Dominican mission to Muslims relied on captive audiences and language schooling
Evidence
The Dominicans often preferred to preach to “captive” audiences of non-Christian subjects of Christian rulers. They also staged theological debates with prominent Muslim and Jewish leaders. To further their strategies, Dominican missionaries founded language schools (in particular, Arabic) and wrote polemical texts meant to provide “refutations” of Islam (and Judaism) ready to be deployed by Dominican missionaries. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 75
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
Related
- Dominican mission strategy required Arabic language schools and written polemics (similarity 0.92)
- Dominican missionaries weaponized their opponents’ own scriptures in coerced religio-legal debates. (similarity 0.87)
- Dominicans applied coerced-listening missionary strategy to Spanish Muslims and Jews (similarity 0.83)
- Thirteenth-century missionaries split between martyrdom-seeking Franciscans and debate-based Dominicans (similarity 0.81)
- Dominican missionaries were the era’s most serious students of Islamic thought (similarity 0.81)
- Reconquered Spanish Muslims served as a captive missionary audience for Dominicans (similarity 0.81)
- Dominican missionaries pragmatically targeted Muslims and Jews over Cathars to avoid martyrdom (similarity 0.81)
- Thirteenth-century Dominican missionaries were formally trained in Arabic and Jewish scriptures (similarity 0.81)
- Dominicans attacked Judaism and Islam by turning their own scriptures against them (similarity 0.81)
- Medieval Dominican rationalist missionizing yielded almost no Jewish or Muslim converts (similarity 0.79)
- Dominican missionaries sought to prove Christianity through rival scripture exegesis (similarity 0.79)
- Medieval missions succeeded only where Christian political power held sway (similarity 0.78)
- Medieval Christian refutation of Islam reused the same failed strategy for 150 years. (similarity 0.78)
- Aggressive doctrinal attack on Islam hardened Muslim resistance rather than winning converts. (similarity 0.78)