scholarly journals A Hadith Condemned at Paris: Reactions to the Power of Impression in the Latin Translation of al-Ghazālī’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa

2017 ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Anthony MINNEMA
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Evil Eye ◽  
Agent Intellect

Of the more than two-hundred articles of the Parisian Condemnation of 1277, one contains an arresting reference to a camel that is killed by a magician by means of sight alone through the power of the Evil Eye. While it is difficult to identify the sources of many doctrines in the edict with certainty, this article can be matched positively to a discussion of the soul’s power of impression in the Latin translation of al-Ghazali’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa. The concept of impression was condemned on account of its association with the Agent Intellect and the theory of emanation, but many philosophers preserved the illustrative example of the camel even when refuting the attendant argument. Unbeknownst to the Latin world, however, this statement about a camel does not originate with al-Ghazali, but with the Prophet Muhammad. This study traces the origin of the article in the Condemnation of 1277 back through Arabic and Persian worlds and examines its reception in the Latin intellectual tradition from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. It also demonstrates that, despite condemnation’s influence and notoriety, its interpretation of this passage in al-Ghazali was not the dominant one in the Latin intellectual tradition. The majority of scholars instead interpreted this passage as al-Ghazali originally intended as an expression of speculative metaphysics, not magic.

Analecta Gelliana

1993 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 292-297
Author(s):  
Leofranc Holford-strevens
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
The Right

Not only was Gellius' preface received in the fifteenth century at the end of his work instead of the beginning, but it arrived almost or wholly without the Greek, which had to be patched up by guesswork; between siluarum and quidam early editors read ‘ille κηρ⋯ον, alius κ⋯ρας ⋯μαλӨε⋯ας’, the first two names in the similar passage, Plin. N.H. pr. 24. Salmasius, in the preface to his Plinianae exercitationes, printed a text ‘ex vestigiis antiquae scripturae optimi exemplaris [sc. MS P = Paris, BN lat. 5765] partim etiam coniecturis nostris correctiorem’; following κ⋯ρας he gave, in the right place but with the wrong accent, ‘alius Κ⋯ρια’. But when eleven years later he came to annotate Simplicius' commentary on Epictetus' Ἐγχειρ⋯διον, alerted by Simplicius' statement (taken from Arrian's own epistle dedicatory) συν⋯ταξεν ⋯ Ἀρριαν⋯ς, τ⋯ καιριὼτατα κα⋯ ⋯ναγκαι⋯τατα ⋯ν øιλοσοø⋯ᾳ κα⋯ κινητικώτατα τ⋯ν ψυχ⋯ν ⋯πιλεξ⋯μενος ⋯κ τ⋯ν Ἐπικτ⋯του λ⋯γων, he remarked: ‘Quidam et inscripsere libros suos olim τ⋯ κα⋯ρια, quod maxime ad rem quam tractabant pertinentia eo opere persequebantur’, citing Gellius with ‘alius κα⋯ρια and commenting ‘Ita enim ex veteri codice ibi scribendum est, non ut vulgo editur, κ⋯ριον [sic]'. Nevertheless, editors preferred his first thoughts to his second; Hertz, in his separate edition of Gellius' preface (Progr. Breslau, summer 1877) and in his editio maior (Berlin, 1883–5), gives three parallels:Plin. N.H. pr. 24, ‘Κηρ⋯ον inscripsere quod uolebant intellegi fauom’, where the Latin translation guarantees the reading;Clem. Alex. 6.1.2.1 (pp. 422–3 Stählin-Früchtel-Treu) ⋯ν μ⋯ν οὖν τῷ λειμ⋯νι τ⋯ ἄνӨη ποικ⋯λως ⋯νӨοȗντα κ⋯ν τ⋯ παραδε⋯σ⋯ [‘orchard’] ⋯ τ⋯ν ⋯κροδρ⋯ων øυτε⋯α οὐ κατ⋯ εἶδος ἕκαστον κεχώρισται τ⋯ν ⋯λλογεν⋯ν (ᾗ κα⋯ Λειμ⋯ν⋯ς τινες κα⋯ Ἑλικ⋯νας κα⋯ Κηρ⋯α κα⋯ Π⋯πλους συναγωγ⋯ς øιλομαӨεȋς ποικ⋯λως ⋯ξανӨισ⋯μενοι συνεγρ⋯ψαντο), where again the sense requires the honeycomb;Philost. VS 565 ⋯πιστολα⋯ δ⋯ πλεȋσται Ἡρώδου κα⋯ διαλ⋯ξει κα⋯ ⋯øημερ⋯δες ⋯γχειρ⋯δι⋯ τε κα⋯ καίρια τ⋯ν ⋯ρχα⋯αν πολυμ⋯Өειαν ⋯ν βραχεȋ ⋯πηνӨισμ⋯να, where hertz emends κα⋯ρια to κηρ⋯α.

The Aerial Battle in the Toledot Yeshu and Sodomy in the Late Middle Ages

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 493-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mazo Karras
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Activity ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Version ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract Thomas Ebendorfer’s fifteenth-century Latin translation of a Hebrew Toledot Yeshu text is the earliest extant Latin version to include a full narrative from the birth of Jesus to the events following the crucifixion, and predates existing Hebrew versions. After reviewing the place of Ebendorfer’s work in the textual tradition of the Toledot, the article examines carefully the work’s account of the aerial battle between Jesus and Judas, in comparison to other versions. Ebendorfer includes the detail of sexual intercourse between the two, which is absent in many later versions. In the context of a discussion of Christian and Jewish attitudes toward male–male sexual activity in the Middle Ages, the article concludes that while this detail was in Ebendorfer’s exemplar, he could have elaborated on it in a way that indicates this was a particularly Christian concern.

Algazel Latinus: The Audience of the Summa theoricae philosophiae, 1150–1600

Traditio ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 153-215
Author(s):  
Anthony H. Minnema
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Latin translation of al-Ghazali's Maqās˙id al-falāsifa was one of the works through which scholastic authors became familiar with the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy after its translation in the middle of the twelfth century. However, while historians have examined in great detail the impact of Avicenna and Averroes on the Latin intellectual tradition, the place of this translation of al-Ghazali, known commonly as the Summa theoricae philosophiae, remains unclear. This study enumerates and describes the Latin audience of al-Ghazali by building on Manuel Alonso's research with a new bibliography of the known readers of the Summa theoricae philosophiae. It also treats Latin scholars' perception of the figure of al-Ghazali, or Algazel in Latin, since their understanding in no way resembles the Ash'arite jurist, Sufi mystic, and circumspect philosopher known in the Muslim world. Latin scholars most commonly viewed him only as an uncritical follower of Avicenna and Aristotle, but they also described him in other ways during the Middle Ages. In addition to tracing the rise, decline, and recovery of Algazel and the Summa theoricae philosophiae in Latin Christendom over a period of four centuries, this study examines the development of Algazel's identity as he shifts from a useful Arab to a dangerous heretic in the minds of Latin scholars.

Aurispa, Petrarch, and Lucian: An Aspect of Renaissance Translation

1974 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cast
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
The Dead

‘A great age of literature’ remarked Ezra Pound in Make it New 'is perhaps always a great age of translation.’ In this article we will be examining a Latin translation of the twelfth Dialogue of the Dead of Lucian by the Italian humanist Giovanni Aurispa, and the influence that this translation, known generally as the Comparatio, had in Italy and in other countries of Europe, in France, in Germany, in England, in Spain, and in Bohemia. Such a translation was naturally important. Few educated people in Europe at the time we are concerned with, the fifteenth century, could, or would, read Greek. If they knew anything of a recently discovered writer like Lucian, it was precisely through Latin versions of his work produced by scholars like Aurispa.

scholarly journals Early Texts on Hindu-Arabic Calculation

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menso Folkerts
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Decimal Place ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Place Value ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
The West ◽  
Value System

This article describes how the decimal place value system was transmitted from India via the Arabs to the West up to the end of the fifteenth century. The arithmetical work of al-Khwārizmī's, ca. 825, is the oldest Arabic work on Indian arithmetic of which we have detailed knowledge. There is no known Arabic manuscript of this work; our knowledge of it is based on an early reworking of a Latin translation. Until some years ago, only one fragmentary manuscript of this twelfth-century reworking was known (Cambridge, UL, Ii.6.5). Another manuscript that transmits the complete text (New York, Hispanic Society of America, HC 397/726) has made possible a more exact study of al-Khwārizmī's work. This article gives an outline of this manuscript's contents and discusses some characteristics of its presentation.

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