Llull, Ramón

(Raymond Lull)

(ca. 1232–1316)

   Recent scholarship has discovered that this Catalan theologian, teacher, and mystic espoused one of the most open-minded attitudes toward the representatives of non-Christian religions during the Middle Ages, although he made great efforts throughout his life to missionize among Jews and Muslims. By the same token, Llull was essentially the founder of Catalan literature and the most important Catalan philosopher and theologian of his time composing in the vernacular.

   Llull was born on Mallorca (Majorca) as the son of a nobleman and entered the service of King James I of Aragon in 1246. He married Blanca Picany in 1257 and had two children with her. In 1263, after a fairly comfortable life as a highranking courtier, Llull, having listened to a Franciscan preacher delivering a sermon, suddenly experienced a series of mystical visions of the crucified Christ.Consequently he accepted, as his divine mission, the task of writing “the best book in the world.” Llull abandoned his family and his public function and became a Franciscan tertiary, accepting the lifestyle of a monk, though he was still married. For nine years he studied philosophy and theology, the Arabic language, and the Muslim religion. In 1272 he wrote a compendium of ALGHAZ āLI’s logic and the Liber de contemplació en Déu (“Book on the Contemplation of God”). Llull founded a school for the study of Arabic in Miramar on Majorca in 1276 and for his entire life pushed for this philological approach in missionary activities since he firmly believed that all interactions with members of other religions had to be based on a solid understanding of their language. This finally convinced the church at the Council of Vienne in 1311 to incorporate Arabic and Hebrew, among other Oriental languages, as important subjects for students of divinity. This practice was subsequently adopted at most of the major medieval universities. Llull himself went on many journeys to North Africa,Cyprus, and Sicily, where he studied intensively Arabic and the KORAN and tried to reach out to Muslims and Jews. He was a most prolific writer, composing approximately 300 works, of which some 268 are still extant, written in Latin, Catalan,Arabic, and perhaps in Provençal (none of the texts that Llull had allegedly written in Arabic have survived).

   Llull was deeply convinced that human reason would be the fundamental catalyst to convert non-Christians who only needed to pay close attention to the logical arguments presented by their dialogue partners to abandon their old faith and to turn to Christianity. In 1299 he began his Principia philosophiae (First principles of philosophy) in which he attempted to combine Aristotelian philosophy with Christian teachings. Llull also composed poetry in Catalan, then a treatise on chivalry, and a kind of autobiographical verse romance, Libre de Evast e Blanquerna (1282 and 1287), in which he himself is personified as the Court Fool, or Lover. In his much later prose work Phantasticus (1311), he depicted himself as “Ramon lo Foll.” In his Llibre d’amic e amat (Book of the Lover and the Beloved), Llull offers religious-poetic reflections for every day of the year. Llull is, however, most famous for his enormously popular and often translated Llibre del gentil e los tres savis (The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men), written between 1275 and 1277, in which he portrays a gentile (an unbeliever) discussing with representatives of the three major world religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism— about the truth of their belief. Although they all argue against each other, in a remarkably tolerant fashion they ultimately agree to disagree with each other and to continue with their discussions at a later time.

   Between 1295 and 1296, Llull created an enormous encyclopedia, his Arbre de ciència (Tree of Science). In his Liber praedicationis contra Judaeos (et Saracenos) (Liber de trinitate et incarnatione) from 1305 Llull outlines his methodological approach in preaching to and converting Jews. His last major composition was his Ars magna (The Great Art), composed in 1308, in which he tried to summarize all of human knowledge, reducing it to one basic principle, applying profound scholastic teachings adopted from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other contemporary thinkers. Llull also produced several preaching handbooks, such as his Rhetorica nova (1302), Liber de praedicatione (1304), Ars brevis praedicationis (1313), and, most important, his Summa sermonum (1312–13), a vast collection of sermons.

   In 1315 Llull traveled to North Africa again to missionize there, but according to legend he was stoned to death in Bourgie, Algeria. Most likely, however, he was only expelled and died a year later in 1316 either on his way home or in Majorca. In Paris, one of Llull’s admirers had already written a biography of his master in 1311, the Vita coetanea. Llull exerted strong influence on the philosophies of Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz.His works had also a great impact on late-medieval and early-modern alchemy.

   Bibliography

   ■ Classen, Albrecht. “Toleranz im späten 13. Jahrhundert, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Jans von Wien und Ramón Llull.” Forthcoming in Mediaevistik. ames, Harvey J. The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

   ■ Johnston,Mark D. The Spiritual Logic of Ramon Lull. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

   ■ Llull, Ramón. Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina. 18 vols. Turnholt: Brepols, 1975–1989.

   ■ ———. Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1232–1316). Edited by A. Bonner. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.

   ■ Peers, E. Allison. Ramón Lull: A Biography. 1929.

   ■ Reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1969.

   Albrecht Classen