(17) The Mediaeval Mind,
Vol. I, p. 280.
The Graeco-Arabic learning passed into Europe through
two sources. As I have already mentioned, Constantinus
Africanus, a North African Christian monk, widely
travelled and learned in languages, came to Salernum
and translated many works from Arabic into Latin, particularly
those of Hippocrates and Galen. The “Pantegni”
of the latter became one of the most popular text-books
of the Middle Ages. A long list of other works
which he translated is given by Steinschneider.(17a)
It is not unlikely that Arabic medicine had already
found its way to Salernum before the time of Constantine,
but the influence of his translations upon the later
Middle Ages was very great.
(17a) Steinschneider:
Virchow’s Arch., Berl., 1867, xxxvii, 351.
The second was a more important source through the
Latin translators in Spain, particularly in Toledo,
where, from the middle of the twelfth till the middle
of the thirteenth century, an extraordinary number
of Arabic works in philosophy, mathematics and astronomy
were translated. Among the translators, Gerard
of Cremona is prominent, and has been called the “Father
of Translators.” He was one of the brightest
intelligences of the Middle Ages, and did a work of
the first importance to science, through the extraordinary
variety of material he put in circulation. Translations,
not only of the medical writers, but of an indiscriminate
crowd of authors in philosophy and general literature,
came from his pen. He furnished one of the first
translations of the famous “Almagest”
of Ptolemy, which opened the eyes of his contemporaries
to the value of the Alexandrian astronomy.(18) Leclerc
gives a list of seventy-one works from his hand.
(18) For an account
of that remarkable work see German
translation by Manitius,
Leipzig, 1912.
Many of the translators of the period were Jews, and
many of the works were translated from Hebrew into
Latin. For years Arabic had been the learned
language of the Jews, and in a large measure it was
through them that the Arabic knowledge and the translations
passed into South and Central Europe.
The Arab writer whose influence on mediaeval thought
was the most profound was Averroes, the great commentator
on Aristotle.
The most striking intellectual phenomenon of the thirteenth
century is the rise of the universities. The
story of their foundation is fully stated in Rashdall’s
great work (Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages,
Oxford, 1895). Monastic and collegiate schools,
seats of learning like Salernum, student guilds as
at Bologna, had tried to meet the educational needs
of the age. The word “university”
literally means an association, and was not at first
restricted to learned bodies. The origin appears
to have been in certain guilds of students formed for
