| This researchproject is a systematic-theological study of the Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Iudaeos (1278), written by the Barcelonese blackfriar Raymundus Martini (±1220-±1285). While having been a missionary in Northern Africa (Tunis) in the fifties of the 13th century, Martini was (after the famous disputation of Barcelona (1263) between Pablo Christiani and the Jewish rabbi Mosje ben Nachman) appointed as a member of a royal Aragon committee, which had to examine the Jewish literary tradition on anti-Christian tendencies. During the following decennia Martini developed a method of disputing with the Jews in which he was determined to persuade them - on the basis of Scripture and Jewish traditional writing - of the reasonableness of Christian faith. Martini believed that lots of ideas in Jewish tradition expressed the core of Christian beliefs, and that these pearls in the dunghill as he called them, even recognized the fact that the Messiah had already come and had the historical features of Jesus. He thought Christianity could beat the Jews with their own weapons. That conviction, which was fairly new in Christian thought on the Jews, was applied yet by Pablo Christiani in his preaching and disputing, but further developed by Martini into a broad and eloquent method. The Pugio Fidei became his magnum opus. It is probably meant as a summa for the missionary-students at the Dominican studia linguarum (language schools) in Spain. After the expulsion of the Jews from Southern France and the Iberian Peninsula it got lost in the dust of history, until it was printed in 1651 in Paris and in 1687 in Leipzig. The first goal of this research on the Pugio Fidei is to describe the apologetic methods which Martini used and, of course, the theological contents of his work. One of the main questions is how the apologetic method determines the theological structure and contents of the work. In the second place Martini s view on the Jewish people will be detected and compared to Christian/Dominican views which circulated in those days. The questions will be answered within the historical context of the Dominican mission strategies in the 13th century and some contemporary Jewish-Christian polemics. In relation to the last aspect works of the Spanish rabbi s Mosje ben Nachman (from Gerona) and Solomon ibn Adret (from Barcelona), both contemporaries of Martini, will be read and examined. |
