Petrus alfonsi biography

Petrus Alfonsi was.
Petrus Alphonsi (died after 1116) was a Spanish physician, writer, astronomer and polemicist who was born and raised as a Jew and later in life converted to.
PETRUS ALFONSI (Aldefonsi ; b.

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Petrus Alfonsi

Petrus Alfonsi (born Moses Sephardi) ( c.1062 - 1110) was a Jewish Spanish physician, writer, astronomer, and polemicist, who converted to Christianity in 1106. Born in Islamic Spain, he mostly lived in England and France after his conversion.

He was born at an unknown date and place in the 11th century in Spain, and educated in al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain. As he describes himself, he was baptised at Huesca, capital of the Kingdom of Aragon, on St. Peter's Day, 29 June 1106, when he was probably approaching middle age; this is the first clear date we have in his biography. In honor of the saint Peter, and of his royal patron and godfather, the Aragonese King Alfonso I he took the name of Petrus Alfonsi (Alfonso's Peter).

By 1116 at the latest he had emigrated to England, where he seems to have remained some years, before moving to northern France. The date of his death is as unclear as that of his birth. He was famous as a writer during his lifetime, and remained so for the rest of the …more

[close] Petrus Alfonsi (born Moses Sephardi) ( c.1062 -

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Petrus Alfonsus

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A convertedJew and controversialist, born at Huesca, in the former Kingdom of Aragon, 1062; died 1110. Previous to his conversion he was known as Moses Sephardi (the Spaniards). King Alfonso I of Aragon, whose physician-in-ordinary he became, stood sponsor at his baptism, which he received in his native town on St. Peter's day (29 June, 1106). In honour of this saint and of his sponsor he chose the name Petrus Alfonsus. As his conversion was attributed by his former co-religionists to ignorance or dishonourable motives, he published a justification in a Latin work consisting of twelve dialogues between a Jew and a Christian. These dialogues were first printed at Cologne in 1536, and have since frequently been re-edited. A second work of Petrus Alfonsus, based on Arabic sources, is entitled "Ecclesiastical Discipline" (Disciplina Clericalis). It ha

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Petrus Alfonsi

PETRUS ALFONSI (Aldefonsi ; b. 1062), Spanish Converso, physician, polemicist, and author, possibly born in Huesca. Known as Mosé or Moisés Sefardi before his conversion at the age of 44, he assumed the new name of Petrus Alfonsi (Aldefonsi) because his conversion took place on St. Peter's Day and his baptismal patron was King Alfonso i of Aragon. He spent the second half of his life in England, where he was physician to King Henry i. Petrus introduced the Oriental apologue to Western Europe through his Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of some 34 stories belonging to the traditional literature of the Orient (translated into English under the title The Scholar's Guide). He was also the author of a polemical treatise, Dialogi… in quibus judaeorum opiniones… confutanur (Bibliotheca Patrum, 22 (1677), 172ff.), which he wrote to defend his conversion.

These dialogues, cast in the mold of classic apologetics, take place between a Jew and a Christian, named respectively Moses and Peter, the two figurations of the author before and after his baptism. The wor