Father Corapi's Biography

The limits of this notice do not permit of more than the barest summary of Ramón’s strange career. Born in 1232, he was apparently the son of one of the military chiefs who in the first part of the thirteenth century succeeded in recon­quering the island of Majorca from its Moslem invaders. He was wealthy, talented, enthusiastic; he married young, but though at the age of thirty he had a little son and daughter and a charming wife, he was shameless in his pursuit of any new face that attracted him. One night, about 1263, when he was busied in composing an ode to his latest inamorata, he suddenly saw beside him the figure of Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross. He was so startled that he could not shake off the impression or go on writing, but had to take refuge in his bed. It was not, however, until this experience had been renewed five separate times that his heart was touched; but, being the man he was, the conversion was thorough. Reflecting on the words “greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends”, his mind, from his unin­terrupted contact with the Moors, turned to the thought of winning them to the service of Christ Jesus. Here was a cause worthy of the sacrifice of all things, even of life itself. He went on a pilgrimage to Compostela and to Rocamadour to obtain the divine guidance. For such a task systematic preparation was needed. He had first of all to make provision for those dependent on him. He gave the rest of his wealth to the poor, and then, after a period of seclusion and prayer, he set about acquiring the knowledge necessary for an intellectual crusade against Moslem philosophy and religion, against Averroes and the Koran. Nine years were spent in learning Arabic and in making other preliminary studies. From the very beginning he had seen the necessity of establishing Catholic religious centres to train missionaries and disputants for the new campaign. This was, he convinced himself, the only way to cope with an outlandish culture of which the average theologian of western Europe knew next to nothing. But though a foundation of this sort—the first missionary college—was later on (in 1276) begun in Majorca at the charges of his good friend, King James II, and confided to the Friars Minor, it seems to have achieved very little.

Meanwhile Ramón pursued his studies and wrote endless books—one of them, a sort of spiritual romance called Blanquerna, has been translated into English. He visited Rome in 1277, in the hope of enlisting the sympathies of the pope, then Paris in 1286, and Genoa in 1290, but always with the purpose of finding at last an opportunity to cross over to Africa himself and begin preaching in Tunis. His fluctuations of mind and resolution are marvellously depicted in the “Contem­porary Life”.

It was at Genoa that, after receiving somewhat of a rebuff in an application to join the Friars Preachers, he finally offered himself to and was accepted by the Franciscans as a tertiary. He was then very ill, but recovered miraculously when in 1292 he caused himself to be carried on board a galley bound for Africa. He realized his dream of preaching in the streets of Tunis, but after imprisonment and much rough treatment at the hands of the Moslems he was soon forcibly deported out of the country and found himself in Naples. Appeals to Pope Boniface VIII at Rome and subsequently to Clement V at Avignon to obtain papal support for his campaign met with very little response. A journey to Cyprus, under a false impression that the khan of Tartary had made himself master of the Saracens in Syria and Palestine, was equally disappointing. Ramón lectured for a while in Paris and then made a second attempt to gain a hearing among the Moors themselves at Bougie in Barbary, but once more, after much ill-usage and a cruel imprisonment, he was deported, and incidentally suffered shipwreck before he reached Italy. Further appeals to the Holy See and to the Council of Vienne in 1311 brought him no encouragement. He spent some time lecturing at Paris, and finally on a third visit to Africa he was stoned at Bougie and left for dead; he was rescued by Genoese sailors, but died on shipboard, within sight of Majorca, on June 29, 1316.

Although Ramón’s whole life was a record of disappointment, his literary activity was incredible. Three hundred and thirteen different treatises are attri­buted to him, most of them in Latin or Catalan, but not a few are in Arabic. Some of his writings have been thought to deserve a note of theological censure, but there is also difficulty in determining in certain cases what is authentically his composi­tion. Nearly all of it gives proof of a tender piety, but he speaks fearlessly of the abuses then prevalent in the Church. Lull is celebrated liturgically by the Friars Minor and others, and Pope Pius XI speaks highly of him in his encyclical letter “Orientalium rerum” (1928), but without according him the title Blessed.

The fullest and most satisfactory bibliography of the subject is the contribution of Fr E. Longpre, in DTC., vol. ix (1926), cc. 1072—1141. The more important biographical material may still he found in the Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. ii, and it is to be noticed that a critical revision of the Latin text of the  “Contemporary Life” has appeared in the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xlviii (1930), pp. 530—178. An admirable translation of the Catalan text has been published in English by E. Allison Peers who has also translated Blanquerna and issued a full biography (Ramón Lull, 1929). The complete works were published in Spain, ed. by P. M. Bataillon and M. Caldentey, in 1948.