Another work which claims Aristotelian authorship only in its title is the Chiromancy of Aristotle, printed at Ulm in 1490, which quotes freely from Albertus Magnus and Avicenna. There are also brief tracts on chiromancy ascribed to Aristotle in manuscripts of the thirteenth or fourteenth century.[835] Förster has identified Polemon as the author of the Greek treatise on physiognomy ascribed to Aristotle.[836] The art of physiognomy of course professed to read character from the face or other parts of the body, and chiromancy which we have just mentioned is really a branch of it. In Latin translation the treatise was accepted as Aristotle’s by such medieval schoolmen as Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus. There are many manuscripts of it in the British Museum, including one which perhaps dates back to the twelfth century.[837] Its popularity continued long after the invention of printing, as is shown by separate editions of it brought out at Paris in 1535 and at Wittenberg in 1538, and by commentaries upon it[838] published at Paris in 1611, at Bologna in 1621, and at Toulouse in 1636. Besides such separate manuscripts and editions of it, it was also regularly embodied in the numerous copies of the pseudo-Aristotelian work to which we next turn.
The Secret of Secrets.
Most widely influential upon the medieval mind of all the spurious works attributed to Aristotle was The Secret of Secrets. Förster enumerated two hundred and seven Latin manuscripts of it and his list is probably far from complete.[839] Gaster calls it “The most popular book of the middle ages.”[840] This is not surprising since it purports to sum up in concise form what the greatest of ancient philosophers deemed it essential for the greatest of ancient rulers to know, and since under the alluring pretense of revealing great secrets in parable and riddle it really masses together a number of the best-tested and most often repeated maxims of personal hygiene and practical philosophy, and some of the superstitions to which men have shown themselves most inclined. Every European library of consequence contains a number of copies of it. It was translated into almost every European language and was often versified, as in Lydgate’s and Burgh’s Secrees of old Philisoffres.[841] Albertus Magnus cited it as Aristotle’s;[842] Roger Bacon wrote a rather jejune commentary upon it.[843] It was printed a number of times before 1500.[844]
Its textual history.
The Secrets of Secrets is believed to be the outcome of a gradual process of compilation from very varied sources, and to have reached something like its present form by the seventh or eighth century of our era. But its chapters on physiognomy, as we have seen, go back to Polemon’s treatise, and part of its medical discussion is said to be borrowed from Diocles Caristes who wrote about 320 B. C. Some Graeco-Persian treatise is thought to be the basis of its discussion of kingship. It is also believed to have appropriated bits from popular literature to its own uses. In Arabic there is extant both a longer and a shorter version, and Gaster has edited a Hebrew text which is apparently derived from an Arabic original different from that of any Latin text. The process of successive compilation, or at least, re-editing and repeated translation which the work underwent is suggested by a series of prologues which occur at the beginning. Following the preface of the Latin translator and the table of contents comes what is called “the prologue of a certain doctor in commendation of Aristotle,”[845] in which omnipotent God is prayed to guard the king and some anonymous editor states that he has executed the mandate enjoined upon him to procure the moral work on royal conduct called The Secret of Secrets, which Aristotle, chief of philosophers, composed. After some talk about Aristotle and Alexander a second prologue begins with the sentence, “John who translated this book, son of a patrician, most skilful and faithful interpreter of languages, says.” This John appears to have been Yuhanna ibn el-Batrik, or Ibn Yahya al-Batrik, who died in 815 A. D.[846] What he says is that he searched the world over until he came to an oracle of the sun which Esculapides had constructed. There he found a solitary abstemious sage who presented him with this book which he translated from Greek into Chaldaic and thence into Arabic. This passage reminds one of Harpocration’s prefatory remarks to his daughter in the Kiranides; indeed, it is quite in the usual style of apocryphal writings.
The Latin translations of John of Spain and Philip.
In the matter of the Latin translation we are on somewhat more certain ground. John of Spain in the first half of the twelfth century seems to have translated only the medical portion.[847] Manuscripts of this partial translation are relatively few,[848] and it was presently superseded by the complete translation made either in the twelfth or early thirteenth century[849] by Philip, “the least of his clerics” for “his most excellent lord, most strenuous in the cult of the Christian religion, Guido of Valencia, glorious pontiff of the city of Tripoli.” Philip goes on to say in his dedicatory preface that it was when he was with Guido in Antioch that they found “this pearl of philosophy, ... this book which contains something useful about almost every science,” and which it pleased Guido to have translated from Arabic into Latin. Although the various printed editions and manuscripts of The Secret of Secrets in Latin vary considerably, they regularly are preceded by this ascription of the Latin translation to Philip, and usually by the other prologues afore-mentioned. Who this Philip was, other than a cleric of Tripoli, is still undetermined. If he was the same as the papal physician whom Alexander III in 1177 proposed to send on a mission to Prester John,[850] he had probably made his translation before that date. J. Wood Brown would identify him with Philip of Salerno, a royal notary whose name appears in 1200 on deeds in the kingdom of Sicily. [851] I have already suggested that possibly he translated the Kiranides.
Philip’s preface.
Returning to Philip’s preface to Guido, it may be noted that he states that Latins do not have the work, and that it is rare among the Arabs.[852] His translation is a free one since the Arabic idiom is different from the Latin. Aristotle wrote this book in response to the petition of King Alexander his disciple who demanded that Aristotle should either come to him or faithfully reveal the secrets of certain arts, namely, the motion, operation, and power of the stars in astronomy, the art of alchemy, the art of knowing natures and working enchantments, and the art of geomancy. Aristotle was too old to come in person, and although it had been his intention to conceal in every way the secrets of the said sciences, yet he did not venture to contradict the will and command of so great a lord. He hid some matters, however, under enigmas and figurative locutions. For Alexander’s convenience he divided the work into ten books, each of which is divided into chapters and headings. Philip adds that for his readers’ convenience he has collected these headings at the beginning of the work, and a table of contents follows.[853] Then come the two older prologues which we have already described, next a letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the extrinsic and intrinsic causes of his work,[854] and then with a chapter which is usually headed Distinctio regum or Reges sunt quatuor begins the discussion of kingship which is the backbone of the work.
Prominence of occult science.