanides was wrongly held to have been the disciple of Judab Sir Leon, it was he who introduced into Spain the works and the method of French Talmudists, whom he possibly came to know through his masters. Thus the Spanish Talmudists, though they boasted such great leaders as Alfasi and Maimonides, nevertheless accepted also the heritage of the French academies. Rashi's influence is perceptible and acknowledged in the numerous Talmudic writings of Solomon ben Adret,[148] and it is clearly manifest in the commentary on Alfasi by Nissim Gerundi (about 1350), who copies Rashi literally, at the same time developing his thought, not infrequently over-elaborating it. He also refutes Rashi at times, but his refutation is often wrong. The man, however, who best represents the fusion of Spanish and French Talmudism was assuredly Asher hen Jehiel,[149] who, a native of the banks of the Rhine, implanted in Spain the spirit of French Judaism, and in his abridgment of the Talmud united Spanish tradition, whose principal representative was Alfasi, with Franco-German tradition, whose uncontested leader was Rashi. Since that time Talmudic activity, the creative force of which seems to have been exhausted, has been undergoing a change of character. Asher ben Jehiel, or, as he has been called, Rosh, terminated an important period of rabbinical literature, the period of the <I>Rishonim.</I> We have seen how during this period Rashi's reputation, at first confined within the limits of his native province, extended little by little, until it spread over the surrounding countries, like the tree of which Daniel speaks, "whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much" (Dan. iv. 20-21). CHAPTER XII FROM THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE TO THE PRESENT TIME It might be supposed that the Jews of France, chased from their fatherland, and so deprived of their schools, would have disappeared entirely from the scene of literary history, and that the intellectual works brought into being by their activity in the domains of Biblical exegesis and Talmudic jurisprudence would have been lost forever. Such was by no means the case. It has been made clear that the French school exerted influence outside of France from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and we shall now see how the Jews of France, saving their literary treasures in the midst of the disturbances, carried their literature to foreign countries, to Piedmont and to Germany. When the Jews of Germany were expelled in turn, Poland became the centre [center sic] of Judaism, and the literary tradition was thus maintained without interruption up to the present time. It is an unique example of continuity. The vitality of Judaism gained strength in the misfortunes that successively assailed it,