the foregoing sketch, for all its brevity, will have emphasised more forcibly than much argument the practical and the scholarly sides of lull’s temperament. we shall say nothing here of the four hundred and eighty-six treatises[4] which he is known to have written, nor of the thousands of other works, no longer extant if indeed they ever existed, with which he is credited. nor is there need to describe his system and doctrine, at once scholastic and popular in character. the libre de amich e amat, which is here translated, is purely a mystical work, and this essay is concerned with the mystical side of[12] lull’s mind, so wonderfully illumined by the flame which burnt through his long life of self-sacrifice.
the book of the lover and the beloved takes us from the african preachings and the disputations of the sorbonne to those long night-watches and days of retreat which must always have accompanied them, but which we are apt to forget in contemplating that form of activity which the world counts greatest. or the thoughts which the book gives us may first have come to the young convert in the solitude of his monastery and the retreat of mount randa. rosselló, who some sixty years ago first published lull’s poems, interprets a passage from blanquerna as autobiographical. it may well be so.
being then in his hermitage he would rise at midnight, and, opening the windows of his cell, would fall to contemplating the heavens and the stars, and praying with all possible devotion, that his soul might be fixed upon god alone.... after long contemplation and much weeping, his custom was to enter the church and ring for mattins, and when his deacon appeared, to help him say them. at daybreak he celebrated mass with devotion, and spoke of god with his deacon, that on god he might set his love. and as they talked together of god and his works, they both wept for the greatness of the devotion which their argument inspired in them. then the deacon went into the garden and busied himself with the cultivation of the trees in it, while blanquerna left the church to recreate his mind which was wearied by the work he had done, to lift his eyes to the hills, and to let them rest on the plains beneath. feeling rested at last, he would betake himself again to meditation and prayer, and the reading[13] of holy scripture or the great book of contemplation, and so he would be occupied until the hours of terce, sext and nones.... after this he dined ... and went into the garden, visited the spring, or walked in the places he loved most, afterwards giving himself up for a while to sleep in order to gather strength for the labours of the night. on awaking he said vespers with the deacon, and then remained alone, thinking on what pleased him most and was fittest preparation for his hours of prayer. after sunset, he went up to the terrace, and there remained long in devout meditation, his eyes fixed on the heavens and the stars, discoursing with himself on the greatness of god and man’s inconstancies. in this state he remained until he retired to rest, and such was the fervour of his contemplation that even upon his bed he found himself in mystic converse with the all-powerful.
such a background as this we must almost of necessity assume in a life at once so active and so spiritual. no doubt lull was able often to spend weeks, or at the least days, in some sacred retreat, and draw from god and from nature strength and inspiration for his endless tasks. to these seasons of refreshing, it may be supposed, we owe his mystical writings.
of lull’s verses many are narrative or doctrinal: the hymns entitled ‘hours of our lady st. mary’ (horas de nostra dona sancta maria), for example; the ‘sin of adam’ (lo peccat de n’adam), written ‘at the request of the king of majorca’; the short ‘song of ramón’ (lo cant de ramón), and above all the ‘medicine for sin’ (medicina de peccat) and[14] the purely didactic verse ‘application’ of the art general. the collection of a hundred songs on the names of god (els cent noms de deu), on the other hand, is more mystical than doctrinal, and suggests, in matter as well as in title, the mystical treatise ‘of the names of christ’ (de los nombres de cristo) written almost exactly three hundred years later by the salamancan friar, luis de león. mystical too, as well as autobiographical, is the dialogue poem el desconort, ‘made in his old age,’ though its spirit is that of disillusion at the refusal of those in high places to help forward his schemes of evangelisation. but neither of these has either the strength or the beauty of the collection of prose poems here translated, a collection which forms part of the novel-like blanquerna, lull’s chief contribution to mystical literature.
his chief contribution it is, mainly, though not entirely, by virtue of the sections entitled the art of contemplation and our book of the lover and the beloved. blanquerna, as a whole, is a somewhat fantastic, and in places extravagant, religious romance—a religious utopia, if parallels to it must be found, or a catholic pilgrim’s progress. the story is of a certain gallant and wealthy youth named evast, who marries a beautiful and virtuous girl called aloma. they live together in great piety and happiness, but have no children, until aloma in[15] her sorrow prays to god, and a boy, blanquerna, is born to them. the child is brought up with great care, and in the fear of god; and when his father sees that he is a youth of discretion, he resolves to devote himself to the religious life. aloma, however, disapproves, saying that they can both serve god best in the state to which he has called them; they decide in the end to lead lives of greater austerity in their home, and to give blanquerna the oversight of the household. but, on proposing this to the boy, they find that he has resolved to become a hermit.
aloma is grieved, and endeavours to marry blanquerna to a beautiful girl called cana. blanquerna’s reply is to persuade cana to become a nun, while he himself retires to the desert to carry out his resolve. the story then describes circumstantially and with some prolixity the lives of evast and aloma after blanquerna has left them; it passes on to cana, who eventually becomes abbess of her convent; and finally, after some long digressions upon convent life, to the later history of blanquerna, which occupies the rest of the romance.
the second book of blanquerna deals with the hero’s life before he is ordained priest and rises to the rank of abbot in the monastery which he has entered. a digression follows, entitled ‘the book of ave maria,’ purporting to be an account of the[16] devotions to our lady which the hero established. the third book presents him as a bishop, and the fourth as pope.
the various religious ideals presented by lull in succession lead up to the great ideal of his life: the evangelisation of the world. blanquerna’s supreme aim as pope is to strive ‘that all infidels and schismatics may be brought into the union of the holy catholic faith.’ his cardinals are quaintly named after the clauses of the gloria in excelsis deo, and every clause is expounded so as to illustrate the activity which the church should show in converting the heathen.
to the court of the pope comes at length a jester,—one ramón the fool,—none other, of course, than lull himself. ‘i would be as a fool,’ he says, ‘to do reverence and honour to jesus christ, and by reason of my exceeding love i would know no measure in my speech.’ thus disguised, the author can write much which he might not otherwise have dared to put into words. and above all he can deliver himself of the shame he feels because the head of the church will grant so little aid to those who aim at following christ’s last recorded command to convert all nations.
the story ends with the decision of blanquerna, the pope now grown old in the service of the church and the conversion of the heathen, to[17] renounce his high office, retire to a hermitage, and devote his last days to contemplation and prayer. his new life is described in detail, and it is interwoven with this description that we come upon the book of the lover and the beloved and the art of contemplation.
the former is by far the simpler and more appealing of the two, the art of contemplation being considerably longer and full of doctrinal teaching. it is, nevertheless, still read, less for its didactic passages than for its close relation with the whole romance, its mystical aspect, and in particular its prayers, which are of great beauty. the book of the lover and the beloved is mystical throughout. it was written, the author himself declares, ‘that the hearts of men might be moved to true contrition, their eyes to abundance of tears, and their wills and understandings to loftier flights in the contemplation of god.’ how well it attains its object, and how truly it reflects the mystic’s being, the reader must judge.
