THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOM 1200-1.~00Nahmanides, one in Latin, and not surprisingly they give very
different views of the event, with Nahmanides and the Chris-
tians each claiming victory.^21 Crucially, however, it was the
Christians who set the agenda; Judaism was in the dock. Over
twenty years later, in 1286, in Majorca, the Barcelona disputa-
tion was still remembered as a cause celebre, a point revealed
in the surviving text of a disputation held that year between
a Genoese merchant and some local Jews.^22
Vigorous attacks on Judaism and Islam increased in in-
tensity. Ramon Marti (d. 1285/90) was a graduate of one of
the early language academies, and he devoted much of his
life, at the prompting of Ramon de Penyafort, to the battle
against both religions. His Dagger of Faith was a massive study
of the Jewish texts, in which he sought to distinguish what he
regarded as the 'true' and the 'false' traditions of the Jews,
talking of certain traditions he had found in the Talmud and
other books, 'and which I most gladly raised up like pearls
out of a great dungheap'. What made Marti dangerous was
the extraordinary care he had taken to study his texts, so that
his translations of Hebrew originals were accurate, and so that
the obvious objection, that the Christians had simply misun-
derstood the texts they were citing, could be countered.^2 :^1RAMON LLULL
Of all those involved in conversionist campaigns the most
extraordinary figure, even to his contemporaries, was Ramon
Llull of Majorca ( 1232-c.1316).^2 ~ The Llulls were part of the
first wave of Christian conquest, settlers from Barcelona who
- Maccoby, Judaism on Trial, pp. 102-50; see also R. Chazan, Barcelona
and Beyond. The di.1putation of 1263 and its aftermath (Berkeley /Los
Angeles, 1992).
- Limor, ed., Dir Disputationen zu Ceuta ( 1179) und Mal/orca ( 1286).
Zwei antijudische Schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters,
vol. 15 (Munich, 1994); Ingetus Contardus, Disputatio contra ludeos,
ed. and trans!. G. Dahan (Paris, 1993).
- Limor, ed., Dir Disputationen zu Ceuta ( 1179) und Mal/orca ( 1286).
- Cohen, Friars and thP jews, pp. 129-69; Chazan, Daggns of Faith,
pp. 115-58. - Fundamental studies are those by J. Hillgarth, Lull and Lullism in
fourteenth-centwy France (Oxford, 1971); and the introduction to
A. Bonner, Select Works of Ramon Uull, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1985;