Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/551

1922 the Arabian astrologers were already becoming known through complete Latin translations. Brief pioneer treatises, like those of Adelard of Bath and William of Conches, which had appeared earlier in the century, had had time to make an impression and become widely known during a period when there was perhaps little or nothing available that was fuller and better. But Daniel's little trickle of learning from Toledo, which does not represent any very considerable advance over Adelard and William, might well be engulfed in the great stream of translations that now poured from Spain into Christian western Europe. But it is unreasonable to conjecture that Daniel's book, which is in any case, rather mild in its astrological doctrine, and which was evoked by the favouring questions of a bishop, was then crushed by bitter ecclesiastical opposition, when we know that William's book, which actually encountered an ecclesiastical opposition of which we have no evidence in Daniel's case, nevertheless continued in circulation and was much cited in the next century, and when we know that both Arabian and astrological doctrines and books were widespread in Christian western Europe both in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Treatises with more poison of astrology in them than his were read and cited and seem to have weathered successfully, if not to have escaped unscathed, whatever ecclesiastical censure may have been directed against them. Moreover, if Daniel's own composition did not secure a wide circle of readers, the chances are that 'the multitude of precious volumes' which he imported from Spain to England did so, despite his sighs about being the only Greek among Romans. Certainly the translations of the master, Gerard of Cremona, who had taught him astrology at Toledo, became known throughout western Europe. Thus while Daniel's personal influence may not have been vast, he reflects for us the progress of a great movement of which he was but a part.

The list given by Rose of the authorities cited by Daniel is inexcusably deficient in the number of its omissions: for example, at fo. 89r, 'sicut in trismegisto repperitur' and 'isidori'; fo. 90v, Aristotle, 'philosophus', 'Adultimus' (?), 'Platonitus'; fo. 91r, 'Esiodus autem naturalis scientie professor omnia dixit esse ex terra', and so on for 'tales milesius', Democritus, and other Greek philosophers; fo. 91v, 'sicut ab inexpugnabili sententia magni hermetis'; fo. 92r, 'audiat ysidori in libro differentiarum'; fo. 92v, 'unde astrologus ille poeta de creatione mundi ait', and 'magnus mercurius', and 'trismegistus mercurius praedicti mercurii nepos'; fo. 97r, 'Aristoteles in libro de sensu et sensato', and 'Albumazar', and 'Aristoteles in libro de auditu naturali'; fo. 98v, 'in libro de celo et mundo'; fo. 99v, Almagest, and 'Ypocrati et galieno'; fo. 100v, 'liber veneris