LEGEND AND HISTORY OF RAYMUND LULLY
We have explained that the Church proscribed initiation because
it was indignant at the profanations of the Gnosis. When Mohammed
armed eastern fanaticism against faith he opposed savage and warlike
credulity to the piety which is ignorant but which prays. His
successors set foot in Europe and threatened to overrun it speedily.
The Christians said: Providence is chastising us; and the Moslems
answered: Fatality is on our side.
The Jewish Kabalists, who were in dread of being burnt as sorcerers in
countries called catholic, sought an asylum among the Arabs, for these
in their eyes were heretics but not idolaters. They admitted some of
them to a knowledge of their mysteries, and Islam, which had already
conquered by force, was before long in a position to hope that it might
prevail also by science over those whom educated Araby termed in its
disdain the barbarians of the West. To onslaughts of physical force
the genius of France opposed the strokes of its own terrific hammer.
Before the flowing tide of Mohammedan armies a mail-clad finger had
traced a clear line and a mighty voice of victory cried to the flood:
Thou shalt go no further. The genius of science raised up Raymund
Lully, and he reclaimed the heritage of Solomon for that Saviour Who
was the Son of David; it was he who for the first time called the
children of blind faith to the splendours of universal knowledge. The
pseudo-scholars, and the people who are wise in their own conceit,
continue to speak with scorn of this truly great man; but the popular
instinct has avenged him. Romance and legend have taken up his story,
with the result that he is pictured as one impassioned like Abelard,
initiated like Faust, an alchemist even as Hermes, a man of penitence
and learning like St. Jerome, a rover after the manner of the Wandering
Jew, a martyr in fine like St. Stephen, and one who was glorious in
death almost as the Saviour of the world.
Let us make our beginning with the romance: it is one of the most
touching and beautiful that have come within our knowledge.
On a certain Sunday, in the year 1250, a beautiful and accomplished
lady, named Ambrosia di Castello, originally of Genoa, went, as she was
accustomed, to hear mass in the church of Palma, a town in the island
of Majorca. A mounted cavalier of distinguished appearance and richly
dressed, who was passing at the time in the street, noticed the lady
and pulled up as one thunderstruck. She entered the church, quickly
disappearing in the shadow of the great porch. The cavalier, quite
unconscious of what he did, spurred his horse and rode after her into
the midst of the affrighted worshippers. Great was the astonishment
and scandal. The cavalier was well known; he was the Seigneur Raymund
Lully, Seneschal of the Isles and Mayor of the Palace. He had a wife
and three children, while Ambrosia di Castello was also married and
enjoyed, moreover, an irreproachable reputation. Raymund Lully passed
therefore for a great libertine. His equestrian entrance into the
church of Palma was noised over the whole town, and Ambrosia, in the
greatest confusion, sought the advice of her husband. He was apparently
a man of sense, and he did not consider his wife insulted because
her beauty had turned the head of a young and brilliant nobleman. He
proposed that Ambrosia should cure her admirer by a folly as grotesque
as his own. Meanwhile, Raymund Lully had written already to the lady,
to excuse, or rather to accuse himself still further. What had prompted
him, he said, was “strange, supernatural, irresistible.” He respected
her honour and the affections which, he knew, belonged to another;
but he had been overwhelmed. He felt that his imprudence required
for its expiation high self-devotion, great sacrifices, miracles
to be accomplished, the penitence of a Stylite and the feats of a
knight-errant.
Ambrosia answered: “To respond adequately to a love which you term
supernatural would require an immortal existence. If this love be
sacrificed heroically to our respective duties during the lives of
those who are dear to each of us, it will, beyond all doubt, create
for itself an eternity at that moment when conscience and the world
will permit us to love one another. It is said that there is an elixir
of life; seek to discover it, and when you are certain that you have
succeeded, come and see me. Till then, live for your wife and your
children, as I also will live for the husband whom I love; and if you
meet me in the street make no sign of recognition.”
It was evidently a gracious _congé_, which put off her lover till
Doomsday; but he refused to understand it as such, and from that day
forth the brilliant noble disappeared to make room for the grave and
thoughtful alchemist. Don Juan had become Faust. Many years passed
away; the wife of Raymund Lully died; Ambrosia di Castello in her turn
became a widow; but the alchemist appeared to have forgotten her and to
be absorbed only in his sublime work.
At length, one day, the widow being alone, Raymund Lully was announced,
and there entered the apartment a bald and emaciated old man, who held
in his hand a phial filled with a bright and ruddy elixir. He advanced
with unsteady step, seeking her with his eyes. The object which they
sought was before them but he did not recognise her, who in his
imagination had remained always young and beautiful.
“It is I,” she said at length. “What would you with me?”
At the accents of that voice, the alchemist startled violently; he
recognised her whom he had thought fondly to find unchanged. Casting
himself on his knees at her feet, he offered her the phial, saying:
“Take it, drink it, it is life. Thirty years of my own existence are
comprised in it; but I have tried it, and I know that it is the elixir
of immortality.”
“What,” asked Ambrosia, with a sad smile, “have you yourself drunk it?”
“For two months,” replied Raymund, “after having taken a quantity of
the elixir equal to that which is contained here, I have abstained
from all other nourishment. The pangs of hunger have tormented me; but
not only have I not died, I am conscious within me of an unparalleled
accession of strength and life.”
“I believe you,” said Ambrosia, “but this elixir, which preserves
existence, is powerless to restore lost youth. My poor friend, look at
yourself,” and she held up a mirror before him.
Raymund Lully recoiled, for it is affirmed by the legend that he had
never surveyed himself in this manner during the thirty years of his
labours.
“And now, Raymund,” continued Ambrosia, “look at me,” and she unbound
her hair, which was white as snow; then, loosening the clasps of her
robe, she exposed to him her breast, which was almost eaten away
by a cancer. “Is it this,” she asked piteously, “which you wish to
immortalise?”
Then, seeing the consternation of the alchemist, she continued: “For
thirty years I have loved you, and I would not doom you to a perpetual
prison in the body of an infirm old man; in your turn, do not condemn
me. Spare me this death which you term life. Let me suffer the change
which is necessary before I can live again truly: let us renew our
nature with an eternal youth. I have no wish for your elixir, which
prolongs only the night of the tomb: I aspire to immortality.”
Raymond Lully thereupon cast down the phial, which was broken on the
ground.
“I deliver you,” he said, “and for your sake I remain in prison. Live
in the immortality of heaven, while I am condemned for ever to a living
death on this earth.”
Then, hiding his face in his hands, he went away weeping. Some months
after, a monk of the Order of St. Francis assisted Ambrosia di Castello
in her last moments. This monk was the alchemist, Raymund Lully. The
romance ends here and the legend follows. This legend merges several
bearers at different periods of the name Raymund Lully into a single
personality, and thus endows the repentant alchemist with a few
centuries of existence and expiation. On the day when the unfortunate
adept should have expired naturally, he experienced all the agonies
of dissolution; then, at the supreme crisis, he felt life again take
possession of his frame, like the vulture of Prometheus resuming its
banquet. The Saviour of the world, Who had stretched forth His hand
towards him, returned sorrowfully into heaven, and Raymond Lully found
himself still on earth, with no hope of dying.
He betook himself to prayer, and devoted his existence to good works;
God granted him all graces save that of death, but of what profit are
the others in the absence of that which should complete and crown them
all? One day the Tree of Knowledge was shewn to him, laden with its
luminous fruits; he understood being and its harmonies; he divined the
Kabalah; he established the foundations and sketched the plan of an
universal science, from which time he was saluted as the illuminated
doctor. So did he obtain glory, that fatal recompense of toil which
God, in His mercy, seldom confers upon great men till after their
death, because it intoxicates and poisons the living. But Raymund
Lully, who could not by death give place to the glory after, might have
occasion to fear that it would perish before himself, and meanwhile it
could seem to him only a derision of his immortal misfortune.
He knew how to make gold, so that he might purchase the world and all
its kingdoms, yet he could not assure to himself the humblest tomb. He
was the pauper of immortality. Everywhere he went begging for death,
and no one was able to give it him. The courtly nobleman had become an
absorbed alchemist, the alchemist a monk; the monk became preacher,
philosopher, ascetic, saint, and, last of all, missionary. He engaged
hand to hand with the learned men of Arabia; he battled victoriously
against Islamism, and had everything to fear from the fury of its
professors. Everything to fear—this means that he had something to
hope, and that which he hoped for was death.[239]
He engaged a young Arab of the most fanatical class as his attendant,
and posed before him as the scourge of the religion of Mohammed. The
Arab assassinated his master, which was what he expected; but Raymond
Lully did not die; it was the assassin that he would fain have forgiven
who killed himself in despair at his failure, so that conscience had an
added burden instead of deliverance and peace.
He was scarcely cured of his wounds when he embarked for Tunis, in
which place he preached Christianity openly; but the Bey in admiration
of his learning and his courage protected him against the madness of
the crowd and caused him to re-embark with all his books. Before long
he returned to the same parts, preaching at Bone, Bougia and other
African towns; the Moslems were stupefied and feared to lay hands upon
him. In the end he revisited Tunis and collecting the people in the
streets, he proclaimed that, though driven from the place, he had come
back to confound the impious doctrines of Mohammed and to die for Jesus
Christ. This time there was no protection possible, the enraged people
hunted him, a veritable insurrection broke out; he fled, to encourage
them further; already he was broken by many blows, pouring with blood,
covered with wounds; and yet he continued to live. He sank finally,
buried—literally speaking—under a mountain of stones.
On the same night, says the legend, two Genoese merchants, Steven
Colon and Louis de Pastorga, sailing over the open sea, beheld a great
light shining from the port of Tunis. They changed their course and,
approaching the shore, discovered a mound of stones, which diffused far
and near this miraculous splendour. They landed in great astonishment,
and finally discovered the body of Raymund Lully, mangled but still
breathing. He was taken on board the ship and carried to Majorca, where
in sight of his native land the martyr was permitted to expire. God set
him free by a miracle and his penance was so finished.
Such is the odyssey of the fabulous Raymund Lully; let us come now to
the historical realities.
Raymund Lully, the philosopher and adept, being the one who deserved
the title of illuminated doctor, was the son of that seneschal of
Majorca who was made famous by his ill-starred passion for Ambrosia
di Castello.[240] He did not discover the elixir of immortality, but
he made gold in England for King Edward III, and this gold was called
_aurum Raymundi_. There are extant certain very rare coins which are
called _Raymundins_ by experts. Louis Figuier identifies these with the
rose-nobles which were struck during the reign in question,[241] and
suggests, a little frivolously, that the alchemy of Raymund Lully was
only a sophistication of gold which would be difficult to detect at a
period when chemical processes were much less perfect than they are at
the present day. This notwithstanding, he recognises the scientific
importance of Lully and gives his judgment concerning him as follows:—
“Raymund Lully, whose genius embraced all branches of human knowledge,
and who brought together in the _Ars Magna_ a vast system of
philosophy, summarising the encyclopædic principles of science as
it then stood, could not fail to bequeathe a valuable heritage to
chymists. He perfected and described carefully various compounds which
are used widely in chemistry; we owe him the preparation of carbonate
of potassium by means of tartar and by wood ashes, the rectification of
spirits of wine, the preparation of essential oils, the cuppellation of
silver, and the preparation of sweet mercury.”[242]
Other scientists, feeling sure that the rose-nobles were pure as gold,
have speculated that, having regard to the very imperfect processes
of practical chemistry during the middle ages, such transmutations
as those of Raymund Lully, and indeed other adepts, were merely
the separation of the gold found in silver mines, and purified by
means of antimony, which is actually indicated, in a great number of
Hermetic symbols, as the efficient and chief element in the Powder of
Projection.[243] We agree with them that chemistry was non-existent at
the period in question, and we may add that it was created by adepts
or rather that the adepts, while keeping to themselves those synthetic
secrets which were the treasure of the magical sanctuaries, instructed
their contemporaries as to some of the analytical processes. These were
afterwards perfected, but they have not as yet led men of science to
reach that ancient synthesis which constitutes Hermetic philosophy, in
the proper sense of the term.
In his philosophical _Testament_, Raymund Lully has set forth all the
principles of this science, but in a veiled manner, following the
practice and indeed the duty of adepts. He also composed a _Key_ to
the _Testament_ mentioned, and finally a _Key_ to the _Key_ or, more
definitely, a codicil, which is in our opinion the most important of
his writings on alchemy. Its principles and modes of procedure have
nothing in common either with the sophistication of pure metals or
with the separation of alloys. As a theory, it is in conformity with
the principles of Geber and as a practice with those of Arnaldus de
Villanova; in respect of doctrine it is in conformity with the most
exalted ideas of the Kabalah. Those earnest minds, who refuse to be
discouraged by the discredit into which ignorance brings the great
things, should study Kabalistically the codicil of Raymund Lully, if
they seek to carry on that research of the absolute which was followed
by the greatest men of genius in the elder world.[244]
The whole life of this pre-eminent adept, the first initiate after St.
John who was devoted to the hierarchic apostolate of holy orthodoxy—his
entire life, we repeat, was passed in pious foundations, in preachings,
in immense scientific labours. Thus, in 1276, he established at Palma
a college of Franciscans dedicated to the study of Oriental languages,
and Arabic especially, with the object of refuting the works of
Mohammedan doctors and of preaching the Christian faith among the
Moors. John XXI confirmed this institution by a pastoral letter dated
from Viterbo on December 16, in the first year of his pontificate.
From 1293 to 1311, Lully solicited and obtained from Pope Nicholas
IV and from the kings of France, Sicily, Cyprus and Majorca, the
establishment of many other colleges for the same purpose. Wherever
he went he gave instructions in his Great Art, which is an universal
synthesis of human knowledge, and has as its prime object the
institution of one language among men as also one mode of thought. He
visited Paris and there astonished the most learned doctors; afterwards
he crossed over to Spain, tarried at Complute, where he founded a
central academy for the study of languages and sciences. He reformed
a number of convents, went on to Italy and recruited soldiers for a
new military order, the institution of which he advocated at the very
Council of Vienna which condemned the Templars. The catholic science
and the true initiation of St. John were intended thereby to rescue the
protecting sword of the Temple from faithless hands. The great ones of
this world derided poor Raymund Lully, and yet in their own despite
they did all that he desired. This illuminated personality, termed
by derision Raymund the Fantastic, seems to have been pope of popes
and king of kings; he was poor as Job and gave alms to sovereigns; he
was called a fool, and he was of that order of folly which confounds
sages. The greatest politician of the period, Cardinal Ximenes, whose
mind was as vast as it was serious, never spoke of him except as the
divine Raymund Lully and the most enlightened doctor. He died in 1314,
according to Genebrard, or in 1315, according to the author of the
preface to the _Meditations_ of the Hermit Blaquerne. He was eighty
years old, and the end of his toilsome and holy existence came on the
Festival of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul.[245]
A disciple of the great Kabalists, Raymund Lully sought to establish an
absolute and universal philosophy by substituting for the conventional
abstractions of systems a fixed notion of natural actualities and by
substituting a simple and natural mode of expression for the ambiguous
terms of scholasticism. He condemned the definitions of the scholars
at his period because they perpetuated disputes by their inexactitude
and amphibology. According to Aristotle, man is a reasonable animal,
but it may be replied that he is not an animal and is only rarely
reasonable. Moreover, the words animal and reasonable cannot be brought
into harmony; a fool, in this sense, would not be a man, and so forth.
Raymund Lully defined things by their right names and not by their
synonyms or approximations; afterwards he explained the names by
etymology. To the question—What is man?—he would therefore reply that
the word, in its general acceptation, signifies the state of being
human, but taken in a particular acceptation it designates the human
personality. What, however is this human personality? Originally, it is
the personality which God made by breathing life into a body compounded
of earth (_humus_); literally it is you, it is I, it is Peter, Paul,
and so on. Those who were accustomed to scientific jargon protested
to the illuminated doctor that anyone could talk like this; that on
the basis of such a method the whole world might pose as learned; and
that popular common sense would be preferred before the doctrine of
academies. “That is just what I wish,” was the answer of Raymund Lully
in his great simplicity. Hence the reproach of puerility made against
his enlightened theory; and puerile it was in a sense, but with the
puerility of His counsel Who said: “Except ye become as one of these
little ones, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” Is not the
Kingdom of Heaven also that of science, seeing that the celestial life
of God and men is but understanding and love?
The design of Raymund Lully was to set the Christianised Kabalah
against the fatalistic _magia_ of the Arabs, Egyptian traditions
against those of India, the Magic of Light against Black Magic. He
testified that, in the last days, the doctrines of Antichrist would
be a materialised realism and that there would be a recrudescence of
all the monstrosities of evil Magic. Hence he sought to prepare minds
for the return of Enoch, or otherwise for the final revelation of that
science the key of which is in the hieroglyphical alphabets of Enoch.
This harmonising light of reason and faith is to precede the Messianic
and universal reign of Christianity on earth. So was Lully a great
prophet for true Kabalists and seers, while for sceptics who at least
can respect exalted characters and noble aspirations, he was a sublime
dreamer.