1 Notes on the Identity of the Latin Translator of Avicenna`s Physics

1
Notes on the Identity of the Latin Translator of Avicenna’s Physics and on Further
Anonymous Translations in Twelfth-Century Spain
Dag Nikolaus Hasse and Andreas Büttner1
The Physics part of Avicenna’s aš-Šifāʾ was translated from Arabic into Latin in two steps. The
first two books and the beginning of the third book were translated in the twelfth century by an
unkown translator. About a century later, in the 1270s, the remainder of book three and book
four were translated by Juan Gonzalves de Burgos and a companion translator named Salomon.
The present paper makes a fresh attempt to lift the anonymity of the earlier translation of the
Physics. It also provides evidence for the identification of anonymous translators of further 18
Latin translations of Arabic philosophical texts in twelfth-century Spain.
In an earlier study, I have studied a different group of translations: Averroes translations of
the thirteenth century. In that case, the key to differentiating between the various translators
was their usage of non-technical, non-disciplinary vocabulary, everyday words, particles and
short phrases. The stylistic analysis resulted in the attribution of twelve anonymous translations
to four different translators, among them Michael Scot.2 The great translation movement in
Spain in the twelfth century is a more difficult target for such an analysis. Here too we have
many anonymous translations. But the textual situation is more complicated. The translation
movement in Spain is much larger, and there is a greater number of anonymous translations.
Also, texts by many different authors are involved, not only by one. Some anonymous
translations, for instance those of al-Kindī, are very short. In order to keep the size manageable
and the corpus coherent, I decided to concentrate on philosophical texts, as exhibited on the
table below, and to exclude, for the purpose of the present study, other disciplines such as
medicine, astrology, or astronomy.
Twelfth-Century Latin Translations of Arabic Philosophical Texts
on the Iberian Peninsula
anonymous
1
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn, fragm.
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exercitationis ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of the 5th Book of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demonstrationis
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, Liber de quatuor confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, selections from I and II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
ed. C. Martini
ed. J. Ruska
ed. G. Théry
ed. A. Nagy
ed. G. Bos / C. Burnett
ed. M.-T. d’Alverny / F. Hudry
ed. E. Gilson
ed. D. Salman
ed. M. Cruz Hernandez
ed. C. Burnett
ed. C. Baeumker
ed. A. Nagy
ed. P. Gautier-Dalché
ed. A. Sannino
ed. J.T. Muckle
ed. 1508
ed. S. van Riet
The paper was written by Dag Nikolaus Hasse. Andreas Büttner contributed significantly by creating a digitalized
and fully searchable corpus of the translations, by developing a surface to improve the workflow of the
computational analysis with Stylo, and by programming a search tool for analyzing the corpus manually. We are
grateful for having received very helpful advice for this paper, especially from Fotis Jannidis and Christof Schöch.
Research for this paper was funded by the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung as part of the
Kallimachos research grant.
2
Hasse, Latin Averroes Translations.
2
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
John of Seville
20-Ps.-Aristotle, Secretum secretorum
21-Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, De differentia spiritus et animae
22-Abū Maʿšar, Great Introduction
Hugo of Santalla
23-Ps.-Apollonius, De secretis
24-Liber Aristotilis de 255 Indorum voluminibus
Gerard of Cremona 25-Aristole, Posterior Analytics
26-Aristotle, Physics
27-Aristotle, De caelo
28-Aristotle, De gen. et corr.
29-Aristotle / Ibn al-Biṭrīq, Meteora I-III
30-Ps.-Aristotle, Liber de causis
31-Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Sense ...
32-Themistius, Comm. Post. Anal.
33-al-Kindī, De quinque essentiis
34-al-Kindī, De somno
35-al-Kindī, De ratione
36-al-Fārābī, De scientiis
37-Isaac Israeli, De elementis
38-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
Avendauth and ?
39-Avicenna, prologue / Isagoge
Gundisalvi and
40-Avicenna, De anima
Avendauth
41-Avicenna, De medicinis cordialibus
Gundisalvi and
42-Ibn Gabirol, Fons vitae
Johannes Hispanus 43- al-Ġazālī, Summa (Maqāṣid)
Gundisalvi
44-Avicenna, Philosophia prima
45- al-Fārābī, De scientiis
46-Avicenna, De convenientia ... scientiarum (from
Post. Anal. of aš-Šifāʾ)
47-Ps.-Avicenna, Liber celi et mundi
Alfred of
48-Nicolaus Damascenus, De plantis
Shareshill
49-Avicenna, De congelatione ... lapidum
ed. M.A. Alonso
ed. D. Salman
ed. H. Suchier
ed. J. Wilcox
ed. R. Lemay
ed. F. Hudry
ed. C. Burnett / D. Pingree
ed. L. Minio-Paluello
mss.
mss.
mss.
ed. P. Schoonheim
ed. A. Pattin
ed. G. Théry
ed. J.R. O’Donnell
ed. A. Nagy
ed. A. Nagy
ed. A. Nagy
ed. F. Schupp
ed. 1515
ed. J.T. Muckle
ed. A. Birkenmajer
ed. S. van Riet
ed. S. van Riet
ed. C. Baeumker
ed. C. Lohr / ed. J.T. Muckle
ed. S. van Riet
ed. M.A. Alonso, repr. Schneider
ed. L. Baur
ed. O. Gutman
ed. H. Drossaart / E. Poortman
ed. E. Holmyard / D. Mandeville
The table lists 19 anonymous translations and 30 translations by translators known to us. At
present state of knowledge, this is the complete corpus of philosophical texts translated from
Arabic into Latin in twelfth-century Spain. Note that for numbers 26-28 and 37 I did not have
access to a digitally searchable text. Number 22, Abū Maʿšar’s Great Introduction, is not a
philosophical text proper. It was added sin order to increase the statistical material for John of
Seville, since texts 20 and 21 are rather short. Abū Maʿšar’s text leads to another problem for
anyone who studies twelfth-century translations: revision. John of Seville’s version of the Great
Introduction was revised, perhaps by Gerard of Cremona, as some have suggested. A related
problem is double translation: Al-Fārābī’s Enumeration of the Sciences (De scientiis), texts 36
and 45, was translated both by Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundisalvi. Isaac Israeli’s
De definitionibus, texts 15 and 37, was also translated twice, by an anonymous translator and
by Gerard. The same is true of al-Kindī’s On the Intellect, texts 4 and 35. In all three cases,
verbal parallels between the translations make it likely that one translation in fact is a revision
of the other. Even if we stay away from these double translations and focus on the others, there
remain enough problems for stylistic analysis. The most troubling question is whether the
stylistic signal of the author, i.e. of al-Kindī or al-Fārābī or Avicenna, may turn out to be
stronger than the translator signal – whether, for instance, Fārābī translations will group
together in Latin, even if the Latin versions stem from different translators. A stylistic
identification of the translator would then be impossible.
3
The status quaestionis on anonymous translations in Toledo owes much to Manuel Alonso,
who has analysed Dominicus Gundisalvi’s translation style in several papers. In an impressive
article of 1955, Alonso compared, on 59 densely written pages, the “coincidencias verbales
tipicas” in the works and translations by Gundisalvi, comparing the Arabic and the Latin.3 This
article is full of interesting material. For the present purpose it is most relevant that Alonso
bases his ascriptions on 34 typical words and phrases:
multivocum, astrologia / astronomia, parificare, minus commune, credulitas / credere, solet,
in sensibilibus, habens, designare / designatus / designatio, concomitari, maneria, fortassis,
materiare, enim, caelatura, si ... aut, intellectus, intentio, vicissitudinantur, quadrivialia,
dapsilis, aequidistantia, mediante, anitas, diversificare, appendiciae, propalare, numerus
surdus, assolare, hylearis, elongatio, transumere / transumptive, imaginatio, et omnino
On this basis, Alonso ascribes nine anonymous translations to Gundisalvi. The other
anonymous translations in my list are not discussed by Alonso:
Manuel Alonso Alonso:
anonymous translations ascribed to Gundisalvi
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn, fragm.
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exercitationis ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of the 5th Book of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demonstrationis
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, Liber de quatuor confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, selections from I and II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
Alonso
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
The evidence collected by Alonso is substantial. Whether we are convinced by it, depends on
the standards we demand from stylistic analysis. One drawback of Alonso’s studies is that he
does not compare Gundisalvi’s style with that of any other translator on the Iberian peninsula.
Once you start comparing, the result is disillusioning. The rare Latin term parificare, for
instance, one of the words picked out by Alonso, is used by Gundisalvi, but also by Gerard of
Cremona and Hugo of Santalla, as the following table shows (which lists only those texts of the
corpus in which the word appears):
3
Alonso, Coincidencias verbales típicas, pp. 129–152, 345–379.
4
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
parifica ANON_10FarabiEuclid:.....................2 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................3 Hugo_23PsAppolDeSecretis:................1 Gerard_30PsArisDeCausis:.................1 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............1 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................2 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........1 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................13 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........1 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
To give further examples: credulitas appears five times in Gerard’s translation of the Posterior
Analytics. designare and its cognates is absent in Gerard, but used by John of Seville and Hugo
of Santalla. fortassis appears in John, Hugo and Alfred. aequidistare is used by Gerard in his
Themistius translation. mediante appears in John, Hugo and Gerard. elongatio is used by Alfred
and Gerard. imaginatio is used in various writings by Gerard. et omnino – which is a
wonderfully stylistic term, that appears often in Gundisalvi’s writings – unfortunately is used
also by John and Gerard. And, a final example, which is exhibited in the table below:
diuersificare is a term which regularly appears in Gerard’s translations.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
diuersifica ANON_06KindiDeRadiis:....................1 ''''_17AvicPhys:........................25 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................7 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............5 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................7 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............9 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................2 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............2 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............1 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................2 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:..........24 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:................3 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:....................4 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............1 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
What these tables show, is that Alonso has successfully unearthed terms preferred by
Gundisalvi, but not necessarily terms typical of Gundisalvi. Hence, Alonso made a great
advance, because he was able to offer many indications buttressing his hypothesis that
Gundisalvi was in fact responsible for a greater set of translations than we knew before. But
these indications are of limited validity. Alonso’s evidence for author attribution is not
conclusive.
From Charles Burnett we have many important studies on the translation movement in Spain:
on the various translators, on the coherence of the translation programme, and on the
differentiation between the two “Johns” involved: between John of Seville (Iohannes
Hispalensis), the translator of at least 14 works mainly of astrology and astronomy in the 1120s
and 1130s, and John of Spain (Iohannes Hispanus, d. 1215), the collaborator of Dominicus
Gundisalvi on two translations, who possibly was the successor of Gundisalvi as archdeacon of
5
Cuéllar.4 The starting-point for my inquiry was Burnett’s list of Arabic-Latin philosophical
translations, which was published in 2005.5 These are his careful comments on the presumed
translators:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn, fragm.
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exercitationis ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of the 5th Book of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demonstrationis
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, Liber de quatuor confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, selections from I and II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
Burnett’s comments
perhaps the same translator as 06
Gundisalvi (?)
anonymous
Gundisalvi (?)
anonymous
perhaps the same translator as 01
Gundisalvi (?)
Gundisalvi (?)
anonymous
Gundisalvi (?)
Gundisalvi (?)
anonymous
anonymous
anonymous
Gundisalvi (?)
unknown, not Gundisalvi
unknown, Toledan (?)
Alfred of Shareshill (?)
anonymous
Burnett follows Alonso’s suggestions on texts 2,4,7,8,12 and 15, but adds cautious question
marks.
Who were the translators of these nineteen treatises? By some coincidence, mosts texts in
question are pieces of Arabic philosophy proper, that is, they are mainly written by Arabic
philosophers, such as al-Kindī, al-Fārābī and Avicenna, rather than by ancient Greek
philosophers transmitted in Arabic. Hence, the identification of the translators is important also
for the determining who transported Arabic philosophy into Europe. Moreover, the anonymity
of the translations prevents us from knowing more about the historical circumstances of the
translation movement on the Iberian peninsula.6 John of Seville was mainly active in the region
of the Limia valley in northern Portugal. Hugo of Santalla, in all likelihood, was a canon of the
cathedral of Tarazona. Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundisalvi were canons of the
cathedral of Toledo, and Alfred of Shareshill was probably active in Toledo towards the end of
the twelfth century. Hence, the importance of Toledo, and possibly other Iberian cities, as a
centre for Arabic-Latin translations depends upon whether we can make advances in identifying
anonymous translators.
I shall approach this task in two steps: first by providing philological evidence, based on a
stylistic analysis of the usage of particles and short phrases, and second by demonstrating that
4
Burnett, John of Seville, pp. 59–78; Burnett, Arabic into Latin.
Burnett, Arabic into Latin: the Reception of Arabic Philosophy, pp. 391–400.
6
On this translation movement see Burnett, The Coherence, pp. 249–288; Hasse, The Social Conditions, pp. 68–
86; specifically on Avicenna translations Bertolacci, A Community of Translators, pp. 37–54; Hasse, Die
Überlieferung arabischer Philosophie, pp. 377–400.
5
6
a good part of the results receives confirmation through a computational analysis of the most
frequent words statistics of the texts.
I – Philological Analysis
The first hurdle to take was to create a digital corpus of texts which allowed for the comparison
of stylistic features. We therefore had to scan the texts and standardize the Latin spelling in a
way that would not seriously distort the stylistic preferences of the translators. In order to
extinguish mistakes of the optical character recognition (OCR) and to standardize the Latin
spelling, the texts were checked automatically against the Archimedes Project Morphology
Service, which is based on a Latin dataset by the Perseus Project,7 and against our own list of
Latin words specific of the translation literature. After many of such checking routines, the two
datasets together recognized a high percentage of the text as correct Latin, as this table shows:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
quality and length of the scanned Latin texts
DATEI LAENGE FEHLER QUAL 01_ANON_01ArisMetAlpha.txt 499 16 97% 02_ANON_02AlexDeIntell.txt 3345 19 99% 03_ANON_03Turba.txt 18682 392 98% 04_ANON_04KindiDeIntell.txt 806 7 99% 05_ANON_05KindiDeMutatTemp.txt 10241 290 97% 06_ANON_06KindiDeRadiis.txt 9150 171 98% 07_ANON_07FarabiDeIntell.txt 4075 65 98% 08_ANON_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis.txt 6567 92 99% 09_ANON_09PsFarabiFlos.txt 822 2 100% 10_ANON_10FarabiEuclid.txt 2277 68 97% 11_ANON_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien.txt 2207 24 99% 12_ANON_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae.txt 6008 42 99% 13_ANON_13IkhwanCosmo.txt 4720 372 92% 14_ANON_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf.txt 1891 112 94% 15_ANON_15IsaacDeDefin.txt 4452 49 99% 16_ANON_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES.txt 966 10 99% 17_ANON_17AvicPhys.txt 59724 339 99% 18_ANON_18AvicDeDiluviis.txt 838 16 98% 19_ANON_19GazaliProlMaqasid.txt 414 12 97% 20_John_20PsArisSecretum.txt 1557 40 97% 21_John_21QustaDeDifferentia.txt 4481 47 99% 22_John_22AlbumasarIntroductorium.txt 109251 1530 99% 23_Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis.txt 47085 693 99% 24_Hugo_24LiberAristotilis.txt 39133 952 98% 25_Gerard_25ArisPostAn.txt 31879 187 99% 29_Gerard_29ArisMeteoraI‐III.txt 15955 311 98% 30_Gerard_30PsArisDeCausis.txt 7194 78 99% 31_Gerard_31AlexanderDeMotu.txt 4484 32 99% 32_Gerard_32ThemistiusPostAn.txt 34126 216 99% 33_Gerard_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis.txt 2291 14 99% 34_Gerard_34KindiDeSomno.txt 3081 57 98% 35_Gerard_35KindiDeRatione.txt 733 7 99% 36_Gerard_36FarabiDeScientiis.txt 15106 280 98% 38_Gerard_38IsaacDeDefin.txt 7124 96 99% 39_Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI.txt 1702 87 95% 40_Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima.txt 65109 468 99% 7
http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/arch/doc/xml-rpc.html
7
41_Gundisalvi_41AvicDeMedCord.txt 3467 44 99% 42_Gundisalvi_42GabirolFonsVitae.txt 71182 378 99% 43_Gundisalvi_43GazaliSumma.txt 57578 753 99% 44_Gundisalvi_44AvicMet.txt 109383 494 100% 45_Gundisalvi_45FarabiDeScientiis.txt 6900 54 99% 46_Gundisalvi_46AvicConvenientiaScien.txt 2192 12 99% 47_Gundisalvi_47PsAvicLiberCeli.txt 12317 45 100% 48_Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis.txt 10175 182 98% 49_Alfred_49AvicLapid.txt 1666 61 96% SUMME 802835 9216 99% –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
With the help of a search programme written for the purpose, I could now start to analyse the
Latin style of these texts. From previous studies it is known that the analysis of small words
and phrases is a promising way towards identifying the translators. From my reading of the
texts, I was aware of certain stylistic preferences of one of the Toledan translators, Dominicus
Gundisalvi: for instance, that he has a liking for the phrase quantum ad as translating the Arabic
bi-l-qiyās ilā. A search of the corpus reveals that this observation is correct:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
quantum ad (translating: bi-l-qiyās ilā)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................1 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................2 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................1 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............1 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............1 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:........................40 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........1 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................2 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:...............11 8
''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............1 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:..........14 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:...............36 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................52 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........0 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......1 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............2 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Note that the phrase quantum ad appears regularly in Gundisalvi’s translations, and also in
some anonymous translations, notably 40 times in the Latin version of Avicenna’s Physics –
which is a first indication that Gundisalvi was the translator of that and other texts. The phrase
is not used by Gerard of Cremona and Alfred of Shareshill, but, unfortunately, once by John of
Seville and twice by Hugo of Santalla. Hence, the evidence of the term quantum ad is good, but
not striking.
Andreas Büttner then improved the search tool in such a way that it would give us lists with
words or phrases that appear only in one of the known translators. We then arrived at five lists
with words that appear only in Hugo, Alfred, Gerard, John or Gundisalvi respectively (We took
out Avendauth because his text is too short to be of any statistical relevance). At first, this
identification of exclusive words proved a dead end. For we found that each of the 19
anonymous texts on the list shares some exclusive words with any of the five translators. This
was a disappointing result, but it became explainable when I studied the lists with characteristic
expressions of the five translators. Many of them consist of content words, such as substantia
composita, which are typical of a topic or a discipline, whereas others are stylistic words, such
as et deinde. The automatic search function cannot differentiate between content words and
purely stylistic words. Content words have a tendency to travel from one author to the other,
but stylistic words are much more stable. Some of them are highly characteristic of one person
writing. I therefore shifted my focus again on small words and phrases that do not contain any
content words. One of them is et deinde:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
et deinde (translating: ṯumma)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................1 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................5 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............2 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:.....................10 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................4 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........1 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................6 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 9
''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:...............25 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........3 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:...............23 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................54 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........1 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......1 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............2 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
This phrase appears in many Gundisalvi translations (except for the very short De medicinis
cordialibus) – regardless, in fact, whether Gundisalvi was translating with another person or all
by himself. et deinde never appears in the philosophical translations by John, Hugo, Gerard,
Avendauth and Alfred. But et deinde appears in the anonymous translations 2, 7, 12, 13, 15,16,
17. This kind of evidence is very indicative.
There are other stylistic phrases typical of Gundisalvi, which are never used by the other six
translators, but shared by a larger group of anonymous translations. One such phrase is
postquam autem:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
postquam autem (translating: fa-iḏā)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................1 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............1 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................1 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................4 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 10
''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............1 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................4 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........0 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:...............18 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................41 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........0 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......2 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............9 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
postquam autem is shared by the anonymous translations 7, 12, 15, 17.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
inter se (translating: baʿḍ li-baʿḍ)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................2 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................1 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................2 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............4 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............2 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................9 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................1 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 11
''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................8 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:..........13 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:...............14 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................10 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........3 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......1 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............2 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
inter se is shared by the anonymous translations 3, 5, 6, 11, 12, 17, 19.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
secundum hoc quod
(translating: min ḥayṯu or min ǧihā mā or bi-mā)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:................ .....0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................3 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................1 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09PsFarabiFlos:.....................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................2 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............0 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........3 ''''_17AvicPhys:........................25 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............1 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 12
''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:...............22 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............3 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:..........12 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:................5 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:...................43 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........1 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......0 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............0 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
secundum hoc quod is shared by the anonymous translations 2, 5, 10, 16, 17 – but also once by
Gerard.
So far I have discussed only two-word- or three-word-phrases, but there is also a particle
which is very distinctive of Gundisalvi: idcirco.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
idcirco (translating li-ḏālika)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................2 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........2 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................4 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............1 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............0 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................3 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:........................10 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 13
Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................6 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........9 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:...............22 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:....................5 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........3 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......1 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............6 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
idcirco is shared by the anonymous translations 6, 8,10, 11, 15 and 17. From these tables, it is
clear that the stylistic phrases et deinde, postquam autem, inter se, secundum hoc quod and
idcirco are highly characteristic of Gundisalvi.
Insteading of presenting the tables for all relevant terms and phrases in this article, I now
choose a different way of presenting the evidence. The table below gives a conspectus of the
stylistic words tracked in Gundisalvi and indicates which of these words appear in which
anonymous translations:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad viam felicitates
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De 4 confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
words and phrases shared with DOMINICUS
GUNDISALVI
(et deinde, postquam autem, inter se, idcirco, in tantum
quod, cur non, ullo modo, uel est, hoc est scilicet,
probatum, sic ut, opus fuit, tunc esset, est hoc quod, non
est necesse, id cuius, potest autem, dictio de, si quis
autem, et etiam quia, praedictum est, habet esse, nullo
modo, est eo quod, secundum hoc quod, non est autem,
sine dubio, in actu, opus est, id in quo)
et deinde, uel est, sic ut, opus fuit, est hoc quod, potest
autem, et etiam quia, est eo quod, secundum hoc quod,
non est autem, in actu, id in quo
inter se, cur non, habet esse, nullo modo, est eo quod,
opus est
uel est, non est autem, in actu
inter se, in tantum quod, secundum hoc quod, in actu
inter se, idcirco, probatum, sic ut, praedictum est, non
est autem
et deinde, postquam autem, uel est, opus fuit, id cuius,
nullo modo, non est autem
idcirco, probatum
idcirco, ullo modo, uel est, tunc esset, praedictum est,
secundum hoc quod, in actu
inter se, opus fuit, dictio de
et deinde, postquam autem, inter se, idcirco, uel est, hoc
est scilicet, sic ut, est hoc quod, non est necesse, non est
autem, sine dubio, opus est, id in quo
et deinde, et etiam quia
et deinde, postquam autem, idcirco, in tantum quod, si
quis autem, habet esse, sine dubio
et deinde, secundum hoc quod, non est autem, in actu
14
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
et deinde, postquam autem, inter se, idcirco, in tantum
quod, cur non, ullo modo, hoc est scilicet, probatum, sic
ut, opus fuit, tunc esset, est hoc quod, non est necesse,
id cuius, potest autem, dictio de, si quis autem, et etiam
quia, habet esse, nullo modo, secundum hoc quod, non
est autem, sine dubio, in actu, opus est, id in quo
in tantum quod, tunc esset, est hoc quod, id cuius
inter se, hoc est scilicet, non est autem
This is the most indicative table of the present study. The words and phrases in recte never
appear in any philosophical translation by the other five translators. The words in italics appear
once in another translator – but only once, not even twice. Hence, the words in italics are not
as exclusively Gundisalvian as are the words in recte. But together they pile up much evidence
– evidence that Dominicus Gundisalvi in fact was responsible for a very large number of
Arabic-Latin translations. In two cases, the evidence is scant, namely for texts 8 and 13: alFārābī, Liber exercitationis ad viam felicitatis, and Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia. These two
texts share only two phrases with Gundisalvi, even though they are not particularly short. But
with respect to the other texts, the evidence for Gundisalvi is strong, even in case of the brief
texts 4 (al-Kindī’s On the intellect), 18 (Avicenna, De diluviis) and 19 (al-Ġazālī, prologue to
the Maqāṣid).
It is remarkable that three texts do not contain any stylistic words or phrases typical of
Gundisalvi: texts 1, 9 and 14. There is an answer to this. Let us turn to the evidence of stylistic
words for other translators: Gerard of Cremona, John of Seville, Hugo of Santalla and Alfred
of Shareshill. Here comes a phrase typical of Gerard of Cremona:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
secundum semitam
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................2 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............0 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................0 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:....................31 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 15
''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:..............25 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................1 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................0 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........0 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:................0 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:....................0 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........0 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......0 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............0 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
At the beginning, it proved difficult to find small words and phrases that are typical of Gerard’s
translations and used only by him, because Gerard’s style is much smoother and less
idiosyncratic than Gundisalvi’s. Gerard shares many stylistic words with one or the other fellow
translator. But further searching led to the following phrases:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellect
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De 4 confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
words and phrases shared with GERARD OF
CREMONA
(propterea quia, praeter quod, secundum semitam, et
neque, et propter illud, per sermonem, demonstratio
super, et nos quidem, quoniam quando, nisi quoniam, et
illud quidem, et scientia quidem, quod est quia, neque
est, secundum duos modos)
secundum semitam, per sermonem, demonstratio super,
et scientia quidem, neque est, secundum duos modos
praeter quod
Note that the negative evidence in this table for Gerard’s translations supports the positive
evidence of Gundisalvi’s table, which we have seen before. This strongly supports the finding
16
that text 14 (Ps.-al-Fārābī, ʿUyūn al-masāʾil), which contained none of the words typical of
Gundisalvi, was translated by Gerard of Cremona.
Let us turn to John of Seville:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
quoque ac (translating: wa) (in lists)
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................0 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............0 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................0 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............1 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................0 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............2 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:.........46 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................0 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................0 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........0 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:................0 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:....................0 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........0 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......0 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............0 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
As I said at the beginning, Abū Maʿšar’s Great Introduction was added to our group of sources,
in spite of its mainly astrological content, because we needed to increase the textual basis for
John of Seville in our corpus. quoque ac is not used by any other Arabic-Latin translator of
philosophical texts in the twelfth century. At this point, it is worth consulting the online Arabic
17
and Latin Glossary and searching for quoque ac among the quotations cited in this lexicon.
Even here, in this much larger group of translations from the eleventh to the thirteenth century,
quoque ac leads us to translations known to derive from John of Seville – which confirms the
evidence of the present method. This is the table with words and phrases used exclusively by
John of Seville:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellect
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad viam felicitates
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De 4 confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
words and phrases shared with JOHN OF SEVILLE
(quoque ac, cumque fuerint, cumque volueris,
dicamusque, et patefecimus)
quoque ac, cumque fuerint, cumque volueris
Among the few stylistic words and phrases which I was able to isolate for John of Seville, three
appear in text number 14, De quatuor confectionibus, a treatise on magic and natural philosophy
by an anonymous Arabic author on, among other things, how to catch animals without hunting.
It served as a source for the final letter of The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The magical
topic could have interested Hugo of Santalla, who is known as the translator of about seven
texts in astrology, astronomy and the divinatory sciences. Hugo would have been a good
candidate for the translation of text 14. But the translator, evidently, was John of Seville, not
Hugo of Santalla, as the following table underlines:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
words and phrases shared with HUGO OF
SANTALLA
(potissimum, pariter, aut saltem, deinceps quoque,
tandemque, denuo, itidem, ut uidelicet, dum uidelicet,
hunc quoque, siue potius, plerumque etiam, rursum in,
atque huiusmodi, eo item)
18
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De 4 confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
pariter
pariter
Hugo of Santalla has long been known as an idiosyncratic stylist. This is confirmed by the
analysis of stylistic particles and phrases. There are many of them. In fact, Hugo’s list of
favourite particles not shared by his fellow translators could have even be longer, if I had
continued searching. He has many stylistic preferences, which are not shared by any of the
anonymous texts discussed here. As a result, we may safely attribute text 14 to the translator
John of Seville.
Now comes our last translator, Alfred of Shareshill:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De 4 confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis (Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to Maqāṣid
words and phrases shared with ALFRED OF
SHARESHILL
(ut plurimum, huius signum, fietque, ceterum,
simulque, aliquotiens, ut multum, per multa)
ceterum
aliquotiens
ut plurimum
From what we know of Alfred of Shareshill’s other translations and writings, he is a likely
candidate for the translation of texts with meteorological, mineralogical or botanical content.
But texts 5 and 18 (al-Kindī, De mutatione temporum and Avicenna, De diluviis), which fall
into this category, do not contain any stylistic words typical of Alfred. Again, this table
underlines the above finding that Dominicus Gundisalvi translated also these two treatises.
I am quite clueless as to text 1. Here we may have a translator at work whom we do not
know. Or, it may be that the text is simply too short for the kind of evidence I have been using.
19
The only stylistic feature shared with other translators, as far as I can see at the moment, is
causa huius est:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
causa huius est
ANON_01ArisMetAlpha:.....................2 ''''_02AlexDeIntell:.....................0 ''''_03Turba:............................0 ''''_04KindiDeIntell:....................0 ''''_05KindiDeMutatTemp:.................0 ''''_06KindiDeRadiis:....................0 ''''_07FarabiDeIntell:...................0 ''''_08FarabiAdViamFelicitatis:..........0 ''''_09FarabiFlos:.......................0 ''''_10FarabiEuclid:.....................0 ''''_11PsFarabiDeOrtuScien:..............0 ''''_12IkhwanInArtemLogicae:.............0 ''''_13IkhwanCosmo:......................3 ''''_14AnonymDeQuattuorConf:.............0 ''''_15IsaacDeDefin:.....................0 ''''_16AvicIsagogeI‐II_QUOTES:...........0 ''''_17AvicPhys:.........................1 ''''_18AvicDeDiluviis:...................0 ''''_19GazaliProlMaqasid:................0 John_20PsArisSecretum:...................0 ''''_21QustaDeDifferentia:...............0 ''''_22AlbumasarIntroductorium:..........0 Hugo_23PsApollDeSecretis:................0 ''''_24LiberAristotilis:.................0 Gerard_25ArisPostAn:.....................1 ''''''_29ArisMeteoraI‐III:...............0 ''''''_30PsArisDeCausis:.................0 ''''''_31AlexanderDeMotu:................0 ''''''_32ThemistiusPostAn:...............0 ''''''_33KindiDeQuinqueEssentiis:........0 ''''''_34KindiDeSomno:...................0 ''''''_35KindiDeRatione:.................0 ''''''_36FarabiDeScientiis:..............0 ''''''_38IsaacDeDefin:...................0 Avendauth_39AvicProlIsagogeI:............0 Gundisalvi_40AvicDeAnima:................1 ''''''''''_41AvicDeMedCord:..............0 ''''''''''_42GabirolFonsVitae:...........0 ''''''''''_43GazaliSumma:................1 ''''''''''_44AvicMet:....................2 ''''''''''_45FarabiDeScientiis:..........0 ''''''''''_46AvicConvenientiaScien:......0 ''''''''''_47PsAvicLiberCeli:............0 Alfred_48NicolausDePlantis:..............0 ''''''_49AvicLapid:......................0 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Given that we know by now that Gundisalvi was the translator also of texts 13 and 17, the usage
of the phrase causa huius est points to Gundisalvi as translator of text 1 as well.
This leaves us with the following result:
anonymous translation
Alonso
analysis of particle usage
20
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics,
Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias,
De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione
temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et
intellect
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad
viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn almasāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of
Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu
scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem
logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ,
Cosmographia
14-Anonymous, De quattuor
confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De
definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis
(Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to
Maqāṣid
perhaps Gundisalvi?
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
probably
Gundisalvi
Gerard of Cremona
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
probably Gundisalvi
John of Seville
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Upon the evidence of particle usage, Dominicus Gundisalvi was the translator of 14 anonymous
translations, probably of 16. If we add text 1, Gundisalvi was the translator of 17 texts. One
translation – that of Pseudo-al-Fārābī’s ʿUyūn al-masāʾil, comes from Gerard of Cremona. One
translation – that of De quattuor confectionibus – comes from John of Seville. Note that Manuel
Alonso’s analysis of Gundisalvi’s vocabulary underlines many findings. But since Alonso did
not compare the vocabulary of Gerard of Cremona (or of any other translator), he could not
detect Gerard’s hand in text 9.
II – Computational Stylistics
The above results can be confirmed to a significant degree by a computational analysis of the
authorship of our texts. Our analysis follows, in principle, the idea of John Burrows that
authorship can be determined computationally by comparing the frequencies of the most
frequent words of individual texts.8 To this end, we have used the script “Stylo”, which was
8
Burrows, ‘Delta’: a Measure of Stylistic Difference, pp. 267-287.
21
written in “R”, a programming language for statistical computing, by Maciej Eder and Jan
Rybicki.9 Stylo provides only a very basic graphical user interface, which is why Andreas
Büttner added a number of tools to improve the workflow of testing the various options of the
script for the whole set or for subsets of our texts. When we began to analyse the text corpus
computationally, we were not entirely optimistic that we would achieve results, because it was
unclear whether the author signal would not trump the translator signal. In an earlier study,
Rybicki had tried to identify English-Polish, French-Polish and French-English and EnglishFrench translators with the Stylo script.10 But his disappointing conclusion was that translators
are condemned to stylometric invisibility. Multivariate analysis of most frequent words cannot
tell translator from translator, because the texts usually cluster around the author rather than the
translator.
Fortunately, however, this does not seem to be true for translations from Arabic into Latin –
perhaps because the linguistic differences between the Semitic language and the Indoeuropean
language block author signals. In a first step, we made Stylo script analyse only that part of our
corpus for which the translators are known, that is, for texts 20 to 49. The computer was not
able to differentiate the translators as long as texts 39, 36 and 45 remained in the corpus. Text
39, Avendauth’s translation of the prologue to aš-Šifāʾ, apparently is too short for computational
analysis. Texts 36 and 45 are two translations of the same text: Gerard of Cremona’s and
Gundisalvi’s translations of al-Fārābī’s De scientiis. Gundisalvi’s translation probably is a
revision of Gerard’s. As soon as we took out these three texts, the analysis delivered the
following satisfactory consensus tree, which is a graphic expression of the grouping of the
remaining texts in the corpus according to the distance measures between them:
9
The script was published 2011 in a Stanford paper and is since freely available on the net. See Eder and Rybicki,
Stylometry with R, pp. 308–311. I am very grateful to Fotis Jannidis for directing my attention to Stylo and for
introducing me to computational stylistics in general.
10
Rybicki, The great mystery, pp. 231–248.
22
Standard Consensus Tree
In principle, the Stylo script is able to differentiate between Gundisalvi, Gerard, John of Seville,
Hugo and Alfred. Note that Alfred’s translation of the section On Stones and Minerals of
Avicenna’s aš-Šifāʾ does not group together with the many other texts from Avicenna’s aš-Šifāʾ
translated by Gundisalvi. The author signal in this case is not stronger than the translator signal.
A problem is John of Seville’s translation of the Secretum secretorum. It does not group
unambiguously with the other translations by John of Seville, but is located in the middle
between the translations by John and by Hugo of Santalla. This is probably because Hugo of
Santalla’s translations, and in particular his translation of Pseudo-Apollonius (Bālīnūs) On the
Secrets of Nature, are too close in topic and language to the Secretum secretorum.
Some brief comments on the statistical parameters which produce this tree are at place. At
the bottom of the tree, you see the parameters we chose in the end, after trying out many others.
The translator attribution rests on an analysis of the most frequent 50 words, then 100 words,
150 and so forth words until 1000 words, and on combining these results. “Culled @ 20-80%”
means: The most frequent words considered are only those shared by at least 20% of all texts
23
(again moving upwards until 80% and combining the results) – thus excluding words that
appear only in certain disciplines of philosophy. “Eder Delta” is a distance function (metric)
used to measure the distance between the word frequency vectors of the individual texts.
“Consensus 0.5” means that the consensus tree makes a direct linkage between two texts if that
linkage appears in at least 50% of the analyses.
We chose this consensus tree as our calibrated standard. Once we had this standard, we could
add anonymous translations. For some anonymous translations, the results are clear, for others
they are not. Text 19, the Latin translation of al-Ġazālī’s brief introduction to the Maqāṣid, is
an example for a case in which the computer is completely at a loss. The analysis results are
represented in a consensus tree, in which the Gundisalvi branch remains intact, as do the John,
Alfred and Hugo branches, but the Gerard branch has been turned into chaos. A similarly
chaotic consensus tree is produced when text 8, al-Fārābī’s Liber exercitationis, is added to the
corpus. Likewise, texts 1, 3-7, 11, 13-15 and 18 are placed ambiguously between known
authors.
But there are also very indicative results, which are presented in the following graphs:
02 Consensus tree: Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu
24
07 Consensus tree: al-Fārābī, De intellectu et intellecto
25
09 Consensus tree: Ps.-al-Fārābī, ʿUyūn al-masāʾil, Flos / Fontes questionum
26
10 Consensus tree: al-Fārābī, Explanation of the 5th book of Euclid
27
12 Consensus tree: al-Fārābī, In artem logicae demonstrationis
28
16 Consensus tree: Avicenna, Isagoge of aš-Šifāʾ
29
17 Consensus tree: Avicenna, Physics of aš-Šifāʾ
Hence, in 7 of the 19 cases, we arrive at unambiguous results when analysing the texts with the
Stylo script. The computer analysis of the distance measures between the most frequent word
lists results in the ascription of six anonymous translations to Dominicus Gundisalvi (texts 2,
7, 10, 12, 16 and 17), among them Avicenna’s Physics (text 17), and of one anonymous
translation to Gerard of Cremona: text 9, Ps.-al-Fārābī’s Flos (ʿUyūn al-masāʾil). This last
ascription is particularly noteworthy since it agrees, against Alonso’s intuition, with the results
of the philological analysis above. It is a surprise also becaue we did not expect that Gerard of
Cremona translated more texts than those listed by his socii in the famous list of translations
which they drew up after his death in 1178 AD.11 In sum, it is very good sign that, whenever
Stylo script groups a text unambiguously with one translator, the result agrees with my
philological analysis above.
11
Burnett, The Coherence, pp. 249–288
30
III – Conclusion
The overall result of the present study can be summarized in the following table:
anonymous translation
01-Aristotle, Metaphysics,
Alpha Meizôn
02-Alexander of Aphrodisias,
De intellectu
03-Turba philosophorum
04-al-Kindī, De intellectu
05-al-Kindī, De mutatione
temporum
06-al-Kindī, De radiis
07-al-Fārābī, De intellectu et
intellect
08-al-Fārābī, Liber exerc. ad
viam felicitatis
09-Ps.-al-Fārābī, Flos (ʿUyūn almasāʾil)
10-al-Fārābī, Explanation ... of
Euclid
11-Ps.-al-Fārābī, De ortu
scientiarum
12-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, In artem
logicae demon.
13-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ,
Cosmographia
14-Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ, De 4
confectionibus
15-Isaac Israeli, De
definitionibus
16-Avicenna, Isagoge, I-II
17-Avicenna, Physics, I-III
18-Avicenna, De diluviis
(Meteora II.6)
19-al-Ġazālī, prologue to
Maqāṣid
Alonso
Stylo
my analysis of particle
usage
perhaps Gundisalvi?
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gerard of
Cremona
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
probably
Gundisalvi
Gerard of Cremona
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
probably Gundisalvi
John of Seville
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
Gundisalvi
The right hand column contains the translator ascriptions proposed in this paper. The evidence
for these attributions is clearly much stronger than Alonso’s evidence had been. Some of the
evidence, such as for Gundisalvi as the translator of Avicenna’s Physics, is so overwhelming
that we may safely call it conclusive. But it is not without reason that this study is called
“Notes”. It is impossible to provide full documentation of all the statistical material relevant for
these attributions in one paper. Also, we believe that there is room for improvement both with
the philological and the computational analysis. Currently we are working on extending our
analysis to all Arabic-Latin translations on the Iberian peninsula in the twelfth century.
The results are interesting in many historical and philological respects. Dominicus
Gundisalvi emerges from this study as one of the major Arabic-Latin translators of the Middle
31
Ages, alongside other great names such as Gerard of Cremona, John of Seville and Michael
Scot. Gundisalvi is the key figure for the transport of al-Fārābī and Avicenna into Latin. He
also contributed much to the Latin version of al-Kindī – one half of Alkindus Latinus comes
from Gundisalvi, the other half from Gerard of Cremona. We know that, for some translations,
Gundisalvi worked together with Arabic-speaking scholars, the Jew Avendauth and the
Mozarab Johannes Hispanus. This may also have been the case for the many anonymous
translations that are attributed to Gundisalvi in this paper. But in view of the great experience
he must have collected over the years and in view of the fact that his Latin style remains
recognizable, one may surmise that he did a good number of these translations by himself.
Dominicus Gundisalvi signs several Latin and Mozarabic charters between 1162 and 1190.
He was archdeacon of Cuellar north of Segovia, but was resident in Toledo, where he was a
canon of the cathedral. Gerard of Cremona was canon of this cathedral too, in the very same
decades. The attribution of 14 (and possibly 17) anonymous translations to Gundisalvi adds to
the importance of Toledo, and in particular: of the cathedral of Toledo, in the translation
movement. Gerard of Cremona, of course, the translator of at least 70 texts from Arabic, among
them great works of Greek and Arabic astronomy and medicine, remains the towering figure.
But his fellow canon Gundisalvi also translated almost 30 texts. In contrast to Gerard,
Gundisalvi was a philosophical and theological author of his own. He was translator and first
reader of the translations at the same time. And in contrast to Gerard, Gundisalvi, when
translating, was not only interested in Greek authors transmitted in Arabic, but also and
predominantly in Arabic philosophy proper. In this particular respect, he was immensely
important for the history of philosophy of the Latin West.
32
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