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Ramon Llull was granted permission to preach in the synagogues and
mosques of the kingdom of James II on the 30 October 1299.
There is one particularly interesting feature in this letter which
already serves to set Llull apart from the mendicant preachers.
Presumably at the insistence of Llull, the King gives the Jews
permission to reply freely and without constraint to Llull's
sermon.[45] Llull, as we know from other places in his writings,
would have deemed the whole operation vain if there was not, at least
in theory, a frank debate over the issues being discussed.[46]
His idea of preaching was not to dictate the truth, but to encourage
debate over the important issues being discussed. It was by engaging
his audience in debate and introducing them to the Art that Llull
believed he would be able to convert them. It was this theory that
Llull wished to put into practice when preaching in the synagogue.
We must now try to set the scene of Llull's arrival at the synagogue
in the call of Barcelona probably during the winter months of
1299.[47] Llull was in Paris until August or September
1299, when he must have made his way back to Barcelona. It is
during this stay in Barcelona that he received permission to preach and
was also writing the Dictat de Ramon, and the Oracions de Ramon
dedicated to the King and his wife.[48] Llull is to be found back
in Majorca at the start of 1300 where he completed the
encyclopaedic Començaments de filosofia started in Paris and wrote
the long poem Medicina de peccat.[49] The letter given to Llull
was signed by the King on the 30 October, and the former, having
been given permission, is unlikely to have wasted much time.
Llull would have been likely to announce his pending visit to the
synagogue to the leaders of the Jewish community. This would have had
a dual purpose. The first, to assure the presence of those important
Jewish figures in the synagogue and secondly as a matter of
courtesy.[50] It is to be remembered that Llull wanted to assure
a reasonably tranquil ambience to encourage discussion and debate rather
than an atmosphere of fear and distrust. It is also for this reason
that Llull would probably have come to the synagogue with not more than
two or three companions, perhaps some of his disciples, in order not
to intimidate those present. This is further attested by the lack of
any mention in the letter given to Llull by the King of the number of
people allowed to accompany Llull.[51] Presumably, the King
realised that, unlike the mendicant preachers, there would be no
incitement to riot or attempts at forced conversion.
Who can we have expected to be present in the synagogue? From an
incipit to one of Llull's works, quoted many times in scholarly
literature, we know that Llull was in contact with three of the
important figures of the Jewish community in Barcelona at this time.
Solomon ibn Adret (c. 1233 - 1310) was a
disciple of Nahmanides and, aside from being an expert in law, was
also a Kabbalist who received direct transmission of esoteric teachings
from his teacher.[52] Rabbi Aaron ha-Levi, the
second rabbi addressed in the incipit, is more of an unknown quantity.
It is clear that he was a great legist. Where he disagreed with the
rulings of Solomon he wrote treatises upholding his, and criticising
Solomon's, position.[53] He and Solomon ibn Adret were
appointed judges in a dispute between a Joseph ibn Baruch and the
Call of Saragossa by Peter III and he was asked by the same Peter
to be the Rabbi of Saragossa in 1284.[54] There are some who
attribute to him the Sefer ha-Hinuch (`Book of
Education') which is an exposition of the 613 commandments in the
Torah. This work fits in very well with a new but important genre of
mystical literature called ta'amei ha-mizvot (`the
mystical reasons for the commandments'). There are literally
thousands of unpublished fragments in manuscript of this genre of
literature. Important figures like Joseph Gikatilla and Moses de
Leon wrote widely on this subject.[55] If Sefer
ha-Hinuch is indeed the work of Aaron, then he too was
the recipient of Kabbalistic tradition.
The third figure is the least known of all and has been identified with
Judah Salmon.[56] It is of great significance that Llull should
have been in contact with him, because he was also the mediator between
Solomon b. Adret and the famous Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia
(1240-c.1290). He is found in connection with
Solomon ibn Adret as the two of them were judges in a divorce case
referred to them in 1281 by Peter III and they both sat together
as judges on the Jewish council of Barcelona.[57] Sometime
during the 1280's (as attested in a responsum concerning the
prophet of Avila in 1295) Solomon ibn Adret put out a ban
against the writings of Abraham Abulafia. In his defence, although
he was probably in Sicily at the time, Abulafia sent a long letter
explaining his teachings and accusing Solomon b. Adret of hypocrisy.
This letter, known to scholarship as Ve-Zot
li-Yehuda (`And this is for Judah') is extant, and
the Judah addressed is Judah Salmon.[58] Otherwise, not much
else is known about Judah, and who his Kabbalistic teachers were
remains unclear. We can expect these three figures to have been
present as well as probably some of their disciples and the rest of the
Jewish community which probably numbered in this period between two and
three hundred families.[59]
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