Aquinas wrote against Islam on direct Dominican request via Martí

Evidence

Thomas Aquinas justifies the use of reason to complement faith in his Summa contra gentiles. Thomas and Ramon Martí had together been students of Albert the Great, and it is apparently Martí who transmits (in 1269?) the request from Ramon de Penyafort, that Thomas compose a Summa to serve as another weapon in the Dominican arsenal of philosophical polemics and apologetics against Islam. Aquinas incorporates into his Summa, arguments from Martí’s Capistrum Iudaeorum (1267); Martí, in turn, employs arguments from the Summa contra gentiles in his Pugio fidei (composed in 1278). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1221

Categorization

• XREF: The mutual borrowing between Martí and Aquinas is a concrete case of the intellectual cross-pollination central to this book’s whole argument about Latin-Christian polemics.