Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/303

 and so continued until the 17th century. It was a precursor of the rationalism and anti-church feeling of the renascence, perhaps assisted by Venetian contact with the East. At Bologna Arabic influence was predominant in medicine; already in the later 13th century the medical course centres in the Canon of Avicenna and the medical treatises of Averroes, with the result that astrology became a regular subject of study, and degrees were granted in it. Most of the physicians of Bologna and Padua were astrologers, and were generally regarded as freethinkers and heretics. Bologna had at one time enjoyed the favour of Frederick II., and he had presented the University with copies of the Latin translations prepared by his order from Arabic and Greek.

The "Great Commentary" was firmly established at Padua, and in 1334 the Servite friar Urbano de Bologna published a commentary on the commentary of Averroes, which was printed in 1492 by order of the general of the Servites. But it is Gaetano of Tiena (d. 1465), a canon of the cathedral at Padua, who is generally regarded as the founder of Paduan Averroism. He was less bold in his statements than the Augustinian Paul of Venice, but still quite definitely an Averroist in his teaching as to the Agent Intellect and the unity of souls, etc. He seems to have had a great popularity, as many copies of his lectures survive. This Averroist cult in Padua held good through the greater part of the 15th century.