The House of Wisdom

by Jonathan Lyons

  That Robert and Hermann initially conceived their translation enterprise as an entryway to the Almagest was a testimony to the enormous gravitational pull that this as-yet-undigested work exerted on medieval Western thought. Such was its allure that just the rumored existence of Arabic copies in the Spanish libraries was enough to send Gerard of Cremona hurrying to see for himself. The most prolific figure among the translators of the second half of the twelfth century, Gerard remained in Spain to render into Latin more than seventy Arabic texts. Among his output was the original object of his intellectual desire: a Latin version of the Almagest. It proved by far the most popular edition among medieval scholars, and it was the first to be printed, appearing in Venice in 1515.38

  A eulogy by Gerard’s disciples reflected the influence on their master of Ptolemy’s great work: “[He] trained from childhood at centers of philosophical study and had come to a knowledge of all of this that was known to the Latins; but for the love of the Almagest, which he could not find at all among the Latins, he went to Toledo; there, seeing the abundance of books in Arabic on every subject, and regretting the poverty of the Latins in these things, he learned the Arabic language, in order to be able to translate. In this way, combining both languages and science, … he passed on the Arabic literature in the manner of the wise man who, wandering through a green field, links up a crown of flowers, made from not just any, but the prettiest; to the end of his life, he continued to transmit to the Latin world (as if to his own beloved heir) whatsoever books he could … as accurately and as plainly as he could.”39

  Among the many translations attributed to Gerard and his team were medical textbooks and surgical manuals, including Avicenna’s great Canon of Medicine; The Calendar of Cordoba; and assorted treatises on alchemy and chemistry, astrology, astronomy, mathematics, optics, and the science of weights.40 In an important shift away from the purely technical concerns of the old French cathedral schools that shaped many of the earliest translations, Gerard and his colleagues began to expand the West’s intellectual horizons through the introduction of a broader range of Greek philosophy and natural science, as well as the writings of the Arab philosophers and scientists themselves.

  If the old ways were represented by the narrow demands of the cathedral curriculum based on the seven liberal arts, an approach that left no real place for study of the natural universe, then this Arab-inspired learning offered Christian thinkers new avenues for exploring the world around them. Introducing Avicenna’s philosophical work On the Soul, the Jewish scholar and co-translator Avendauth made the case for this radical departure: “Latin readers will know with certainty something hitherto unknown, namely whether the soul exists, what are its nature and its qualities according to its essence and its activity, and this will be proved by true reasons … Here, then, is a book translated from the Arabic, whose author, you must know, has collected everything that Aristotle said in his book about the soul, sense-perception and the sensible, the intellect and the intelligible.”41

  Although the intellectual ferment bubbling out of al-Andalus in the mid-twelfth century attracted many of the best and the brightest from across Christendom—men like Gerard, Robert, Hermann, and Peter the Venerable—it seems the Iberian Peninsula held no particular allure for Adelard of Bath, just one generation before. With no mention of Spain in his extant writings, it is impossible to know for sure why Adelard did not simply head straight there from Laon, France, and instead made the more arduous journey south and east to Sicily and then on to the crusader principality of Antioch. One reason may lie with established ties between the prominent Benedictine community in Adelard’s native Bath and those in Sicily, where he was hosted by the local Benedictine bishop, and Antioch’s large Pisan quarter.

  By contrast, the young scholar Daniel of Morley seems to speak for many of the newer generation when he recalls years later on his return home how he traveled to Spain after abandoning his studies in Paris in disgust at the masters’ low level of learning. “When some time ago I took myself away from England for the sake of academic study and spent some time in Paris, there I saw beasts seated in scholarly chairs with grave authority … These masters were so ignorant that they stood as still as statues, pretending to show wisdom by remaining silent,” Daniel writes some time after 1175. “But when I heard that the doctrine of the Arabs … was all the fashion in Toledo in those days, I hurried there as quickly as I could, so that I could hear the wisest philosophers of the world.”42

  After studying with Gerard of Cremona and others, Daniel went back to England with “a precious multitude” of Arabic books, extending a tradition first introduced by Adelard of Bath. On Daniel’s return, Bishop John of Norwich, himself a student of astronomy, asked the well-traveled scholar to write a treatise on a revised zij known as the Toledan Tables. Instead of an essay on the latest in astronomical thinking, Daniel turned out an organized cosmology, the first in the West to be fully informed by “the doctrine of the Arabs,” especially the Aristotelian worldview of the astrologer Albumazar.43 One version features at least a dozen quotations from The Introduction to Astrology, citing Albumazar on everything from the makeup of the celestial bodies to perfect circular motion and the source of color.44 Other references are drawn from different Arab works on the natural philosophy of Aristotle and from a close reading of Adelard’s On the Use of the Astrolabe.45

  Beginning in the early ninth century, the Arab scholars of the House of Wisdom worked their way through the classics of Greek philosophy and science, systematically laying a solid foundation for their own original research. Three hundred years later, the West was accorded no such luxury; instead, the translators began to inundate Christendom with ancient texts and more recent Arabic commentaries, scientific innovations, and philosophical advances. The shock arrival of this pagan philosophy, dressed in enticing Arab garb and leavened with the occult, shook Western scholars out of their narrow worldview and forced them to confront troubling questions about the nature of the universe, the definition of knowledge, and even the existence of God. Arab thinkers soon dominated Latin learning. Traditional Christian authorities, such as Augustine and Bede, were often tossed aside, and Arabic words, terms, and phrases—the names of the stars, for example, as well as dozens of technical terms—were increasingly embedded in Western scholarly literature.

  For the rising new class of scholars, wandering intellectuals like Daniel of Morley, this made perfect sense: “Let us then borrow from them and, with God’s help and command, rob the pagan philosophers of their wisdom and eloquence. Let us take from the unfaithful so as to enrich ourselves faithfully with the spoils.”46 Such intellectual larceny was not without its practical problems. The early translators, for example, discovered that Latin lacked the vocabulary to keep up with the Arabs’ philosophical and scientific language.

  Adelard of Bath had already freely acknowledged the Arabs as his masters, a tradition adopted by those who followed. Soon, the translator Hugh of Santalla, a close colleague of Robert and Hermann, was urging his fellow scholars to follow the Muslim lead in astronomy: “It befits us to imitate the Arabs especially, for they are as it were our teachers and precursors in this art.”47 Another scholar hailed the Arabs as the only people to truly understand geometry. Such was the standing of the Muslims in twelfth-century England that partisans of Henry II, Adelard’s onetime pupil, threatened the pope that their lord would convert to Islam in order to rid himself of that “meddlesome priest,” Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury.48 In the event, the murder of Becket did the trick.

  Adelard of Bath’s scholarly explorations largely ignored philosophical or theoretical texts. For his translation of Albumazar, after all, Adelard chose the author’s abbreviated text, without its vital philosophical core. His strong leanings toward the more technical disciplines of Arab astronomy and astrology set the direction for the first wave of the Latin translations carried out in Spain. By the thirteenth century, the West was awash in competing astronomy texts, pro
mpting Oliver of Brittany to complain, “A day would scarcely suffice to completely tell of [astronomy’s] innumerable books and authors.”49

  But the growing sophistication of Western scholars meant it was only a matter of time before they would venture from the mildly problematic matter of astronomy and astrology, with their implied threat to the Christian notion of free will, to the downright dangerous learning of Arab and Greek cosmology and metaphysics. Bridging the gap between the two was the towering figure of Michael Scot, who in the first half of the thirteenth century shaped the course of philosophy, mathematics, and science more than any other Western figure. If Adelard of Bath had nibbled at the edges of the studia Arabum one hundred years before, then Michael Scot devoured Muslim learning whole—first in Toledo and then in Sicily, at the court of Frederick II, the Holy Roman emperor.

  Little is known of Michael’s early life.50 He was born somewhere in Scotland in the late twelfth century, and his name appears in medieval manuscripts as Master Michael Scot, suggesting he had earned a degree of some sort and probably taught as well. This notion is supported by the gentle didacticism of some of his writings and translations. At one point, he promises his royal patron that he will produce an introductory work on astrology “in a popular grammar-school style,”51 while his literary, scientific, and biblical references are all in keeping with the university conventions of his day. He had considerable medical knowledge, wrote about the influence of the heavens on human health, and may have had formal medical training. A sixteenth-century roll of famous physicians includes the following entry: “Michael by cognomen and medicus by profession, by nation a Scot.”52 One Latin manuscript offers alchemical recipes that it says come from “the book of MS, physician to Emperor Frederick.”53

  Over the centuries, many have poured fantasy and fable into the murky depths of Michael’s life story. We are told, for example, that his astrological skills enabled him to predict the cause of his own death—that he would be struck on the head by a small rock. Michael took to wearing a metal helmet of his own design in an attempt to ward off the inevitable. One version says the prediction came good one day after he bared his head for Mass, when a pebble broke free from the vaulted ceiling of the church and grazed his head; Michael examined the missile and the seemingly minor wound, promptly went home to arrange his affairs, and died within days. Some time earlier, he warned Frederick, whom he served as both astrologer and physician, not to let the royal barber bleed him, then a common medical procedure. The king ignored the advice and almost died from infection after a freak accident.

  Michael’s forecasts of the outcomes of Frederick’s military adventures were said to have been highly accurate. The poet Henry of Avranches, who had recently joined the Sicilian court, recalls how Michael predicted the emperor’s success in a planned war against the Lombard cities, some time before the campaign began in 1236. The poet then offers his version of the astrologer’s death:

  As he was about to say more, he became silent and,

  Not permitting his secrets to be published to the world,

  Bade that his breath be spent on thin air,

  Thus the inquisitor of the Fates submitted to Fate.54

  Dante’s Inferno places Michael Scot with the sorcerers in the lower depths of hell, saying he “truly knew every trick of the magical arts,” while Shakespeare may have drawn on him for the character of Prospero in The Tempest. Two hundred years after the Bard, Sir Walter Scott’s epic The Lay of the Last Minstrel still celebrates the persistent legend of his famed countryman:

  A wizard, of such dreaded fame,

  That when, in Salamanca’s cave,

  Him listed his magic wand to wave,

  The bells would ring in Notre Dame!55

  In the course of his varied and colorful career, Michael emerged as the West’s first real expert on Aristotle; the translator of seminal texts on Arabic astronomy and metaphysics; the mentor to one of the West’s great mathematical geniuses; and an author of original works on astrology, human anatomy, physiology, and physiognomy. In an age of mass illiteracy, such esoteric book learning and association with Arab teachings was enough to see him branded a wizard.

  For all the singular infamy ultimately attached to his name, Michael Scot was very much a product of the broad social and economic changes that had been taking shape gradually across the West since the tenth century or so, chiefly the emergence of a money economy and the associated rise of towns and cities.56 Early medieval Europe knew nothing like the great Muslim political, cultural, and commercial hubs—Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and Cordoba. The Arabs had proved great builders of cities, and these urban centers were central to the Muslim enterprise. They provided the meeting place of ideas, the storehouses of books, the abodes of scholars, and the great mosques where the latter could lecture or teach. They housed the tradesmen of the intellectuals’ craft, such as scribes, papermakers, librarians, and booksellers. Urban merchants and traders generated the surpluses of cash and leisure time that made the scholarly life possible in the first place. In the division of labor that characterized Arab city life, there was ample room for the thinker, the teacher, and the writer.

  For their part, most medieval European cities were modest outgrowths of military encampments or ecclesiastical centers, or congealed gradually around market towns that dotted traditional trade routes. Some grew from settlements dating back to Roman times. But all that changed as the feudal order in the countryside started to unravel, and the peasants fled the land that kept them in bondage to make their own way in the growing urban centers. There they pursued commerce, taking advantage of a general upturn in the European economy driven in part by expanding foreign trade and the emergence of town life. The new urban communes soon organized to defend their interests against the nobility, the crown, and the church. Artisans and other professionals founded guilds and corporations to regulate membership, reduce competition, and protect their livelihood. This is the origin of the modern term university, which initially described the universe, or totality, of members of a guild or profession. Students and teaching masters who began to meet informally in the towns and cities adopted the institution of the university from the urban guilds; over time, the term’s origins became obscured, leaving the word today with the sole meaning of an institution of higher learning.57

  Europe’s new intellectuals were distinct in medieval society for both their high degree of mobility and their urban origins.58 The breadth of this movement can be seen in the extraordinary range of nationalities represented among the leading translators active in Spain: Germans, Englishmen, Scots, Frenchmen, Italians, Slavs, and others. Yet they all shared a number of important characteristics: They saw themselves as pioneers, had little time for established convention, and were prepared to roam far and wide to find the best teachers and the latest texts, or to take part in the most heated debates of the day. Many within the religious establishment had nothing but contempt for such “professional students.” One twelfth-century monk lamented, “They are wont to roam about the world and visit all its cities, till much learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek liberal arts, in Orleans classics, at Salerno medicine, at Toledo magic, but nowhere manners and morals.”59

  Some eked out a living as beggars or worked as servants to more well-off colleagues. Others literally sang for their supper. In what may be a rare autobiographical tidbit, Michael Scot touts the value of musical skill for the poor but educated traveler: “Nor is there a musical instrument that can better guide his life everywhere, whoever plays it, than the lyre, as is clear from the experience of anyone who goes from door to door playing it,” he writes in one unpublished manuscript. “If they play it well, it pays their way everywhere in Christendom.”60

  The translation movement that helped make Michael Scot the leading public intellectual of his day was an export industry, carried out by educated, inquisitive, and independent “knowledge workers” drawn to Spain from foreign lands in pursuit of the studia Arabum. The finishe
d goods, in the form of translations, commentaries, and original works, rarely remained behind where they were created. Instead, these were destined for the foreign markets of Italy, France, and England—home to groupings of scholars and students who came together by the early thirteenth century to create the West’s earliest universities, in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. The new Arabic texts pouring forth from the former al-Andalus were learned, coherent, and steeped in the authority of Aristotle and the Muslims’ advanced sciences. They were not susceptible to the sort of allegorical interpretation that the Latin world had used in the past to deflect or absorb dangerous, non-Christian ideas.

  Nowhere was their effect more profound than at the University of Paris, by now the leading center of Christian theology. Here at last, the students and young teaching masters seemed to say, was direct access to the teachings of philosophy, unencumbered by church orthodoxy or the ignorant Latin scholarship of yesteryear. Set in motion by Adelard and carried through by men like Michael Scot, the irresistible force of the new science was now headed for the immovable object of Christian teaching. Something would have to give.

  PART IV

  Al-Asr/Afternoon

  Chapter Eight

  ON THE ETERNITY OF THE WORLD

  MICHAEL SCOT’S DUBIOUS reputation, a product of his association with the dangerous learning of the Arabs, was further clouded by his affiliation with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who ruled his tumultuous domains from Sicily and southern Italy. Grandson of Roger II—the original “baptized sultan” and the sponsor of al-Idrisi’s Map of the World—Frederick was twice excommunicated by the popes for disobedience and widely suspect in the West for his love of Muslim learning, his deep ambivalence toward Christian holy war, and his immoderate erudition. Frederick spoke half a dozen languages, followed a scandalous regimen of bathing and diet prescribed by his Arab physicians, and traveled with his own personal “dialectician”—a Muslim, no less—so he could pursue his philosophical studies on the road.