The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms_ The Struggle for Dominion, 1200-1500

THE WESTERN MEDITERRA.'\IEAt\ KINGDOM 1200-1500

Given that the work survives in a Catalan version intended

for a Christian audience, it is only to be expected that the

Gentile will become Christian. (It is likely that the book was

intended to serve as a didactic aid to would-be missionar-

ies.) And yet at the end of the story there is a surprise. The

Gentile is deeply impressed by all he has heard; he makes

his choice in his mind, but before he can tell the Wise Men,

he sees two fellow pagans approaching. Rather than waiting

to hear which religion he has chosen, the Three Wise Men

insist on leaving now; the reader is never told explicitly which

religion the Gentile has chosen. Indeed, one of the Wise

Men bewails the divisions between the three religions in

what seems almost an ecumenical spirit:

Just as we have One God, One creator, One Lord, we should

also have one faith, one religion, one sect, one manner ofloving

and honouring God, and we should love and help one another,

and make it so that between us there be no difference or con-

trariety of faith or customs, which difference and contrariety

cause us to be enemies with one another, and to be at war, kill-

ing one another and falling captive to one another.:q

It would be wrong to exaggerate Llull's openness to Judaism
and Islam. Elsewhere in his works his characters weep at the
'obstinacy' of the Jews. But his acceptance of Judaism and
Islam as partially true was an admission few were ready to
make in the era of Ramon Marti and the increasing seclusion
of Jews behind ghetto walls, or indeed their total expulsion
from France, England and elsewhere. It mirrored the Muslim
and Jewish belief that the other monotheistic religions were
roads that led some way towards the ultimate truth. It was only
rarely that Llull supported tough measures against the Jews,
or full-scale crusades against the Muslims. He was in many
ways an old-fashioned figure, out of line with the thinking
of the Dominican inquisitors, even though he seems to have
enjoyed reasonable relations with them. He was a product
of a society in which the three religions coexisted, though
uneasily, and his works reflect that background even while
trying to achieve the conversion of all the Jews and Muslims
who lived under Christian rule. It was onlv in 1492 that the

34. Bonner, SelHI Works, vol. 1, pp. 301-2.