Free For Lust of Knowing by Robert Irwin Page A

a master, became very angry. After biding his time for a few days, he went for Lull with a knife, crying, ‘Now you shall die!’ He succeeded in wounding Lull, before Lull wrested the knife from him. The Moor committed suicide in prison.
    Lull spent nine years studying Arabic and Islam in Majorca. There was some urgency in his studies, for he feared that the Mongols, who at that time had conquered most of Asia, including Iran and Iraq, would convert to Islam unless Christian missionaries reached them first. His earliest works were all written in Arabic:
The Compendium of the Logic of al-Ghazali, The Book of Contemplation
and
The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men
. He also translated al-Ghazali’s logic into rhymed Catalan verse. Since Lull had encountered the writings of the Sufi mystical thinker al-Ghazali (
c.
1033–1111) and examined his logic early on in his studies, Sufism exercised a strong influence on Lull’s subsequent writings. Lull was a staggeringly prolific writer and it has been calculated that he wrote approximately two hundred and fifty books. Only a few of these works will be discussed here.
The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men
features a debate between a Christian, a Saracen and a Jew in front of a neutral Gentile. The Saracen’s prayer is accurately described, as are the main points of Islamic doctrine. Lull claimed that he relied for his information on the Qur’an,
Hadith
(reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) and on commentaries on both. Lull’s Christian spokesman stressed the materialistic nature of the Muslim notion of paradise, but the Saracen replied that there is also a spiritual glory in paradise and this consists of the vision and contemplation of God. The Saracen tried and failed with the argument that, since Muhammad is so widely revered, God must have approved this reverence andtherefore Muhammad is indeed a Prophet. The Saracen was the last to speak in the disputation, but the Gentile departed without pronouncing a verdict. The three resolved to continue to debate until they should be all of one mind. It is possible that
The Book of the Gentile
was modelled on an unidentified Arabic source. 54
    Besides writing many treatises on theology and philosophy, Lull also wrote a novel.
Blanquerna
is a missionary romance, in which the eponymous hero decides as a young man to become a hermit. His dismayed parents try to use the daughter of a friend to lure him away from this austere path, but their encounter only results in his converting her to a religious vocation. She becomes a nun, while Blanquerna wanders through many strange lands looking for the right place to build his hermitage. Like Bunyan’s pilgrim, he faces all sorts of trials and has many encounters with allegorical personages. Eventually he elects instead for the monastic life and he rises to become first abbot of his monastery and then a bishop and finally pope. After years of presiding over the Church as a reforming pope, he resigns the Papacy and returns to his original goal and becomes a hermit. In retirement, he writes two books,
The Book of the Lover and the Beloved
and
The Art of Contemplation
. The book ends abruptly with the appearance of the emperor who is looking for Blanquerna and is guided to his hermitage. 55
    Blanquerna
’s rambling narrative is studded with fables and short stories most of which seem to derive from Arabic originals. The boxing of tales within tales was characteristic of medieval Arabic literature and is found in such well-known story collections as
Kalila wa-Dimna
and
The Thousand and One Nights. The Book of the Lover and the Beloved
, which is boxed within
Blanquerna
, and which deals with the approach of the mystic to God who is the ‘Beloved’, was, according to Lull, made ‘according to the manner of the Sufis’ and, as is the case with
The Book of the Gentile
, it is possible that it was modelled on a lost Arabic