A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our EraThorndike, Lynn
History
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Thorndike, Lynn
Magic -- History; Science -- History
distribution of manuscripts of his translations in European libraries
indicates that they were widely influential.
[Sidenote: A contemporary memorial of Gerard of Cremona.]
The best source for the life and works of Gerard of Cremona[240]
(1114-1187) is a memorandum attached by his friends to what was
presumably his last work, a translation of the _Tegni_ of Galen with
the commentary of Haly, in imitation of Galen who in old age was
induced to draw up a list of his own works. Gerard, however, is already
dead when his associates write, having worked right up to life’s close
and passed away in 1187 at the age of seventy-three. They state that
from the very cradle he was educated in the lap of philosophy, and
that he learned all he could in every department of it studied among
the Latins. Then, moved by his passion for the Almagest, which he
found nowhere among the Latins, he came to Toledo. There, beholding
the abundance of books in every field in Arabic and the poverty
of the Latins in this respect, he devoted his life to the labor of
translation, scorning the desires of the flesh, although he was rich in
worldly goods, and adhering to things of the spirit alone. He toiled
for the advantage of all both present and future, not unmindful of
the injunction of Ptolemy to work good increasingly as you near your
end. Now, that his name may not be hidden in silence and darkness,
and that no alien name may be inscribed by presumptuous thievery in
his translations, the more so since he (like Galen) never signed his
own name to any of them, they have drawn up a list of all the works
translated by him whether in dialectic or geometry, in “astrology” or
philosophy, in medicine or in the other sciences.[241]
[Sidenote: Account by a pupil of his astrological teaching.]
Another contemporary picture of Gerard’s activity at Toledo is provided
us by the Englishman, Daniel of Morley, or _de Merlai_, who went to
Spain to study the sciences of the _quadrivium_. He tells how Gerard of
Toledo (_Gerardus tholetanus_), interpreting the Almagest in Latin with
the aid of Galippus, the Mozarab,[242] asserted that various future
events followed necessarily from the movements and influences of the
stars. Daniel was at first astounded by this utterance and brought
forward the arguments against the _mathematici_ or astrologers in the
homily of St. Gregory. But Gerard answered them all glibly. It should
perhaps be added that in another passage Daniel without mentioning
Gerard speaks of setting down in Latin what he learned concerning the
universe in the speech of Toledo from Galippus, the Mozarab.[243]
Gerard’s translation of the Almagest seems to have been completed in
1175,[244] but meanwhile in Sicily an anonymous translation from the
Greek had appeared, probably soon after 1160. Of it we shall presently
have something to say. Gerard’s version was, however, the generally
accepted one, as the number of manuscripts and citations of it show.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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