Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/20

16 whole of Europe. "The French poems of the trouvéres were, in less than a century, familiar in translations into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Dutch, Bohemian, Italian and Spanish. A work composed at Morocco or Cairo was known at Paris or Cologne in less time than is now-a-days required for an important book published in Germany to cross the Rhine" (Renan). To this intellectual movement the commerce of the Jews powerfully contributed. If there were any demand for a particular manuscript they promptly supplied it. Books of science were, naturally, not multiplied with the same rapidity as works on medicine and philosophy, but whatever demands existed were supplied. A knowledge of Latin was widely spread among the Jews. In the thirteenth century Solomon of Barcelona reproves his co-religionaries of Provence for neglecting the study of Hebrew in their eagerness to acquire the Roman tongue.

Civic toleration has seldom been carried further than among the Arabs in Spain. Cordova was preeminently the city of learning; Seville of gaiety and music. Jews, Mohammedans and Christians were on the same official footing and spoke the same language. Hebrew and Spanish were often written in Arabic characters. John of Seville, a christian bishop, translated the Bible into Arabic. In spite of the opposition of the clergy mixed marriages were not very infrequent. This fact indicates that toleration had already begun to penetrate the mass of the people; yet this must not be taken as a general conclusion, for at the slightest sign religious feuds broke forth. It is probably more true to conclude that tolerance was the mark of liberal princes. Jews and Christians had a place among the Moors so long as their interests did not clash. There was no real learning among the masses in Spain or in Europe in the days of ignorance. The courts of princes, on the other hand, were alive with intellectual curiosity.

Nothing was easier, however, than for a learned man to get a hearing in Moslem countries before other men of his class. The case was much the same at European universities. Any mosque would serve the Moslem doctor for an audience-hall, and as nearly all mosques had endowed schools attached to them, hearers were provided from the outset. If the teacher was eloquent, pupils flocked to hear him by hundreds. The subjects taught were jurisprudence, logic, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy. All except the first were derived directly from the Greeks, or from Arab commentators. Of Greek literature, poetry, drama, the Arabs were absolutely ignorant. They did not even know the distinction between Greek tragedy and comedy.

We may perhaps judge of the authority of Aristotle among them by quoting from Averroës's edition of his works:

"The author of this book," says the Arab commentator, is "Aristotle, wisest of the Greeks, who both founded and completed the sciences of Logic,