RAYMOND MARTINI. - Dominican theologian and missionary, b. at Subirats (Catalonia) around 1220, d. at Barcelona after July 1286. A religious from 1236, he was sent, with a group of confreres, to Tunis to found a school of Arabic there (1250). On 27 March 1264, at Barcelona, King James of Aragon entrusted him with the task of examining the writings of the Jews. From 1268 to 1269 he was again a missionary among the Moors, at Tunis. In 1281 he taught Hebrew at Barcelona.

A profound connoisseur of languages and of the Arab and Jewish world, he devoted his whole life to their conversion. To this end he wrote various works: Explanatio symboli Apostolorum, finished in 1257 (ed. by J. March in 1908, see the work cited in the bibliography), where he explains the Creed, with constant reference to the Jews and the Saracens; Capistrum Judaeorum, written in 1267 (ms. Bologna, Bibl. Univ., cod. Lat. 1675; Paris, Bibl. nat., cod. Lat. 3643), gives the proof of the messianic prophecies and counters the objections of the rabbis; Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Iudaeos, finished in 1278 (Ortona 1518, Basel 1550, Frankfurt 1561), a kind of Summa apologetica. As for doctrine, R. in the Explanatio seems to draw more on St. Augustine and on Abelard, while in the Pugio he draws on St. Thomas and precisely on the Summa contra Gentiles, which he sometimes reproduces verbatim.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Quétif-Echard, I, pp. 396-98; J. March, R. M. y la seva Explanatio Symboli Apostolorum, in Anuari del Institut d'estudis catalans, Barcelona 1908, pp. 443-96; H. Sancho, La Explanatio Symboli apostolorum de R. M., in La ciencia tomista, 9 (1917), pp. 394-408; A. Berthier, Un maître orientaliste du XIIIe siècle: R. M., in Arch. Fr. Praed., 6 (1936), pp. 267-311; S. Liebermann, A few words on some Jewish legends, customs and literary sources found in Karaite and Christian words, Jerusalem 1939, pp. 43-91; F. Cavallera, L'Explanatio Symboli de R. M., in Studia Mediaev. in honorem R. Martin, Bruges 1949, pp. 201-20.

Alfonso D'Amato

@incollection{ec10_raimondo_martini, author = {D'Amato, Alfonso}, title = {Raimondo Martini}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {502--503}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/raimondo-martini} }

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Raymond Martini

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