Ramon Lull

Ramon Llull

Ramon Llull,  T.O.S.F. ( c. 1232 – c. 1315; Anglicised Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull; in Latin Raimundus or Raymundus Lullus or Lullius) was a mathematician, polymath, philosopher, logician, Franciscan tertiary and writer from the Kingdom of Majorca.

Third Order of Saint Francis (TOSF)

Franciscan Third Order Confraternity Penitents, married, single laity

 Lull was a mathematician, polymath, philosopher, logician, Franciscan tertiary and writer from the Kingdom of Majorca.

Since Llull's first writings, there has been confusion in the church regarding whether he was a saint or a heretic. Llull has had a canonization process open in the Vatican since the times of Philip II. King Philip was one of the promoters of this process. The Spanish king was extremely fond of his work and used parts of it in the creation of the monasterio del Escorial.

Philip II portrait by Titian, 1550 "Felipe el Prudente" ("Philip the Prudent") 

...his empire included territories on every continent then known to Europeans, including his namesake the Philippines. During his reign, the Spanish kingdoms reached the height of its influence and power. This is sometimes called the Spanish Golden Age.

House of Habsburg

Flag of the Catholic League (France), ca. 1590

Almohad Caliphate, Moroccan rulers of Majorca before the House of Aragon.

Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial 

(On 2 November 1984, UNESCO declared The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo of El Escorial a World Heritage Site)

 Llull was considered a heretic by most, and the debate regarding both King Philip II and him continued in Rome long afterwards. Llull's works were prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition under the same king Philip, for he considered that "non-initiates could not understand them". Copies of the works were safely stored in the Library of El Escorial and were consulted by Spanish Scholars, mostly sympathetic to Llull's views.

Within the Franciscan Order Llull is honoured as a martyr. He was beatified in 1847 by Pope Pius IX. His feast day was assigned to 30 June and is celebrated by the Third Order of St. Francis.

King James II of Majorca

Life of Raymond Lull; 14th-century manuscript

In 1263 Llull experienced a religious epiphany in the form of a series of visions. He narrates the event in his autobiography Vita coaetanea ("Daily Life"):

Ramon, while still a young man and Seneschal to the King of Majorca, was very given to composing worthless songs and poems and to doing other licentious things. One night he was sitting beside his bed, about to compose and write in his vulgar tongue a song to a lady whom he loved with a foolish love; and as he began to write this song, he looked to his right and saw our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, as if suspended in mid-air.

The vision came to Llull five times in all, leading him to leave his family, position, and belongings in order to pursue a life in the service of God. Specifically, he realized three intentions: to die in the service of God while converting Muslims to Christianity, to see to the founding of religious institutions that would teach foreign languages, and to write a book on how to overcome someone's objections to being converted.
In 1276 a language school for Franciscan missionaries was founded at Miramar, funded by the King of Majorca. He finally achieved his goal of linguistic education at major universities in 1311 when the Council of Vienne ordered the creation of chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean (Aramaic) at the universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris, and Salamanca as well as at the Papal Court.

John Duns Scotus

Llull is the first author to use the expression "Immaculate Conception" to designate the Virgin's exemption from original sin.He appears to have been the first to teach this doctrine publicly at the University of Paris.

 Llull's position on this subject was of great importance because it paved the way for the doctrine of Duns Scotus, whom he met in 1297, after which he was given the nickname Doctor Illuminatus.

Page of the Ars Magna by Ramon Llull. Printing in 1517

Ars magna ("The Ultimate General Art" or "The Great Art", first published in 1305).

The Art was intended as a debating tool for winning Muslims to the Christian faith through logic and reason.

The Art operated by combining religious and philosophical attributes selected from a number of lists. It is believed that Llull's inspiration for the Ars magnacame from observing Arab astrologers use a device called a zairja.

Zairja...was a device used by medieval Arab astrologers to generate ideas by mechanical means.

 "a branch of the science of letter magic, practiced among the authorities on letter magic, is the technique of finding out answers from questions by means of connections existing between the letters of the expressions used in the question. They imagine that these connections can form the basis for knowing the future happenings they want to know."

La Maquina de la Verdad, Ars Magna, Ramon Llull

Image-- a paper computer system of the 13th century, Códex written by Ramon Llull

Arbor-scientiae

Tree of Science  is one of the most extensive and characteristic works of Ramon Llull, written in Rome between 1295 and 1296. It is a version in encyclopaedia format of General Art or Ars magna aimed to non university public... the organic comparison, in which each science is represented by a tree with roots, trunk, branches, leaves and fruits. The roots represent the basic principles of each science; the trunk is the structure; the branches, the genres; the leaves, the species; and the fruits, the individual, his/her acts and his/her finalities. This vegetal allegory shows the influence of Aristotle.

This figure, a "Lullian Circle," the form of a paper machine operated by rotating concentrically arranged circles to combine his symbolic alphabet, which was repeated on each level. These combinations were said to show all possible truth about the subject of inquiry. Llull based this notion on the idea that there were a limited number of basic, undeniable truths in all fields of knowledge, and that everything about these fields of knowledge could be understood by studying combinations of these elemental truths.