Page:Disciplina Clericalis (English translation) from the fifteenth century Worcester Cathedral Manuscript F. 172.djvu/11



INTRODUCTION

Peter Alphonse, the author of the popular mediaeval collection of oriental folk tales or, known as Disciplina Clericalis, was, according to his own testimony, born at Huesca in the kingdom of Aragon in the year 1062. He was a Jew by birth and was known before his conversion by the name of Rabbi Moses Sephardi, or Moses the Spaniard. He was baptized under the name 'Petrus Alphonsus,'—the first part of the name due to the apostle on whose birthday the event occurred, the second part deriving from , "the glorious emperor of Spain who was my spiritual father and who received me at the baptismal font." He was according to Söderhjelm one of the many Jewish intellectuals of the Middle Ages who served as intermediaries between oriental and occidental culture.

A few years after his conversion he published his Dialogi—or Dialogus contra Judaeos —in which the Christian Peter defends the doctrines of Christianity against the attacks of Moses the Jew (representing the attitude of the author before his conversion as well as that of the orthodox Jews of his time).

It was probably not far from the same time that the Disciplina Clericalis was written. The author had at least already become a Christian,—a fact fully established by the Prolog of the Disciplina, which begins: "Petir Alfons, seruaunt of Jesus Christ maker of this book," and, "I return thanks to God who is the first without beginning;" and the author closes the Prolog with, "May the