Ramon Llull, known in Latin as Raymundus Lullus, is a figure who escapes classification. He was a courtier, poet, missionary, philosopher, novelist and mystic; he wrote in Catalan, Latin and Arabic; he invented a method of thought based on figures and rotating wheels that fascinated Giordano Bruno and Leibniz. Yet Llull's name is also attached to a long series of alchemical treatises he never wrote. Distinguishing the historical Llull from his legend is the first step to understanding him.
From court to conversion
Llull was born in Palma de Mallorca around 1232, a few years after the conquest of the island by James I of Aragon. He grew up in court circles, married and had children, and was seneschal to the future King James II of Majorca. He wrote love poems in the troubadour style.
According to the Vita coaetanea, the autobiography he dictated in old age, at around thirty he saw a vision of Christ crucified five times while composing verses for a lady. From then on he resolved to devote his life to three aims: converting Muslims, writing the best book in the world against the errors of unbelievers, and founding schools where missionaries could learn languages.
Arabic and the illumination on Mount Randa
To carry out his programme, Llull studied Arabic and philosophy for about nine years, with the help of a Muslim slave. He then withdrew to Mount Randa, on Majorca, where, by his own account, he received the illumination that showed him the form of his Art.
In 1276, with the support of the King of Majorca, he founded a college at Miramar where thirteen Franciscan friars were to study Arabic: the first of many attempts to give body to his missionary project.
How the Ars magna works
Llull's idea is as simple as it is bold: if Jews, Christians and Muslims agree on certain attributes of God, it should be possible to build a method that, by combining those attributes, reaches truths demonstrable and acceptable to all, without appealing to the authority of their respective Scriptures.
The Art rests on a few elements:
- the divine dignities: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory, indicated by letters of the alphabet (from B to K);
- the figures: circles, triangles and tables relating the dignities to one another and to principles such as difference, concordance, contrariety, beginning, middle and end;
- the wheels: concentric rotating discs that make it possible to obtain systematically every possible combination of letters;
- the questions: whether, what, from what, why, how much, of what kind, when, where, how, and with what.
By combining letters and questions, reasoning proceeds almost mechanically. It is no accident that many historians of logic see in Llull a distant forerunner of symbolic calculation. The main versions are the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem, the first, and the Ars generalis ultima with its summary, the Ars brevis (1308).
Novelist and missionary
Llull also wrote narrative works of great importance for Catalan literature:
- the Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, a dialogue in which a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim set out their faith to a pagan, in a tone of respect rare for the period;
- Blanquerna, a novel about the life of a man who becomes pope and then a hermit, which contains the Book of the Lover and the Beloved, a collection of short mystical verses;
- the Book of Wonders, also known as Fèlix, a narrative encyclopaedia in the form of a journey.
He travelled to Paris, Montpellier, Genoa, Rome and North Africa, where he preached several times and was imprisoned and expelled. At the Council of Vienne (1311-1312) he argued for chairs of oriental languages in the universities. He died around 1316; a tradition, not confirmed, holds that he was stoned at Bougie, in Algeria.
The false alchemist Llull
After his death numerous alchemical treatises began to circulate under his name, the most famous being the Testamentum, composed in the fourteenth century. Scholars agree in regarding them as spurious: in his certainly authentic works Llull shows himself sceptical of the transmutation of metals. The so-called pseudo-Llull was nonetheless one of the most widely read alchemical corpora in Europe, and helped make Llull a Hermetic authority.
The legacy
The Lullian Art enjoyed a long fortune: it was studied by Nicholas of Cusa, by Giordano Bruno, who combined it with the art of memory, by Athanasius Kircher and by the young Leibniz, who acknowledged his debt in the Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (1666).
In short
- Ramon Llull (c. 1232-1316) was a Majorcan layman who devoted his life to dialogue and mission.
- His Ars magna combines divine attributes and questions through figures and wheels to reach shareable truths.
- He wrote novels and dialogues fundamental to Catalan literature.
- The alchemical treatises in his name are spurious, the work of the so-called pseudo-Llull.
