Medical knowledge was also attributed to Rashi,
and a medical work ascribed to his authorship. One scholar went
so far as to call him a calligrapher.[32] From his infancy, it
was declared, he astonished the world by his learning and by his
memory; and when, toward the end of his life, he went to Barcelona,
he awakened every one's admiration by his varied yet profound
knowledge.
These errors, invented, or merely repeated, but, at all events,
given credence by the Jewish chroniclers and the Christian
bibliographers, cannot hold out against the assaults of
criticism. To give only one example of Rashi's geographical
knowledge, it will suffice to recall how he represented the
configuration of Palestine and Babylonia, or rather how he tried
to guess it from the texts.[33] His ignorance of geography is
apparent in his commentaries, which contain a rather large number
of mistakes. In addition, Rashi was not always familiar with
natural products, or with the creations of art, or with the
customs and usages of distant countries. Still less was a rabbi
of the eleventh century likely to have an idea of what even
Maimonides was unacquainted with, the local color and the spirit
of dead civilizations. Rashi-to exemplify this ignoranceexplained
Biblical expressions by customs obtaining in his own day: "to
put into possession," the Hebrew of which is "to fill the hand,"
he thinks he explains by comparing it with a feudal ceremony and
discovering in it something analagous [analogous sic] to the act
of putting on gauntlets.
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