Ramon Llull

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Ramon Llull [ rəˈmon ˈʎuʎ ] (German Raimund Lull , first name also in the spelling Raymund or Ramund ; Latinized Raimundus Lullus , also Raymundus Lull (i) us ; * around 1232 in Palma de Mallorca ; † beginning of 1316 on the journey from Tunis to Mallorca ) was a Mallorcan philosopher , logician , grammarian and Franciscan theologian . He lived for a long time in the Mallorcan monastery of Santuari de Cura on Mount Randa , where he also experienced his mystical visions. His tomb is in the Basilica of Sant Francesc in Palma.

Life

Raimundus Lullus (Ramon Llull)

Ramon Llull was the son of a Catalan knight who had fought under James I of Aragón for the reconquest of the Saracen- ruled Balearic Islands . So he grew up at court and was appointed tutor of the princes at an early age. He led a courtly, secular life and devoted himself to poetry as a troubadour .

He married in 1257. His marriage to Blanca Picany had two children, Domènec and Magdalena. In 1263, a vision in which he saw Christ crucified next to him caused Llull to radically change his life. He went on pilgrimage and educational trips, also to the Arab world, continued his education, learned Arabic and put his poetry in the service of the Catholic faith. Around 1295, Raimundus joined the Third Order of St. Francis as a Terziar .

Llull soon became a famous scholar and confidante of James II of Mallorca , whom he had brought up, he taught at the Paris Sorbonne and took part in the Council of Vienne . There he campaigned for the establishment of chairs for Hebrew , Arabic and Chaldean (= Old Church Syriac) at the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca, which made him one of the founders of Western European Oriental Studies . In 1276 Ramon Llull founded a mission school in the Miramar monastery in Valldemossa . In 1314 he went on a trip to Tunis on behalf of Jacob II. In North Africa, in addition to his diplomatic and literary activities, he continued his evangelization. The circumstances of his death are unclear. According to a tradition, for which there is no evidence, he is said to have been stoned by angry Muslims in Bougie (Algeria) and died of the consequences of the stoning on the way back to Mallorca, where he was buried in La Palma.

Due to the special interest of King Philip II . from Spain to the writings of the polymath a first canonization process was initiated. In the middle of the 18th century it was stopped because of the writings ( Directorium Inquisitorium ) of the Catalan Dominican and Grand Inquisitor Nicolás Aymerich (1322-1399), who claimed to have found more than a hundred heresies in Lull's writings . At the beginning of the 20th century, Catalan theologians demanded that Lull be rehabilitated. The Catalan theologian and historian Josep Perarnau was able to provide evidence that Aymerich had misquoted Lull's writings in order to expose him to suspicion of heresy. At the end of the 20th century, the canonization process was resumed.

Regardless of the official canonization process, there was a popular veneration of the theologian as a "martyr" all along. However, his martyrdom was never recognized by the Church, as the ongoing canonization process shows.

plant

Ars magna, Fig. 1

Because of his visions of Christ, Llull worked as a missionary throughout the Mediterranean. He also taught at the universities of Paris and Montpellier. He was influenced by three cultures: the Christian , the Islamic and the Jewish . He wrote a large part of his more than 280 works in Latin and Catalan . This made Llull the founder of Catalan literature . His Arabic works have been lost.

Llull called logic the art and science of using the mind to distinguish between truth and lies , to accept truth and to reject lies.

This art, which at the same time became the title for his work Ars magna (German: "Great Art"), came down to the idea of ​​mechanically combining terms with the help of a logical machine and at the same time created the algorithmic tradition of heuristics.

Llull himself constructed such a "logical machine", which consisted of seven discs that could be rotated around a center. Words were written on each of these disks that included different terms, e.g. B. human , knowledge , truth, fame , well-being and quantity , logical operations , e.g. B. Difference , agreement , contradiction and equality . By turning these concentric disks, various combinations of terms resulted which corresponded to the final forms of the syllogistic principle.

The literary historical investigation of Llull's complete works is difficult. This also applies to the attribution and separation of numerous works. A recent study comes to the conclusion that Llull may have written 265 works in Latin , Arabic and Old Catalan, including:

  • Llibre de contemplació en Déu ;
  • Llibre d'amic e amat (The Book of the Friend and the Beloved) - Much of this work seems homoerotic, but the “lover” is the believing Christian, the mystic, the “beloved” is Jesus Christ. This work of Llull is strongly influenced by Islamic Sufism ;
  • Ars generalis ultima .

Making his art, the ars , known in university circles proved difficult. Llull therefore began to simplify and adapt his Ars, which happened in different stages. The Ars of the first phase, the quaternary Ars (1274–89) was followed by the second phase, the ternary Ars (1290–1308). Each version of the Ars was accompanied by works that applied the general principles to a particular branch of science. A traditional science artfully reformulated became a new one , with the result that Llull undertook a personal reform of theology, philosophy, logic, medicine, astronomy, geometry, and rhetoric.

The most widespread versions of his combinatorial inventions can be found in Ars brevis , created in 1308 . Combinatorics is based on a logical calculation and its automation. Nonsensical combinations are excluded with the help of an algorithm. Lull's turntables only show meaningful links. These principles also apply to modern information technology. Thus the three-part turntable, with nine letters on each disc, is a forerunner of today's computers.

meaning

Raimundus Lullus Monument, main hall of the University of Barcelona
Raimundus Lullus Monument in Palma de Mallorca

During Llull's lifetime and in the period that followed, his ideas were received with suspicion. His Ars was based on a Neoplatonic system, which contradicted the mainstream of contemporary scholasticism . Thanks to his language skills, Llull had direct access to the Arab world of thought and took an unusually tolerant attitude towards Islam for his time. Towards the end of his life, however, Llull represented a "mission by sword" (missio per gladium).

Nevertheless, his works have a long history of impact and in the centuries when Llull was officially banned, his works were secretly studied and copied. The followers of Llull are called Lullists . The philosopher Nikolaus Cusanus can also be counted among them. There are also some pseudo-Lullistic writings that mainly deal with alchemy (cf. also Johannes de Rupescissa ).

His theology was also taken up by Giordano Bruno . In the 15th century, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola quoted Llull's writings at length.

For Ernst Bloch , Lullus is “the strangely rationalist scholastic” who tried to refute the Koran with his ars inveniendi .

In the 17th century his works Ars magna and Ars brevis gained greater influence through the system of a perfect philosophical, universal language described therein .

This system is based on the combination of basic philosophical concepts. Llull's thoughts were taken up by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , the founder of mathematical logic. In the 19th century, William Stanley Jevons tried to realize the idea of ​​a logical machine .

Llull studied both syllogism and induction . He was the first to devote himself to the systematic study of material implication , which is one of the fundamental operations of mathematical logic, analyzed logical operations with the copula “and” ( conjunction ) and the copula “or” ( disjunction ).

The work had a great influence on the logicians of the Jansenist monastery of Port-Royal .

Llull structured the sciences in L'arbre de ciència (around 1295/96, published in Latin in 1482) systematically, for which he used the allegory of the tree; this metaphor was first introduced into the history of science around 1240 by Petrus Hispanus under the term Arbor porphyriana (see tree of knowledge and family tree of science ).

With Llull fourteen trees represent the realms of being such as elements , botany , animals , sensation , imagination , morality , social theory etc .; In two other trees, these areas are illustrated by examples ( Exempla ) and proverbs ( Bonmots ). Each tree in turn has a seven-part internal structure, consisting of roots, trunk, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers and fruits.

Quote

Handwritten signature by Ramon Llull on June 16, 1256.

“The friend longed for solitude.
To be alone, he sought the company of
his lover. With him he is alone in the
midst of the people. "

- The Book of the Friend and the Beloved, section 46

“For a long time I have struggled to seek the truth in one way and another, and by God's grace I have come to a happy end and to the knowledge of the truth which I longed to know and which I put in my books, but I did I am without consolation because I could not finish what I wanted so badly and what I have worked for thirty years, and also because my books are little appreciated, yes - I tell you too - because many people know me even consider a fool. "

effect

Llull's teachings were already controversial during his lifetime. Later the Lullism movement developed around his students. The Roman Church put him on the index of banned books for a long time and only later rehabilitated it.

The most famous philosophers who received Llull include Agrippa von Nettesheim , who wrote a commentary on Ars brevis Llulls (“In Artem brevem Raymundi Lulli”, 1533), Nikolaus Cusanus , who also took up Llull's attempts at interreligious dialogue , and others Giordano Bruno , who wrote several small works on Llull.

Johannes Reuchlin , the Pforzheim humanist, saw Llull as a pioneer of his multi-confessional studies.

The mathematician and architect Juan de Herrera (1530–1597), who completed the construction of El Escorial , tried in his Discurso sobre la figura cúbica to bring Llull's geometry ( Nova Geometria , Paris 1299) into agreement with Euclidean .

It proves Llull's effect even in contemporary art and culture that Daniel Libeskind architecturally and Barbara Weil artistically refer to him in the 2003 construction of the Studio Weil in Port d'Andratx , Mallorca.

In some of his works, the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies alludes to Llull and his symbolic language. Letters in particular, as well as cross shapes and circles, often refer to the founder of the written Catalan language.

The Catalan equivalent of the Goethe-Institut is named Institut Ramon Llull after him. Llull is also the namesake of the university of the same name in Barcelona.

The Electorium parvum seu Breviculum is located in the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe . The breviculum, which was probably created in northern France in 1321, has autobiographical features. Llull dictated his life story to his student Thomas le Myésier , a canon from the northern French city of Arras . Le Myésier attached great importance to the graphic representation of the teachings of Llull. Twelve full-page miniatures about the life and work of his master are attached to the text .

Under the title DIA — LOGOS Ramon Llull & the art of combining , an exhibition at the ZKM Karlsruhe from March 17 to August 5, 2018 showed how Llull conquered the hearts of artists, poets and thinkers. Using the example of Llull and the Llull reception, the exhibition also demonstrated the path from the four elements via the trinity to the binary code . By bringing together historical materials from the holdings of libraries such as the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Biblioteca de Catalunya with contemporary artistic positions, the exhibition tried to provide insights into previously unknown facets of Ramon Llull's thought and work. Ramon Llull's ideas also had a great influence on the work of visual artists such as Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003), Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) and Anselm Kiefer (* 1945). In the field of literature, the permutation techniques used by Juan Eduardo Cirlot (1916–1973) represent an extreme case of combinatorial poetry. But also authors such as Italo Calvino (1923–1985), Umberto Eco (1932–2016) and the Latin American Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) and Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) appear to be influenced by Llull's ars combinatoria, as are authors from the Vienna group , above all Konrad Bayer with his text Der Vogel singt - a poetry machine with 571 components [.. .] , which is based on a complicated mathematical construction plan. Ramon Llull also leaves his mark on music - including in the works of Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), John Cage (1912–1992) and Josep Maria Mestre's Quadreny (* 1929). The exhibition ended with the autobiographical poem Cant de Ramon from the year 1300. It says: I am a man now: old, poor, laughed at / have no help, 'from no power, / have only thought up too great a deed / have in the world's great thing ignited, / gave many a good example, - but be it complained - / it brought me hardly any honor or love. I want to die in the sea of ​​love ...

Works

Complete and collective editions
  • Opera latina cum cura et studio Instituti Raimundi Lulli Universitatis Friburgensis [cited as ROL for short ], 1959ff (critical complete Latin edition, still to be published)
  • Obres de Ramon Lull [quoted as ORL for short ], ed. M. Ubrador, S. Galms et al., Palma de Mallorca, 21 volumes, 1906-1950; then continued in the Nova edició de les obres de Ramon Llull, Palma de Mallorca 1990ff (Catalan complete edition)
  • Beati Raymundi Lulli doctoris illuminati et matyris Opera , ed. Ivo Salzinger, 8 volumes, Mainz 1721–1742, reprinted Frankfurt am Main 1965 [abbreviated as MOG ]. (Latin collective edition still used for works that have not yet been critically edited)
  • Opera [Latin Edition] . Strasbourg 1651, reprint ed. and introduced by Anthony Bonner: Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1996, ISBN 978-3-7728-1624-6
  • Selected works of Ramon Llull (1232-1316) , edited and translated by Anthony Bonner, 2 volumes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1985, ISBN 0-691-07288-4 . (Includes The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men , pp. 93–305; Ars Demonstrativa , pp. 317–567; Ars Brevis , pp. 579–646; Felix: or the Book of Wonders , Volume 2, pp. 659-1107; Principles of Medicine , pp. 1119-1215; Flowers of Love and Flowers of Intelligence , 1223-1256)
Single editions and translations
  • The Book of the Friend and the Beloved ( Libre de Amic e Amat ). Translated and edited by Erika Lorenz. Herder, Freiburg 1992, ISBN 3-451-04094-8
  • The book on St. Mary ( Libre de sancta Maria ): Catalan-German. Edited by Fernando Domínguez Reboiras. With an introduction by Fernando Domínguez Reboiras and Blanca Garí. Translated by Elisenda Padrós Wolff. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2005 ISBN 3-7728-2216-9
  • The new logic. Latin-German. Translated by Vittorio Hösle and Walburga Büchel. Edited by Charles Lohr. Meiner, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 978-3-7873-0635-0
  • Ars brevis. Latin-German. Translated and edited. by Alexander Fidora. Meiner, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-7873-1570-3
  • The book of the Gentiles and the three wise men , ed. Theodor Pindl. Reclam, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-15-009693-6
  • Felix or The Book of Miracles ( Llibre de Meravelles ). Translated by Gret Shib Torra. Schwabe, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-7965-2236-9
  • Doctrina pueril - What children need to know , introduced by Joan Santanach i Sunol, translated by Elisenda Padrós Wolff, Catalan Literature of the Middle Ages Volume 4, Lit Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10522-6
  • Ramon Llull's new rhetoric , text and translation of Llull's Rethorica Nova by Mark David Johnston, Routledge, London 1994.

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Ramon Llull  - Quotes
Commons : Ramon Llull  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joachim Schäfer: Raimundus Lullus of Palma. Lexicon of Saints, October 4, 2016, accessed October 6, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Contents of the speech bubble: Lux mea est ipse Dominus , My light is the Lord himself (according to Mi 7,8  VUL ).
  3. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Müller Jahncke: Lullus, Raymundus (Ramon Llull). In: Encyclopedia of Medical History. 2005, p. 869 f.
  4. ^ Joachim Schäfer: Raimundus Lullus of Palma. Lexicon of Saints, October 4, 2016, accessed on August 18, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Patrick Schirmer Sastre: Ramon Llull: Trailblazer of logical thinking. MZ, November 27, 2015, accessed on September 23, 2019 .
  6. ^ Gotthard Strohmaier : Avicenna. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41946-1 , p. 145.
  7. ^ Josep M. Nidal, Modest Prats: Història de la llengua catalana , Vol. 1: Dels inicis al segle XV . Edicions 62, Barcelona 1982, ISBN 84-297-1904-0 , pp. 302-356 (Catalan).
  8. ^ Anthony Bonner and Lola Badia: Ramon Llull. Barcelona 1988. See also the brief overview by A. Bonner et al. at the University of Barcelona.
  9. ^ Ramon Llull database. Center de Documentació Ramon Llull of the University of Barcelona (Facultat de Filologia), accessed on 23 September 2019 .
  10. ↑ Justine Duda: The beginnings of modern computer technology. Raimundus Lullus - Life and Work. Competence center for electronic cataloging and publication processes in the humanities at Trier University, May 15, 2016, accessed on January 8, 2020 .
  11. ↑ see: Anne Müller: Begging Order in Islamic Foreign Countries. Institutional framework conditions for Franciscan and Dominican missions in Muslim areas of the 13th century. Münster 2002, p. 274ff.
  12. ↑ Michele Pereira Catalog of the alchemical works attributed to Raimond Lull
  13. ↑ Ernst Bloch: The principle of hope . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1959, chapter 37: The technical utopias , subchapter Bacon's Ars inveniendi; Fortleben der Lullischen Kunst , pp. 758–763, quotation p. 760.
  14. ↑ Peter Schulthess, Alexander Brungs, Vilem Mudroch: The Philosophy of the Middle Ages 4: 13th Century, 2nd Half Volume, Eighth Chapter - Iberian Peninsula. Schwabe online, accessed on September 23, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Kristin Feireiss (author), Kristin Feireiss and Hans-Jürgen Commerell (eds.): Mnemonic cartwheels: Daniel Libeskind's Studio Weil and the work of Barbara Weil. Exhibition catalog. Aedes West, Berlin 2000 (English)
  16. ↑ Amador Vega, Peter Weibel, Siegfried Zielinski, Bettina Korintenberg: DIA — LOGOS Ramon Llull & the art of combining. ZKM, accessed on September 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Llull, Ramon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lullus, Raimundus (Latinized); Llull, Ramon; Lulle, Raymond; Lull
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catalan philosopher, logician and theologian
DATE OF BIRTH around 1232
PLACE OF BIRTH Palma de Mallorca
DATE OF DEATH 1316
Place of death on the way from Tunis to Mallorca