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The Hebrew Language of the “Dispute of Barcelona”. A reappraisal.

After eight hundred and fifty years the Disputation of Barcelona between Mošeh ben

Naḥman or Nahmanides – and the Dominican friar Paul Christià does not cease from bringing forth

new researches; the seminal works of R. Chazan and J. Cohen – although pointing to different

lectures of the fact – have led younger scholars to look into singular aspects of that unique event

that‟s to say the role of the Dominican Order and the real meaning of the disputation (Voss 2009),

the historical and the cultural context within the Kingdom of Jaume I the Conqueror (Caputo 2005),

the relationship with others religious encounters as the debate at Mayorca between the Genuan

trader Inghetto Contardo and some local Jews (Limor 2010) and last but not least the relationship

between Jews and apostates (Kruger 2007). Of course, all these researches have touched upon the

Vikkuaḥ Ramban, the Hebrew report of the four days of disputation and have raised several

questions as concerning its textual, historical and literary features. Henceforth, our paper aims at

reviewing this extraordinary piece of polemical literature, ascribed almost universally to

Naḥmanides and by far his most acclaimed work– in order to clear up some peculiar aspects. First

of all, I shall briefly examine the textual tradition of Hebrew Text on which U. Ragacs has written

at lenght; tracking down the ancient testimonia of the text will help us to settle the problem of

autorship. Can Naḥmanides be still considered the auctor of the Vikkuaḥ or the work is a late piece

of literature, as J. Riera i Sains (1985:7) supposed ? After having answered these preliminary

questions, I shall evaluate the language, the stilship and the literary aspects of the Vikkuaḥ. This is

the most rewarding field of research, as Chazan‟s and Caputo‟s insights have shown. That

exploration will lead us to discover the links with Nachmanides‟ thought, the literary strategies and

the echos of the Middle Age culture. At this juncture, I would like also to offer an answer about the

historical value of the Vikkuaḥ: is it a true, historical report or is it just a fiction or do we have to

search for a more nuanced solution?

*

During the past two centuries scholars weren‟t fully aware of the textual problems of the

Vikkuaḥ: the poor value of the manuscript from Strasbourg used by K. Wagenseil in 1681 for the

first printed edition was obviosly known, as it was fraught with lacunae and abusive expressions

added from a copist of German background. That edition is more a cultural curiosity than an useful

tool of research. The Costantinopolitan edition in Milḥemet ḥovah (1710), the only copy of an

manuscript otherwise lost (Ragacs 2010:158), served as basis of the edition that M. Steinschneider

published in 1860, after a meticulous comparison with the Ms Saraval 26a from Breslau and a

manuscript from Leiden. Steinschneider‟s work was subsequently used by Chavel (1963) for the

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standard printed edition, but it still betrays various textual problems. Neither these editions or the

minor ones (Smilévitch 1986; Bianchi 1999) dared to collect all the manuscript evidence of the

Vikkuah; it goes without saying that this need is even more compelling, since J. Riera i Sans

(1985:7) assumed that the Vikkuaḥ was composed only between XIV and the XV century. U.

Ragacs (2010) deserves the credit of having gathered all of the 32 manuscripts of the Vikkuaḥ and

of having tried to catalogue them according their datation and script. This painstaking work has

definitely shown that there were already copies of Vikkuaḥ text spanning from the end of XIII

century to the end of the XIV century. A miscellanous manuscript from Biblitheca Palatina of

Parma (MS Parma Biblioteca Palatina 2749), dating back seemingly to 1300, hosts just a folio with

a single fragment which debates the messianic value of Daniel 9,25 (see Vikkuaḥ § 61). As the folio

does not match with the rest of the manuscript, the datation has been sometimes put in question.

Anyway, as U. Ragacs (2010: 87-88) has noticed elsewhere, this same folio presents the medieval

transcription of the Catalan word dux, so that a early datation seems vindicated1; another manuscript

written in a Byzantine script from Cambridge seem to date around 1387, whereas a manuscript from

the Biblioteca Palatina of Parma and another one from Paris fall between XIV and XV century. So

far with the testimonia from the first half of XIV century.

Three other pieces of evidence confirm the existence of a Hebrew manuscript of Vikkuah in

the same period. The first-one comes from the library of the maiorquine Jew Moses Almateri.

Tradesman, moneylender and talmudist, Moses Almateri was born at Xativà in 1310 and died at

Maiorca in 1362, lefting 134 books listed in a inventory published by J. Riera i Sans (2008). Among

them there are worth noticing the item # 39, the sefer auicoha (quendam alium librum ebrahicum

voccatum ceffer a-/uicoha, in papiro scriptum (Riera i Sans 2008:26). The editor oddly ascribed it to

Maimonides (Riera i Sans 2008:30)2 and ruled out every connection with Ramban‟s work, whereas

the # 103 is De disputatione magistri Mosse that the editor translated La Disputa de Mossé ben

Nachman (Riera i Sans 2008: 28; 34: item quendam alium librum hebraicum/ de disputacione

magistri Mossè). Although the title is oddly Latin, the inventory clearly speaks of a librum

hebraicum. This second item definitely witnesses the existence of a copy of Vikkuaḥ in the

aforesaid period.

The second piece of evidence was detected by J. Perarnau i Espelt in a review article of

Riera i Sans‟s book (1988:273-275). The Catalan scholar pointed out that in the first half of XIV

1 By the way the Genuan trader Inghetto Contardo during his debate at Maiorca (1286) asked for the Hebrew book of

the Dispute 2 As far as I have searched for, such a title does not appear in Maimonidean works. A sefer Vikkuaḥ was penned by

Shem Tov ben Joseph Falaquera (1220-1290) in the second half of the XIII century: it is a dialogue between an

orthodox Jew and a philosopher on the harmony of philosophy and religion, being an attempt to prove that not only the

Bible, but even the Talmud, is in perfect accord with philosophy. Is‟nt more economic to think of our Vikkuaḥ ramban?

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the Speculum Hebraeorum – a polemical work written by the Portuguese monk João of Alcobaca –

speaks of a certain book to be found in jewish libraries, where it was told of a dispute between fr.

Paul and rabbi Mošeh from Gerona. According to Fr. João, the author of the book, whose Latin title

was Disputatio Nachmanis, was Rabi Astruch de Porta and boasted the victory of the Jewish

champion. Since the first edition of the Speculum Hebraeorum goes back to 1333 and the work, as

well as all the Portuguese culture of the time, largely depends from the Catalan one, Perarnau i

Espelt concludes that perhaps João from Alcobaca had before him a copy of a work alike to that of

Mošeh ben Naḥman.

The third and last testimonium comes from a work of Alfonso de Valladolid, formerly Abner

de Burgos (1270-1350), a polymath Jew who became Christian in his fifties after a troublesome

conversion. Alfonso penned a series of polemical works, among which shines the Moreh Tzedeq;

still exant in a Spanish translation, Mostrador de Justicia, realized while he was still alive (1350),

this work is unsurpassed as to the great amout of Hebrew material, biblical as well as postbiblical,

collected by his auctor. According to R. Szpiech (2006: 565-572), this opus magnum shows a very

great familiarity with the Hebrew text of the Vikkuaḥ. Many are the references and the explicit

quotations to the rabbinical auctoritates on the coming of the Messiah, there discussed chiefly by

Pau Christià. The support for Pau Christià‟s arguments is so great that the work self really is an

offshot of Barcelona‟s disputation, aiming at the conversion of his former correligionaries.

The short overview of the textual evidence seems to confirm that almost from the end of

1300 and surely in the first half of XIV century, an Hebrew report of the Dispute was circulating

within the Jewish world and that its existence was known to Christians too. Alongside with it or

shortly predating it, Naḥmanides would have composed another text probably in Catalan – the very

language of the debate3 - after a request of the bishop of Gerona, Pere de Castellnou

4. The reason

behind that request does not have a clearcut explanation: Caputo (2005: 172-173) hints at a simple

intellectual curiosity, as the bishop and Naḥmanides shared a cultural milieu, born during the

kingdom of Jaume I and expressed by many literary texts. Or – we can imagine – that the bishop

understood the debate in the terms of a “classic” Medieval disputation that required after the debate

the publication of a booklet with the quaestiones disputatae? The emergence of such a booklet in

which Naḥmanides expressed his own opinion was at odds with the design of Ramon de Penyafort

nurtured by the scolastic thought: according to him, the imaginary and ideal interlocutor of the

3 On this aspect see Miller 2000: 125-126.

4 Marques 2007:69 deals briefly with Pere de Castellnou. Quite oddily, after the death of Jaume I, as Amador de los

Rios (1876:7-10) points out, Pere de Castellnou lead clerics populace of Gerona attacking the local Jewish aljiama and

the king Pere III had to request in harsh terms from the bishop to stop that activity

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quaestio had only the purpose of raising doubts and perverting the text of the auctoritas. His

presence let the master, at the same time a fighting warrior and a esorcizing priest, make the truth

shine and to estabilish again the true meaning of the text5.

At any rate, this text is lost forever and all that we have is the Hebrew text of Vikkuaḥ

Ramban6. In R. Chazan‟s words (1992:101), this is “a literary tour de force…a masterpiece of

Jewish polemical literature” and at the same time “a carefully crafted record aimed at creating a

certain set of impressions in the mind of its readers” (Chazan 1992:103). To corroborate the first

part of this judgement, the first step is a close scrutiny of its language and of its style. As

concerning the language, I have already shown (Bianchi 1999:77-78; Bianchi 2005:407-412) that

Naḥmanides‟s Hebrew stands halfway between the Biblical and Rabbinical one7. He draws from

Biblical Hebrew the use of construct state (concurrent with the later šel), the masculine plural – îm

and feminine ôt, the pronouns suffixes, some “archaic” adverbs (e.g. zûlatî) or prepositions, the

relative pronoun ‟ašer, the usage of all of the seven conjugations and in some istances of the waw

consecutive followed by apocopates forms (Vikkuaḥ § 1; § 20). To the Rabbinical Hebrew belongs

the use of the participle as the present tense, the construction „attîd plus infinite to describe a future

action and raṣitî plus infinite for the conditional, a rich set of prepositions (temporal, hypotehtic and

adversative) or negative adverbs. As to the lexical field, there are employed some names describing

Christian authorities (‟afifior: pope; hegemon “bishop”, galaḥîm “priest”) or ideas (šillûš “Trinity”),

whereas the Hebrew noun especially follow the pattern qetilah or are built with the abstract suffix –

ût. There are many reference to the religious field (dat, ḥôq, ‟emûnâ) or to the semantic field of

truth (‟emet). Here and there are witnessed some Latin words (“vagare”, “sermones”, “specularia”)

or from Spanish-catalan (kloister – chiostre – meistre “master”, razonamiento “reasoning”, “dia”

“day”, whereas there are‟nt loanwords from Arab8.

All told, that linguistic description becames even more remarkable, if we consider that

Naḥmanides‟s exegetical works usually display a complex and involuted style: this style has been

5 See for these remarks F. Alessio 2004:1018. In some way, as E. Smilévitch (1984: 14) aptly remarked, Ramon de

Penyafort saw the disputation as a by-pass of the crusade 6 It goes without saying that the choice of Hebrew is easily understandable: R. Salomon ben Abraham ibn Parhon, a

scholar lived in XII before in North Africa and then in Italy – remarked that between the Ishmailites (that‟s to say in the

Arab world) everybody sprake the same language, whereas among the Edomite lands (that‟s to say the Christian-ones)

there were so many different languages that the Jews of these lands used the holy language as mean of communication

Henceforth Hebrew still was “a literary language..of great flexibility and handiness, that was at hand of many people”

(I. Abrahams 1911:360-361). 7 As far as I know, a study of Naḥmanides‟s hebrew does not exist. Saenz Badillos‟s remarks (1982:239-246) on

Medieval Hebrew does not go further than Maimonides. In spite of that, T. Calders i Artis (2004, 105-119) has

emphatized the presence of a lively Jewish literature in the catalan country, spanning from poetry to prose and in touch

with the christian writers. An analysis of their linguistic peculiarities would be really welcomed. 8 All told, we cannot subscribe to H. Maccoby‟s harsh judgement (Maccoby 1982:78), according to which the Hebrew

text (of the Vikkuaḥ) would have been lacking of a revision and would have shown an hasty composition and an

innaccuracy in biblical and talmudic quotations.

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called “musive” as it makes often use of a classical style and a formal writing as well as of explicit

and implicit quotations from the Bible and the Talmud (Septimus 1982: 26-27). The same is true as

concerning the difficulty of the lexicon (Chazan 1992: 111; Perani 1999: 31-32). This short

overview makes more striking the language and the style of the Vikkuaḥ: the narrow, but

straightforward vocabulary, the brief but poignant sentences avoiding every embellishment, but

striving for comprehensiveness, wants to comunicate to the reader the same, nervous atmosphere of

the debate. Naḥmanides also achieves this purpose through a rich set of verbs which shows how his

literary skills are close to the biblical style so well described by R. Alter (1981:65-72). For instance,

as in the purest biblical prose, the verbs ‟āmar “to say”, „anâ “to answer”, sā‟al “to question” will

frame all the direct discurses and the following dialogues. As in the Bible the dialogues reveal the

disparate intersection of personalities and moods and their ultimate contrast, so the dialogues of

Vikkuaḥ let Naḥmanides‟s personality overcome that of Pau Christià. This is achieved though the

verb ṣā‟aq “to cry” (Vikkuaḥ § 51) used thrice by Pau Christià (a device for underlying his lacking

of self-control?) or the verbs lā‟ag “to mock” and ṥāmaḥ “to be happy” employed by Naḥmanides

for his self-assurance. No “free-motifs” or description are used to achieve that result. Other verbs

quite recurring are „āmad and qûm in order to point out the motion before starting to speak or before

closing the session. For describing the movement we only find the verb hālak. These latter verbs

could suggest a sort of teatral stage – to put it in E. Smilévitch‟s (1984: 11) words – where each

character has his own role and his own script to follow, but we are just in the biblical narrative

realm.

On the stylistic and literary ground another striking feature is the overwhealming use of the

first person in all the report. As N. Caputo (2004: 107) has stressed, the first person ultimately hides

two separate voices: the narrator and the commentator. The first always speaks in past tense,

whereas the subject costantly uses the present tense9. It could be possible that Naḥmanides aimed at

reaching a sort of autobiographic agreement with the reader in order to stress the truth of his report

and at teaching to him how to deal with a likewise situation. In our opinion, that choice also echoes

a stylistic use, well known in some biblical books, as some Psalms, Qohelet‟s wisdom

autobiography and the “prophetical books” (Chazan 1992). As matter of fact, nobody has recalled

the exemple of those biblical books set in exile as the books of Daniel, of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their

main characters must often deal with heathen kings for the people‟s sake and they act in an

dangerous environment. Daniel must fight to keep his faith in a polysteistic society and against the

will of an ambigous king, whereas Ezra and Nehemiah must deal with the Persian kings in order to

secure the observance of the Law and the future of Jerusalem. At the Babylonian and Persian Courts

9 We cannot forget that the voice of the narrator and the voice of the commentator are to be found in all the medieval

literature that sticks as far as is possible after the orality and the experience.

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they face kings who show, at a certain degree, friendship and involvement towards the life, the

religion and the concern of these diasporic heroes. I find quite appealing that Naḥmanides aimed at

stressing the similarity of his situation with that of the past, as the exile is one of main concerns in

his thought. I would like to press further that analogy, by using above all the “memories of

Nehemiah” (Bianchi 2011). Many scholars agree that the memories of Nehemiah are a kind of

autobiography, not free from some boasting embellishiment, that trustfully accounts for the deeds of

this Jewish governor of the fifth century B.C. Neverthless others, as D.J. Clines (1990:124-164) did,

have underlined in it “the perils of autobiography” that‟s to say that Nehemiah could have lied as

far as his importance, selflessness, energy, worthiness are concerned. In order to search out this

possibility in the memories of Nehemiah, Clines singled at least three areas: the narrative about

Nehemiah‟s mind, his intentions, feelings and motivations; narrative about the minds of other

characters, their intentions, feelings and motivations; matters of time, sequence, narrative

compression, and reticence.. Let us apply this yardstick to the Vikkuaḥ Ramban and to

Naḥmanides.

As concerning the first area now applied to the inner world of Naḥmanides, he describes

himself as a witty sage, at command of all the sources of his faith; he is able not only to deal with

the king according to the utmost courtier‟s ethics and to joke with the adversaries, but also to speak

of Christian faith and to defuse all the traps of the convert Pau Christià10

. As we noted above, some

verbs will undeline the self assurance of Naḥmanides and will mock the adversary‟s incapacity to a

right interpretation of halakah and accordingly of the haggadah (Chazan 1992:156).

As to the second area, Pau Christià is the other main character. He is described in a

shadowly way, without lending any information about his past and present, but stressing his

ignorance and his incompetence everywhere11

. Such a description seems to point out a poor record

of studies as far as his jewish past is concerned, but it probably bears the heavy mark of polemics.

Pau Christià, formerly Saul from Montpellier, had really get a rabbinic education:12

a student of

rabbi Eliezer from Tarascona, he felt at home above all in the realm of the Haggadot, as he built his

argument upon the haggadic materials. Nothing is said about the process that led him to embrace

the Christian faith13

, although Dinour related it to the Maimonidean Controversy that upset the

highly cultured Jewish communities of Provence and of Montpellier. His name of baptism

10

In R. Chazan‟s words, Naḥmanides is a sort of “folk- hero”. According to Smilévitch (1984:1), Naḥmanides would

bea n artist, able to overcome the limits he suffered at the beginning of the debate. 11

It is worth noticing as the code used by Wagenseil pressed futher that line of argument and entered a series of abusive

expressions agaisnt Pau Christià; he is the wicked, the empious, the heretic and least but not last “a donkey”. 12

Chazan 1999:70-71 considers him the scion of a prominent family who attended one or more of the major accademies

of the region”. 13

Chazan 1992, 58- 59 quotes a letter sent from Jacob ben Eliah, a Spanish Jew fled to Venice, who blamed Pau

Christià for having taken his two children from his wife and for having made them Christians.

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witnesses how he wanted to refer himself “not only to a paradigmatic convert, but also to a fierce

disputant against Judaism, as many chapters in the Act of Apostles easily show (Kruger 2007: 164-

165). In Naḥmanides‟s words, Pau Christià becomes the exemplum of the apostate who had

betrayed his faith because of the influence of the Christian world and that has became a menace for

his former correligionaries14

. Behind that description there could have been, according to N. Caputo

(2005), one of Naḥmanides‟s major concerns that‟s to say to remark the difference between

apostates and Jews. At stake there would not have been the relationship with the Christians who, as

Naḥmanides recognized elsewhere, were‟nt idolaters at all, but with the former Jews15

. To the

question “Are you still my brother?” put by Simcha Goldin (1999) in a paper dealing with the

apostates from Judaism and their relationship with their former faith, Naḥmanides would have

answered “No”.

As to the other main character, the king Jaume of Aragon, he is portrayed in a quite

magnificent way. His status and his dignity are highlighted at opening and at the ending of the

disputation. On one side Naḥmanides remembers at volume his Christian education and its limits,

but on the other he underlines the esteem and the kindness of the king towards him. To

Naḥmanides‟s eyes, the politeness and the gentlemanship were so important that in the opening

words of the Vikkuah he underlined his ability to behave in a polite way (the Hebrew word is

mûsar). Moreover, in his Commentary to the Torah, he will search for the same polite behaviour in

the life of the Patriarchs. Nahmanides seemingly claims to share with the king the same etic code.

We can add something else to confirm that statement: Naḥmanides describes twice the king bursting

off against Pau Christià and Arnau de Segarra, when these latter ones did not behave in a polite

way.

Around this “trio” we see others “secondary” characters; among them stood others friars as

Fr. Ramon de Penyafort, the true deus ex machina of the disputation (Cohen 1982:103-108). He is

present in the Vikkuaḥ at the very beginning, when he gave Naḥmanides freedom of spech unless

he does not harm Christian faith and just at the end, with a short speech about Trinity uttered during

the Sabbath service in the sinagogue of Barcelona. At the debate took also part fr. Arnau of Segarra,

at the time Prior of the convent of Santa Caterina. A former student of Fr.Albert the Great, founder

of the convent of Gerona and Murcia and spiritual father of Jaume I, he implemented the missionary

ideas of Ramon de Penyafort towards Jews and Muslim and he acted as censor of the Talmud and

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As in the dispute of Paris first as well as in Tortosa later, a convertite will be strumental to a Church that is still

reluctant to engage into a debate with the Jews. Pau Christiani‟s career after the encounter at Barcelona is known from

scattered records: he kept on his activity of missionary disputant both in Southern France (Chazan) and at Paris (Ragacs

2001), attacking the Talmud and the moneylending, up to the disinterrement of baptized Jews come back to their

religion (Shatzmiller 1992, 203-217). 15

The opening quotation from the talmudic Tractate Sanhedrin about the fate of the five disciples of Jesus may point

out to that interpretation.

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head-inquisitor of the Kingdom (from 1265 to 1269) The Vikkuaḥ reports two brief, but important

intervention of him: the first is germane to the meaning of the word yom in Hebrew16

as he quotes

Jerome‟s authority to confirm, against Pau Christià‟s opinion, that the plural yamîm also mean

“years” (Vikkuaḥ § 67). The second intervention took place within a heat argument about a

quotation from Maimonides‟s tractate Shoftim about the Messiah17

, as Arnau de Segarra accused

Maimonides to be a liar (Vikkuaḥ §§ 74-75) and is rebuked by Naḥmanides. Whereas we do not

have informations about the franciscan friar Peter from Genua, it is worth noticing the majestic

attendance which follow the debate. It recalls the typical middle-age taste for the theatre and for the

human voice that rules all the reality.

The third area of research with its subcategories offers us the chance of a stricter comparison

between the Vikkuaḥ and the latin protocols of the event: on the aftermath of the debate the friars

composed a protocol still extant in two copies: the first, on which was put the royal seal, comes

from the Royal Archive of Barcellona, whereas the other one, slighty different, was kept in a

cartularium of Gerona. As far as the category “time” is concerned, the Vikkuaḥ affirms that the

disputation lasted four days, whereas the Latin protocol reduced it to a day alone. It is possible that

the latin writer compacted the events for sake of bureaucratic brevity.

On the matter of space, the two sources seem to be fond of the enormous attendance of

nobles, priests being at the royal palace or in the cloister. That attendance does not stay always in

silence. In the Latin protocol Jews and Christians too shout against Naḥmanides‟s poor performance

in front of Pau Christià‟s arguments. In the Hebrew one, both of them asked to Naḥmanides to end

the disputation, being afraid of his frankness and of the reaction of the populace.

A point of fair agreement seems to be the collection of biblical and rabbinical testimonia

concerning the Messiah that were discussed; we find quotations from the book of Daniel, from

Genesis 49,10, Psalm 20,2, Isaiah 52 and as concerning the Talmudic lore, the story of the Messiah

sitting at Rome‟s gate and in the Gan Eden. At this juncture we can briefly sketch the concordance

or the divergence between Vikkuah‟s arguments and the rest of Naḥmanides‟s thought. Fews are the

concrete links with the great commentary to the Torah: the reference to the priestly descent of

Hasmoneans kings debated in Vikkuaḥ § 12 surfaces in the commentary to Genesis 49,10, but in this

latter work Naḥmanides denies that priest can be kings; despite that, the same spot presents a

similar description of the exile after the destruction of the first temple. Others texts expounded in

that opus magnum and used in the Vikkuaḥ are Deuteronomy 30,7 as well as Leviticus 26,12:

16

Caputo 2005: 159-161 highlights the importance of the debate on the word yôm. The presence of an anonimous jew

to confirm the basic meaning of yôm that‟s to say “dia” in catalan wants to underline that all the discussion is set in the

exile. 17

Eventually a Latin document issued from the King will order in 1265 the burning of all the copies of Maimonides„s

tractate Shoftim as it uuters blasfemies against Jesus Christ.

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Naḥmanides used both of them to express his ideas about the present exile and the future

redemption, whereas he does not put forth his own interpretation of Genesis 1,2. He only reports the

interpretation of the Berešit Rabba, but not his own that sees the four beasts described in the book

of Daniel as hiding the four kingdoms. Among the prophetical books there are references to the

book of Isaiah, to Jeremiah 31,33-34 and above all to the book of Daniel. A large part of this

material is to be found especially in the Sefer Ge‟ullah where Naḥmanides expounds the teaching of

Daniel about the coming of Messiah and the historical events relating to it (Perani 1999: 97-106).

Against that background we can read, for instance, the identification of Zerubbabel as the prince

told in Daniel 9,25 and the fulfillment of the mitzwot as the gateway for the coming of the Messiah.

There is no open reference to his cabalistic interpretations, although the sentence about the

interpretation of Haggadah according to “the secrets of the masters” probably hints at it.

Of all the items listed in the third fold the more important is by far the so called “reticence”.

As to Nehemiah‟s memories, Clines made it originate from the psycology of the auctor or from the

narrative plot. Our case is most difficult, as the studies of M. Cohen and R. Chazan and their

reappraisal of the Latin protocols have prompted to label the Vikkuaḥ as a work of public

edification, whose aim was at reassuring the Jewish hearers both about the coming of the Messiah

or thanks to the happy ending. The Hebrew report would bear the mark of an intentional reticence in

order a) to exagerate the freedom of speech by Naḥmanides against the Christian faith; b) to

minimize the desaster of the debate; c) to slander Pau Christià; d) the results; to turn a sort of

limited debate into a celebration of the jewish faith and he would have use his literary skills (greater

than his oratory) for assuring to himself a postumous victory. Let us test if these four cases can

disclose a deliberate reticence and to strenghten Chazan‟s arguments.

The first issue is the freedom of speech available to Naḥmanides: at the beginning of the

Vikkuah, Naḥmanides stresses to have requested from the king and from Ramon de Penyafort a

complete freedom of speech and to have get it. During all the debate, however, Naḥmanides seems

always on the defensive; he often underlines that he is obeying a king‟s order and he is forced to

answer to the questions of Pau Christià also under the pressure of the king. To mess the picture

there is a sentence issued from the royal court of Barcelona in April 1265. This sentence states that

Bonastruc de Porta (aka Naḥmanides) stood before the king, because Ramon de Penyafort and other

friars accused him “to have said some contemptous words against Our Lord and against all the

Catholic faith and to have drawn from them also a book, a copy of which he gave to the bishop of

Gerona” (Denifle 1887:243) Bonastruc answered that these words were uttered because of the

freedom of speech that the king awarded him to the the beginning of the dispute. As the querelants

did not accept the royal verdict which sentenced Naḥmanides to a two year‟s ban and to the burning

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of his book, the King fined and acquited Naḥmanides18

. I wonder if this situation does not reveal

more ambiguity than reticence, like a sort of “gioco delle parti” (to use Pirandello‟s words) between

the king and Naḥmanides. This latter could have accepted the involvement in the dispute perhaps to

harm not the interests of his community and to offend not Jaume I whose kingdom faced a deep

internal crisis. Meanwhile his assent could reveal the will to know better the new missionary

method, to grasp its faults and to point out its dangers to his fellows Jews. As to the king, he

supported the Christian missionizing zeal, letting Dominicans to preach in the sinagogues and in

private dialogues and speaking in first person in the sinagogue of Barcelona about the Trinity. At

the same time he allowed the Jews to attend not the preachings out of the calls judaica. He kept on

protecting the Jews, who were members of the royal chamber and an important economic force in

the country and protecting Naḥmanides to whom he granted 300 gold solidi for the expenses, a fact

also stated by a official document from royal archive.

Which part did the friars have in this game? As far as I can see, Domenicans friars sought to

test the idea of Pau Christià that was possible to prove, by means of the Talmud and of other Jewish

scriptures, that Jesus was the Messiah. That idea represented an upgrade in comparision to N.

Donin‟s appeal in the first dispute of Paris to burn the Talmud as a blasfemous work and was

realized singling out Naḥmanides as the Jewish speaker. We can wonder if that choice was born

from a previous knowledge of Naḥmanides‟s though about haggadic materials. All along the debate,

Pau Christià always kept the initiative and the Latin protocol ascribed him a complete victory upon

Naḥmanides who flight away with scorn. Neverthless, it was less than a complete victory, if the

friars sought to punish the alleged Naḥmanides‟s blasfemy and the redaction of the booklet. Their

acts reveal both a certain reticence to admit a stronger resistence from Naḥmanides and his

arguments or they can betray that the disputation had a greater importance ad intra that‟s to say

among the Christians19

.

Another issue shrouded with reticence in the Hebrew text is the theme of authority. Within

the debate of Genesis 49,10, Pau Christià denies that Naḥmanides can bear the title of rab

(“Maistre”), as the Jewish people lost any kind of political authority after the death of Jesus. Since

the following lost of rabbinical ordination (semikâ), Jews lost any authority (memšallâ). In the

Hebrew text Naḥmanides avoids the question, though ironically admitting of being not a “rav” or

“maistre”. According to M. Žonca (2009), P. Christià argued that the rabbinical authorities of his

18

Eventually the Friars asked for help to Pope Clement IV, so that and a papal bulla issued in 1266 a bulla directed

asked for chastening the daring of this man who, after having disputated with the pious friar P. Christiani, composed a

book full with many lies, copied in manyfold copies and sent in several regions. The papal bulla had any effect as

Nachmanides already settled in Erets Israel,

19

R. Szpiech (2006) has a more nuanced approach as in his opinion the dispute started as a missionary enterprise, but

was eventually used ad intra, for disciplinary reasons within the Church.

11

age did not held a legitimate power anymore, as they concealed to the others jews the messianicity

of Jesus. Henceforth that Judaism was just a kind of heresy, as he said during the second disputation

of Paris in 1270. Nachmanides was not at ease in replying to this line of argument. Still less at ease

Nachmanides seems, when Pau Christià used some haggadic passages for proving that the Messiah

was already came. Twice in the Vikkuaḥ, Naḥmanides proclaims that he did not trust these

haggadot and tries to explain his point of view built upon the binding value of the Bible and the

Talmud and the free acceptance of the midrashim. Some scholars found that argument so weak to

reveal Naḥmanides‟s ultimate failure: to be forced to deny the binding value of Haggadah, to

discredit on his own exegetic method and his orthodoxy before his fellow jews as concerning his

faith into the Messiah and in the value of the Haggadah. The Latin protocol would support that

conclusion. In my opinion, a careful reading of Naḥmanides‟s arguments provide a more nuanced

conclusion: as matter of fact, in the heated “give and take” of the debate, Naḥmanides seems to

deny any binding value to the Haggadah and this stance fuels P. Christià‟s reaction who accused

him to be an heretic. In his Vikkuaḥ Naḥmanides tries to refine his argument: his exegetical work

shows that he felt free of accepting and denying the values of an haggadic passage as far as they

contradict each other (as the two tales on the birth of Messiah) or they are inferior to the rabbinic

teachings or they can be overcame by a cabbalistic interpretation. Although the Hebrex text seems

to hide the difficulties before Pau Christià‟s arguments – in such a sense we can speak of reticence –

Naḥmanides was able to provide his hearers of an answer against the new missionary argument and

to offer an organic picture of his conception of the Jewish history and of her messianic expectations

(Caputo 2005:176-179).

At the end of this analysis we face the most problematic question: is the Vikkuaḥ Ramban a

trustworthy report of the facts or is it just a work of propaganda and therefore – in our today

language – a sort of “fiction” ? I would propose, always relying upon Clines‟s work, the definition

of “fact-ion” that‟s to say a literary genre where historical facts and fiction are strictly blended.

Blending historical facts and imaginative reconstruction is a special feature of Medieval Literature,

where the boundaries between history and fiction are rather blurred. An exemple of that situation is

the famous Latin Autobiography of Hermann the Jew. The auctor of this latter text, probably

written in Germany during the XII century, used some past memories about the conversion of some

Jews (Schmitt 2002:240-244) for celebrating the new monastic order and calling for the conversion

of his readers through dreams, narrative strategems and theological topoi. The same is true for the

historical tales in Medieval Hebrew prose, as E. Yassif (1999: 267; 2002:287) has aptly remarked.

Trough these tales, the writer can shape the cultural memory of the Jewish people and can voice

both his individual concerns and his communal anxieties. Could we read Naḥmanides‟s Vikkuaḥ in

12

such a way? It is evident that the Vikkuaḥ is neither “a recorded” tape nor a stenographic account –

to put it in I. Loeb‟s words – of the disputation. It follows an agenda of its own as well as the Latin

protocols did20

. Naḥmanides‟s Vikkuaḥ surely kept the memory of the auctoritates debated, of his

arguments with Pau Christià and of his interpretations, but his reflection on the event shows an

highly literary and theological elaboration (Maccoby 1983, 74-75). Because of this, the Vikkuaḥ

can be read now on several levels. First of all, it tells the story of an encounter according all the

medieval categories (the description of the court, the king‟s behaviour and so on); at the same time

the Vikkuaḥ also is Naḥmanides‟s apology for all the doubts and the worries which his words and

his behaviour were raising among other Jews, especially as far as the status of Haggadah and the

coming of the Messiah were concerned; furthermore, it works as an handbook for providing to the

Jewish communities of Spain, Provence and France a set of answers to be used against the

Dominican missionary endeavour and such an apostates as Pau Christià. Last but not least, the

Vikkuaḥ offers an answer to the Dominican point of view voiced by the Latin protocol, which

claimed the complete victory of Pau Christià over Naḥmanides and the intellectual and moral

bankrupcy of the latter.

Although the disputation of Barcelona become as soon as possible, a paradigmatic exemple

of missionary zeal towards the Jews, it is worth noticing, the ominous silence of Ramon Llull on

this event. A. Bonner (1989:178-180) remarked that the disputation took place just in 1263, when

R. Llull lived a deep conversion and started to build the majestic effort to evangelize Muslim and

Jews. This silence firmly refuses the missionary strategy that the Dominicans, which whom he was

in contact, built on the word of auctoritates (see the allusion to Ramon Marti in the Liber de

Acquisitione). His famous sentence “Disputaction por auctoritates no ha repos” underlines his

skepticism before R. Martì‟s obsession for the Talmud and its testimonia and paves the way to

another kind of missionary strategy, which wanted the infidels acknowledge by their own reason the

splendour of the Catholic Faith21

.

20

I briefly dealt with the problems of Latin protocols in Bianchi 1999, 27-28. As far as I see, the Latin Protocols

seemed to bring into a systematic disrepute Nachmanides‟s person and interpretation. It is worth noticing as these

documents speak of the same friar Pau only twice: the first at the beginning of Latin Protocol, whereas the second as to

his preliminary meeting in Gerona with Nachmanides. 21

Harvey J. Hames 1998: 319-348 labelled Llull‟s relationship towards Judaism a pragmatic one, marked by tolerance

and respect, but always aimed at bringing them to recognize the truth of the Christian faith.

13

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