In the middle ages 79

Nor is that all. Along with these works, the Paris-

ian doctors receive a vast number of commentaries,

made by the Arabs of Bagdad and of Spain. Fi-

nally, they also come into possession of a large col-

lection of Arabian and Jewish works, having their

sources in Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Avice-

bron, not to mention others.

All of these riches, in Latin translation, were

brought to Paris, to France, to England, to Italy,

to Germany ; and the study and evaluation of these

translations is one of the most difficult and far-

reaching problems connected with the history of

that age. In the last century, work on this great

problem was begun by eminent scholars; nor can

we even now say that it is solved. Will it ever be

solved? For, it continually enlarges as further in-

sight into it is gained. But results have been ob-

tained; and within recent years specialists of all

nationalities have taken the work in hand.^"

We get some idea of the difficulties, with which

these scholars have to deal, when we recall that the

work of translation was accomplished in a century

and a half; that the Latin translations were made

from Greek works, pseudo-Greek works, and books

of the Jews and Arabs ; that the Greek works were

9" Menendez y Pelayo in Spain, Marches! in Italy, Vacant in

France, Mandonnet in Switzerland, Little in England, Charles Ras-

kins at Harvard, Pelzer in Rome, l^esides a number of Germans

(such as Rose, Wiistenfeld and Grabmann).

80 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

nearly all twice translated into Latin and in two

different ways, the one including the direct transla-

tions from the Greek and the other the translations

by a sort of cascade of intermediate languages

(Arabic and Hebrew and even the vernacular) ;

and, finally, that it was carried on in three main

centres, — in Greece itself, in the Greek speaking

countries of southern Italy (The Sicilies), and in

Spain. Often the same work was translated many

times and at different places; many were anony-

mous or undated.

Through the three great frontiers raised between

West and East — Spain, Byzantium, Sicily — the

influence of these ideas is set in motion; but it is

especially through Spain that the influx is the

greatest. It is at Toledo, indeed, the most ad-

vanced post of Christianity, and where the kings of

Castille are contending against the ever-menacing

invasion of the Mussulmans, that Christian civihza-

tion gives welcome to the science and philosophy

and art of the Arabs. There, in the Archbishop's

palace, was founded a college of translators who,

for three-quarters of a century, carried on this

formidable task, and indeed to a happy conclusion.

Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, and Germans

worked side by side with Jews and christianized

Arabs, under the encouragement and stimulus of

the two learned Archbishops, whose names are