Guillelmus Adae

Guillelmus Adae (sometimes also William or Wilhelm Adam) was a Dominican from Catalonia , who served as a papal missionary in Persia from 1314 to 1317 and later became Bishop of Smyrna (1318), Archbishop of Soltanije (Iran, 1322) and of Antivari ( Montenegro , from 1324) was appointed. In fact, he only resided temporarily at these bishoprics; According to the sources, he was often to be found in the vicinity of the papal curia in Avignon .

He was one of six Dominicans who were led by John XXII. were sent to Persia; probably Guillelmus was there before 1314, during the pontificate of Clement V been before. According to his own statements, as part of his missionary work he reached India and the Gulf of Aden and beyond to Ethiopia .

Guillelmus is best known as the author of a treatise on the question of how the Holy Land was to be retaken after the fall of Acre (1291) ( De modo Sarracenos extirpandi , probably 1317). He advocated a new crusade and in this context also praised the Genoese initiative in the eastern Mediterranean: Genoa , in addition to the occupation of Chios with the consent of the Byzantine emperor , also participated in the battles against the Turks (1319); the most prominent of the Genoese involved, Martino Zaccaria , received the title of “King and Despot of Asia Minor” from the Latin pretender to the throne in Constantinople for these services as “marine police” in the Aegean . Guillelmus advocated first restoring the rule of the Roman Church over Byzantium and then attacking the Turks in Asia Minor before a strike could be carried out against the Mamluk state in Egypt and Syria. To weaken Egyptian trade through Alexandria , he even drafted a plan to block the Gulf of Aden.

In several places Guillelmus describes aspects of slavery in the eastern Mediterranean. He claims that there were more than 200,000 Greek slaves in Persia at that time. He directed sharp attacks against those Christian merchants, above all Segurano Salvaigo from Genoa and his family, who supplied the Egyptian Mamluks with slaves from the Black Sea region as new recruits for their armies.

Guillelmus Adae is said to have died for some time in December 1341.

Works

• De modo Sarracenos extirpandi
• Arbor caritatis
• a sermon

The tract Directorium ad passagium faciendum was also attributed to Guillelmus because of the large number of content and textual proximity by Kohler. Other researchers assume that it was written by Raimundus Stephani OP . It certainly does not come from Burchardus de Monte Sion , as earlier research suspected.

Quotes

1. ↑ Michel Balard : La Romanie génoise , Vol. 1, p. 121
2. ↑ http://urts173.uni-trier.de:9080/minev/MedSlavery/sources/Guillaume_Adam.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Thomas Kaeppeli: Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi , vol. III, Rome 1980, pp. 287-288
4. ↑ http://www.arlima.net/ad/directorium_ad_passagium.html

literature

• Thomas Kaeppeli OP: Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi , vol. II, Rome 1975, pp. 81-82.
• Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Documents arméniens, vol. II, Paris 1906, pp. 521-555. (Edition of De modo Sarracenos extirpandi , ibid. Biographical information p. Clxxviii-ccvii)
• Charles Kohler: Documents rélatifs à Guillaume Adam, archevêque de Sultanieh, puis d'Antivari, et à son entourage (1318–1346) . in: Revue de l'Orient latin 10 (1903-1904), pp. 16-56.
• Michel Balard : La Romanie génoise (XIIe-début XVe siècle) , 2 vols., Rome 1978.
• Antony Leopold: How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries , Aldershot 2000.