A reading of Ramon Llull's «Regles introductòries a la pràctica de l’Art demostrativa»

Abstract

A not negligible part of Ramon Llull’s poems was craft to facilitate memorizing the conceptual and operational foundations of his Art. The latter is a complex intellectual tool and its creator was a supporter of didactic obscurity. Besides, the effort that the Art’s users are asked to make is indissociable from the practice of the first intention, i.e., understanding and loving God. That is why the poems created to learn the Art and put it into practice seem, at a first glance, good examples of trobar clus. The reading proposed in this article tries to make more leu the content of the Regles that Llull created to ease the application of his Art demostrativa, the central user’s manual of the quaternary phase of the Art. These two closely related works provide evidence for Llull’s interest in the dissemination of his scientific thought in the vernacular sphere.