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Pedro Alfonso is one of the most important figures of the medieval Spain. Jewish sage educated under Islam and Christian converse, enable him to posses the best cultural knowledge of the three monotheistic semitic cultures, reflected in his work.
Pedro Alonso's work embraces different fields such as the scientific field, literary field and the religious field. His main contribution in the religion field is his “Dialogus contra iudaeos”. The content of this work, in some chapters, goes well beyond the realm of religion, falling at times into the realm of Science, and in a more indirect way into the field of politics, showing, as it happens in Chapter V, the real political situation that presented Islam in retreat, opposed to Christian triunf that appears in others chapters.
This thesis has an introducction in which it is exposed the background of the controversy about the “Dialogus contra iudaeus”, the historical evolution of the Jewish-Christian polemic with short references to the most important disputes that took place, and a historical and biographical profile of Pedro Alfonso.
The second part, which is the central and most important one, includes the translation from the latin version of the “Dialogui”, included in the Minge's edition of the “Patrología Latina” (1899), not forgetting the Meith's edition (Berlin, 1982) and other fragmentary works. It must be taken into account that this is the first full translation of Pedro Alfonso's “Dialogi” into spanish.
The third part, and from different perspectives for the approach, two works have been used: the first one, the “Biblioteca Ibérica Medieval” (1986), written by Reinhardt and Santiago), and another, the “Polémique crhétienne contre le judaïsme au Moyen Age” (1991), written by Dahan. Finally, the thesis is provided with its appropriated index and the critical and biographical apparatus.