Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages (original) (raw)
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
Related papers
Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Period
Sceptical aspects in this workshop will focus on Jewish-Christian polemics from three different points of view: philosophical controversies in Halevi’s Kuzari; conversion as it appears in Abner of Burgos’ Teshovat Apikoros; and confessionalization in the early modern period. Judah Halevi lived most of his life under Islamic rule, and yet he engaged in anti-Christian polemics in his Kuzari. Although the Jewish critique of Christianity is usually considered a reaction to a Christian mission, much evidence indicates that such polemics are not solely a defensive measure. Jewish rationalists engaged in polemics against Christianity as part of their self-definition of Judaism, while Jews who eschewed rationalism, especially those in Christian Northern and Eastern Europe, usually did not engage in such criticisms of Christianity even when there were Christian provocations. The issue to be addressed is to what extent does Halevi’s anti-Christian polemics fit this Jewish rationalist paradigm. Abner of Burgos, the famous Jewish convert to Christianity from the 14th century, wrote extensively, after his conversion, praising his new faith and claiming it to be the true religion, while rejecting his birth faith. In many of his works, Abner harshly criticizes “Jewish” ideas, while at the same time, he puts a great effort to show that the Jewish Rabbis, in fact, accepted the fundamental principles of Christianity, but had to conceal this acceptance for political reasons. What is the meaning of “public” and “private” theological controversies between Jews and a Christians, and how do these two types of controversies differ? These questions will be approached via an examination of the 17th century anti-Christian Latin polemical work, "Porta veritatis" (1634-1640). In a way, the polemics contained in this work were “staged” for a very limited public--or for no public at all. What, then, was this work's real purpose? Certainly, it sought not only to establish the “truth” of one religion, or rather some of this religion’s tenets, with respect to the other. But also, it sought to demonstrate that a Jew could “actively” defend his/her religion, and to be present as an intellectual on the philosophical scene, a scene that was quite lively and even frantic in the century of Spinoza and Descartes.
In this paper, I examine the changing role of apostates in medieval Jewish-Christian polemic. Using three case studies, I suggest that Jewish converts to Christianity were not merely instruments in the hands of Christian theologians. Rather, they were self-conscious participants in the debate with their own aims and purposes. Far from disowning their Jewish past, they used it in order to mould the debate and influence Christian perceptions of post-biblical Judaism. Analysing their argumentation, it is thus possible to identify traces of conflict and dissonance within Jewish communities.
Nordisk Judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies
Jewish polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages show a striking change in contents and in the linguistic form of the texts after the First Crusade. While the texts up to about 1100 are reports on religious discussions between Jews and Christians, often held in a friendly tone, the texts after 1100 contain aggressive or bitter attacks on the Christians. An example of how this was put into words appears in a Jewish text from the 1250s. In seven points the author gives voice to this protest against the introduction by the French king of a number of harsh edicts against the Jews. There is a marked dividing line between the predominantly aggressive texts from Northern France and the more sober ones from Southern France. On the one hand every single Jewish polemical passage should be analyzed as to form and content, including the context and text type in which the passage occurs, on the other hand the passages should be related to each other including their historical background. ...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.