As versões judaico-cristãs sobre o debate de Barcelona em 1263: um estudo sobre identidades e fronteiras com base n’A vikuah de Nahmânides e n’O Relato Cristão

Abstract

The Barcelona Debate in 1263 was an event promoted by the Dominican Order in conjunction with the Catalan-Aragonese monarchy. At the time, a convert, friar Pablo Christiani, and a Catalan rabbi, Moses ben Maimon, discussed the motion that there were writings from rabbinic Judaism that demonstrated the advent of the Messiah. After the confrontation, two versions with different information about the results of the discussion were written, one by the rabbi and the other anonymous, being known in Portuguese as Maimon’s Vikuah (A Vikuah de Nahmânides) and The Christian Report (O Relato Cristão). From the examination of these primary documentation, in the light of the Content Analysis proposed by Laurence Bardin, this study takes a sociocultural approach to the observable representations in the different narrative constructions about the event and emphasizes the conflict of adjacent identities in each version. In view of the analyzes undertaken, this master thesis concludes that the maintenance of borders between Judaism and Christianity is found in the narratives, through a dichotomy observed through the use of binary oppositions and diverse valuations between the disputant and their rival. In relation to the rabbi, the Christian version adopts representations that signal the adversary's incapacity, lies and errors, while those of the friar show their skill and diligence in elaborating the interpretations of the texts cited. In relation to the friar, the Jewish version elaborates representations that characterize the Christian's foolishness and inabilities to understand Talmudic texts, while highlighting the rabbi's eloquence and erudition. Through these controversial sources, we seek to understand, based on the way in which the interpretative differences around the figure of the Messiah were described, the different representations that each group built of itself and the other in that specific context