| An important theme in medieval intellectual history was the attempt by exegetes from the 12th century onward to reconcile and integrate the new information coming from Greek authors, whose writings were translated and sometimes interpreted by the Arabs, with the body of culture of the Latin-speaking West, itself a product of many forces, amongst which the Hellenistic-Roman culture played an important role. The introduction of Muslim influence in the West through Spain changed the intellectual map of Latin Europe, now forced to deal with old material in a new form.;Pedro Alfonso was one of the earliest translators, providing an example of how this transmission worked, illustrating the paradoxes of translation as both creation and replacement, continuity and rupture. His largest and most important work, the Dialogi contra Judaeos, defends his decision to embrace Christianity, with arguments derived from Patristic and Rabbinic sources, science and reason.;The first chapter of this study presents Alfonso's treatise, explains the importance of his work and the method used. The author of the Dialogi provides us with scant indication of the range of his Patristic. Jewish and Muslim sources. The second chapter therefore is a survey of the historical development of the main events and of the literature forming the background of the Dialogi. It considers Alfonso's work in relation to precedent cultural relations in the Mediterranean world. The third chapter provides a brief survey of the exegetical tradition, both in Christian and in Jewish circles, which shaped Alfonso's own methods of interpretation, and its importance for the critical discourse in our time. The fourth chapter discusses our limited knowledge concerning the author's background, different theories concerning his identity and his intriguing relations with Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny. The fifth chapter examines Alfonso's Dialogi contra Judaeos, which reflects his unique background as a Jew raised in a Muslim society and educated in Arabic, living in a Christian environment. His interior dialogue provides the dramatic setting which makes it possible for the author to elaborate at will upon the moral and spiritual implications of the ideas related. It is a remarkable achievement for its time, due to Alfonso's knowledge of Jewish and Muslim arguments, of Jewish literature, of Patristic sources, and to the place reason occupies in his arguments. Astronomy, medicine and knowledge of the physical world are also used to solve scriptural problems. Alfonso's text includes more than a doctrinal discussion, because it shows the social and cultural interaction of Christians, Jews and Muslims, furthering our understanding of the complex processes of social and cultural change occurring not only in Spain and the Latin West, but throughout the Arab empire from Baghdad to the frontier of al-Andalus. It also shows that the intellectuals of medieval Europe probably formed more of a cultural union than we do now. |
