Raymond Lull

Catalan mystic, scholar, and teacher

• Born: c. 1235
• Birthplace: Palma de Mallorca, Majorca (now in Spain)
• Died: Early 1316
• Place of death: At Tunis, on Majorca, or on the voyage to Majorca

Lull devised a unique and influential Neoplatonic and non-Scholastic philosophy, founded a school of Arabic, composed Arabic books, corresponded with Islamic savants in North Africa, and helped create the Catalan language. Friend of rulers, prelates, and the powerful, he wandered the courts of Europe, advocating for his many enterprises.

Early Life

Raymond Lull (Ramon Llull in his native Catalan) was born to a Crusader who had helped conquer Islamic Majorca island some three years before. Like most youngsters of his affluent class, he apparently received a gentleman’s education in the vernacular but called himself “illiterate” in the learned Latin. As was fashionable, he became a troubadour composer and gave himself to a life of womanizing and trivialities. A disputed report makes the boy Lull a page at the court of James I the Conqueror, the ruler of the various realms confederated around Catalonia and Aragon; he held the post of majordomo, or head of household, at the subordinate court of the conqueror’s son, James II of Majorca. Lull’s marriage to Blanca Picany in 1257 gave him a son, Domènec, and a daughter, Magdalena, though he continued to live a dissolute life.

In later years, he confided many details of his life to monks of Vauvert in Paris, from which a fascinating vita coetanea (contemporary life) was composed in 1311. In it Lull tells of five apparitions of the crucified Christ in 1263 that frightened and then converted him to a life of religious fervor at age thirty.

Lull’s Majorca was a cosmopolitan center of western Mediterranean trade and culture, with a third of its population still Muslim, with a large Jewish community , and with merchant colonies and an immigrant society from many countries. It was natural for Lull to focus on converting Muslims and to learn Arabic. Leaving a fund to support his abandoned family, he set about acquiring a formal education in Latin, while adopting the coarse cloth and mendicant lifestyle of a wandering holy man. During nine years of intensive study on Majorca, he learned Latin and Arabic passably well, and studied the Qur՚ān, the Talmud, and the Bible as well as the works of Plato, Aristotle, and the standard European authors. A book written by a disciple six years after his death shows Lull as a thin, serene figure, his bald head capped and his beard unusually long.

Life’s Work

Lull was both a meditative thinker and a man of restless action. The two personas were fused: action in the service of his contemplative vision. His active life can be followed in his constant travels during thirty years, until his death at the end of a journey. During these travels, he wrote an average of nine or ten books a year. Some of these works were treatises or booklets, but seven ran to 150,000 words, three to 250,000, one to 400,000, and one to nearly a million. During his studies, Lull had made a compendium in Arabic of al-Ghazzālī’s logic; more significant, he also wrote in Arabic Libre de contemplació (1273; Book of Contemplation, 1985). Book of Contemplation is an encyclopedic summa of mysticism; some scholars think it his greatest work. At the end of his studies, during two sessions of intense contemplation on Mount Randa on Majorca, he received a cosmic illumination and then a vision of a Christlike shepherd, which set the direction of his future thought and books. As a guest at La Real Abbey, he now composed the first version of his celebrated work on the ultimate constitution of reality and its symbolic expression in systems, which he called Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (c. 1274; a brief art of finding truth). Later he devised a machine with crank and revolving wheel to demonstrate his art graphically as propositions revolved in circles, squares, and triangles.

Acclaim for his books led James II of Majorca to invite Lull to his court at Montpellier in 1274-1275. Lull persuaded the king to endow a center or priory on Majorca called Miramar, where relays of thirteen Franciscan friars would learn Arabic for missionary work, a foundation Pope John XXI confirmed in 1276. Lull seems to have spent the next decade writing on Majorca, though older scholars have him traveling widely in Europe and Africa. The fourteen books finished on the island include Libre de l’ordre de cavalleria (1279; The Book of the Order of Chivalry, 1484), Doctrina pueril (1274-1276; teaching of children), Libre del gentil e dels tres savis (1274-1276; The Book of the Gentile and Three Wise Men, 1985), and works on law, medicine, logic, theology, and angels. At Montpellier in 1283, he wrote his novel Blanquerna (English translation, 1925), named after its hero, and two more books on his art. At Rome in 1287 seeking papal multiplication of language schools, Lull discovered that the pope had died; he therefore journeyed to Paris to lecture on his art at the university, to visit Philip IV the Fair, and to write his novel Libre de meravalles (1288-1289; Felix: Or, Book of Wonders, 1985) and five other works. Back at Montpellier, perhaps after a side trip to Rome, he lectured and wrote on his art. A brief residence in Genoa allowed him to translate the latest work on his art into Arabic, before pleading again at the papal court for schools and for a crusade; Libre de passage (1292; book of passage), his petition to Pope Nicholas IV, and his treatise on converting infidels date from this Roman stay of 1292.

Though his chronology is sometimes difficult to establish, Lull seems to have announced at Genoa his intention to preach to the Muslims in Tunis, but out of cowardice, he refused to sail. The resultant popular scorn induced a grave psychosomatic illness. Stirred by two visions, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Dominican order and then became a Franciscan external affiliate or layman-tertiary. He did voyage to Tunis in 1293, where his preaching on the Trinitarian Art to Muslim savants caused the Ḥafṣid sultan Abū Hafs to imprison and then to expel him. At the Franco-Angevin court of Naples, Lull lectured on the art, preaching also to the Muslim colony of nearby Lucera and conferring with the new pope, Celestine V, at Naples, in 1294-1295. Lull fitted in a trip to Barcelona and to Majorca, where he dedicated a philosophical work to his son; later, he returned in 1295 to Rome, where he presented two books to the latest pope, Boniface VIII. Stopping at Genoa to compose several books, Lull visited James II at Montpellier and traveled on for a prolonged stay lecturing at the University of Paris from 1297 to 1299. At Paris he consulted with Philip IV and composed thirteen of his most important works on topics ranging from theology, mathematics, and astronomy to love, proverbs, and encouragement for the Venetian prisoners of war (including Marco Polo) at Genoa.

Staying at the court of James II of Aragon at Barcelona in 1299, Lull wrote two books and preached by royal permission to subject Muslims and Jews. In 1300-1301, he preached to Majorca’s Muslims and wrote seven books. At the news that the Mongol khan Maḥmūd Ghāzān was conquering Syria, Lull embarked for Cyprus, intending to oppose him; once arrived, Lull found that the rumor was false. He visited Henry II of Cyprus, hoping that the king would send him to preach to the local Muslims and to the ruler of Islamic Egypt. Lull wrote two books on Cyprus, including his Rhetorica nova (1301; Ramón Llull’s New Rhetoric, 1994). Illness and an attempt by two assistants to poison him frustrated his efforts on the island. He visited Cilician Armenia, writing a book there on belief in God (1302). Perhaps after a trip to Jerusalem, he wrote Mil proverbis (1302; thousand proverbs) at sea on his way back to Italy. From 1303 to 1305, he worked alternately in Genoa and Montpellier, producing at Montpellier fifteen of the nineteen books written by him during this period.

At the court of James II of Aragon at Barcelona in 1305, Lull composed Liber de Trinitate et Incarnatione and Liber praedicationis contra judeos. In 1306, he worked at the University of Paris as well as at the court of Pope Clement V at Lyon. Back on Majorca, he took ship for Islamic Bougie, where he preached in the center of town and barely escaped being stoned. Jailed for six months and scheduled for execution, he wrote in Arabic a Christian-Muslim dialogue. Later, expelled, shipwrecked, and nearly drowned off Pisa, he took advantage of his recuperation in that city to finish his greatest work, Ars generalis ultima (1305-1308; last general art). At Pisa, he composed a total of eight books, including one on memory, and tried to persuade the city council to found a crusading military order. He visited Genoa and Pope Clement V at Avignon, before settling down at Montpellier to write eighteen books during 1308-1309. While lecturing at the University of Paris in 1310-1311, he produced thirty-five books, many against the work of the philosopher Averroës .

When the ecumenical council met at Vienne in France in 1311-1312, Lull appeared before it to argue successfully for a statute mandating chairs of Asian languages at the major universities. He also urged consolidation of the military orders for more effective crusading. The suppression of the Knights Templar in 1312 was the result. Back at Montpellier briefly in May, 1312, to write a book on angels, he continued on to Majorca, writing there seventeen books and making his will. He spent the year from spring, 1313, to spring, 1314, at the Messina court of his supporter Frederick III of Sicily, where thirty-seven books were published. He was in Tunis again in 1314-1315 and produced twenty-six more works, mostly small in size. Lull died before March, 1316, at Tunis, Majorca, or aboard ship on the way to Tunis.

Significance

Lull was the first European to write on philosophy in the vernacular. Since his goal was to unify the three faiths of Abraham (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), revelation and mysticism were prime components of his philosophy as well as the reason for his writing and debating in Arabic. He joined elements of Islamic and Jewish learning to Christian thought, especially to the tradition of Augustinian Neoplatonism. Fundamentally syncretistic rather than innovative, his conceptual and stylistic patterns are puzzlingly complex. Lull is also the first great name in Catalan prose, and his Blanquerna is the first European novel on a contemporary theme. Audacious and immensely vigorous, he traveled tirelessly around the western Mediterranean as a propagandist and reformer. His writings are astonishing for their variety and number. The ten large volumes of the modern Mainz edition hold only 50 of his 280 works. Lull is famous as a mystic and a poet; he even has reputations as an occultist and a martyr. Attempting to organize all knowledge, his art mechanizes logic and thought processes into what Anthony Bonner calls “an extraordinary network of systems” in symbolic computation, foreshadowing computer science.

For centuries after his death, theologians and philosophers were divided over his writings. In 1376, the inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich condemned one hundred Lullian “errors,” and Pope Gregory XI condemned twenty of Lull’s books; Pope Martin V reversed this condemnation in 1416. Jean de Gerson battled Lull’s great influence at Paris and around 1400 had his art banned from the Sorbonne. Nevertheless, Lullism continued to excite academics and mystics. Lull enjoyed a transcendental influence in the Renaissance, especially on Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Bessarion, Giordano Bruno, Nicholas of Cusa, Lefèvre d’Étaples, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A chair was founded in Lull’s name at the Renaissance university of Alcalá in 1508, and Philip II of Spain projected a Lullian academy in 1582. Lull’s The Book of the Order of Chivalry was one of the first books published by William Caxton when printing came to England. Sir Francis Bacon, René Descartes, François Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift mocked Lull, but Gottfried Leibniz was deeply influenced by him. Though never canonized, the layman Lull was allowed a limited cultus (cult) within the Franciscan order, with his feast day on July 3 confirmed in 1858 by Pope Pius IX.

Bibliography

Bonner, Anthony, ed. and trans. Selected Works of Ramón Llull, 1232-1316. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. The first one hundred pages of introduction provide an excellent short biography, including Lull’s own semiautobiography. Introductions, before each of the seven works (including two on Lull’s art), add considerable information. Includes a revised catalog of Lull’s works, by date and place, as well as a bibliography and an index.

Evans, G. R. Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers. New York: Routledge, 2002. Succinct biographies of important thinkers mainly theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages, including Lull. Also provides a bibliography and an index.

Hillgarth, Jocelyn N. Ramón Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1971. Though concerned with Paris as the most important center of Lullism after Lull’s death, the author also offers an excellent short biography of Lull in English. Includes a detailed chronology, bibliography, index, and twelve illustrations of Lull’s life.

Hillgarth, Jocelyn N. The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1216. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976-1978. Besides giving full background on Lull’s times, this text provides a long chapter comparing Lull with contemporary Spanish literary figures such as King Alfonso X.

Johnston, Mark D. The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramón Llull: Lay Learning and Piety in the Christian West Around 1300. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Discusses Lull’s “art of arts,” beauty in language, order, and virtue and propriety in speaking. Includes an extensive bibliography and an index.

Johnston, Mark D. The Spiritual Logic of Ramón Llull. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1987. A philosophical survey of Lull’s logic in its fundamentals and development. Argues that Lull adapted his Scholastic predecessors so that his art was applied in a unique way to logic and so that it could be a program both of thought and of argumentation. Concludes that Lull was not a philosophical genius, as most scholars think, but one of the greatest moral teachers. Includes a brief biography.

Llull, Ramón. Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramón Llull Reader. Edited and translated by Anthony Bonner. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. An abridged version of Bonner’s 1985 edition of Selected Works of Ramón Llull. Includes maps and other illustrations, a bibliography, and an index.

Menocal, Maria Rosa, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, eds. The Literature of Al-Andalus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Part of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature series, provides a biographical look at Lull’s work in the context of Muslim Spain.

Peers, Edgar Allison. Ramón Lull: A Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1929. A still-useful full-length biography in traditional biographical format.

Vega, Amador. Ramón Llull and the Secret of Life. Translated by James W. Heisig. New York: Crossroad, 2003. A look at Lull’s religious and spiritual philosophy. Discusses language and alchemy, contemplation, formation, conversion, wonder, and more. Includes a bibliography and an index.