The whole life of this pre-eminent adept, the first initiate after St. John who was devoted to the hierarchic apostolate of holy orthodoxy—his entire life, we repeat, was passed in pious foundations, in preachings, in immense scientific labours. Thus, in 1276, he established at Palma a college of Franciscans dedicated to the study of Oriental languages, and Arabic especially, with the object of refuting the works of Mohammedan doctors and of preaching the Christian faith among the Moors. John XXI confirmed this institution by a pastoral letter dated from Viterbo on December 16, in the first year of his pontificate. From 1293 to 1311, Lully solicited and obtained from Pope Nicholas IV and from the kings of France, Sicily, Cyprus and Majorca, the establishment of many other colleges for the same purpose. Wherever he went he gave instructions in his Great Art, which is an universal synthesis of human knowledge, and has as its prime object the institution of one language among men as also one mode of thought. He visited Paris and there astonished the most learned doctors; afterwards he crossed over to Spain, tarried at Complute, where he founded a central academy for the study of languages and sciences. He reformed a number of convents, went on to Italy and recruited soldiers for a new military order, the institution of which he advocated at the very Council of Vienna which condemned the Templars. The catholic science and the true initiation of St. John were intended thereby to rescue the protecting sword of the Temple from faithless hands. The great ones of this world derided poor Raymund Lully, and yet in their own despite they did all that he desired. This illuminated personality, termed by derision Raymund the Fantastic, seems to have been pope of popes and king of kings; he was poor as Job and gave alms to sovereigns; he was called a fool, and he was of that order of folly which confounds sages. The greatest politician of the period, Cardinal Ximenes, whose mind was as vast as it was serious, never spoke of him except as the divine Raymund Lully and the most enlightened doctor. He died in 1314, according to Genebrard, or in 1315, according to the author of the preface to the _Meditations_ of the Hermit Blaquerne. He was eighty years old, and the end of his toilsome and holy existence came on the Festival of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul.[245]