The average man has seldom understood the Mystic. He conceives
the Mystic Life, with its ceaseless spiritual activity, and its
restlessness which knows no stay till it reaches its goal, as a life
of tranquillity, if not of indolence and ease. He has no conception
of what it really is, and for that, perhaps, he should not be blamed.
But not content with misinterpreting the mystic’s life, he presently
becomes more daring; he asserts that mysticism is essentially
‘unpractical,’ and that one whose aim is to reach the state of Union
with God must necessarily be as a fool in his relations with the world.
Here the average man is grossly, inexcusably mistaken. His error has
again and again been exposed, confuted, disproved by example after
example to the contrary. Yet, for all that, it seems to thrive in the
average mind.
Now, if the story of one man’s career could suffice to destroy the
mistaken idea that the mystic is an unpractical dreamer, that man
would surely be the Majorcan Ramón Lull, the ‘Apostle of Africa.’ Lull
lived far back in the thirteenth century, not long after the days
of St. Francis of Assisi, whose disciple he was. He gives us, as it
were, a prevision of the splendours of that Golden Age of Mysticism
which dawned for Spain three hundred years after his birth. His mystic
writings--and especially his BOOK OF THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED--are
full of the purest and noblest spirituality, compounded with the
quintessence of love. ‘If ye will have fire,’ he cries, ‘O ye that
love, come light your lanterns at my heart.’ His famous phrase, ‘He
who loves not lives not,’ sums up his inspiration. Yet Lull was no
cloistered visionary. His life is full of romance and adventure: so
crowded with incident is it that many pages will not suffice even to
summarise its principal happenings. His capacities showed the rare
combination of scholar and man of affairs: he was both these, and he
was also the man of God. To the service of his Master, for Whom alone
he lived, and for Whom he died, Lull was able to bring the full and
complete tribute of an efficient and active body, a superb mind, and an
ardent, unconquerable spirit.
I
RAMÓN LULL was born in Palma, the capital of Majorca, on January 25,
1235. His father had taken part in the conquest of Majorca from the
Saracens some six years earlier, and for his services had received
the gift of an estate, which his son inherited. The boy was brought
up as a page in the royal court of Majorca, and, in spite of a sound
religious education and the interest and favour of the King, he had
hardly reached years of discretion when he began to lead a careless
and dissolute life. His biographers tell of how the King, to stop his
degrading practices, married him to a certain D^a. Blanca Picañy, but
without thereby reforming him in the least. Lull was chiefly enamoured
of a Genoese lady, so passionately that he dared one day to ride on
horseback into the Church of St. Eulalia, where she was engaged in
devotion. Eventually she herself arrested his intrigues. Receiving from
him some gallant verses on the theme of her bosom, she called him into
her presence, and, uncovering herself before him, disclosed a malignant
cancer by which her breast was slowly being consumed.
This terrible shock marked the first stage in Lull’s conversion. He
went back to the palace another man--as taciturn and sombre as he had
formerly been gay and jovial. The tradition may well be true that he
saw at this time a vision of the Crucified, saying, ‘Ramón, follow
Me’: he himself in some lines of autobiography tells us of five such
visions, though when they occurred is not certain. Be this as it may,
he turned from his evil life and fixed his affections on God:
When I was grown and knew the world and its vanities, I began to do
evil and entered on sin. Forgetting the true God I went after carnal
things. But it pleased Jesus Christ in His great pity to present
Himself to me five times as if crucified, that I might remember Him
and set my love on Him, doing what I could that He might be known
through all the world and the truth be taught concerning the great
Trinity and the Incarnation. And thus I was inspired and moved by
so great love, that I loved no other thing but that He should be
honoured, and I began to do Him willing service.[1]
From the first, as these lines significantly bear evidence, Lull’s
new ideals were directed towards specific objects. He was set upon
the conversion of the Jews and Mohammedans who figured so largely
in thirteenth-century Spain. And setting aside emotional methods as
resolutely as the idea--so general then--of conversion by force, he
began to ponder what he conceived to be worthy means of compassing his
aim--a progressive and unanswerable appeal to the reason. A sermon
heard on the Feast of St. Francis (October 4, 1266) supplied the spark
which kindled Lull’s plans into action. He sold all his land, with the
exception of a portion retained for himself and his family, gave up
his position of seneschal in the royal palace, and retired first to a
Cistercian monastery and later to Mount Randa, near Palma, living there
a life of study and meditation with the object of fitting himself to
become a missionary to the Moslems.
The record of Lull’s life in Mount Randa is one not only of prayer,
fast and vigil, ecstasy and vision, but of the study of Arabic and the
elaboration of his scheme of a book which was to illuminate and convert
the world. He believed this _Art General_ to be directly inspired
by the Holy Spirit. Once it was sufficiently developed he turned in
his practical way to means by which its study could be advanced. To
King James II of Majorca were explained the scholar’s vast plans for
the conversion of Islam; the King submitted them to one Bertram de
Berengario, a professor of theology, and, when satisfied of their
orthodoxy, endowed a college in Miramar for the training in sciences
and languages of thirteen Franciscan missionaries to the Saracens
(1275). Thus one part of Lull’s ideals was realised.
For a short time he remained at Miramar, teaching Arabic and the
_Art General_. But before long we find him lecturing on the _Art_ in
Montpellier, which was part of the Majorcan kingdom. Then he is at
Rome, where his enterprise is sanctioned by the Pope, and a School
of Oriental Languages founded. He spends two years lecturing in the
University of Paris, learning all the time as well as teaching. A
college is founded in Navarre through King Philip of France. Lull goes
farther afield--to Palestine, Egypt, Ethiopia and Morocco. In 1282 we
read of his being back in France again, at Perpignan. Success continues
to attend him, but not in a measure that can satisfy his ardent
soul. Ever burning for more triumphs, he resolves at last to put the
lukewarmness of Europe to shame, and to go himself to Africa as an
Apostle of the Faith.
After some delay (the chronology of this period is very uncertain[2])
he set sail from Genoa, and landed in Tunis about 1291. Professing only
a desire to learn the truth--to convert or be converted as events might
prove--he began to debate in public with the Moslems, following his
own logical method. He was only too successful. Many of the infidels,
attracted by his reasoning, embraced Christianity; but the monarch
began to fear for his throne, and before long Lull found himself in
prison. Condemned to death for his preaching, he was reprieved by the
intercession of a Saracen of influence, and banished from Africa,
leaving Tunis amid insults and blows, on pain of being stoned to death
should he ever return. For a time he evaded his enemies and remained in
the country, but a year of this life showed him its futility, and he
returned to Naples. Here he remained writing and teaching for a time;
then he went to Rome (_c._ 1296), attempting unsuccessfully to obtain
sanction for new missionary projects; again we find him in Genoa, next
in Paris (1297-8), back in Majorca, once more in Genoa (1300), then
on a new campaign in Cyprus and Armenia (1300-2), back _via_ Rhodes
and Malta, where he made stays, to Genoa and Paris (1303), Palma,
Barcelona, Lyon and Montpellier (1305).[3] Here he saw both the King
and Pope Clement V. With the former he planned a crusade for the Holy
Land, but the latter, much occupied in other affairs, gave him no
support.
Everywhere and always evangelisation filled his thoughts. No difficulty
or objection, as the records of these years show, could curb his zeal;
the thought of imprisonment or torture made no difference to his plans,
while to die a martyr’s death when his work should be done was his
great ambition. ‘Foolish Lover,’ says an imaginary opponent to him
in his little classic, ‘why dost thou weary the body, throw away thy
wealth and leave the joys of this world, and go about as an outcast of
the people?’ And his reply is the simplest imaginable. ‘To honour my
Beloved’s Name, for He is hated and dishonoured by more men than honour
and love Him.’
In 1306 Lull determined to make an attempt to preach once more in
Africa. At the outset he was successful, founding a school at Bona,
where he first went. But on proceeding to Bugia, and beginning to
preach in the market-place, he was promptly arrested, all but stoned
by the crowds, summarily tried, and imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon
with a view to later execution. Something in Lull’s personality,
however (or, as some say, the pleas of certain Catalan and Genoese
inhabitants), saved him once more; he was even allowed the privilege
of a disputation with a Mohammedan champion, and eventually was exiled
again in the same year of his leaving Italy.
The ship in which he was returning suffered shipwreck off Pisa,
where he landed and remained for two years. In Pisa he wrote a book
incorporating his memorable dispute with the Saracen apologist and
other experiences in Africa. But it would seem that these experiences
had been modifying his belief in intellectual conversion, for he
approached Pope Clement V again with proposals for a new crusade.
Enthusiasm for crusades, however, was a thing of the past, and neither
the Pope nor Italy as a whole gave the scheme any support.
So this dauntless fighter went once more to Paris, which at that time
was in the grip of Averroism, and hence provided a new field for
missionary effort. Seventy-three years old as he was, Lull lectured,
wrote, and taught unceasingly against the infidel philosophy, and won
for himself fresh glory, accomplishing in Europe what only physical
force withheld from him in Africa. King Philip, his royal admirer, gave
him the name of _docteur illuminé_, by which, in one or another of its
translations, he is still known to-day.
The Council of Vienne (1311-2) gave Lull another of those opportunities
which he was never slow to take. The picture of the venerable
missionary at the feet of the Head of the Church, pouring forth his
impassioned pleas for those enterprises which authority so hesitated
to allow, is indeed a moving one. He painted the glory of recovering
the Holy Places, the plight of the Christians in Armenia, and the
peril which the Greeks were in from the Turks--themes not exhausted
even after seven hundred years. These, however, were but a few of
Lull’s representations. The number of his requests which were granted
was relatively small, but among them was a wider scheme than any yet
sanctioned for a system of colleges for the teaching of missionary
languages. This earnest of the continuance of his work must have
encouraged beyond measure one who, in the natural course of life, was
nearing the end of his activities.
Perhaps it was this, indeed, which inspired him to cross once more to
Africa, to brave its terrors and to suffer martyrdom for the Faith at
last--as from his conversion he had wished--if it might be the will
of God. And the will of God it proved to be. On August 14, 1314, he
set out from Palma for Bugia. On his arrival he began his work less
openly than before, and for some months contrived to preach secretly,
make conversions and confirm the faithful of earlier days. He passed
to Tunis, where he had further success, but for some unknown reason
was compelled to return to Bugia. Success made him bold. Feeling
perhaps that the hour of supreme effort--even if it meant the supreme
sacrifice--had come, he threw prudence to the winds, assembled a vast
concourse, and, proclaiming himself that same Ramón who had formerly
been condemned in Bugia, he preached once more the faith of the
Saviour. This time the crowd broke loose, and not only clamoured for
Lull’s death, but took him out of the city and stoned him (June 30,
1315), even as a Jewish mob had stoned the first of Christian martyrs.
Various accounts are given of his burial. It seems that two Genoese
merchants begged his body and carried it to Majorca, but some versions
have it that a great pyramid of light aided them in their search for
it, that life remained in the body until it reached Palma, and that
adverse winds forced the vessel, which was making for Genoa, to land at
Lull’s birthplace. Here the body was received with the greatest sorrow
and mourning, and buried with due solemnity in the sacristy of the
convent of St. Francis of Assisi.
Ramón Lull was beatified by Pius IX. The title-page of his great
romance, _Blanquerna_, calls him ‘Doctor illuminate, Martyr unconquered
of Jesus Christ, Master universal in all arts and sciences.’ But in his
own country Lull receives the simpler homage of a saint.