Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/19

Rh we must seek the full expression of Arab philosophical thought, while Algazel is its most original expositor. The greatest of the astronomers were Albategnius, Ibn Yonis and Abul-Wefa.

Greek made its way slowly in Europe, also, though it was never quite lost. In the tenth century, Sister Hrosvita, a nun of Hanover, composed Latin poems and dramas, learned Greek and read Aristotle. In the twelfth Abelard recommended the nuns of the Paraclete to study both Latin and Greek; and Héloise was acquainted with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well. In the thirteenth, Greek manuscripts were systematically collected by a few scholars—Robert of Lincoln, for example; and Roger Bacon's far-reaching proposal for the establishment of schools of comparative grammar for the study of Chaldean, Hebrew, Arabic and Greek, as well as Latin, represents the highest wave of a very widespread current. Petrarch's letters are a proof of a great rationalistic movement in the fourteenth century to which the study of the classic authors of Greece, in their original tongue, was a prime necessity. Neither Petrarch nor Dante knew Greek sufficiently well to read Homer in the original. The council which sat at Basel from 1431 to 1449 to consider the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin churches attracted many Greek scholars to western Europe, and by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 learned Greeks, who brought with them treasured manuscripts, were dispersed throughout all christian countries.

Raymond of Toledo, grand chancellor of Castile, established a college of translators shortly before the middle of the twelfth century, and the works of Avicenna and other Arab philosophers were translated into Latin. In all works of this kind learned Jews bore an important part. The translations were barbarous in the extreme. Each Arabic word was translated into Latin by one clerk, and the construction arranged by another. 'The Latin word covered the word in Arabic as a piece in chess covers the square.' The grammatical construction was Arabic rather than Roman. The style was barbaric. "Inuarkin terra alkanarihy, stediei et baraki et castrum munitum destendedyn descenderunt adenkirati ubi descendit super eos aqua Euphratis veniens de Euetin" is a phrase from Hermann, the German, and it bears out Roger Bacon's dictum that students would lose their time, trouble and money over translations of the sort. "Should Cicero or Livy return," says Petrarch, "and stumblingly read his own writings once more, he would promptly declare them the work of another, perhaps of a barbarian."

We have seen that the eagerness of collectors of manuscripts sometimes made Moorish scholars familiar with literary works even before they were published in their native country. Copies were rapidly made and distributed: a popular work would soon be known over the