The art of disputation: dialogue, dialectic and debate around 800 (original) (raw)
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Open Theology, 2016
Using interpretative resources from contemporary recognition theory with a special focus on the notion of mediated recognition, this paper discusses the nature and degree of methodological agreement as manifested in three twelfth-century dialogues. The first source to be considered was written by Gilbert of Crispin, and known as Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili (Disputation of Christian with a Pagan), ca. 1093. The second source was composed by the Christian convert Peter Alfonsi, whose dialogue Dialogi contra Iudaeos (Dialogue against the Jews) was written about 1110. The third source to be considered is Peter Abelard’s treatise Collationes, a dialogue with three participants and the narrator, written between 1127 and 1132. In particular, the paper discusses the role of reason, the principles of argument, and the potentially-shared set of rules these dialogues employ, thereby bringing the agreement among conflicting parties into focus. In this respect, the novel interpretative app...
On March 4th, 1233, in his bull Sufficere debuerat perfidie Iudeorum, Pope Gregory IX complains to the bishops and archbishops of Germany of the many " perfidies " of the German Jews, including their " blasphemies " against the Christian religion, which, he fears, may have an ill effect on Christians, particularly converts from Judaism. He orders the bishops to prohibit Jews from presuming to dispute with Christians and to prevent Christians from participating in such disputations through ecclesiastical censure. Gregory clearly thought that it was dangerous to allow informal discussions or debates about religion between Jews and Christian laymen. At the same time, he was instrumental in the promotion of the two new mendicant orders and in the encouragement of their missionary efforts towards Jews (and to a lesser extent Muslims). Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Dominicans in particular became specialists of religious disputation. Laymen were increasingly discouraged or prohibited from engaging in such disputation by both ecclesiastical and royal legislation. This article will examine several key texts involving the dangers of interreligious debate and discussion in the Middle Ages from the perspective of Christian authorities (ecclesiastical, royal or other). Various authors, from Tertullian to Joinville, expressed misgiving about the effects such debate could have on Christian participants and bystanders , and various medieval legal texts, civil and canon, sought to limit or prohibit such debate. Keywords disputation – ecclesiastical authority – anti-Judaism – Christianity – mandate of the king