Le Myésier’s Ladder: The Breviculum and the Project to Re-Diagram Llull’s Ars

Abstract

This dissertation addresses an early fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript, known as the Breviculum (Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, St. Peter, Perg. 92). It contains a compilation of the works of Ramon Llull (1232–1315), an idiosyncratic philosopher from Mallorca who came Paris in the hopes of convincing theologians at the university to adopt his combinatorial-diagrammatic logic system, called the Ars. It was Thomas Le Myésier (d.1336), Llull’s French disciple, who took it upon himself to present the Ars in a set of handbooks, a sort of Lullian curriculum. He dedicated the smallest of these volumes—the Breviculum—to the queen of France and commissioned an artist to paint an introductory set of miniatures. This dissertation examines the Breviculum in three chapters. The first chapter describes Le Myésier’s intellectual background, his manuscripts, and the Lullian Ars in the context of Parisian academia. The second delves into the artistic world of the court of the countess of Artois. Employed by the countess later in his career, Le Myésier took inspiration from her literary and artistic milieu. The last chapter examines the Breviculum and its miniatures in depth, explaining the details of Le Myésier’s new mise-en-page and diagrams for the Ars, the techniques he chose in collaboration with an artist to represent Llull’s life and philosophy, and his investment in images as a crucial component in the process of knowledge. These observations speak to pictures’ potential to represent philosophical concepts and, ultimately, the role of images in reaching higher truth.