Description
Book SynopsisThis book discusses the “long fifteenth century” in Iberian history, between the 1391 pogroms and the forced conversions of Aragonese Muslims in 1526, a period characterized by persecutions, conversions and social violence, on the one hand, and cultural exchange, on the other. It was a historical moment of unstable religious ideas and identities, before the rigid turn taken by Spanish Catholicism by the middle of the sixteenth century; a period in which the physical and symbolic borders separating the three religions were transformed and redefined but still remained extraordinarily porous. The collection argues that the aggressive tone of many polemical texts has until now blinded historiography to the interconnected nature of social and cultural intimacy, above all in dialogue and cultural transfer in later medieval Iberia. Contributors are Ana Echevarría, Gad Freudenthal, Mercedes García-Arenal, Maria Laura Giordano, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Eleazar Gutwirth, Felipe Pereda, Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto, Katarzyna K. Starczewska, John Tolan, Gerard Wiegers, and Yosi Yisraeli.
Table of ContentsIntroduction Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers 1 Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages John Tolan 2 The Brighter Side of Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemical Encounters: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in the Midi (Twelfth–Fourteenth Centuries) Gad Freudenthal 3 Better Muslim or Jew? The Controversy Around Conversion across Minorities in Fifteenth-Century Castile Ana Echevarría 4 The Spirit of the Letter: The Hebrew Inscription in Bermejo’s Piedat Revisited Yonatan Glazer-Eytan 5 Forgotten Witnesses: The Illustrations of Ms Escorial, I.I.3 and the Dispute over the Biblias Romanceadas Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto 6 From Christian Polemic to a Jewish-Converso Dialogue Jewish Skepticism and Rabbinic-Christian Traditions in the Scrutinium Scripturarum Yosi Yisraeli 7 The Rabbi and the Mancebo: Arévalo and the Location of Affinities in the Fifteenth Century Eleazar Gutwirth 8 The Virus in the Language: Alonso De Cartagena’s Deconstruction of the “Limpieza De Sangre” in Defensorium Unitatis Christianae (1450) Maria Laura Giordano 9 Apologetic Glosses—Venues for Encounters: Annotations on Abraham in the Latin Translations of the Qurʾān Katarzyna K. Starczewska 10 Vox Populi: Carnal Blood, Spiritual Milk, and the Debate Surrounding the Immaculate Conception, ca. 1600 Felipe Pereda Index
