and more involved in the art of preaching, writing a vast
Summa sermonum in Mallorca (1312–1313).
Llull’s last works are dated from Tunis, December
1315, after which he disappears from history. He prob-
ably died early the following year, either there on the
ship returning to his native Mallorca, or on the island
itself, where he is buried. The story of his martyrdom
(he was stoned to death) is a legend bolstered by pious
falsifi cations in the early seventeenth century, in which
an earlier (1307) stoning in Bejaï’a was transposed and
made into the cause of his death.
Thought and Infl uence
The unusual nature of Llull’s system and of his thought
in general is due to his insistence that any apologetic
system that hoped to persuade Muslims and Jews would
have to abandon the use of Scripture, which only caused
endless discussions over validity and interpretation, and
try to prove the articles of the Christian faith, above all
those of the Trinity and Incarnation that Muslims and
Jews found most diffi cult to accept. The fi rst consider-
ation forced Llull to forge an abstract system that could
stand completely by itself. This was the art, each work
of which begins with a series of concepts distributed
amid geometric fi gures, and then proceeds to describe
the correct method of combining these concepts. The
point was to display the basic structure of reality, which,
noted Llull, begins with the attributes of God, good-
ness, greatness, eternity, and so forth, which are not
static but unfold into three correlatives of action. Thus
bonitas (goodness) unfolds into an agent (bonifi cati-
vum) and a patient (bonifi cabile), and the act joining
them (bonifi care). Their necessary activity ad intra
produces the Trinity, and their: contingent activity ad
extra the act of creation. Moreover, this triad of action
is then reproduced at every level of creation, so that, for
instance, man’s intellect is composed of intellectivum,
intelligibile, and intelligere, and fi re of ignifi cativum,
ignifi cabile, and ignifi care.
This metaphysics of action exerted a strong infl u-
ence on Nicholas of Cusa, as did the combinatorial art
on Giordano Bruno and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
But at the same time, Llull’s system was taken over by
alchemists, and eventually over one hundred such works
were falsely attributed to him. This, plus his self-image
as a phantasticus, the unusual nature of his system, and
the fact that his attempts to prove the articles of the faith
made him suspect to the Inquisition, helped propagate
the image of a peculiar, countercultural fi gure.
Llull’s infl uence in the Iberian Peninsula was less
hetorodox and countercultural than in the rest of Eu-
rope. Aside from the fi fteenth-century Llullist schools
of Mallorca and Barcelona, there were a certain number
of Castilian translations of his works done in the later
Middle Ages, although interest in him seems to have
been of a dispersed, sporadic nature, at least until the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Then we fi nd a
Lullist school at Valencia (where some of his works
were published), the chief fi gure of which was the
humanist Alonso de Proaza. He in turn was in contact
with Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who in
his foundation in 1508 of the University of Alcalá de
Henares, instituted a chair of Lullian philosophy and
theology. Later in the century, Felipe II was an admirer
of Llull, as was his chief architect, Juan de Herrera, who
not only wrote a Tratado del cuerpo cúbico based on
Llull’s art, but in 1582 founded a mathematical-philo-
sophical academy in Madrid in whose program the art
was to have a prominent place.Literary Works
Llull’s most unusual literary feature is that he dared to
modify the conventional genres of contemporary ro-
mance tradition to fi t his own didactic needs. Llull fi rst
attempted the novel, in the Libre de Evast e Blaquerna
(Book of Evast and Blaquerna, 1283), and Félix o El
libre de meravelles (Felix, or the Book of Wonders,
1288) he recounted stories morally useful to his read-
ers. He similarly adjusted the narrative wrapping of an
early apologetical work, the Llibre del gentil e dels tres
savis (Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men),
in which an unbeliever struggles to fi nd the truth and
fi nally embraces the faith.
The plot of Blaquerna follows the outline of a
hero’s biography; the main character is endowed with
the mental strength permitting him to overcome the
obstacles in the way of his becoming a contemplative
hermit. These “obstacles” are the ties that link a man
to society: a family, a religious order, a diocese, and
the whole of Christianity ruled by the pope. Blaquerna
abandons his parents, Evast and Aloma, and convinces
his bride, Natana, to become an exemplary nun, where-
upon he enters a monastery and becomes a reforming
abbot who is then elected bishop. Blaquerna improves
the spiritual life of his diocese and as a result is elected
pope; from Rome Blaquerna manages to reorganize
the world and to change the moral attitudes of people.
Finally he renounces the papacy and becomes the per-
fect hermit, which permits him to write Llibre d’amic e
amat (Book of the Lover and the Beloved), a collection
of short mystical proverbs lyrically embellished and
artistically constructed.
The Book of Wonders follows the spiritual journey of
Felix through events that cause him “wonder” because
they seem to be contrary to God’s will, and that allow
various hermits and philosophers to explain the funda-
mental points of Christian knowledge about God, angels,
the heavens, the elements, plants, minerals, animals,LLULL, RAMÓN