This correspondence between the earlier and later schools of Toledo is
even more close and exact than we have yet observed. It appears also in
the fact that a Jewish interpreter was attached to each, and rendered
important service as a member of the college. Under Don Raymon this place
was held by Johannes Avendeath, or Johannes Hispalensis as he is commonly
called, who worked along with the Archdeacon. ‘You have then,’ says
Avendeath, addressing the Archbishop, ‘the book which has been translated
from the Arabic according to your commands: I reading it word by word
into the vernacular (Spanish), and Dominic the Archdeacon rendering my
words one by one into Latin.’[164] The same division of labour seems
to have been followed in the new school which Frederick promoted.
The Emperor drew the attention of these learned men to Averroës, and
signified his desire that a version of this author should be prepared
like that which had been made from Avicenna. Michael Scot and Gerard of
Cremona were responsible, the former probably in a special sense, both
for the general conduct of the undertaking, and, in particular, for the
accuracy of the Latin. Now these scholars also, like their predecessors,
availed themselves of the help of a Jewish interpreter. This was one
Andrew Alphagirus, who seems to have taken the same part that Avendeath
had formerly done, by translating the Arabic of Averroës into current
Spanish, which Scot and his coadjutor then rendered into Latin.
Such at least appear to be the suggestions which offer themselves
naturally to one who peruses the colophon to the copy of the _De
Animalibus ad Caesarem_ preserved in the _Bibliotheca Angelica_ of Rome.
Thus it runs: ‘Here endeth the book of Aristotle concerning animals,
according to the abbreviation of Michael Scot Alphagirus.’ The form of
expression is curious, but may be exactly matched from the versions
produced by the earlier Toledan translators: that is, if we are to
believe Bartolocci. This author, in the first volume of his _Bibliotheca
Rabbinica_, mentions a manuscript of the Fondo Urbinate in the Vatican
which, he says, contains the four books of Avicenna on Physics translated
by ‘Johannes Gundisalvi.’ This name has evidently, like that of ‘Scoti
Alphagiri,’ been formed by composition from those of the two translators,
_Johannes_ Avendeath and Dominicus _Gundisalvi_ who aided each other in
the work.[165]
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