Did Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg Refuse to Be Ransomed?

This paper proposes that R. Solomon Luria's description of R. Meir of Rothenburg's noble refusal to be redeemed from prison is a later and erroneous version of a discussion that originally pertained to an anonymous 12th-century sage whose contemporaries were prohibited from redeeming his body for an exorbitant sum, due to the talmudic rule, »captives may not be redeemed for greater than their value because of tikkun olam« (mGit 4:6). The suggestion that this story was later introduced into the story of Maharam resolves a puzzle posed by Luria himself: how could Maharam have failed to realize that his refusal to be redeemed would be detrimental to Torah learning in Europe? The author believes that, while his idea cannot be proved, it is as convincing as the other resolutions of the contradiction between Luria's report and that of Judah ben Asher concerning the attempts to redeem Meir of Rothenburg from prison.