With their active apostolate of preaching and teaching, Dominican friars were important promoters of Latin Christianity in the borderlands of medieval Spain and North Africa. Historians have long assumed that their efforts to convert or persecute non-Christian populations played a major role in worsening relations between Christians, Muslims and Jews in the era of crusade and reconquista. This study sheds light on the topic by setting Dominican participation in celebrated but short-lived projects such as Arabic language studia or anti-Jewish theological disputations alongside day-to-day realities of mendicant life in the medieval Crown of Aragon. From old Catalan centers like Barcelona to newly conquered Valencia and Islamic North Africa, the author shows that Dominican friars were on the whole conservative educators and disciplinarians rather than innovative missionaries - ever concerned to protect the spiritual well-being of the faithful by means of preaching, censorship and maintenance of existing barriers to interfaith communications.
Reviews
'It is impossible to do justice in a short review to Robin Vose's interesting and thoughtful study of the Dominicans ... The author has successfully fulfilled his ail that the study 'will contribute to a more balanced and historically accurate account of the complexities surrounding inter-religious contacts in the Middle Ages' (p. 17); it is a welcome addition to the corpus of Iberian studies available to English-speaking scholars.' The Journal of Speculum 'Students of medieval history will benefit greatly from reading this revision of the notion that there existed a grand 'thirteenth-century dream of conversion'.' Sefarad
