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This article deals with explicit permissions for two types of cross-dressing found in the thirteenth-century ethical tract Sefer Chasidim. In order to avoid being sexually assaulted, female Jewish travellers were allowed to disguise themselves as a. Christians, even as nuns, or b. men. This contradicts biblical and rabbinical prohibitions against such practices.These textual passages are discussed, set against the Jewish and Christian medieval discourse on dress and identity, and they are also related to other contemporary source texts that show that the borders between men and women, and Jews and Christians, as distinct and separate groups were at this time being contested. The author concludes that these permissions should not be seen as ways of transcending the boundaries of the group, but rather as part of a discourse that served to strengthen such boundaries.

Humanistportalen

The so-called Barcelona disputation of 1263 was one of the earliest Jewish-Christian disputations in medieval Europe. The disputants were Paul Christian, a Jewish convert to Christianity and member of the Dominican order, and the well known Jewish sage Ramban (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of Gerona). In the disputation Paul Christian used an innovative method: he attempted to prove the truth of basic Christian dogma, for instance that the Messiah had already come, by using classical Jewish texts, especially the Talmud. Paul Christian used the same method in his sermons which the Jews in the area were forced to listen to. When one analyses the arguments he employs, it becomes obvious how he alludes to both Jewish and Christian traditions in order to convince his listeners.