Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: When was Petrus Alphonsi born?
He was born at an unknown date and place in the 11th century in Spain, and educated in al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain, largely the same as modern Andalucia. As he describes himself, he was baptised at Huesca, capital of the Kingdom of Aragon, on St. Peter's Day, 29 June 1106, when he was probably approaching middle age; this is the first clear date we have in his biography.[2] In honor of the saint Peter, and of his royal patron and godfather, the Aragonese King Alfonso I he took the name of Petrus Alfonsi (Alfonso's Peter).
His famous Trinitarian "IEUE" interlaced-circles diagram was influenced by the different 3-circles Tetragrammaton-Trinity diagram of Petrus Alphonsi, and in turn led to the use of the Borromean rings as a symbol of the Christian Trinity (and possibly also influenced the development of the Shield of the Trinity diagram).
What makes this doctrine so radically different from some previous Christian polemics of the time is that they tried to prove the validity of Christianity by pointing out scriptures in the Old Law that confirmed that Jesus was the Son of God. With this belief, it portrayed the Jews as a people who would eventually see the truth and would ultimately convert to Christianity. Petrus’ new concept claimed that the Jewish leaders were blatantly lying and had attempted to cover up the truth. This new concept obviously would create a new type of tension between Christians and Jews, and Alfonsi inadvertently affected Anti Semites to rebring [deicide] as a charge against all Jews.
In addition to philosophical and scientific literature, the Jewish writer Petrus Alphonsi translated a collection of 33 tales from Arabic literature into Latin. Some of the tales he drew on were from the "Panchatantra" and "Arabian Nights", such as the story cycle of "Sinbad the Sailor".
De dracone, in which he calculates movements of the stars De Astronomia, contains an astronomical grid according to the Arab, Persian and Latin calendars. With them and the aid of an astrolabe it was possible to find out, with accuracy, the ascending positions of the sun, moon, and the five known planets. Carta a los peripatéticos franceses.
This work presented a point of view contrary to previous Christian philosophy because Christians claimed that the Jews were blindly practicing the Old Law. Petrus Alfonsi initiated a differing idea that “the Jews no longer followed the Old Law; they follow a new and heretical law, that of the Talmud.” Petrus’ belief was that the Jewish leaders were knowingly and willfully leading their flock astray. He believed that they purposely lied in order to conceal their sin of killing Jesus, in spite of the fact that they knew that he was the Son of God. Petrus Alfonsi also claimed that the Talmud was written to keep the Jewish people from seeing that Jesus was the Son of God; he called the Talmud “a fabric of lies” and a “heretical book.”
The Augustinian tradition afforded Jews in Europe a tolerance throughout the Latin West that was not shared among other religions. This tradition did not place any emphasis on Judaism being heretical, but rather pointed to the fact that the Jews had a pivotal part to play in the spreading of Christianity. This doctrine was originally written to explain why Jews were not converting to Christianity. Since the Jews were the ones who had kept the law, it would seem logical that they would know whether the savior had come, and this seemed to present a problem within Christian society. Daniel Lasker said of Petrus’ ideology that “These innovations signaled the beginning of the end of the relative Christian tolerance of Jews and Judaism inspired by the writings of Augustine.” Other authors before Petrus had used harsher rhetoric; there was seldom any deviation from the Augustinian tradition.
Petrus’ upbringing placed him in an atmosphere that provided a significant impetus to launch him as one of the most important figures in anti-Judaic polemics. According to Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi was reared in a society in turmoil: a place of chaos and political instability, where Judaism was in conflict with science, and Islam and Christianity were becoming a larger influence. His background was conveniently placed in the centre of contention between religions and circumstances that surrounded his upbringing, and provided the framework for polemics that would shape Medieval Judaic perception.
Lauretta is the narrator of this very old tale. The earliest form of it is found in the Sanskrit "Śukasaptati" ("The Parrot's Seventy Tales"), which was compiled in the 6th century AD. A later version from the 11th century is found in "Disciplina Clericalis", which was written in Latin by Petrus Alphonsi, a Jewish convert to Christianity. The tale was very popular and appears in many vernacular languages of the era.
When one contrasts Alfonsi’s Judaic polemics to his Islamic polemics, there is much revealed about his thoughts on each religion. Petrus’ polemics against Judaism did not focus on how the religion was created or the people that were the original followers of the religion, but that is exactly how Alfonsi sought to defame Islam. He would use a different method of attack against Judaism by associating Judaism with Islam to the Christians.
Disciplina clericalis is a book by Petrus Alphonsi. Written at the beginning of the 12th century, it is a collection of fables and tales and is the oldest European book of its kind.
Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos was not an entirely new polemical concept; he used the same arguments and cited the same Old Testament prophecies that polemicists before him had been using. Before Alfonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos, Medieval Latin knew very little about the religious beliefs and practices of the Jews living within their own city. Most Christians did not know the contents of the Talmud, and some did not even know of its existence. This lack of knowledge provided a problem for Christians who were trying to prove the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, and they were doing this without even knowing the basics of Judaism.
When Alfonsi used the Talmud in his arguments, his goal was to expose it as “devoid of divine inspiration” and he did this through proving the Talmud was “contrary to logical and scientific fact.” The way that Alfonsi used the Talmud was completely different from how Christians in the past had used it. Previously Christians would merely peruse the Talmud for inflammatory references to Jesus in order to invoke Christian disdain towards the Jews. When Petrus Alfonsi quoted from the Talmud, he ignored any such slanderous language, and focused on references that would contradict philosophical logic or scientific fact. He proved philosophical fact in his polemics by discussing how the corporeality of God could not exist because it contradicted the dominant Aristotelian theory, and that the Talmudic rabbis saw such scriptures as “God created man in his own image,” as literal. In the Dialogi contra Iudaeos Petrus attacked the mystical tradition called Shi’ur Qomah. He showed how science of his day clearly contradicted the Talmudic claim in hopes of discrediting the validity of it being divinely inspired.
A manuscript from the 12th century containing the work an be found at the Cambridge Historic Parker Library. [14]
Petrus Alphonsi was a Jewish Spanish physician, writer, astronomer, and polemicist, who converted to Christianity in 1106. He is also known just as Alphonsi,[1] and as Peter Alfonsi or Peter Alphonso and was born Moses Sephardi). Born in Islamic Spain, he mostly lived in England and France after his conversion.
Petrus’ attack, although directed at Judaism, does not attempt to challenge the Jewish people; he reserves his polemics for the rabbis and rabbinical Jewish writings. This is particularly interesting because his polemics demonstrate that the Jewish people were not impenitently heretical but rather misguided by envious rabbis who wanted to retain power over the Jews. If this was the case, then there was hope for the Christians that the Jews could convert.
The fifth titulus in the Dialogi contra Iudaeos dealt specifically with polemics against Islam, and out of all twelve tituli, the fifth titulus was the only one that mentioned anything of Islam. Tolan argued that the fifth titulus was shorter and less developed than the other anti-Judaic tituli because he was just trying to convince a Jew of the invalidity of Islam; so there was no need to fully develop this titulus. Blackman argues differently about the fifth titulus, that it was written to associate Judaism with Islam. The fact that Petrus associated Moses with defending the Islamic faith makes this an argument against Judaism. Petrus does not directly say that this is his reason, but the Dialogi was written for Christians to read, not Jews. This document was one of the most important polemics written for Christians’ perception of Judaism. The Dialogi portrayed Judaism as defending Islam, so if Petrus could show Islam as invalid, then he could, through association, expose the invalidity of Judaism.
Jacob ben Reuben (rabbi) The Moon is made of green cheese
Although Blackman believes that Petrus was motivated in part to write the Dialogi to help explain to Christians why Islam is false, if he really wanted to articulate a complete argument against Islam, he could have written a separate work that was against a Muslim and not a Jew. It seems very illogical for Petrus to write such an extensive work against Judaism, and then write one of the twelve titulus about Islam in the middle of the Dialogi. If the purpose of the fifth titulus is to be against Islam, it does not coincide with anything else in the Dialogi, and it is placed in the middle of it. If Petrus’ true intention of the fifth titulus was to prove the invalidity of Islam then he most certainly would have written an entirely different polemic and included the fifth titulus in that work.
Up until the Dialogi contra Iudaeos, the Augustinian tradition was followed in Christendom which allowed relative tolerance to the Jewish people, and for the most part up until this point the attacks on the Jewish people were localized and more importantly, not organized. There was no literature before Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi condemning Judaism as a whole. There was no document for people to latch on to and group up against the Jewish people.
Although it is not possible to prove with empirical evidence, Blackman believes that Petrus Alfonsi converted to Christianity because he honestly believed that it was right and the most logical choice to make. His surroundings suggested that his conversion was merely the product of opportunism and chaos, but when one begins to delve into the Dialogi contra Iudaeos it becomes apparent that he deeply believed what he wrote. Funkenstein agrees saying that he believes that Petrus’ motives for the writing of the Dialogi were fairly sincere. It is my belief that Petrus supposed that all Jews simply needed to see the truth and that the rabbis were lying out of envy to keep the populace subordinated. He saw himself in the Jews, and as long as they were being led by deceitful rabbis, they had no reason to convert. It was this ubiquitous ideal that was his greatest weakness when writing the Dialogi. Although this document was written for Christians, he intended it to help the Christians understand why the Jewish people were not converting. According to Alfonsi, as long as the rabbis of the present day remained in power, they were able to keep the Jewish people from seeing the truth. Alfonsi’s Dialogi was the single most important work in polemics for shifting the perspective of the Christians, and he assumed that his work would be able to convert the Jews. This was not the case. Although he was successful in changing the mindsets of the Christians toward the Jews, there was not the desired result of conversion but rather something he was against, a greater persecution of the Jews.
Friedrich Wilhelm Valentin Schmidt produced a scholarly edition in 1827.[12]
In the Dialogus Alphonsi relates that he traveled to England as magister in liberal arts. He spent several years there as court physician of Henry I of England (reigned 1100-1135).[4]
Petrus was born a Jew while living in al-Andalus, and after he rose to prominence, he converted to Christianity. This environment gave him an advantageous knowledge of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that would later prove useful in his polemics. John Tolan mentioned in his book Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers that "Alfonsi’s texts were received enthusiastically—he became an auctor, an authority to be quoted. His success was due in large part to his ability to bridge several cultures: a Jew from the [Muslim] world of al-Andalus." His knowledge of these different religions is what makes Alfonsi unique and why he is essential to be studied when looking at anti-Judaic polemics.
Petrus established in the beginning of the fifth titulus that he was very knowledgeable in Islam, and it is evident that he wanted his readers to know that he had the authority to write about Islam. Since there was no real polemics about Islam at this time, it was important to make it known to his readers that he had the authority to write about Islam. To accomplish this, Petrus so arrogantly says that he “is not less convincing than if Mohammad himself were present…” This confidence in his knowledge of the Islamic faith allows the opportunity for the Dialogi to make a difference in the perception of Christians in Latin Europe.