Polemical Encounters

“Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers have fundamentally advanced our understanding of and the debate around the meaning of medieval polemic. This collection of essays is original and impressive, and it will undoubtedly inspire a new generation of scholars.”

—Hussein Fancy, author of The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon

“Mercedes García-Arenal, Gerard Wiegers, and their brilliant collaborators have once again joined voices to provide us with a work of polyphonic scholarship. Polemical Encounters is a volume uniquely suited to revealing the intimate agon of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the premodern world.”

—David Nirenberg, author of Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today

“This fascinating and valuable collection of essays takes us deep into the medieval and early modern worlds of interfaith relations. Experts across a range of subfields ask fresh and original questions about the nature of the polemical enterprise. From Mozarabic communities in the twelfth century to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth, we are introduced to a variety of polyglot polemicists who fashioned new styles of discourse from changing geographic and demographic realities both in Iberia and beyond. The basic but profound conclusion of this wide-ranging volume is that the more Christians, Muslims, and Jews challenged each other polemically, the more polyvalent, fractured, and open to reform their own religious hierarchies became.”

—Alex Novikoff, author of The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance

“This volume contributes to an important, ongoing revision of Iberian cultural and religious history in the late medieval and early modern periods. It challenges a conventional approach to Iberian polemical exchange that has emphasized theological argument among recognized authorities in clearly defined Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. This volume, in contrast, highlights polemical exchange in an Iberian context of shifting identities, cross-confessional borrowing, and wide situational variation.”

—Miriam Bodian, author of Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam

“This multiauthored volume brings detailed philological and historical research to bear on the unusually complex spiritual, cultural, and linguistic relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians during Spain’s troubled and incomplete transition from medieval diversity to early modern uniformity. Readers from a wide range of scholarly disciplines will be rewarded with novel perspectives on the remarkable textual evidence that emerged from this conflictive yet productive encounter.”

—James S. Amelang, author of Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain

“An interesting book that presents a broad perspective on religious diversity while analysing the processes triggered by religious controversy.”

—Juan Hernández Franco Journal of Ecclesiastical History

“Polemical Encounters makes an excellent contribution to our understanding of how some medieval and early modern Iberians attempted to construct and maintain their own religious boundaries in spite of a messy lived experience that belied this imagined clarity.”

—Gretchen Starr-LeBeau Journal of Modern History

“The editors have selected essays which draw out the rich depth of intercultural exchange in the Iberian Peninsula and outside it.”

—Lesley Twomey English Historical Review