Plato of Tivoli.
Next in importance to John of Spain as a translator of Arabic astrology in the first half of the twelfth century should probably be ranked Plato of Tivoli. They seem to have worked independently and sometimes to have made distinct translations of the same work, as in the case of the Nativities of Albohali and the Epistle of Messahala. On the whole, Plato’s translations[218] would appear slightly to antedate John’s. Haskins has shown, however, that the date 1116, hitherto assigned for Plato’s translation of the Liber embadorum of Savasorda, should be 1145.[219] But Plato’s translation of Albohali is dated 1136, while John’s was not made until 1153.[220] In 1136 is also dated Plato’s translation of the astrological work of Almansor in the form of one hundred and fifty or so brief aphorisms, judgments, propositions, or capitula, which later appeared repeatedly in print. Two years later he turned the famous Quadripartitum of Ptolemy into Latin. His other translations include Albucasis (Abû’l-Qâsim Chalaf b. ʿAbbâs el-Zahrâwî) on the astrolabe, Haly (ʿAlî b. Ridwân b. ʿAlî b. Ğaʿfar, Abû’l-Hasan) on nativities, and a geomancy. Most of Plato’s translations were produced at Barcelona.
Robert of Chester.
In a manuscript at the British Museum[221] one of Plato of Tivoli’s translations is immediately preceded in the same large clear hand, different from the smaller and later writing employed in the remainder of the manuscript, by a translation of the Judgments of the astrologer Alkindi by Robert of Chester,[222] with an introduction to “my Hermann,” whom Robert commends highly as an astronomer. A letter written in 1143 by Peter the Venerable to St. Bernard tells how in 1141 he had induced two “acute and well trained scholars,” who were then residing in Spain near the river Ebro, to turn for a time from the arts of astrology which they had been studying there, and to translate the Koran. These two translators were the friends whom we have just mentioned, Hermann of Dalmatia and Robert of Chester. Robert, too, tells us in the prefatory letter to the translation of the Koran, completed in 1143, that this piece of work was “a digression from his principal studies of astronomy and geometry.” Besides such mathematical treatises as his translations of the Judicia of Alkindi, the Algebra of Al-Khowarizmi, a treatise on the astrolabe ascribed to Ptolemy, and several sets of astronomical tables, including a revision or rearrangement of Adelard of Bath’s translation of the Tables of Al-Khowarizmi, Robert on February 11, 1144, translated a treatise on alchemy which Morienus Romanus, a monk of Jerusalem, was supposed to have written for “Calid, king of Egypt,” or Prince Khalid ibn Jazid, a Mohammedan pretender and patron of learning at Alexandria. Of it we shall treat more fully in another chapter. About 1150 we seem to find Robert returned to his native England and writing at London.[223]
Hermann the Dalmatian.
Hermann the Dalmatian, or twelfth century translator, must be distinguished on the one hand from Hermann the Lame who wrote on the astrolabe,[224] and apparently on the other hand from Hermann the German who translated Averroes and Aristotle in the thirteenth century.[225] To the twelfth century translator we may ascribe such works as a treatise on rains,[226] a brief glossary of Arabic astronomical terms,[227] and Latin versions of the Planisphere of Ptolemy,[228] of the astrological Fatidica of Zahel,[229] and of the Introduction to Astronomy in eight books of the noted Arabic astrologer Albumasar, a work often entitled Searching of the Heart or Of Things Occult.[230] Hermann dedicated it to Robert of Chester, whom he also mentions in the preface of his translation of the Planisphere,[231] and in his chief work, the De essentiis, a cosmology which he finished at Béziers in the latter part of the same year 1143.[232]
Hugh of Santalla.
Hugo Sanctelliensis or Hugh of Santalla[233] is another translator of the first half of the twelfth century in the Spanish peninsula who appears to have worked independently of the foregoing men, since he to some extent translated the same works, for instance, the Centiloquium ascribed to Ptolemy, Latin versions of which have also been credited to Plato of Tivoli and John of Seville. Hugh’s translations are undated but at least some of them may have antedated those of the men already mentioned,[234] since Haskins has identified Hugh’s patron, “my lord, Bishop Michael,” with the holder of the see of Tarazona from 1119 to 1151. Hugh’s nine known translations are concerned with works of astronomy, astrology, and divination. Those on astrology include, besides the Centiloquium already mentioned, Albumasar’s Book of Rains, Messahala on nativities, and a Book of Aristotle from 255 volumes of the Indians, of which we shall have more to say in the chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle. The works on other forms of divination are a geomancy[235] and De spatula, a treatise on divination from the shoulder-blades of animals. In the preface to the geomancy he promises to treat next of hydromancy but says that he has failed to find books of aeromancy or pyromancy.[236] Although, as has been said, Hugh seems to have labored independently of the other translators and in a somewhat out-of-the-way town, he nevertheless seems to have felt himself in touch with the learning of his time. In his various prefaces, like William of Conches, he speaks of “moderns” as well as the arcana of the ancients,[237] and his patron is continually urging him to write not only what he has gathered from the books of the ancients but what he has learned by experiment.[238] In the preface to his translation of Albumasar’s Book of Rains he tells Bishop Michael that “what the modern astrologers of the Gauls most bemoan their lack of, your benignity may bestow upon posterity,”[239] and the distribution of manuscripts of his translations in European libraries indicates that they were widely influential.
A contemporary memorial of Gerard of Cremona.
The best source for the life and works of Gerard of Cremona[240] (1114-1187) is a memorandum attached by his friends to what was presumably his last work, a translation of the Tegni of Galen with the commentary of Haly, in imitation of Galen who in old age was induced to draw up a list of his own works. Gerard, however, is already dead when his associates write, having worked right up to life’s close and passed away in 1187 at the age of seventy-three. They state that from the very cradle he was educated in the lap of philosophy, and that he learned all he could in every department of it studied among the Latins. Then, moved by his passion for the Almagest, which he found nowhere among the Latins, he came to Toledo. There, beholding the abundance of books in every field in Arabic and the poverty of the Latins in this respect, he devoted his life to the labor of translation, scorning the desires of the flesh, although he was rich in worldly goods, and adhering to things of the spirit alone. He toiled for the advantage of all both present and future, not unmindful of the injunction of Ptolemy to work good increasingly as you near your end. Now, that his name may not be hidden in silence and darkness, and that no alien name may be inscribed by presumptuous thievery in his translations, the more so since he (like Galen) never signed his own name to any of them, they have drawn up a list of all the works translated by him whether in dialectic or geometry, in “astrology” or philosophy, in medicine or in the other sciences.[241]