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02 - Raymond Lull- First Missionary to the Moslems by Samuel Zwemer · Raymond Lull- First Missionary to the Moslems

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Raymond Loll, first Missionary to the Moslems,
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  Speaker 1: by Samuel's Wemer. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, Europe and the Saracens in the thirteenth century
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  Speaker 1: eighty twelve hundred to thirteen hundred. Although the history of
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  Speaker 1: an age is going on all at once, it cannot
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  Speaker 1: be written all at once. Missionaries are proceeding on their
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  Speaker 1: errands of love. Theologians are constructing their systems. Persecutors are
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  Speaker 1: slaying the believers. Prelates are seeking the supremacy. Kings are
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  Speaker 1: checking the advance of the churchmen. All this, and an
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  Speaker 1: infinitude of detail, is going on in the very same
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  Speaker 1: period of time Shed's history of doctrine. We cannot understand
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  Speaker 1: a man unless we know his environment. Biography is a thread,
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  Speaker 1: but history is a web in which time is broad
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  Speaker 1: as well as long. To unravel the thread without breaking it,
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  Speaker 1: we must loosen the web. To understand Raymond Loll, we
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  Speaker 1: must put ourselves back seven hundred years and the Europe
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  Speaker 1: and the Saracens as they were before the dawn of
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  Speaker 1: the Renaissance and the daybreak of the Reformation. Although the
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  Speaker 1: shadow of the dark Ages still fell heavily upon it.
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  Speaker 1: The thirteenth century was an eventful epoch, at least for Europe.
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  Speaker 1: The colossal power of the Empire was waning, and separate
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  Speaker 1: states were springing up in Italy and Germany. The growth
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  Speaker 1: of civil liberty, although only in its infancy, was already
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  Speaker 1: bringing fruit in the enlargement of ideas and the founding
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  Speaker 1: of universities. In England, Norman and Saxon were at last
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  Speaker 1: won people. The Magna Carta was signed and the first
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  Speaker 1: Parliament summoned. About the time when Lowell was born, the
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  Speaker 1: Tatars invaded Russia and sacked Moscow. Saracens and Christians were
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  Speaker 1: disputing not only the possession of the Holy Land, but
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  Speaker 1: the rulership of the world. Although in the East the
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  Speaker 1: long struggle for the Holy City had ended in the
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  Speaker 1: discomfiture of the Christians, the spirit of the Crusades lived on.
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  Speaker 1: The same century that saw the fall of Acre also
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  Speaker 1: witness the fall of Baghdad and the extinction of the Caliphate.
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  Speaker 1: Sa Ferdinand of Castile was winning city after city from
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  Speaker 1: the Moors, who were entrenching their last stronghold, Grenada. The
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  Speaker 1: year twelve forty marks the rise of the Ottoman Turks.
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  Speaker 1: Loll was then five years old. Before he was twenty,
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  Speaker 1: Louis the Knights had failed in his crusade and been
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  Speaker 1: taken prisoner by the Sultan of Egypt. Emperors had deposed
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  Speaker 1: popes and pope's emperors, and the Inquisition had begun in
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  Speaker 1: Spain to torture Jews and heretics. At Cologne the foundations
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  Speaker 1: of the Great Cathedral were being laid, and at Paris
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  Speaker 1: men were experimenting with a new giant gunpowder. All Europe
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  Speaker 1: was heated with the strong wine of political change and
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  Speaker 1: social expectations. In the same century, sudden and subversive revolutions
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  Speaker 1: were taking place in Asia. The Mongolian hordes under Ganghis
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  Speaker 1: Khan poured out like long pent waters over all the
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  Speaker 1: countries of the East. The Caliphate of Baghdad fell forever
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  Speaker 1: before the furious onslaught of Hulaku Khan. The Seljuk Empires,
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  Speaker 1: whon advanced its Moslem room rule into the mountain ranges
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  Speaker 1: of Anatolia, and Turks were disputing with Mongols the sovereignty
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  Speaker 1: of the roof of the world. The beneficial effects of
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  Speaker 1: the crusades were already being felt in the breaking up
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  Speaker 1: of these two colossal fabrics of the Middle Ages, the
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  Speaker 1: Church and the Empire, which ruled both as ideas and
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  Speaker 1: as realities. The feudal system was disappearing. The invention and
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  Speaker 1: application of paper, the mariner's compass and gunpowder heralded the
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  Speaker 1: errors of printing, exploration, and conquest. In the century that followed.
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  Speaker 1: It was not dark as midnight, although not yet dawn.
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  Speaker 1: The cocks were crowing. In twelve forty nine the University
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  Speaker 1: of Oxford was founded. In twelve sixty five, Dante was
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  Speaker 1: born at Florence. The pursuit of truth by philosophers was
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  Speaker 1: still a game of wordy dialectics, but Thomas Aquinas and
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  Speaker 1: Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus left a legacy of thought as well.
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  Speaker 1: The two former died the same year that Raymond Luell
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  Speaker 1: wrote his R's Demonstrava. It was in the thirteenth century
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  Speaker 1: that physical science struggled into feeble life in the cells
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  Speaker 1: of Gerbert and Roger Bacon. But these men were accounted
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  Speaker 1: magicians by the vulgar and heretics by the clergy, and
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  Speaker 1: were rewarded with the dungeon. Marco Polos, the Venetian, the
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  Speaker 1: most famous of all travelers belonged to the thirteenth century
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  Speaker 1: and did for Asia what Columbus did for America. His
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  Speaker 1: work was a link in the providential chain which at
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  Speaker 1: last dragged the New World to light. But both Marco
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  Speaker 1: Polo and Roger Bacon lived ahead of their age. Gibbons
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  Speaker 1: says with truth that if the ninth and tenth centuries
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  Speaker 1: were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were
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  Speaker 1: the age of absurdity and fable. Thought was still in
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  Speaker 1: terror through dread of the doom declared on heretics and rebels.
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  Speaker 1: The maps of the thirteenth century showed no appreciation of
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  Speaker 1: Marco Polo's discoveries. The world as Raymond Louell knew it
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  Speaker 1: was the world of medieval legend and classic lore. The
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  Speaker 1: Earth's surface was represented as a circular disc surrounded by
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  Speaker 1: the ocean. The central point was the Holy Land or Jerusalem.
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  Speaker 1: According to the prophecy of Ezekiel, Paradise occupied the extreme east,
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  Speaker 1: and Gog and Magog were on the north. The Pillars
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  Speaker 1: of Hercules marked the boundary of farthest west, and the
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  Speaker 1: nomenclature of even southern Europe was loose and scanty. It
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  Speaker 1: is interesting to note that the first great improvement of
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  Speaker 1: these maps took place in Catalonia, the province of Spain
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  Speaker 1: where Lull's ancestors lived. The remarkable Catalan map of thirteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy five in the Paris Library is the first world
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  Speaker 1: map that throws aside all pseudo theological theories and incorporates
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  Speaker 1: India and China as part of the world. Nearly all
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  Speaker 1: the maps of the Middle Ages are inferior to those
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  Speaker 1: in our illustration. Clever artists concealed their ignorance and gave
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  Speaker 1: life to the disc of the world by pictures of
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  Speaker 1: turreted towns, walled cities and roaring lines, and imaginary forests,
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  Speaker 1: swift to satirize their modern descendants, as geographers, who, in
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  Speaker 1: Afric's maps with savage pictures fill their gaps and or
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  Speaker 1: inhabitable downs place elephants for want of towns. Regards the
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  Speaker 1: general attitude of the masses toward intellectual progress, a writer
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  Speaker 1: justly remarks, there were, by no means lacking elements of
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  Speaker 1: native vigor ready to burst forth, but the courage that
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  Speaker 1: is born of knowledge, the calm strength begotten by a
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  Speaker 1: positive attitude of mind, face to face with the dominant
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  Speaker 1: overshadowing sphinx of theology or lacking. We may fairly say
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  Speaker 1: that natural and untaught people had more of the just
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  Speaker 1: intuition that was needed than learned folk trained in the schools.
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  Speaker 1: Man and the actual universe kept on reasserting their rights
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  Speaker 1: and claims in one way or another, but they were
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  Speaker 1: always being thrust back again into Sumerian regions of abstractions, fictions, visions,
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  Speaker 1: spectral hopes and fears, in the midst of which the
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  Speaker 1: intellect sonabulistically moved upon an unknown way. The morality of
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  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages presents startling contrasts over against each other,
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  Speaker 1: and not only in the same land, but often in
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  Speaker 1: the same individual. We witness sublime faith and degrading superstition,
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  Speaker 1: angelic purity, and signs of gross sensuality. It was an
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  Speaker 1: age of self denying charity to suffering Christians and of
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  Speaker 1: barbarous cruelty to infidel's Jews and heretics. The wealthy paid
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  Speaker 1: immense sums to redeem Christian slaves captured by the Saracens,
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  Speaker 1: and the Church took immense sums to persecute those who
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  Speaker 1: erred from the faith. When the Crusaders under Godfrey of Boullion,
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  Speaker 1: who refused to wear a crown of gold where his
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  Speaker 1: savior had worn a crown of thorns, came in sight
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  Speaker 1: of Jerusalem. They kissed the earth and advanced on their
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  Speaker 1: knees in penitential prayer. But after the capture of the
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  Speaker 1: city they massacred seventy thousand Moslems, burned the Jews in
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  Speaker 1: their synagogues, and waited in blood to the Holy Sepulcher
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  Speaker 1: to off rep thanks. The general state of morals, even
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  Speaker 1: among popes and the clergy, was low. Gregory the Seventh
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  Speaker 1: and Innocent the Third were great popes and mighty reformers
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  Speaker 1: of a corrupt priesthood, but they were exceptions in the
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  Speaker 1: long list. One of the popes was deposed on charges
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  Speaker 1: of incest, perjury, murder, and blasphemy. Many were in power
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  Speaker 1: through symony, concubinage, and unnatural vices were rife in rome
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  Speaker 1: among the clergy. Innocent the Fourth, who became pope the
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  Speaker 1: very year lull was born, was an outrageous tyrant. Nicholas
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  Speaker 1: the Third and Martin the Fourth, who were popes toward
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  Speaker 1: the close of the thirteenth century, rivaled each other in infamy.
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  Speaker 1: The pontificate of the former was so marked by rapacity
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  Speaker 1: and nepotism that he was consigned by Dante to his inferno.
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  Speaker 1: The latter was the murderous instigator of the terrible Sicilian vespers.
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  Speaker 1: Martinson says that the ethics of this period often exhibit
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  Speaker 1: a mixture of the morals of Christianity with those of Aristotle,
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  Speaker 1: and this is natural if we remember that Thomas Aquinas
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  Speaker 1: represents the height of medieval morals as well as of dogmatics.
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  Speaker 1: Since were divided into carnal and spiritual, venial and mortal,
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  Speaker 1: the way to perfection was through the monastic vows of poverty, celibacy,
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  Speaker 1: and obedience. The poetry of the period reflects the same
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  Speaker 1: startling contrast between piety and sensuality, composed as it was
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  Speaker 1: of the tenderest hymns of devotion and Bacchanalian revels. The
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  Speaker 1: seven great hymns of the medieval Church have challenged and
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  Speaker 1: defied the skills was the best translators and imitators. The
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  Speaker 1: wonderful pathos of the stabot Mater Dolorosa and the terrible
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  Speaker 1: power of diace Eira appear even in their poorest translations.
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  Speaker 1: In spite of its objectionable doctrinal features. What Protestant can
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  Speaker 1: read doctor Cole's admirable translation of the Stabot Materar without
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  Speaker 1: being deeply affected? Yet the same age had its Carmena burana,
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  Speaker 1: written by Goliardi and others, in which Venus and Bacchus
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  Speaker 1: go hand in hand and the sensual element predominates. We
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  Speaker 1: do not need to be reminded that Beatrice's adorer had
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  Speaker 1: a wife and children, or that Laura's poet owned a
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  Speaker 1: son and daughter by a concubine. Nor were Dante and
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  Speaker 1: Petrarch exceptions among medieval poets in this respect. It was
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  Speaker 1: a dark world. The thirteenth century was also an age
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  Speaker 1: of superstition, an age of ghosts and visions and miracles
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  Speaker 1: and fanaticism. The flagelence wandered from city to city, calling
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  Speaker 1: on the people to repent. Girded with ropes and scant clothing,
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  Speaker 1: or entirely naked, they scorged themselves in the open sha streets.
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  Speaker 1: The sect spread like contagion from Italy to Poland, propagating
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  Speaker 1: extravagant doctrines and often causing sedition and murder. Catherine of
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  Speaker 1: Siena and Francis of Assisi, in the fervor of their love,
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  Speaker 1: saw visions. The latter bore the stigmata and died of
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  Speaker 1: the wounds of Christ, which are said to have impressed
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  Speaker 1: themselves on his hands, and sighed through an imagination. Drunk
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  Speaker 1: with the contemplation and love of the crucified Redeemer, the
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  Speaker 1: author of the two most beautiful hymns of the medieval period,
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  Speaker 1: went to fanatical extremes and self sought torture to atone
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  Speaker 1: for his own sins and for the good of others.
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  Speaker 1: Peter in Alaska in twelve twenty eight saw vision of
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  Speaker 1: the Virgin Mary, and devoted all his property from that
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  Speaker 1: day to the purchases of freedom for Christian captives from
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  Speaker 1: their Moorish masters. He founded the Order of the Mercedarians,
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  Speaker 1: whose members even gave themselves into slavery to save a
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  Speaker 1: fellow Christian from becoming an apostate to Islam. During the
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  Speaker 1: twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monastic orders increased in numbers
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  Speaker 1: and influence. They formed the standing army of the papacy
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  Speaker 1: and were generally promoters of learning, science, and art. The
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  Speaker 1: Franciscans were one of the strongest orders although one of
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  Speaker 1: the latest. In twelve sixty four, this order had eight
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  Speaker 1: thousand cloisters and two hundred thousand monks. Some of these
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  Speaker 1: monks were saints, some scientists, and some sensualists. Alongside of
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  Speaker 1: unmeasured superstition and ignorance, in the mass of the priesthood,
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  Speaker 1: we meet with genies of intellect and a wonderful displays
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  Speaker 1: of self forgetting love in the few. Yet the most
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  Speaker 1: sacred solemnities were parodied on Fool's Festival, which was held
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  Speaker 1: in France on New Year's Day. Mock popes, bishops and
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  Speaker 1: abbots were introduced into all their holy actions mimic in
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  Speaker 1: a blasphemous manner. Practical mysticism, which concerned itself not with
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  Speaker 1: philosophy but with personal salvation, was common in the thirteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: especially among the women of the Rhine provinces. Saint Hildegarde
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  Speaker 1: Mechilde and Gertrude the Great are striking examples. There were
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  Speaker 1: also attempts at a reformation of the church and the
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  Speaker 1: abuses of the clergy. The Albigenses and the Waldensis were
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  Speaker 1: in many ways forerunners of Protestantism. Numerous other sects less
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  Speaker 1: pure in doctrine and morals arose at this time and
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  Speaker 1: spread everywhere from eastern Spain to northern Germany. All of
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  Speaker 1: them were agreed in opposing ecclesiastical authority and often that
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  Speaker 1: of the state. Such was the political, intellectual, moral, and
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  Speaker 1: religious condition of Europe in the days of Raymond Loul.
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  Speaker 1: The Mohammedan world was also in a state of ferment.
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  Speaker 1: The Crusades taught the Saracen at once the strength and
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  Speaker 1: the weakness of medieval Christianity. The Battlefield of Tolosa, strewed
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  Speaker 1: with two hundred thousands slain Moslems, was the death knell
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  Speaker 1: of Islam and Spain. Saracen rule and culture at Granada
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  Speaker 1: were only the afterglow of a sunset, glorious but transient.
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  Speaker 1: What dominions the Saracens lost in the West, they regained
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  Speaker 1: in Syria and the East. In twelve fifty, the Mameluke
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  Speaker 1: Sultans began to reign in Egypt, and under Babar's the
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  Speaker 1: first Moslem Egypt reached the zenith of its fame. Islam
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  Speaker 1: was a power in the thirteenth century, not so much
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  Speaker 1: by its conquests with the sword as by its conquests
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  Speaker 1: with the Maslim philosophy as interpreted by al Kindi, Alfarabi, Avicenna,
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  Speaker 1: and Algazelle. But most of all, the philosophy of Avrose
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  Speaker 1: was taught in all the universities. Aristotle spoke Arabic before
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  Speaker 1: he was retranslated into the languages of Europe. The Saracens,
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  Speaker 1: says Meyers, were during the Middle Ages almost the sole
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  Speaker 1: repositories of the scientific knowledge of the world. While the
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  Speaker 1: Western nations were too ignorant to know the value of
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  Speaker 1: the treasures of antiquity, the Saracens preserved them by translating
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  Speaker 1: into Arabic the scientific works of the Greeks. Part of
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  Speaker 1: this learning came to Europe through the Crusaders, but it
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  Speaker 1: came earlier and more largely through the Arabian schools of Spain.
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  Speaker 1: No other country in Europe was in such close touch
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  Speaker 1: with Islam for good and ill as the kingdoms of Castile, Navare,
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  Speaker 1: and Aragon in the north of what we now call Spain.
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  Speaker 1: There the conflict was one of mind as well as
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  Speaker 1: of the sword. There, for three centuries waged a crusade
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  Speaker 1: for truth as well as a conflict on the battlefield
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  Speaker 1: between Christian and Moslem In this conflict, Raymond Louell's ancestors
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  Speaker 1: played their part. During all the years of Loul's life,
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  Speaker 1: the Moslem power held out at Grenada against the United
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  Speaker 1: Spanish Kingdoms. Not until fourteen ninety two was a Saracen
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  Speaker 1: expelled from Southern Europe. Regarding missions in the thirteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: little can be said there were a few choice souls
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  Speaker 1: whom the Spirit of God enlightened to see the spiritual
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  Speaker 1: needs of the Saracen and Mongol and to preach to
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  Speaker 1: them the Gospel. In twelve fifty six, William de Rubriquis
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  Speaker 1: was sent by Louis the ninth, partly as a diplomat,
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  Speaker 1: partly as a missionary to the Great Khan. In twelve nineteen,
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  Speaker 1: Francis of ASSISI, with mad courage, went into the Sultan's
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  Speaker 1: presence at Damietta and proclaimed the Way of Salvation, offering
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  Speaker 1: to undergo the ordeal of fire to prove the truth
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  Speaker 1: of the Gospel. The Dominican general Raymond de Penaforte, who
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  Speaker 1: died in twelve seventy three, also devoted himself to missions
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  Speaker 1: for the Saracens, but with no success. The only missionary
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  Speaker 1: spirit of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was that of
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  Speaker 1: the crusaders. They took up the sword and perished by
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  Speaker 1: the sword. But Raymond Lowell was raised up as if
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  Speaker 1: to prove, in one startling case to which the eyes
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  Speaker 1: of all Christendom were turned for many a day, what
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  Speaker 1: the Crusaders might have become, and might have done for
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  Speaker 1: the world, had they been fought for the cross with
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  Speaker 1: the weapons of him whose last words from it were
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  Speaker 1: forgiveness and peace. End of Chapter one read by Alathia
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  Speaker 1: Cheris