The Book of the Lover and the Beloved

Ramon Llull (1232-1316) was born the son of a prosperous Catalan merchant and spent his youth pursuing worldly pursuits, until a series of powerful visions of Christ moved him to devote his life entirely to serving God. One of his lifelong ambitions was to write a book to counter the "errors of the infidels," to which end he studied Arabic and immersed himself in whatever arabic texts he could obtain. The book of the Lover and the Beloved' is a compilation of 366 paragraphs for daily meditation, which it calls "moral metaphors," and is written in the style of the Muslim sufis offering words of love and brief exempla that inspire great devotion. Contains original text in Latin and Catalan and English translation and commentary.