The Toledan Translation Movement (Nicola Polloni)

This lecture is centred on the rise and development of the Arabic-into-Latin translation movement in Toledo in the second half of the twelfth century. A short presentation of the cultural landscape of the twelfth-century philosophical debate offers the context on which and from which the first translations were realised with the aim of providing new scientific and philosophical texts to the Latin scholars. Mirroring the rising Greek-into-Arabic translations that were taking place between Southern Italy and the Byzantine territories, a first generation of translators spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula (and beyond), making available to the Latin audience a wide number of scientific writings. A fact directly related to the developments of the political situation after the taking of Toledo (1085) and the Almoravid dominion in Al-Andalus.

The passage to the second generation of Arabic-into-Latin translators is marked, too, by the socio-political situation of the Iberian Peninsula. In the second half of the century, the main centre of the translating activity is Toledo, and the lecture considers the different factors that made possible the establishment of the translation movement in that town. Finally, the biographies and contributions of the three most important Toledan translators – Gerard of Cremona, Dominicus Gundissalinus, and Michael Scot – are briefly presented and discussed, pointing out the pivotal role they played in the ‘philosophical revolution’ that was going to take place in Latin Europe thanks to the ‘new’ works translated into Latin.

The lecture is the first part of the research seminar "The Penetration of Arabic Philosophy into the Latin Philosophical Tradition (1162-1215)" organised by the "Aquinas and the Arabs" International Working Group.

Essential Bibliography:

Primary Sources
Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, ed. S. Van Riet, vol. 1, Brill, Louvain – Leiden: 1968.
Gundissalinus, De scientiis, ed. M. Alonso Alonso, CSIC, Madrid – Granada: 1954.
Plato of Tivoli, Mahometis Albatenii de scientia stellarum liber, Bologna 1645, fol. b. Cfr. M. - Th. D’Alverny, ‘Translations and Translators’, in R. L. Benson– G. Constable (eds.), Reinassance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1982, 426-433, ivi 451.

Secondary Sources
A. Bertolacci, ‘A Community of Translators: The Latin Medieval Versions of Avicenna’s Book of the Cure’, in C.J. Mews - J.N. Crossley (eds.), Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe 1100-1500, Brepols, Turnhout: 2011, 37-54.
Ch. Burnett, ‘The Institutional Context of Arabic-Latin Translations of the Middle Ages: A Reassessment of the «School of Toledo»’, in O. Weijers (ed.), Vocabulary of Teaching and Research Between Middle Ages and Renaissance. Proceedings of the Colloquium London, Warburg Institute, 11-12 March 1994, Brepols, Turnhout: 1995, 214-235.
Ch. Burnett, ‘The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Programme in Toledo in the Twelfth Century’, Science in Context 14 (2001), 249-288.
Ch. Burnett, ‘John of Seville and John of Spain: a mise au point’, Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 44 (2002), 59–78
Ch. Burnett, The Gundissalinus’s Circle, forthcoming.
M.Th. D’Alverny, ‘Avendauth?’, in Homenaje a Millás Vallicrosa, vol. 1, CSIC, Barcelona: 1954, 19-43.
F. J. Fernández Conde, La religiosidad medieval en España. Plena Edad Media (siglos XI-XIII), Trea, Gijón: 2011.
Ch. H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1924.
N. Polloni, ‘Elementi per una biografia di Dominicus Gundisalvi’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 82 (2015), 7-22.
J.F. Rivera, ‘Nuevos datos sobre los traductores Gundisalvo y Juan Hispano’, Al-Andalus 31 (1966), 267-280.

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