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For this new anthology, Anthony Bonner has chosen central texts from his acclaimed two-volume compilation Selected Works of Ramon Llull (Princeton, 1985). Available for the first time in an affordable format, these works serve as an introduction to the life and writings of the Catalan (properly, Majorcan) philosopher, mystic, and theologian who lived from 1232 to 1316. Founder of a school of Arabic and other languages, Llull was also a poet and novelist and one of the creators of literary Catalan.

This volume contains three prefaces on Llull's life, thought, and reputation. Of Llull's works, it offers Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, his seminal Christian apology; the Ars brevis, a summary of his philosophical system; The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, a celebration of mystical love in the courtly tradition; and his wittily scathing Book of the Beasts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good translation with helpful background info
Wonderful collection of five of Llull's most important work. Bonner's translations are concise and fluid, very helpful. His introductory remarks to each book fill in historical and biographical information, so you end up with a bio of Llull in addition to his actual writings. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to read Llull in English for the first time.

Hard to Get your Arms Around
For all practical purposes, this book is the primary introduction to Ramon Llull available in English.Llull is a difficult figure to come to terms with, for various reasons, and I must admit that I left this book feeling a bit more confused than I was when I started.

There are two components of this book:Llull's writings themselves (not by any means all of them, which would require much more space, and Professor Bonner has already released a two-volume anthology in addition to this book) and Professor Bonner's commentary.From the very start, it's difficult for us to even begin to conceive of Llull's place in his own world.Llull was born in Mallorca, which had only been reconquered from the Muslims a few years before his birth, thus raising the prospect that he experienced some cultural crosscurrents in his youth.He spent his earlier years as a courtier, and more specifically as a troubador, which also could raise suspicions about his background.After a conversion experience, Llull became a tertiary Franciscan, a designation defining a semi-monastic state not necessarily in permanent orders; presumably, he was considered too old to enter regular orders (he was past thirty).He spoke Arabic fluently, and a great deal of his work is in Arabic.

Professor Bonner defines him primarily as having one major goal in his life:conversion of the Moors, and defines him as a "polemicist", in the terms of the day.On reading his works, one feels that the polemic is missing, and in fact he apparently has so much sympathy for Islam that it looks as if he may have been a crypto-Muslim himself.Llull himself cites Sufi influence in some of his work, and one of his major works - "The Book of the Lover and his Beloved" - bears a title that sounds like a direct translation from Arabic.

Llull's major life's work was his "Ars" (which apparently means something in this context like style of presentation) and it is in this area that the book really falls down, in my opinion.Professor Bonner makes constant reference to Llull's "Ars" without ever going into any specific examples as to what it is.It is apparently some system of thought that is supposed to explain all other systems of thought, and it involves the use of diagrams.Based on what I have found in other works it is true that Llull's "Ars" is apparently quite abstruse, and I can only presume that Professor Bonner didn't feel he had enough space to do it justice in this one-volume presentation.However, I was left with a sense that it was either something akin to the Jewish Kabbala or else a thirteenth-century version of Abraham Maslow's diagrams.Neither of these images leaves me any further on.

Llull was both praised and condemned by later generations as an alchemist, a charge which Professor Bonner dismisses by showing that the alchemical works attributed to him were forgeries.Llull has also been beatified by the Vatican, but he has never been canonized; one wonders whether this is was because of the whiff of alchemy in his background or whether his thought was too far out of the Christian mainstream, like Meister Eckhart.

Llull is also considered the founder of Catalan literature, a fact which Professor Bonner devotes no space to, and it would be interesting to place him within this perspective.All in all, I found Professor Bonner's explanations told me too little, and they didn't really prepare me for what I encountered when reading Llull's texts.It would be interesting to see if there is any serious study of Llull's work by a competent Hispanic Arabist on the level of Luce Lopez-Baralt or Father Asin Palacios.

I can't say that the book cleared things up for me.Having said that, I have no recommendation to the reader where he or she should go to find out more.Perhaps Professor Bonner's two-volume work provides more background, but to all appearances it is a specialist work and probably more than the casual reader would care to deal with.There are some websites in Spanish and Catalan that I've encountered that go into some detail regarding the "Ars", but I suspect some New Age revisionism in their content, which is certainly not a charge that can be levelled at Professor Bonner.

In the end, I opt for three stars for the work.If you're interested in Llull this is as good a place to start as any, and better than most, no doubt. ... Read more

Product Description
The colorful life and work of Ramon Llull,the famous Catalan mystic, poet, philosopher,and early proponent of inter-religious dialogue. ... Read more

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Chapters: William of Ockham, Gersonides, Catherine of Siena, Ramon Llull, Pietro D'abano, Thomas Bradwardine, Jean Buridan, Duns Scotus, Nicole Oresme, Giles of Rome, Abner of Burgos, Albert of Saxony, Liu Ji, Profiat Duran, William Crathorn, Marsilius of Inghen, Oxford Calculators, Petrus Aureolus, John of Paris, Walter Burley, Gregory of Rimini, Sophonias, Richard Swineshead, Adam de Wodeham, Samuel Ibn Seneh Zarza, Nicholas of Autrecourt, John of Jandun, William of Heytesbury, Henry Harclay, Robert Holcot, Robert Alyngton, Adalbertus Ranconis de Ericinio, Walter Chatton, John Dumbleton. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 143. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (c. 1265 8 November 1308) was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought. Scotus has had considerable influence on Catholic thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being," that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued scripturally for the Immaculate conception of Mary. Little is known of Scotus' life. He was probably born in 1265, at Duns, in Berwickshire, Scotland. In 1291 he was ordained as a priest in Northampton, England. A note in Codex 66 of Merton College, Oxford, records that Scotus "flourished at Cambridge, Oxford and Paris. He began lecturing on Peter Lombard's Sentences at the prestigious University of P...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=19344947 ... Read more

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Modern histories of medieval culture often assert without qualification that the oral exercise of public eloquence during the European Middle Ages was limited to preaching by the clergy. The classical art of rhetoric supposedly survived only as a written subject for study in the schools. During the past thirty years, however, knowledge of medieval rhetorical theory and practice has grown tremendously. Historians and philologians have devoted particular attention to the relationship between oral and written communication in medieval Europe. Their investigations are beginning to suggest -- not surprisingly -- that interest in eloquence was not confined to the schools or clergy. Secular officials arguing in princely courts or town halls, and laypeople seeking to develop their learning or piety also cultivated an interest in rhetoric.

Given the paucity of testimony available, the New Rhetoric of the Mallorcan lay theologian and philosopher Ramon Llull (1232-1316) offers an exceptional witness to the non-academic and non-clerical concern for eloquence. His proposals for new Christian arts of communication are among the best evidence available for assessing the diffusion of rhetorical doctrines from the cloisters and schools into the courts, town halls, and private chapels of Western Europe around 1300.

Growing interest in Llull's work and in medieval rhetoric have combined to produce this first published edition. The first part on order shows how Llull's entire program attempts to correlate ethical, metaphysical, and linguistic categories into a single system of Anselmian "rightness." The next section on beauty could almost form a complete art of preaching in itself, thanks to the brief compilations of sermon material that it includes. The broad range of discursive elements and techniques in which Llull seeks verbal beauty makes this section very eclectic in scope. Part three on knowledge attempts to explain the diffusion of right linguistic and rhetorical doctrine almost exclusively through the Divine Dignities and other categories of the Great Art. The final section on love consists of ten proverbs regarding loving speech, each explicated with an appropriate exemplum.
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1923. Lull lived back in the 13th century, not long after the days of St. Francis of Assisi, whose disciple he was. His mystic writings are full of the purest and noblest spirituality, compounded with the quintessence of love. Lull was no cloistered visionary. His life was full of romance and adventure, so crowded with incident is it that many pages will not suffice to even summarize its principal happenings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A strange and enigmatic book...
A friend gave me this book a couple of years ago and I find that I return to it again and again.It is a series of 365 short meditations on being in relationship with God. The meditations can be, at times, astoundingly difficult to understand.But every now and then one pops out that is so perfect I am convinced that this crazy Spanish mystic must have been on to something.

If you are trying to deepen your relationship with the Divine, do yourself a favor:Get this book. ... Read more

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Ramon Llull (1232-1316), born on Majorca, was one of the most remarkable lay intellectuals of the thirteenth century. He devoted much of his life to promoting missions among unbelievers, the reform of Western Christian society, and personal spiritual perfection. He wrote over 200 philosophical and theological works in Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. Many of these expound on his "Great Universal Art of Finding Truth," an idiosyncratic dialectical system that he thought capable of proving Catholic beliefs to non-believers.

This study offers the first full-length analysis of his theories about rhetoric and preaching, which were central to his evangelizing activities. It explains how Llull attempted to synthesize commonplace advice about courtly speech and techniques of popular sermons into a single program for secular and sacred eloquence that would necessarily promote love of God and neighbor. Llull's work is remarkable testimony to the diffusion of clerical culture among educated lay-people of his era, and to their enthusiasm for applying that knowledge in the pursuit of learning and piety. This book should find a place on the shelf of every scholar of medieval history, religion, and rhetoric. ... Read more

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Ramon Llull was a highly original medieval writer and thinker. Direct contact with Moslem culture during his early years in Majorca, soon after the Christian reconquest, furnished him with a vision of the "Other" quite unique among medieval European intellectuals. It was not, however, until his thirties that he abandoned the courtly life, immersed himself in theological and philosophical studies and began his sustained campaign of conversion. He travelled on many occasions throughout Europe in search of royal and papal support and undertook several missions to north Africa, in the course of one of which he was stoned and imprisoned. Despite his many travels he found time to compose more than 260 works, in Catalan and Latin, many of which related to his famous 'Art', a method for religious discussion with scientific and logical applications that subsequently influenced Giordano Bruno and Liebniz. When he was almost eighty years old, Llull dictated the story of his life to a group of Carthusians in Paris, leaving us this fascinating autobiography. ... Read more