Hamner Lecture – Choosing Eschatologies in the Medieval Mediterranean: Ramon Martí (fl. 1250-84) on Islam and Judaism

The Department of History presents the 2025 Dr. H. Nicholas Hamner Lecture. Dr. Thomas E. Burman will be giving a lecture titled "Choosing Eschatologies in the Medieval Mediterranean: Ramon Martí  (fl. 1250-84) on Islam and Judaism." 

This event takes place on Wednesday, October 8th, 2025, starting with a reception at 5:00pm in the Dunbar Hall Lobby, followed by the lecture at 6:00pm in Dunbar Hall Auditorium Room 1303. The lecture is open to the WMU community. If you wish to attend the reception, please RSVP by Friday, October 3.

Unlike his contemporary Iberian missionary, Ramon Llull, for whom contending with Islam was central, Ramon Martí decided that the core Christian conflict was with Judaism, despite the fact that he knew Arabic and Islam intimately. In this, moreover, he resembles another contemporary Iberian, Rabbi Moses Nachmanides who, though deeply immersed in the Arab culture of Islamic Spain, similarly considered the Jewish-Christian conflict to be the great dispute at the heart of history. 

Thomas E. Burman (Ph.D., Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto) taught at the University of Tennessee for twenty-five years before becoming Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame in 2017. He is currently writing a book, Beyond the Mediterranean: The Intellectual Venture of Ramon Martí OP, 1250-84.