Nachmanides and the Disputation of Barcelona

Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman—Nachmanides—led the Jews of Catalonia: physician, kabbalist, and commentator whose Torah commentary is still printed beside Rashi's. In 5023 King James I of Aragon summoned him to Barcelona for a public disputation with the Dominican convert Pablo Christiani. Nachmanides agreed on one condition: that he be free to speak. The king promised.

The debate lasted four days before great crowds. The question was set: to prove from Jewish sources that the Messiah had already come. Pablo quoted aggadah; Nachmanides answered that aggadah is parable and lesson, not binding law. Then he went on the attack: what the prophets promised—that nation shall not lift sword against nation—plainly had not happened; the world is full of blood, and the Christian powers shed most of it. And he added that what keeps a Jew from another faith is not argument but the whole life he was raised in.

The king publicly said he had never heard a bad case argued so well. But when Nachmanides wrote out the proceedings at a bishop's demand, he was charged with blasphemy; the sentence was commuted to exile.

In 5027, aged seventy-two, he landed at Acre and went up to Jerusalem, where he found only two Jews. He gathered a community and restored a synagogue that still bears his name.