Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond

Published by Penn State University Press 2019

Polemical Encounters

Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond

Edited by: Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers

Volume 2 in the series Iberian Encounter and Exchange, 475–1755

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271082998

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 case studies that expose how the current historiographical focus on the three religious communities as allegedly homogeneous 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 among these religious communities in the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Antoni Biosca i Bas, Thomas E. Burman, Mònica Colominas Aparicio, John Dagenais, Óscar de la Cruz, Borja Franco Llopis, Linda G. Jones, Daniel J. Lasker, Davide Scotto, Teresa Soto, Ryan Szpiech, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, and Carsten Wilke.

Author / Editor information

García-Arenal Mercedes :

Mercedes García-Arenal is Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Madrid and the author of several books, including Messianism and Puritanical Reform: Mahdis of the Muslim West and Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morroco, and coauthor, with Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, of The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism.

Reviews

“An interesting book that presents a broad perspective on religious diversity while analysing the processes triggered by religious controversy.”
—Juan Hernández Franco, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

“Polemical Encounters makes an excellent contribution to our understanding of how some medieval and early modern Iberians attempted to construct and maintain their own religious boundaries in spite of a messy lived experience that belied this imagined clarity.”
—Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Journal of Modern History

“This volume contributes to an important, ongoing revision of Iberian cultural and religious history in the late medieval and early modern periods. It challenges a conventional approach to Iberian polemical exchange that has emphasized theological argument among recognized authorities in clearly defined Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. This volume, in contrast, highlights polemical exchange in an Iberian context of shifting identities, cross-confessional borrowing, and wide situational variation.”
—Miriam Bodian, author of Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam

“Mercedes García-Arenal, Gerard Wiegers, and their brilliant collaborators have once again joined voices to provide us with a work of polyphonic scholarship. Polemical Encounters is a volume uniquely suited to revealing the intimate agon of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the premodern world.”
—David Nirenberg, author of Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today

“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

“This fascinating and valuable collection of essays takes us deep into the medieval and early modern worlds of interfaith relations. Experts across a range of subfields ask fresh and original questions about the nature of the polemical enterprise. From Mozarabic communities in the twelfth century to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth, we are introduced to a variety of polyglot polemicists who fashioned new styles of discourse from changing geographic and demographic realities both in Iberia and beyond. The basic but profound conclusion of this wide-ranging volume is that the more Christians, Muslims, and Jews challenged each other polemically, the more polyvalent, fractured, and open to reform their own religious hierarchies became.”
—Alex Novikoff, author of The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance

“Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers have fundamentally advanced our understanding of and the debate around the meaning of medieval polemic. This collection of essays is original and impressive, and it will undoubtedly inspire a new generation of scholars.”
—Hussein Fancy, author of The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. Qurʾānic Quotations in Latin: Translation, Tradition, and Fiction in Polemical Literature Antoni Biosca i Bas and Óscar de la Cruz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. The Mudejar Polemic Taʾ yīd al-Milla and Conversion between Islam and Judaism in the Christian Territories of the Iberian Peninsula Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Part II. Around the Forced Conversions
5. Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics in Light of Mass Conversion to Christianity Daniel J. Lasker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
6. Theology of the Laws and Anti-Judaizing Polemics in Hernando de Talavera’s Católica impugnación Davide Scotto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
7. The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán Mercedes García-Arenal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
8. Art of Conversion? The Visual Policies of the Jesuits, Dominicans, and Mercedarians in Valencia Borja Franco Llopis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Part III. Mediterranean and European Transfers
10. Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Interreligious Encounter Ryan Szpiech Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
11. The Libre de bons amonestaments by ʿAbd Allāh al-Tarjumān: A Guidebook for Old and New Christians John Dagenais Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
12. Poetics and Polemics: Ibrahim Taybili’s Anti-Christian Polemical Treatise in Verse Teresa Soto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
13 Torah Alone: Protestantism as Model and Target of Sephardi Religious Polemics in the Early Modern Netherlands Carsten Wilke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	357
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	377
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	414
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	419

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 440
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 6
- Images: 6
- Other: 6 illustrations
Keywords: Polemics; religion; Iberian Peninsula; medieval; Early Modern Spain; Ramon Martí; conversion; Christianity; Islam; Judaism; Vincent Ferrer; Taʾ yīd al-Milla; Tathlīth al-wadānīyah; Hernando de Talavera; Católica impugnación; Martín Figuerola; Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán; Marcos Dobelio; Granadan Lead Books; Libre de bons amonestaments; ʿAbd Allāh al-Tarjumān; Ibrahim Taybili; Early Modern Netherlands

eBook

Published: December 17, 2018
ISBN: 9780271082998