

Interior Art: "Many illustrators are prone to use the.Interior Art: The Horseclans II ( 1993).


There are merchants: Genoans, Pisans and “Spaniards” (no doubt Catalans). This text offers us precious information on the Latin Christian community of Tunis, which is numerous and diverse. The questions concern the legality (or not) of a whole series of transactions with Muslims: from selling them nails to secretly baptizing their children. Each section contains first a question posed by the friars and then the pope’s response, transmitted by Raymond. Questions and answers are preserved in a text known as the Responsiones ad dubitabilia circa communicationem christianorum cum sarracenis, dated January 19th 1235. Raymond of Penyafort, confessor and penitentiary to Pope Gregory IX, explains that the pope gave his answer to each of these questions and that he, Raymond, wrote them down and sent them to the two friars. The ecumenical councils and pontifical decrees had indeed established the rules in principle, but they had not imagined all the particular cases that these friars encountered in Tunis. Towards the end of 1234, a letter arrived at the papal curia from the Franciscan minister and the Dominican prior residing in Tunis, posing a series of forty questions concerning their ministry to the Catholic community of Tunis-primarily on whether certain sins called for excommunication, or whether they were mortal or venial.
