The Ars, panacea or chimera
Around 1274 he retires to Puig the Randa, a mountain situated in the centre of Majorca, where he devotes himself to meditation and contemplation; it is there where, leading a hermit life in a cave, he had an illumination and decides to write his philosophical system the Ars. The said Ars (Latin word that means Art) was a complex technique, conceived by himself, to interpret reality, find truth and demonstrate it; and in that way justify Christianity by means of reason, through rational semi mechanical techniques, of symbolic notation and combinatorial diagram.
The Art, equipped with a universal vocation, and of which he made several versions, was based on principles common to the three monotheist religions of the era (Christian, Muslim and Jewish) and had to be infallible in the conversion of the “infidels”.
On the other hand, the Art constituted, according to him, a method suitable for every area of knowledge of the 13th. century (theology, natural and human sciences). It was a naïve attempt and genial at the same time to mechanize and mathemathize knowledge. In any case, a huge philosophical task to which he devoted his life and his writing in such a manner that even his novels and poems were intended for the theological divulgation and the approximation of the reader to the Art.
