In many accounts of Western intellectual history, the emergence of scholasticism is closely associated with the recovery of Aristotle’s major philosophical works, which had been unavailable in the West in the earlier middle ages.194 Actually, Alexander of Hales and the Halensian Summists have often been hailed as the first to incorporate Aristotle, though these claims have not really been substantiated by textual research. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that Aristotle was far from the only or even the most predominant philosophical influence during the great Latin translation movement, which spanned the century between 1150-1250.195
In addition to Aristotle, this movement saw many works by Arabic scholars translated into Latin. My account of these translations immediately below will reveal the extent to which the Islamic scholar Avicenna in particular influenced early Franciscan thought and indeed the school’s reading of Aristotle. In order to identify the areas of Avicenna’s influence over the course of the book’s chapters, I will provide a description of the key aspects of his thought that were studied at the time. In closing, I will revisit the thesis, initially proposed by the great medieval scholar Etienne Gilson, that the early Franciscan adoption of Avicenna was vital to the school’s project of systematizing Augustine.
The Translation Movement
194 Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristote en Occident: les origins de l’aristotélisme parisien (Paris: Éditions de l’Institut superior de philosophie, 1946). Peter Dronke (ed.), The History of Twelfth-Century Western
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
195 I am deeply grateful to Amos Bertolacci for his helpful comments on this chapter.
Over the course of the eleventh century, all the major works of Aristotle became readily available through a series of religious Crusades, which saw the West recapture some key Islamic political and intellectual strongholds, in particular Sicily, Italy, and Toledo, Spain.196 In the same instance, Western thinkers came into contact with a wealth of material by Arabic scholars, whose Classical Age began around the eighth century, and who were therefore more experienced at engaging with Aristotle’s work. Most importantly, Latin scholars gained access to the major writings of Avicenna (d. 1037), who was the most prolific and prominent Islamic philosopher and theologian known in the West at the time. Although Avicenna is sometimes described as a ‘commentator’ on Aristotle, this term needs to be carefully qualified.197
Admittedly, Avicenna framed many of his theories with reference to Aristotelian arguments. He even named the major treatises in his massive Book of the Cure after works by Aristotle, such as De anima, Physics, and Metaphysics, none of which were incidentally named by Aristotle himself. Nevertheless, Avicenna developed an approach to these topics that is markedly original, and in many cases opposed to the plain reading of Aristotle’s texts.
With good reason, therefore, Latin thinkers regarded Avicenna as a primary source in his own right and as a philosopher as worthy as esteem as Aristotle himself. This is confirmed by
196 Bernard Dod, ‘Aristoteles Latinus,’ in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, Norman Kretzmann et al.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). M-T D’Alverny, ‘Translations and Translators,’ in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R.L. Benson and G. Constable (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 421-62; idem., Avicenne en Occident. Recueil d’articles (Paris: Vrin, 1993).
197 Amos Bertolacci, ‘On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus Magnus: An Attempt at Periodization,’ in The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics, ed. Dag Nikolaus Hasse and Amos Bertolacci (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 213.
the fact that Avicenna’s writings are never found together with Aristotle’s in the medieval manuscript tradition, as would normally be the case with mere commentaries.198
Between 1152-66, Toledo-based scholars led by Dominicus Gundisalvi or Gundissalinus produced a highly influential Latin translation of the doctrinal core of Avicenna’s Book of the Cure (al-Shifa), in particular, its tractates titled, De anima, Metaphysics, and Physics (I-III, 1).199 Gundissalinus also produced a number of his own works which compiled ideas from Avicenna, first and foremost, as well as thinkers like the Spanish Jew Costa Ben Luca and the Arab Christian Avicebron, thereby mediating the work of these thinkers to the Latin West.200 According to Amos Bertolacci, a pioneer of scholarly inquiry into the Latin reception of Avicenna, ‘the translators of the Sifa intended to provide Western scholars with a commentary on Aristotle’s works.’201 This was not a commentary in the strict sense, but a sort of expert guide to the same philosophical matters Aristotle himself considered. Through these translations, early scholastic thinkers came into possession of those of Avicenna’s writings that were relevant to work in theology and philosophy.
In contrast, Aristotle’s major writings were introduced to the West in fits and starts.
By 1160, James of Venice, a man of Greek origin, had translated Aristotle’s De anima and Physics.202 But his Nicomachean Ethics circulated in multiple and mostly partial forms prior to Robert Grosseteste’s translation in 1240-3, as did his Metaphysics, at least before the early
198 Dag. N. Hasse, Avicenna's De Anima in the Latin West (London: The Warburg Institute, 2000), 226.
199 Amos Bertolacci, ‘A Community of Translators: The Latin Medieval Versions of Avicenna’s Book of the Cure,’ in Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe 1100-1500, ed.
Constant J. Mews and John N. Crossley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).
200 Alexander Fidora, ‘Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Introduction of Metaphysics into the Latin West,’
Review of Metaphysics 66:4 (June 2013), 691-712.
201 Amos Bertolacci, ‘A Community of Translators,’ 52.
202 Bernard G. Dod, ‘Aristoteles latinus,’ 46; cf. M-T D’Alverny, ‘Translations and Translators,’ 436.
thirteenth century.203 By 1210, in fact, two Latin versions of the latter text were available: the so-called Metaphysica vetusissima by James of Venice included up to chapter four of book four. The second, anonymous translation—or Anonyma sive Media—probably produced in the late twelfth century, included the first eleven of the twelve books in total, though it did not start to be circulated widely until the mid-thirteenth century.204
In his periodization of Avicenna’s reception, Bertolacci observes that Avicenna’s major works, not least his Metaphysics, were simply taken as substitutes for those of Aristotle in the late twelfth century. Possibly, they were even circulated under Aristotle’s name.205 The situation did not change dramatically, however, when the Aristotelian works like Metaphysics and De anima that were most relevant to scholastic inquiry became readily available in the thirteenth century. While Aristotle’s works were now regarded as the main texts on
philosophical matters, Avicenna nonetheless continued to offer a ‘privileged way of access to Aristotle’s work and its main tool of interpretation.’206
For this reason, figures like Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, Roland of Cremona, Roger Bacon, and the Halensian Summists tended to read Aristotle through the lens of Avicenna. In some cases, they simply cited Aristotle when actually quoting Avicenna.207 As Lesley Smith confirms, ‘a citation of Aristotle might mean either a genuine text or an
203 Alexander Murray offers a valuable explanation as to why Grosseteste translated this work in, Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 78-80.
204 Amos Bertolacci, ‘On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus Magnus,’ 204.
205 M-T D’Alverny, ‘Translations and Translators,’ 451.
206 Amos Bertolacci, ‘On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus Magnus,’ 202.
207 Dag. N. Hasse, Avicenna's De Anima in the Latin West, 63. Amos Bertolacci, ‘On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus Magnus: An Attempt at Periodization,’ 254.
opinion of Avicenna or even a pseudonymous work’ in this period.’208 There are a number of possible reasons for the ongoing dependence on Avicenna over Aristotle in what Bertolacci identified as the second phase in Avicenna’s reception, which was marked by the joint consideration of Aristotelian and Avicennian works.
In the first place, we have seen, Avicenna had been introduced and subsequently interpreted in the second half of the twelfth century as the key to interpreting Aristotle, or even as a substitute for Aristotle. Although Aristotle’s personal works eventually came to the fore of scholarly discussion, the reluctance to engage with them apart from intermediaries proved difficult to discard. As Etienne Gilson notes in his discussion of Alexander of Hales:
‘his work seems to belong to a time when no collective theological effort was yet being made in order to assimilate the newly discovered Aristotelian world’.209
Among the many hindrances to reading Aristotle in this period was the lack of a consistent and totally correct translation of the Aristotelian corpus. As is well known, Latin scholars in the late middle ages did not generally have a high level of proficiency in Greek—
and in most cases, they had no knowledge of it at all—owing partly to severed ties with Byzantium in 1054. Although the widespread ignorance of Greek may not have impacted on the quality of the translations that specialists produced, it undermined at very least the general scholarly ability to gauge that quality with confidence. Thus, Roger Bacon believed that
‘unspecified flaws in the Latin versions of Aristotle gave him license to attribute to Aristotle any doctrine which he felt that the philosopher must have taught.’210
208 Lesley Smith, ‘The Theological Framework,’ The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol 4: 1100-1500, ed.
Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 82-3.
209 Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 328.
210 Richard Dales, ‘The Understanding of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy,’ 144. Daniel Callus, ‘Introduction of Aristotelian Learning to Oxford,’ Proceedings of the British Academy (London, 1944), 37-8.
By contrast, the Latin translations from Arabic were produced by scholars who were highly conversant in Arabic. From at least the tenth century, Latins had travelled to Spain in order to study texts not otherwise available to them. Thus, a population of Arabic-speaking Christians grew up in Muslim territories over time. When these fell to the West in 1185 through the Crusades, consequently, there was already a body of indigenous experts available to make translations into Latin. The result was a higher level of confidence in the Avicennian translations and a corresponding tendency to project Avicenna’s ideas on to Aristotle in one way or another. Such flagrant misreading of Aristotle was not altogether deliberate, however.
For the understanding of Aristotle at the time was highly confused by the wide circulation of spurious works.211 In particular, the popular Liber de causis, translated by Gerard of Cremona in Toledo around 1170, was falsely attributed to Aristotle and was only recognized by
Aquinas in 1268 as a Neo-Platonic amalgam of Proclus’ Elements of Theology.212
The so-called Theology of Aristotle was in fact a ninth-century Arabic adaptation of Plotinus’ Enneads 4-6. Although it was not translated into Latin until 1519, it affected Latin thought nonetheless, insofar as Islamic scholars like Avicenna commented on it as part of the Aristotelian corpus and felt constrained because of it to reconcile Aristotle and Plotinus.213 Another work that contributed to the confusion was the De spiritu et anima, which was commonly attributed to Augustine, above all, by early Franciscans like Alexander of Hales.
211 Richard Dales, ‘The Understanding of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy,’ 144.
212 Cristina D’Ancona, ‘The Liber de causis,’ in Interpreting Proclus: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed.
Stephen Gersh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 137-61.
213 Cristina D’Ancona, ‘The Textual Tradition of the Graeco-Arabic Plotinus,’ in The Letter Before the Spirit:
The Importance of Text Traditions for the Study of the Reception of Aristotle, ed. Aafke M. I. van Oppenraaii (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 46. Cristina D’Ancona, ‘The Theology Attributed to Aristotle: Sources, Structure, Influence,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, 8-29.
In a fascinating article on the topic, G. Théry shows that already before 1246, Albert the Great had rejected the notion in his Sentences Commentary and in other works that the text was by Augustine. He attributed it instead to a Cistercian called ‘William’.
Although some of his later writings do attribute passages from the text to Augustine, this is not an indication that Albert changed his mind about the authorship. Rather, it reflects his awareness of the fact that there are some authentic extracts from Augustine within the work, which is ultimately a mis-mash of different sources, that is not itself the product of Augustine’s hand.214 As evidence of this, Albert noted that the text is not mentioned in Augustine’s famous Retractationes, where the Bishop reflects at the end of his life on
everything he has written.215 This evidence would have been available to early Franciscans as well, which serves to suggest, as Théry insists, that they maintained the attribution of
Augustine in spite of evidence to the contrary, in an effort to advance their own scholarly agenda.
In many respects, early Franciscans were trying to reclaim the recently recovered works of Aristotle in a way that could be passed off as consistent with Augustine’s teachings.
The De spiritu et anima, if it was by Augustine, formed the optimal link between his work and the Avicennian texts they wanted to use to interpret Aristotle.216 In response to the rejoinder that Albert and Thomas Aquinas also quote the De spiritu et anima, Théry points out that they do not do so affirmatively, but only in order to respond to their Franciscan
214 G. Théry, ‘L’authenticité du De spiritu et anima dans Saint Thomas et Albert le Grand,’ Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 10 (1921), 376.
215 Ibid., 377.
216 Ibid., 376.
counterparts, who quote the text endlessly.217 Like his teacher, Aquinas rejected the Augustinian provenance of the text.
As noted above, the contents of these and other works were quite compatible with Avicenna’s own outlook, which was ‘open to Neoplatonic accretions in psychology and metaphysics, despite its strong Aristotelian basis in logic and natural philosophy.’218 Indeed, Arabic-speaking scholars like Avicenna had long enjoyed access to the Neo-Platonic
curriculum into which Aristotle had been incorporated between the third and sixth
centuries.219 In this context, Aristotle’s writings were studied in preparation for reading Plato, with whom Aristotle was believed to be largely in agreement.220 As a result, Aristotle’s thought was skewed in a way that eventually became the common understanding of most Muslim authors. These authors, not least Avicenna, in turn passed their perception of
Aristotle on to Latin scholars, who tended genuinely to believe that it was correct, even when it contradicted the obvious meaning of Aristotle’s own texts.221 Plato’s remained almost totally unavailable until the Renaissance.
The broadly Neo-Platonic sympathies the scholastics had adopted by indirect means played an important role in their initial reception of Aristotle. By necessity, early thirteenth century scholars were adapting to the idea of basing their writings and debates around
systematic theological themes and not only the Bible. Still, they hesitated to pursue natural or
217 Ibid, 377.
218 This is a quote from Amos Bertolacci, taken from his comments on this chapter.
219 See Cristina D’Ancona, ‘Greek into Arabic: Neoplatonism in Translation,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
220 George E. Karamanolis, Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
221 Richard Dales, ‘The Understanding of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy,’ 142-3.
philosophical explanations such as they found in Aristotle, which did not ultimately presuppose the authority of Scripture and the faith. In this context, the philosophy of Avicenna was appealing precisely because of its religious nature.222 As a Neoplatonist of sorts, he presented a sort of ‘top-down’ way of thinking in which all things come from, depend upon, and in turn reflect God, although his way of construing this top-down relationship was highly idiosyncratic.
At another level, Avicenna provided a model that was lacking in the Christian tradition for the sort of comprehensive philosophical and theological work that was quickly becoming the chief ambition and hallmark of scholastic thought. In that sense, Avicenna gave Latin scholastics the tool they needed not only to systematize a way of thinking that was Augustinian in the loose sense of the term but also to pay lip service to the idea of
appropriating philosophical inquiries and indeed Aristotle’s philosophy in a way that was compatible with and even advanced their efforts to attribute primacy to theological considerations.
Although the habit of reading Aristotle in terms of Avicenna became common from the turn of the thirteenth century, it was hindered and complicated by the condemnation of Aristotle’s writings in 1210 and again in 1215, which prohibited lecturing albeit not private reading of Aristotle.223 These condemnations, in which Avicenna’s works were probably implicated, came into effect only at Paris, and were likely supported by the university
theologians who were concerned about growing interest in Aristotle amongst members of the
222 Alain de Libera, La querelle des universaux: De Platon á la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris: Èditions du Seuil, 1996), chapter 4: La scolastique arabe, 223-29; idem., Penser au Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 112.
223 Leland Edward Wilshire, ‘The Condemnations of 1277 and the Intellectual Climate of the Medieval University,’ in The Intellectual Climate of the Early University (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), 162.
arts faculty.224
The sympathies underlying this opposition were deeply conservative. They had to do with the perceived threat Aristotelian thought posed to traditional Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and creation ex nihilo. On account of these concerns, there is very little evidence of direct engagement with Aristotle, even through Avicenna, around the time of the
condemnations, for instance, in the works of Stephen Langton and contemporaries such as Peter Comestor, Godfrey of Poitiers, Robert de Courcon, and Peter the Chanter.225
Rather quickly, however, circumstances changed dramatically. Even scholars like William of Auvergne (b. before 1290, d. 1249), Bishop of Paris from 1228-49, who was critical of Aristotle and Avicenna on topics like the eternity of the world and God’s freedom in creation, became attracted to Avicenna’s broader religious-philosophical perspective.
William quickly recognized this as compatible in many respects with his own Christian worldview, which is developed most memorably in his Magisterium divinale et sapientale.226 As works like this evidence, the actual opposition to Aristotle—or the number of those who believed his thought to be heretical—had quickly dissipated. Although lecturing on Aristotle and related works was forbidden, it is clear that theologians were reading these works from about 1220 onwards.227 When Pope Gregory IX renewed the condemnation in 1228, consequently, it largely fell on deaf ears. By 1231, therefore, Gregory revoked his ban, and the reading of Aristotle that was already happening began publicly to flourish.
224 Amos Bertolacci, ‘On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus Magnus,’ 212, 217.
225 Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities, 197.
226 Roland Teske, ‘William of Auvergne’s Debt to Avicenna,’ Studies in the Philosophy of William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris (1228-1249) (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006), 217-38.
227 Lesley Smith, ‘The Theological Framework,’ 84.
Once again, however, this reading was deeply colored by the reading of Avicenna, at least until William of Moerbeke, a colleague of Thomas Aquinas, translated anew or revised earlier Aristotelian translations from the 1250-60s. The impetus behind this request was evidently the assumption that earlier Latin translations had been influenced by Averroes who was regarded at this time as the source of philosophical and theological errors that needed to be uprooted.
Once again, however, this reading was deeply colored by the reading of Avicenna, at least until William of Moerbeke, a colleague of Thomas Aquinas, translated anew or revised earlier Aristotelian translations from the 1250-60s. The impetus behind this request was evidently the assumption that earlier Latin translations had been influenced by Averroes who was regarded at this time as the source of philosophical and theological errors that needed to be uprooted.