1308 / Miscellanea Mediaevalia Bd.35 (PDF)

Ramon Llull in 1308: Prison, Shipwreck, Art, and Logic (p. 609-610)


Anthony Bonner (Palma de Mallorca)


For Ramon Llull 1308 was a very special year. Not only did it follow a dramatic year in which he was stoned while proselytizing in North Africa, imprisoned, and then shipwrecked on his return to Europe, but in its own way it was a kind of annus mirabilis, and this in two ways. In the first place, it was probably the most productive year of an extraordinarily productive career - one in which he finished thirteen works (see Appendix I). And secondly, it was a pivotal year in his presentation of three different approaches to the task which for him was fundamental: the development of techniques capable of converting non-Christians.

The dramatic events of the year before occurred on his second voyage to North Africa, strikingly different from the first he had undertaken in 1293, fourteen years previously. Then he had gone to Tunis, where he had engaged the local doctors of the law in rational and pacific discussions on the merits of their various religions. When it became clear that his arguments were not completely unconvincing, he was simply asked to leave. All this was in striking contrast to his voyage of 1307, to the town of Bougie (or Bejaya) in presentday Algeria. There, as the ,Vita coaetania‘, an account of his life he dictated to Parisian monks near the end of his life, says, „In the main square of the city, Ramon, standing up and shouting in a loud voice, burst out with the following words: ,The Christian religion is true, holy, and acceptable to God; the Saracen religion, however, is false and full of error, and this I am prepared to prove‘.“ This was the only time in his life he used such provocative tactics. Why he did it, we don’t know; it might have been an attempt to try the Franciscan model of gaining adherence by showing a willingness to face martyrdom. In any case, the reaction

Andreas Speer und David Wirmer, Universität zu Köln.