Introduction
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the three Jewish–Christian disputations which took place in the Middle Ages: the Paris Disputation of 1240, the Barcelona Disputation of 1263, and the Tortosa Disputation of 1413–14. Of these, the most celebrated is the Barcelona Disputation of 1263, the Jewish account of which was written by Moses Naḥmanides. The Paris Disputation was not really a disputation at all, but an interrogation in which the Jewish spokesman, Rabbi Yeḥiel, was given very little scope for the exposition of fundamental Jewish ideas; he was severely hampered both by the restricted role he was given, and by the limits of the interrogation itself, which was confined to allegedly anti-Christian passages of the Talmud. The Tortosa Disputation, on the other hand, was a true disputation, in which the same areas were covered as in the Barcelona Disputation, but under much inferior conditions. At Barcelona, however, many factors came together to form the greatest confrontation between Christianity and Judaism in the Middle Ages. In addition, the Barcelona Disputation took place at a turning-point in Jewish history.