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SIX CENTURIES OF ISLAM

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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

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THE DAY MISSIONS LIBRARY

RAYMOND LULL
AND
SIX CENTURIES OF ISLAM

Rev. H. U. WEITBRECHT, Ph.D., D.D.

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
LONDON: NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.

STATUE OF RAYMOND LULL AT TALMA, MAJORCA.

RAYMOND LULL
AND
SIX CENTURIES OF ISLAM

BY THE
Rev. H. U. WEITBRECHT, Ph.D., D.D.

LONDON
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C
BRIGHTON : 139, nokth stkeet
I915

The books named below give more details of Raymond
Lull's times, life and works.
Raymond Lull : The Illuminated Doctor. A Study in
Medieval Missions. By W. T. A. jBarber, D.D.
Pp. 172. London : Charles H. Kelly. 1903. 2s. 6d.
Raymond Lull : First Missionary to the Moslems. By
S. M. SwemER. Pp. 172. New York; Punk and
Wagnalls. 1902. 3s.
Le bienheureux Raymond Lulle. Par Marius Andre.
Pp. 216. Paris : Lecoffre. 2nd ed. 1900.
History of the Christian Religion and Church. By Dr.
August Neander. See Fifth Period ; First Sec
tion (Expansion and Arrest of the Christian Church) .
History of Mediaeval Philosophy. By Maurice de
Wulf. Transl. by P. Coffey. Longmans. 1909.
Mediaeval Philosophy. By Frederic Denison
Maurice. These two contain chapters on the philosophy of
Raymond Lull.
Les Croisades. ParBREHTER. Paris: Lecofire. 1907.
A History of Christian Missions In the Middle Ages.
By G. F. Maclear. Macmillans.
See Chapter XVI. on Missions to the Saracens and
Mongols.

RAYMOND LULL

The year 1915 finds Christian people in four conti
nents commemorating the six hundredth anniversary
of the death of Raymond Lull. Who was he, and
why should his death be so widely remembered
after so long a time ? A glance at his life and
times gives the answer.
At the time of Raymond Lull's birth in 1235,
the great series of campaigns which we know as
the Crusades were drawing towards their close.
More than six centuries had passed since Mohammed
died in 632. He had brought the pagans of Arabia
to the worship of one God, and his successors went
forth to other lands, at first mostly Christian, to
enforce the same message and to proclaim that
Mohammed had superseded all previous prophets,
including the Christ. Their armies came with this
message against peoples whose Christianity was
largely corrupted and divided into warring sects,
some of which helped the invader. The alterna
tive to acceptance of Islam was for pagans the
sword, for Jews and Christians the payment of a
yearly poll-tax and a degraded position in state
and society, for, wherever the faith of Islam con
quered, there the law of the Koran must govern the
land no less than the religion. 3

4 RAYMOND LULL
During these six hundred years the Arab nation,
known in the West (from a district of Arabia) as
Saracens, had built up a great empire. In the
thirteenth century this included, counting from
west to east, a great part of Spain, the whole of
North Africa, Syria, Mesopotamia, much of Asia
Minor and Central Asia, and Persia, while in North
India Moslem rulers held sway over a population
chiefly pagan. By that time the Arab power was
divided and greatly decayed through inroads of
Turks and Mongols who presently took over most
of what had belonged to it ; but it was still strong
in Syria and Egypt. The chief ruler of the Mo
hammedan world was known as the khalifa or
caliph, that is the successor, by divine right, of the
prophet and prince of Mecca, and in this capacity
he claimed (and still claims) to be the guardian of
" the two holy places," viz., Mecca with Medina,
and Jerusalem. The two former the Moslem
specially reveres as the birth-place and burial-
place of his prophet ; but the latter also he estee.ns
as the centre of the Jewish religion and the city of
the prophet Jesus. The Arab rulers of the Holy
Land had a considerable number of Christian
subjects who paid their devotions at Jerusalem
and Bethlehem, and besides them, Christian pil
grims came in large numbers from the countries of
Europe to worship there. It was the oppressions
and exactions practised on these pilgrims by the
Moslem rulers of Palestine which gave the first
occasion for the Crusades. In 1096, after a council
held at Clermont, Pope Urban II. summoned the

RAYMOND LULL 5
princes and peoples of Europe to a war for the
deliverance of the holy places from the grasp of
the infidel. The assembly answered : " God wills
it ! " and armies were mustered from every land,
the warriors being marked with a red cross on breast
or shoulders. Seven great campaigns were under
taken, and during two centuries it is reckoned that
not less than two million soldiers marched east
wards, of whom many, including kings and em
perors, perished. The Holy Land, with parts of
Asia Minor, North Africa and Mesopotamia, was
conquered, and a kingdom of Jerusalem was set up,
which stood for a time. But the Christian rulers
were divided among themselves, and one by one the
territories which they had gained were lost, till the
fall of Acre in 1291, accompanied by the massacre
of 60,000 Christians, closed this chapter of history.
During all this time, and for long afterwards,
Islam and Christianity stood against each other
less as religions than as empires. The religion of
Mohammed had from the first been spread by the
armies of Islam, and the Christian peoples, sunk in
a condition of great ignorance, scarcely realised any
other way of resisting Islam than by the sword ;
in fact they were almost entirely ignorant of the
history of Mohammed and the teachings of his
religion. But without such knowledge it was
impossible to resist those evils of Islam that really
matter, or to learn the lessons which God intended
it to teach to an unfaithful church. Mohammed
laid stress most rightly on the unity of God as
against the worship of images which even some

6 RAYMOND LULL
Christians indulged in, and against heretics who
taught that the Holy Trinity consisted of God the
Father, God the Mother and God the Son. He
also taught belief in the Angels of God, in His Pro
phets and their Books, including the Old and the
New Testaments, in the Day of Judgment, and in
the Decrees of God which ordain both good and
evil. But he denied the divinity of our Lord and
also His death and resurrection, and he quite ignored
the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation, the
Atonement, and the work of the Spirit — those facts
of revelation through which we are brought into
union with God — were the ones which he explicitly
denied, while he claimed to supersede Jesus Christ
and His revelation, and maintained that the Koran
was the final scripture which did away with all
that had gone before. In his teachings about
the duties of religion, Mohammed took over much
from the Jewish and Christian religions. Prayer,
fasting and alms-giving are three of the main duties
of Islam ; and to these is added confession of the
faith (" there is no God save Allah : Mohammed is
the apostle of Allah "), and pilgrimage to the Ka'ba
shrine at Mecca. But he also gave permission for
polygamy and for divorce on very easy terms, like
wise for slavery, and he positively encouraged the
use of force for the promotion of religion, while he,
professing to be the final apostle of God, was
by his own confession morally imperfect. This
religion, which took over so much of the truth of
former revelations, while it missed their fulfilment
in Christ, could only be overcome by understanding

RAYMOND LULL 7
its actual strength and weakness, and by setting
forth both in teaching and in life the Saviour of
mankind as He really is.
There were a very few men in the Middle Ages
who saw this truth and tried to carry it into effect.
One was St. Francis of Assisi, who went to preach
the Gospel to the Sultan of Egypt in 1219. He was
courteously treated, but dismissed with the plain
intimation that he would not be again admitted.
A well-known teacher of that time, Peter the Vener
able, had the Koran translated into Latin, and wrote
tracts for Mohammedans, in which he reasoned with
them kindly ; but the one man of the Middle Ages
who gave his life to the work of preaching Christ to
the Moslem in the spirit of love and with the help of
adequate knowledge was " the enlightened teacher,"
Raymond Lull.
In his youth and early manhood no one would
have been thought less likely to do this than Raymond
Lull. He belonged to a noble Spanish family living
on the island of Majorca off the southern coast of
Spain. He became seneschal of the royal court of
Majorca and gave his leisure partly to literature,
partly to pleasure. He was happily married, yet
he lived a dissolute life amid luxurious surround
ings. Had he thus continued, Raymond Lull's
name would have lived in the history of literature,
for his songs and stories were widely read and still
survive in early Spanish literature. But God had
provided some better thing for him. He was writing
one day a sonnet in praise of a lady whom he was
pursuing with amorous intentions. Looking up for

8 RAYMOND LULL
inspiration he became conscious of the vision of
Christ upon the cross regarding him with tender
sorrow. His life was changed. He determined to
give himself to the service of the Crucified, and
meditating on the ill success of the so-called soldiers
of the Cross in vanquishing the infidel, he resolved
to assay the conversion of the Moslem with the
weapons of love and learning. After the manner
of the time Raymond left wife and child and attached
himself to the Franciscan order as a tertiary ; that
is, a lay brother remaining in secular life.
Having taken his resolve Lull carried it out
systematically. In the Europe of his day all
learned work was done in Latin; but Lull saw clearly
that, in order to reach the Moslem, he must master
his language, so he set himself to study Arabic, and
with this in view he purchased a Moorish slave.
When the man found for what purpose his master
was using him he turned upon him and blasphemed
Christ. Lull forgot himself and struck the man,
who then attacked his master and wounded him
with his knife. For this he was thrown into prison,
and there, dreading vengeance, he committed suicide
to Lull's great sorrow. With other help Lull con
tinued his studies for nine years, for it was his
intention to qualify also as a teacher of theology and
philosophy so that he might inspire others also to
take up the work to which his own life was given.
And those nine years were a time of prayer not less
than of study.
It was inevitable that Lull's studies should be
marked by the limitations of an age whose scholar-

RAYMOND LULL 9
ship was utterly ignorant of natural science and
moved in a sterile routine of formal logic ; but the
sincerity and the prayer which went with it made
it a real force for good. It was his belief that a
method could be found by which all thinking men,
and especially Saracen unbelievers, could be irre
sistibly convinced of the truth of Christianity. In
search of this he withdrew to a mountain, and spent
eight days in prayer and meditation. Then the con
ception of a universal system of knowledge flashed
upon him, which he entitled "the Universal Art."
Having sketched out the plan of his work at home,
he spent four months more in solitude and fervent
prayer that God would use the conception which
He had vouchsafed for the furtherance of His
kingdom. This "Universal Art" formed the groundwork
of the lectures on theology and philosophy which
Lull presently delivered in the universities of Paris
and Montpelier. He speedily became a popular and
influential professor, whom his many disciples hailed
as doctor illuminatus, the Enlightened Teacher. To
us, now reading his works, this enthusiasm may
seem strange, for the method of the "Universal
Art " consisted in the demonstration of spiritual
truth by logical formulas with the help of mathe
matical figures. But his arguments were addressed
to opponents who were dominated by the same
limited philosophy. The importance of these argu
ments consists in the fact that they represented an
utterly new method of approach to the Moslem by
love and persuasion, instead of by force. When in

10 RAYMOND LULL
1296 Lull completed his book on the "Universal
Art," he wrote : " On bended knee, and in all
humility, we beg that all would adopt this method
[of persuasion] ¦ for, of all ways of converting un
believers and regaining the Holy Land, this is the
easiest and the most in accord with Christian love,
and far mightier than others." Moreover, Lull did
a real service to the cause of Christian truth by
combatting, with all his power, the followers of the
Moslem philosopher, Averroes, who maintained that
what was false in philosophy might be true in
theology. Against this, Lull's system, with all its
faults, stood for the position that truth is one.
The influence which Lull gained by his writings
and lectures he first used in setting forward the train
ing of missionaries for the Saracen world. In 1276 he
started at Miramar in Majorca a school for the study
of Arabic and geography. Later he urged the univer
sity of Paris to found chairs for the teaching of Greek
(then almost unknown in Europe), Arabic and the
Tatar language ; Arabic in order to reach Moslems
with the Gospel, and Tatar in order to convert to
Christianity a nation then still heathen, but which
Lull saw was likely soon to be swallowed up by
Islam, as actually happened later. Three times did
Lull visit Rome and once Avignon, when the pope
had removed there on account of the great schism,
and tried to move the head of Western Christendom
to take regular measures for the evangelisation of the
Moslem. Among other things he advocated the
establishment of several monastic colleges for the
study of missionary languages. But even though

RAYMOND LULL II
the crusading spirit was waning the idea of a spiritual
conflict could not yet displace it, and the popes did
nothing. The council which was held at Vienne in
France in 1311 gave Lull a readier hearing, and
issued a decree for the establishment of professor
ships of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldee in
various universities, but not much came even of
this. Lull's literary activity was enormous. Be
sides poems and stories in his own vernacular, the
Catalan dialect of Spanish, his Latin works on
philosophy and theology are over two hundred in
number. This combination of authorship in the
language of learning and in the tongue of the
common people was rare in his or in any age, and it
is specially important in missionary work.
All this learning and influence Lull cast unre
servedly into the scale for the promotion of his
great lifework. His main endeavours were directed
to the region of Tunis which at that time had pretty
active commercial intercourse with Italy. By the
time that he had been lecturing four years in Paris, his
eloquent appeals had aroused enthusiasm, if not much
imitation ; and his resolve in 1291 to embark at Genoa
for Tunis as a missionary to the Saracens was hailed
with applause. But as the day of embarkation came
nearer his courage quailed at the prospect of facing
the fierce fanaticism of the Moslem. He dared not
embark, and the vessel sailed without him. Lull
felt that he was reprobate and sank into a fever
which slowly wasted him. His friends would have
had him go home, but he felt that the only cure
was to go forward and implored them to put him on

12 RAYMOND LULL
the next vessel bound for Tunis. They did so, and
before he had arrived at his destination he was well.
The Bey, partly through the influence of Christian
merchants at Tunis, received him honourably as a
Christian philosopher. He was allowed to meet the
leading Moslem divines for public discussion, and
it would seem that his long study of Arabic had told,
for he was able effectively to set forth the Christian
doctrine of the divine attributes and other theological
topics. Apparently there were no outbursts of
bigotry, and Lull's scholarship and saintly character
began to produce an effect on his hearers which
alarmed the authorities. He was accused to the
Bey of blasphemy, and thrown into prison. Tried
by the shari'a, or Moslem law, he was sentenced to
death, but the influence of friends and consideration
for Christian powers procured his release, on condition
that he should leave Tunis, never to return. Lull
was duly embarked on a vessel bound for Italy, but
the desire to witness to the Moslem was strong upon
him, and he managed to escape to another vessel
lying in the harbour. There he remained hidden
for months in the hope of landing once more. Mean
while he wrote one of his philosophical works, but
eventually he was forced to return to Naples.
In the year 1300 Lull returned for a time to his
own island of Majorca. There he succeeded in con
verting a considerable number of Moslems, who had
remained since a former Mohammedan conquest ;
and this was the chief permanent result of his efforts
as an evangelist. From Majorca he went on to
Cyprus, but there the king was in no mind to risk

RAYMOND LULL 13
the stirring up of strife between his Christian and
Moslem subjects. The missionary went on as far
as Armenia in the hope of promoting a mission to
the Tatars • but it does not appear that this effort
met with success. In 1306 Lull again made for
North Africa, but this time his destination was the
port of Bugia, 300 miles west of Tunis. Here he
went boldly forth into the city square, preaching
and discussing publicly. He was soon imprisoned,
and for some six months kept in confinement. His
captors all this time did their best by arguments and
threats and enticements to bring over the zealous
Nazarene to Islam. At last the ruler, partly out of
respect for him, partly for political reasons, set him
free, strictly commanding him to leave the country
for ever. But the veteran felt that he must obey
God rather than man. He longed to strengthen
the converts whom he had made on his first visit
to Bugia, and he longed too for the crown of martyr
dom. Remembering his first failure, he writes :
" Although, O God, I am unworthy of dying for
Thee, nevertheless I do not give up the hope of
obtaining this holy and precious death." Once
again, therefore, at the age of eighty, he left his
native island for Bugia in August, 1314. Some
months he did actually spend in quiet, exhorting
and teaching his hidden disciples. But at length
he could not be restrained from coming forth to
preach publicly, nor did he conceal his identity.
The fanaticism of the mob was roused, and they
stoned him to death on the seashore on the 30th
June, 1315. His friends were allowed to carry his

14 RAYMOND LULL
body back to Majorca, where it rests in the church
of St. Francis at Palma. His death sealed the truth
of his words : "He who loves not, lives not j he
who lives by the Life, cannot die."
Another six hundred years have passed in the
history of Islam since the martyrdom of Raymond
Lull. The Arab dominion was replaced by the
Turkish, which overthrew the ancient Eastern
Empire of Rome when Constantinople fell in 1453.
For two centuries after this the Turk was the terror
of south-eastern Europe. He ruled over Hungary
and part of Poland, and Buda-Pest was for a century
and a half the capital of a Turkish province. But
since then the Turkish Empire has steadily decayed,
followed by the other great Moslem power, the
Mughal empire of India, and in our own day we see
almost the whole of the Mohammedan world under
the rule of " Christian " powers. The consequences
of this are momentous.
It means, in the first place, that the barriers
placed by force and ignorance between the Christian
and the Moslem world in the days of Raymond Lull
are rapidly giving way. The preacher of the Gospel
is now free to go to three-fourths of the Moslems of
the world and to deliver his message to all who wish
to hear it. The Old and New Testaments have been
translated into all the important languages spoken
by Mohammedans, and are widely read by them,
and in these same languages a Christian literature is
being created. Christian education is widely made
use of by Moslems in India, Turkey and other lands.
The western science and culture, against which the

RAYMOND LULL 15
Moslem world had barricaded itself for many cen
turies, is irresistibly overflowing it. The old idea
that Moslem religion and Moslem rule must be
necessarily linked together is yielding to the force
of circumstances, and in the present war we see
the Moslems of the world ranged on either side, in
accordance with what they regard as their temporal
interests, both for and against what was hitherto
the leading Moslem power. Christian teaching has
modified their ideals of conduct. War for the faith
no longer rouses the old enthusiasm j modern
teachers maintain that the Koran discountenances
polygamy and slavery though it does not actually
forbid them. Medical missions have shown the
Moslem in a practical way that the Nazarene is
animated by no feelings of enmity towards him,
while in arts and sciences the Christian is at present
far ahead. Many thousands of Moslems in Asia and
Africa have entered the Christian church, and not a
little Christian literature has been produced by them.
But there is another side to the picture. In
lands where the Moslem and the pagan were formerly
in deadly conflict, especially in Africa, the peace
and commercial intercourse following on the rule of
western powers has opened the way for the Moslem,
carrying his religion with his trade, to influence his
pagan neighbour and bring him into the pale of
Islam, and in his readiness to use this opportunity
he is an example to us. Islam provides an " easy
way " for the animist ; he may retain his polygamy,
his magic, his blood-feuds 1 and so the number of
converts yearly made from among these peoples by

l6 RAYMOND LULL
Islam in all probability largely exceeds the number
who accept the Gospel. The modern teachers of
Islam, too, though they tone down the moral code
of the faith to suit the prejudices of the West, yet
speciously maintain that permissive polygamy and
divorce are suited to the needs of human nature
and avoid the social evils of western lands. Little
as this is borne out by the moral and social conditions
of India or Egypt, such teachings reinforce the
attacks being made from other quarters on the
axioms of Christian morality which have hitherto
been accepted on all sides. The same class of persons
claim that Islam, having rejected the mysteries of
the Trinity and the Atonement, and believing in a
prophet who did no miracles, shows that there is
little or no need of the supernatural in religion.
In fine, the present situation reminds us that the
Moslem world is affecting the Christian no less
really than it did in the days of Raymond Lull,
when it loomed so large on the political horizon.
And his life reminds us that we have to rely upon
the same forces which moved him — the under
standing and the love of our opponent. We must
never forget that Islam owes its destructive force
to the fault of the Christian church which, in its
early days, had distorted the image of the Christ.
Had Mohammed met with the pure faith of the New
Testament and an undivided Church, it may well be
that he would have become a propagator instead of
an opponent of the Gospel. ' Our task is to show Christ
as He really .'", in life and word, to the Moslem world.
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Chauncy Maples, Second Bishop of Likoma. By the Rev.
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