Dominicans shifted missionary targets to protected Jews and Muslims to avoid martyrdom

Evidence

The Dominican order had been from its outset a missionary order, whose initial purpose was to bring Cathars back into the Catholic fold. Dominican missionaries, moved more by a desire to convert (or perhaps less of a desire to meet a martyr’s end) soon found it expedient to focus their efforts on the Muslim and Jewish subjects of Christian rulers: even if the latter’s active support could not be secured, they certainly wouldn’t put the missionaries to death. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1180 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

St Francis, before his own journey to Egypt, had already despatched a party to Africa who successfully forced a reluctant Muslim government to martyr them. Before they left Christian territory they announced that God had chosen them to be numbered in the glorious army, Deus nos vult in numero suorum martyrum computare. In Seville they tried to break into the Friday mosque, and, when they were driven away by the crowd, as ‘ambassadors of the King of Kings’ they went and abused Muhammad and Islam outside the royal palace instead. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 686 (#complicates, via linked claim)

That is why Ricoldo disputed with learned Muslims only aliquantulum, and why his pages are filled by literary sources, and not by the fruit of personal contact. That is why missionaries gave their attention chiefly to Christians, Latin or Oriental, living under Islamic rule, rather than to the Muslims themselves; and those that turned to the Muslims sought, not the conversion of the infidel, but their own martyrdom. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1465 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Dominican missionary strategy followed a two-phase destroy-then-expound sequence; Dominican missionaries pragmatically targeted Muslims and Jews over Cathars to avoid martyrdom — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1180; Dominicans applied coerced-listening missionary strategy to Spanish Muslims and Jews — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1178 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Dominican missionaries pragmatically targeted Muslims and Jews over Cathars to avoid martyrdom #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1180
• Franciscan missionaries deliberately provoked Muslim authorities to secure martyrdom #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 686
• Medieval missionaries aimed at martyrdom rather than Muslim conversion #complicates (0.70) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1465
• Early Jesuits openly recruited converts from Islam and Judaism #complicates (0.70) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1106