1263: Nachmanides on the Disputation of Barcelona in his Sefer Vikuaḥ

Abstract

Nachmanides’s Sefer Vikuaḥ records the so-called Barcelona Disputation of 1263, one of three famous debates between Christians and Jews in the Middle Ages. In these staged debates, Christian and Jewish participants publicly disputed interpretations of the Bible and extra-Biblical Jewish texts, such as the Talmud. These debates provide an insight into Jewish–Christian relations in an age of Christian expansionism and important social transformations and illustrate how increasingly rampant forms of aggressive Christian proselytism contributed to the wider decline of these relations in late medieval Europe.