Biography
Rav Vidal of Tolosa (early fourteenth century – after 5127/1367), one of the Rishonim, is known to the world of learning as HaRav HaMaggid, after his great work the Maggid Mishneh on the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. Little is recorded of his life. He lived in Villefranche and later in Barcelona, where he came to know the Ran and published his commentary; from Rav Yosef Karo’s introduction to the Kesef Mishneh it is clear that Vidal was a friend of the Ran, and he is mentioned in the responsa of the Rivash, the Ran’s talmid, from which it emerges that he was niftar in the Ran’s own lifetime. His son Rav Yitzchak was also a talmid chacham, who lived in Alcala.
The Maggid Mishneh is counted among the most important of the commentaries that accompany the Rambam. As it has reached us it covers six of the books of the Mishneh Torah — Zemanim, Nashim, Kedushah, Nezikin, Kinyan, and Mishpatim. Where there is a dispute over the true meaning of the Rambam, it is common to rule as the Maggid Mishneh understands him; and because his path is taken to reflect that of the Rashba, his reading is often followed in resolving the words of the Rashba as well. Until the twentieth century it was never printed on its own, but only alongside the Mishneh Torah — first at Constantinople in 5269/1509.
Where traditions differ. Sources differ on his origin — the Chida placed it at Tolosa in Spain, a modern scholar at Toulouse in southern France — and traditions naming his rebbi (the Rashba, or the Ra’ah) do not fit the chronology and are doubted already by the Chida.
רבי וידאל (או: אינוידאל) די טולוזא, מחבר ספר מגיד משנה על משנה תורה לרמב"ם, מן הראשונים. ידוע גם בכינויו הרב המגיד, על שם חיבורו.
Vidal of Tolosa, alternate spelling Vidal de Toulouse, was a Spanish rabbi and scholar of the late 14th century, and is often referred to by the sobriquet, Harav Ha-Maggid, or the Maggid Mishneh, named for his magnum opus by that name.
On Wikipedia: עברית · English — summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA