The Biblioteca de Catalunya and the Ministry of Culture of the Catalan Government are delighted to announce publication of the work Ramon Llull in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, now translated into English thanks to funding from the Ramon Llull Institute. This e-book introduces us to one of the most universal Catalan thinkers of all time. The e-book includes interviews - conducted by Joan Santanach - with various scholars: Lola Badia, Alexander Fidora, Amador Vega and Albert Soler, with a further contribution from Ricard Torrents, leading expert on Jacint Verdaguer. The book is complemented by readings of extracts from Llull’s texts by the aforementioned scholars and with a musical reconstruction by Antoni Rossell. The texts, by Joan Santanach, help to illustrate a number of different facets of Ramon Llull, as well as presenting a selection of the most significant manuscripts and printed books held in the Biblioteca de Catalunya. The e-book includes an updated bibliographic section. The book is free to access in EPUB format for iOS, Android and .PDF format for computer. The work is subject to a Creative Commons licence.

This publication edited by Dr. Maria Incoronata Colantuono presents an accurate selection of musical and liturgical medieval texts from the 9th to 13th century, preserved at the Biblioteca de Catalunya. By means of this compilation, the different authors of this work introduce and explain fundamental concepts about the relationship between music and church such as neumes, Gregorian chants, the ecclesiastical centres in Catalonia or the main architectural styles of the moment. The work contains interviews with specialists who provide a wide vision of the music and liturgy; among them, Jesús Alturo, Juan Carlos Asensio, Joaquim Garrigosa i Massana, Katarina Livljanic and Eduardo Carrero. The book, which encompasses musical performances by Juan Carlos Asensio and Antoni Rossell, concludes with an extensive bibliography and a list of digital resources that contribute to improve the research and scholar studies.

Ramon Llull (1232-1316), born on Majorca, was one of the most remarkable lay intellectuals of the thirteenth century. He devoted much of his life to promoting missions among unbelievers, the reform of Western Christian society, and personal spiritual perfection. He wrote over 200 philosophical and theological works in Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. Many of these expound on his "Great Universal Art of Finding Truth," an idiosyncratic dialectical system that he thought capable of proving Catholic beliefs to non-believers. This study offers the first full-length analysis of his theories about rhetoric and preaching, which were central to his evangelizing activities. It explains how Llull attempted to synthesize commonplace advice about courtly speech and techniques of popular sermons into a single program for secular and sacred eloquence that would necessarily promote love of God and neighbor. Llull's work is a remarkable testimony to the diffusion of clerical culture among educated lay-people of his era, and to their enthusiasm for applying that knowledge in pursuit of learning and piety. This book should find a place on the shelf of every scholar of medieval history, religion, and rhetoric.

The authors maintain that Llull was an atypical 'scholar' because he enjoyed a form of access to knowledge that differed from the norm and because he organized the production and dissemination of his writings in a creative and unconventional fashion. Ramon Llull (1232-1316), mystic, missionary, philosopher and author of narrative and poetry, wrote both in Latin and in the vernacular claiming he had been given a new science to unveil the Truth. This book shows why his Latin andvernacular books cannot be read as if they had been written in isolation from one another. Llull was an atypical 'scholar' because he enjoyed a form of access to knowledge that differed from the norm and because he organized theproduction and dissemination of his writings in a creative and unconventional fashion. At a time when learned texts and university culture were conveyed for the most part using the vehicle of Latin, he wrote a substantial proportion of his theological and scientific works in his maternal Catalan while, at the same time, he was deeply involved in the circulation of such works in other Romance languages. These circumstances do not preclude the fact that a considerable number of the titles comprising his extensive output of more than 260 works were written directly in Latin, or that he had various books which were originally conceived in Catalan subsequently translated or adapted intoLatin. Lola Badia is a professor in the Catalan Philology Departament at the University of Barcelona. Joan Santanach is Lecturer of Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona. Albert Soler (1963) is Lecturer of Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona.

A Companion to Ramon Llull and Lullism offers a comprehensive survey of the work of the Majorcan lay theologian and philosopher Ramon Llull (1232-1316) and of its influence in late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Europe, as well as in the Spanish colonies of the New World. Llull’s unique system of philosophy and theology, the “Great Universal Art,” was widely studied and admired from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. His evangelizing ideals and methods inspired centuries of Christian missionaries. His many writings in Catalan, his native vernacular, remain major monuments in the literary history of Catalonia. Contributors are: Roberta Albrecht, José Aragüés Aldaz, Linda Báez Rubí, Josep Batalla, Pamela Beattie, Henry Berlin, John Dagenais, Mary Franklin-Brown, Alexander Ibarz, Annemarie C. Mayer, Rafael Ramis Barceló, Josep E. Rubio, and Gregory B. Stone.

The starting point for this research is the ascertainment of a major change in the spirituality paradigm of the last centuries of the European Middle Ages, which, since the 13th century, results in a new and final interpretation, focused on pauperistic, evangelical and apostolic ideals, of the religious phenomenon. This symbolic revolution, which completely changed parameters and involved both men and women, entailed an intense urbanisation and feminisation of spirituality. Within that general framework, the pages of this book attempt at investigating the penetration, evolution and changes of the new forms of female monastic and religious life in a delimited space and time: the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula during the period from the 13th to the 16th century, trying to establish the connection between those new spaces of female spirituality and the strategies, wishes and potentialities of the women who promoted their creation, strengthening or reform.

The Book of the Order of Chivalry was written in Catalan by Ramon Llull between 1274 and 1276 and is one of the author’s earliest works. After his death, it achieved a wide dissemination throughout Europe in part because it was considered the theoretical manual on knighthood par excellence. The book was written in Catalan for knights who might not have a knowledge of Latin. Llull devotes his treatise to the definition of the duties of a perfect knight. In addition, he is interested in delving into the religious and moral aspects of chivalry as well as in trying to reform this institution. This edition is based on the Catalan text from Luanco’s Libro de la Orden de Caballería del B. Raimundo Lulio, which is included here in facsimile format thanks to the generosity of the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona. To this are added new Spanish and contemporary English translations. In addition, this volume includes an edition of Caxton’s 16th century English translation.