COMMENTARY ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BOOKS OF LULL

Ramon Lull (c. 1232–1316) was a Majorcan philosopher and mystic who created a "Great Art" (Ars Magna) using logic and combinatorics to prove theological truths. Bruno was one of the most famous Renaissance "Lullists."

FIRST SECTION.

CHAPTER 1. THE PROPOSED SUBJECT. original: "Q. propositum. Caput 1." The "Q" in these headings is likely an abbreviation for "Quaestio" (Question) or "Quod" (That), a common Scholastic convention.

Rejecting all the vanity of bombastic speech original: "sermonis ampullati," literally "puffed-up" or "swollen" language, let us take up the universal and primary efficient cause, the particular and proximate agent, the material cause 10 which disposes the first, the subject of consideration, and finally the parts, form, and goal of this most worthy architecture and mastery.

3v

CHAPTER 2. THE PRIMARY EFFICIENT CAUSE.

The universal efficient cause of the Lullian art is the extrinsic active intellect. In the philosophy of the time, the "active intellect" was the power that turned potential thoughts into actual knowledge. "Extrinsic" suggests it acts upon the individual mind from a higher source. It relates to the illumination of the mind itself in no different a way than the daytime star The Sun—by whose aid all things that are seen are made visible—relates to the external 15 eye. By its operation, things that are first only visible in potentiality are made visible in actuality, so that from there the sensitive faculty, having been immediately stirred, is awakened and informed; the cause of that [intellect], which never...