Ramon Llull's Electorium Parvum seu Breviculum

Aside from being the author of the first major work of Catalan literature, Ramon Llull (ca. 1232 – ca. 1315/16) was a mathematician, philosopher, logician, writer, and mystic from the Kingdom of Majorca. He was committed to the conversion of the Moors but used philosophy and theology to try and convince them to convert by choice rather than by force or intimidation. This splendid manuscript concerning his life and works contains twelve miniatures that are considered to be some of the finest specimens of French illumination in the early-14th century. Aside frombeing one of the most important sources on the famous Catalan philosopher, it is also one of the earliest secular biographies and its miniatures have captions like modern cartoons

Splendid Imagery

Most of the miniatures depict scenes from Llull’s life beginning with his religious epiphany in 1263 and ending in 1307 during his second trip to Tunis, where he debated with Muslim scholars. His lithe Gothic figure is dressed in a simple brown habit and he sports a full grey beard as the reader follows his travels and works. The rest of the miniatures are allegorical in nature and demonstrate principles from Llull’s philosophical teachings, including a beautiful miniature of he and Myésier presenting his works to a French Queen framed by a splendid Gothic architecture. Furthermore, because of Myésier’s close relationship with Llull and his supervision of the manuscript’s production, the miniatures are thought to be unusually accurate in their depiction of Llull’s physical appearance, which is exceptionally rare in medieval art.

The Journeys of a Royal Commission

The manuscript was created by Thomas Le Myésier (d. 1336), who was taught and mentored by Lull, and appears to have been made in northern France within a few years of his master’s death in 1316, probably ca. 1321. It was commissioned by the French Queen, probably Joan II of Burgundy (1292-1330), in order to bring Llull’s teachings to the French court of King Philip V (ca. 1293-1322). Since then, the manuscript has experienced a turbulent ownership history over the next five centuries during which time it passed through various hands. It first left Paris for Poitiers in the 16th century where it came into the possession of a canon of the Cathedral of St. Pierre. It is not documented what happened to the manuscript between 1582 and 1736, when it was sold by Freiburg jurist Joseph Anton Weigel to Ulrich Bürgi, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest. Following the secularization of the monastery in 1806/07, it was absorbed along with the rest of the monastic library into the Court Library of the Grand Duke of Baden in Karlsruhe, which evolved into the modern Baden State Library.