In Randa, Ramon Llull received the illumination that would take him to write his magna Art and also, during his time of meditation in a cave of the Puig, remembering his devotion to the Sufis, he created Llibre d'Amic e amat, condensing in verse his life, dedicated to the love of God.
Blanquerna was praying and was considering how to contemplate God and his virtues; and having finished his prayers, wrote about his contemplation. And he did this every day; and in his prayers he discovered new reasons, so that with many and various ways he wrote the Book of the Friend and the Beloved, and those ways were short, and in little time the soul could go through many of them. And with God's blessing, Blanquerna began his book, which was divided into as many verses as days in the year. And each verse was enough for a whole day to contemplate God, according to the art of the Book of Contemplation.
[...]
Said the beloved to the friend: "Do you know, yet, what is love?"
And the answer: "If I did not know what is love, would I know what is work, sadness, and pain?
Llibre d’Amic e amat (1276-1278)
Translated by Richard Mansell. Performed by Antoni Font Gelabert.
(1232 – 1316). A philosopher and writer. His parents arrived on Majorca at the time of the Catalan conquest of the island. His youth took place in the court of Jaume II of Majorca, where he was Seneschal (the administrative head of the royal household). At thirty years of age, married to Blanca Picany and with two children, he suffered a time of extreme crisis which led him to give up everything and dedicate himself to the conversion of people to Christianity, sine he believed he had developed a “scientific” method, an art, through which nobody could rationally choose any other religion. He founded a school of eastern languages in Miramar, near Deià, to train missionaries in his method. He wrote an autobiography, Vida coetània (Daily life), where he explains the immense task to which he dedicated his life as a traveller and tireless promoter. His Ars magna is a type of book of mathematical logic to be applied to religious doubts. He wrote in Catalan, Latin and Arabic: Llibre de contemplació en Déu (Book of contemplation of God, c. 1212), Llibre del gentil e los tres savis (Book of the gentile and the three wise men, 1272), Romanç d’Evast e Blaquerna (Romance of Evast and Blanquerna, c. 1286), including the Llibre d’Amic e Amat (Book of the friend and the beloved), inspired by Sufism; Llibre de meravelles (Book of wonders, 1298/99), and both of the latter two works are written in prose. In total 240 of his works have survived, including autobiographical poems such as Cant de Ramon (Ramon’s song) and Lo desconhort (Grief).
The Llibre d’amic e amat has a didactic function. Some followers ask the master Blanquerna to show them his method of spiritual elevation. He, remembering the extraordinary devotion of the Muslim mystics called Sufis decides to condense into short lines his life dedicated to loving God.
Randa is a delightful hamlet where water runs all year round. It is also a hill with three monasteries: Gràcia, Sant Honorat and Cura. Ramon Llull wrote "the reverend master climbed a mountain called Randa, which was not far from his home", and that leads us to think that it must have been the lord of Pola or sa Mata Escrita, the current name of an estate at the foot of the hill. At each of the three monasteries there are caves which might have been inhabited by Llull during his periods of meditation. That is where he was enlightened and decided to write his great Art to convert all to the Christian faith, confirmed by the appearance of an angel in the form of a shepherd. Later, tradition attracted Llull's admirers to the place and at the start of the 15th century a type of school was founded there to promote the work of Llull. Interest in Llull's teachings has been surrounded by debate over the years, and at times his work was banned and persecuted.
