436 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
no Schoolman so famous. He was a prolific author, and in his application of thought to the physical sciences, he has been compared to his fellow Franciscan, Roger Bacon.1
His Universal Science he applied to medicine and law, astrology and geography, grammar and rhetoric, as well as to the solution of theological problems.2 It was a key to all the departments of thought, celestial and terrestrial. Ideas he represented by letters of the alphabet which were placed in circles and other mathematical diagrams. By the turning of the circles and shifting of lines these ideas fall into relations which display a system of truth. The word " God," for example, was thus brought into relation with nine letters, B— K, which represented nine qualities: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, volition, virtue, truth, and glory. Or the letters B-K represented nine ques tions, such as, what, quid; from what, de quo; why, quare; how much, quantum. Being applied to God, they afford valid definitions, such as " God's existence is a necessity." This kaleidoscopic method, it is not improbable, Lullus drew from Jewish and Arabic sources, and he himself called it Cabalistic.
The philosophy of Lullus found a number of adherents who were called Lullists. It w^as taught at the universities of Valencia and Aragon. Giordano Bruno drew from it. Eymericus, the inquisitor, became the bitter foe of the Lullists, arraigned their leader's teachings before the Roman court, and exhibited a bull of Gregory XI. (1372) condemn-
works against the Mohammedans, Jews, and Averrhoists. Lea speaks of Lullus " as perhaps the most voluminous author on record." III. 581.
1 Reuter, Gesch. der Aufklarung, II. 95 sq.
2 In his work on the miracles of heaven and earth, de miraculis cceli et mundi, he represents a father leading his son through woods and across fields, over deserts and through cities, among plants and animals, into heaven and hell, and pointing out the wonders they saw. In his Blanquerna magister christiance perfectionis he presents an ethical drama in which the hero is introduced to all stations of religious life, monk, abbot, bishop, cardinal, and pope, and at last gives up the tiara to retire to the seclusion of a convent.
§ 76. MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS. 437
ing them as heretical.1 Philip II. read some of the Majorcan's writings and left annotated copies in the Escurial library. Lullus' works were included in the Index of Paul IV., 1559, but ordered removed from the list by the council of Trent. A papal decision of 1619 forbade Lullus' doctrine as dangerous. In 1847 Pius IX. approved an office for the " holy Raymundus Lullus " in Majorca, where he is looked upon as a saint. The Franciscans have, since the time of Leo X., commemorated the Spaniard's memory in their Breviary.
§ 76. Missions among the Mongols.
Central Asia and what is now the Chinese Empire were almost as unknown to Western Europe in the twelfth cen tury as the lake region of Central Africa was before the journeys of Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley. To the Nestorians, with their schools at Edessa and Nisibis, naturally belonged the task of spreading the Gospel in Central and Eastern Asia. They went as far as China, but after the ninth century their schools declined and a period of stagna tion set in. Individual Nestorians reached positions of in fluence in Asiatic courts as councillors or physicians and Nestorian women became mothers of Mongol chiefs. But no Asiatic tribe adopted their creed.
In the twelfth century the brilliant delusion gained cur rency throughout Europe of the existence in Central Asia of a powerful Christian theocracy, ruled over by the Presbyter John, usually called Prester-John.2 The wildest rumors were
1 The genuineness of this bull has been a subject of much controversy. Commissions were even appointed by later popes to investigate the matter, and the bull, with other documents originating with Gregory, was not found. Hergenrother pronounces for its genuineness, Kirchengesch., II. 540. Eymericus ascribed Lullus' teachings to the suggestion of the devil, and declared that Lullus maintained the erroneous proposition that "all points of faith and the sacraments, and the power of the pope may be proved by reasoning, necessary, demonstrative, and evident."
2 G. Oppert, D. Presbyter Johannes in Sage u. Gesch., Berlin, 1864, 2d ed. 1870. Brunet, La legende du Pretre-Jean, Bordeaux, 1877. Zarncke, D. Priester- Johannes, Leipzig, 1879.