Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist ‘You say that the Messiah has come .’: The Ceuta Disputation (1179) and its place in the Christian anti-Jewish polemics of the high middle ages Maya Soifer History Department, Princeton University, Dickinson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Abstract This article suggests that the ‘Disputation of Ceuta’ provides a link between the Christian anti-Jewish polemical discourse of the twelfth century, produced largely for internal consumption, and the active missionising of the thirteenth century. Having purportedly taken place in the North African port of Ceuta between a Christian merchant from Genoa and a Jew from Ceuta at the time of Almohad rule (1179), the disputation displays the signs of a major shift in the Christian contra Judaeos strategies. Unlike other twelfth-century works of this genre, which address a variety of points central to Jewish-Christian debate, the Ceuta Disputation is remarkably consistent in its emphasis on one particular issue e that of the coming of the Messiah. The messianic content of this disputation thus foreshadows the central thrust of the thirteenth-century Dominican mission to the Jews, which finds its fullest expression at the Barcelona Disputation of 1263. The article explains the prominence of this theme in the period by suggesting that the extraordinary emphasis on the Messiah in the Ceuta E-mail address: msoifer@princeton.edu 0304-4181/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2005.06.002 288 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 Disputation could be the result of the Christian protagonist’s meeting with the North African Jew face-to-face and discovering that the Messianic promise was a subject of considerable interest for his opponent. More importantly, regardless of whether the discussion in Ceuta had or had not taken place, the new Christian attitude towards anti-Jewish polemics expressed in the Disputation’s text was most likely inspired by real-life discussions between Jews and Christians. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Jewish and Christian relations; Mediterranean trade in the middle ages; Ceuta; Genoa; Scriptural exegesis, Almohads The Messiah came in the twelfth century. This time he did not arrive in the manner anticipated by the prophets of the Bible. Rather, his arrival occurred in the world of polemics, where he suddenly emerged from relative obscurity to become the central topic of the continuing religious debate between Jews and Christians. He appeared on the pages of a little-known text, which was gathering dust in the library of the University of Genoa, until Ora Limor discovered it in the 1980s, and published it under the title of the ‘Ceuta Disputation of 1179’, by analogy with the thirteenth- century disputations of Paris and Barcelona.1 The time has come to lift the veil of obscurity that surrounds the polemical Messiah’s arrival, and the only way to do so is to analyze the text and the context of the Ceuta Disputation. The Disputation’s inconspicuous beginning carries no hint of the remarkable discussion about to unfold. The voice of the narrator provides a minimalist description of the participants and names the city where the debate occurred: ‘Here begins a disputation between Guilielmus Alphachinus of Genoa and a certain very wise Jew by the name of Abraham Mo, which took place in Ceuta’.2 The disputation follows immediately, without a smooth transition. As if continuing an earlier discussion, the Jew introduces the topic that is to dominate the entire debate: ‘You say that the Messiah has come and was circumcised’ (Tu dicis Messiam venisse et circumcissum fuisse).3 From this point on the disputation proceeds as a ‘question and answer’ session, with the Jew posing the questions and the Christian answering them. The Jew is thus the one who drives the discussion forward by introducing new topics. The discussion encompasses many issues frequently broached in the Jewish-Christian debate, such as circumcision, virgin birth, dietary prohibitions, and allegorical and literal interpretation of the Bible. However, the Jew always insists on returning to the 1 Die disputationen zu Ceuta (1179) und Mallorca (1286): zwei antijüdische schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua, ed. Ora Limor (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1994). 2 Incipit disputatio inter Guilielmum Alphachinum Ianuensem et quendam sapientissimum Iudeum Mo Abraym nomine, que fuit facta Septe; Limor, Die Disputationen, 137. Limor speculates that the ‘Mo’ in ‘Abraham Mo’ might be either a part of his first name (‘Moses’), or of an honorary title like ‘mori’ or ‘morenu’, ‘my/our teacher;’ Die Disputationen, 3. 3 Die Disputationen, 137.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 289 question of the Messiah’s coming. The following exchange is characteristic of the entire debate: The Jew said: ‘It is necessary for you to demonstrate more clearly and to show that the Messiah has come, which you have not yet demonstrated’. Guilielmus answered: ‘I will prove to you straightforwardly and demonstrate that the Messiah has come’.4 The Jew’s inquiries can be classified according to several broad categories: Old Testament’s prefigurative prophecies; messianic prophecies and their fulfillment; the Christian Messiah’s fulfillment of the Law; the divinity of the Messiah; and the restriction of salvation to believers in the Messiah. In the beginning of the disputation, after indicating his desire to debate the issue of the Messiah’s coming, the Jew wants to know why Christians deviate from their Messiah’s example by refusing to submit to circumcision: ‘And why are the Christians not circumcised?’5 The Christian responds, but only after the Jew affirms his own belief in the truth of the Jewish prophets: ‘If I did not hold these things which the prophets foretold as valid, I would not profess myself to be a Jew’.6 This sentence is the key to the disputation: the Jew cannot deny the prophets; so, if he can be shown that the prophecies pointed toward Jesus, he must acknowledge him as the promised Messiah. Next, the Christian discusses the topic of circumcision, arguing in the traditional Christian vein that physical circumcision came to an end with the advent of the Messiah, replaced by circumcision of the heart.7 The Jew then puts forward another objection to Jesus’s messiahship, expressing doubts as to whether the Messiah should have been born of a virgin, if Isaiah had spoken only of a young girl. The Christian retorts that there would have been nothing miraculous about a young girl giving birth; therefore, the prophet meant to speak of a virgin.8 In the next several paragraphs, the Jew tries a different strategy, demanding the Christian show that a number of prophecies found in the Old Testament were fulfilled, which would be a proof that the Messiah had already come.9 To the Jew’s assertion that the promise of messianic peace found in Isaiah 9:7 remains unfulfilled, the Christian answers that God sent the Messiah as a messenger of peace and an 4 Die Disputationen, 142. 5 Die Disputationen. Et Christiani quare non circumciduntur? 6 Die Disputationen. Ad hec Guilielmus Alfachinus Ianuensis respondit: ‘Dic michi prius, si cuncta que prophete dixerunt pro firmo habebis, et ego postea respondebo tibi’. Iudeus dixit: ‘Si ea que prophete prophetaverunt pro firmo non haberem, Iudeum me esse non confiterer’. 7 Die Disputationen, 137-8. 8 Die Disputationen, 138-40. 9 Die Disputationen, 140. Iudeus dixit: ‘Quanta tibi ostendere oportet completa esse ex prophetis, si vis probare, quod Messias venit?’ Guilielmus respondit: ‘Dic, quod velis, et ego respondebo tibi’. 290 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 intermediary between God and men.10 Unsatisfied, the Jew complains that, ‘It is necessary for you to demonstrate more clearly and to show that the Messiah has come, which you have not yet demonstrated’.11 In answer, the Christian invokes the famous prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27 on the ‘seventy weeks of years’,12 arguing that many prophets spoke about the Messiah in Jerusalem before the advent of Christ, but have disappeared since. ‘And therefore’, he concludes, ‘you should not doubt, but believe firmly that the Messiah has come’.13 However, the Jew is not ready to let the Christian off the hook. Did the prophets ever say that the Messiah should be called ‘God’, or that he was to rule for eternity, considering Daniel’s prediction that this future reign was to last unto a time, and times, and half a time (Dan. 12:7)? The Christian tries to put his mind at rest on both counts, arguing in response to the second objection that the prophet applied this condition not to the true Messiah, but to the Messiah the Jews continued to expect, that is, the Antichrist.14 Then, a rapid succession of questions and answers ensues, as the Christian grapples with the following inquiries from the Jew: (1) where is the evidence that the kingdom of Edom has been destroyed? (2) should not the Jewish people as a whole, and not only those who believe in the Messiah, be saved? (3) should not the Messiah be first sent to the Jewish people?15 Abruptly thereafter, the Jew returns to the strategy used at the beginning of the disputation, when he challenged the Christian repudiation of circumcision by asking his opponent to explain why the Christian Messiah promised not to destroy but to fulfill the law, and yet failed to uphold it, in this new case, the law of dietary prohibitions. The Christian accuses the Jew of being unable to discern [ruminare] and provides an explanation that is almost entirely based on Isidore’s De fide catholica.16 Stymied, the Jew promptly shifts the subject back to the person of the Messiah, demanding that the Christian present evidence that the prophets foretold the Messiah’s crucifixion.17 When asked by the Jew to show that the Messiah had to be sealed with a stone, with guards set before it, the Christian declares Sampson a type of 10 Die Disputationen, 141. Tu scis, quia diabolus propter superbiam de celo in terram deiectus est, et ideo deus hominem fecit, ut de eius stirpe angelicus ordo, qui fuerat imminutus, compleretur. Homo vero creatus et in paradiso positus suasione diabolica peccavit, et statim discordia inter angelos et homines tam magna fuit, quod preces eos postea noluerunt audire. Sed venit mediator dei et hominum Messias quem tu dicis, mittere hanc pacem, et misit; de qua propheta fuerat locutus. This might be an echo of St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? or more directly of Gilbert Crispin’s writings: see Anna Sapir Abulafia and G. R. Evans, The works of Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), xxxiii. 11 Die Disputationen, 142. Magis oportet te aperte ostendere et monstrare Messiam venisse quam nondum ostendisti. 12 On the role of this passage in Jewish-Christian inter-religious polemics see Robert Chazan, ‘Daniel 9:24-27: exegesis and polemics’, in Contra Iudaeos: ancient and medieval polemics between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996), 143-59. 13 Die Disputationen, 142-3. Et ideo non debes dubitare, sed firmiter credere Messiam venisse. 14 Die Disputationen, 143-4. 15 Die Disputationen, 145-8. The second question in particular seems to be troubling the Jew: he asks it three times. 16 Die Disputationen, 148-50. 17 Die Disputationen, 150.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 291 Christ, who, captured by his enemies, was able to escape from prison after three days: ‘On the third day, he [Samson] opened and broke the gates and the seal, and scared the guardians to death. This Samson is interpreted as ‘the sun’, and the Messiah, who is called Christ in Latin, was the true sun, because he illuminated the entire world’.18 But the Jew also wants evidence that the Messiah is supposed to rise again (Et ubi invenisti, quod Messias debuit resurregere?), and that he should be called the Son of God (Et ubi invenisti Messiam filium dei nominari debuisse?).19 Interrupting the flow of the discussion, the Christian, however, digresses from the subject of the Messiah to offer his allegorical interpretation of Proverbs 30:18-20. But even here he takes the time to point out that the way of a serpent upon a rock signifies the way of the Devil in the world after the coming of Christ ‘who is called the Messiah (qui dicitur Messias), whose firmness [is understood] as a rock (qui pro firmitate petra)’.20 Still, the Jew determines to pursue his favorite line of argument to the very end. He hurls one more prophecy at the Christian, making it very clear that the outcome of the debate hinges on the latter’s ability to deflect this last polemical arrow. The Jew is convinced that the Christian would never be able to provide an adequate response: Listen, Christian, to the things that I will put against you at once, what has to come and appear at the time of the Messiah, what has not yet come, nor appeared, and what you will never be able in any way to show or prove to have come or appear. And therefore all that you said from the prophets [about] the Messiah to have come, will entirely turn to nothing. For in the time of the Messiah, a certain city by the name of Sylo [Shiloh] has to come and appear, which has not yet come or appeared, and which you will never be able in any way to show to have come or appear.21 However, the Jew is quickly disappointed in his expectations. The Christian declares him ‘stupid’ (te ipsum stultum ostendis), and proceeds to argue that the ‘Sylo’ of the prophecy in Gen. 49:10 is best translated as ‘sent’, and that it refers to ‘this Messiah, who is called Christ, who was sent’ (de illo Messia, qui dicitur Christus, qui mittendus erat). Immediately he mounts an attack against the Jew, challenging him, in his turn, to provide some evidence that the passage e The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, and he shall be the expectation till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations e accurately describes the situation of the contemporary Jews: Now therefore show me the sceptre, show me some leadership or power that you have had from that time! Which you will not be able to show or to prove in 18 Die Disputationen, 154. Sanson vero quid fecit? Tercia die portas et signacula aperuit et confreit, et custodes usque ad mortem formidavit. Sanson iste ‘sol’ interpretatur, et Messias, qui Latine dicitur Christus, verus sol fuit, quia totum mundum illuminavit. 19 Die Disputationen, 155, 157. 20 Die Disputationen, 161. 21 Die Disputationen, 164. See the reading of the verse by Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) (1085-1158), in Schiloh: ein beitrag zurg geschichte der messiaslehre, Part I: die auslegung von Genesis 49:10 im altertume bis zu ende des mittelalters, ed. Adolf Posnanski (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1904), 127-8. 292 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 any way. And if it is true that you cannot prove [it] either entirely true, or to the contrary, you have to believe beyond all doubt that the Messiah has come, and everything that the prophets have said of him is fulfilled. Whereupon you have to admit yourself defeated, and if you wish to be saved, it is necessary for you to be a Christian and be baptised.22 At this dramatic moment, the Jew realises that the last polemical weapon in his arsenal has failed him. Not only does he announce his decision to become a Christian, but he also provides an explanation for his change of mind. The Jew wants to be baptised because he is convinced that the Messiah has already come: ‘I truly believe that the Messiah has come, and everything that the prophets prophesied is fulfilled, and I admit myself to be outdone, and with a willing spirit I wish to be made a Christian and be baptised’.23 By now it should be abundantly clear that the disputation between a Jew and a Christian that purports to have taken place in the North African city of Ceuta revolved around the question of the coming of the Messiah. So what, one might ask. After all, was not the issue of the messianic role of Jesus what divided Judaism from Christianity in the first place? Was it not only natural that a Jew and a Christian getting together to debate the merits of their respective faiths would focus on the issue of the Messiah? The surprising answer, at least for the twelfth century, seems to be no. A look at other twelfth-century disputations, which, like the Ceuta Disputation, claim to be based on real-life discussions between Jews and Christians, reveals that the messianic theme was not among the topics favoured by the protagonists. Thus Odo of Cambrai asserted that he was pressed into a debate with a certain Leo the Jew (in 1105 or 1106) and later decided to cast his argument in the form of a dialogue between the Jew and himself. The discussion, characteristically, focused on the Incarnation and original sin.24 Actual conversations with a Jew seem to underlie Gilbert Crispin’s late eleventh-century Disputatio Iudei et Christiani. Here, too, the topic of the Messiah’s advent was to make but a fleeting appearance, overshadowed by more pressing concerns, such as the validity of the Jewish Law, or Crispin’s application of St. Anselm’s argument for the necessity of the Incarnation to the Jewish-Christian debate.25 The anonymous author of the Dialogus inter 22 Die Disputationen, 166. Nunc itaque ostende michi sceptrum, ostende michi ducatum vel potestatem ulam, quam ab illo tempore habuisti! Quod nullo modo ostendere neque probare poteris. Et si hoc verum est, quod omnino verum, neque contra probare potes, indubitanter credere debes, quod Messias venit, et cuncta, que de illo prophete dixerant, sit adimpletum. Unde te victum confiteri debes, et si vis salvus fieri, Christianum te esse et baptizari oportet. 23 Die Disputationen, 166. Vere Messiam venisse credo, et cuncta, que prophete prophetaverunt, sit adinpletum, et superatum me confiteor, et Christianum me facere et batizare [sic] libenti animo volo. 24 See the recent translation and commentary by Irven M. Resnick, Odo of Cambrai, Disputatio contra Judaeum Leonem nomine de adventu Christi filii Dei (On original sin and a disputation with the Jew, Leo, concerning the advent of Christ, the son of God: two theological treatises) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 85. 25 Abulafia and Evans, The works of Gilbert Crispin, xxvii, 17; Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘An attempt by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, at rational argument in the Jewish-Christian debate’, Studia Monastica 26 (1984), 64-5.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 293 Christianum et Iudeum de fide Catholica, written between 1123 and 1148 and wrongly attributed to William of Champeaux, also claimed that his work was a report of a disputation he had with a Jew while on business. The work, modeled on Crispin’s Disputatio, did touch upon the question of the Messiah’s advent, but it was only one of many points raised by the author. Topics such as the carnality of the Jewish Law, the Trinity, the place of the crucifixion in the scheme of salvation, baptism, original sin, and the humanity of Christ, occupied more prominent places.26 If one turns from the polemical works cast in dialogue form, to the Christian twelfth-century contra Judaeos literature as a whole, the picture is much the same. The question of the Messiah’s advent makes an occasional appearance, but only as a minor element in the debate that encompassed subjects as complex as the mystery of the Trinity and the Christian sacraments, Jewish blindness in reading the Bible, the abolition of the Old Law, the advent of the ‘true Israel’, and the divinity and humanity of Jesus. To find another contra Judaeos work dedicated in its entirety to the question of the Messiah, one has to go as far back as the seventh century, to the work by Saint Julian, bishop of Toledo, who argued for the messianic role of Jesus, and against the belief of many Jews in Spain that the Messiah was to come in the sixth millennium after the creation of the world.27 In addition, in the eleventh century, Fulbert of Chartres wrote a series of three sermons against the Jews, in which he expounded Gen. 49:10, affirming that the Messiah had already come because there was no longer a Jewish state.28 The Disputation of Ceuta is thus one of the first works of high medieval anti- Jewish polemics that break the flow of the dominant discourse by singling out the messianic theme as the focal point of the debate. However, the Messiah’s polemical advent has been largely overlooked by scholars who are not accustomed to search for changes in the subject matter of the voluminous twelfth-century contra Judaeos literature.29 There is a good reason for this. For centuries Christians attacked Jewish beliefs, and by the high middle ages the time-tested arguments conveniently compiled by Tertullian in the third century, and by Isidore of Seville in the seventh, were still 26 Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘Jewish-Christian disputations and the twelfth-century renaissance’, Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989), 105-25. 27 La controversia Judocristiana en España (desde los orı´genes hasta el siglo XIII), ed. Carlos del Valle Rodrı́guez; Homenaje a Domingo Muños León (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones cientı́ficas; Instituto de Filologı́a, 1998), 124. 28 Bernard Blumenkranz, Les auteurs Chre´tiens latins du moyen âge sur les juifs et le judaı¨sme (Paris: Mouton & Co, 1963), 237-9. Another work with a messianic theme, supposedly written by an eleventh-century rabbi from Morocco, has an uncertain provenance (Rabbi Samuelis marochiani de adventu messiae quem judaei temere exspectant liber, PL 149). Ora Limor has recently argued that ‘rabbi Samuel’s’ epistle was written in the fourteenth century by its alleged translator, Alfonso Buenhombre, a Spanish Dominican friar (‘The epistle of Rabbi Samuel of Morocco: A best-seller in the world of polemics’, in Contra Iudaeos, ed. Limor and Stroumsa, 177-94). 29 There is one exception: Robert Chazan argues that the Christian assault on the Jewish hope for future redemption by a Messiah is the sign of a new aggressive missionising in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (‘Undermining the Jewish sense of future: Alfonso of Valladolid and the new Christian missionizing’, in Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval and early modern Spain, ed. Mark Meyerson and Edward English (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 179-94). 294 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 finding enthusiastic reception among Christian theologians eager to challenge Jewish unbelief.30 Continuing the early Christian tradition, these writers usually built their arguments on a series of citations, or testimonia, drawn from the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament) to support the Christian claim that the Jewish Law was superseded by the New Covenant ushered in by Jesus Christ.31 Not surprisingly, some passages proved to be particularly popular, and polemicists recycled them over and over again, with an almost mechanical repetitiveness. For example, Genesis 49:10 used in the Ceuta Disputation (The sceptre shall not be taken away from Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations), has been cited numerous times by Christian writers throughout the middle ages to prove that contemporary Jewish powerlessness signified the Jews’ failure to recognise Jesus as their redeemer: among many others, Isidore, Fulbert of Chartres, Petrus Damiani, and Petrus Alfonsi relied on it.32 Is it any wonder then that most scholars have found it hard to become excited at the prospect of sifting through this grey mass of deeply traditional argumentation, conservative to the core and clearly resistant to change? It did not help that in the late 1960s Amos Funkenstein published a brilliant and very influential article in which he offered a working classification of Christian anti-Jewish polemics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.33 In it, he defined the twelfth-century polemical literature as the first, or ‘the older pattern’ of religious polemics e ‘a stereotype repetition of arguments usually going back to Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine’.34 Funkenstein also postulated that there emerged in the twelfth century a second type of polemic, as Christians attempted to argue for the truth of the Christian faith sola ratione, that is, through an invocation of reason rather than by a reliance on the authority of the Bible.35 The third and the fourth types, which involved the Christian 30 Tertullian, Liber Adversus Judaeos; Isidore of Seville, De fide catholica ex veteri et novo testamento contra Iudaeos ad Florentinam sororem suam (PL 83). Lukyn Williams’s overview of medieval Christian contra Judaeos literature remains useful in many respects: A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos; a bird’s-eye view of Christian apologiae until the renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935). For a newer overview see Gilbert Dahan, La polémique chre´tienne contre le judaı¨sme au moyen âge (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), translated into English as The Christian polemic against the Jews in the middle ages, trans. Jody Gladding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), or Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte (11.-13. Jh.), mit einer ikonographie des Judenthemas bis zum 4. Laterankonzil (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991). 31 Dahan, The Christian polemic, 42. 32 Isidore, De fide, PL 83; Petrus Damiani, Antilogus contra Judaeos, PL 145; Petrus Alfonsus, Dialogi, PL 157. On the Christian polemical use of Gen. 49:10 see Adolf Posnanski, Schiloh: ein beitrag zur Geschichte der Messiaslehre, Part I, 302-24; 347-9. 33 Amos Funkenstein, ‘Basic types of Christian anti-Jewish polemics in the late middle ages’, Viator 2 (1971), 373-82. It appeared earlier in Hebrew in Zion 33 (1968), 125-44. See Simon Schwarzfuchs ‘Religion populaire et polemique savante: le tournant de polemique judeo-chretienne au 12e siècle’, in Medieval Studies in honour of Avrom Saltman, ed. Bat-Sheva Albert, Yvonne Friedman and Simon Schwarzfuchs (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1995) for a more recent analysis of the evolution of Christian and Jewish inter-religious polemics. 34 Funkenstein, ‘Basic types’, 373. 35 Funkenstein, ‘Basic types’, 377.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 295 utilisation of the Talmud (either by attacking it as heretical, or by using it to prove the veracity of Christian claims), pointed away from the twelfth and towards the thirteenth century.36 What Funkenstein’s classification did, besides doing a great service by stimulating research on the subject, was to leave most of the twelfth- century Christian anti-Jewish polemical literature out of the loop. Indeed, why should there be a pressing need to study something that belonged to an ‘old pattern’, that is, was old-fashioned, unoriginal, lacklustre? To cite just a few examples, historians characterised the Majorca Disputation as ‘lacking any originality or subtlety’,37 the Adversus Iudeos treatise by Joachim of Fiore as ‘one more collection of very banal testimonia on the principal themes of the controversy’,38 and Petrus Damiani’s Antilogus as ‘stagnant’ and ‘naive’.39 In all fairness, one scholar has done a great deal to advance the study of twelfth-century contra Judaeos literature. Anna Sapir Abulafia focuses mainly on the treatises in the sola ratione tradition, and has written extensively on the attempts by the followers of St. Anselm e Odo of Cambrai, Gilbert Crispin, and Pseudo-William of Champeaux e to integrate rational arguments into the dialogue with the Jews.40 The trouble with her approach is that it tends to inflate the importance of rational argumentation. Already Funkenstein noted that only a few Christian authors adopted sola ratione polemics in the twelfth century.41 Even Gilbert Crispin, who, according to Abulafia, in his Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili aimed to go beyond the biblical testimonia and formulate a purely rational argument in support of Christianity, showed a clear preference for scriptural authority in the Disputatio Iudei et Christiani.42 On the other hand, the list of authors who employed Scripture-based argumentation in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is long and includes Christian scholars who also applied reason to anti-Jewish argumentation: Peter the Venerable, Gilbert Crispin, Pseudo-William of Champeaux, Peter Abelard, Guibert of Nogent, Petrus Alfonsi, Rupert of Deutz, Peter of Blois, Joachim of Fiore, and Peter of Cornwall. From the perspective of the twelfth century, therefore, Petrus Damiani’s eleventh- century ‘naive’ scripturalism appears as a portent of things to come. Thus, while the twelfth-century polemics’ rather limited rationalistic turn has received a lot of attention, the signs of a genuinely major shift in the Christian contra Judaeos strategies have gone unnoticed. Even after Ora Limor’s edition and annotation of the Ceuta Disputation, there was not exactly an outburst of interest. 36 Funkenstein, ‘Basic types’, 374, 379-81. 37 Norman Roth, ‘Disputations, Jewish-Christian’, in Medieval Jewish civilization: an encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (New York & London: Routledge, 2003), 216. 38 Dahan, The Christian polemic, 48. 39 Jeremy Cohen, ‘Scholarship and intolerance in the medieval academy: the study and evaluation of Judaism in European Christendom’, The American Historical Review 91 (1986), 596. 40 Abulafia, ‘Jewish-Christian disputations’, 105-25; Abulafia, ‘An attempt by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, at rational argument’, 55-74; ‘Twelfth-century humanism and the Jews’, in Contra Iudaeos, ed. Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa, 161-75. Her argument in the last article is developed further in her book Christians and Jews in the twelfth-century renaissance (New York: Routledge, 1995). 41 Funkenstein, ‘Basic types’, 377. 42 Abulafia, ‘An attempt by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, at rational argument’, 56-7. 296 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 Limor herself did not think that it merited a separate study. She believed it worthy of attention only insofar as it could help her highlight the text and the context of the Disputation of Majorca, a thirteenth-century polemical work whose author borrowed material from the Ceuta Disputation.43 She claims, not unreasonably, that ‘[t]he Disputation of Majorca [being] almost three times as long as the previous one, is more complicated in its action and is more original and interesting from the point of view of content’.44 Yet, it is only in comparison to the Ceuta Disputation that Limor is willing to call the Majorca text ‘original’. In fact, neither of the disputations, she admits, is particularly striking. They are works of the ‘old’ type, and as such do not have ‘much originality in them’.45 This is, therefore, where the Ceuta Disputation stands at present: overshadowed by the Disputation of Majorca and regarded as unoriginal, too short, and rightfully ignored. Norman Roth recently drove what might appear to be the last nail into the coffin by describing the Ceuta Disputation in the following terms: ‘Like the ‘Majorca disputation’, it is naive and stereotypical in its arguments that the messiah has already come, and like the later disputation it ends with the conversion of the Jew. It hardly need be said that it is entirely a literary fiction’.46 Perhaps it would be worthwhile to pause for a moment over Norman Roth’s statement. According to Roth, the Ceuta Disputation (1) revolves around the issue of the coming of the Messiah and (2) is a literary fiction. Therefore, he identifies precisely the two issues that make this disputation remarkable: its subject matter and its claim to be a record of a real-life polemical confrontation between a Jew of Ceuta and a Christian from Genoa. While in the absence of corroborative evidence one cannot verify the claim of the disputation’s authenticity, I believe it should be taken seriously. It is possible that the extraordinary emphasis on the Messiah in the Ceuta Disputation was the result of the Christian protagonist’s meeting with the North African Jew face-to-face and discovering that the Messianic promise was a subject of considerable interest for his opponent. More importantly, regardless of whether the discussion in Ceuta had or had not taken place, its text reveals a shift in the Christian attitudes towards anti-Jewish polemics, a shift most likely inspired by real-life discussions between Jews and Christians. To realise just how remarkable this development was for the twelfth century, we need only remember the thirteenth- century Dominican mission to the Jews, and the importance the messianic theme assumed in the Order’s public disputations. In other words, behind the seemingly worn-out exegetical arguments of the Ceuta Disputation there hides a transition to a more active, missionary attitude that changed the face of Christian anti-Jewish polemics of the high middle ages. 43 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants: three medieval anti-Jewish works from Genoa’, Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991), 43; Die Disputationen, 31. In both works Limor discusses the Ceuta Disputation in conjunction with the Disputation of Majorca. 44 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 38. 45 Ibid., 39. 46 Roth, ‘Disputations, Jewish-Christian’, in Medieval Jewish civilization, 216.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 297 In his opening statement, the author of the Ceuta Disputation claims that the work is a record of a real-life polemical confrontation: ‘Here begins a disputation between Guilielmus Alphachinus of Genoa and a certain very wise Jew by the name of Abraham Mo, which took place in Ceuta’.47 Many twelfth-century authors of Christian-Jewish disputations made the claim that their works were reports of real- life discussions with Jews, and yet they either carefully reworded the Jewish responses or used the fictional character of a Jew in order to advance a dialectical argument in support of Christianity.48 This said, even a cursory comparison of the Ceuta text with some well-known disputations shows that the difference in tone and style is at least as dramatic as the shift in the subject matter. In the words of Ora Limor, it has ‘a decidedly amateurish quality’.49 It is not a learned scholastic treatise of the Anselmian fides quaerens intellectum type.50 Its Latin has many syntactical inconsistencies.51 There are also mistranscriptions, involving missing letters and dropped words, wrong nominal and pronominal cases and numbers, and verb irregularities. Some quotations from the Vulgate are imprecise, and some are mutilated almost beyond recognition, giving the reader an impression that they were written from memory, without first being checked against a copy of the Vulgate.52 The text gives a distinct impression of being a rough draft never properly polished and edited. It is possible that the author intended to rework the draft into a disputation of a literary type, but whether he succeeded in this task at some later date remains unknown, as only the one manuscript of the Disputation survives.53 There is thus no indication that the hand of a Christian theologian is at work in the text of the Ceuta Disputation. One can therefore conjecture that Guilielmus Alphachinus was a layman, and that the Disputation is a record of his discussion 47 Incipit disputatio inter Guilielmum Alphachinum Ianuensem et quendam sapientissimum Iudeum Mo Abraym nomine, que fuit facta Septe; Limor, Die Disputationen, 137. 48 R.J.Z. Werblowsky, ‘Crispin’s Disputation’, The Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (1960), 70; Abulafia and Evans, The works of Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, xxvii. 49 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 46. 50 Werblowsky, ‘Crispin’s Disputation’, 70, 74. 51 Limor, Die Disputationen, 11. 52 Of course there existed many versions of the Latin Bible in the twelfth century. It was precisely to ensure uniformity of the text that abbot Stephen Harding produced his Cı̂teaux bible in 1109 after consulting Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts of the testaments (see ‘Bible’, and ‘Bible, Cistercian’ in: Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Strayer (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1983), vol. 2, 213, 219). However, the discrepancies between biblical quotations in the Ceuta Disputation and the Vulgate are so significant in many cases that it is difficult to explain them by the author’s reliance on a variant text of the Vulgate. Examples: Dan. 9:26: The manuscript: Cum duce venturo erit vastitas, et in fine belli destructa desolacio; Die Disputationen, 145. The Vulgate: Et civitatem et sanctuarium dissipabit populus cum duce venturo; et finis eius vastitas, et post finem belli statuta desolatio. Hos. 13:14: The manuscript: Eros [sic] mors tuus, o inferne, et ero mors tua; Die Disputationen, 153. The Vulgate: Ero mors tua, o mors! Morsus tuus ero, inferne! Ps. 44:12: The manuscript: Quia concupivit rex decorem tuum; Die Disputationen, 164. The Vulgate: Et concupiscent rex decorem tuum. In two cases I was unable to locate the exact source of the quotation: Scapulas meas et ignoravi, maxillas et alapas, Hieremias dixit; Die Disputationen, 151. Suspendamus in lingo; Die Disputationen, 152. 53 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 47; Limor argues that spoken Italian peeks through the Latin text, especially in the use of con instead of cum; Die Disputationen, 11. 298 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 with a Jew of Ceuta. The Latin text was then the result of the author giving his own vernacular (perhaps, Genoese) version to a cleric who translated it into Latin. Like Ora Limor, I do not discern the presence of different ‘levels of speech e the level of the protagonist and that of the author’ e in the text of the Disputation.54 The dialogue structure of the work is simple, with the Jew posing each question and the Christian answering: ‘The Jew said . Guilielmus said’ (Iudeus dixit . Guilielmus dixit). It is a ‘real’ dialogue, in that there is a continuous and direct verbal exchange between the two parties, with no one side taking an inordinate amount of time to expound a particular point, although e not unexpectedly e the Christian’s allotment of time ‘in the spotlight’ tends to be longer. The Jew prods the Christian, and steers the debate in the desired direction: ‘Tell me, Christian.’ (Dic michi, Christiane.), and challenges the Christian’s point if his explanation is un- satisfactory: ‘How can what you say be?’ (Quomodo hoc potest esse, quod dicis?).55 The argument is drawn almost entirely from scripture: in answer to the Jew’s inquiries and challenges, the Christian adduces passages from the Old Testament. 56 The Christian protagonist’s knowledge of the Scriptures is superficially impressive, but not very wide-ranging.57 Most of his quotations (31) come from the Psalms (the book a layman was most likely to know), followed by Isaiah (17) and Daniel (8). He cites the other books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Leviticus, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezra, Micah, Amos, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ezekiel, Zechariah) only once or twice. There are also occasional references and allusions to the deuterocanonical works (Wisdom of Solomon) and the New Testament (Matthew, 1 Corinthians). The Christian could have been relying on his knowledge of the Bible, or e given his dependence on Isidore, and possibly Petrus Damiani58 and even Gilbert Crispin e quoting from a work or several works from the contra Judaeos genre.59 54 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 47. 55 Die Disputationen, 142. 56 There are only a few exceptions. At one point, the Jew introduces an argument that at the time of the Messiah the ‘Roman river’ should run with oil (Nonne in tempore Messie . flumen Rome, id est summitas huius fluminis, oleo discurere .). Limor finds a similar passage in Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos VI, 18; Die Disputationen, 140. Guilielmus’s interpretation of Prov. 30: 18-20 also departs from scriptural exegesis, and appears to be his own invention; Die Disputationen, 160-3; Limor, ‘Missionary Merchants’, 37. 57 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 47. 58 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’. Limor finds some similarities between the Ceuta text and Damiani’s Letter (the works are found in the same manuscript), although she cannot prove a direct borrowing; Die Disputationen, 10. 59 Given the fact that Damiani wrote his Antilogus as a letter to a layman, Honestus, it is possible that vernacular versions of this work existed in the twelfth century. Crispin’s Disputatio Iudei et Christiani enjoyed great popularity during this period: twenty manuscripts of it survive from the twelfth century. Parts of the work were translated into Hebrew (Abulafia and Evans, The works of Gilbert Crispin, xxvii). It is possible that vernacular translations existed as well. David Berger argues that there might have been a collection of polemical material from various authors circulating in France in the twelfth century, which contained quotations from Gilbert Crispin. See his ‘Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben: a study in the transmission of medieval polemic’, Speculum 49 (1974), 46.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 299 The arguments put forward by the Jewish protagonist also reflect the major trends in the contemporary Jewish-Christian debate. Many of his objections to the Christian’s claims figure prominently in the Jewish polemical works against Christianity. For example, the Jew’s argument against the abrogation of circumcision and the laws of kashrut, his reading of Isaiah 7:12-15 as referring to a ‘young girl’ rather than a virgin, and his case against the Messiah’s divinity, all appear in Nizzahon Vetus (Old Book of Polemic), a ‘virtual anthology of Ashkenazic polemic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’.60 Especially striking is the Jew’s adamant refusal to accept the Christian’s allegorical reading of the Prophets.61 While one can read these passages as a reflection of the ancient Christian stereotype of the ‘literalist’ Jew incapable of interpreting the Scriptures ‘spiritually’, their presence can very well be a deliberate strategy on the part of the Jewish protagonist. Elaborating Yitzhak Baer’s original proposal that the focus on the plain meaning ( peshat) of the Bible by the school of Rashi developed in response to the Christian allegorical interpretations, Michael Signer argues that the Christian environment ‘required continued attention to the words, laws, and narratives of the Hebrew Bible which Christians claimed as their own’.62 Similarly, Robert Chazan has shown that Saadia Gaon’s efforts to eliminate all references to the Messiah from the reading of Daniel 9:24-27 was meant to preclude Christian use of the verse.63 In an indication that real- life discussions underlie the text of the Ceuta Disputation, the Jewish polemicist makes a concerted effort to spurn allegory. Thus, his contention that the Shiloh of Genesis 49:10 stands for a ‘certain city’ echoes Rabbi Samuel ben Meir’s (Rashbam, c.1085-c.1174) interpretation of Shiloh as a city near Shechem.64 His attempt at literal exegesis is therefore in line with the contemporary Jewish exegetical strategies conditioned by the Christian challenge. In other words, argumentation that both the Jew and the Christian bring ‘to the table’ is not out of sync with their social standing or with the polemics current in their respective communities. The available information on the identity of the Christian protagonist provides further evidence in support of the Ceuta Disputa- tion’s historicity. Although there is no explicit indication in the text of the 60 See The Jewish-Christian debate in the high middle ages: a critical edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with an introduction, translation, and commentary, ed. David Berger (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 67. See also pages 96, 100, 74-5, 200. 61 Die Disputationen, 157-9. Nonne, dixi tibi, Christiane, quia allegoriam numquam accipiam nec accepi nec ad ipsa accipiendam in lege preceptum nullum habui? Et tu iterum me illam accipere constringis. 62 Michael Signer, ‘God’s love for Israel: apologetic and hermeneutical strategies in twelfth-century biblical exegesis’, in Jews and Christians in twelfth-century Europe, ed. Michael Signer and John Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 126, 129. 63 Robert Chazan, ‘Daniel 9:24-27: exegesis and polemics’, in Contra Iudaeos, ed. Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa, 147. 64 See Rabbi Samuel ben Meir’s Commentary on Genesis, ed. Martin Lockshin (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 359: ‘Lo’ The scepter shall not depart from Judah: the kingship that has been granted to him e that all twelve of his brothers shall bow low to him (vs. 8) e that greatness of his shall not cease nor shall mehoqeq e power e cease from his progeny, until he, i.e. Judah, comes to Shiloh e in other words until a Judaean king, Rehoboam the son of Solomon, comes to Shiloh, which is near Shechem, to renew the monarchy’. 300 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 disputation as to what Guilielmus Alphachinus’s occupation was, his highly original exposition of Proverbs 30:18-20 seems appropriate in the mouth of a merchant, who knew from personal experience that weathering a storm in an open sea and trusting God to guide him to a safe harbour was safer in the end than relying on blind luck and trying to land before the storm had subsided: J[ew] said: ‘How do you explain the way of a ship in the sea?’ G[uilielmus] answered: ‘You know, when ships go through the sea, no road appears or goes before, and God brings it into a safe harbour. This signifies good men who remain in the service of God to the end and perform their works, and God similarly by an unknown road, escorts them into a safe harbour, that is to eternal life’. J. said: ‘Now and then certain ships are destroyed. Tell me what you understand concerning these’. G. answered: ‘These ships, which are destroyed, signify those men who believe up to a point, and in time of temptations they go back, just as the ones who in the beginning commit themselves to the service of God, and afterwards go back to practice corrupt and perverse deeds. Such [men] were unwilling to remain in an open sea, until the storm receded, [and] until a suitable weather/season blew later to guide [them] to a safe harbour; neither were they willing to overcome and avoid these diabolic temptations, but as abominable ones would persist in other acts. And so they run into danger, and so they are shipwrecked upon rocks or upon land, and are rightly destroyed, and will be tortured in eternal damnation’.65 Ora Limor’s search in the State Archives of Genoa confirmed that Guglielmo Alfachino was a real historical figure, and, in fact, a well-known merchant in this maritime city. A series of notarial documents have information concerning Alfachino’s commercial activities between 1158 and 1205. Thus, an 1158 document indicates his intention of travelling to the Crusader kingdom, while from 1205 come two commenda contracts between Alfachino and the members of another well-known Genoese family.66 The text of the disputation contains several clues that add to its historicity by linking it to a particular time and very particular historical circumstances. At one point in the discussion, Alfachino mentions the passing of 1179 years since the 65 Die Disputationen, 161-62. It seems that Alphachinus drew his inspiration from the Wisdom of Solomon. Comp. to Wis. 5:10 (And as a ship that passeth through the waves: whereof when it is gone by, the trace cannot be found, nor the path of its keel in the waters), and Wis. 14:1-5 (Again, another designing to sail, and beginning to make his voyage through the raging waves, calleth upon a piece of wood more frail than the wood that carrieth him. For this the desire of gain devised, and the workman built it by his skill. But thy providence, O Father, governeth it: for thou hast made a way even in the sea, and a most sure path among the waves, shewing that thou art able to save out of all things, yea though a man went to sea without art. But that the works of thy wisdom might not be idle: therefore men also trust their lives even to a little wood, and passing over the sea by ship are saved). 66 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 37-8.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 301 coming of the Messiah, which provides the basis for dating the disputation.67 That a Genoese merchant might find himself in the Islamic city of Ceuta in 1179 is by no means surprising. Until the middle of the twelfth century, the relations between Genoa and the Almoravid rulers of North Africa were hostile.68 However, in 1153 or 1154 the Genoese concluded a treaty with the ruler of the new, Almohad, dynasty that they renewed every fifteen years throughout the rest of the century (1161, 1176, 1191). In the second half of the twelfth century, the Genoese maintained their position as the dominant European mercantile presence in Ceuta.69 Between 1179 and 1200, the Genoese made thirteen documented voyages to Ceuta.70 They exported Flemish, north French and English woollen cloths, silver and armaments to the Muslim world, while receiving some of the raw materials required in processing these goods.71 Whereas the identity of the Christian protagonist of the disputation can be readily authenticated and his presence in Ceuta easily explained, the portrait of the Jewish participant in the debate remains sketchy. His name is Abraham Mo, perhaps a metathesis of Mo Abraham (Mo Abraym nomine), and he is considered to be ‘very wise’ (sapientissimum Iudeum).72 He is not yet sixty years of age (sexaginta annos nondum habes),73 and has a large family in Ceuta ( filliis, et fratribus atque sororibus ac cognates), who allegedly join him on his journey to the Holy Land.74 Abraham’s remark at the end of the disputation, in response to Alfachino’s suggestion that he be baptised right there and then, sheds some light on the situation of the Jewish community in Ceuta under the rule of the Almohads. According to Abraham Mo, if the Muslims were to find out about his conversion to Christianity, both the Christian and the Jewish communities in Ceuta would be in mortal danger.75 Not only did Islamic 67 Nil mirum, si hoc ignoras, quia sexaginta annos nondum habes, et mille centum septuaginta et novem anni conpleti sunt quod hoc evenit, et tam longe a Roma natus fuisti. And again: Unde debet intelligi, quod mille centum septuaginta novem anni completi sunt, ut superius dixi, quod hoc evenit; Die Disputationen, 140, 143. 68 Hilmar Krueger, ‘Genoese trade with northwest Africa in the twelfth century’, Speculum 8, No. 3 (July, 1933), 377. 69 Mohamed Cherif, Ceuta aux e´poques almohade et me´rinide (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1996), 138-9. 70 Krueger, ‘Genoese trade with northwest Africa in the twelfth century’, 382. On the trade between Genoa and the North African ports see also Georges Jehel, L’Italie et le Maghreb au moyen âge: conflits et e´changes du VIIe au XVe sie`cle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 58-68. On the growing number of commercial contracts between Genoa and Ceuta (1160-1191), see David Abulafia, The two Italies: economic relations between the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the northern communes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 113, 158, 166, 182. 71 David Abulafia, ‘The role of trade in Muslim-Christian contact during the middle ages’, Mediterranean encounters, economic, religious, political, 1100-1550 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 8-10. 72 Die Disputationen, 137. 73 Die Disputationen, 140. 74 Die Disputationen, 166. 75 Die Disputationen, 166. Quoniam Mussumuti isti mali et pessimi sunt valde, et si hoc forte scirent, nos et vos in periculo mortis erimus; et tantum pro me per totum mundum nollem evenire. One can also interpret Abraham’s words as a ruse to avoid immediate conversion. 302 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 authorities traditionally prohibit conversions to religions other than Islam,76 but also a particularly ferocious form of religious commitment characterised the Almohad regime. According to some Jewish and Muslim sources, the Almohads gave Jews and Christians under their rule the choice between conversion to Islam or death.77 The Spanish Jewish philosopher and exegete Joseph Ibn ‘Aknin mentions the Jews of Fez, Sijilmasa and Dr a’a, who chose to sanctify God’s name by martyrdom.78 At the same time, ‘many, perhaps most’ Maghrebi Jews saved their lives by converting to Islam.79 The Jewish community of Ceuta figures prominently in the history of the Almohad persecutions. By the time the Almohad regime was established in North Africa, a Jewish community had existed in Ceuta for at least a century, its members, given the importance of trade in the city’s economy, probably engaged in commerce.80 There are reasons to suspect that the emergence of a Jewish community in Ceuta was in fact connected to the development of North African trade with the Italian cities.81 When in the 1140s the Almohads first emerged from the Atlas Mountains to start their march into the northern coastal plain, the city of Ceuta was spared the first onslaught. 82 ‘Abd al-Mu’min tried to capture the city in 1143, but had to retreat in the face of a fierce opposition.83 By 1148 or early 1149, however, the city finally submitted to the Almohad rule, and its Jewish inhabitants, like all the Jews and Christians who happened to be in the Almohads’ path, were given the choice between converting to Islam or facing death.84 Was the Jewish community in Ceuta completely wiped out in the late 1140s? The famous lament by Abraham ibn Ezra on the destruction of Andalusian and North African Jewry, Ah arad (Oh, there descended), seems to suggest so: a y Where is the protection for the congregation of Tlemsan? Its glory is melted away A bitter voice I raise over the fate of Ceuta and Mehnes; I rend my garments for Dar’i already vanquished; On one Sabbath day, the blood of sons and daughters was spilled like water.85 76 Mark Cohen, Under crescent and cross: the Jews in the middle ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 61. 77 H. Z. Hirschberg, A history of the Jews in North Africa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), vol. I, 120. 78 Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in medieval Spain: cooperation and conflict (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), 122. 79 Hirschberg, 193. 80 There is no firm evidence on the presence of Jews in Ceuta before the late eleventh century. See Hirschberg, A history of the Jews in North Africa, 355. E. G. Cravioto attempts to prove the existence of a Jewish community in Ceuta as early as the ninth century, but his argument is not convincing. See E.G. Cravioto, Notas para la historia de los Judios en Ceuta (Siglos XI-XVI ) (Ceuta: Publicaciones Caja Ceuta, 1988), 16. 81 Hirschberg, 355. 82 Hirschberg, 118. 83 Cherif, Ceuta aux e´poques almohade et me´rinide, 27-8. 84 Roger Le Tourneau, The Almohad movement in North Africa in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 59-60; Cravioto, Notas para la historia, 25. 85 Translated by Leon J. Weinberger in Twilight of a Golden Age: selected poems of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1997), 97; Hirschberg, 123.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 303 It is likely, however, that at least some Jews of Ceuta managed to survive the massacre, like the two brothers, natives of Ceuta, whom Benjamin of Tudela met in Genoa in the 1170s.86 A letter of a learned silversmith, a refugee from Ceuta, describing his misfortunes, survived in the Cairo Geniza. He escaped before the Almohads took over the city.87 Some surviving members of the Jewish community in Ceuta who converted to Islam undoubtedly continued to practice Judaism in secret.88 We know of at least one forced convert from Ceuta who became a pupil of Maimonides and a famous scholar in his own right e Joseph ben Yehuda Ibn Shim‘on ha-Ma‘arabi.89 Information about his early life is sketchy, but it seems that he was forcibly converted to Islam as a youth, and subsequently studied philosophy, medicine, and astronomy with Muslim teachers. While probably still in his twenties, Ibn Shim‘on left Ceuta, went to Alexandria (possibly by way of Spain), and then to Fustat, where he studied with Maimonides, who dedicated his Guide to the Perplexed to him. By 1185 he was settled in Aleppo as a businessman and court physician.90 Ibn Shim‘on’s departure from Ceuta was part of a massive exodus of rabbis and religious scholars from Morocco. Many left in the wake of Maimonides’ declaration that a Jew must leave a country where he is forced to transgress the divine law. Maimonides himself left Fez for this reason in 1165, eventually settling in Egypt.91 The respected leader’s departure almost certainly prompted many others to action, as did his stern advice in the Epistle on Forced Conversion, circulated among the Jews of North Africa: He should on no account remain in a place of forced conversion; whoever remains in such a place desecrates the divine name and is nearly as bad as a wilful sinner; as for those who beguile themselves, saying that they will remain until the Messiah comes to the Maghreb and leads them to Jerusalem, I do not know how he is to cleanse them of the stigma of conversion.92 Assuming that the Jewish protagonist of the Ceuta Disputation was indeed an historical figure, his decision to weather the Almohad storm and to wait for the imminent coming of the Messiah in Ceuta was put to severe test after the arrival of a clever Genoese merchant. If one is to believe the claim advanced in the text of the disputation, in the end Abraham Mo changed his mind, and chose to embark on a Genoese ship sailing for Palestine (eight years before Christian Jerusalem fell to 86 Limor, Die Disputationen, 6. 87 S.D. Goitein, A mediterranean society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. V: The Individual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 76-7. 88 E.G. Cravioto, Notas para la historia de los Judios en Ceuta, 25. 89 The ‘Westerner’; not to be confused with Joseph ben Yehuda Ibn ‘Aknin who never left Spain, and was not Maimonides’ student. On the confusion between the two Josephs, perpetuated since the nineteenth century up to the present, see Norman Roth’s article ‘Ibn ‘Aknin, Joseph b. Judah’, in Medieval Jewish civilization: an encyclopedia, 341-8. Many thanks to Prof. Mark Cohen for the reference. 90 Roth, ‘Ibn ‘Aknin, Joseph b. Judah’, 344; Hirschberg, 359. 91 Hirschberg, 137. 92 Quoted in Hirschberg, A history of the Jews in North Africa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), vol. I. 304 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 Saladin), in order to be baptised in the Jordan river.93 If this is what happened, it would have been an unconventional way for a Jew to escape the Mussumuti isti mali, but it would fit the general pattern of Jewish emigration from North Africa in the second half of the twelfth century. I believe that the messianic theme of the Ceuta Disputation owes its prominence to the ad hoc circumstances of real-life discussions in Ceuta and perhaps elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In other words, the discussion depicted in the text of the Disputation went in the particular direction it did because the Genoese merchant discovered what kind of arguments were likely to keep a Jew’s attention, and perhaps even convince him in the end. In fact, the Jew of Ceuta is portrayed as actively influencing the course of the disputation, and constantly prodding his opponent to return to the question of the Messiah when the Christian strayed too far from the matter. The dispute took place at the time when messianic hopes among the Jews ran high. One need not go farther than Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen to realise that the Jew of the Ceuta Disputation was not alone in the intensity of his concern. Written in 1172, the Epistle addresses a community demoralised by the Almohad persecutions and caught off-guard by the pretences of false messiahs. Maimonides acknowledges that the sufferings of the recent years were terrible: Remember, my coreligionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins God has hurled us into the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us, as God has forewarned us: Our enemies themselves shall judge us [Deut. 32:31]. Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.94 It is no wonder that a persecuted people would be eagerly anticipating an imminent arrival of the Messiah, ‘for a drowning man catches at a straw’.95 Nevertheless, Maimonides urges his fellow Jews not to give ear to those who claim that the Jews should abandon the commandments and follow a false Messiah. In particular, Maimonides exhorts the Jews not to believe the claims of Christians who ascribe messianic powers to Jesus of Nazareth: You know that the Christians falsely ascribe marvellous powers to Jesus the Nazarene, may his bones be ground to dust, such as the resurrection of the dead and other miracles. Even if we granted this for the sake of argument, we should not be convinced by their reasoning that Jesus is the Messiah. For we can bring a thousand proofs from Scripture that it is not so even from their point of view.96 93 . con filiis et fratribus atque sororibus ac cognates in navem Ianuensium ascendit, et Hierosolimam perrexit, Christi nomine se in Iordane flumine baptizavit; Die Disputationen, 166. 94 Maimonides, Epistles of Maimonides: crisis and leadership, trans. by Abraham Halkin (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 126. 95 Ibid., 120. 96 Ibid., 126.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 305 The messianic assertions put forward by the Christians are not the only danger he sees. A number of fellow Jews had appeared in recent years claiming to be the long- expected Messiah. Maimonides refers to the incident in Yemen that was still troubling the Jewish community there at the time of his writing.97 Another false Messiah, he says, appeared about fifty years before in Andalusia.98 But even as Maimonides argues that these men lack the characteristics of a true Messiah, he tells the Jews not to lose hope, for the multiplication of these pretenders itself might be the signal of the imminent arrival of the Anointed One.99 It was to help Jews like Abraham Mo, to ‘strengthen people in their faith and put them on their feet’, that Maimonides wrote the Epistle.100 He sensed their vulnerability to potential missionising, especially on the sensitive issue of the eagerly anticipated arrival of the Messiah. In the light of Maimonides’s concerns, Guglielmo Alfachino deserves some credit for discovering and exploiting the Achilles’ heel of his opponent’s position. In a matter of decades, what the Jewish sage had feared and the Christian merchant had anticipated came to pass. By the time Guglielmo’s countryman, Inghetto Contardo, debated faith with the Jews of Majorca in 1286, the Messiah had become the centrepiece of the Christian missionising effort.101 Unfortunately, there is no evidence to show that the Ceuta Disputation made a discernible impact on the direction of the Christian anti-Jewish discourse. Given the fact that it survives in a single manuscript, any direct influence is unlikely.102 Its innovative argumentation is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the change in Christian strategies. In all likelihood, there were other Christian missionaries like Alfachino e amateur as well as professional e who engaged Jews in debates and drew similar conclusions about their vulnerabilities. One can hypothesise that the change was the result of their collective efforts. What is certain is that there is a direct link between the Ceuta Disputation and the Disputation of Majorca. Despite being separated from the Ceuta Disputation by more than a hundred years, the 1286 debate owes a great deal to its antecedent. Like Alfachino, Inghetto Contardo, the protagonist of the Majorca Disputation, was a merchant from Genoa, and a real historical figure.103 Like the earlier disputation, the Majorca debate belongs to the ‘old pattern’ of Christian anti-Jewish polemics, even though its author is aware of the Barcelona Disputation of 1263, where the Talmud was utilised to support the Christian claims.104 The borrowings from the 97 Ibid., 123. 98 Ibid., 128. 99 Ibid., 130. 100 Ibid., 131. 101 The text of the Majorca Disputation was published by Ora Limor in the same volume as the Ceuta Disputation. Die Disputationen zu Ceuta (1179) und Mallorca (1286): zwei antijüdische schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua, ed. Ora Limor. It also appeared with a French translation and an introduction by Gilbert Dahan, as Inghetto Contardo, Disputatio contra Iudeos: controverse avec les juifs (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993). 102 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 47. 103 Ibid., 40. 104 Ibid., 44; Dahan, Inghetto Contardo, 26. 306 M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 Ceuta text are extensive: Ora Limor found that whole passages in the Majorca text (about 1200 words out of a total of 20,000) were transcribed from the earlier disputation; so it is clear that the writer had the text of the Ceuta Disputation available to him.105 Nevertheless, as Limor is careful to point out, most of the Majorca text’s content is original, and the disputation itself is more complex than the Ceuta debate, consisting, as it does, of four parts, with each part dedicated to Inghetto’s discussions with different Jews at various locations in Majorca.106 The theme that unifies all of these mini-discussions, however, is the same theme that underlies the Ceuta Disputation e the question of the coming of the Messiah. Both of the scholars of the Majorca Disputation, Limor and Dahan, emphasise the centrality of the messianic theme in this document.107 Limor notes the importance accorded to the topic of the Messiah in the conversion of one of Inghetto’s opponents, Astruc Isaiah, who declares himself to be persuaded by the Christian’s argument that the Messiah has come: ‘And now I truly recognise that the Messiah has come in our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Et nunc uere cognosco Messiam uenisse Dominum nostrum Ihesum Christum).108 Limor even speculates that the prominence of this theme reflects the fact that the messianic expectations were widespread among the Jews at the time.109 Unlike the Ceuta and the Majorca Disputations, the famous Barcelona Disputation of 1263 was not a voluntary discussion, but a forced confrontation that took place at the court of King James I of Aragon, during a major Dominican missionary campaign against the Jews. Rabbi Moses ben Nachman of Gerona was summoned to debate religious matters with Friar Paul Christian, a Jewish convert to Christianity. The Disputation was tightly controlled. The Christian masterminds dictated the rules and set the agenda for the debate, stipulating explicitly that the truth of Christianity was not to be ‘placed in dispute’. The Jewish side was thus reduced to the passive position of deflecting the Christian attack.110 On the very first day, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman heard the following agenda declared by Friar Paul: Friar Paul proposed to the said rabbi that, with the aid of God, he would prove from writings shared and accepted by the Jews the following contentions, in order: that the Messiah, who is called Christ, whom the Jews anticipate, has surely come already; also that the Messiah, as prophesied, should be divine and human; also that he suffered and was killed for the salvation of mankind; also that the laws and ceremonials ceased and should have ceased after the advent of the said Messiah.111 105 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 43; Die Disputationen, 31. 106 Limor, ‘Missionary merchants’, 38. 107 Dahan, Inghetto Contardo, 48; Limor, Die Disputationen, 37. 108 In Dahan’s edition, Inghetto Contardo, 258. 109 Die Disputationen, 37. 110 Robert Chazan, ‘The Barcelona ‘Disputation’ of 1263: Christian missionizing and Jewish response’, Speculum 52 (1977), 825. See also Chazan, Barcelona and beyond: the Disputation of 1263 and its aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 111 Robert Chazan, ‘The Barcelona ‘‘Disputation’’ of 1263: Christian missionizing and Jewish response’, Speculum 52 (1977), 826.  M. Soifer / Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005) 287e307 307 In this well-articulated and confident agenda, one hears a distant echo of the Ceuta Disputation. Although less lucidly expressed, the same essential elements were already present there: the coming of the Christian Messiah, the prophecies of his arrival, the abrogation of the Jewish Law after his advent, the proofs of his divine nature and his suffering, and the promise of messianic redemption. A major change has taken place, however, since Abraham Mo pestered the Genoese Christian with questions about the Messiah. By the late thirteenth century the time had come for the Christian to ask, and for the Jew to respond. Towards the very end of the Ceuta Disputation, Guglielmo Alfachino adopted a more aggressive attitude, demanding to see some proof of Jewish leadership. In Barcelona, this kind of Christian assertiveness ruled the day. It appears that in the almost hundred years that separated Barcelona from Ceuta, the Christians internalised the lessons they learned from debating Jews like Abraham Mo, moulding Jewish weaknesses into Christian strengths, and Jewish doubts into an active missionary agenda. The precise mechanism of this trans- formation awaits further research.112 It is already clear, however, that by focusing on the messianic theme polemicists like Guglielmo Alfachino helped usher in a new age in Christian conversionary efforts. Before long, professional missionaries arrived on the North African shores. In 1219 the Franciscans set up a mission in Morocco, and in 1227 some of their brethren found martyrdom in Ceuta.113 All that remains is to conclude that when the Messiah came in the twelfth century, he did not come alone: the Mission followed closely in his wake. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Prof. William Chester Jordan, my teacher and supervisor, for introducing me to the Ceuta Disputation, and for being such a patient and attentive critic. I also thank the two anonymous readers of this article’s first version for their critical comments, which have greatly improved its argument. Maya Soifer was born in Moscow, Russia and received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in History from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is currently a PhD candidate in Medieval History at Princeton University, working on her dissertation, tentatively entitled ‘The Jews of the Milky Way: Jewish-Christian Relations in Northern Castile (twelfth to fourteenth centuries)’, under the supervision of Professor William Chester Jordan. 112 David Berger posed the problem of the connection between the twelfth-century polemical works and the mid thirteenth-century missions to the Jews in ‘Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian contacts in the polemical literature of the high middle ages’, The American Historical Review 91 (1986), 577. 113 Robert Burns, ‘Christian-Islamic confrontation in the West: the thirteenth-century dream of conversion’, The American Historical Review 76 (1971), 1388.