RAIMONDO MARTINI. - Dominican theologian and missionary, b. at Subirats (Catalonia) c. 1220, d. at Barcelona after July 1286. He entered the religious life in 1236 and was sent, with a group of fellow friars, to Tunis to establish an Arabic school there (1250). On 27 March 1264, in Barcelona, King James of Aragon entrusted him with the task of examining Jewish writings. From 1268 to 1269 he was again a missionary among the Moors in Tunis. In 1281 he taught Hebrew in Barcelona.
A profound scholar of languages and of the Arabic and Hebrew worlds, he devoted his entire life to their conversion. To this end he wrote several works: the Explanatio symboli apostolorum, completed in 1257 (ed. by J. March in 1908, V. op. cit. in bibl.), in which he explains the Creed with constant reference to Jews and Saracens; the Capistrum Judaeorum, written in 1267 (ms. Bologna, Bibl. Univ., cod. Lat. 1675; Paris, Bibl. nat., cod. Lat. 3643), which demonstrates the messianic prophecies and answers rabbinic objections; the Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Iudaeos, completed in 1278 (Ortona 1518, Basel 1550, Frankfurt 1561), a kind of apologetic Summa. As regards doctrine, in the Explanatio R. seems more inspired by St Augustine and Abelard, whereas in the Pugio he follows St Thomas, specifically the Summa contra Gentiles, which he sometimes reproduces verbatim.