PREFACE

...hesitant and uncertain in this business, I do not know which side to support. This I do know: Llull was a man devoted to GOD and most burning with zeal for spreading the Holy Roman Church (as the monuments he left to posterity more than sufficiently testify). But I proceed to our intended goal, which is the examination of the Lullian doctrine. I am not unaware that Nicholas Eymerich A 14th-century Inquisitor General of Aragon known for his fierce opposition to Llull. was the first of all who—whether he did so out of ignorance or spurred by the sting of envy, I know not—compiled up to two hundred propositions from Llull's writings which were contrary to the Orthodox faith (as he himself indeed thought). These were presented to Gregory XI, then residing at Avignon, and subjected to Ecclesiastical Censure. Having obtained a Papal Bull through deception original: "subreptionem," a legal term for obtaining a favor by concealing the truth., he condemned the Author together with his Books in a public judgment as infamous with the mark of heresy. This most unjust sentence vehemently inflamed the minds of those who favored Llull; thus they left no stone unturned to bring the causes of the unjust condemnation and the wrongly explained propositions of the condemned doctrine back to the anvil for reshaping. This was finally achieved through the labor of Bernard Ermengand of the Order of Preachers The Dominicans., a Provincial, through twelve most skillful Doctors of Sacred Theology assembled by him for this purpose, with the fairness that was right. Whence in the year 1419, by the authority of Pope Martin V, the German Cardinal of the title of St. Eusebius referring to Cardinal Alemannus of the Holy Roman Church, having maturely considered the matter, finally decided the pending lawsuit of the agitated cause in favor of Llull through a newly obtained Bull via Bernard Castelli, the Bishop. He willed that the Bull of Eymerich, deceitfully extorted from Gregory XI, be held by all as fraudulent, vain, and void. Subsequently, the Council of Trent, at the solicitation of the Spaniards and after the case was reviewed by new Theologians chosen for that purpose, ratified and confirmed this, granting that the Lullian Books could be safely read as being free from all suspicion of heresy. Added to these was the most ample privilege of Emperor Charles V in favor of the Lullian Art, along with other indulgences of the Popes, to which I refer the Reader, as they are attached everywhere to Llull’s works.

By such great favor of the Bulls, it happened that thereafter the Lullian dogmas were viewed with a slightly milder eye. Many, stimulated by a laudable curiosity while they probed the Principles of the Art a little more deeply, found them so far from being discordant with the truth that they instead perceived them as fertile seedbeds of all Arts and Sciences. From there, as if from a certain Trojan Horse, a huge crowd of Commentators soon emerged, although hardly anyone has been found who has been able to fully extricate himself from the hidden darkness of the art, partly because of its unavoidable difficulty, and partly because of its unpolished and obscure style of speaking.