Ramon Llull’s mission founder feared dying at Muslim hands before sailing to Tunis

Evidence

The Vita briefly describes some of Llull’s numerous trips to Paris and Rome: Paris, where he attempted to convince scholars to take his Art seriously (and upbraided them as obfuscating Averroists when they did not), and Rome, where he constantly urged Popes and curia to establish monasteries, modeled on Miramar, for the linguistic and scholarly training of monk-missionaries (he lambasted their worldliness and corruption when they did not heed his calls). Having little success in either endeavor, Llull went to Genoa, with the intention of embarking for North Africa and testing his new missionary method directly upon Muslims. Suddenly confronted by the real possibility of death at the hands of Muslims, he became frightened and did not board a ship leaving for “Saracen lands” and subsequently suffered deep doubt and depression at his failure. He eventually boarded a Genoese ship bound for Tunis where he tried his argumentation on prominent Muslims. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1289

Categorization

• XREF: The fear-of-death-in-Saracen-lands motif belongs to the same martyrdom/imminent-violence imaginary the reader maps in Anidjar and Razack.