Gentiles and Jews: Common Ground and Authorities in the Mission of Ramon Marti's Pugio fidei

This article analyses the introduction by Ramon Marti to his Pugio fidei ('Dagger of Faith', c. 1278), a polemic promoting Christianity against philosophy and Judaism. The article examines Marti's approach in translating quotation sources from Hebrew into Latin in a way acceptable to a Jewish audience; and it explores why Marti combined in one work polemics against philosophy and polemics against Jews. An autograph manuscript (13th c.) of the Pugio fidei surviving in Paris allowed for detailed examination of the text and editing changes; and made possible confirmation of Marti's intention to present together the diverse polemics

Early Witness: Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Peter of Tarentaise in Ramon Marti's Pugio fidei (c. 1278)

This article examines a medieval anti-philosophy polemic (Pugio fidei, Book I) and use by the author (Ramon Marti) of contemporary, Latin text sources. The analysis is of both quotations presented with author attributions and text reproduced without attribution. The work survives in an autograph manuscript (13th c), allowing for precise analysis of Marti's reproduction of text, in order to determine the degree of fidelity or intervention by Marti. The question is important because scholarship of the past 30 years has disagreed about Marti's fidelity in reproducing and translating into Latin copious Arabic and Hebrew sources in the Pugio fidei, thus raising questions about his stated priorities about handling sources with integrity while composing aggressive polemics. This article's findings on Latin sources corroborate the latest findings on Marti's reproduction of Hebrew sources: that Marti made largely faithful reproductions (particularly in quotations with author attribution), with occasional interventions for emphasis, explanation, or to weave the source into his discourse. The article also makes attributions to Latin sources not previously identified

Hebraism and Humanism

The article presents the relationship between Christian Hebraism and Humanism between the end of the 15th and the first half of the 16th century. The polemical origins of Humanism as an anti-scholastic movement, and of Hebraism from Christian-Jewish controversies in the Middle-Ages are studied from the vantage point of selected, significant cases. The initial success and the final demise of the Christian Hebraist project are explained in term of the "limits of Humanism", that is to say the challenge the discovery of extra-Christian or extra-Catholic sources posed for the formation of early modern Western identity. The reaction against the integration of Hebrew among the Humanistic canon of the educational languages represents a convenient vantage point to observe the ultimate failure of the Humanistic project, or, in a more optimistic bend, its permanent perfectibility