Llull in Cyprus

Re-post from 2007

I should be in bed, but Douglas Adams is just as addictive now as he was 9 or 10 years ago when I read the first four books of the Hitchhiker trilogy. And I’m sure maybe something about the Resurrection would be appropriate, but the book this passage is from (Other Middle Ages, previously quoted) is due soon. So here it is, a passage from the medieval biography of the Blessed Ramon Llull; this passage drew me only because of Cyprus. I, too, was a missionary in Cyprus, after all . . .

Thus Ramon approached the king of Cyprus [Henry II Lusignan] and asked him whether he would encourage the infidels–namely Jacobites, Nestorians, and Monophysites–to attend his sermon and disputation. After he had done this in order to edify his listeners, he asked the king of Cyprus to send him to the sultan, who is a Saracen, and to the king of Egypt and Syria, in order to inform them of the holy Catholic faith. The king did not, however, provide for any of this things. Placing his trust in him who “spreads the Gospel with much virtue” [Psalms 62.12], Ramon began with only God’s help to act manfully among them by means of preaching and disputations. In the end, persisting in his preaching and doctrines, he suffered no small physical weakness. Two persons were serving him, a cleric and a manservant. Not “taking heed of God” and neglecting their own salvation, they thought of extorting money from this man of God through their evil hands. Thinking that he had been poisoned by them, Ramon dismissed them from his employ.

At Famagusta, he was graciously received by the Master of the Templars, staying in his house in the city of Limassol [how does that bit of geography work?] until he recovered his health. Ramon then returned to Genoa . . . (pp. 99-100)

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