Ramon Llull

Born around 1232 in Palma de Mallorca, Llull was a knight before he became a Catholic philosopher, theologian, and missionary. He invented the Art, a system of general principles and combinatorial operations illustrated with diagrams, meant as a universal logic to prove Christian doctrine to people of all faiths and nationalities. A prolific writer, he composed literary works in Catalan to spread the Art to wider audiences, and his books were translated into Occitan, French, and Castilian while he lived - he likely wrote in Arabic too, though none survives. The work didn't catch on, and by the early modern period his name had drifted into association with alchemy. Later scholars recognized him as a precursor to social choice theory, 450 years before Borda and Condorcet, and saw his ideas prefigure computation theory. He joined the Third Order of Saint Francis, was venerated as saintly, and beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1847, three decades after his death in 1316.