LexLlull - The Roots of the European Intellectual Lexicon through Ramon Llull's Multilingual Vocabulary

ID Call: HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships

Sapienza's role in the project: Host Institution

Supervisor: Stefano Asperti

Fellow: Simone Sari

Department: Letters and Modern Cultures 

Project start date: February 16, 2026

Project end date: February 15, 2029

Abstract:

The dissemination of the intellectual lexicon in medieval Europe occurred thanks to the development of universities and the vulgarisation of knowledge. The LEXLlull project aims to analyse the origin and relationship between these two phenomena through the extraordinary production of the Catalan writer Ramon  Llull (1232-1316), who was in contact with the academic world of his time and aspired to spread the epistemological system he had created (i.e. the Art) to all strata of society.
The project envisages the creation of a multilingual (Catalan, Latin, French and  Occitan) online dictionary based on the works and translations that circulated when the author was alive, and a monographic study of the scientific vocabulary used in the different languages in relation to the study centres he frequented. In this way, it is possible to obtain a synchronic source of the medieval European scientific lexicon in the main Romance languages and to understand how laymen could acquire this knowledge.