Disputation of Barcelona
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The Disputation of Barcelona (July 20–24, 1263) was a formal ordered medieval
debate Debate is a process that involves formal discourse on a particular topic, often including a moderator and audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for often opposing viewpoints. Debates have historically occurred in public meetings, a ...
between representatives of Christianity and Judaism regarding whether or not
Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
was the
Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...
. It was held at the royal palace of King
James I of Aragon James I the Conqueror ( es, Jaime el Conquistador, ca, Jaume el Conqueridor; 2 February 1208 – 27 July 1276) was King of Aragon and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276; King of Majorca from 1231 to 1276; and Valencia from 1238 to 1276 ...
in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican
Friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...
Pablo Christiani Pablo Christiani (or ''Paul Christian''; né "Saúl" or "NN שאול בן" ) was a Sephardic Jew who, having converted to Christianity, used his position as a Dominican friar to endeavor to convert other Jews in Europe to Roman Catholicism. Earl ...
, a convert from
Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
to
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, and Nachmanides (Moshe Ben Nahman, also called ''Ramban''), a leading medieval Jewish scholar,
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
,
physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
, kabbalist, and
biblical commentator This is an outline of commentaries and commentators. Discussed are the salient points of Jewish, patristic, medieval, and modern commentaries on the Bible. The article includes discussion of the Targums, Mishna, and Talmuds, which are not regarded ...
. During the Middle Ages, there were numerous ordered
disputation In the scholastic system of education of the Middle Ages, disputations (in Latin: ''disputationes'', singular: ''disputatio'') offered a formalized method of debate designed to uncover and establish truths in theology and in sciences. Fixed ru ...
s between Christians and Jews. They were connected with burnings of the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...
at the stake and
violence Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or Power (social and p ...
against Jews. In Barcelona, Jews as well as Christians were given absolute freedom to speak their arguments how they wanted, making this unique among disputations.


Overture

The ordered disputation was organized by
Raymond de Penyafort Raymond of Penyafort ( ca, Sant Ramon de Penyafort, ; es, San Raimundo de Peñafort; 1175 – 6 January 1275) was a Catalan Dominican friar in the 13th century, who compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, a collection of canonical laws tha ...
, the superior of Christiani and the
confessor Confessor is a title used within Christianity in several ways. Confessor of the Faith Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith but not to the point of death.Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
s of
Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
. Relying upon the reserve his adversary would be forced to maintain through fear of incurring the wrath of the Christian dignitaries, Christiani assured the King that he could prove the truth of Christianity from the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...
and other
rabbinical writings Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writ ...
. Nachmanides complied with the order of the King, but stipulated that complete
freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
should be granted. The disputation took place in front of the royal court of King James of Aragon (1263), who guaranteed and asserted freedom of speech for the Jewish spokesperson Nachmanides. This led to a genuine confrontation between Christianity and Judaism in which the true fundamental differences between the two religions could be brought to light.


Proceedings

The debate turned on the following questions: # whether the
Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...
had appeared or not # whether, according to Scripture, the Messiah is a divine or a human being # whether the Jews or the Christians held the true faith.


Had the Messiah appeared

Based upon several
aggadic Aggadah ( he, ''ʾAggāḏā'' or ''Haggāḏā''; Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: אַגָּדְתָא ''ʾAggāḏəṯāʾ''; "tales, fairytale, lore") is the non-legalistic exegesis which appears in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, ...
passages, Christiani argued that
Pharisaic The Pharisees (; he, פְּרוּשִׁים, Pərūšīm) were a Jewish social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs b ...
sages believed that the Messiah had lived during the Talmudic period, and that they must therefore have believed that the Messiah was
Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
. Nachmanides countered that Christiani's interpretations of Talmudic passages were per-se distortions; the rabbis would not hint that Jesus was the Messiah while, at the same time, explicitly opposing him as such:
"Does he mean to say that the sages of the Talmud believed in Jesus as the messiah and believed that he is both human and divine, as held by the Christians? However, it is well known that the incident of Jesus took place during the period of the Second Temple. He was born and killed prior to the destruction of the Temple, while the sages of the Talmud, like R. Akiba and his associates, followed this destruction. Those who compiled the Mishnah, Rabbi and R. Nathan, lived many years after the destruction. All the more so R. Ashi who compiled the Talmud, who lived about four hundred years after the destruction. If these sages believed that Jesus was the messiah and that his faith and religion were true and if they wrote these things from which Friar Paul intends to prove this, then how did they remain in the Jewish faith and in their former practice? For they were Jews, remained in the Jewish faith all their lives, and died Jews - they and their children and their students who heard their teachings. Why did they not convert and turn to the faith of Jesus, as Friar Paul did? ... If these sages believed in Jesus and in his faith, how is it that they did not do as Friar Paul, who understands their teachings better than they themselves do?"The Disputation of Barcelona (1263)
. Report of Moses Nahmanides, translated from Hebrew, and Anonymous Report, translated from Latin. (medspains.stanford.edu)
Nachmanides noted that prophetic promises of the
Messianic Age In Abrahamic religions, the Messianic Age is the future period of time on Earth in which the messiah will reign and bring universal peace and brotherhood, without any evil. Many believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the consu ...
, a reign of universal peace and justice had not yet been fulfilled. Nachmanides also argued that since the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, the world had still been filled with violence and injustice, and among all religions, he claimed that the Christians were the most warlike. He asserted that questions of the Messiah are of less dogmatic importance to Jews than most Christians imagine, because it is more meritorious for the Jews to observe the precepts of the
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
under a Christian ruler, while in exile and suffering humiliation and abuse, than under the rule of the Messiah, when every one would perforce act in accordance with the Law.


Is the Messiah a divine or a human being

Nachmanides demonstrated from numerous biblical and Talmudic sources that traditional (rabbinic) Jewish belief ran contrary to Christiani's postulates, and showed that the Biblical prophets regarded the future messiah as a human, a person of flesh and blood, without ascribing him
divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...
attributes.
" .. it seems most strange that... the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards... he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, simply cannot tolerate these assertions. If you have listened all your life to the priests who have filled your brain and the marrow of your bones with this doctrine, and it has settled into you because of that accustomed habit. would argue that if you were hearing these ideas for the first time, now, as a grown adult you would never have accepted them."
According to a report by Nachmanides,
Friar Paul claimed: "Behold the passage in Isaiah, chapter 53, tells of the death of the messiah and how he was to fall into the hands of his enemies and how he was placed alongside the wicked, as happened to Jesus. Do you believe that this section speaks of the messiah? I said to him: "In terms of the true meaning of the section, it speaks only of the people of Israel, which the prophets regularly call 'Israel My servant' or 'Jacob My servant.'"


Conclusion

The Jewish residents of Barcelona, fearing the resentment of the Dominicans, entreated him to discontinue; but the King, whom Nachmanides had acquainted with the apprehensions of the Jews, desired him to proceed. At the end of the disputation, James I awarded Nachmanides a prize of 300 gold coins and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended." On the
Shabbat Shabbat (, , or ; he, שַׁבָּת, Šabbāṯ, , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical storie ...
after the debate, the king also attended the
Sinagoga Major de Barcelona The Ancient Synagogue of Barcelona ( ca, Sinagoga Major de Barcelona; es, Sinagoga Mayor de Barcelona) is believed to be an ancient synagogue located in the Jewish quarter of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Medieval rabbi Shlomo ben Adret, leader ...
, arguably one of the oldest synagogues in Europe, and addressed the Jewish congregants there, "a thing unheard of during the Middle Ages".


Aftermath

Since the Dominicans claimed victory, Nachmanides published a transcript of the entire proceedings including some dialog that took place privately between himself and the king. As a result of the publication, under pressure from the Dominicans, James I forced Nachmanides to leave Aragon and never return. In 1267 he settled in
Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
. There he founded a
synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
in the Old City of
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
, the Ramban Synagogue.The Ramban Synagogue; Hope Amidst Despair
by Larry Domnitch (''The Jewish Magazine'')
It is the second oldest synagogue that is still active in Jerusalem. In August 1263, James I ordered the removal of passages deemed offensive from the Talmud. The committee assigned to carry out this censorship consisted of Bishop of Barcelona
Arnau de Gurb Arnau de Gurb (in Spanish language, Spanish, ''Arnoldo de Guerbo'') was bishop of Barcelona from 1252 to 1284. He had served as a canon (priest), canon at the cathedral of Vic and later as primary archdeacon in Barcelona. As bishop, he expanded the ...
,
Raymond de Penyafort Raymond of Penyafort ( ca, Sant Ramon de Penyafort, ; es, San Raimundo de Peñafort; 1175 – 6 January 1275) was a Catalan Dominican friar in the 13th century, who compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, a collection of canonical laws tha ...
, and the Dominicans Arnoldo de Legarra, Pedro de Janua and
Ramón Martí Raymond Martini, also called Ramon Martí in Catalan, was a 13th-century Dominican friar and theologian. He is remembered for his polemic work ''Pugio Fidei'' (c. 1270). In 1250 he was one of eight friars appointed to make a study of oriental lan ...
(author of ''Pugio Fidei''). The event was the inspiration for
Hyam Maccoby Hyam Maccoby ( he, חיים מכובי, 1924–2004) was a Jewish-British scholar and dramatist specialising in the study of the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. He was known for his theories of the historical Jesus and the origins of C ...
's play, ''The Disputation''. This was dramatized for television in 1986 by
Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...
, starring
Christopher Lee Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor and singer. In a long career spanning more than 60 years, Lee often portrayed villains, and appeared as Count Dracula in seven Hammer Horror films, ultimat ...
as James I,
Bob Peck Robert Peck (23 August 1945 – 4 April 1999) was an English actor who played Ronald Craven in the television serial ''Edge of Darkness'', for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor. He was also known for his role as game warden Rob ...
as Pablo Christiani and
Alan Dobie Alan Russell Dobie (born 2 June 1932) is an English stage, television and film actor and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Early life and career Dobie was born in Wombwell, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to George Russ ...
as Nachmanides.''The Disputation''
at
IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
; retrieved 22 June 2017


See also

*
Disputation of Paris The Disputation of Paris ( ''Mishpat Pariz''; ), also known as the Trial of the Talmud (), took place in 1240 at the court of King Louis IX of France. It followed the work of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity who translated the T ...
(1240) *
Disputation of Tortosa The Disputation of Tortosa was one of the famous ordered disputations between Christians and Jews of the Middle Ages, held in the years 1413–1414 in the city of Tortosa, Catalonia, Crown of Aragon (part of modern-day Spain). According to the ' ...
(1413–1414) *
Converso A ''converso'' (; ; feminine form ''conversa''), "convert", () was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants. To safeguard the Old Christian po ...
*
Marrano Marranos were Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were Forced conversion#Spanish Inquisition, forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, but continued to Crypto-Judaism, practice Judaism i ...


References


Further reading

*
Nahmanides Moses ben Nachman ( he, מֹשֶׁה בֶּן־נָחְמָן ''Mōše ben-Nāḥmān'', "Moses son of Nachman"; 1194–1270), commonly known as Nachmanides (; el, Ναχμανίδης ''Nakhmanídēs''), and also referred to by the acronym Ra ...
, Charles Chavel (Translator): ''Disputation at Barcelona (Ramban)''. Shilo Publishing House (NY) (January 1983) , *
Hyam Maccoby Hyam Maccoby ( he, חיים מכובי, 1924–2004) was a Jewish-British scholar and dramatist specialising in the study of the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. He was known for his theories of the historical Jesus and the origins of C ...
, ''Judaism on Trial'' (1981, Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation) ** same, ''The Disputation'', a play
The Disputation of Barcelona (1263)
by Cecil Roth. The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 1950), pp. 117–144
The Barcelona "Disputation" of 1263: Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response
by Robert Chazan. Speculum, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 824–842

of the Hebrew Report of Moses Nahmanides and the Anonymous Latin Report


External links




The Disputation of Barcelona
{{Authority control 1263 in Europe 13th-century Judaism 13th century in Catalonia 13th century in Aragon Christian anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages Criticism of Christianity Criticism of Judaism
Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
Jewish Spanish history Jewish–Christian debate Medieval Barcelona Medieval Jewish history Nachmanides