ABSTRACT

Theological debates between Jewish and Christian religious leaders were a sine qua non in the Middle Ages. As Nahum N. Glatzer suggests in the book The Judiac Tradition (1969), the four-day debate at Barcelona in 1263, in which Moses ben Nahman (a.k.a. Nahmanides, and known also as Bonastrug de Porta), the rabbi of Gerona, had a leading role, was one of the major religious disputations. There were other disputations, such as those in Paris in 1240, Avila in 1375, and Tortosa in 1413—1414. The other debater in the Barcelona one was Fra Paulo (a.k.a. Pablo Christiani), a converted Jew who had become a Dominican monk; some scholars assume that he taught the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic writings to the scholarly Dominican, Raymond Martini. The disputation was sponsored by King James I of Aragon and was attended by Raymond Martini, Raymond de Penaforte, the king's confessor, also a Dominican, the Franciscan Peter de Janua, and the aristocracy and representatives of the population. Nahmanides wrote down in Hebrew his impressions. After the debate, he was banished from Aragon by Pope Clement IV. He went to Palestine in 1267, where he died. His account appeared in print first in Wagenscil's Tela ignea satanae (1681), together with a Latin translation; both text and translation are corrupt. A more reliable text appeared in Constantinople in 1710. The best edition, on which Glatzer based his translation, is by M. Steinschneider (1860)