השימוש בכתבי הרמב"ם בתעמולה הנוצרית של המומרים

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in Spain, a substantial number of rabbis and other prestigious people who were part of the intellectual elite of the Jewish community rejected their faith and became Christian. Following their conversions, they all tried to propagate their new belief amongst their past coreligionists. This propaganda was carried out in a number of ways, including public debates and the writing of books in Hebrew, Latin, and old Spanish. This trend of intellectual apostasy played an important role in the mass conversion to Christianity that occurred from the end of the fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries. By this time, the majority of the Spanish Jewish community (then the most important Jewish community of Europe) had converted to Christianity.

This article is the first to analyze the role that the writings of Maimonides played in the missionary writings of three major Jewish apostates: Abner of Burgos (approximately 1260—1347; apostate around 1321); Pablo de Santa Maria (1352—1435; apostate in 1390) and Pedro de la Caballeria (approximately 1380—1464; apostate around 1413 at the Tortosa disputation). Maimonides is the main post-Talmudic source in the writings of these three authors. Their different uses of Maimonides lie between the opinion that Maimonides was a Christian at heart (this is the secret of the Guide of the Perplexed according to Abner of Burgos) and Pedro's view that Maimonides represents erroneous Jewish opinion.