Introduction

Anselm Turmeda (c. 1352–c. 1423) was an extraordinary figure who straddled the worlds of Christianity and Islam. Born in Majorca, he became a Franciscan and studied theology at Bologna but then went in the late 1380s to Tunis, where he remained for the rest of his life and, at some point, was converted to Islam. His treatise The Gift (1420), written in Arabic, is a Muslim refutation of Christianity; but the Disputation of the Donkey (1417–18), like his Book of Good Advice (1398), is a Christian text written in his native Catalan. This duality enabled both Muslims and Christians of subsequent centuries to claim Turmeda as their own. The intersection of the two religions in Turmeda is illustrated by the fact that the Disputation of the Donkey is an adaptation (and in places a translation) of a Muslim work, a tenth-century Arabic fable which is one of the fifty-one epistles constituting an encyclopedia composed by a heterodox fraternity collectively known as ‘The Brethren of Purity and True Friends’.

The Disputation of the Donkey takes the form of a debate on the question whether humans are more noble than animals. Friar Anselm produces many traditional arguments in favour of human superiority, but all are demolished by his interlocutor, a donkey. Only the nineteenth argument forces the donkey to admit defeat: Christ took on human form. This reassuring use of the incarnation to prove human dignity was not unusual in the Renaissance.