Rabbi Avigdor ha-Kohen of Vienna רבי אביגדור הכהן מווינה
head of the Vienna school after the Or Zarua, teacher of the Maharam
In the thirteenth century Vienna becomes what Mainz and Speyer had been in the twelfth: a place people travel to for its learning. It was begun by Rabbi Yitzchak, author of the Or Zarua, who came there from France and the Rhineland; it was continued by Rabbi Avigdor ha-Kohen, called Kohen Tzedek.
He gathered and wrote down: his notes on the Torah and on the tractates are composed of what he heard from many teachers, and through them one sees whom he listened to and what was being said in those years in the batei midrash from Prague to the Rhine. Such compilations are the ordinary work of this school: less to say one's own than to keep what was said from being lost.
His student is better known than the teacher. Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg, the Maharam, whom all Germany later asked and who died in an imperial prison rather than let himself be ransomed, came from this house.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- The Tosafot, where his words are cited — his notes and the teachers' words he transmitted
- The responsa of the Maharam of Rothenburg — the teacher's name, given by his student
Basis: documents and evidence.