Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Names and terminology
- Map 1
- Map 2
- INTRODUCTION
- Part I Context
- Part II Contacts
- 4 TEACHING TRUTH
- 5 DESTROYING ERROR
- 6 WORKERS IN THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD
- 7 DIPLOMACY AND ESPIONAGE
- 8 THE COMPLEXITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
- CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix Dominican studia
- Bibliography
- Index
CONCLUSIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Names and terminology
- Map 1
- Map 2
- INTRODUCTION
- Part I Context
- Part II Contacts
- 4 TEACHING TRUTH
- 5 DESTROYING ERROR
- 6 WORKERS IN THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD
- 7 DIPLOMACY AND ESPIONAGE
- 8 THE COMPLEXITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
- CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix Dominican studia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The first century or so of Dominican presence in the medieval Crown of Aragon saw the friars' engagement in many different activities. Most were unremarkable, in that they involved pastoral duties common to mendicants throughout Christendom. The friars' primary mission was to nurture and protect Christian souls, and this was all the more true in a border region where non-Christian influences were relatively strong. Indeed, the Aragonese Dominicans' greatest achievement was perhaps the part they played in transforming what had once been deeply Islamic cities like Mallorca and Valencia into colonial centers whose ambience and amenities were barely distinguishable from those of an old Christian metropolis. They did the same thing, though to a far lesser extent, in special enclaves set aside for Christian use in the Muslim principalities of North Africa. It was no small matter to provide burgeoning immigrant populations of soldiers, merchants and their families with all the spiritual comforts (and restrictions) of home. In this sense, medieval Dominican friars could indeed rejoice in the knowledge that they were planting “lilies of the Christian name” in once fruitless “pagan” lands throughout the western Mediterranean.
Agricultural metaphors reveal only one dimension of a complex reality, however. Dominicans in the Crown of Aragon could not ignore the fact that they lived in close proximity to Muslim and Jewish populations with vibrant religious traditions of their own.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon , pp. 257 - 264Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009