(NACHMANIDES / RaMBa”N). Chidushei Bava Bathra [Novellae to Talmud Tractate]. * Appended: Dina DeGarmei.

Dina Degarmei, a small work that generated many supercommentaries, is an exposition of laws pertaining to personal injuries and property damage. In the poem which serves as the preface to Dina DeGarmei (f.110), Nachmanides praises his predecessors, the “Sages of France” (i.e. The Tosaphists). R. Solomon Luria (Yam shel Shelomo, Tractate Bava Kama, introduction) would cite this poem as evidence of the great esteem in which Nachmanides held the rabbis of France, whereas Maimonides had a certain disdain for the French rabbis. See C.B. Chavel, Kithvei Ramban, Vol. I (1968), p. 417; EJ, Vol. XII, col. 780; Vol. VII, cols. 430-431. Israel Ta-Shema established that with the exception of Nachmanides’ 1523 commentary to Bava Kama and the appended Dina DeGarmei, there did not appear in print any other work of Nachmanides’ Talmudic interpretations for a further two centuries. The ramifications of this are significant as Aschkenazic decisors such as R. Shabthai Cohen, (Sha”Ch) were bereft of the major portion of Nachmanides’ scholarship. See I. M. Ta-Shema, Kiryath Sepher, Vol. L (1975), p. 327; and H. Soloveitchik, Printing and the History of Halakha, a Case Study, in: Bar-Ilan Annual, Vol. XXX-XXXI (2006), p. 319.