ABSTRACT
In about 1949 I began to work on what I hoped would be a book on Giordano Bruno, making abstracts of his Latin works. In these I found many references to Ramon Lull, and resolved that I must investigate Lull before going further with Bruno. On the advice of Ivo Salzinger in the first volume of his edition of Lull’s Latin works, the famous Mainz edition of 1721–42, I began with Lull’s Tractatus novus de astronomia. It seemed perfectly unintelligible. There were many circles and other diagrams, labelled with letters of the alphabet. One learned that BCDEFGHIK stood for the Dignities, or Attributes of God, Bonitas, Magnitudo, Eternitas, Potestas, Sapientia, Voluntas, Virtus, Veritas, Gloria (Goodness, Magnitude, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Strength, Truth, Glory). Most of these divine attributes, or Names of God, were familiar from the Bible. Was the book, then, some kind of pious meditation, turning the Divine Names on the prayer wheels of the Art of Ramon Lull? All Lull’s immensely complex Arts have one procedure in common: they revolve BCDEFGHIK (or sometimes sixteen letters) on circles or wheels.
