Polemical Encounters ― Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond

This collection takes a new approach to understanding religious plurality in the Iberian Peninsula and its Mediterranean and Northern European contexts. Focusing on polemics—works that attack or refute the beliefs of religious Others—this volume aims to challenge the problematic characterization of Iberian Jews, Muslims, and Christians as homogeneous groups.

From the high Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, Christian efforts to convert groups of Jews and Muslims, Muslim efforts to convert Christians and Jews, and the defensive efforts of these communities to keep their members within the faiths led to the production of numerous polemics. This volume brings together a wide variety of polemical case studies that expose how the current historiographical focus on the three religious communities as allegedly homogenous groups obscures the diversity within the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, as well as the growing ranks of skeptics and outright unbelievers.

Featuring contributions from a range of academic disciplines, this paradigm-shifting book sheds new light on the cultural and intellectual dynamics of the conflicts that marked relations between these religious communities in the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Thomas E. Burman, Antonio Biosca, Óscar de la Cruz, Mònica Colominas Aparicio, Linda G. Jones, Daniel J. Lasker, Davide Scotto, Borja Franco Llopis, Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Ryan Szpiech, John Dagenais, Teresa Soto, and Carsten Wilke.

Mercedes García-Arenal is Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council [Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas] in Madrid.

Gerard Wiegers is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam.