>>1066679
Actually there's a lot of shit like that happening back then.
When the Catholic church discovered the existence of the tripe written in the Talmud, books were confiscated and shit like that were ordered by the Pope, I forgot which one.
But it was one of the most successful conversion efforts to the Jews.

>>1066729

Are you sure you're not confusing it with something else?

The Disputation of Barcelona was a debate over whether or not Jesus was the Messiah, and the Jews won that one, despite the fact that the debate was refereed by a devout Christian monarch.

Subsequent debates would often give the Jewish participants a script to read from, and yeah, they appealed to the Pope to overturn the result, but just the idea that it could happen in the first place is so bizarre that it's almost inconceivable.

>christians trying to win a rational debate

so cute

I wish there were more details on this. What arguments did each side present? Wasn't the King the one who decided on the winner of the debate? He might have been biased toward the Jews because they offer him loans at low-interest.

>>1066762

I admit, I read this a couple of years ago, and I don't have the material in front of me, but IIRC, it mostly went:

>Pablo Christiani attempts to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah, that the Jews of the time and slightly later times (a couple of centuries) believed this, and that Jesus is divine.
>He supplements his arguments not only with biblical quotations, but a lot of quotations from the gemarah.
>Nachmanides, the Rabbi in the debate, points out that many of his Gemara quotes are both taken out of context and aggadic (legends passed down, not sources of law), are contradicted by other gemara statements decrying Jesus.
>Furthermore, he pulls out that the Messiah is supposed to do a number of things, most especially bring worldwide peace, which have not happened.

Yes, James the 1st decided the winner of the debate, and while I don't know the state of the finances of the country at the time, I would also think there's a significant reason for bias in the other direction: A medieval monarch depends on the catholic clergy for much of the administration of his realm, and him geting in trouble with the pope can have very serious consequences.

Apparently, he awarded the Rabbi in the debate with 300 gold coins, and made a public address at the synagoge in Barcelona, which was unheard of at the time.