William of Tripoli

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William of Tripoli ( lat. Guilelmus Tripolitanus , * before 1220, † after 1273) was a preacher monk and Orient missionary to the Dominicans , as well as the author of two treatises on the Muslim religion.

Life

He probably came from Champagne and settled as a cleric in Tripoli in the Holy Land . He joined the Dominican preachers and initially worked as a preacher and missionary in the Crusader states. In his treatise, he later boasts of having baptized “a thousand Saracens ” , presumably mainly Muslim prisoners of war and slaves. He was later called to the school of the Dominican Convention of Acre .

In 1239 he was ambassador to the Emir of Hama , al-Muzaffar Mahmud , and in the spring of 1240 brought the leader of the barons ' crusade , Theobald IV of Champagne , an offer of alliance by the Muslim emir and the (erroneous) news that the emir want to convert to Christianity.

It can be seen from his work that he lived in Egypt for some time and may also have visited Iraq . In 1263 he accompanied the papal legate Thomas Agni of Cosenza , a Dominican friar who was bishop of Bethlehem , to the papal curia in Rome , where he presented the cause of the Holy Land.

Subsequently, as papal nuncio in France , he collected funds for the additional fortification of Acre and Jaffa .

In 1271 he was allegedly one of the two learned Dominicans whom Pope Gregory X. appointed in Acre to accompany (with legacy) the brothers Niccolò , Maffeo and Marco Polo , who were supposed to travel to the Mongolian Great Khan to convert it to Christianity and as an ally against to win Islam. However, they turned back in Ayas in Lesser Armenia , as an invasion of the Egyptian Mamluk sultan into northern Syria threatened to endanger their security.

In any case, Wilhelm had already started to write his tract at that time, because he dedicated it to Tedaldo Visconti, later Gregory X., before his election as Pope, but he continued to work on the work after July 12, 1273, although it is conceivable that By completing this work, he complied with the Pope's call of March 11, 1273 to deliver reports on the Muslims for the planned Second Council of Lyons . His treatise De Statu Saracenorum is a knowledgeable, essentially sympathetic account of the history and teaching of Islam , written by an author who had a knowledge of Arabic. Wilhelm was convinced that there was sufficient convergence between Christianity and Islam for the peaceful conversion of Muslims to be achieved. He believed that the recovery of the Holy Land could be done by missionaries, not soldiers.

Works

He wrote two tracts on the Muslim religion:

  • Notitia de Machometo: et de libro legis qui dicitur "Alcoran" et de continentia eius et quid dicat de fide Domini nostri Iesu Christi. (1271)
  • De Statu Sarracenorum: et de Machometo pseudopropheta eorum et de ipsa gente et eorum lege. (1273)

output

Literature and web links

See also

personal data
SURNAME William of Tripoli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guilelmus Tripolitanus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dominican monk and missionary to the Orient
DATE OF BIRTH before 1220
DATE OF DEATH after 1273