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Abstract
Ramon Martí, a thirteenth-century Spanish Dominican, was a linguist, missionary, emissary, and scholar. He mastered Arabic and Hebrew, and composed Christian polemical works against Islam and Judaism. He traveled the Mediterranean world and interacted with the kings of Aragon, France, and Hafsid North Africa. He was also, as this dissertation demonstrates, an advocate for the use of Aristotelian philosophy in service to theology, and a well-informed participant in contemporary theological debates.
Martí was a friar at the Santa Catalina convent in Barcelona, and in modern scholarship, he is primarily considered in the context of interfaith relations in medieval Iberia. While appreciating his unique perspective as a multilingual friar in a religiously plural environment, we must also consider Martí's writings in the context of developing Dominican theology at the University of Paris, and the Order's involvement in controversies regarding the role of Aristotelian philosophy in Christian scholasticism.
This dissertation examines the Dominican Order's reactions to these controversies, comparing the acts of their general and provincial chapters to events at the University of Paris, especially Bishop Tempier's Condemnations of 1270 and 1277, which encapsulate many contemporary concerns. These narratives provide a new lens for viewing Martí's philosophical theology in his Explanatio simboli Apostolorum and Part One of the Pugio fidei.
Martí wrote several texts against Judaism and Islam, but Part One of the three-part Pugio fidei is quite different. The text, which borrows heavily from Thomas Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles, contains no specific anti-Islamic or anti-Jewish argumentation. Part One addresses philosophical errors that threatened Christian faith, especially arguments supporting the eternity of the world, limiting the knowledge of God, and denying the resurrection of the body – all prominent controversial topics at the University of Paris. Part One of the Pugio serves two purposes: it condemns the errors of the Radical Aristotelian scholars at Paris and supports Dominican moderate Aristotelianism. Martí made unique contributions to these causes, bolstering Aquinas's arguments with Arabic and Hebrew sources unavailable in Latin translation. Situating Ramon Martí in this Parisian milieu identifies him as an engaged Dominican responding to this important scholastic conflict between faith and reason.
