[2798] Bubnov (1899), 370.... “Hoc opusculum ex Arabico versum ad manum habuit, retractavit dicendique genere expolivit.”
[2799] Printed by Pez. Thesaur. Anecdot. Noviss. III, ii, 95-106. “Herimannus Christi pauperum peripsima et philosophiae tyronum asello imo limace tardior assecla.” The MSS are numerous.
[2800] Digby 174, fol. 210v; also noted by Bubnov (1899), p. 113. Hermann’s dedicatory prologue, however, does not give his friend’s name in full, but reads in this MS, “B. amico suo.”
[2801] See Clerval, Hermann le Dalmate, Paris, 1891, in Compte rendu du Congrès scientifique international des catholiques, Sciences Historiques, 163-9. Also, I believe, published separately as Hermann le Dalmate et les premières traductions latines des traités arabes d’astronomie au moyen âge, Paris, Picard, 1891, 11 pp. Clerval adduced only one MS in support of his contention and took up the untenable position that Arabic astronomy was unknown in Latin until the twelfth century. He also did not distinguish between the different works on the astrolabe.
[2802] Munich CLM 14836, fols. 16v-24r. BM Royal 15-B-IX, fol. 51r-: in both cases followed by the treatise of twenty-one chapters.
[2803] Professor Haskins has announced as in preparation an article on Hermann the translator which will perhaps solve the difficulties.
[2804] In a Berlin manuscript of the twelfth century (Berlin 956, fol. 11) there is added a note in a thirteenth century hand recounting the legend that this Hermann was the son of a king and queen and that, his mother having been asked before his birth whether she would prefer a handsome and foolish son or a learned and shamefully ugly one and she having chosen the latter alternative, he was born hunchbacked and lame. It was from this MS of the treatise on the astrolabe that Pertz edited the legend in the Monumenta Germaniae (Scriptores, V, 267). Rose (1905), p. 1179, calls the writer of this note Berengar, too, asking anent the opening words of the note, “De isto hermanno legitur in historia,” “Aus welcher historia hat der Schreiber (Berengarius) seine Fabeln?” The note at the close of the treatise in Digby 174, fol. 210v, gives a different version of the legend, stating that Hermann was a good man and dear to God and that one day an angel offered him his choice between bodily health without great wisdom and the greatest science with corporal infirmity. Hermann chose the latter and afterwards became a paralytic and gouty.
[2805] This treatise, in which Hermann expresses amazement that Bede has so underestimated the duration of the moon, immediately precedes the one on the astrolabe in BN nouv. acq. 229, a German MS of the twelfth century, fols. 17r-19r (formerly pp. 265-269). After the treatise on the astrolabe follows a third work by Hermann, “de quodam horologio,” fols. 25v-28r. Then follows the treatise in twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe.
These citations alone are sufficient to demonstrate the error of Clerval’s assertion: (1891), 165. “On ne peut invoquer aucune preuve sérieuse en faveur d’Hermann Contract. Jacques de Bergame et Trithème ... sont les premiers qui aient attribué au moine de Constance les traités en question.”
[2806] Bubnov (1899) 372. “Habet etiam ex divinitatis archana institutione et physica lata ratione cum omnibus mundanis creaturis concordiam in rebus omnibus, secundum phisiologos non parvam congruentiam....” Bubnov unfortunately used only one of his four MSS in printing this text, and there often seems to be something wrong with it or with his punctuation. This criticism applies more especially to the passage quoted in the following footnote.