Nina Caputo

In the mid-thirteenth century, a rabbi—Moses ben Nachman, better known to history as Nachmanides—was summoned to Barcelona. There the king required him to defend his faith in a disputation with a Catholic friar. That contentious debate and its aftermath is depicted in Debating Truth in the form of a five-chapter graphic novel, together with translations of the medieval source documents and an essay which provides historical context and describes the reasoning underpinning the decisions made by the author and by the artist.

There are two main sources for the disputation—one from a Jewish perspective, one from a Christian one—and so the debate is presented visually twice over. I can see how discussing the differences between the two versions, both overt and subtle, would be an excellent way of stimulating deeper classroom discussions about historical analysis and subjectivity. However, some of the visual cues functioning as editorial comment were so subtle that I only picked up on them when I read the accompanying essay. This, combined with some shifts in narrative topic, could potentially be quite confusing to a student reader, especially since quite dense theological topics are being discussed. Despite these pedagogical reservations, however, I could see this being a very useful addition to any course on medieval Jewish, Spanish, and/or religious history, or even a more general survey course of the Middle Ages.… (mais)