The 1263 Barcelona disputation ended with each side claiming victory
Evidence
Pablo Cristiá tried to show, using carefully chosen passages of the Talmud, that the Messiah had already come; Nachmanides parried Pablo’s attacks by asserting that he had misinterpreted the passages in question, and by presenting alternate (generally nonmessianic) interpretations. The result of the debate is what might have been expected: neither side succeeded in convincing the other, but each side claimed to have out-debated the other. Two accounts of the debate were subsequently composed, one in Latin and one in Hebrew, and of course they differ widely. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1188
Categorization
- SHARE: Send to anyone into medieval interfaith disputations or the Nachmanides debate specifically — the detail that rival Latin and Hebrew accounts naturally conflict is a nice kernel.
- STORYSTEM: The two rival trial transcripts, each ‘of course’ contradicting the other, is a ready narrative device — a historical event whose only records are mutually incompatible partisan versions.