The Perennial Importance of Mary's Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur'anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics After the Conquest of Granada (1492)

Abstract

This paper studies the little-known Spanish Qur'anic translations included within Christian works of polemics that were produced in Iberia in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Such fragments are an important testimony of otherwise rare translations of the Qur'an into Iberian vernacular languages. This study focuses on the Qur'anic material cited by authors connected to Martín García, Bishop of Barcelona (c. 845–928/1441–1521) in polemical treatises written for the evangelisation of the Granadan Muslims (converted to Christianity by the decree of 1502) and the conversion of the Valencian and Aragonese Muslims (legally Muslims until 1526). It considers two treatises, authoured respectively by Juan Andrés and Johan Martín de Figuerola, belonging to the genre that has come to be known as Antialcoranes, or ‘anti-Qur'ans’. These are further compared to the quotations included by Martín García himself in his sermons as well as by two subsequent sixteenth-century authors, Lope de Obregón and Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón.