Essays in Medieval Studies
3
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The Natural Rhetoric of Ramon Llull
Mark D. Johnston
The Catalan theologian and philosopher Ramon Llull (1232-1316) is one of the most unusual figures of the later Middle Ages.1 His career is typically eccentric in the best medieval fashion. The
son of a merchant nobleman on the island of Mallorca, he was raised at the court of Aragon,
where he became a royal official; sometime around 1263 he experienced a profound religious
awakening that left him committed to one great goal spreading the Christian Faith among
nonbelievers by proving philosophically the truth of its beliefs to them. After several years of
academic preparation (how and what is still unclear), he spent the rest of his long life engaged in
missionary journeys to infidel lands, even reaching Armenia in 1301, visiting kings and popes in
order to promote his plans, and writing nearly 300 works in Latin, Arabic, and his native
Catalan.
The foundation of all Llull's works is his peculiar system for
philosophical argument, the so-called Great Universal Art of Finding Truth,2 which he claimed as a divine revelation and
which is indeed so idiosyncratic that it easily appears to be a wholly original creation. The most
notorious feature of this General Art is Llull's selection of nine attributes of the Christian Godhead
as fundamental components of all being and knowledge. He designates these Divine Dignities, or
Absolute and Relative Principles as he variously calls them, with the letters B through K of the
alphabet. By arranging these letters in circular and tabular figures, Llull generates double or
triple
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combinations of the letters, and these
combinations are supposed to symbolize exhaustively all theological and philosophical
propositions as expressions of Christian truth. Although the basis of Llull's General Art is patently
Neoplatonic and his arguments typically resemble those of twelfth-century speculative
theologians, various modern scholars have sought to discover a genuine formal validity, in Llull's
General Art3 and have even proclaimed it a
precursor of modern symbolic logic.4 Other
less enthusiastic critics have concluded that Llull's General Art relies fundamentally on arguments
from analogy and proportion, which most readily express a Neoplatonic metaphysics of
participation, proportion, and resemblance.5 While this conclusion seems fundamentally correct, it does not by
itself explain exactly how or why Llull constructs the arguments that he does. In order to
understand fully his method, another, nondiscursive tenet of Llull's philosophy must be
recognized. This is his doctrine of the "two intentions," set forth very early in his career and
repeated, or .simply assumed, by all his later work.6 According to Llull, every created being bears in its nature the
obligations directly to serve, honor, and know its Creator or, indirectly, to contribute to these
ends.7 These two intentions evidently
combine Augustine's famous distinction between use and enjoyment8 with Anselm's doctrine of rectitudo9 and apply them universally to every creature. The practical
realization of this application comprises the whole work of Llull's career. All the versions of his
General Art and his other writings represent one global effort to reinterpret spiritually, as moral
allegory or "moralization" in the Scholastic sense, all of creation. Llull regarded this project as an
especially efficacious means of turning the arts and sciences to the service of Christian truth,page 176
and he attempted to write new plans, based on his General
Art, for each of the seven liberal arts and other Scholastic sciences. The fact that Llull did not
have formal Scholastic training and that his knowledge of these fields evidently derived almost
entirely from vernacular translations or Latin encyclopedias made such a task much easier and
explains the popularizing character of his work, which he regularly believed would make truth
more accessible to laymen. In a forthcoming study of Llull's logical doctrines, I show how his
accounts of this art, which include such peculiar features as syllogisms with tautological premises,
are only comprehensible as a popularizing "moralization" of the rudiments of Aristotelian logic.10 In this study, I wish to show how a similar
explanation is possible for Llull's accounts of rhetoric, which display equally unusual features.
Although Llull treats the rhetorical arts in many of his writings, my comments here are based
primarily on his one major rhetorical work, the Rethorica nova, a treatise evidently begun
early in his career but only finished in 1303.11 The Rethorica nova divides its subject under four
rubrics Order (Ordo), Beauty (Pulchritudo), Knowledge (Scientia), and
love (Caritas) and I will use these to organize my own analysis, explaining how Llull
attempts to "moralize" rhetorical practice into a kind of naturally and therefore irrefutably
persuasive communication, taking that word in its literal sense of "sharing."
The most prominent category in Llull's accounts of rhetoric is
unquestionably Beauty. He regularly and unequivocally identifies the beauty of words with the
beauty of the things that they name. One example from his Ars generalis ultima of 1308 is
sufficient: "April and May ... are more beautiful words
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than ... October and November because they signify flowers and leaves and
birdsong and the renewal of the seasons and growing things, while October and November do not
at all."12 This beauty obviously covers
both the denotative and connotative value of words, regarded in the broadest manner possible.
Indeed, it is the breadth of Llull's perspective that allows him to embrace under the general
heading of Beauty a mass of commonplace medieval grammatical and rhetorical lore as well as his
own highly idiosyncratic doctrines of verbal beauty. Examples of commonplace precepts are the
display of truth, courage, affection, humility, controlled gesture, suitable dress, and smooth
diction that ornament the speaker and his discourse,13 as Classical authorities and medieval preaching manuals habitually
insist;14 another is the use of appropriate
comparisons, exempla, or proverbs,15 as contemporary sermon and poetry theorists alike advise;16 still another is the fitting modification,
called determinatio in twelfth-century artes poetriae,17 of nouns by adjectives or verbs by adverbs suitable to them.18 Considered in the company of these
commonplace doctrines, Llull's new procedures are very different, to say the least, and indeed
seem almost wholly incompatible with the practice of those medieval language arts. For example,
he claims that the sentence "Beautiful is the queen" is ugly and disordered because it does not
place the noun before the adjective, in their order of "dignity";19 or, he states that the sentence "the queen and the servant-girl are
very lovely" is not beautiful, but that the sentence "the queen and the noblewoman are very
lovely" is beautiful, evidently because the social ranks of the latter are more comparable;20 or, he explains that the sentence "the
beautiful queen is not good" is more beautiful if rephrased aspage
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"It is disturbing that the beautiful queen of great dignity and high position, as the
wife of the king, should be defiled by sin, since through the stain of sin all beauty is made foul";21 finally, he argues in his Ars generalis
ultima that phrases using the superlative degree of adjectives are always more beautiful than
those using the comparative and those using the comparative than those using the positive.22 Considered broadly, Llull's category of
Beauty perhaps corresponds to the traditional rhetorical canon of style, which the artes
poetriae especially developed and may even recall the work of preaching theorists such as
Robert of Basevorn, who labels all rhetorical devices "ornaments."23 Nonetheless, I think that it is obvious from the examples cited that
Llull's view depends fundamentally on his referential conception of verbal beauty as the
manifestation in words of the beauty or value of the things that they name. Llull clearly regards
this Beauty as a transcendental feature of being, but his explanation of its metaphysical status is so
vague, as subsequent examples will show, that it would be hazardous to claim any source for his
views in specific Franciscan authorities or other Scholastics who also treated the transcendental
status of beauty.24
It is interesting to observe, however, that Llull invariably
associates Beauty with his second most prominent rhetorical category, Order, which he sets out
first in the Rethorica nova. This connection not only recalls the broad Neoplatonic
functions of universal hierarchy in his entire General Art, but also reflects the traditional
identification of beauty .with "due proportion."25 Llull defines proportion as "the beauty of measured order"26 and asserts that this order creates the
efficacy and force of words in the speaker as well as the
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audience.27 His accounts
of Order from the Rethorica nova and other works show the same conflation of well-known commonplaces from the medieval language arts with idiosyncratic precepts of his own. For
example, he often refers to basic grammatical rules for the collocation of nouns, verbs, and
adjectives;28 he describes the artful
position of beginnings, middles, and ends29 as taught in the artes poetriae;30 he summarizes the arrangement of parts in a letter or political
speech31 as prescribed in the ars
dictaminis and ars arengandi.32 At the same time, Llull suggests for Order, just as he does for
Beauty, various outrageously impractical precepts of his own. For example, the words that name
the most beautiful thing should come first in a sentence;33 or, the sentence "The queen has great beauty and great evil" is
unrhetorical because the essential character of a queen does not allow these contrary accidental
qualities;34 or, as he argues elsewhere, the
two sentences "Goodness is great" and "Goodness is eternal" form a better order when combined
as "Goodness is great and eternal."35 The
order that Llull thus recognizes perhaps corresponds to the traditional rhetorical canon of
disposition or arrangement but subordinated completely to the sheerly representational use of
linguistic relationships as verbal icons of real-world relationships.
The section of Llull's Rethorica nova entitled Knowledge
reflects no traditional rhetorical canon but may recall an important requirement often stated in the
artes praedicandi36 and ultimately
authorized by Augustine:37 this is the
preacher's obligation to possess adequate training in the literary arts and any other branches of
knowledge relevant to the material that he must expound. Llull attempts to fulfill this requirement
by
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offering a miscellaneous assembly of
grammatical, poetic, and rhetorical lore, organized and classified with the nine Absolute
Principles, nine Relative Principles, and nine Questions of his General Art. Similar, though much
briefer, classifications also appear in his Liber de praedicatione of 1304 (a sermon
collection)38 and Ars generalis
ultima of 1308.39 The doctrines
offered are very eclectic and simple, characteristics that readily suggest the banally popularizing
scope of so much of Llull's work. From grammar he cites the distinctions between letters and
sounds, the eight parts of speech, and the degrees of adjectives;40 from the ars praedicandi the division of natural and moral
subjects41 and the advice to speak
humbly42 and to consider the audience's
character;43 from the ars poetriae
the procedures of determinatio and "coloring" one word with another;44 from the ars dictaminis the parts of
a letter;45 from logic the distinctions of
subject and predicate and simple and compound voces significativae;46 from moral literature on speech the
injunction to think before speaking and comparisons of words spoken in the heart and mouth;47 from Classical rhetorical authorities advice
on delivery and pronunciation, the three considerations of time, place, and audience,48 the divisions of probable and necessary
argument, as well as praise and blame, and useful, just, honorable, and true subjects.49 To these well-known and rudimentary
precepts Llull adds his own typically idiosyncratic teachings. For example, masculine nouns
should precede neuter, and neuter should precede feminine in any sentence;50 words of more syllables should come at
the end of a sentence, words of equal syllables in the middle, and words of fewer syllables in the
beginning;51 and a phrase such as "rex
bonus" with words of one gender is more beautiful thanpage
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the phrase "rex et bonitas" with words of different genders.52 Thus the Knowledge that Llull offers as a
guide to rhetorical practice always maintains an orientation toward that representational function
of language as verbal icon that we have already observed in his remarks on Beauty and Order.
Ultimately, this Knowledge consists in correctly using or "moralizing" words according to the
ethical and metaphysical values inherent in them by virtue of their constitution from the Divine
Dignities that inform all being in the system of Llull's General Art.
The brief final section of the Rethorica nova, entitled
Love, offers the most conventional material in this text: a series of ten proverbs, each illustrated
with an exemplum, that show how words spoken with love are most effective. Part Two
on Beauty also includes sets of exempla and proverbs,53 and Llull in fact wrote many works of this type,54 which were common ancillary preaching
aids.55 In theory this section on Love
observes in general Augustine's axiom that the end of all Christian instruction is love,56 and in particular the counsel of love for
one's audience found in most sermon manuals.57 This Love constitutes, then, the most direct contribution to Llull' s
rhetorical program of his fundamental doctrine of two intentions; the preacher who speaks from
love fulfills his natural, divinely instituted purpose.
Now the four sections of Llull's Rethorica nova all rely to
one degree or another on modes of spiritual reinterpretation or "moralization" in defining the role
of Order, Beauty, Knowledge, or Love in rhetorical practice. At the most fundamental level, the
simple collocation of traditional rhetorical lore with Llull's own idiosyncratic precepts implies a
common basis for that lore and his precepts and
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effectively makes them analogues of one another. This analogizing function is
explicit in several passages on rhetoric from Llull's Ars generalis ultima, as when he states
that "just as the logician seeks natural conjunctions of subjects and predicates to make a true
conclusion in the syllogism, so the rhetorician seeks natural conjunctions between subject and
predicate in order to ornament a beautiful subject with its essential predicates."58 We must remember, however, that for
Llull every analogy in word or thought corresponds to an analogy in being as well. Llull is a
super-Realist, for whom language, thought, and being are perfectly congruent, and this
congruence results from the real constituents, especially Llull's own Principles, that they share.
Llull's "moralization' is never just a discursive exercise but always assumes a metaphysical
justification.
Throughout the Rethorica nova Llull attempts to explain
this metaphysical basis through a tripartite hylemorphic model of form, matter, and end in words.
The latter term is Llull's own addition to standard Scholastic doctrine, which he needs in order to
establish the ontological foundation of his doctrine of two intentions. As Llull explains it, words
such as "god," "angel," "man," "king," "sun," "star," "lion," "rose," "ruby," and so forth all
possess a form that beautifies any speech about them.59 Words such as "sun" or "angel" are beautiful by virtue of the
spiritual matter of the beings that they name.60 Words such as "angel," "justice," "bread," "iron," "ship," or
"castle" are all beautiful thanks to the "optimal" ends of the things that they name.61 Llull applies this model of form, matter,
and end throughout his accounts of Beauty, Order, and Knowledge in the Rethorica nova,
adapting it as needed to the particular grammatical or
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rhetorical relationships that he describes. For example, he explains how the word
"queen" possesses an essential form that beautifully "agrees" with the accidental form provided to
it by the word "good" when the two words are combined in the phrase "the queen is good."62 Or he observes that "Speech is in its end,
form, and matter. It is in the end that causes desire and appetite for something that cannot be had
without words. Hence he who desires that chooses and joins words, which are the matter of
speech. And since the form informs matter, then the form, matter, and end are that in which
speech is and for which words were invented."63 This diffuse explanation presumably answers Llull's standard
question "In What?" asked of language. Llull applies his hylemorphic model so often and with
such vague or superficial explanations that it ultimately becomes only a common pattern
arbitrarily imposed on the many grammatical or rhetorical relationships that it pretends to explain.
In this respect, the application of this model is itself an analogical argument; that is, the effect of
this application is to insinuate that those grammatical and rhetorical relationships depend on a
natural connection like that attributed to the union of form and matter in Scholastic
metaphysics. Llull's model of form, matter, and end does not explain the metaphysical constitution
of language ultimately but rather interprets it allegorically.
The same interpretative function is evident in Llull's other major
metaphysical explanation of rhetorical practice, the catalogue of rhetorical lore under his
Principles in the section on Knowledge. According to Llull, his Principles, as transcendental
constituents of all being and knowledge, contain all beauty and all material for speaking, however
various or diverse.64 In most cases he
simply asserts this
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transcendental derivation, but in
others he belies the analogical basis of his arguments as when he says of his Principle of Virtue
(Virtus) that "if God has put special virtues in plants and stones, far more has He [done
so] in words made virtuous by the moral and thelogical virtue existing in their speaker."65 This argument relies not only on the
topical warrant of greater to lesser but also on the multiple sense of the word "virtue" itself, which
Llull thus exploits as an analogical distinctio sensuum. This word play suggests very well
how sheer verbal analogy enables much of Llull's moralization of rhetorical doctrine. For example,
Llull argues that his Absolute Principle of Greatness (Magnitudo) informs any speech
about great beings and renders that speech beautiful, as when one says "God who has such great
excellence created a great world and this greatness for a great end, namely to create angels and
men with great memories for remembering, qreat minds for understanding, and great wills for
desiring God."66 Llull's simple repetition
of the word "great" creates verbally, as a stylistic effect, the common quality that he attributes to
the influence of his transcendental Principle of Greatness.
If we consider the contents of Llull's Rethorica nova as a
whole, we can observe, then, a range of "moralizing" techniques at work: at one extreme stands
the use of linguistic signs as verbal icons of the things that they name, as in his bizarre schemes for
word order; at another extreme stand the purely verbal analogies that use words as instances of
themselves, as in the example cited of discourse on "greatness." Somewhere between these
extremes are the more usual types of allegory displayed in the groups of exempla and
proverbs collected in the Rethorica nova. The whole range of these moralizing techniques
serve one
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end the reinterpretation of rhetorical
practice to its first intention, namely, the honor, service, and praise of God. Llull recognizes this
end explicitly in the introduction to his section on Love where he declares that "He who speaks in
love beautifies his speech through love,"67
and love, as he defines it elsewhere, is the union of one will to another.68 The Rethorica nova also begins with the claim that "Speech
is the means and instrument through which speakers and listeners agree in one end," and this
agreement is greater when one's listeners are more pleased, and they are more pleased when one's
speech is more beautiful.69 Beautiful
speech is, then, the instrument of that union of wills called love, and more beautiful speech creates
more love, thanks to, in Llull's view, the transcendental influence of his Principles in the form,
matter, and end of that beautiful speech. What Llull seeks in his Rethorica nova is a
natural means of communicating, in the literal sense of sharing, love. In this regard, it epitomizes
his General Art as a whole, which seeks a natural means of communicating sharing Christian
truth. Llull achieves this result, he believes, by reinterpreting or moralizing language as a being
constituted from the same Divine Attributes as all other beings. Where Hugh of Saint Victor
declared that "All nature speaks of God,"70 Ramon Llull argues that all speaking is of God's nature. If nature is
a sermon, a sermon is natural, for Llull.
Illinois State University