CHAPTER LXIX
RAYMOND LULL
Life and works—Orthodoxy questioned—His natural science not unusual—His Art Universal—Circular figures employed in theology—Figure of a tree used in medicine—Lull and alchemy—His attitude to astrology—To the condemnation of 1277 at Paris—His book on medicine and astrology—An uncomplimentary allusion to thirteenth century medicine—Necromancy and divine names.
Life and works.
Ramon Lull or Raimond Lulle or Raymund Lull or Raymond Lully, to mention some of the forms of his name which have prevailed in different languages and times, appears to have been one of the most energetic and versatile characters of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century.[2730] Born in 1235 or 1236 or possibly a year or two earlier at Palma in the island of Majorca, he seems to have spent his youth as a pleasure-loving courtier, if not libertine, and to have initiated by the composition of love verses the long series of poems and treatises in Catalan which make him a prominent figure in the history of medieval Spanish literature.[2731] At about the age of thirty he underwent a conversion not unlike that of Saint Francis and thenceforth devoted himself to learning and religion. This combination was characteristic of him and he has been charged with holding that all the mysteries of the Faith could be proved and comprehended by reason and with “removing all distinction between natural and supernatural truth.”[2732] His chief contribution to learning was the method of his Art, of which more presently. But he was a voluminous writer upon a great variety of themes, some of which border more closely on the field of our investigation. Some of these works at first sight may seem to have little connection with what appears to have been Lull’s main object in life, namely, the conversion of the Mohammedan world and the rescue of the holy sepulcher.[2733] But his crusading and missionary methods were somewhat peculiar, involving not only a long preparatory educational period, especially in the study of oriental languages, but also the refutation of Arabian philosophy, particularly that of Averroes, and toward that goal the conciliation of philosophy and theology in the Christian world. In 1276 he persuaded the king of Aragon to establish a school for the study of Arabic in Majorca, and in 1311 at the Council of Vienne he persuaded the pope to authorize chairs in Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic at Rome, Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. He failed, however, in his effort at this council to obtain a prohibition of Averroistic teaching in Christian universities. Lull himself, besides teaching in his own school in Majorca, lectured on his Art at Paris, Montpellier and elsewhere. But he also was an active field missionary, converting Saracens not only in the Balearic Isles but also in Cyprus and Armenia, while he went three times to North Africa. On the first occasion he was imprisoned and then banished, on the last he was stoned to death. This martyrdom, added to his fame as a poet and scholar, has made him the national saint of the Balearic Isles, but he actually has only been beatified and not canonized. He appears to have been a member of the third order of St. Francis. His will, drawn up in 1313 and brought again to light in 1896, shows that he had children.[2734] His death occurred on the 29th of June, 1315.
Orthodoxy questioned.
The chief reason why Lull has never been canonized is the doubt that has prevailed as to his complete orthodoxy, a matter more than once questioned. Eymeric (1320-1399) when Inquisitor-General of Aragon attacked the doctrines of Lull, listing five hundred passages in his works as heretical and claiming that Gregory XI had condemned two hundred in a bull of 1376,—which has not been found. It is thought that the bull meant is one against a converted Jew, Raymond of Tárrega who had turned renegade and written works on magic. At any rate in 1386 another inquisitor at Barcelona cleared the views of Lull from suspicion. The University of Majorca established by King Ferdinand the Catholic became a great center of Lullism. Then in the middle of the sixteenth century Lull’s works were placed on the Index Expurgatorius, but were removed before the close of the century. It may seem strange that the relations between Lullism and the Inquisition and Index were not more cordial, since they are often both represented as pursuing the same quarry, Averroism, of which we are told, “Lullism always provided its strongest foes.”[2735] But we rather suspect that “Averroism” was in the nature of an air-drawn phantom whose assailants were apt to injure one another.
His natural science not unusual.
Probst regards Lull as in advance of his age in his use of observation and experimental science and his knowledge that the world was round and acquaintance with the mariner’s compass.[2736] This knowledge, however, he really shared with his times and we can scarcely regard him as a precursor of Columbus nor even quite as an equal of Roger Bacon in these respects, exaggerated as we believe the estimates to be which have often been made of Roger’s importance. But Probst shows a similar tendency to exaggerate the scientific importance of Lull at the expense of his period.
His Art Universal.
Lull’s chief original contribution to medieval learning bore scant relation indeed to the methods of observation and experiment. His famous Art came to him as a sudden inspiration in the midst of long study and reflection and was, he and his followers believed, received by direct divine illumination. Hence his title, “the illuminated Doctor.” In reality the method of his Art leads us to infer that it occurred to him by some process of sub-conscious association with the employment of the planisphere in astronomy or the use of a revolving wheel and tables of combinations of letters of the alphabet such as we have noted in the geomancies and modes of divination ascribed to Socrates, Pythagoras, and other philosophers. Lull’s idea seems to have been the invention of a logical machine which would constitute the same sort of labor-saving device in a scholastic disputation or medieval university as an adding machine in a modern bank or business office. By properly arranging categories and concepts, subjects and predicates in the first place, one could get the correct answer to such propositions as might be put. Another advantage of this method would be that a sceptical Arab, who might refuse to listen to or view with suspicion the verbal arguments of a missionary, would be irresistibly convinced of the truth of the doctrines of Christianity by this machine, or at least mechanical method, which would impress him as impartial and reliable Lull’s diagrams and mechanical devices included a tree, intersecting triangles, and concentric circles divided into compartments, of which one rotated something like the planet; in the signs while the other remained stationary like the sphere of the fixed stars.
Circular figures employed in theology.
In questions of theology a circle was employed whose center stood for God while its circumference divided into sixteen “chambers” representing kindness, grandeur, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth, glory, perfection, justice, beneficence, pity, humility, dominion, and patience. One hundred and twenty more “chambers” were formed by combining pairs of the foregoing. Another circle shows the rational soul in the center represented by four squares and has its circumference divided into sixteen compartments representing appropriate qualities. A third circle, devoted to principles and meanings, enclosed five triangles in a circumference of fifteen compartments; while a fourth circle divided fourteen compartments of its circumference between the seven virtues and seven vices respectively rendered in blue and red. Other “figures” dealt with predestination, fate, and free-will, truth, and falsity. The following is a specific instance of the way in which these were combined. When the rational soul is troubled and uncertain in the circle of predestination, because the chambers of ignorance and merit, science and fault, mingle together, it forms a third figure representing doubt.
Figure of a tree used in medicine.
In medicine the figure of a tree was employed. At its roots a wheel divided into quarters signifying bile, blood, phlegm, and atrabile. The tree had two trunks, on one of which bloomed the principles of ancient medicine. Its first branch, the natural, bore seven flowers: the elements, complexions, humors, members, faculties, operations, and spirits; and four figures dependent on these, namely, ages, colors, shapes, and sexes. The second non-natural branch produced six flowers: air, exercise, food and drink, sleep and activity, emptiness and surfeit, and the accidents of the mind. The third bough, or contrary to nature, had three flowers: disease and its causes and results. The other main trunk had two boughs. One divided into hot and cold, moist and dry, and the four degrees of each. The other bore three triangles and a square. The red triangle represented the source, the middle, and the end; the green triangle stood for difference, agreement, and contrariety; the yellow triangle comprised majority, minority, and equality.[2737] The square divides into four colors: red for being; black for privation; blue for perfection; green for imperfection.[2738] Such are some of the diagrams of the Lullian art, intended presumably to be worked by cranks or levers. There is really nothing magical about them; they are purely mechanical and representative and illustrative. But in their make-up they are certainly suggestive of a Gnostic or Ophite diagram or of a geomantic wheel, and possibly may sometimes have been suspected of being magical by outsiders.
Lull and alchemy.
The use of the word “Art” for this logical machinery and graphic method of Raymond Lull perhaps also led to the notion that he was an alchemist and exponent of the Hermetic art. Various works of alchemy were ascribed to him but are regarded as spurious; perhaps some of them are by the Jew, Raymond of Tárrega, already mentioned. No work of alchemy is mentioned in the lists of his writings drawn up in 1311 and 1314,[2739] and the sixth part, devoted to metals, of his Libre de les Maravels is unfavorable to alchemy.[2740] In his Latin Questions Soluble by the Demonstrative or Inventive Art he again adduced reasons against transmutation.[2741] De Luanco has collected other passages from Raymond’s undisputed works unfavorable to alchemy and the alchemists.[2742] We have seen, however, that a writer may criticize most or all other alchemists sharply and question various doctrines and methods of alchemy and yet have his own way of getting around the difficulties whether theoretical, such as the permanence of species, or practical. There is therefore something to be said for the position of Barber who, while recognizing that the treatises current under Raymond’s name are spurious, adds, “We can well believe that he wrote as well as thought on alchemy.”[2743] And it was Berthelot’s opinion that while the works ascribed to Raymond are spurious, “nevertheless it is incontestable that those writings were composed by persons who believed themselves his disciples.”[2744] These spurious works were in existence at an early date and Raymond is cited as an alchemist from the fourteenth century on.
His attitude to astrology.
If Lull was an opponent of the art of transmuting metals rather than an adept in alchemy, he was at least a believer in astrology as several of his works show. It is true, and this is the more important to note as suggesting how Lull’s utterances on the subject of alchemy may also have been misunderstood, that the Histoire Littéraire de la France, in describing Raymond’s Tractatus novus de astronomia, written in 1297, gives the impression that it is directed against astrology, stating that Lull says that he has written it “to dissuade princes and magnates from trusting in the divinations of astrologers,” and adding, “Less worthy of praise is the second part of the work where the author assumes to apply to astronomy the principles of his art universal.”[2745] An examination of the treatise itself in manuscript[2746] shows that it is only of certain astrologers and diviners who deceive princes by false judgments from the stars that Raymond would have royalty beware. He writes his book not because “astronomy” (i.e. astrology) is false but because it is so difficult that often judgments made by the art turn out false, and because he wishes to investigate and discover new methods by which men can have greater knowledge of “astronomy” and its judgments. When he comes to speak of the properties of each planet, he remarks that “astronomers” attribute many properties to Saturn but do not prove them. He intends to employ his Art in investigating Saturn’s properties, and comes to the conclusion that men born under that planet are, among other traits, ponderously grave, suspicious by nature, disposed to toil and to build great edifices, and ambitious to hold office.[2747] Later on we find him spending many pages in listing different combinations of the planets in the signs as fortunate or unfortunate.[2748] All this, of course, is judicial astrology rather than astronomy. He “proves” also that the sky is animated by a moving and circular soul or spirit, and he states that “astronomers” recognize in their judgments that this soul of the sky is the cause of things caused in our inferior world.[2749] After a while, however, he does reprove “the philosophers who invented the science of astronomy” for “certain points in this science in which they have erred,” namely, in making it necessary and inevitable. Lull holds that God can alter nature as the smith alters the direction of his falling hammer, and that the human mind has free will to resist the influence of the stars.[2750] But this criticism of astrology is neither novel nor entirely justified. Lull never disputes but always accepts the theory that the heavenly bodies shed their influence and virtue upon inferiors. He does, however, speak slightingly of the art of geomancy and its practitioners.[2751]
To the condemnation of 1277 at Paris.
In the same year 1297 in which Raymond wrote the treatise just summarized he also published an imaginary dialogue dealing with the 219 opinions which had been condemned at Paris in 1277.[2752] In this dialogue “Socrates” undertakes the defense of philosophy while Raymond supports theology and the articles of condemnation. We have seen that a number of the opinions condemned were astrological in character. Raymond does not join in active condemnation of all of these, passing over a number in silence and perhaps intentionally evading them. On article 30, “that superior intelligences create rational souls without the motion of the sky; but that inferior intelligences create the vegetative and sensitive souls by means of the motion of the sky,” Raymond’s comment is that creation is the proper function of God. To Socrates’ repetition of the sixty-first article, “that God can do contrary things, that is, by means of a celestial body which is diverse in its whereabouts,” Raymond replies that God can act directly and produce contraries without the intervention of any heavenly body, if He wishes to, as He did in creating the four elements with their contrary qualities of hot and cold, dry and moist. Raymond adds, however, that God would not produce sins, since He is perfect in goodness. In reply to articles 92 and 102, that the heavenly bodies are moved by a soul and by appetitive virtue just like an animal, and that the soul of the sky is intelligence, Raymond answers that in his opinion it is correct to say that the sky has a motive soul but not a vegetative or sensitive or imaginative or rational soul. “If, however, I am not speaking the truth in this, I am prepared to receive correction; but I believe that I am speaking truly.” Raymond also upholds human free will as in the preceding treatise. The close of the present dialogue is, at least on the surface, an edifying instance of submission to ecclesiastical authority. Socrates asks Raymond if the theologians believe as he has been saying. Raymond replies that he believes so, since he has proved his own statements and believes them to be true, and he knows that the venerable lords and doctors of theology who are pillars of the Christian Faith believe only what is true. If, however, he has erred, it is unwittingly and unintentionally, and he humbly supplicates those most powerful masters to correct the words of their weak servant. Socrates chimes in that he has merely been repeating for his part what the ancient philosophers said, but that if any of it is contrary to Christianity, he does not want to believe it. He therefore proposes that they go to Paris and submit the book to the theologians there for their approval or correction, as his desire is to see “great concord between my lords the masters in theology and in philosophy.” It seems evident that behind his humble tone Lull is trying to soften down the condemnation of 1277 and substitute a somewhat more conciliatory attitude.
The book of Raymond on medicine and astronomy.
Lull’s attitude to astrology is further illustrated by a treatise in which he applies the method of his Art universal to the subject of astrological medicine.[2753] “Since the science of medicine is very difficult on account of its principles being so secret,” Raymond proposes to investigate them by means of his Art. His treatise has three divisions: the first, concerning the inferior world of the elements and the body of the human patient; the second, concerning the regions of the celestial bodies; and the third, consisting of questions. Raymond denotes the four elements by the letters from a to d, and the combinations of heat or cold with humidity and drought by the letters from e to h. He then introduces a figure with two circles representing the eighth sphere and the zodiac, since the motion of the planets controls that of the human body. These two circles are each divided into eight “houses,” which correspond to sixteen pairs of letters consisting of each of the four elements joined with each of the four letters denoting pairs of qualities, namely, ae, af, ag, ah, be, bf, bg, bh, ce, cf, cg, ch, de, df, dg, and dh. Raymond then discusses such topics as fevers, the pulse, evacuation, diet, bleeding, bathing, the color of the urine, digestion and indigestion, pains, appetite, and the method of grading medicines. The relation of his letters and “houses” to these matters may be seen from his statement that the house of ae causes one kind of appetite, that of be another, and so on. Coming to the second section of his treatise, Lull treats of the planets and signs and relates the conjunctions of the various planets with one another to his eight letters and their combinations. In the third part he puts illustrative problems and solves them by reference to his preceding text.
An uncomplimentary allusion to thirteenth century medicine.
We might think Lull an opponent of medicine, if we attended only to a passage in his Contemplation of God.[2754] Here he complains that doctors of the body are more sought after, better paid, more scrupulously obeyed than are physicians of the soul. They go well clad on good steeds, and amass wealth by working all sorts of impositions upon their patients, boasting of their knowledge of diseases of which they are really ignorant, prolonging the period of illness in order to increase their pay, and prescribing syrups and the like in large quantities because they share in the profits of the apothecaries. They try out potions on their patients which they would never take themselves, and there is no other art in the world so risky and over which there is so much disagreement. These remarks of Raymond are, however, the sort of satirical observations on medical practice that might be made at almost any period, so that it is difficult to tell if they are especially applicable to the thirteenth century.
Necromancy and divine names.
In closing we may note two brief indications of Lull’s belief in two other occult subjects, namely, necromancy and the power of divine names. Of necromancy he of course did not approve but in the treatise just cited he adduces the art of necromancy as evidence for the existence of God, since it requires the services of demons and they are no other beings than fallen angels who owe their existence to God.[2755] This somewhat tortuous theistic argument we have already heard advanced by Justin Martyr. In his treatise in Catalan on The Hundred Names of God Raymond asks, “Since God has put virtues in words, plants, and stones, how will He not have put far greater virtue into His names?”[2756]
[2730] A number of works on Lull have appeared recently: M. André, Le bienheureux Raymond Lulle, 3rd edition, Paris, 1900; S. M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, First Missionary to the Moslems, New York, 1902; W. T. A. Barber, Raymond Lull, the illuminated doctor: a study in medieval missions, London, 1903; J. H. Probst, Caractère et origines des idées du bienheureux Raymond Lulle, Toulouse, 1912. By Barber also the article “Lullists” in ERE. The fullest discussion of Raymond’s writings seems to remain, however, that in HL 29: 1-386, which includes works still in MSS. The most accessible edition of the works in print is perhaps that of Salzinger, Mainz, 1721-1742, in ten folio volumes. The Revista Lulliana was started at Barcelona in 1901.
[2731] A. Helfferich, Raymond Lull und die Anfänge der catalonischen Literatur, Berlin, 1858.
[2732] William Turner, in CE.
[2733] A. Gottron, Ramon Lulls Kreuzzugsideen, Berlin, 1912.
[2734] Don Francisco de Bofarull y Sans, El Testamento de Ramón Lull y la Escuela Luliana en Barcelona, Madrid, 1896, 96 pp. Extract from vol. 5 of Memorias de la Real Acad. de Buenas Letras de Barcelona. L. Delisle, Testaments d’Arnaud de Villeneuve et de Raimond Lulle, 20 juillet 1305 et 26 avril 1313; Extrait du Journal des Savants, June, 1896.
[2735] Barber in ERE.
[2736] Probst (1912) chapter 8, “Lulle Savant,” especially pp. 156-7, 164-5, 171. The chapter appears to be written almost entirely from secondary sources and shows an insufficient knowledge of the middle ages in general.
[2737] I have seen in Digby 85, fols. 152r-86v, Speculum medicine (of Lull) which is mainly devoted to a discussion of these three triangles.
[2738] For this and the preceding paragraph on the circles employed in theology I have followed the descriptions in HL 29: 75 ff. and 87 ff.
[2739] HL 29: 271.
[2740] HL 29: 354. The work is in Catalan; the other nine parts treat of God, angels, elements, sky, plants, beasts, men, Paradise, hell.
[2741] HL 29: 139. Quaestiones per artem demonstrativam seu inventivam solubiles.
[2742] J. R. de Luanco, Ramon Lull considerado como alquimista, Barcelona, 1870.
[2743] “Lullists” in ERE.
[2744] Berthelot, La chimie au moyen âge, vol. I.
[2745] HL 29: 309.
[2746] I have used CLM 10544, fols. 287r-368r, to which the following citations apply, and CLM 10597, which includes only the portion concerning the twelve signs and seven planets.
[2747] Fol. 291v-292r.
[2748] Fol. 342v et seq.
[2749] Fol. 336r.
[2750] Fols. 357-9.
[2751] Fol. 360r.
[2752] P. O. Reicher, Raymundus Lullus und seine Stellung zur Arabischen Philosophie, mit einem Anhang enthaltend die zum ersten Male veröffentlichte “Declaratio Raymundi per modum dialogi edita” (contra aliquorum philosophorum et eorum sequacium opiniones erroneas et damnatas a venerabili Patre Domino Episcopo Parisiensi) pp. 95-221, in Beiträge, VII, 4 and 5 (1909).
[2753] Digby 85, early 15th century, fols. 131-49r, “Liber Raymundi de medicina et astronomia” (In Antonius, Bibl. Hisp. Vet. II, 129, “Liber de regionibus infirmitatis et sanitatis”). According to Macray the opening words are “Quoniam scientia medicine est multum difficilis,” but the first word appears as “Quum” in my notes on the MS. “Explicit Medicina Raymundi in Monte Pessulano anno Christi 1403,” on which Macray comments, “(sic; rectius 1303)” but perhaps 1403 is the date of this copy. This MS contains other works by Lull on his Art and on medicine.
[2754] HL 29: 230. Liber contemplationis in Deum.
[2755] HL 29: 233.
[2756] HL 29: 265-6; Els cent Noms de Deu.