King James of Aragon, following a turbulent minority, undertakes the conquest of the Muslim kingdom of Majorca in 1229.

This act is the first stage in the aggressive extension of Aragonese power into the western Mediterranean.

James captures the entire Balearic archipelago in 1235.

James, in completing the conquest of the Muslim kingdom of Valencia in 1238, has brought the kingdom of Aragon—now comprising Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearics—to its greatest extent, and earns himself the title James the Conqueror.

Having in 1242 divided his lands among his sons, James does so again in 1262 but succeeds only in causing virulent civil strife.

His elder son, Peter, receives Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia in the second division, and his younger son, James, receives the Balearic Islands, Roussillon, and other Pyrenean counties that he is to hold in fief from Peter.

Ramon Llull was born into a wealthy family in Palma, the capital of the new Kingdom of Majorca founded by James I of Aragon to integrate politically the recently conquered territories of the Balearic Islands (today part of Spain) in the Crown of Aragon.

His parents had come from Catalonia as part of the colonizing efforts for the formerly Almohad island.

As the island had been conquered militarily, all the Muslim population who had not been able to flee the conquering Europeans had been enslaved, though they still constitute a significant portion of the island's population.

Conversant in Latin, Catalan, Occitan (both considered the same language at the time as "popular Latin") and Arabic, Llull had been well educated, and had become the tutor of James II of Aragon.

By 1257, he had married Blanca Picany and they have had two children, Domènec and Magdalena; yet despite his family he lives, as before, a troubadour's life.

About this time he had become the Seneschal (the administrative head of the royal household) to the future King James II of Majorca, a relative of his wife.

A key event in his early life was his religious conversion.

In 1265, he had had a religious epiphany, a vision of Christ crucified.

The vision came to him five times in all.

As a consequence of this conversion experience, he took the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis the following year, leaving his position and family to live a life of solitude and study for the next nine years.

During this time, he had learned Arabic from an enslaved Muslim he had purchased.

His first major work, Art Abreujada d'Atrobar Veritat (The Abbreviated Art of Finding Truth) had been written in Catalan and then translated into Latin.

He has written treatises on alchemy and botany, Ars Magna, and Llibre de meravelles.

He has written the romantic novel Blanquerna, the first major work of literature written in Catalan, and perhaps the first European novel.

Llull presses for the study of Arabic and other then-insufficiently studied languages in Spain for the purpose of converting Muslims to Christianity.

He has even written some books in Arabic.

His interest in finding a common ground between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism makes him one of the earliest ecumenists.

However, his mission to convert the Jews of Europe is zealous, his goal to utterly relieve Christendom of any Jews or Jewish religious influence.

Some scholars regard Llull's as the first comprehensive articulation, in the Christian West, of an expulsionist policy regarding Jews who refused conversion.

To acquire converts, he works for amicable public debate to foster an intellectual appreciation of a rational Christianity among the Jews of his time.

His rabbinic opponents include Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona and Moshe ben Shlomo of Salerno.

Ramon Llull, around 1275, designs a method, which he will first publish in full in his Ars generalis ultima or Ars magna ("The Ultimate General Art", published in 1305), of combining religious and philosophical attributes selected from a number of lists.

It is intended as a debating tool for winning Muslims to the Christian faith through logic and reason.

Through his detailed analytical efforts, Llull has built an in-depth theological reference by which a reader could enter in an argument or question about the Christian faith.

The reader would then turn to the appropriate index and page to find the correct answer.

Llull also invents numerous 'machines' for the purpose.

One method is now called the Lullian Circle, each of which consists of two or more paper discs inscribed with alphabetical letters or symbols that refer to lists of attributes.

The discs can be rotated individually to generate a large number of combinations of ideas.

A number of terms, or symbols relating to those terms, are laid around the full circumference of the circle.

They are then repeated on an inner circle that can be rotated.

These combinations are said to show all possible truth about the subject of the circle.

Llull bases this on the notion that there are a limited number of basic, undeniable truths in all fields of knowledge, and that we can understand everything about these fields of knowledge by studying combinations of these elemental truths.

The method is an early attempt to use logical means to produce knowledge.

Llull hopes to show that Christian doctrines could be obtained artificially from a fixed set of preliminary ideas.

For example, one of the tables lists the attributes of God: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory.

Llull knows that all believers in the monotheistic religions—whether Jews, Muslims or Christians—would agree with these attributes, giving him a firm platform from which to argue.

The idea will be developed further by Giordano Bruno in the sixteenth century, and by Gottfried Leibniz in the seventeenth century for investigations into the philosophy of science.

Leibniz will give Llull's idea the name ars combinatoria, by which it is now often known.

Some computer scientists have adopted Llull as a sort of founding father, claiming that his system of logic was the beginning of information science.

The kingdom of Majorca, with its Balearic Island dependencies, gains independence from Aragon at the death of James the Conqueror in 1276, with its capital at Perpignan, a fortified mainland town on the Tet River, about eight miles (thirteen kilometers) from the Mediterranean, and the former capital of Roussillon.

The Majorcan royal castle lies within the huge fortress that dominates the town.

Elne had been one of the first towns to be attacked when the Arabs crossed the Pyrenees in 719, and when the counts of Roussillon achieved independence, Perpignan became the capital of the county, with Elne remaining the Episcopal city.

The high altar of the present cathedral of Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie was consecrated in 1069.

Its Romanesque cloister was built in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

The conflict with France the Papacy over Aragon’s possession of Sicily quickly becomes a kind of civil war, as Peter's brother, King James II of Majorca, joins the French.

James has also inherited the County of Roussillon and thus stands between the dominions of the French and Aragonese monarchs.

Peter had opposed James' inheritance as a younger son and reaps the consequence of such rivalry in the crusade.

The first French armies under Philip and Charles enter Roussillon in 1284.

They include sixteen thousand cavalry, seventeen thousand crossbowmen, and one hundred thousand infantry, along with one hundred ships in south French ports.

Though they have James' support, the local populace rises against them.

The city of Elne is valiantly defended by the so-called Bâtard de Roussillon (Bastard of Roussillon), the illegitimate son of Nuño Sánchez, late count of Roussillon (1212–1242).

Eventually he is overcome and the cathedral is burnt, despite the presence of papal legates, while the population is massacred, all save the Bâtard.

He succeeds in negotiating his surrender and accompanies the advancing royal forces as a prisoner.

The French camp is hit hard by an epidemic of dysentery on the heels of the naval loss.

Philip himself is afflicted.

The heir to the French throne, the future Philip IV, opens negotiations with Peter for free passage for the royal family through the Pyrenees,.

The pass around the massif of Albères (five hundred and sixty-eight meters) was the main route through the Pyrenees in Antiquity.

The Romans called it the Summum Pyrenæum.

It had since been superseded by the Col de Perthus one kilometer to the northeast.

The Aragonese troops, saving promised to leave the passage to the French king and his family, content themselves with attacking the retreating French army, decimated by dysentery.

Peter entrusts the vanguard to Ramon de Montcada and his Almogàvers, who massacre the fatigued French but spare the royal family.

This first attack is followed up by a second attack by Roger de Lauria, the admiral of the fleet which had defeated the French at Les Formigues and had then disembarked to fight on land.

The result of all this is a rout: the French are decimated further and it is a complete Aragonese victory.

According to the chronicle of Ramon Muntaner, the festivities of celebration last eight days in Barcelona.

The king of France himself dies on October 5 at Perpignan, the capital of James of Majorca, and is buried in …