This collection takes a new approach to understanding religious plurality in the Iberian Peninsula and its Mediterranean and Northern European contexts. Focusing on polemics—works that attack or refute the beliefs of religious Others—this volume aims to challenge the problematic characterization of Iberian Jews, Muslims, and Christians as homogeneous groups.
From the high Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, Christian efforts to convert groups of Jews and Muslims, Muslim efforts to convert Christians and Jews, and the defensive efforts of these communities to keep their members within the faiths led to the production of numerous polemics. This volume brings together a wide variety of polemical case studies that expose how the current historiographical focus on the three religious communities as allegedly homogenous groups obscures the diversity within the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, as well as the growing ranks of skeptics and outright unbelievers.
Featuring contributions from a range of academic disciplines, this paradigm-shifting book sheds new light on the cultural and intellectual dynamics of the conflicts that marked relations between these religious communities in the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.
In addition to the editors, the contributors are Thomas E. Burman, Antonio Biosca, Óscar de la Cruz, Mònica Colominas Aparicio, Linda G. Jones, Daniel J. Lasker, Davide Scotto, Borja Franco Llopis, Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Ryan Szpiech, John Dagenais, Teresa Soto, and Carsten Wilke.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I The Medieval Iberian World
1. “‘When I Argue with Them in Hebrew and Aramaic’: Tathlīth al-waḥdānīyah,
Ramon Martí, and Proofs of Jesus’s Messiahship,” Thomas E. Burman
2. “Qurʾānic Quotations in Latin: Translation, Tradition, and Fiction in Polemical Literature,” Antoni Biosca i Bas and Óscar de la Cruz
3. “The Mudejar Polemic Ta’yīd al-Milla and Conversion between Islam and Judaism in the Christian Territories of the Iberian Peninsula,” Mònica Colominas Aparicio
4. “‘Sermo ad conversos, christianos et sarracenos’: Polemical and Rhetorical Strategies in the Sermons of Vincent Ferrer to Mixed Audiences of Christians and Muslims,” Linda G. Jones
Part II Around the Forced Conversions
5. “Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics in Light of Mass Conversion to Christianity,” Daniel J. Lasker
6. “Theology of the Laws and Anti-Judaizing Polemics in Hernando de Talavera’s Católica impugnación,”Davide Scotto
7. “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán,” Mercedes García-Arenal
8. “Art of Conversion? The Visual Policies of the Jesuits, Dominicans, and Mercedarians in Valencia,” Borja Franco Llopis
9. “Marcos Dobelio’s Polemics against the Authenticity of the Granadan Lead Books in Light of the Original Arabic Sources,” Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and Gerard Wiegers
Part III Mediterranean and European Transfers
10. “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Interreligious Encounter,” Ryan Szpiech
11. “The Libre de bons amonestaments by ‘Abd Allāh al-Tarjumān: A Guidebook for Old and New Christians,” John Dagenais
12. “Poetics and Polemics: Ibrahim Taybili’s Anti-Christian Polemical Treatise in Verse,” Teresa Soto
13. “Torah Alone: Protestantism as Model and Target of Sephardi Religious Polemics in the Early Modern Netherlands,” Carsten Wilke
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index
“This multiauthored volume brings detailed philological and historical research to bear on the unusually complex spiritual, cultural, and linguistic relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians during Spain’s troubled and incomplete transition from medieval diversity to early modern uniformity. Readers from a wide range of scholarly disciplines will be rewarded with novel perspectives on the remarkable textual evidence that emerged from this conflictive yet productive encounter.”
—James S. Amelang, author of Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain
