PETER OF ALFONSO. - Jewish physician (Moshe Sephardi), b. in Huesca (Aragon) in 1062, converted at the age of 44, d. ca. 1110. A profound connoisseur of the Bible and of Arab thinkers, he was baptized by Stephen, bishop of Huesca, on 29 June 1106 and took his "surname" from Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, who was his godfather and kept him as his physician (P. calls him his "spiritual father").
To vindicate the biblical foundations of his conversion against the calumnies of his former coreligionists, he set out its circumstances (in the Prologue) and its reasons in the 18 dialogues Petri cognomento Alphonso ex iudaeo christiani et Moysi iudaei (the author before his conversion): "Moses" proposes the difficulties and "Alfonso" resolves them. The work, in an attractive style, is erudite, methodical, and most interesting for the knowledge of anti-Christian conceptions (especially the first 4 dialogues) and of the formalism of the Israelites of the 12th century; it played a conspicuous part in the apologetics of the time. It is praised by R. Martini (Pugio fidei, III, 3,4), Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. hist., XXV, 118), Matteo Palmieri (Cronaca, a. 1068). Perhaps the anti-Christian writings of R. Jacob ben Ruben (Milbamoth 'Adhānā), 1170) and of R. Shēmōbh ben Jishāq of Tudela ('Ebben bōhen) were intended as replies to P. It was printed at Cologne (1536), then in PL 157, 335-672. P. also composed the didactic-moral work Disciplina clericalis, in a prologue and 30 fables, translated from Arab authors, inserted in a dialogue between a dying Arab and his son; various storytellers of the 14th century depend on it; it was published (2 vols., Paris 1824) by J. Labouderie, vicar general of Avignon, who added to it two old French vernacular versions, one in prose (15th cent.), the other, older, in verse; the text of P. is reproduced in PL 157, 671-706.
Bibliography2 works
Antonino Romeo