Natural theology and natural philosophy in the late Renaissance

Abstract

notion of the better (melius). A second mystical ascent progressed from rational knowledge of comparative perfection to the spiritual knowledge of the superlative (optimum) wherein was true knowledge of God, the optimum et maximum. In Lull’s account, therefore, sensation and reason were both necessary stages in attaining knowledge of God from the observation of nature. By this method, Lull believed that the highest mysteries of the Christian religion could be attained even by the natural man. The Trinity itself was not only possible to discern from nature, but was demonstrated as logically necessary. The attributes of God were plainly manifest in the natural world so that all monotheists – including in particular the Muslims whom Lull was evangelising – could accede to them and follow them to their logical, Christian, conclusions. Though Ramon Lull’s ars was condemned by the Church for a short period in the late fourteenth century, 102 it established itself as one of the most influential philosophies of the Renaissance, heavily influencing (among others) Raymond Sebond, Nicolas Cusanus, and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).103 The Ars magna and Ars brevis were reproduced in both text and diagrammatic form frequently throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. 104 By this at-once mystical and natural route, a comprehensive 101 Lohr, 'Metaphysics', p. 540. 102 Lull’s ars was condemned in Avignon in 1376 and in the University of Paris in 1390, before being absolved in 1416. See Badia et al., 'Centre de Documentacio Ramon Llull,' University of Barcelona, 2011, www.centrellull.ub.edu. 103 Yates reports that Bruno thought that ‘since the divine mind is universally present in the world of nature...the process of coming to know the divine mind must be through the reflection of the images of the world of sense within the mens’ (Yates, Art of memory, p. 257). Bruno’s natural theology, however, was symptomatic of the pantheism for which he was executed for the crime of heresy in 1600. 104 Other Catholic philosophers of the sixteenth century heavily indebted to Lull include the Parisian humanists Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples (c. 1455-1536) and Charles de Bouvelles (1479-1553). Francis Yates has dedicated a volume of essays to Lull’s sixteenth-century following (Frances Amelia Yates, Lull & Bruno, Collected essays (London & Boston, MA: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982). Also see Yates, Art of memory, 189ff.). Many editions of Lull’s work and commentaries thereupon were published in sixteenthand seventeenthcentury France and Italy, such as Bernard de Lavinheta, Explanatio compendiosaque applicatio Artis Raymundi Lulli (1523); Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, In Artem brevem Raymundi Lulli (1533); and Pierre Gregoire, Syntaxis Artis mirabilis (1583-87). Lazarus Zetzner’s 1598 edition of Lull’s entire corpus (Ramon Lull, Opera ea quae ad inventam ab ipso artem universalem (Strasburg, 1598)) was reprinted in 1609 and 1617. A chair of Lullian philosophy and theology was founded by Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros (1436-1517) at the University of Alcala. For these examples of Renaissance Lullism, I am indebted to Badia et al., 'Centre de Documentacio Ramon Llull.’ A full bibliography of editions of Lull’s printed works in the Renaissance can be found in Elies Rogent, Estanislau Duran and Ramon Alos-Moner, Bibliografia de les impressions Lul-lianes