Abner of Burgos

Abner of Burgos (c. 1270 – c. 1347, or a little later) was a Jewish philosopher, a convert to Christianity and polemical writer against his former religion. Known after his conversion as Alfonso of Valladolid.

As a student he acquired a certain mastery in Biblical and Talmudical studies, to which he added an intimate acquaintance with Peripatetic philosophy and astrology. He was graduated as a physician at 25, but throughout a long life he seems to have found the struggle for existence a hard one. In 1295, he reportedly treated a number of Jews for distress following their experiences in the failed messianic movement in Avila. As Abner reports in his Moreh Zedek/Mostrador de justicia, he himself "had a dream" in which a similar experience of crosses mysteriously appearing on his garments drove him to question his ancestral faith.

Not being of those contented ones who, as Moses Narboni says in his Maamar ha-Beḥirah (Essay on the Freedom of the Will; quoted by Grätz, p. 488), are satisfied with a peck of locust beans from one Friday to another, he resolved to embrace Christianity though at the advanced age of sixty, according to Pablo de Santa María (Scrutinium Scripturarum); according to other writers he took this step soon after he was graduated in medicine. According to the statements of his contemporaries, such as Narboni, he converted, not from spiritual conviction, but for the sake of temporal advantage. Something of the apostate's pricking conscience seems to have remained with him, however, although he was immediately rewarded with a sacristan's post in the prominent Metropolitan Church in Valladolid (whence he took the name of Alfonso of Valladolid). The argument that Abner converted for material gain is put into question by the fact that his post as a sacristan was extremely modest and he never, throughout his long and public polemical career after conversion (c. 1320-1347) advanced in his post to something more lucrative.

Abner's most distinguishing characteristic was his use of postbiblical literature, including hundreds of Talmudic and Midrashic sources as well as much medieval Jewish and Arabic (in translation) literature, all in an effort to prove the truth of Christianity. Equally striking is the fact that he wrote his anti-Jewish polemics in Hebrew, unlike virtually every polemicist in the history of Christianity. His most major work, the Moreh Zedek (Teacher of Righteousness), which now survives only in a 14th-century Castilian translation as Mostrador de Justicia, is one of the longest and most elaborate polemics against Judaism ever written and is one of the key sources for the history of anti-Jewish thought in thirteenth and fourteenth century Western Europe. Abner's text rivals (and in many ways surpasses) the Pugio Fidei in length, complexity, variety of sources, and psychological impact, although there is no evidence that Abner actually knew of the polemical Dominican work.

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