Ramon Marti

Raymond Martini, or Ramon Martí was a 13th-century CatalanDominican friar and theologian. He is remembered for his polemic work Pugio Fidei (c. 1270). In 1250 he was one of eight friars appointed to make a study of oriental languages with the purpose of carrying on a mission to Jews and Moors. He worked in Spain as a missionary, and also for a short time in Tunis. A document bearing his signature and dated July 1284 shows that he was at that time still living.

He was born in the first half of the 13th century at Subirats in Catalonia; and died after 1284. It is speculated that he could have been of Jewish origin. In 1250 he was selected by the provincial chapter, sitting in Toledo, to study Oriental languages at a Dominican school which had been founded for the express purpose of preparing its pupils to engage in polemics against Jews and Moors. Subsequently he lived for a long time in a monastery at Barcelona.

In March 1264, he was commissioned, with the Bishop of Barcelona, Raimon de Penyafort, and two other Dominicans, Arnau de Segarra and Pere Gener, to examine the Hebrew manuscripts and books which the Jews, by order of the king, were to submit to them, and to cancel passages deemed offensive to the Christian religion. This is the first instance of Dominican censorship of the Talmud in Spain.

Their report was not severe, however, since Martí declared that many passages were confirmatory of the truth of Christianity, and that the Talmud should not be burned entirely (Pugio Fidei, ii.14, §8).

Martí was the author of two anti-Jewish books, one of which, the Capistrum Judaeorum, first published in 1990. His refutation of the Koran is lost.

There is at Bologna a manuscript of his Capistrum Judaeorum, aimed at the errors of the Jews; and at Tortosa a manuscript containing Explanatio simboli apostolorum ad institutionem fidelium which has a marginal note that it was edited "a fratre Ro Martini de ordine predicatorum".

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